We emerge like the spawn of the forest that encloses this village. As if aware of our destination, the mares draw our carriage to the clearing. Once they reach the execution platform, they halt. I tie the reins to my footrest and leap down from the driver’s bench. Our carriage is a slight but ominous thing, canopied in midnight-blue leather and fastened with thick iron bolts. The whole contraption appears to my eye as a grand foreboding book, one that holds fast to its secrets. I move to the back and unlatch the iron grate.

The Headsman climbs out from the wagon. He is looming and lanky. His arms, while thin, are sure.

He is already hooded when He lumbers into view. His hood is dun, and the eyes that stare through its only openings are citrine and intensely focused.

We have been travelling for what feels to be a ceaseless summer, an interminable span of swelter and insects and sweating peasants. Of late it feels that we are wayfaring to the very edge of the world. We have nearly reached the sea.

Our rituals rarely deviate, so the fact that we have not yet collected a coffin for today’s victim troubles me. When I inquire about this the Headsman tells me:

…in due course…

My duty is to tend to the block and I see to this as soon as the Headsman passes me. The block is stored within the wagon. We employ it for each beheading. Its surface has been smoothed by the blood that voids out of His victims. This human grease softens the woodgrain. The block now has the silken texture of a woman’s thigh.

The Headsman stores His implement in an oblong box of stone that is lidded with a nameless tombstone.

Once the Headsman has inspected the scaffold for today’s task He returns to the carriage and uncaps the oblong box. The gravestone lid groans as He pushes it from its mount. Trapped air flows upward. It is heady with apple and pine, poppy and sage. On the eve of the first execution where I served as the Headsman’s Trust I watched Him prepare entanglements of these and other flora with great care. He’d sowed the dank bottom of the trough with them, making a fragrant bed upon which His unwieldy axe reposes. I do not ask the Headsman about this practice, though I believe that the indwelling spirits of these plants bless the weapon. Never have I witnessed the Headsman burnish it nor lean it to the whetstone, yet the blade has lost none of its lustre or its edge.

A drum begins to beat.

The ceremony is commencing.

I could list the minutiae of these proceedings—the vengeful accusations of thievery or wortcunning, the mock trials, the prayers for the condemned—but a greater picture can be painted without such trivialities.