The Executioner's Daughter (2 page)

Her father turned away from his table and frowned at the rabbit. “What poor hunter maimed this animal and didn't kill it properly?”

“And the herbs you were to collect?”

Lily looked at the empty basket over her arm.

Her father knew her well enough and didn't wait for a reply. “The usual boys from town,” Lily said. “They chased it with sticks and stones.”

“What happened to your face?” he asked.

Lily bowed her head over the rabbit. “'Twas nothing,” she said. “I tripped and fell into some prickers.”

Lily's mother, Allyce, brushed willow bark powder from her fingers. She had hair the color of sunlight, and skin so white it seemed to glow. Without a word, she took Lily's chin to lift her face to the light, then she angled it this way and that. The skin around Allyce's lips tightened. “You must be more careful,” she said gently.

“Aye,” Lily agreed.

Her father turned back to his work. Allyce held her hands out for the rabbit. “Let me see.” With soothing movements, she inspected the frightened animal. Lily watched, wishing her own touch was as soft and comforting, but she had hands like her father; strong and wide, and oftentimes clumsy.

“Can we save it?” Lily asked after a moment of silence, broken only by the scraping of her father's pestle grinding against the mortar.

“Hmmm,” Allyce murmured. “I suppose we have half a chance to save the wee thing, which is better than no chance at all.”

Lily nodded. “I'll make a poultice.”

Her mother pointed to a couple of herbs, then she placed the rabbit in a basket loosely woven out of twigs and meadow grass.

Using the herbs her mother had suggested, Lily mixed self-heal and chickweed in a wooden bowl before adding water to form a warm mash.

Allyce inspected the medicine and nodded approval. “Get your friend.”

Lily carefully retrieved the rabbit from the basket.
Her friend.
It was true that her only friends were the animals she brought home to care for. But at least they couldn't call her names, and if they ran from her, it wasn't because she was the executioner's daughter.

“Hold it still, child,” her mother reproved, applying the poultice to the wound.

“I'm trying,” Lily said, wishing again she had her mother's calming way. Animals wild with pain, children screaming, or crying men and women alike were soothed by Allyce's touch.

“Very well,” her mother murmured.

Lily smiled, humming softly to the rabbit. Slowly it relaxed in her hands as her mother applied more poultice and then wrapped the injured leg with a scrap of cloth.

“It should heal properly,” Allyce said, wiping her hands on her apron.

Lily squeezed the rabbit with happiness. Suddenly it struggled to get free. She fumbled, trying not to drop the animal on the floor. “Oh,” she cried, “I've loosened the bandage.”

Allyce tightened it again and patted her daughter's shoulder.

Lily sighed. “I'll never be like you. You could pick thorns from a unicorn's muzzle and it wouldn't run away.”

“Have patience, child. You have a gentle heart, and the rest will come. Now go put the wee one outside with the others.”

Lily took the rabbit outside where she had stacked cages for her injured friends. She fed and petted her collection of rabbits, one quail, a pheasant with a broken leg, and a fox who'd been half torn apart by dogs when Lily had found him over a fortnight ago. Now he scampered around in his cage and licked her fingers when she poked them through the wooden bars.

“You'll be leaving me soon,” she said to the young fox. “Only, stay away from those vicious dogs, do you hear?”

When she was done, the sun hung low, casting long, violet shadows to the east.

Inside, her father sat on a bench by the unshuttered window, polishing his ax with a soft cloth. William Goodman was a large man with broad shoulders and wavy black hair. His sharpening stone sat at his booted feet. Laid out on the bench beside him was a knife with a narrow blade, a sharp hook, and a tankard of ale. Lily knew it wasn't her father's first drink. Nor would it be his last.

Allyce stood by the cook fire, stirring their supper in a large iron kettle. Her thin back curved over the pot like a willow branch, and her cheeks glowed red from the heat.

Lily took the long-handled spoon from her mother. “Let me,” she said. “I like to stir.”

“Thank you, child,” her mother said, wiping the sweat from her brow with the hem of her apron. She moved to the trestle table and laid out wooden bowls, chunks of hearty wheat bread, creamy butter, and cheese curds.

“More ale, gentle Allyce,” Will said, holding up his tankard, using his favorite name for his wife.

“You've had enough,” Allyce said firmly.

In a burst of temper, Will slammed the tankard beside him on the bench. “I'll have more and plenty,” he bellowed.

Allyce didn't flinch. “You won't be fit for the evening chores.”

“I'm fit enough,” Will said, his voice back to its low rumble.

Lily watched as her mother reluctantly filled the vessel and her father near downed the refill in two long draughts. Allyce pressed her lips together and turned away, placing the jug of ale on the table, out of Will's reach. But Lily knew that wouldn't stop her father from finishing the jug and likely refilling it a time or two more from the keg before he fell into bed and snored the night through.

Silence fell over the cottage. Her father drank every night, so Lily was used to it. But occasionally he drank far more than usual, and she didn't like how it made him angry and raise his voice. And yet other times it brought tears to his eyes as he sat in the corner, near weeping into his tankard.

“The ale is a balm to his soul,” Allyce had once told Lily.

“Like a poultice for a wound?” Lily had asked.

“Aye,” agreed her mother.

“But what's wrong with his soul?”

Allyce had sighed and pulled Lily close in her arms. “One day you'll see and understand. But not for many years I hope.”

Lily had wanted to ask more questions, but her mother shushed her.

Remembering, Lily swung the pot off the fire and ladled the soup into the bowls. She wondered if souls could bleed like flesh, and if so, what had cut her father so deeply that he needed ale every night to soothe the ache.

“Come to the board,” Allyce said to Will when Lily was done filling the bowls.

“First, I must finish my task,” Will said. “I'll not have my blade dull tomorrow.”

Lily looked at her mother, noticing how distraught and frail she suddenly appeared.

Allyce looked at her daughter and nodded. “There's to be an execution tomorrow.” She lowered her gaze. “'Tis the fourth one in as many months. Seems Lord Dunsworth is finding great use for the executioner this year.”

Lily silently agreed. In the past, there had been only two or three executions a year. “What did the condemned man do?” she asked.

“Poaching,” her father said. “Killed and butchered a doe from Lord Dunsworth's woods. Foolish man. I don't know how he thought he wouldn't get caught with soldiers prowling about as they do.” Will swallowed the last drops of ale from his tankard and moved to refill it.

Slowly, Lily ate her supper. Her mother wouldn't allow her to watch tomorrow's execution, she knew, even though the whole town would be there for the spectacle. She could barely remember the last execution she had attended, the only one, when she had been a mere seven years. Four thieves were sentenced to hang together. Out of town, on a hill, the townspeople had built a gallows large enough to hang all four.

Everyone had gone to the hanging. Lily had been told to stay behind, but she longed to be a part of the laughing, shouting crowds she heard on their way to the execution. She had joined them, hiding amongst the milling people to keep hidden from her parents—just another child off to see the hanging.

But all she could remember when she got to the hill was looking up at the distant gallows, squinting against the sun, and hearing the roar of the crowd all around her. On the platform, a tall man, who wore a black hood and black gloves like her father's, looped nooses around the thieves' necks and pulled the ropes till the condemned men hung like sacks of grain.

CHAPTER TWO

The next morning, when Lily came back from her foraging, she found her mother kneading bread at the table, her sharp elbows pointed out to either side like broken wings. Allyce glanced up. Already she looked weary from the day. On execution days, or days they were summoned by Lord Dunsworth's bailiff to the dungeon, her mother always looked older and sadder.

“Good day, Mother,” Lily said, trying to sound bright and cheerful, as though she could bring the fresh morning in with her. She lay aside her basket to help her mother with the dough. “Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough,” Allyce said, brushing a strand of hair from her face with the back of her floury hand. “Take the mattress out today and give it a good beating. Something bit me harder than usual last night.”

Lily nodded and picked up some dough and began to push it this way and that. The warm lump felt good in her hands. After a few moments of silence, she asked, as she always did, “Did you dream?”

Her mother dreamed every night. Usually she told Lily her dreams, which were fanciful and full of color and light. But sometimes she just crossed herself and wouldn't speak of her dreams, as though they frightened her to even think of them. And occasionally, after something happened, like her father accidentally cutting off the tip of his little finger with his ax, her mother said, “I saw it in a dream.”

Allyce pounded the dough on the board, punching it with her fists before dropping it into a bowl and covering it with a towel. Then she moved on to the next lump.

“Well, did you?” Lily prodded her mother.

Allyce cast a sideways glance at her daughter. “Aye, I dreamed a dream,” she said, “of you, if you must know.”

“Me?” Lily smiled. “Was I a princess this time or a unicorn or a…” Lily closed her eyes, imagining what magical creature she could be. “Or a gentle dragon, mayhap?”

Her mother snorted. “Nothing so wonderful this time, daughter,” she said almost sharply. “You were a fish.”

Lily gasped, “A fish? With slippery scales and the stench of the fishmonger?”

This time her mother laughed. “I don't remember smelling you. But you were a fish with stripes of many colors. A fisherman caught you in his net. You were so beautiful, he didn't know what to do with you. Finally he let you go and you swam away, out to the great, wide sea…” Her voice trailed off.

Lily frowned. She preferred the dreams of herself as a princess courted by a prince of the realm. A unicorn was better than being a flip-flopping fish, even if it was a beautiful one.

“Is that all?” Lily asked, thinking her mother must have more to tell her. Perhaps she turned into a princess later in the dream.

“'Tis all,” Allyce said. “Now go see your father and then collect the eggs, and I'm sure Milly is ready to burst.”

Disappointed that there was no more to the dream, or at least no more her mother would share with her, Lily wiped her hands clean, then took the basket of fresh herbs and pushed through the leather curtain into the apothecary where her father was preparing tincture of thyme.

He looked up at her before returning to his work. “Mistress Smith will come today to pick this up for her colicky babe,” he said.

“I could have made it,” Lily said. “I remember how.”

“'Tis no matter,” Will said. “It keeps me busy until it's time.”

To go to the execution,
Lily finished silently for him.

She placed the basket on the long trestle table. She would sort and chop and dry the herbs later. Without another word, she went out the back door and collected speckled eggs, finding them hidden in dark hollows around the dirt yard. Next, she tied Milly to a stake with a bit of rope and milked the goat into a wooden bucket. For cow's milk, they depended on farmers giving it in trade for medicine and healing. Often the farmers traded milk or a newly slaughtered pig, cow, or chicken. Or sometimes a wheel of cheese or a sack of grain or, even better, flour. The townsfolk also gave goods, as well as coins if they were wealthy enough.

Lily untied Milly, and the goat kicked off across the yard, scattering squawking chickens. Laughing, Lily carried the milk inside and poured it into the churner, where she would later turn it into cheese.

Her mother and father sat at the table, breaking their fast. Will tore at chunks of day-old bread, dipping the hard crust into cider to soften it. Allyce nibbled on a piece of cheese.

“Sit,” her mother said.

Lily scooped some hot porridge into a bowl and sat beside her mother, reaching across the table for some clotted cream.

“Mind your elbows, child,” her mother said absently.

Lily held back a sigh, but did as she was told. Though why manners mattered when they never had guests, nor were invited anywhere to dine, made no sense to her. Still, her mother insisted on them. No elbows, no spitting, no talking with a full mouth. The hardest rule was not to feed her dog at the table. Blossom had to wait till after the meal for scraps, no matter how sweetly she begged.

They ate in silence, as they often did. Afterward, Lily scraped the wooden bowls into a slop bucket for Blossom. The dog snorted and slobbered as she licked it clean. Lily grinned. She had a strong suspicion that her dog was carrying a litter.

Her father picked up a large, leather bag. The innards clanked dully, drawing Lily's attention away from happy thoughts of pups scampering about the yard. Lily stared at the bag, envisioning the contents. The hood, the ax, the various knives and hooks. Only once had Lily asked what they were for.

“The ax is for hands and—” her father had begun before Allyce cut him off with a sharp elbow in the arm. “She'll need to know these things,” he'd said, frowning at the interruption.