The Crown Read Online Free PDF Page A

been swallowed up by the mob.
    I knelt down in the dirt, sticking my head out of an opening in the fence. I shouted: “Margaret! Margaret! Margaret!”
    As she limped forward, I could see her eyes were half open. I screamed her name now, so loudly I thought the muscles in my throat would shred. She blinked and looked in the direction of my screams.
    Something quickened in her eyes. She came toward me.
    The people clustered right around me roared in approval. They’d get a closer look at the prisoner now. Two of the soldiers started over. In seconds they’d have her and pull her away.
    Margaret looked right at me. I saw her lips move, but I couldn’t hear what she said.
    I fished in my dress and took out my Rosary beads. I forced my arm out through the opening in the fence and threw her the beads. They landed in the dirt, at her feet. As she knelt to pick them up, an old woman leaned over the railing and spat on Margaret. The spittle landed on her left breast. “Burn, you papist whore!” she screeched.
    The soldiers grabbed Margaret. One of them yelled something at the crone. They had seen only the spitting. I watched Margaret seize the beads and tiny crucifix and make them into a ball, clutched tight to her body.
    As the men spun her back toward the stake, she looked over her shoulder, saw me as I waved my arm, sobbing.
    “Joanna,” she cried. And was led away.
    The soldiers called for quiet, and the crowd’s jeers died down. The gray-bearded official was reading from a scroll, but I could hear only phrases: “guilty of high treason . . . inciting of rebellion . . . conspiracy to levy war . . . the pleasure of His Majesty.” The minute the man had finished and lowered his scroll, soldiers grabbed hold of Margaret.
    I got to my feet but flinched at the feel of a hand on my shoulder. It was Geoffrey Scovill. He’d found me again.
    We both watched as the soldiers hoisted Margaret on top of the barrel and tied her tothe stake, around the top of her chest and her waist. Other men heaped the branches, sticks, and kindling around her feet. She was too far away for me to see her face clearly, but I thought her lips moved in prayer. I hoped she still held the Rosary beads.
    “Ahh!” the crowd roared as if one. A second later, I saw why: a short man trotted forward, a blazing torch in his hand. He bowed to the soldiers standing in a semicircle around the stake and then lit the branches surrounding the barrel.
    “Christ have mercy, Christ have mercy,” I whispered and began the Dominican prayer of salvation, the one I had prepared to say at the moment of her death. At least I could perform that task.
    A new cry rippled through the crowd. “What is he doing?”
    “Where is he going?”
    I turned toward the shouting just in time to see a man run by me, toward Margaret. A tall, fit man in his early fifties, a gentleman, his cheeks ravaged with tears.
    For a few seconds I was stunned; I could not take it in. Then I scrambled to the top railing of the fence.
    “What are you doing?” Geoffrey grabbed my arm to hold me back.
    “Let go of me! Let go!” I tore myself out of his grip. “I must help him.”
    “Help him? What in God’s name for?” Geoffrey demanded.
    “Because,” I said, my cheeks also wet with tears as I hoisted myself over the railing and landed on the other side, “that man is my father.”
    By the time I had made it over the fence, my father had almost reached Margaret. But the soldiers surged after him, and I saw one strike his shoulder with a picket.
    “No, don’t hurt him!” I screamed, and a soldier spun around, shocked at the sight of me.
    “Get back! Get back!” he said, waving his own picket at me as if I were a crazed dog. Behind him I could see a whole swarm of soldiers trying to tackle my father.
    “Father, no! No!” I screamed again, and his head jerked up. Although there were at least three guards on top of him, he was able to get to his feet. “Joanna, get away from here,” he