THIS LAST DAY ON EARTH

The condemned religious prisoner, his thoughts, his hopes

It was never meant to be this way.

I can't remember what it was like to be born, which is a shame. But I was born and have lived and prayed to my lord and am now awaiting my death. It's not far off. Twelve noon, they said, and the axeman will be there, flexing his muscles, the crowds roaring, greedy for a sight of my blood, and somewhere, amongst them, would be Mary, the love of my life, and I know, I absolutely know, she will be weeping.

The gaoler is hovering outside the door, almost continuously staring at me through its tiny rusted grill. If I tried to beat the axeman to it by somehow ending my own life he'd be on me quick as lightning. But I won't. It would be a sin, and anyway I want the world to see the colour of injustice. I want the howling masses to know what they've clamoured for, to smell its blood in the air, the texture of my fear writ on the lines on my face, and savour the truth in my eyes.

And Mary �" I want her to know that lies have consequences. Dire, painful, final consequences.

The minutes tick along, so slowly I might be waiting for a kettle to boil �" but I'm not. The gaoler scrapes his blade on the rusted grill of my door.

“Hey, fella, scumbag, you okay?” he leered, his unintelligent beetle-brows bristling with hatred and fury as he addressed me.

“I'll live,” I replied, sardonically, grinning at the nonsense humour in my own words. Because I wouldn't live, would I? Not here on earth, anyway. But I would arise in a better place, the bloody stump of my neck healed by magic...

His dull face barely gave way to whatever thoughts were slowly forming in his duller brain.

I heard the execution party before I saw them.

The priest, complicit in my death, more so than me and my innocence, mumbling, his eyes burning into the book he carried.

Why can't he read words that were written in a language I understand? I found myself wondering. But he wasn't, and I don't understand too much Latin.

This man, this priest, knew my innocence. But he kept that knowledge to himself.

Once, only a few years ago, he and I had prayed to the same god, and the king had died. Suddenly one god was of the past and another of the present, and I was too stubborn to shift with fashion. The priest had, though. He'd seen the direction life lay, and didn't want to die. So he'd forgotten all his past oaths and uttered new ones with a seraphic light in his eyes and his fingers crossed.

And here he was, reciting me to Heaven.

Behind him, the Governor of the old gaol, head bowed, face impassive, said nothing.

I knew him, all right. In the old days we'd prayed side by side. Now I prayed on my own and, it seemed, had prayed my way to a bleak today.

I was led out of the cell, my condemned cell, towards the platform and its hideous block. The axeman stood there holding his mighty weapon, his head covered by a blood-stained hood.

I'd prayed with him, too, only a year since. To the same god. But he had seen danger, and repented his true faith before joining the other.

Most people had done that, but I hadn't because, you see, I believed in my god. Ever since my unremembered birth I'd been taught to. It had been hammered into my consciousness, and you don't break old habits so easily.

I was made to kneel before the block.

The priest stood close, and still muttered the absurdities of his Latin text.

I managed to glance up.

I saw Mary in the crowd, her eyes dry when they should be wet.

She was leaning on the shoulder of a hunch-backed man.

The man who had accused me before the court.

The man with a cruel spot for Mary.

“Executioner!” ordered the governor.

The priest continued his inane mumbling.

So this was it. The choice of gods. Or a god �" the wrong god. Or the right one. The axe would tell.

Mary stared, her eyes wide with … was it horror?

The mumbling priest �" I caught a glimpse of his eyes, dead like the axe-blade and just as meaningful.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw the axeman raise his weapon.

The crowd was suddenly silent and in a moment the sun bl...