The Executioner
Inspiration: a silver cup, a family heirloom.)
“Thief!”
“Rascal!”
“You’re a disgrace!”
The words kept hitting me, like a hailstorm as the cart drove slowly up the main street.
“You devil!”
“Rogue!”
“Wretch! What did your parents ever teach you?”
The cart jerked into a halt. I looked up, squinting. The platform was only a few feet ahead. The noose was dangling from a wooden frame above it, a lazy serpent basking in the sun.
I closed my eyes. Felt another rotten egg hit my shoulder, the soft shell breaking, the filthy, thick, stinking liquid running down my arm.
A strong grip closed around my forearm.
“Come on you. Last stop before hell”. A raucous laugh.
I can’t help the tears running down my cheeks. And suddenly she is in front of me again.
The stifling crowd fades into the background. The insults, the cheers are muffled by the wind, her voice.
“Dear, Dear Anne, I cannot tell anyone about this but you can help me!”, she pressed my hand and sat me down beside her, her skirts billowing and settling around us in a protective halo.
“You know I love him. And you know I can’t marry him, a man so beneath my station but...” her eyes, slate-grey, glowing with the tears she would never be able to shed.
“But you can help me? Tell them it was you he was visiting all those times? Please Anne?”
I lowered my gaze.
“My lady. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. You know?”
I dared look up then. Will she see me for what I am? Will she know, will she ever know how devoted I am to her? Not just as her servant?
She smiled. A smile so sad as I had never seen before. A smile that would crack a heart, make it wither and watch it die.
“I knew you would understand, Anne.”
Out of her skirt’s pocket, she took out the most beautiful silver cup I had ever seen. It gleamed like hope in the faint morning light.
“This is yours. Please tell them he was coming to see you and I will reward you.”
She walked off. I wanted to scream, I wanted to run after her, I wanted to grab her, hug her, kiss her, claim her. Yet I stayed on the bench. Sitting. Impassive.
“You witch!”
I try not to wince as another piece of rotten food hits me in the face. Cabbage? Really?
But the guard keeps pushing me up the stairs, manhandling me, almost lifting me as I buckle and stall.
My eyes fall on him then.
Silence. I can only see his eyes as the mask covers his face and shoulders.
The world has gone still.
Is it my voice or. Whose voice is this, covering the shouts of the crowds, covering the laughs of the guards, is it me screaming truly?
I fall to his feet, tripped and pushed by my gaoler. I hear the leather of his pants creak as he squats next to me and murmurs in my ear.
“Recognise the cup you stole, bitch? My mistress sends her regards!”
The silver gleams, still. A dull, sick grey that tastes like blood in my mouth.
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