The Executioner's Daughter

By nightfall, everyone in the town was asleep. Even the visitors who had come from far away were tucked in their rented beds in the upper floors of the sold out taverns. A cold, crisp fog covered the village like an extra blanket, as if to convince everyone to stay in bed safely at home. But it didn’t need to. Everyone knew that tomorrow was the big day. They needed their rest.

The vendors would be up before down to stake out the best places to sell sausages. The sizzling meat would entice the earliest arrivals to a juicy breakfast. The bards would be tuning their lutes and testing out melodies, trying to find words that rhymed with “blood,” “soul,” or “cursed.” Families would set up blankets in the front row. The wealthy would book seats in the buildings with windows for the best views. The air of celebration would start early, and drunkenness would spread happily through the event even before the prisoner was threaded through the spokes of the wheel to answer for her crimes.

Prisoner or prisoners. That was up to me. Or rather, up to them.

“Why do I have to do it?” I had asked father. This was a responsibility I had never been given before.

“Because witches are dangerous and powerful,” he had told me. “When backed into a corner, they’ll do anything to save themselves, and men are especially susceptible to their…” he’d coughed and looked away awkwardly. “Charms.”

So here I was, standing outside the prison cell, delivering them their fate: “One of you is a witch,” I told the two women before me. “The town is sure of this. If she who is confesses, the innocent may go free to live out the rest of her days in peace and happiness. The other will be executed at dawn.”

Agatha, the older of the two, gazed intently into my eyes until I was forced to look away.

“Neither of us is guilty of this crime,” she insisted. “We cannot lie before god and our people.”

“Then the town has decreed that the loss of one innocent life is a small price to pay for the destruction of a deadly threat,” I recited from my script perfectly. “If one of you does not confess by dawn, you both will be killed by breaking on the wheel.”

Christina, the younger one, curled up next to the wall, her knees tightly drawn into her chest. She choked down a sob.

Agatha glared daggers at her, no doubt judging the girl for her weakness.

“I will await your confession,” I told them. I settled in on a stool by the wall, hoping I did not have a long night ahead of me. I hoped that the witch, whoever she was, would have the good sense and honor to spare the life of the other woman and face her fate bravely. Then again, if witches were honorable and brave, they would not have been in this predicament in the first place.

Cristina crawled along the stone floor of the cell and gripped the woolen robe old woman Agatha wore. “Please, Mother Agatha,” she begged. Her youthful beauty gazed upward at the crone with desperation. “Please confess. For me. I have done nothing wrong, and I have my whole life ahead of me.”

Christina was right to beg. She understood the grisly fate that awaited her in just a few hours. The bloodthirsty crowd would watch with glee as my father wrapped one of her arms between the spokes of a giant wagon wheel, lifted feet off of the ground for just this purpose. He would tie her wrist with an expertly knotted rope, then repeat the process with her other arm, then with each leg. He would take the heavy club he kept reverently for such a purpose and slowly, methodically, with the confidence of a fine craftsman, heave it against her limb. The bone would crack, crushed between the club and the heavy wooden spoke of the wheel. Blood would seep down her arm, dripping down the wood, down her body, to the dirt where it would pool in slow, steady drips over the course of the day.

Her screams would pierce the air and mingle with the triumphant cheers of rowdy delight of the crowd.

Father would calmly ask her to confess. Each crack of bone would be an opportunity to save her immortal soul before her inevitable expiration. If she did not, he would work his way through every inch of each limb, until her arms and legs were but ribbons, the bound ankles and risks suspending her limply in place as her eyes rolled back in delirious pain.

The other prisoner would watch all of this until it was her turn.

We would leave her there for hours until the crowd dispersed, quite drunk and ready for other amusements, the bards selling songs about the day’s events, local artists handing out sketches as souvenirs. Both prisoners would eventually expire in the hot sun, under the watchful circling of buzzards. Where they went after that would depend on whether my father had elicited a confession during his process.

But one of them had the chance to avoid all this if the other confessed tonight.

I considered reminding them of all that lay before them, but I had strict instructions to stick to my script and communicate with the witches as little as possible. Besides, the town performed this ritual at least a couple times a year, to those who committed various crimes. Thus, my father preserved order, and both Agatha and Christina no doubt had seen firsthand what was to now befall them once the sun began to rise and the fog dissipated under the light of its holy beams.

Agatha pushed Christina away, forcing her to loosen her grip on Agatha’s cloak.

“You are just a child,” she told her. “You think you can manipulate me with your tears the way you have manipulated every man in this town? I have spent decades healing the sick, growing herbs to help the people here. Then you come along and act with petulant vengeance, and just like that, they are ready to toss me aside like a useless old woman. No.” Agatha held her shoulders back. “I am no witch. I help people. You are the one who blighted Hans’ crops, and we both now that you are the one who should confess.”

“Agatha, I know not of the crime that you speak!” Christina cried. “I didn’t even know Farmer Hans until I heard the accusations against me.”

Agatha raised an eyebrow. “That’s not what you told me when you came begging for me to teach you the ingredients for a love potion.”

“There!” Christina looked at me in triumph. She pointed at Agatha. “She just admitted to knowing the ingredients to a love potion. Clearly she is the witch."

“On the contrary,” I told her. “All I have heard so far is you are the one who attempted to do magic to gain the unearned affections of a married man in town.” It was starting to seem like father was right about them. Perhaps these women really were a threat to the safety of the people.

Christina took a different approach. The tears in her eyes dried up as suddenly as they had appeared. “You are nothing but a useless old hag,” she spat at Agatha. “If this town really needed you, you wouldn’t be here with me. But because you are old and ugly and of no value to anyone, they are happy to kill you, just like they kill common thieves.”

My stomach turned as I watched Christina twist the verbal knife into old woman Agatha’s soul. The fight seemed to leave her for a moment, and I watched Agatha’s eyes grow even more tired and wrinkled as the truth of what Christina had said sunk in. But she saw me watching her, and somehow, for some reason, that seemed to give her a reserve of strength.

Agatha took a step towards Christina and slapped her hard across the face. The old woman towered over the younger one, but she did not yell. I marveled at how her once bent spine unfurled, powered by her deadly rage.

“You insolent child,” Agatha whispered. “You know nothing of power. Your recklessness got us both imprisoned. You are a dead woman either way. Redeem yourself with your final action. Do something that you have never done in your miserable life: perform one single sacrifice for the sake of someone else but yourself.”

Christina responded by curling up into a ball on the floor and laughing. The sound sent a chill up my spine. I longed for dawn.

What seemed like hours passed, and eventually Christina twitched into a restless sleep. I too began to doze in the dark of the prison hallway until Agatha turned from the hopeless demon on the floor of her cell and fixed her gaze on me once more.

“That girl deserves to die,” she told me. “But I have only ever helped people. Why must you do this to me?”

“They fear you.” The words escaped my dry, cracked throat before I had a chance to choke them back. But Agatha nodded. She knew they were the truth.

“Do you fear me?” she asked.

At this, I froze. I knew not how to answer. I did not think that she should die, but I had my orders. Father had never given me responsibility like this before. I shook my head ever so slightly, unsure if she could even see it in the darkness of the prison with her cloudy eyes.

“At one time,” Agatha told me, sadness clogging her mouth, making the words come out thick. “She was like a daughter to me.”

“I cannot free you,” I told her. The town would be quick to replace her with me on that wheel if I upended the order of things.

Agatha shook her head sadly. “I know you cannot,” she said. “But I have left you a gift. When you find it, you must not tell anyone, lest you suffer the same fate as us. A town needs a mother.”

Before I had time to ask her what she meant, I saw the sky outside the tiny stone window had started to turn. It was the dark blue of the beginning of the dawn. The fog was beginning to lift.

Agatha sat down next to Christina and stroked the girl’s hair gently. I heard the clunk of my father’s steady bootsteps down the hall.