Mordaunt bowed with a smile of triumphant ferocity.
“Did the people shout at all?” Cromwell asked.
“Very little, except ‘Long live Cromwell!’”
“Where were you placed?”
Mordaunt tried for a moment to read in the general’s face if this was simply a useless question, or whether he knew everything. But his piercing eyes could by no means penetrate the sombre depths of Cromwell’s.
“I was so situated as to hear and see everything,” he answered.
It was now Cromwell’s turn to look fixedly at Mordaunt, and Mordaunt to make himself impenetrable.
“It appears,” said Cromwell, “that this improvised executioner did his duty remarkably well. The blow, so they tell me at least, was struck with a master’s hand.”
Mordaunt remembered that Cromwell had told him he had had no detailed account, and he was now quite convinced that the general had been present at the execution, hidden behind some screen or curtain.
“In fact,” said Mordaunt, with a calm voice and immovable countenance, “a single blow sufficed.”