The Executioner's Daughter Read online

  She lay down beside her mother and stared up at the evening sky that winked at her from between the overhead leaves. “How did you meet Father?” she asked, her voice sounding barely louder than a puff of air.

  For a long moment, her mother said nothing. Lily thought her mother hadn’t heard her, but she didn’t want to ask again. Her whole life she’d known that her parents didn’t like to talk about the past. She had come to accept this silence, but sometimes she longed for a history. Something more than the story of how the midwife wouldn’t attend when Allyce’s time was near, so Will had had to act as midwife and help bring Lily into the world. “The best midwife in the land,” Allyce always said at the end of the story, making Lily laugh and her father wince.

  “He saved me from my fate,” Allyce said slowly, breaking into Lily’s thoughts. “Your father was my own knight, though his armor was black as death.”

  “What do you mean?” The words were barely out of her mouth when her mother sat up in alarm. Then Lily heard the clop of hooves hitting an occasional rock and the clank of buckles and harnesses. Fear shot through her. All travelers in the forest had to be careful, but especially a woman and her daughter, alone and unprotected.

  They sprang to their feet. Allyce grabbed Lily’s hand and lifted her skirts with the other. They started running. Lily heard a shout behind them, and her mother pulled her along faster. Whenever Allyce glanced behind her, Lily caught a glimpse of her fearful eyes and two bright spots of color on her cheeks.

  Lily opened her mouth to breathe easier, but still each breath came ragged. She swiped her hair out of her face, tripped over a log and sprawled forward. The air was knocked out of her.

  “Come along,” Allyce panted. “Quickly now.”

  Lily staggered to her feet. Once again her mother took her hand and they ran. The jangle of harnesses seemed to come from many directions, and the pounding hooves beat into her body until she didn’t know if it were the horses or her own heart she heard thumping.

  When they neared the clearing where they lived, they didn’t slow until they’d burst out of the forest. Gasping for air, Allyce bent nearly double. Lily held her arm. She tried to listen for the sound of pursuit, but all she could hear was the deep in and out of her own breathing.

  At last their racing hearts slowed and Lily wiped a sleeve across her forehead. Allyce placed her hands on Lily’s shoulders. “We must not tell your father what happened, do you hear?” she said.

  Lily nodded. She was used to keeping secrets. She no longer told her parents when children chased her or if a farmer’s wife had come upon her unexpectedly and spit at her. As for telling others, whom would she tell?

  Allyce hugged her. “Father is home now. Let me go in first. You tend to your animals and come later.”

  Lily made her way to the side of the cottage. Now that the danger had passed, anger sparked in her. It seemed she was always running away from something. More like someone. Taunting children, farmers who chased her if she got too close to their fields, and men on horseback who could be soldiers of Lord Dunsworth’s or thieves. Running away. It seemed that’s all she knew how to do. That and picking herbs.

  She examined the cages to be sure they still held strong. Then she changed the water and left seeds and wilted lettuce to hold the animals over till morning. Thinking enough time had passed, she went inside.

  Her father sat in a dark corner. When Lily came in, her mother called them to the table to eat. As her father rose out of the shadows, Lily was shocked to see that he still wore his gloves. While her mother scrubbed her hands raw after an execution, her father simply removed his gloves and placed them on a high shelf. Several years ago, Lily had teetered on a stool to bring them down and play with them while her parents were busy in the apothecary. But the gloves were stiff, and Lily had been afraid to do more than nudge them with the tips of her fingers.

  Looking up from the table where she sat, Allyce stiffened when she saw her husband’s hands. “Take them off,” she said, her voice as sharp as a nettle.

  Lily winced to hear the harsh sound, so unlike the sweet, happy voice her mother had used only a short time earlier when they had wandered through the forest.

  Her father said nothing as he poured himself more ale and swallowed the entire tankard in one breath.

  “Take them off,” Allyce said again. “I’ll not sit here while you wear them.” She stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the bench behind her.

  “Why should I?” Will demanded, sounding like his voice might burst through his chest at any moment. “I’ll need them again tomorrow!”

  “What? Nay…” Her mother sank back onto the bench. Her shoulders seemed to drown in her dress as understanding swept over her.

  Lily reached a hand toward her, but her mother flinched away. Hurt by the rebuff, Lily clasped her hands together under the table.

  “Aye,” Will said. “The bailiff sent word that there’s to be another execution.”

  Lily picked at the food on her small trencher as she watched her father quickly drain and refill his ale a few times over. He didn’t eat, and neither did her mother.

  At last, Allyce pushed herself to her feet and passed beyond the leather curtain into the apothecary.

  Her father stood unsteadily and went out through the front door. A few minutes later, she heard the loud thwacking sound of him splitting wood. Lily peered out the window and could just make out his figure in the darkness. Every time he raised the wood ax, he shrugged his left shoulder, as though that gave him more power. And he kept his head tilted to the side as he did whenever he was concentrating. The tankard of ale sat on a log next to him, within easy reach.

  Lily moved away from the window and cleaned up the table. Blossom whined, and she shooed her outdoors, then she peeked around the curtain to find her mother.

  In the gloomy light with only a couple of candles flickering nearby, Allyce stood before the long table, sorting piles of herbs. Lily watched for a minute before she realized her mother was simply moving one pile from place to place. Then her mother stopped and leaned against the table, holding herself up with her hands splayed against the wood. Her shoulders shook with silent sobs. Lily longed to rush to her mother and hold her, but what comfort could she give? She could barely calm a wounded rabbit, never mind ease her mother’s grief.

  Uncertain, she stood watching, waiting for a sign that her mother needed her … wanted her, or even knew she was there. But Allyce didn’t turn around. Slowly her slender shoulders stopped shaking. They squared, and Allyce took a deep breath, and then another.

  Lily’s chest felt tight. “Mother?” she said at last.

  Her mother turned toward Lily, her eyes wet. She opened her arms and Lily ran into them, wishing she could loosen the tears that strained at her throat. But she had worked too long and too hard at keeping them trapped inside and she didn’t know any longer how to unstopper the opening to let them flow.

  “Dear Lily,” her mother crooned, rubbing her back.

  “I just wanted to comfort you,” Lily said against her mother’s shoulder.

  “And so you do.” Lily heard the warm smile in her mother’s voice. “You are my greatest comfort.”

  “Then why are you sad?”

  “All the things I must do in this life,” Allyce said heavily. “The executions, the tortures, the—” She paused abruptly and pulled Lily even tighter against her. “I pray that you never have to—” Again she cut herself off.

  “Never have to what, Mother?” Lily asked.

  Allyce shook her head. “Pay me no mind, daughter. ’Tis fate.” She gave a short laugh that scratched at Lily’s ears. “Sometimes I think I cheated fate, and now fate is laughing at me.”

  Lily understood that fate had a hand in all that happened, but she didn’t understand how her mother thought she had cheated it. One did not cheat fate or change one’s destiny.

  “You have me,” Lily said, her voice small, afraid this would not be good enough.

&
nbsp; Her mother squeezed her harder.

  They stood for a long time in the circles of each other’s arms. Lily remembered back to when the only place she found solace was cuddled up next to her mother. Her father, so big and dark, often frightened her, though he was never cruel to her. Sometimes he was even kind, bringing her treats and tickling her till she curled into a giggling ball.

  But until recently, her mother had always been like a blanket, keeping her warm and safe. And that’s how she felt right now. Yet Lily also felt protective, as though she too held the power to soothe and comfort.

  * * *

  The rain started early the next morning, so that when Lily awoke, it was to its patter on the thatched roof of the cottage. She lay on her pallet, listening. It was a good and proper day for an execution, she thought. Somehow it didn’t seem fair to put someone to death when the sun blazed merrily in the sky and the birds sang sweetly. But on a dreary day, when the sky cried for the wicked, it seemed right and just.

  Then she remembered her father’s drunken raging of the night before. He’d chopped wood deep into the night, taking rests only to quench his thirst. Well after moonrise, he’d stumbled into the cottage, demanding more ale. He had smashed his tankard on the table so hard, the handle broke off. Then he’d thrown the vessel into the fire, scattering coals and sending sparks twirling into the cottage.

  “Where’s the ale?” he had demanded.

  “You’ve drunk it all,” Allyce had said stiffly.

  In the dark, Will had swept the bowls and jugs off the rickety shelves. He’d knocked away a stack of baskets and tipped over the empty washtub in his futile search for more to drink.

  Lily had trembled behind her curtain where she hid. Her father had seemed cruel and desperate, not the quiet man who gave medicines and good advice to those who came for help. Not even the sullen man he’d become of late. This raging man, she did not recognize.

  When at last he’d given up searching, his legs buckled beneath him as he sank onto a bench. Only the faint glow of the embers had illuminated his features. He’d rested his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands.

  Allyce had gone to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Come, William,” she’d said calmly.

  Clumsily he’d risen, leaning heavily on his wife. She’d led him to their bed, where he lay down with his boots on.

  “I am cursed,” Lily had heard him say in a hoarse whisper. “And I’ve cursed you, too.”

  “Sleep,” Allyce had said, and she’d started humming a melody that had nothing to do with curses or despair or drunken rages.

  So when Lily awakened the next day with the rain in her ears, her mother’s song still played in her heart.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The sky wept all through Lily’s morning chores. She closed the shutters against the chill, but soon it was too dark to see, so she opened them and wore a shawl to ward off the cold. She moved buckets throughout the cottage to catch the rain that dripped in through loose patches in the thatching.

  During a lull in the rain, Lily went outside to collect the eggs and milk Milly. When she rounded the side of the cottage, a ghostly figure hunched by the cages.

  “Oh!” she cried, nearly dropping the egg basket. Her sudden fear turned to anger. “Who said you could come here, sneaking through the fog like a thief?”

  “I wasn’t sneaking. I was just standing here.”

  Lily eyed him suspiciously. She noticed he had his fingers in the fox’s cage the way she often did. “Where are your friends?”

  “Who?”

  Lily moved the egg basket to her other hip. “The boys you hunt rabbits with.”

  “They’re all at the hanging.”

  “Why aren’t you?”

  John shrugged.

  Lily shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Want to help me find the rest of the eggs?” she asked, surprising herself as much as the boy with this question.

  After a moment of awkward silence, the boy replied, “Nay,” in a scoffing voice.

  “I’m not going to let you stand there while I work. Do you want to clean the cages?”

  John’s face slowly lit up. “Aye.”

  “Do you think you can do a fine job?” Lily asked doubtfully.

  “I can!”

  Turning to hide her smile, Lily showed him what to do and went about with her egg collecting and milking. When she was done with Milly, she helped John finish up.

  “The fox is soft,” John said, poking his fingers back into the kit’s cage.

  “I think he likes you,” Lily said, enjoying the way the boy’s face beamed with pleasure.

  John laughed. “I think so, too.”

  The rain started to fall again. “I have churning to do, so go on home,” Lily said.

  “May I come again?” John asked. “I mean to help clean.”

  Lily tilted her head and considered for a moment. “You may come,” she finally agreed.

  He flashed his crooked teeth at her and then scooted off into the foggy rain.

  Lily watched him go before making her way into the cottage. She wouldn’t dare call him a friend. He was merely a pesky boy. But he said he’d come again.

  * * *

  By noon, Lily had finished her other chores and headed into the apothecary. Other than the forest, this was her favorite place to be. The tangy and sometimes sweet and spicy smell of the herbs circled around her as she moved about the room. A whiff of mint, then the full scent of rose petals …

  Lily began chopping, peeling, and boiling the herbs. Some she ground into powders for brews, some she hung to dry from the rafters, while others she soaked in spirits.

  She was sniffing fennel roots that had spoiled when the door burst open. Startled, Lily threw up her hands, scattering roots and leaves on the floor.

  A bedraggled figure lurched in.

  “Mother!” Lily cried.

  “A woman,” Allyce wailed. Her cloak and bliaut soaking wet, she leaned against the wall, one hand braced to keep her steady. With eyes tightly shut, she swayed. Her hair fell loose from its coils, clinging in curves to her thin cheeks. “’Twas a woman we hung today.”

  “A woman? Nay!” Lily could easily imagine the evil men who were sentenced to die, but a woman? “Why?”

  “She stole candles from the Church.”

  Lily knew it was a dreadful sin to steal from the Church, but they were only candles. Was a bit of animal fat or beeswax worth a woman’s life? Is that what her mother had meant by judging too harshly?

  “A woman,” Allyce moaned. “Near my age!” She said no more, but hung her head.

  Lily held back a moment, then she stepped close and encircled her mother in her arms. The wet clothes quickly soaked through Lily’s tunic, but she barely noticed. Her mother shook with sorrow as Lily stroked her wet hair.

  A long while later, when her mother’s sobs turned to shivers, Lily led her before the fire and stripped off her clothes. Then she wrapped her in blankets and pulled her bed close to the fire and lay her down gently.

  Allyce’s breathing finally settled to a raspy burr. Lily stared into the fire. She imagined the thief—the woman—standing on the platform, her hands tied behind her back, the man with the black hood wrapping the heavy noose around her neck, then pulling on the rope until the tips of her toes quivered in the air.

  “She sinned against God,” Lily said fiercely to the fire. “She had to die.”

  The fire did not reply, and the jumping and dancing flames lulled Lily to sleep. She awoke much later to the sound of thumping boots entering the cottage. When she opened her eyes, she froze in terror, seeing a tall man wearing a black hood and black gloves. Then he stepped into the firelight and she weakened with relief. It was not the executioner from her dreams, but only her father with a cloak pulled over his head against the rain, and a trick of the light.

  * * *

  Like a thief, the fever came in the night.

  After her father had come home and s
tarted drinking, Lily had fallen asleep on the rush mat next to her mother’s bed.

  It was her mother’s shallow breathing that awoke Lily. At first she thought the shushing sound was her father tying together bundles of rushes to fix the roof, but the noise was too even and close. She glanced at her mother and noticed, even in the dim light, that her face burned red. Lily jerked up and placed a hand against her mother’s forehead. Hot. Far too hot.

  She ran into the apothecary, nearly tripping over her father on the other side of the leather curtain. An empty jug lay beside him. She shook his shoulder.

  “Wake up, Father. Wake up!”

  Will snorted as if coming close to waking, then he turned his head away from her and snored.

  “Father!” She shook him harder.

  “Be gone,” he grumbled without opening his eyes.

  “Mother has a fever. She needs you!” Lily waited for a reply, but all she got was another deep snore. “Too much to drink,” she said with disgust, standing and kicking her father’s leg harder than she meant to, but he didn’t stir.

  Lily pulled aside the curtain that separated the cottage from the apothecary, and held it open by draping it over a wooden peg in the wall. This way she could gather the medicines in the smaller room, while still keeping watch over her mother.

  Her hands shook. Why did her father have to drink so much last night? What if she gave her mother the wrong medicine and made the fever worse?

  Trying to clear her mind of her horrible thoughts, she stood before the apothecary table and looked down at the herbs and plants and boxes of grains and seeds, and at the flasks of tinctures and concoctions. She reached for some celandine to make a tincture and wondered whether a hot poultice of mint on her mother’s chest would do any good for the cough. Trying not to twist her thoughts into worry knots, she worked quickly. She placed a pot of water over the fire, and when it came to a boil she poured the steaming liquid into a cup with crushed white willow bark, making a brew to help reduce the fever. She also made a mixture of borage and set it aside.