The Executioner's Wife

The Lone Survivor

The sentences of the sixty-three nobles scheduled to die the next day were handed to Alois on a scroll, as usual. But everyone in town knew about it long before the paper reached his hand. The evening of the wedding, the baker's shop became the hub of the mass disbelief- the king was executing sixty-three of the lords and ladies who kept his kingdom in check. One of the flower merchants told his sister, who told her husband, who told the baker, who of course told his wife, and the gossip took off from there. Talk of peasant uprisings and the eventual collapse of everything they knew made the town's mood sour. Once the chatter died down, a collective truth was cemented between all who had heard and dared to disbelieve. They would all see the nobles die the next morning. The bakers' shop was quiet now, but the events of the coming day kept the couple up late into the night.

The baker and his wife silently swept up the spilled flour and scraps of paper, souvenirs of a long, profitable day. But the baker could tell, within the stiff-armed movements of his wife, that there was a rant brewing inside of her. He was right.

"How long do you think before everything gets crazy?" the baker's wife suddenly asked.

She did not usually ask for her husband's opinion. The baker thought a moment.

"I give it less than a week."

The baker's wife humphed, but had nothing clever to retort. Her husband glimpsed, for the first time in his life, fear in her eyes.

"Maybe we should head inland." She suggested.

"And leave the shop?" The baker shook his head. "I don't think it will get that bad. Maybe out in the nobles' lands, but I think we will be fine."

"He's executing sixty-three people tomorrow."

"Sixty-three nobles," her husband corrected her. "Besides, he's executed more than that in one day before."

"Well, that was when the king's executions made sense," the baker's wife scoffed. "People used to get the axe for speaking against the king. Okay, fair enough. But now you have to die for not clapping at his wedding? Did all sixty-three of those uptight fools forget to clap? What happens when he points a finger at someone for looking at him sideways? What happens when he kills you for baking a slice of bread that looks like his grave? What happens then?"

Tears slid down her cheeks as she tried to bury the thought of him on the scaffold. Her husband's heart clenched, but he did not move to embrace her. Instead he only offered, "It won't come to that."

"How do you know?"

He didn't. But he told her anyway, "Because you wouldn't let him."

His wife barked a harsh laugh, since there was some truth in it. The baker smiled slightly. But they both lost their mirth as a dark shadow passed their window. It walked with a crooked pace as if something were weighing it down on one side. Upon closer look, the baker couple found it was the executioner, limping home from the blacksmith's with a new grindstone. They recognized the sign. He was going to sharpen his tools.

The baker finally felt the dread that had been rising like bile in his wife. Maybe they should put some more thought into moving inland. After all, once one had failed to reason with the king, it was certainly futile to try and reason with the executioner. For what more could he do, but his job?

*******

The king's statement that Lily could go where ever she wanted actually held some weight. When she approached the dungeons, low in the bowels of the castle, she could hear the weak protests of the nobles sentenced to die the next day. Once she reached the door of their cell, a guard extended a hand to stop her.