#tresilian probably does

[shredsandpatches]

sunday snippet (i do approve of his appellant-killing policy edition)

Wrote this a while back when I was thinking about how I was writing Lord Chief Justice Robert Tresilian in the aftermath of the Revolt vs. during the appellant crisis and decided I should just, you know, put it in the text. Last night while being frustrated about not being sure what I wanted to write I decided to tweak the scene a bit, so here’s some of that. I spent way too much time contemplating where exactly I should have Richard shift (unconsciously) out of the royal “we” here, but I think I have it right.

Tresilian was the probable author of Richard’s infamous “questions to the judges” in 1387, which were meant to establish the actions of the “Wonderful Parliament” of the previous year (described in the passage below) as treasonable, so this scene is leading up to that. The reference to the rebels of 1381 being guilty, or not guilty, of treason was a genuine controversy at the time, as the Treason Act of 1351 laid out very specific definitions for what counted as treason (it is still in force today, though the punishments are somewhat different). This is, of course, also why Richard needed to pose the questions to the judges.

--

“My lord,” Richard says, “I think you know that I didn’t approve of your handling of the Rising, back in ’81.”

Tresilian gives him a tight little half-smile, runs a hand through his hair, the red beginning to fade to a less remarkable yellow around his temples. “Your Highness made your disapproval quite clear,” he says, bending forward as if he can’t decide whether to bow properly or not. “You were very young then, my lord, and still quite new to your throne. I know your Highness meant well.”

“Indeed,” Richard says. “We may not have approved of your methods back then, but we do recognize the zeal with which you served us.”

Tresilian straightens, a hint of relief visible in his features. “I am glad of it, your Highness,” he says. “Especially in these times, when your Highness has enemies everywhere.”

“Yes,” Richard says. “Enemies mightier and more dangerous than Wat Tyler or John Ball could ever have been. We’re surrounded by traitors, Tresilian. Gloucester, Arundel, Warwick—they’ve turned the Parliament against us and mean to rule in our name. They harp constantly on how we should be fighting the French, and then they deny us the funds to actually fight the French. They convince the knights of the shire that we’re going to poison them all when we summon them to a meeting, so they can come to my palace themselves to threaten me. They dismiss my allies from office and appoint a council to choose my associates for me.” By now he is angry enough that his head is beginning to throb and his cheeks are flushing. He sighs heavily, presses his hands to his face. “Christ,” he says. “Sometimes I wish the French had invaded. Let them deal with that.”

Tresilian snorts a little in a way that at least sounds amused. “I wouldn’t make such a rash wish, your Highness,” he says. “I think we have the means to deal with your enemies without French assistance.”

Richard nods. “You’re extremely learned in the law,” he says. “This is treason—isn’t it? Gloucester said that there is precedent, for deposing a king. There’s also precedent to convict overmighty subjects of treason, right? My grandfather did it to Mortimer, you know. After the Rising, you helped my councilors overrule me. But I’m not a boy anymore. I won’t let them trample on my rights like this.”

“Your Highness,” Tresilian says, “I’ve already spoken to my lord of Suffolk. I see no impediment to building a case against them. It’ll take some careful argument, of course. But I think you’re absolutely right, my lord: if the rebels back in ’81 were guilty of treason—and I maintain they were—”

Richard clears his throat. He isn’t here to relitigate the revolt.

“—then certainly Gloucester and Arundel and their confederates are at least equally guilty, your Highness,” Tresilian concludes.

[shredsandpatches]

sunday snippet (sing, John Ball, and tell it to them all edition)

I feel like I’ve been kind of in the zone writing about the Rising of 1381, and also the novelthing, since it has a lot of sex, needs more violence, and so this week I wrote up John Ball’s execution scene. It definitely balances the ratio out a little bit. But I think it actually came out pretty well and I’m a little bit “huh, so I can write a horrible medieval execution, I guess.”

I’m not giving you the whole scene below—it stops before the gross parts—but I really like the scaffold speech I wrote, even though I only technically wrote about three lines of it and pulled together the rest from the Wycliffe Bible and Ball’s sermon on Blackheath (admittedly, the version given by the hostile Walsingham, but it does evoke some of the language of Ball’s surviving letters. Incidentally: Walsingham was probably AT John Ball’s trial, which was held in St. Albans, and does not describe it in any way. This is a common sentiment here but: fuck you, Walsingham).

--

They have set up a throne opposite the scaffold. It glitters in the sunlight. Tresilian is at his right hand, looming over him like his ill angel, as he has ever since they left for Essex—ever since they returned to the Tower from Clerkenwell.

At the scaffold they have already lit the flame. Richard stares into it, although in the sunlight it seems feeble, scarcely like something that would burn a man’s heart and entrails. He remembers the fire he had felt inside himself, on the day of Smithfield; now he, too, feels like a thin flame that a slight breeze might easily snuff out. Richard wonders if John Ball had felt like that, when he preached on Blackheath—if he too had known himself filled with light. He wonders if that light still burns within him now.

His flame will be extinguished today.

Richard had expected jeering, from the crowd, although as Ball finally comes into view, dragged on a wooden frame behind a horse, there is only a murmur that rustles through the crowd like dead leaves blowing across stony ground. Tresilian rests a hand on Richard’s shoulder, just for a moment, in a gesture that might be a paternal reassurance, but the slight pressure he applies might also be a stern warning: now is not the time for mercy.

If you let this continue, he had said, the blood will be on your hands.

John Ball, though bruised from his ignominious journey, mounts the scaffold as if he were ascending the altar to say mass. He is not a big man, like Wat Tyler had been, although he looks as though he had once been well-fed, before extended imprisonment. His face is bruised in a way it had not been, during his trial. As the executioners strip him to the waist, his eyes meet Richard’s and Richard feels, for an instant, as if it is he who were being stripped bare.

This is in your name, Richard tells himself. You cannot look away.

Ball is given the chance to speak, one last time: to make a confession, or to plead for mercy and thus entertain the crowd. But when he steps forward, he is brief, and his voice is steady, firm. His flame has not been extinguished yet.

“Brothers and sisters,” he says, in his thick Yorkshire burr. “You have heard my message by now. I would say the one thing I have said again and again. God has made no distinction of men, between bondmen and free men. But the Evangelist tells us that our Lord—our only Lord, Christ who is in heaven, has said: ‘whoever receiveth not you, neither heareth your words, go ye from that house and city, and scatter the dust of your feet. Truly I say to you, it shall be more sufferable to the land of men of Sodom and of Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than to that city.’ And so I say the same unto you. Now is the time, appointed to me by God, in which I will cast off the yoke of bondage, and recover liberty.”

He steps back, offers his wrists to be bound, and inclines his head to receive the noose.