“But you did not succeed,” Peta said quietly.
“There are a couple of prospects: Garrick’s brothers, your daughter’s friend, Oswin.”
This suggestion stirred Anna to speech. “No!”
“No,” I agreed. “I doubt that I could even convince Lord William of their guilt, and he seems to want to believe that you did not do this.”
They looked at me expectantly, correctly assuming I had not come here to tell them I had failed.
I took a deep breath. “I may, may, have a way to save one of you. But I will need some help from you before I am certain of it.”
My words increased the fear in the daughter’s eyes and brought hope to the mother’s, but neither ventured to speak.
“I need to know what happened,” I prompted, looking directly at the mother, hoping against hope that the woman would confide in me.
Peta swallowed her fears and licked her lips nervously. “It was as the lord said. We—”
“No,” I interrupted. I did not believe she would tell me the truth about the murder, and it would serve my lord’s purpose if she never told it.
I clarified my request, nodding in the daughter’s direction. “I mean that I need to know about her.”
The mother looked puzzled for a moment, then her eyes widened. “No! I don’t want to talk about that!”
“Mama?” Anna tried to interrupt, but Peta did not stop protesting.
“I don’t want her to hear!”
“Mama?” she tried again, tears welling in her eyes. “I know, Mama, it doesn’t matter.”
“You know?” Peta asked, apparently more horrified by this revelation than the thought of her coming death. But then, she had had months to prepare herself for her coming execution, and this was a secret she had clearly thought to take to her grave.
“You know?” she asked again. “How could you know?”
Anna got up, rushed around the small table, and threw her arms about Peta. “I’ve always known,” she told her. “It’s better this way. I don’t want to belong to him.”
I waited patiently as they cried, anxious only that John and Hodge might sneak back to the door to spy on what was happening.
When the women had calmed somewhat I started to question Peta again. I needed to be certain I was right in my assumptions or my lord might reject my solution to his instructions. “So how did it happen?”
“It is so hard to even think about now,” Peta told me. “I don’t think I can talk about it.”
“If you don’t,” I reminded her, “both you and Anna will hang.”
Peta sniffed. “I was so young. Garrick and I were speaking of marriage. He was different in those days — kinder and much less angry. Then the army rode through town and camped a while. One young knight paid a lot of attention to me. I was very pretty then and we went walking. I didn’t plan for more to happen, but he was so insistent, and then the army left...”
“And you were—”
“I had to marry Garrick,” she interrupted me. “It wasn’t until after Anna was born that he really began to suspect. It got worse after that. He was always angry and very jealous.”
It was somewhat worse than I had feared, and I found myself very disappointed in my lord. Not so much disappointed over his dalliance, but over his ignorance that he had ruined three separate lives for a night of pleasure. One man had died as a result of it, and now at least one more woman would hang. But these feelings of disappointment would not keep me from my duty.
“You know what you have to do?” I asked Peta.
Anna’s mother closed her eyes. Her voice trembled when she answered me. “Tell me.”
“You have to confess to murdering your husband and make a heroine of your daughter as she tried to protect him.”
“No!” the girl screamed. She was about to shout more, but I was around the table and clamping my hand hard over her mouth. “Silence, you fool!” I hissed. “Do you want both of you to hang?”
She struggled against me for a time, but her mother threw her arms about her and stroked her hair until she calmed.
John the Bailiff and Hodge did not enter the house to investigate the brief commotion.
“I killed him,” the daughter hissed the moment I removed my hand. “He wouldn’t let me marry Oswin and escape him.”
“I guessed as much,” I admitted, “but the truth does not help us. If you tell that story I believe my lord will hang you both. Unless I am mistaken, you are his true interest here.”
“He’d let my mother die?” Anna asked. Her whole body trembled with resurging anger. “Then I hate him too!”
I ignored her outburst. “If you confess,” I told Peta, “then Anna lives, inherits all of your property, and marries young Oswin. She has a chance at the decent life you were denied.”
“And will Lord William recognize her as his daughter?” she asked.
“I would not expect that,” I said. “I think he will go away from here after the trial and never return again.”
Peta did not consider long. “I love you, Anna,” she said. “You have long been the only light in my life. I can die happy and hope for salvation knowing that you will live.”
“No!” Anna protested, new tears pouring from her eyes. “How can I live knowing you died for my crime?”
Her mother only hugged her tighter.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked me.
We hanged Peta two days later.
She wept on her way to the gallows and so did her daughter and a very large number of villagers. The sun was unforgivingly bright, sparing no one — especially me — any of the details of the poor woman’s plight.
Among the vast hosts of duties I handle for my lord, by far the worst is acting as his executioner. I earn a full shilling for each death, but I have yet to meet a man, no matter how grievous his sins, that I felt happy to hang. It’s not clean like a death in battle, and it sets hard against my soul.
Hanging a woman is a thousand times more terrible.
It’s not that I object to the penalty, only to the knowledge that if God will not forgive these criminals’ sins it is my cold hands that are sending them straight to hell.
Peta’s death was far worse for me than most. It wasn’t that I thought her innocent. Whatever Anna had tried to say, whatever Peta confessed before the court, I knew in my heart that she had helped her daughter once the attack had begun.
No, what stuck in my heart was my lord’s role in this crime. One thoughtless night and he had ruined Peta’s life. Where the Normans came, destruction followed. My great-grandfather had stood beside King Harold at Stamford Bridge and died with him at Hastings. And here I served the grandsons of the men who killed him and continued to witness their poison spreading across our land.
We had no proper gallows to break Peta’s neck, so I helped her step up onto a stool and fit the rope down over her head. Father Stefan made the sign of the cross on her forehead. He had already absolved her of her sins. A few more moments of pain and fear and she would be on her way to heaven.
Peta’s eyes were wide with terror as I lifted the hood to cover her head.
“Anna will live,” I whispered. It was the only kindness I could think to offer her.
Peta gasped and shuddered as the cloth slid over her face.
“Mama!” Anna screamed.
John the Bailiff grabbed hold of her and held her back. He had already been named her guardian and he had promised me he would let her marry Oswin when a decent interval had passed.
That was the only good thing to come out of our visit. The village and Sir Gerald had breathed a sigh of relief at Peta’s confession. One death more than satisfied their sense of justice. Only Garrick’s brothers had protested letting Anna live, and I trusted John would keep those two in check.
I looked to Lord William and he nodded. His face was an expressionless mask; I had no idea what he might be thinking. Was he remembering a few pleasant hours spent fifteen years ago? Was he relieved his daughter would not join her mother in death? Was he sad that he could not save both of them? I had served my lord for years, but answers to these questions were beyond my knowledge of him.