Amos: There wasn’t a better lad in the shire, sir.

Cromwell: What has been done?

Bridget: We don’t know.  I brought Amos up at once to find you.  I wanted to come alone, but he wouldn’t let me.

Amos: I couldn’t stay, sir.  They’ll not have hurt him surely?

Bridget: What will they do?  Is it too late?  Can’t it be stopped?

Cromwell: Bassett.

(The officer comes.)

Bassett: Yes, sir.

Cromwell: Have you heard any Star Chamber news these last days?

Bassett: Nothing out of the way, sir.  A few croppings and brandings.

Cromwell: Any names?

Bassett: Jollyboy was one.  That’s an anyhow name for a man, now, isn’t it?  Lupton there was, too.  He was cropped, both ears—­said a bishop was a man.  That was blasphemous.  And a fellow about ship money.  That was savage.  Tanner his name was.

Amos: Yes—­but not Seth—­it wasn’t Seth Tanner?

Bassett: Tanner was all I heard.

Amos: It wouldn’t be Seth.

Bridget: What did they do to him?

Bassett: It’s not proper hearing for your sort.  But they let him go.

Cromwell: What was it?  The girl has heart enough.

Bassett: Both thumbs, both ears, the tongue, and a T on the forehead.

Amos: It wasn’t Seth, sir.  It couldn’t be Seth—­not like that.  He was the beauty of the four parishes.

Bassett (to CROMWELL):  Was he something to do with you, sir?

Cromwell: There is a boy, Seth Tanner, we have a care for.

Bassett: Because I made bold to take him in.  He was dazed, as it were—­didn’t seem to know where to go.

Cromwell: It was a good man’s doing.  Where is he?

Bassett: I live under the walls here, as you might say.

Cromwell: Could we see him?

Bassett: Nay—­it’s no place to take you to.  But I’ll fetch him if you will.  He doesn’t sleep.

Cromwell: Do, then.

(BASSETT goes.)

Amos: It’s not my Seth, is it, sir?  Not his tongue—­and a bloody T. They would know how he could sing, and he looked like Gabriel in the books.

Hampden: Shall we go, Oliver?

Cromwell: No.  Let us all see it out.

Bridget: Father, it’s horrible.  They don’t do things like that, do they?

Amos: Dumb—­and a bloody T—­and the thumbs.  It’s some other poor lad.

(BASSETT returns; with him a figure, the hands and ears bound up in rough thick bandages, and on his forehead a burning red T. He looks at them, with reason hardly awake.)

Amos (going to him):  Seth—­Seth, boy.

(SETH moves his lips, but makes no sound.  They look at him in horror.)