The Executioner was tired. He had spent the morning preparing the site. Clearing the ground, chopping and piling the wood, tying the bundles of twigs. He had escorted the victim to the stake, where he tied her securely, covered her head and placed straw and branches between her feet, between her legs, around her arms and body, and for good measure, stuffed inside her gown. She was mostly silent, but when there was a lull in the noise of the crowd, or when the wind died down, he could hear her whispered prayers.

Thick clouds rolled across the skies. The Executioner hoped the rain would wait.

He wasn’t just tired physically, but emotionally. The girl he had bound to the stake, who waited for death by fire, was Jeanne D’Arc, and the Executioner was not sure, even now, if she was guilty of all she was accused of. She’d never wavered from her claim that God spoke to her through the Archangel Michael, but what angel, what God, would sanction such an end? She had fought selflessly for France and for her King, but she had been judged a heretic, and as such an abomination, she was to die.

The crowds cheered and waved as the Executioner took his place by the hooded girl. He touched his lit torch to the straw at Jeanne D’Arc’s feet. The flames licked at the twigs and within moments the careful and artful arrangement of combustibles was aflame. Her calves, her thighs, her torso, her arms, her neck.

Jeanne D’Arc’s wool hood threw sparks and smoke as it burned around her face. Oh, her face. Visible now, blistered, peeling, charred, melting. Horrible, bubbling face.

The crowds continued to wave and cheer, bending when the wind blew the acrid smoke their way, bowing when the heat was at its most fierce.

When it was over, when the screaming and praying and sobbing were almost a memory, the Executioner fell to his knees and asked God to forgive him once again.

A light rain began to fall. It fed the dry ground and the long rows of corn that waved in the wind. The raindrops hissed on the smoldering pile of ash and bone and strangely, a single unscorched ribbon of wool bathrobe. All that was left of Joan McCready, the farmer’s wife.

Randolph McCready rose from arthritic knees, picked up his blowtorch and started the long walk back to the old farmhouse, his barking, cheering hunt dogs at his side. It was a slow walk, for he was tired, both physically and emotionally.

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