Constant

Chapter 13

(LYDIA)

"What were you thinking?!" I demanded once I was alone with James and Peter. "A trial won't make any difference! The entire town is out there already calling for his blood."

"I don't know," James said as he shoved his hands through his hair and leaned his arms on his knees. "I thought that it might give us some time to get all of this figured out. Hopefully we can come up with a solution."

"It won't make any difference you heard the people out there, they have already made up their minds the want to see him hang."

James didn't listen to me. Instead he went back to the unconscious Peter's wounds. I pushed his hands away and put my hands on my hips glaring at him.

"What are you doing?!" I demanded.

"What does it look like? I'm attending to his wounds."

"It would be cruel to heal him just so that he can be healthy enough to die. It would be far better to let him bleed out right here and now. Let him have some dignity." I said as I thought of the horrible executions that I had seen in the past. They were always a large spectacle in town and many of the people loved to attend. It was a horrible morbid tradition that people always turn out when there was a public execution. My father had always insisted that we go to them. My mother would plead with him to let us stay home but he would say that we should go together as a family like all of the other towns people. My father would lift me up on to  his shoulders and hold my mother close at his side forcing us to watch. We weren't allowed to close our eyes or cover our ears to block out the sounds. The hangings from my childhood always haunted me. I could imagine the crunching bones as necks were suddenly broken with a short drop and a sudden stop.

 And those were the lucky ones. 

I had seen a few hangings where the rope took several long minutes to be effective all the while the writhing body hung suspended. Legs kicking looking for a foot hold to end their torment as they slowly suffocated. They would do anything for just one more fresh breath of air. When their efforts would prove pointless they would hang with their heads lolled back, eyes bulging, and tongue swollen. Their bowels would release. A sword would be thrust through their chests to make sure that they were really dead. I had always thought that the sword should have been used instead of the rope. A quick wound to the heart was quicker and seemed better than the rope. I looked at Peter's face and I couldn't imagine wishing that fate on anyone. 

"Something tells me that his life isn't over yet," James whispered as he set to work.

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(LYDIA)

I stared at the people around me. Many of them I had known for years. While they had not ever been my friends I didn't expect them to turn on me so quickly. They looked at me as though they couldn't believe that I would dare to defend the man who had supposedly attacked me. I constantly proclaimed Peter's innocence while the people continually condemned him.

I searched Eliza's face out in the crowd and she offered me a friendly smile. I wondered what she thought of this spectacle. Surely she would be the only person who believed me when I said that Peter hadn't done anything wrong. James had proclaimed Peter healthy enough to kill and was sitting near Eliza. Out of the entire town they were the only two people who weren't calling for Peter to hang. I looked straight ahead to Peter who was sitting at the front of the group all alone. His hands were bound in front of him to prevent his stitches from ripping open again. Ruben would have considered it a tragedy if he were to bleed out and we had to start this entire thing over.

I wondered if Peter regretted coming here. I wondered if he regretted saving me in the very beginning. His life would have been better if he had just let Orvil kill me. I wanted to ask him but I knew that he wouldn't ever admit it. Ruben was pacing back and forth behind Peter. Every now and then he would look up at me and smile. I wasn't sure if he was smiling to assure me that everything was going to be alright or if he was just smiling to let me know that he had won.