On the eleventh of June, III Leeland:16, Gregory, Traitor of the North, was executed for his crimes.
He was brought up from the jails below William Hall to the tolling of the noon bells.
There was an angry buzzing around him as the people stood in the square beneath the June sun. Those who had come here today were ready to see a man’s head parted from his body, and to hear the two dull thuds of the sword and the skull. They had worked themselves around to seeing moral sense in the severing of arteries and bones, and the extinguishment of a thinking mind. People in this state are not joyful. They have cobbled together an idol of righteousness out of whatever anger they can find at hand. It must be this way, or the event is an atrocity.
The buzz turned to shouts near the doors of William Hall as Gregory emerged. Four Billies stood around the condemned man, more for his protection than to propel him forward. Gregory walked quietly, his hands bound before him. By the time he saw Cyrus Stoat in the crowd, he was bleeding from the head. He had been hit by rocks thrown by the angry people. Refuse and filth were flung at him as well, by enterprising citizens who had brought buckets of rotten food and excrement for this purpose. His brown robe was stained and filthy, and his beard dripped with some unpleasant substance.
“Traitor!” they screamed. “Shame! Filth!” And there were many more words far less flattering. The priests among the crowd screamed louder than any. On the platform at the edge of the square, Bishop Wildrick stood to the right of Queen Anne. He did not shout or scream, but his posture was stern, righteous.
As Gregory passed by Cyrus, he turned his head, and their eyes met. Gregory’s face showed fear, confusion, resignation; his body swayed with the impacts of missiles from the crowd. And yet—in his eyes there was peace. Recognizing Cyrus, Gregory smiled gratefully.
“Run,” he said. The word was plainly audible above the cacophony.
And then his steps took him on—on and toward the large platform at the edge of the square.
Gregory reached the platform and began to ascend the steps. A large man with a hood and a great cleaver waited for him at the top. There was a little wooden block there, with a hole cut out for his neck. Next to the block was a pedestal, on which sat a beautifully crafted crown of silver and gold. Gregory knew that Anne was to be formally crowned Queen by Wildrick a few minutes after his own execution.
“Grygory!” came the clear, ringing voice of Queen Anne. She used his former name, to his lasting distaste. “You have admitted, before a court of law and a judge of my bench, to the crime of treason!”
Gregory nodded agreeably. He surveyed the crowd, and saw that Merrily Hunter had encountered Cyrus Stoat. He smiled. This was as it should be. He would lead her to the valley.
“You gave aid and comfort to an enemy who sent armed soldiers to wrest the sovereignty of Uelland from its rightful monarch!” continued the queen.
He nodded again, frowning slightly in agreement. He was indeed guilty.
“You gave information to the White Knights that led to the death of men and women and children of this Kingdom in the village of Hog Hurst!”
The litany of his crimes continued, and Gregory listened carefully, making sure none had been forgotten. It was essential that every one of his sins—everything he had ever done wrong, in fact—be recited in this moment. Sotto voce, he added to the Queen’s catalog some additional wrongs to which he had previously confessed, but which she had omitted in the interest of brevity.
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“Which,” she concluded, “being against the laws of the Holy Empire of the Dusk and the Kingdom of Uelland, I have decreed and given sentence that he shall be condemned from life to death by sword.”
She nodded briefly at Gregory, who obediently knelt at the block. He looked up at the crowd, and saw the retreating figures of Cyrus and Merrily, trailed by the goblin Gmork. They would not witness what happened next.
He saw Victor Hogman standing at the front of the crowd, clasping his small pendant. Behind him stood the enigmatic and scarred Brutus. Their faces were grave and pained. Gregory smiled and laid down his head.
The crowd was silent. The sword flashed in the air, and dropped. In the silence, there was a soft, rather sad .
The faces in the crowd, drawn with anticipation, were frozen for a very long time. There were no cheers, no shouts. No one blinked, or shifted, or moved. They simply stared, holding their breath. Then a woman gasped, and fainted. The people closest to the stage drew back in shock. Their eyes, fixed first on the surface of the platform, slowly moved upward to focus instead on a point above the stage. It was the height of a man.
Queen Anne, her face ashen, looked first at the executioner, and then at the man standing before her. She did not take a step back, but looked as if she very much wanted to.
Gregory carefully placed his head back on his neck, blinked, and stretched slightly. He lifted his eyes to the crowd and drew in a deep breath.
“Glory!” he said in a loud voice. And the word carried around the square.
“Glory!” he shouted again. He turned to Queen Anne and embraced her. Lost in the moment, the Rebel Queen put her arms around Gregory for a long and entirely natural embrace of love and forgiveness.
“Hallelujah!” he concluded loudly.
To the left of the stage, on the side facing Bastings Hall, the small orchestra had gathered to play for the Queen’s coronation. They had, clipped to their music stands against the wind, charts on which the name of the composer was printed as “Merrily Hunter.” They were not supposed to start playing yet. But in the arms of each musician something unexpected shivered and awakened.
Gregory descended from the platform and into the crowd. He reached out his hands to those he passed, and moved among them. They did not recoil; instead they looked on him in wonder. His hands touched those around him. As he did, every ailment and illness left them. The healing spread to those beyond his reach. Men with boils found their skin suddenly unafflicted, healed. The lame and twisted stood upright, healed. Men who were blind, and had seen nothing but darkness for ten or twenty years, opened their eyes and looked around at the light of the day, healed. A dog with three legs, sitting in one corner of the square, suddenly found that he had four perfectly good legs, and immediately set about chasing a newly-rejuvenated squirrel whose severed tail had grown back. Healed. A great many mosquitoes were raised from the dead, to the momentary irritation of several in the crowd. The mosquitoes, after a brief and gleeful effort to reprise their former lives, were soon squashed.
The players by the stage, unable any longer to resist the pull of the music they heard in their heads and felt in their bones, began to play. It was a simple tune, but it stuck immediately and irresistibly in the mind. And after a few moments, as Gregory made his way through the crowd, words began to form in the thoughts of all who heard the music, and they began all at once, to their lasting surprise, to sing. Even Queen Anne, Bishop Wildrick, and the executioner (who had by now removed his hood and set down his axe) sang, and their faces radiated an inexplicable light and joy like none that had ever before touched them.
They sang:
She has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored
She has loosed the fateful lightning of her terrible swift sword
Her truth is marching on!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on!
She is sifting out the hearts of men before Her judgment seat
Oh be swift my soul to answer Her, be jubilant my feet
Our God is marching on!
Gregory turned to the platform and ascended once again, facing Queen Anne. She looked at him in terror and wonder. He turned to the pedestal nearby with the ceremonial crown and gently picked it up. He winked at Bishop Wildrick. And, before the assembled witnesses, he placed the crown on her head, even as she knelt before him. He laughed, and drew her to her feet; and then he lifted her hand up in triumph as they faced the singing crowd.
With a pattern in Her bosom that transfigures you and me:
As she sings to make men joyful, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Glory, glory, hallelujah!
Our God is marching on!
