The Executioner's Daughter
Page 8
Lily.
The grief overwhelmed him. Even right after she had left, he hadn’t felt such a painful wrenching of his heart. The tears came without warning. Flooding his eyes. Filling his nose. Tears he had been saving his entire life, ever since he’d been a boy, teased and taunted and chased away. The executioner’s son.
He gently touched the gleaming cross. The feathers fluttered with the movement. Lily was well. She had left the cross, he knew, to tell him so.
As his tears abated, he imagined his daughter in some distant part of the land, healing and soothing as Allyce used to do. Carefully, he lifted the cross from its resting place and hung the chain around his neck. He would keep Lily’s gift next to his heart, where it would be safe.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I’ve always been interested in medieval times. As a child living in Belgium, my family toured many of Europe’s castles. The ancient, thick stone walls and turrets, and the dank dungeons never failed to stimulate my imagination. I became a princess or a knight in shining armor. I battled dragons and always won.
My interest in medieval life never faded. As I grew up, I continued to travel and visit castles. They still held a magical appeal for me, but I also grew very aware of the darker side of the Middle Ages such as the pestilence, the harsh laws, the famine, the battles. The more I learned about what life was like back then, the more I wanted to know.
The Middle Ages ran from around A.D. 450 to A.D. 1500. During this more than one-thousand-year span, England went through many cultural changes. In the earlier years, England was in transition from life under Roman rule to life under the influence of invading Angles and Saxons (from the coasts of Denmark and Germany). Then, in 1066, William, from Normandy, invaded and conquered England, thus giving him the name William the Conqueror.
Soon, England thrived, and the period known as the High Middle Ages began. New towns sprouted up; the merchant class could now afford luxuries such as elaborate wall hangings and glass windows instead of oiled cloth. The population was expanding, so more food had to be produced with the help of newly designed farming equipment. Soaring cathedrals and solid castles were built, many of which remain standing today. It was a time of growth and prosperity, except for the peasant class, which toiled from dawn till dusk.
Although many aspects of life were quite civilized, there was a hauntingly barbaric side—the punishment of criminals was far less humane than it is today. Thieves had their hands cut off; liars often had their tongues removed; criminals were tortured on the rack or the wheel. Yet everyone accepted this, for the most part, as a way of life.
Punishments were seen as a good deterrent against future crimes, and the criminals were portrayed as sinners who deserved to be humiliated, tortured, or executed. Children attended the executions with the rest of the townsfolk. There was much shouting against the condemned person and cheering for the executioner. And once the convict was killed, he was often left on display for people to see as a gruesome reminder not to sin.
Once the idea for this novel came to me, I started to do research into an executioner’s life. On a summer vacation to Europe with my family, we visited the medieval town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber in Germany, and at the Kriminalmuseum I came across an intriguing book called Criminal Justice Through the Ages, which described the life of an executioner in a medieval town. Because his job was to kill for a living, people were both frightened and disgusted by him. As a result, the executioner was not allowed to attend church, drink in pubs, or fraternize in any way with others. And that was true for his family as well.
Many executioners inherited their job from their father, or were criminals themselves, given the job of executioner only to save their lives. Some were alcoholics, unable to bear what they were doing, but condemned to the profession nonetheless.
Because there were usually few executions each year, the executioner made extra money by working other jobs such as driving lepers from town and cleaning sewage cesspools. Or, as in Lily’s father’s case, by becoming a healer. There was a mystical aura surrounding the executioner. So much so, that people would visit him secretly for medicine, which they felt held more potency. Some believed that the rope used to hang criminals had special healing powers that only the executioner could pass on by way of his concoctions.
As I discovered more about the executioner’s family “curse,” I felt it was important to portray Lily as an outcast, as she truly would have been in 1450, the approximate date this story takes place. I imagined that life would have been extremely difficult for Lily, given her circumstances. But, like other women of her time who became leaders and surgeons and defended castles, I wanted Lily to choose to fight against her destiny—to rise above her fate.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Laura E. Williams is the author of Up a Creek and Behind the Bedroom Wall, which was named a Jane Addams Peace Award Honor Book. She lives in West Hartford, Connecticut. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Author’s Note
About the Author
Copyright
Henry Holt and Company, LLC
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Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
Copyright © 2000 by Laura E. Williams. All rights reserved.
Published in Canada by H. B. Fenn and Company Ltd.
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-8186-2 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-8186-0 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8050-6234-2 / ISBN-10: 0-8050-6234-3
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First published in hardcover in 2000 by Henry Holt and Company
First paperback edition, 2007
eISBN 9781250128751
First eBook edition: May 2016