and stuck in beads to the
glass, blurring the jars’ contents to formless, whitish blobs.
By the time they’d
dropped off the third load, Krakus had a buzzing, smeared sensation in his
chest. He dragged the rusting pig-iron weight of his heart back and forth until
nothing remained in the shed but tables, the terrible chair, and Droshky
himself.
In a dull voice, Krakus
said, “Brother Fillip, fetch me a couple of soldiers.”
“Yes, Father,” Fillip
said, hardly above a whisper, and ran from the shed.
While he was gone, the
whole endless time, Krakus and Droshky didn’t unlock stares for a moment. A
hundred questions, a thousand imprecations, seethed in the doctor’s expression,
but Krakus didn’t say a word. You’re not owed, he thought. You’re not
owed a chance to talk. You’re not owed an explanation. Again and again he
thought it; he was convinced, if only by himself, that he did right, and that
he would do right this evening, and as much after as he could.
At last, Brother Fillip
returned with two of the soldiers who inhabited the Fort: a corporal so fresh
he still had spots and a private who looked to Krakus as though he should have been
on leading-strings. They came waiting for orders, and Krakus said, “Bear
witness.” He didn’t look away from Droshky, but took a deep breath and lifted
his hand in a holy gesture—he’d never done this.
“By the power granted me
by Naheel Queen of Heaven, and the wisdom my Brothers trust me to possess, I
hereby condemn Tadeusz Droshky to death by the sword this night after the
Office of Vespers, for crimes against those I hold under my protection. I
myself condemn him. My own hand will strike him down. And if I err in judgment,
may the Queen have mercy on my soul.”
Droshky blanched at the
beginning of the Ordinance of Summary Justice. By the end he shook, green in
the face.
“Take him to the
stockade,” Krakus ordered quietly. The young soldiers lunged to obey, and
marched Droshky out with his legs wobbling, rubbery under the strain. After
they’d gone, Krakus stood with Fillip, gazing sightlessly, but all too aware of
the Brother’s gaze on him. The drizzle hissed on outside the open door. Water
dripped from the eaves; gray, filtered light and the damp scent of rain filled
the shed. “Well,” he said. “Well. Let’s go and burn it all.”
They smashed the jars
into the pile so it’d burn in spite of the wet, and wound up bent over an arrow
trying to light a pitchy rag in the rain. Fillip, the better shot, loosed the
arrow into the bottom of the pile, and it went up in a spectacular fireball
that toasted Krakus’s face even from a distance. When the flame died down, it
all smoldered, charred specimens, sooty broken glass.
“You can go,” he told
Fillip.
“I’ll stay, if that’s all
right, Father.”
Krakus put his hand on
Fillip’s shoulder. The young man felt chilled through his damp habit, but he
didn’t shiver. They stood for some time, watching the pile collapse slowly in
on itself.
“He’s evil,” Fillip said
suddenly. “I, all the others, we think he killed a Brother once. Boleslav
always teased him. And when Boleslav got hurt and went under his care…”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Fillip looked at him; he
felt the eyes and looked over, too. “I didn’t think you’d care.”
“You were probably
right,” Krakus said, bowing his head under the shame of it.
“Thanks and praise to the
Queen of Heaven, from Whom all goodness shines, and Who makes us holier than
yesterday,” Fillip recited. He turned from under Krakus’s hand and headed for
the gate to Section Three: Commissars. “I think it’s almost time for Vespers.”
Krakus put his all into
the service that evening. Things were going to get better here. He’d fight for
that, and he swore it to Her over and over in his heart. When Lech pronounced
the benediction, he went straight to the stockade in Section Four. The square
stone building hulked in the
Dorothy Salisbury Davis, Jerome Ross