This is the place.

Contributed by Douglas Noble on 27/11/07

This is the place. I am almost brought to laughter, but I may miss it, though I do not expect to see it again. From here we watched everything happen, we could see out over the square where they burned them. If you look, you can still see the scorch marks on the ground, even though they tried to brush them away with hard bristled brooms. From here you can remember, or at least I can.

Let me tell you. Trust me.

It was a matter of faith in the end. They burned us because of what we believed, or what we didn’t believe. It didn’t match up to they way that they were reading the book and that was that. I don’t blame them, really. Maybe if there had been as many of us we’d have done the same.

And here was where we were brought, with this window so we could watch as they burned us, one by one. The purifying fire, they said, and who’s to say that they weren’t wrong? Every morning they’d march out in their great cloaks and hoods, with one more of us tied to the end of a wooden pole by his hands. They’d push him ahead of him toward the pile of wood in the centre of the courtyard by use of the pole, ramming it into the small of his back where his hands were tied. At last he would be placed on a sort of platform at the centre on the wood and the whole would be set ablaze.

And all the time in deep and terrible song.

But even their songs would not cover the screams. And each day we watched through this window, and we listened at this window as our friends and our families and our faithful died, and not one of us turned to their ways. I take great comfort in that. They tortured us with the sights and sounds, yes, but they did not understand that they had given us comfort even as we watched.

You will doubtless be aware of the manner of heresy that we were accused of. We denied the papist Eucharist, that foolish tenet that bestowed men with the ability to confer miracles. No priest, we argued, could change bread to meat, or wine to blood. To say otherwise was blasphemy to us. To contend that miracles could be produced so easily this way, to order God to keep to a time table, this is what we found offensive. Did we hurt anyone by saying such a thing? And yet they came for us, and tore down our alter and broke the fingers of the preacher. Their faces remained hidden behind their hoods as they swung their weapons at our heads.

Our trial was swift, as these things go. Again and again they gave us the opportunity to change our minds, but we wore our scars well. Why would we, who had known truth, succumb to these bullies, who took no pleasure in their lives? One of my brethren laughed as they cut him, laughed back into the blank masks that bore down upon his body. He was strongest of us all, but even he screamed as the fire lapped at his flesh.

But I still do not know why they feared us so, to treat us in such away. Our preachers died, yes, and that was our doctrine, but they died by their own hand, and there was always someone to take their place. Were these priests afraid that their congregations would demand the same of them? Demand that they abandon their sleight of hand deceptions and provide their own flesh? To us it seemed only fair, and you can count the scars on my body as proof of this. But would it have happened? I don’t know.

And now it is only I who remain, and the firewood has been taken away and I do not know what my fate may hold. Through all of this my faith has never been shaken, as each day this glassless window that we had been afforded to provide us with a view of our friends as they died also gave us the hope that they would deny us. Alongside the sights and sounds of our tormented compatriot we were able to smell the unmistakable scent of their souls as their bodies burned. We few hungry and abused prisoners huddled at the windows then, with our faces pressed to the gaps. This was to be our communion.