The Executioner

The first time he had seen justice, he was four years old and yet nothing special in form still. A weedy boy. Skinnier than most children but fairly clean at his mother’s insistence. His hair was the colour of sun baked cow manure, his lips thin and nose stubby. The almost too large eyes he possessed were his most note-worthy feature, being a shade that was neither hazel or grey but an uneasy blend of both, fringed by long dark lashes that his sisters secretly envied. These fluttered as he struggled to comprehend the scene in front of him, from the perch of his father’s dependable shoulders.

The man’s hands were bound, soot black cloth smothering his vision. Sightless, head bowed, they led him through the crowd towards the platform. This looked like a game at first to the child, but something about the tone of certain voices rising above the din told him it wasn’t. They were saying nasty things, faces snarled up like cornered foxes, ready to tear and claw. 

‘Murderer! He must pay his dues! The fires of Hell need fed and he is surely worthy of providing the kindling.’

There were cries of agreement and a circle of rope was lowered and tightened around the man’s neck. At this point he raised his head to the heavens and a hole flew open beneath him, perfectly square and dark in its purpose. The child gasped and gripped a handful of his fathers smock, as the man at the end of the rope wriggled like a worm. The boy looked about and saw the sea of faces, utterly changed now, sobered, cowed, resigned.  

Very quickly the man grew still and there suspended before the crowd, he reinforced the King’s decrees without so much as a single utterance. 

‘Da. What did he do?’ the boy said into the shell of his father’s ear.

His father set a meaty hand around his calf. ‘I’ll tell you on the way home. We must head back to your mother now.’

He never did tell the boy. Years later, once almost grown, his son would come to realise he had chattered away that day about other things on purpose, to avoid the revelation that the man who had been hung was the violator and murderer of his own twin sister. This truth was only shared with him after his father’s passing, by his own sister who was a clear decade older than him and had been wise enough up until then to respect their father’s wishes. 

In the early days, he often attributed this series of events to setting him on the road to his profession as an executioner. It felt like a worthwhile thing to do, to dispense justice and help instill a healthy fear of transgression in the general populace. That was how order was maintained and crimes such as that which had befallen his aunt were prevented. But the new head of state, the successor of King Robert the third, had drafted much stricter laws and before him right now was the discomforting evidence of that.

The first child was eight years of age, a Master Jeremy McDermot. His crime – stealing rabbits from the Earl of Dumbartonshire’s lands. Although hooded, he was trembling as his offences and sentence were read out. The next child was fourteen – a Master Lucas Wirral. His crime – mistakenly cutting down three trees in an orchard belonging to Thomas Dewsbury-Smithe, that he had been wrongly informed were diseased. As the charges were read, a woman, the executioner presumed to be the boy’s mother, called out from the crowd.

‘Please Sirs! Have mercy on him. On all of them. They are but children. And he didn’t know he was doing wrong in cutting those trees down. It was a mistake!’

The executioner gave her a withering stare despite her pleas inwardly piercing his heart. Two guards dragged her away.

‘Take me Sir!’ she cried, trying to twist from their grasp. ‘Take me instead. I’ll pay for his sins!’

The guard to her right landed a blow that dazed her into silence.

The final child was eleven year old Miss Catherine Losse. She had stolen iron to sell in order to purchase food for her family. When the final words of her sentence were read, a puddle of yellow formed around her feet.

‘It will soon be over,’ the executioner whispered, as he placed the noose around her tiny neck.

His hands hung hesitant in the act of tightening. He wanted to comfort the now wailing child. He wanted someone to comfort him and say that this wasn’t murder, that what he was doing was not an act of crime in of itself. Yet these yearnings went unresolved. He had not expected otherwise. He glanced at the two boys, bravely awaiting their fate, little men in children’s bodies, probably gifted no more than the scraps of life by misfortune of provenance. He fussed about, checking the ropes, trapdoors, weights and beams. The crowd was growing restless.

‘I cannot do it,’ he said, finally stepping back.

The guards look perplexed. The Sheriff stepped forward, a hefty man with a jowly chin and beady eyes as black as his attire.

‘Is something amiss?’ he enquired. He spoke with his face sideways on, in the manner of a snake coyly sizing up its prey. 

The executioner shook his head.

‘I cannot do this. I cannot kill these children Sir.’

The Sheriff’s eyes bulged.

‘You will be silent and do your duty before your God and for King!’ he said sternly. ‘Now go. Before I have you hanged along with them.’

Upon the platform the executioner crossed his wrists behind his back as if readying to be bound and hooded like the others.

‘I have honour for the King and love for my country but I do not believe that God sanctions the killing of little ones, especially on matters so slight.’ The Sheriff, purple with rage, spittle flying from his mouth, roared.

‘Seize him! Gag him too. Bind, hood, then hang him first. Let them all see what happens to those who see fit to judge our King and abdicate their responsibility.’

Two guards fulfilled these tasks and as the trapdoor opened beneath him and he twitched and swung, it occurred to him that justice is a contraption of many parts, just like the gallows and for the whole to be sound, the foundations must be healthy, which in this case it was not. The law was suffering from a madness of the mind, a plague of arbitrariness and cruelty. His death quite possibly would achieve nothing he knew, but at least he had followed his conscience and as his father had always told him, there is no higher law than that – for it is a gift of God.

For more information on the historical practice of executing minors and the reforms that took place in the UK, please see the link below. Also, if you have a comments to add, or links of your own regarding this issue in other countries, please feel free to contribute.

http://www.capitalpunishmentuk.org/child.html

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