Three Way Treason, Chapter 05

Chapter 5

"Lay down and close your eyes!", I told him and he obeyed, though he was shaking so much he was hardly lying still. I kneeled beside his head and lifted it up to rest in my lap.

"I’ll make it a quick thrust; you will hardly have time to feel it. Maybe a short, sharp pain, but it can’t possibly be worse then what you have already endured during the years…"

I rambled, trying to sound as consolingly and calming as possible. I didn’t want him to panic now. He was shaking violently by now and pearling with sweat and I felt myself starting to do the same. The poor boy suffered from mortal dread and it wasn’t strange of course but the whole thing made me very uneasy too and I felt bile rise in my throat and tears well up in my eyes. I have killed in battle in my youth, but this was hardly the same thing.

I told myself that I’d been a fool accepting to help him like this. Now he would make a murderer of me, did he know it would haunt me the rest of my life? He would make a traitor of me too, how could I even think of helping him, even this way? I should be only glad to see him tortured, shouldn’t I? But logic had no dominion here today it seemed. Only emotions ruled and my feelings told me that I could not stand the thought of turning him in, knowing what would happen to him. I was sorely tempted just to let him go, but my feelings wouldn’t allow that either.

I parted his shirt to lay bare his chest, it was heaving unevenly and deeply and then I drew my dagger and laid it beside me on the floor. He startled violently as he heard the clinking noise; he opened his eyes and stared at me opening his mouth too as to speak to me, maybe to beg me not to do it after all, but not a single word came over his lips. Maybe he was too afraid to utter a sound? Maybe he knew no words would make a difference anyway? Maybe he just wanted to tell me to be faster about it because he couldn’t stand to wait for it?

His staring made me even uneasier. I couldn’t do it if he were to look at me like that. Couldn’t do it and get that look imprinted in my mind forever. I leaned over him and put my hand over his eyes, talking to him as if I was soothing a small weeping child. He flinched and tried to avoid my hand at first but then gave in to me and let me cover them up. I kept on whispering in his ear and he seemed to respond to it by calming down a bit, not shaking quite as much as before, his breathing a tad less frantic. I was surprised he had not yet started to panic, he was scared out of his mind, and still, a coward he was not.

I took the dagger in my other hand, tried not to make any noise in doing so, and lifted it slowly, slowly over his heart, all the time talking calmly and lovingly in his ear. I didn’t want him to know when it happened, didn’t want him to have to see it. It seemed he had been able to peek through my fingers though because suddenly he raised his arms and his small hands grabbed my wrist. It was a reflex I understood, and his resistance was not very much of a challenge to me. I could easily have thrust that dagger through his heart with his hands still holding on to my wrist. I was too strong for him and not even with the despairing strength of fighting for your life could he have stopped my are for more than a few seconds. But I didn’t want to act that forceful. I didn’t fight him but let him hold my arm and kept talking soothingly to him.

"Don’t do that son," I told him as if I was talking to my own child, "don’t do that, don’t torture yourself like that. You don’t have to be afraid, it will be over in a second and you will not feel much at all. Now, now, come on. I know you don’t want to die, my Dear child, I know it’s unfair and cruel and I hate to be the one doing this to you… but you know what we talked about, there is no other way out, no other way… Please don’t fight me...…"

As I talked his arms started to shake from fatigue and slowly he released them and let them sink to his sides again. I pressed my hand harder over his eyes and it went slippery and wet from tears and sweat. I leaned over him even more, caressing his cheek with my cheek and not for a second did I stop my consoling rambling. I was not quite aware what I actually said to him now; maybe I even sang a little, a lullaby my mother had once sung to me, ages ago…

Then I drove it through his heart with all the strength I could muster…

I let go of him fast and stepped away, soon blood would well out of the wound and I did not want to be stained. I looked at him, now suddenly detached and thinking only of practical matters. Successfully able to repress the thoughts of the sound when the knife went through, of the hotness of his last breath on my cheek, of the convulsive shudder that went through him as the blade went in. A shudder from pure horror, from pure pain, from pure hate that in spite all that had so far been robbed from him, now even his life was to be stolen from him…

I repressed all this and stared at him seemingly indifferent to it all. It struck me that the blade was too deeply buried in his chest to make it believable that he had done it to himself and I reached down and wiggled it halfway up again. I had wanted to be sure he would die instantly, didn’t want him to suffer any more than necessary, and had driven it all the way down to it’s hilt. I stepped back to inspect my adjustment. It did look better. But then the obvious struck me. How stupid could one be? That was my dagger, with my coat of arms on the hilt.

I looked desperately around me for something to replace it with. The only thing I found was a big pair of scissors in a corner, lying on a small sewing table. That would have to do. I ignored my apprehension as I wiggled my knife out of the wound completely, drying the blood off the blade on his clothes. And I completely shut out all thoughts and feelings as I carefully and not without trouble, since the scissors were thicker than my lithe dagger’s blade, pressed it down the wound. Blood squished up around it and the sound as it scraped against the ribs was nauseating. I let go and shuddered but gathered myself for a final ordeal and took his already cold hands and folded his fingers around the scissors.

Now that was all that I could do and I ought to have left and get some of my men but, following a sudden impulse I reached down to his body a last time. I avoided looking into his wildly staring eyes, and with a fast movement I sheared the long braid close to his head and as fast curled it together into a silky ball and hid it inside my shirt. And it was in the nick of time too. I heard footsteps and murmurs outside of the chamber door and only seconds after some of my men, arms ready, stepped into the room. They spotted his body at once and looked at me, puzzled.

"What? Who’s that?"

"But that’s… ", my captain said, "the spy, right? The prince’s slave that helped us?"

"The very one," I agreed, still not letting my upset emotions come to the surface, I was calm.

"What happened here?"

"You have the murderer here", I pointed at the sad corpse at my feet, "he did it, I’m afraid."

My men looked at me not ready to believe it straight up.

"Yes", I said gravely, "he was a traitor, he worked with the council all along and went behind our backs and, I’m ashamed to admit, managed to fool me completely. He was the one stabbing the prince to death at the order of the council and he might have got away with it and we had been none the wiser if I had not happened to witness the deed. Unfortunately from such a distant that I could not hinder it. That’s why I’ve been gone. I had no time to find you and explain it to you; I had to get to the murderer before he got away."

All I told my men was the simple truth. Still I felt a twinge of guilt. I knew my speech condemned him forever. His body would be open to sacrilege and his memory would always be spat at. Maybe he deserved it? Maybe he would have deserved the torture too that would have befallen him if I hadn’t carried out the death sentence myself, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for him. Things were not so uncomplicated. The truth not so simple, life not as black and white… All the excuses he had made for acting the way he had still rang in my ears and I couldn’t really dismiss any of them as not being at least a part of the truth as well. Well, he was dead now and would not care what happened to his body or what people would say about him. I hoped he had ended up in a better place. I had not been taking my eyes off him while I spoke but now I turned to look my men in the eyes to lie to them for the first time.

"I was unfortunately too late. He must have known as we arrived and the council was arrested that he would not be helped to get away. Gods only know why he went through with it anyway. When I got here I found him like this. He must have thrust the scissors through his heart rather than risk facing punishment."

My men stared too at the small body, the scissors still protruding from the hideous wound, his hands stiffening around it. Obviously no one suspected anything I said would be a lie.

"He sure found the easy way out", the captain said bitterly. He stepped up and poked at his ribcage with his booted foot. His face showing disgust as if he’d poked a turd.

"What happened to his hair?" he asked suddenly, and I felt myself startle.

I didn’t know why I had done that but I sure couldn’t tell them I had cut it and saved it as some sort of keepsake. Never thought they would notice. But one should never underestimate the sense for details of a keen old soldier. I shrugged though as if the matter was of very little importance, and so it was.

"How should I know?" I said, irritated, "What does it matter?"

"What shall we do with the body?" the man still standing in the door asked.
I hesitated. "I’m not sure what would be best…"

"Well, I am," said the captain.

He drew his sword and before any of us had time to react he had raised it and letting the sharp edge fall again, cutting the slave’s head off his body by the thin neck as easily as if it had been a twig. The edge clanged against the flagstones and sent up a small flare of sparks. It was a clean cut and the head only tilted a little to the side looking still attached to the body if you didn’t look closer. A surprisingly small amount of blood dribbled from the headless neck but then I guess most of it had been drained from the stab-wound in the chest. He was already lying in a pool of his own blood.

"We will stick the head on a pole on the city wall and nail the body underneath it. Better let someone gut it first or something, so that people won’t think he got away this easily", he spat contemptuously at the corpse, "What a coward, but what can you expect from the likes of him?"

The other men crowding in the door, some three or four of them, murmured agreement. I said nothing but inside of me I disagreed. That slave had been many things, most of them not good, but he had sure not been cowardice.

>>> * <<<

I sat alone in my bedroom. It had been a strenuous week. The political situation of this land was in turmoil. We worked hard to clear things up again. We would succeed, I had no doubts, but it would take years and a lot of work on our part. I sat in my chair, relaxing my tired limbs and aching back, trying to drain my busy head from all these demanding thoughts. I twirled the braid around my hand, loosened it and holding on to one end of it let the other coil to the floor and then repeated it all over again…