The King's Achievement

the Prior and Chris arrived at the hostelry

he hall, which was high and vaulted with a frieze of grotesque animals and foliage running round it. There were a few servants there, and one or two friends of

as too well trained to ask; so he too dismounted and followed the

at the upper end, questioning him closely

harply, and looked a

-faced and anxious, h

r turned

uffered to-d

e the King as head of the English Church, but it had been scarcely possible to believe that the sentence would

my Lord Prior,

now, and his mouth worked. "They were hanged in their habits," he went on. "P

, my Lord Prior?" he sa

y is still

im a moment with pursed lips; an

I must see to the hous

ri

y Lord Prior

ort to fix his attention; then nodded sharply and wh

e said. "Mother of

t into the porch again. The others were standing there, fearful

but of an overmastering desire to see the place; he passed straight by his horse that

called

ied, "not so fast-we

nd again; but Chris was seated, staring out with eyes that saw nothing down the broad stream away to where the cathedral rose gigantic and graceful on the other side. It was the first time he had been in London since a couple of years before his profession, but the splendour an

en a barge swept past them, and a richly dressed man leaned from the stern and shouted something mockingly. The other monk looked nervously and dep

ng off to the left presently, and leaving the city behind them. They were soon out again on the long straight road that led to Tyburn, for Chris walked desperately fast

Chris had not even troubled to ask

said; and Chris looked at him va

urn-gate, and the clump

*

en space, dusty

om the west, and birds were chirping in the branches; there was a group or two of people here and there looking curiously about them. A man's voice came

fixed on the low mound that rose fifty yards away, and the three tall posts, place

him who whispered with an angry nervousness, he was aware of the ends of three or four ropes that hung motionless from the beams in t

he uprights with a kind of mechanical tenderness; the men were silent

right, those two dens of the tiger that had snarled so fiercely a few hours before, as she licked her lips red with martyrs' blood. It was indescribably peaceful now; there was no sound but the birds overhead, and the soft breeze in

word from him. For a moment his sense of identity was lost; the violence of the associations, and perhaps even the power of the emotions that had been wrought there that day, crushed out his personality; it was surely he who was here to suffer; all else was a dre

*

mselves, and he started and looked rou

"it is enough. We shall be attacked." Chris paid

s their chariot of glory, their necks in the rope that would be their heavenly badge; they had looked out where he was looking as

, and he remembered that it was this that had borne their wei

st pulled his

sake, broth

turned

" he said; "wh

re the men were standing still watching them; and Chris saw below, by the sid

The grey wood ashes had drifted by now far across the ground, but the heavy logs still lay there, charred and smoked, that had blazed beneath the cauldron where the limbs of the monks had been seethed; and he stared down at them,

, "here; here was the

nd looked into h

said; "are you s

ade an impa

harply. "Come, brother,

*

d, as he walked up from the hurdle; the secular priest had turned pale and shut his eyes more than once; the three Carthusian priors had been unmoved throughout, showing ne

h he had picked up near the cauldron, drinking in every detail, and painting it into the mental pi

n, waiting to bear off the straggling souls in their tender experienced hands; of the celestial faces looking down, the scarred and glorious arms stretched out in welcome; of Mary with her mother's eyes, and he