The noose dangled in the warm wind, and Villiam’s guards grabbed it and looped it around the bandit’s neck. They brought a stool for the man to stand on, but he couldn’t stand. He was too broken. His head was left uncovered, as was custom for murderers. Men who were hanged for lesser crimes—lone marauders who raped or thieved—got sacks over their heads. Marek looked at the bandit. The blood from his severed ear had painted his face such that only small bits of glinting white from his eyeballs showed as he lifted his gaze out toward the crowd, unashamed. After a few pathetic slips, Villiam’s guards finally lifted him onto the stool and held his legs. The bandit didn’t struggle or curse. He said only, ‘God forgive you,’ the same words Marek had said to him a few days earlier. And then the guards pulled the stool away and he was swinging. He swung and swayed and his legs seemed to buck and pull. His body tensed and held itself, his legs stiff and straight. And then he stilled.
‘Is he dead yet?’ Marek asked.
‘My God, are you blind?’ Jude looked at Marek and saw that the boy had covered his eyes with his hat. Jude pulled it off his face. ‘Have a look.’
Marek opened his eyes just in time to see one of Villiam’s men gutting the bandit with a sword, the bowels spilling out and smacking on the gallows floor. The sound echoed over the hush of the crowd. Marek turned and hid his face in the sleeve of his father’s wool sweater, which was full of dried grasses and briars and smelled of the lambs. He gagged and bent and spat at the ground. Something was wrong with his stomach. Jude took him by the arm and led him away from the crowd.
‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you feel sorry for the bandit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why would you?’
‘Maybe he was somebody’s father.’
‘You think he wouldn’t kill his own kin?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Those bandits don’t care for kin. They’re the Devil’s children. Forget him. He’ll rot now. He’ll feed the worms. Shall we pick some flowers on the way home?’
‘Yes.’
* * *
*
The flowers were still shy and wistful, their buds just breaking into bloom as it was early spring yet. There were bloodred poppies growing alongside the road, and Jude picked some as Villiam’s guards passed, marching in tandem toward the village. Jude pretended they didn’t exist. He didn’t like northerners. He thought they carried an element of evil. Their light hair never seemed dirty, and their skin never showed any signs of wear. He didn’t trust men so clean. They only understood the surfaces of things, which was why they appeared so perfect. They took Jude’s depth and pain as weakness, he thought. They didn’t respect his thoughtfulness. They saw him and his son as farm animals, no better than the lambs they raised. And they seemed not to care about the villagers’ safety. Not once during an attack by bandits had the guards defended the village. They retreated up the mountain to the manor and took aim. That was all. They were cowards, Jude thought. What he didn’t know, of course, was that the bandits worked for Villiam. He paid them to ransack the village any time there was a rumor of dissent among the farmers. Father Barnabas conveyed such rumors to the lord. That was his primary function as the village priest: to listen to the confessions of the people down below and report any sagging dispositions or laziness to the man above. Terror and grief were good for morale, Villiam believed.
To get to Agata’s grave, Jude and Marek passed into the woods. There were horse chestnuts on the ground. Swine were let to pannage there, and as Marek and Jude walked along they could hear some snorts and squeals. Past those woods was an orchard of apple trees, too old to bear fruit. The silver bark was thick as armor and laced high with the scars from years and years of villagers etching their names with Xs. Past the orchard, the grass was thin, the dirt pale and rocky, but as it had just rained, the ground gave in a pleasant way under Jude’s bare feet and Marek’s thin-soled shoes. Marek picked a handful of chamomile and cornflowers growing near a trail of runoff, then followed an ostrich fern off the path toward a patch of iris. He picked an iris in bloom and some young sprigs of freesia. Then they turned toward a grove of black poplars, where, under the largest tree, was Agata’s grave.
Marek was solemn as they walked, his stomach churning and his mind still darkened by the scene in the village square. Of course he had seen bandits hanged and disemboweled before, but there was something special about this man. He hadn’t looked scared as Villiam’s men dragged him to the gallows. Maybe he knew where he was going. Like Jesus on the Cross.