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Updated: May 27, 2025
He went out quietly, two steps in advance of the Captain and the Captain's drawn pistol, and advanced unflinchingly towards the horse that stood saddled in the midst of the group of executioners, with the same curious crowd looking on greedily at the spectacle. "Ever been on a horse?" asked the Captain, his deep voice little more than a growl. "Once or twice," Jack answered indifferently.
"All was silent as death while the executioners were piling wood around their victim. He said not a word, until feeling that the flames had seized upon him.
The whole character of that bold address became invested with a something preternatural and inspired; to the minds of the vulgar, the mortal was converted into the oracle; and, marvelling at the unhesitating courage with which their idol had rebuked and conjured the haughty barons, each of whom they regarded in the light of sanctioned executioners, whose anger could be made manifest at once by the gibbet or the axe, the people could not but superstitiously imagine that nothing less than authority from above could have gifted their leader with such hardihood, and preserved him from the danger it incurred.
To this Janavello nobly replied, "That there were no torments so cruel, nor death so barbarous, which he would not prefer to abjuration; that if the marquis made his wife and daughters to pass through the fire, the flames could only consume their bodies; that as for their souls, he commended them to God, trusting them in His hands equally with his own, in case it should please Him to permit his falling into the hands of the executioners."
On the first cart was the former laundress of Catana, afterwards wife of the grand seneschal and governess to the queen, Philippa of Cabane: the two executioners at right and left of her scourged her with such fury that the blood spurting up from the wounds left a long track in all the streets passed by the cortege.
To behead people by scores without caring whether they are guilty or innocent; to wring money out of the rich by the help of jailers and executioners; to rob the public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates; to take loaves by force out of the bakers' shops; to clothe and mount soldiers by seizing on one man's wool and linen, and on another man's horses and saddles, without compensation, is of all modes of governing the simplest and most obvious.
Had there been any chance to escape by fighting, fighting would have been the choice of his fierce and hardy spirit. But what was he against six? Defying the fiery anguish in his foot, he made a desperate leap which took him to the extreme overhanging edge of the bluff. Already the jaws of the executioners were gnashing at his heels. A second more and they would have been at his throat.
Multitudes of accused were hauled before the tribunal and were condemned by batches almost without the form of a trial. For long hours day by day Vargas and del Rio revelled in their work of butchery; and in all parts of the Netherlands the executioners were busy. It was of no use for the accused to appeal to the charters and privileges of their provinces.
If Knox could have understood that, he would not have been Knox. The point was intelligible; Lethington perceived it, but Knox never chose to do so. He went on with his isolated texts, Lethington vainly replying "the cases are nothing alike." Knox came to his old stand, "the idolater must die the death," and the executioners must be "the people of God."
The captain ordered the detail into position, gave the necessary orders to load, aim, and fire, and the condemned men and women fell to the ground, each one pierced by the bullet of his or her near relation. Sam, who was standing with the inventor Cope, scanned the faces of the executioners with care, and was unable to detect the slightest sign of emotion in them.
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