The Bleeding Land by Giles Kristian Page B

his knapsack, took from it a leather bundle, laying it reverentially on the ground. His fingers fumbled at the thong, pulling it loose, then he unrolled the bundle to reveal an assortment of implements, which he pushed to one side of the leather wrapping so that he could kneel on the rest of it to keep his breeches dry. Those instruments, all tooth and wicked blade, reminded Mun of a carpenter’s tools. He heard his mother implore God’s mercy under her breath, and he peered through gaps in the crowds, looking for Tom and Martha, hoping that they were gone.
    ‘If the lad’s got any sense he’ll have the girl half a mile away by now,’ Sir Francis muttered as though he had read Mun’s mind, and Mun nodded grimly. The two soldiers were tasked with kneeling – no layer between
their
breeches and the freezing earth – and holding George Green still so that Waller could commence his work. And grim work it was. The frail-looking barber took up a knife whose blade glinted dully through the blizzard, and put the blade beneath Green’s shirt, pulling it up towards his neck, slitting the soaking linen to expose the man’s bare chest. Then using the same knife he sliced into Green’s belly and the minister jerked and writhed, and though his hands were still bound behind his back it was all the soldiers could do to keep him down. Waller made two more cuts, these down either side of Green’s belly as far as the first incision, and then he turned this gory flap up and laid it on the man’s chest and steam rose from Green’s insides, clouding in the freezing air. A low murmur spread through the crowd.
    Waller looked back at Sheriff Thurloe, who nodded, and then the barber shoved his sleeves up to the elbows and plunged a hand into Green, grimacing, his face turned up to the wintry sky as he worked by touch rather than by sight. After a moment he pulled out a piece of liver, which steamed and glistened wetly, spilling blood down the barber’s claw-like hand and spindly white arm.
    ‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! Mercy!’ George Green shrieked in a strangled, tormented voice. The crowd fell silent but for some gasps and muttered curses, because Waller was getting it all wrong.
    ‘His heart, damn you, man!’ Mun yelled, stirring a few ayes. In went Waller’s hands again and this time he pulled out the man’s gut rope, which gleamed bright purple and blue against the white skin and snow, unravelling as in his panic Waller tried to find the beating heart.
    Sheriff Thurloe stepped up and bent over the grisly scene. He was growling at Waller, who was tumbling the guts every which way as he delved deeper into the gory hole, blood even soaking his bunched sleeves. Then he took up his blood-slick knife again and raked it inside Green and there was another moan from the crowd as the condemned man convulsed, blood and mucus frothing at his nose and mouth and choking him, so that his cries to Jesus decayed into a pathetic gurgling that made the hairs on Mun’s neck bristle. One of the soldiers holding Green down turned his face away from the barber’s work then fell on all fours and vomited. The other man watched it all wide-eyed, his face spattered with Green’s blood.
    ‘Show some mercy, Sheriff!’ Sir Francis bellowed, and men turned to glare at him, though some gave up ayes, for they all knew Sir Francis Rivers – knew him to be a friend of the King – and most respected him. ‘He is a man, Thurloe, not a beast! Show some mercy, damn you!’ It seemed to Mun that even this crowd’s blood-lust had been sated now and more than a few added their voices in support of Sir Francis.
    Sheriff Thurloe peered into the throng and when Mun craned his neck he saw who Thurloe was looking at. It was Lord Denton, wrapped in a bear fur against the bitter day, his hat, which sported a bright purple plume, angled so that it partly obscured his face. But that purple feather dipped and Thurloe gripped Waller’s shoulder and told him to end it. The