He can hear his skin bubbling and crackling as the flames lick up all around him. The smoke fills his throat. He is blind. The pain is beyond what his mind can understand and has ascended into a white euphoria.
There are people, beyond the pyre, watching him burn. He cannot see them but he knows they are there. Hypocrites. All of them. But that hardly matters.
He wonders if this is how the king felt, when the burning rafters were collapsing all around him and his ministers. He could hear the screams from across the river. He felt the heat of the blast, as the hidden black powder ignited.
In one night, the kingdom had its head cut off. The ensuing anarchy found snakes coiling to slot into the void left by the king and Parliament. Though they were once his allies, his sponsors, they cannot allow a man like him to live. Not while the common people bay for blood. Not while they mourn men who pressed boots to their necks for generations.
The irony. That's why he laughs as he burns.
Paddy Dobson
5th November 2022