The Executioner’s Daughter by Jane Hardstaff EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Jane Hardstaff
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical Fiction
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- Size: 2 MB
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Basket Girl
She’d never get used to beheadings. No matter what Pa said.
Peering through the arrow-slit window, Moss tried to catch a glimpse of
the fields beyond Tower Hill. All she could see were people. Crazy people.
Spilling out of the city. Scrabbling up the hill for the best view of the
scaffold. Laughing and shouting and fighting. Madder than a sack of
badgers. She could hear their cries, carried high on the wind, all the way up
to the Tower.
‘Get your stinking carcass off my spot!’
‘Son-of-a-pikestaff, I ain’t goin nowhere!’
‘What are you? Dumb as a stump? Move your bum, I said! I’ve been
camping here all night!’
‘Then camp on this, coloppe-breath!’
She shook her head in disgust. Execution Days brought a frenzied crowd
to Tower Hill. The more they got, the more they wanted. Like a dog with
worms.
Of course, London had always been execution-mad. If there was a monk
to be drawn and quartered or a Catholic to be burned, the people liked
nothing better than to stand around and watch. Preferably while eating a
pie. But you couldn’t beat a good beheading. That’s what the Tower folk
said. Up on the scaffold was someone rich. Someone important. Maybe
even a Royal. That’s what people came for. Royal blood. Blood that
glittered as it sprayed the crowd. It made Moss feel sick just thinking about
it.
‘Moss!’
Pa was calling. She could hear his cries below, faint among the bustle on
Tower Green.
‘Moss, MOSS!’
He’d be panicking by now. Well, let him panic. She’d sit tight. She’d
wait. With luck, he wouldn’t find her. Judging by the rats’ nest in the
fireplace, no one had used this turret for months. No prisoners, no guards
and no one to find a girl somewhere she shouldn’t be.
Moss scraped her tangle-hair out of the way and pushed her freckle-face
to the narrow gap. Up here, she was ten trees tall. She could see everything.
On one side Tower Hill. On the other the river. And, in between, the Tower
of London, planted like a giant’s fist in the middle of a deep moat, lookouts
knuckled on all corners. It was said that the Tower was strong enough to
keep out a thousand armies. Bounded by two massive walls, it guarded the
city, arrow-slit eyes trained on the river. It was a fortress, a castle and a
prison. Moss had lived here all her life. And in the summer the reek of the
moat made it stink like a dead dog’s guts.
‘Moss!’
Pa’s voice was closer.
‘MOSS!’
Too late she heard his feet pounding up the twist of steps. Now there was
no way out. She scowled and scrunched herself into a corner.
‘Are you up there?’
‘No! Go away!’
His face appeared in the doorway, full of frown.
‘What are you playing at? Don’t do this to me, Moss.’
‘I’m not doing anything.’
‘You know what day it is. Come on. It’s time.’ He stood over Moss, his
bear-like frame blocking the light.
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