ace. Guy de Archambault waddled back out
of danger, then finding that he was not followed, poked his head around
the edge of the door.

"Prithee, Sir Jacques, have ye any message for their Judicial
Highnesses?"

"Yes, damn you! Tell them to get someone else for this infernal
execution--and be quick about it!"

With a gleeful chuckle, the Bailiff disappeared again. The little squire
picked up the white tunic and brushed it off dejectedly. If he missed
this opportunity to serve as squire to the Lord High Executioner, his
name would rotate to the bottom of the list and he might not have a
chance to serve again before it was time to make up new lists.

Jacques strode to the window. Lady Ann of Coberly. The name could mean
anything or nothing, according to the whimsy of the lower courts. Lady
Ann.... Ann! But it couldn't be her--Or could it? Jacques looked far
down the years to a youngster just out of training, eager to prove
himself in the execution arena. There had been an Ann then, and she had
left one morning taking a young man's heart with her, leaving behind
only the unfathomable look of reproach and disappointment that he had
come since to know so well.

But it couldn't be that Ann! He tried to create the image of her face,
but saw only the acres of spectator tents, their bright pennants
snapping in the wind, and the open squares teeming with spectacular
costumes copied from medieval history books by an atomic age which
found in the pageantry of execution-day its one escape from safe,
sanitized, prescribed living. The Arthurian song of a strolling minstrel
drifted up to him....

"To the fairest of all maidens,

To Argante, the Queen, most beauteous elf,

She will make my wounds all sound,

And with a healing draught make me full well...."

Jacques clenched his great fists. No, he wouldn't do it. Seniority
entitled him to some consideration. If necessary, he'd put a call
through to the Bureau. They'd understand. His record was good. He'd
always performed faithfully, meeting death every session, dealing it out
to young and old alike.

But not to a woman; certainly not to a woman who might have meant a
great deal to him! During the long spartan years of his training, the
isolated years of monastic living at a time when youth burned strongest
in him, the image of woman had become a haunting dream, unreal as the
moonlight streaming through his curtainless window, untouchable as the
mist of a summer morning.