“With pleasure, sir,” the man wheezed, his sour breath causing Alison to recoil. He turned to her, his beady eyes dancing with excitement. “Let’s go, witch. It’s time for you to get what’s coming to ya.” He yanked the chain without warning and Alison felt herself being dragged in the direction of the pyre.
“No! No! I have children! Please don’t do this! Please don’t do this!” She dug her heels into the mud. Twenty yards away, at the foot of the pyre, stood the executioner, torch at the ready. The pyre itself consisted of a stake surrounded by a mound of straw set amongst a stack of wooden logs.
“Come on! We haven’t got all day!” The jailer whined, tugging at the chain and pulling her forward, despite her intentions to not move an inch.
She was so frail, so weak...she had no fight left in her save for the fight brought on by fear. The crowd meanwhile, with a buzz of excitement, seemed to become more frenzied with each passing second. They could smell blood. They could smell death. They wanted a spectacle.
Alison stared at them, their faces becoming one big blur. The hate, the desire to kill...it was too real. It was too real...
Two men separated from the crowd and stepped forward, seizing her by the arms, murder in their eyes.
“No! No! Please! I have children!” Alison screamed, kicking and swatting at them as they lifted her off the ground. “You’re all mad! You actually believe me to be a witch!?”
The men ignored her, their hands like iron shackles as they carried her forwards and up the slope towards the pyre.
“I...have...children!” Alison felt herself growing faint now, though her churning stomach and the bile now rising up within her throat kept her from losing consciousness.
“Please...”
“Alison Balfour.” The executioner’s voice as they reached the pyre was loud in her ear. “You have been sentenced to die by fire.”
“No! This is not right! How can you behave like such animals!?”
“Tie the witch to the stake!” cried John from the platform.
Her strength - weakened by her lack of food and water over the past four days - was not enough to resist the jailer and the two men who forced her to the stake, slammed her against it, and lashed her to the wooden pole with ropes that cut her wrists.
“Please!” she cried. “This is un-Christian! I have children!”
“Don’t you tell us what’s un-Christian, you vile creature!” John spat, wagging his finger at her. “We should have cut out your tongue!”
Alison ignored him and turned to the only woman who might have the power to change the course of the events unfolding. Margaret Stewart sat beside her husband, watching Alison, her expression both horrified and sympathetic. Her gaze, while it communicated sadness, was clearly powerless and Alison knew there was nothing she could, or would, do. She vomited again as the hooded executioner approached her, clearly intent on lighting the straw piled high around her.
“Father Clouston will now read the witch her last rites,” said Henry Colville from the platform.
“I didn’t do anything!” Alison screamed. “This is murder! I’m a mother with two small children! How can you do this!” She set her gaze upon those in the crowd. “How can you be allowing this to happen!”
“Silence!” John bellowed from the platform (though Alison wasn’t sure why as the crowd was by now in such a bloodthirsty frenzy, they weren’t listening to anyone – neither him or her.)
Father Clouston approached and Alison tried to look into his eyes. The priest however was having none of it and instead averted his gaze as he opened his worn, leather-bound bible and began to read aloud.
“I haven’t done anything wrong! Stop this madness!” cried Alison. “Please! Father Clouston!”
“Quiet you whore!”
“Satan’s mistress!”
“Enough already! You confessed!”
Alison glared at those in the crowd who defied her. “I confessed under torture! I was tortured by these animals - ”
“Per istam sactam unctionem - ” Father Clouston’s voice found its way into the mix.
“ – why won’t you listen to me!?”
“Shut your mouth, whore!” John snapped from the platform. “Do you really want to add dishonesty to your sins!?”
“ – ignoscat tibi Dominus - ”
“Oh shut up you dog! You’re the worst of the lot!” Alison’s eyes blazed fire now – a fire that matched the fire beginning to lick at the straw as the executioner set the pyre ablaze.
Where earlier she’d felt herself growing faint – she felt herself coming alive now – alive now, in these moments where her life was about to leave her. Or was she about to leave this life? What did it feel like to die? The smoke from the fire began to billow and Father Clouston finished reciting from the bible. The crowd, in all its frenzy, seemed to be nothing more than an annoying buzz now, so much was Alison focused on her life in this present moment. She had decided she wouldn’t utter another word, she didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. She wouldn’t scream either. It was them who should be screaming and standing in her position.
The smoke grew thicker by the minute and before long she was coughing and wheezing. It wouldn’t be long now, she thought. It wouldn’t be long until she died...
She thought of Anna. And William. Poor William, his body destroyed as he was murdered by those animals. Abraham, good and faithful Abraham, such a man deserved a better end to his life. These vile creatures – Henry and John and Father Clouston – they would eventually get their own punishment. Surely God would not allow such foul behaviour to go unpunished.
Her coughing now was constant and she could no longer breathe as her lungs began to burn. At least I’ll die before the fire gets me, she thought. In a way, she was thankful for the smoke as it screened her from her tormentors. Cloaked in its darkness, she could neither see nor hear their shouts, their insults, their excitement. It was just her and the smoke and her tragic demise now... Such an unnecessary and unjust way to die...