A Fine Madness by Alan Judd (best classic books TXT) 📕

racked, pulled from the throat of John Ballard. The priest’s face showed white through his beard, rigid, staring upwards, his mouth and eyes open wide, his cheeks wet and quivering. When the scream stopped the kneeling man said something to which there must have been an answer because he motioned again to the man at the ratchet, who eased it a notch back to where it had been. The kneeling man moved closer to Ballard’s head, putting his ear almost to his mouth. Ballard said something and the man turned towards the scribe at the desk, again with words we could not distinguish, which the scribe took down.

Thus was John Ballard’s confession extracted, a word, a name, a sentence at a time. It was later read aloud for him in court, he being too weak to profess it himself. Not that it was needed by then because the confessions of Babington and the others, obtained without racking, were sufficient to have them all hanged, drawn and quartered at St Giles-in-the-Fields – which was where they had met and plotted. The drawing of their guts was done as slowly and carefully as could be, the Queen having said she wanted an example made of these men ‘for more terror’. I witnessed that too, again with Christopher. They were done over two days and we were there to see the ending of Ballard, Chidiocke Tycheborne, John Savage and Anthony Babington. There was such a crush of people we could not see all of it clearly and, neither of us being tall, we had to peer over many men’s heads.

Ballard died too soon to be drawn alive, his head still in the noose, such was his state following his racking. Unlike those he seduced to his cause he did not suffer being laid out on the ground while the executioner knelt between his legs and cut off his private parts. Then the executioner would throw them into the fire or, if he were minded, into the crowd. Nor did Ballard suffer the evisceration of his bowels and gut as the executioner’s knife opened him from crotch to ribs, pulling out his intestines and organs hand over hand and holding them aloft for all to see before throwing them to the flames or feeding them to the dogs. Some said that Babington sighed as his heart was plucked out but we were not close enough to hear.

I tell you this, sir, not because I enjoyed such spectacles – though it was impossible not to watch if you were anywhere near – but so that you understand the significance of my conversation with Christopher afterwards. I believe it had a bearing on his own death seven years later.

We left the execution that day with a sense of relief – for me, at least – and threaded our way towards Christopher’s lodging without either of us having expressed any intention of where to go. I think we were both somewhat dazed by what we had witnessed and it was a while before we spoke. For me, the jostling, noisy, smelly streets were a relief for once, the buffets and hazards of daily life a pleasure again. It was not until we were approaching Hog Lane that either of us spoke.

‘What are you thinking?’ he asked. ‘Now, this minute?’

‘I was thinking of those men, the rackers and executioners, whose daily task that is. Whether it makes them morbid or whether their senses are so blunted that they become like cider-presses, heedless of the apples they crush.’

‘But you accept it has to be done so that God’s will be fulfilled?’

‘Yes. Though I prefer that others should do it.’

‘You count yourself a good Christian, Thomas. Is what we’ve seen Christian? What about mercy?’

‘It is our Christian duty to defend God’s purpose and God’s word. Mercy is God’s prerogative.’

‘Which is exactly what Father Ballard would say if it were you or me on the rack.’

I was well aware of this uncomfortable truth and tried not to think about it because I saw no way around it. ‘If it is God’s will that such things should happen, whoever does them, in order that we may come to His truth and be reconciled to Him, then we have to accept it. His ways may be mysteries to us now but when we are brought before Him all will be revealed and all shall be reconciled.’

‘Thus a multitude of individual sufferings is the price of reconciliation with the Almighty. A price worth paying. Is that what you truly believe?’

‘I say God works in mysterious ways, ways beyond our comprehension.’

‘But if someone says the price is too high, that they reject reconciliation on such terms, they spurn God, what would happen to them?’

‘They would be punished everlastingly.’

‘By the ever-merciful?’ There was a playful light in his eyes. ‘So we suffer in this world or in the next. We are doomed to suffer either way. But what if there is no next world? Supposing that beyond us, after us, beyond the sky, there is nothing? No thing. Yet if there is after all another world, then we suffer in both. Is that your idea of a just and merciful God?’

There are men who relish such arguments, delighting in wordy twists and turns, but I am not one of them. Arguments like that always lead so quickly to extreme conclusions that within a few sentences I find myself forced into positions I would never have chosen. Words are slippery, easily disguised, their meanings changing with context. You and I, sir, may use the same words but mean them differently, making us honest neither with each other nor with ourselves. Do you not think?

Very well, I go on.

I stopped Christopher in the street when he spoke as he did then. ‘You cannot, must not say such things. They would make you a free-thinker, an atheist.’

He raised his arms. ‘Atheist, theist, deist – I care nothing for any ists. I care for the mind and I follow thought