The Hangman's Daughter
By J Lily Corbie
Copyright 2014 J Lily Corbie
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Table of Contents
The Hangman's Daughter
About the Author
I was the hangman's beautiful daughter.
My father was renowned through the land as the finest executioner in seven generations, and his work was by appointment to the king. On the days when he was to tend his gallows, there would come a smart rapping on the door. As always, it woke me, but even though I was nearly a grown woman, I stayed in bed with the covers pulled up about my chin until the door opened and I heard his boots rapping over the floor.
He sat on the edge of my bed, stroking my hair back, and he smiled at me when I opened my eyes. "We've work today," he said. It was the greeting he'd given me every morning for as long as I could remember, changed only by one word if there was no work and he could spend his day with me. "I'll see to the horses."
"I'll meet you, father," I promised.
He bent over me, pressing his lips to my forehead. I waited in bed until he had withdrawn and my door had closed quietly between us. Like every morning I could remember, I hurried through all of the morning duties so I could meet my father at the door.
That morning, I saw the door to his bedroom opened, and my mother's pale, drawn face peering out at me. He loved my mother, in his way. He had chosen her specifically to create me--he had been drawn to her for her deep black hair and pretty face. Once he had me, he had little enough need for her, save as a vehicle to slake his lust. He still liked her well enough, if only for the way tears stood in her pale brown eyes or for her sweet bruising skin.
I met her eyes just a moment, and she looked away, shutting the door.
She had one other use to him, at least. She kept his house. My father was a wealthy man, for he was paid by the life he extinguished, and the king sought his services above all others. He said there was no need for his wife to soil her hands with such petty matters as gardens. Not when she was so much more use inside the house. My mother didn't dare move against the order couched in the words, and so I had never once seen her set a single foot outside of the house.
While I dressed, my father donned his black mask and readied our cart. I could see the way the skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled in greeting, and he held out a hand to me. He curled his fingers gently around mine, leading me out to the waiting cart and grim black stallions.
Though the village was carved out of the middle of a forest and was all around rich farmland, my father's land was barren and rocky. I knew the end of his land by sight. Nothing grew but desperate scrub grass, and the trees of the forest began just steps over the unmarked end of our property. There was no garden in the back, no flowers worshipping the sun by the front door...only a great, ancient elm bowing protectively over the roof.
We crunched our way through the thick carpet of fallen leaves, and he wrapped his hands around my waist, lifting me from the ground and setting me in my seat. While he climbed up beside me, I scanned the trees for signs of my lone visitor. So far as I knew, no one else had seen her. I leaned against my father while he steered the cart down the long road into town. Our breath sent clouds into the chilly air, and he wrapped one arm around my shoulders. I nestled against his side to keep warm.
The gallows waited for us with an awning constructed to save my skin from the sun. The ravens were already perched on the nearest buildings, waiting. A crowd had already gathered, pressing close against the platform and jostling against each other for the best view. The condemned were gathered in a ragged line, all chained together. A guardsman stood by the steps with the key that would release each in his turn.
The crowd cheered when we arrived. My father lifted me from my seat and set me safely on the platform. He drew out a rolled sheet of paper and a bag of coins, which he passed to a man waiting at the edge of our stage. The man took it and started the difficult-looking process of wading out of the crowd. I followed his track and stared when he jostled a cloaked figure out of the way. I leaned forward, straining to see, but before I could decide if it was my visitor, the crowd had shuffled back into place, hiding the stranger.
A familiar face waited for me at the very edge of the platform, beside my awning. It was the autumn of my eighteenth year, and he the first boy to earn my notice.
Make no mistake; others had tried. My father's gaze grew jealous and his jaw tightened when boys my age braved the blighted land around our house to ask for my hand. He turned them away with abusive shouts and threats. My mother always stood behind him with wet eyes and shook her head at my would-be suitors. I only laughed, thinking my life a fine one indeed.
Many never returned a second time. They barely turned a regretful eye to where I stood in the window, watching. I might never see them again, and I never cared to know their names. I believed my father would always be there to turn them away, and none would brave his wrath a third time.
My boy had never appeared at the door, never even traded a single word with me. I had first noticed him in the heat of the summer, not watching the twitching condemned, but me. He was always ready for my slightest glance with a smile.
Though he had earned a place in my day, my attention was fixed by my father and his work. I passed much of my childhood on his gallows, watching the procession of rapists, murderers, mutilators, thieves, and treasoners. I saw men, women, and children all succumb to the rope in my time. As I grew straight and tall, he whispered to me all the secrets of his wicked trade: what ropes to use for heavy men or slighter women and children, how much length was needed for a fast, clean death or a slow strangle. When I had grown enough, he began to set my small hand on the thick lever that opened the trap and lent me strength until I could pull it on my own. Even then, he would keep a hand on my shoulder, pride shining in his eyes when I listened unflinching to the resounding snap at the end of the rope.
Make no mistake; my father was a truly skilled man. He knew all the tricks of the ropes, and when he was before a crowd, there was no showman who could equal him. By his whim, he could open the trap beneath your feet and you would never know quite when death hit you. He liked the crack of a neatly broken neck nearly more than my voice, and that sound mingling with the cries and screeches of carrion birds were my childhood music. Those were the sounds of comfort filling my mind and ears when I closed my eyes at night.
After he had cut down a body, and while a man standing on the far corner of the platform from me read the charges of the next man in line, my father consulted me. We would size him up, guessing his height, his weight. When I was right, my father's praise warmed me through, and sometimes he even let me tie the noose before he secured the rope.
When he saw a pretty woman waiting in the line, he didn't turn to me. He loved to watch her strangling, kicking and straining and purpling before a hissing crowd. When I was very small, he would sit in a chair kept on the edge of the platform and draw me into his lap. He waited and watched and moaned softly in my ear when I squirmed against the uncomfortable hardness that rose against my small rear and thighs. I had grown too much for the chair, so by that day, he would stand behind me with his arms about my waist and his hips pressed against my back while I pulled the lever. He would drop his head and whisper
to me with his breath tickling my ear, love and lust coloring his voice. I couldn't always understand him, but I knew what he was telling me.
When the crowds were loud, tearing at one another in their blood-craze, he would use a thinner rope, a deeper drop, and shriek with laughter when the head popped from the body and bounced out into the bloodthirsty crowd.
My admirer seemed immune to it all, a calm island at the edge of the chaos. I enjoyed watching the crowds moving away at the end of the day. They cheered my father unabashedly while there were still convicted men and women awaiting their fates, but they shuffled away shame-faced and shuddered when they saw the waiting horses. He stayed while men and women came forward, stony faced or with streaming eyes, to claim the dead and pay to wheel them away, and pay again at the churchyard for the privilege of a proper burial. My admirer remained just at my feet while the new line formed, and for the first time, I smiled back at him.
The way his smile grew in answer to mine sent a rush of heat from my hair to my toes.
After the line was gone and the crowd dissipated, the guardsman who had unlocked the condemned gave my father his pay. He was a tall man with hard eyes, and he had listened to the pleas and begging unflinching, but he would not meet my father's eyes. While the men concerned themselves with coin, I watched the last stragglers in the square, and finally, I saw her.
She stood on the far side of the square, hood pulled up to shade her eyes. All my life, I had believed the watcher in the woods was a woman, and there she was, plain as day. Even in the evening sun, she appeared to be bathed in moonlight. I looked away, meaning to call my father's attention to her, but he was still counting his pay. When I looked back, she was gone.
The guard stood as far away as he dared and didn't meet my eyes when I looked at him. He waited until the pay was counted and tallied against the dead. My father nodded when he was satisfied, and the guardsman retreated across the square to the empty prison cart and its driver.
My admirer had disappeared with the crowd, but our day was hardly at a close. No matter how many came to claim the dead, there were always many more, forgotten or unwanted. It was the executioner's duty to carry the unclaimed away to dispose of them.
My father picked me up and spun me around like a little girl before he set me in my place on the cart. He did it to make me laugh, and I was glad to indulge him. He climbed up beside me and lifted his arm. I took my place against his side for our ride.
We skirted past the holy ground by the church. Those who had purchased the bodies of their loved ones waited to surrender them to the priests and the undertaker. They did not watch while we passed them by. Even the undertaker flinched away from us when we passed. We belonged in the field behind. The ground there was soft and grey with old powdered ash. There, my father would build up a deep pyre for the unwanted corpses of the condemned.
That was my true playground. Mere steps away, on hallowed land, bodies were piled deep and only thinly covered over by the undertaker, who kept his eyes always averted from me and my games. If it rained too hard, or the wind blew too strong, or if the elements somehow conspired, then the trembling mounds would tumble open. No one but us--my father, the undertaker, and me--ever ventured to the graveyard, and so they didn't know the fate of the loved ones they couldn't bear to commit to the fire.
Those were my favorite days. When the rotting remains spilled to the ground, the carrion birds descended to feast. The air swirled with the ashes their wings lifted. I laughed at the spectacle, and they filled my ears with their calls and the wet tearing as they stripped away the putrid flesh. I spent my childhood playing with the bones in the stench once the sparkling ravens had finished with their grim feast. Often, they would pass close enough for me to touch and seemed pleased with my laughter.
That day, the earth kept the dead. I stayed aside while my father fed the fire to a blaze of such terrible heat that it could be felt all of the way to the road. We stayed until the fire had burned down, and the dead were reduced to only so much charred flesh and so many scorched bones. Though the coals were still radiating enough heat to keep me comfortable, my father swept me up, carrying me to the emptied cart.
The sun was setting, and those we passed on the road found somewhere else to look. My father still wore his mask. I leaned against his side, dozing while we rode.
When we arrived at our door, all of the items on my father's list were sitting on the step. The townsfolk were eager to keep us at a distance and saw to it we never wanted for anything. My mother didn't dare venture past the threshold even to gather up my father's purchases. He opened the door for me and gathered them up, dropping them on the floor for her to tend.
She waited until he had gone to put away the cart and care for his horses before she scurried out to gather the new things. The smell of our dinner filled the room, and the table had been set with three places. By the time my father returned, she was sitting at her place with her hands folded in her lap and her head bowed. I had changed out of my ash-streaked dress and washed my face and hands.
I was brushing out my hair by the window when something in the trees caught my attention. There she was, flashing like the moon between the trees, then gone when I tried to look at her straight.
My father had come in, dangling his mask from one hand while he ran his other hand through his hair. He caught me staring out the window. He drew up beside me, setting a hand on my shoulder. "Those are all your brothers and sisters," he told me. He must have thought I was looking out at the row of tiny mounds, each topped with a white rock. I had the whole story memorized well enough to mouth it with him by the time I was six. "I knew I must have a perfect child, and your mother was to help me. So every time her belly grew, I waited eagerly. Six times before you. Six times, your mother went to bed and screamed and bled, and gave forth an imperfect infant. I saw each of them first, and I held them even before the midwife. And when I saw they weren't the best, I broke their necks and carried them out to bury side by side." His hand lifted to stroke my hair. Sometimes, he kissed my cheek instead. "I know it sounds cruel, my darling. But I was saving your poor mother the pain, you see. I throttled them before she saw them or touched them, to spare her from the loss. And we would try again. So I knew, when I lifted you from the bloody childbed, I had the child I had always wanted. So I offered only you to the midwife, and only you to your mother's arms." He smiled, and I felt so warm. "I knew you would have your mother's beautiful hair and sweet face, and I knew you would have my eyes." He tipped my face back to be sure my eyes were indeed the same sky blue as his. "I didn't know what a lucky father I was."
My mother had never once interrupted the story, and that evening was no different. She waited until we joined her at the table, and said not a word while we ate or while she cleaned after our meal. As soon as she could escape, she disappeared into my father's room, leaving us to each other's company.
When the fire burned low, my father hugged and kissed me and wished me a sweet night. I returned to my room, and before I had climbed under the covers, I could hear the steady knocking of his bed against the wall. I fell asleep to the familiar sound, and never heard the least whimper from my mother.
I woke that night to a gentle rap-tap-tapping at my window. I took a sleepy moment to understand the sound before I crawled to the casement to find my admirer standing in the moonlight, wearing the same smile as always. He opened his arms to me, and I glanced over my shoulder, searching for any sign of light around the door. I saw none and heard no sound. I couldn't imagine my father not knowing there was a boy on his land.
Though I did not know his name, and had never even heard his voice, I caught up the shawl draped over my chair. I wrapped it about my shoulders and crept over the casement and into his arms. His hands were strong on my waist as he lifted me from the sill and set me gently on the hard, cold ground. Snow was sprinkled over the land, clustering in brilliant piles on the black dirt and pale grass. He took my hand and led me from the house, so I followed
on bare feet with my shawl clutched about my shoulders.
The moon shone as bright as day on us, and the stars all stood brilliant against the velvet of the sky. It was a gift to us, allowing us to tiptoe away from the house without risking lamps or getting lost. I could feel the fast, hard beat of his heart through his palm where it pressed against mine. I dared think of nothing else, not of where we were going, why I had gone, or even the taste of my heartbeat, thick in my throat. He guided me without hesitation to the promising shelter of the trees I had always been able to see through my window. The stiff grass crinkled underfoot, and the clumps of snow creaked when one of us stepped on them. We were not at all alone: an owl flew over our heads, leading the way to safety.
The looping branches choked out our precious light, and I could only just make out his smile as he peered at me. He kept my hand trapped in his when he finally broke the silence. "What is your name?"
I felt a smile tugging over my lips as I looked at him. He was handsome, in a fashion, with sharply defined features and dark hair trailing into his black eyes. "Do you not know?"
He raised my hand to his lips and gently kissed my knuckles. "I know you are the hangman's beautiful daughter."
"Isabella," I said, deciding he could keep my hand. His skin was rough and calloused against mine. He took my answer for encouragement and brushed my hair back from my face. When he offered nothing else, I asked, "And yours?"
His arm slipped around my waist, drawing me close. Less snow made it through the branches above us, but I was grateful still for his heat. "Henry," he said. "I'm the blacksmith's son."
His breath was hot against my face, and he smelled of coal and sulfur. When he drew me against him, I could feel the bulge in his breeches pressing hard against my stomach. I thought of dying men and the scandalous erections so many seemed to develop in their final moments, and of my father's hardness beneath me when I had perched in his lap as a child. He released my hand to curl his fingers through my long hair and jumped when my curious fingers slipped down the front of his pants to brush for the first time over a man's erection.
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