I looked toward that pile of human fragments and in my mind’s eye I did see the golden-haired head of Andy Battell sitting high above all that sundered and withering black flesh, with the sun coming down from straight overhead and striking against my hair and beard with a wondrous radiance. And it was a vision not very much to my liking.
Yet did it seem certain I would end my life in this place within this hour. For though it was only an early time of the morning, with the mists and fogs of night still settling about the ground, a great throng did come forth and take up a place around the edges of this plaza. And the high nobility of the town had the closest place, nigh the chopping-block. I had me in mind that it must look much this way in London, at the Tower, when some great person of the realm is being parted from his head, and he stands alone by the block, and the Lord Chief Justice is there, and the Bishop of this place and that, and the Duke of this and the Earl of that, all at close range, where they can hear the sound of the axe and see the blood go flying.
And then there did come forth to me a colossal blackamoor, who must have had an elephanto for his grandsire, for he was an immensity of flesh and bone and muscle, a wall of a man; and he carried in one hand, the way you might carry a pike or a pigsticker, a sword of most ferocious size, five feet long or even greater. This blackamoor was naked except for a necklace of small bones at his collar and a chain of long lion-teeth at his waist, and his skin was oiled to a very high gloss. This was the executioner and you could see that he did relish his work, for he was smiling and singing under his breath and swinging his vast sword back and forth through the air to test the strength of his right arm.
I looked about me and said, “Ah, you would not kill me on this the holy day of my faith!”
I was minded to invent for them a fable: that this was a day of days, upon which no man was to be given to death, for his soul would be deprived of heaven if he perished that day, unless he performed certain rites that only a priest could do for him. But all this clever imagining of my fevered and frighted mind was futile, in that they paid no attention to what I said, but laid hold on me and in a trice stripped from me all my clothes, and I stood naked before that multitude.
Now, it is an awful thing to die by the headman’s blade, but it is five times more awful to do it naked before hundreds of onlookers. Heigh-ho, and the onlookers themselves were just as naked, or the next thing to it; but they at least had their privities decently covered, and, besides, they were not the ones who were dying that day.
And there I stood with my yard and buttocks and everything exposed to the gaze of the curious, which robs a man of all dignity at the moment when he most needs his dignity, since he is about to lose all else. It is barbarism. King Henry, when he sent his queen Anne Boleyn to lose her head, did not also command that she be laid bare so that the gapers could behold her royal breasts and loins. Nor did he expose the equally royal belly and rump of Katherine Howard, his later queen, to the crowd when she went to the block. Or imagine Sir Thomas More naked on the scaffold, or Somerset, or Northumberland, or Norfolk! Nay, it is too much, to be revealed at the last before the mockers; but these savages took no account of it. I was sore afraid I would beshit myself in fear, or rouse their laughter with my urine, or, worse, have my yard stand tall at the last, as is said sometimes to happen to the dying, and there be no way to conceal any of these weaknesses of the flesh. I think I was more afraid of those shames than of dying itself.
Naked, then, and alone, and unshriven, did I march forward between two armed men to the chopping-place.
I looked about me.
“I beg you mercy,” I said, “for I am a stranger in this land, and I was but left here as a pawn by my enemies, who hoped to see me brought to this pass. But I have done you no injury, as you all do know.”
This brought me no response. Certain ngangas began an evil-sounding chanting and a making of music.
I said, having trouble finding my voice now, for my throat was dry as the sands of Egypt and my tongue was swollen with dismay, “Only give me five more days, and my companions will return, bringing you all you desire. But if you slay me, they will fall upon you and exact a terrible vengeance.”
This waked only laughter in them, as well it might, since it was the direct opposite in sense from my previous plea.
And after that I said, knowing the time did grow desperate, “Let me pray, and make my peace with my Maker, before you smite me.”
They indicated I might do that. But I could not find the words of prayer within my soul. I was not ready to die, and I had no summing-up yet to make to the Lord of my life and deeds, for I felt myself interrupted in mid-course. To death I had been no stranger, God wot, since coming to this land; but now that he was so close, now that I could view the very blade that would sever my neck and the very heap on which my head would be thrown, I could not speak the language of grace. So I stood still, in a praying guise, getting down on my knees, and in my head there was only a buzzing and a droning as of idle insects on the wind.
Seeing that it was useless, I rose again and stood slack, thinking that there was no delaying it further. Mofarigosat himself was arriving now, borne toward the executing-place on a high litter much ornamented with peacock feathers and the tails of leaopards. No doubt they had been waiting only for him, and would proceed with despatch to the grand event.
But then came another figure, on foot, much out of breath, making his way through the crowd with little sharp outcries that caused them all to move aside swiftly before him. This was the white-skinned red-eyed ndundu witch Mboma, my friend and tutor. He was flushed and wearied, as though he had run a long way, he who was so frail and feeble of body. They were already jostling me toward the chopping-block, which was a mere crude heavy log much nicked and sliced, and stained with old blood.
“Wait!” cried Mboma. “Let him be!”
The executioners paid no heed, but pushed me forward and bent me down, and the headsman grasped his weapon.
“I say wait!” cried the albino again, and added some words in the holy language, unknown to me.
Already was the great sword rising.
Mofarigosat leaned forward on his wickerwork throne. “What is this?” he said.
“Take not his life!” said Mboma.
The headsman looked toward Mofarigosat, as if to say, Let us ignore this interruption, O my lord, and continue with our morning’s work. But Mofarigosat gestured, the smallest mere movement of his left hand, and in that trifling flick of his fingers did reprieve my life.
To Mboma he said again, “What is this?”
The man-witch approached his master Mofarigosat and answered, in his high reedy voice that scarce carried five yards, “He may not be slain, for his Portugals are coming, with many warriors and guns to aid us in our wars.”
Mofarigosat said scowling, “Is this sure?”
“I have seen the truth of it in the rising smoke of my fire,” declared the ndundu. “In six days will they be here.”
There was muttering and grumbling among the chief lords, who had come to see me shortened that day, and would not have me set free. Mofarigosat and his witch carried on a brief colloquy that I could not hear, and then the chieftain gestured once again to the headsman, more broadly, signalling that I was saved.