Apart from Edgar Allan Poe, there was no
bigger name in horror fiction during the nineteenth century than one Bram
Stoker. He was born in Dublin, Ireland and the third of seven children. He
suffered from an unknown illness and spent most his days bedridden until he
recovered at the age of seven. Later he attended Trinity College, Dublin where he studied mathematics. Stoker became
the personal assistant to the popular stage actor Henry Irving. He is mentioned
by one of the characters in “The Squaw.”
Bram Stoker started his literary career by writing short stories. “The Crystal Cup” was his first. It
was published in 1872 when Stoker was twenty-five. Rats soon became his animal
of choice in a number of his tales, including, of course, “The Burial of the
Rats” (1896) and his best ghost story, “The Judge’s House” (1891).
He also used cats (black
ones) to weave the most fiendish cat horror tale since Edgar Allan Poe’s “The
Black Cat” (1843) published 50 years earlier. “The Squaw” will never be
mistaken for a warm holiday story, yet it was published in the December 2nd
Christmas issue of The Illustrated
Sporting of Dramatic News magazine, titled “Holly Leaves” on its cover.
In 1893, Stoker took a
break from writing Dracula to publish
“The Squaw.” He viewed the story as being that important. It includes an American
with a thick Southern accent that can be overbearing at times.
“The Squaw” was first
published in book form by Stoker’s wife, Florence, during 1914. This was two
years after Stoker’s death. The anthology titled Dracula’s Guest and Other Stories further contained the first
publication of “Dracula’s Guest,” a segment cut from the Dracula novel due to length.
Given the excellent
writing, character generation and shocking ending, “The Squaw” is one of Bram
Stoker’s greatest horror short stories.
The Squaw
1893
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URNBERG AT THE time was not so much exploited
as it has been since then. Irving had not been playing Faust, and the very name of the old town was hardly known to the great bulk of the
travelling public.
My wife and I being in
the second week of our honeymoon, naturally wanted someone else to join our
party, so that when the cheery stranger, Elias P. Hutcheson, hailing from
Isthmian City, Bleeding Gulch, Maple Tree County, Neb. turned up at the station at Frankfort, and casually remarked that he was going
on to see the most all-fired old Methuselah of a town in Yurrup, and that he guessed that so much travelling alone was
enough to send an intelligent, active citizen into the melancholy ward of a
daft house, we took the pretty broad hint and suggested that we should join
forces.
We found, on comparing
notes afterwards, that we had each intended to speak with some diffidence or
hesitation so as not to appear too eager, such not being a good compliment to
the success of our married life; but the effect was entirely marred by our both
beginning to speak at the same instant—stopping simultaneously and then going
on together again.
Anyhow, no matter how,
it was done; and Elias P. Hutcheson became one of our party. Straightway Amelia
and I found the pleasant benefit; instead of quarrelling, as we had been doing,
we found that the restraining influence of a third party was such that we now
took every opportunity of spooning in odd corners. Amelia declares that ever
since she has, as the result of that experience, advised all her friends to
take a friend on the honeymoon. Well, we “did” Nurnberg together, and much
enjoyed the racy remarks of our Transatlantic friend, who, from his quaint
speech and his wonderful stock of adventures, might have stepped out of a
novel. We kept for the last object of interest in the city to be visited the
Burg, and on the day appointed for the visit strolled round the outer wall of
the city by the eastern side.
The Burg is seated on a
rock dominating the town and an immensely deep fosse guards it on the northern
side. Nurnberg has been happy in that it was never sacked; had it been it would certainly not be so spick and span perfect as it is at
present. The ditch has not been used for centuries, and now its base is spread
with teagardens and orchards, of which some of the trees are of quite
respectable growth.
As we wandered round
the wall, dawdling in the hot July sunshine, we often paused to admire the
views spread before us, and in especial the great plain covered with towns and
villages and bounded with a blue line of hills, like a landscape of Claude
Lorraine.
From this we always
turned with new delight to the city itself, with its myriad of quaint old
gables and acre-wide red roofs dotted with dormer windows, tier upon tier. A
little to our right rose the towers of the Burg, and nearer still, standing
grim, the Torture Tower, which was, and is, perhaps, the most interesting place in the city. For
centuries the tradition of the Iron Virgin of Nurnberg has been handed down as an instance of the horrors of cruelty of which man is
capable; we had long looked forward to seeing it; and here at last was its
home.
In one of our pauses we
leaned over the wall of the moat and looked down. The garden seemed quite fifty
or sixty feet below us, and the sun pouring into it with an intense, moveless
heat like that of an oven. Beyond rose the grey, grim wall seemingly of endless
height, and losing itself right and left in the angles of bastion and counterscarp. Trees and bushes crowned the wall, and above again towered the lofty houses on
whose massive beauty Time has only set the hand of approval. The sun was hot
and we were lazy; time was our own, and we lingered, leaning on the wall. Just
below us was a pretty sight—a great black cat lying stretched in the sun,
whilst round her gamboled prettily a tiny black kitten. The mother would wave
her tail for the kitten to play with, or would raise her feet and push away the
little one as an encouragement to further play. They were just at the foot of
the wall, and Elias P. Hutcheson, in order to help the play, stooped and took
from the walk a moderate sized pebble.
“See!” he said, “I will
drop it near the kitten, and they will both wonder where it came from.”
“Oh, be careful,” said
my wife; “you might hit the dear little thing!”
“Not me, ma’am,” said
Elias P. “Why, I’m as tender as a Maine cherry-tree. Lor, bless ye. I wouldn’t
hurt the poor pooty little critter more’n I’d scalp a baby. An’ you may bet
your variegated socks on that! See, I’ll drop it fur away on the outside so’s
not to go near her!”
Thus saying, he leaned
over and held his arm out at full length and dropped the stone. It may be that
there is some attractive force which draws lesser matters to greater; or more
probably that the wall was not plump but sloped to its base—we not noticing the
inclination from above; but the stone fell with a sickening thud that came up
to us through the hot air, right on the kitten’s head, and shattered out its
little brains then and there. The black cat cast a swift upward glance, and we
saw her eyes like green fire fixed an instant on Elias P. Hutcheson; and then
her attention was given to the kitten, which lay still with just a quiver of
her tiny limbs, whilst a thin red stream trickled from a gaping wound.
With a muffled cry,
such as a human being might give, she bent over the kitten licking its wounds
and moaning. Suddenly she seemed to realize that it was dead, and again threw
her eyes up at us. I shall never forget the sight, for she looked the perfect
incarnation of hate. Her green eyes blazed with lurid fire, and the white,
sharp teeth seemed to almost shine through the blood which dabbled her mouth
and whiskers.
She gnashed her teeth,
and her claws stood out stark and at full length on every paw. Then she made a
wild rush up the wall as if to reach us, but when the momentum ended fell back,
and further added to her horrible appearance for she fell on the kitten, and
rose with her black fur smeared with its brains and blood. Amelia turned quite
faint, and I had to lift her back from the wall.
There was a seat close
by in shade of a spreading plane-tree, and here I placed her whilst she
composed herself. Then I went back to Hutcheson, who stood without moving,
looking down on the angry cat below.
As I joined him, he
said:
“Wall, I guess that air
the savagest beast I ever see—’cept once when an Apache squaw had an edge on a half-breed what they nicknamed ‘Splinters’ ‘cos of the way he
fixed up her papoose which he stole on a raid just to show that he appreciated the way they had
given his mother the fire torture. She got that kinder look so set on her face
that it jest seemed to grow there. She followed Splinters mor’n three year till
at last the braves got him and handed him over to her. They did say that no
man, white or Injun, had ever been so long a-dying under the tortures of the
Apaches. The only time I ever see her smile was when I wiped her out. I kem on
the camp just in time to see Splinters pass in his checks, and he wasn’t sorry
to go either. He was a hard citizen, and though I never could shake with him
after that papoose business—for it was bitter bad, and he should have been a
white man, for he looked like one—I see he had got paid out in full. Durn me,
but I took a piece of his hide from one of his skinnin’ posts an’ had it made
into a pocketbook. It’s here now!” and he slapped the breast pocket of his
coat.
Whilst he was speaking
the cat was continuing her frantic efforts to get up the wall. She would take a
run back and then charge up, sometimes reaching an incredible height. She did
not seem to mind the heavy fall which she got each time but started with
renewed vigor; and at every tumble her appearance became more horrible.
Hutcheson was a kind-hearted man—my wife and I had both noticed little acts of
kindness to animals as well as to persons—and he seemed concerned at the state
of fury to which the cat had wrought herself.
“Wall, now!” he said, “I
du declare that that poor critter seems quite desperate. There! there! poor
thing, it was all an accident—though that won’t bring back your little one to
you. Say! I wouldn’t have had such a thing happen for a thousand! Just shows
what a clumsy fool of a man can do when he tries to play! Seems I’m too darned
slipper-handed to even play with a cat. Say Colonel!” it was a pleasant way he
had to bestow titles freely—“I hope your wife don’t hold no grudge against me
on account of this unpleasantness? Why, I wouldn’t have had it occur on no
account.”
He came over to Amelia
and apologized profusely, and she with her usual kindness of heart hastened to
assure him that she quite understood that it was an accident. Then we all went
again to the wall and looked over.
The cat missing
Hutcheson’s face had drawn back across the moat, and was sitting on her
haunches as though ready to spring. Indeed, the very instant she saw him she
did spring, and with a blind unreasoning fury, which would have been grotesque,
only that it was so frightfully real. She did not try to run up the wall, but
simply launched herself at him as though hate and fury could lend her wings to
pass straight through the great distance between them. Amelia, womanlike, got quite
concerned, and said to Elias P. in a warning voice:
“Oh! you must be very
careful. That animal would try to kill you if she were here; her eyes look like
positive murder.”
He laughed out
jovially. “Excuse me, ma’am,” he said, “but I can’t help laughin’. Fancy a man
that has fought grizzlies an’ Injuns bein’ careful of bein’ murdered by a cat!”
When the cat heard him
laugh, her whole demeanor seemed to change. She no longer tried to jump or run
up the wall, but went quietly over, and sitting again beside the dead kitten
began to lick and fondle it as though it were alive.
“See!” said I, “the
effect of a really strong man. Even that animal in the midst of her fury
recognizes the voice of a master, and bows to him!”
“Like a squaw!” was the
only comment of Elias P. Hutcheson, as we moved on our way round the city
fosse.
Every now and then we
looked over the wall and each time saw the cat following us. At first she had
kept going back to the dead kitten, and then as the distance grew greater took
it in her mouth and so followed. After a while, however, she abandoned this,
for we saw her following all alone; she had evidently hidden the body
somewhere. Amelia’s alarm grew at the cat’s persistence, and more than once she
repeated her warning; but the American always laughed with amusement, till
finally, seeing that she was beginning to be worried, he said:
“I say, ma’am, you
needn’t be skeered over that cat. I go heeled, I du!” Here he slapped his
pistol pocket at the back of his lumbar region. “Why sooner’n have you worried,
I’ll shoot the critter, right here, an’ risk the police interferin’ with a
citizen of the United States for carryin’ arms contrairy to reg’lations!” As he
spoke he looked over the wall, but the cat on seeing him, retreated, with a
growl, into a bed of tall flowers, and was hidden. He went on: “Blest if that
ar critter ain’t got more sense of what’s good for her than most Christians. I
guess we’ve seen the last of her! You bet, she’ll go back now to that busted
kitten and have a private funeral of it, all to herself!”
Amelia did not like to
say more, lest he might, in mistaken kindness to her, fulfil his threat of
shooting the cat: and so we went on and crossed the little wooden bridge
leading to the gateway whence ran the steep paved roadway between the Burg and
the pentagonal Torture Tower. As we crossed the bridge we saw the cat again
down below us. When she saw us her fury seemed to return, and she made frantic
efforts to get up the steep wall. Hutcheson laughed as he looked down at her, and
said:
“Goodbye, old girl.
Sorry I injured your feelin’s, but you’ll get over it in time! So long!” And
then we passed through the long, dim archway and came to the gate of the Burg.
When we came out again
after our survey of this most beautiful old place which not even the
well-intentioned efforts of the Gothic restorers of forty years ago have been
able to spoil—though their restoration was then glaring white—we seemed to have
quite forgotten the unpleasant episode of the morning. The old lime tree with its
great trunk gnarled with the passing of nearly nine centuries, the deep well
cut through the heart of the rock by those captives of old, and the lovely view
from the city wall whence we heard, spread over almost a full quarter of an
hour, the multitudinous chimes of the city, had all helped to wipe out from our
minds the incident of the slain kitten.
We were the only
visitors who had entered the Torture Tower that morning—so at least said the
old custodian—and as we had the place all to ourselves were able to make a
minute and more satisfactory survey than would have otherwise been possible.
The custodian, looking to us as the sole source of his gains for the day, was
willing to meet our wishes in any way. The Torture Tower is truly a grim place,
even now when many thousands of visitors have sent a stream of life, and the
joy that follows life, into the place; but at the time I mention it wore its
grimmest and most gruesome aspect. The dust of ages seemed to have settled on
it, and the darkness and the horror of its memories seem to have become
sentient in a way that would have satisfied the Pantheistic souls of Philo or Spinoza.
The lower chamber where
we entered was seemingly, in its normal state, filled with incarnate darkness;
even the hot sunlight streaming in through the door seemed to be lost in the
vast thickness of the walls, and only showed the masonry rough as when the
builder’s scaffolding had come down, but coated with dust and marked here and
there with patches of dark stain which, if walls could speak, could have given
their own dread memories of fear and pain. We were glad to pass up the dusty
wooden staircase, the custodian leaving the outer door open to light us
somewhat on our way; for to our eyes the one long-wick’d, evil-smelling candle
stuck in a sconce on the wall gave an inadequate light.
When we came up through
the open trap in the corner of the chamber overhead, Amelia held on to me so
tightly that I could actually feel her heart beat. I must say for my own part
that I was not surprised at her fear, for this room was even more gruesome than
that below. Here there was certainly more light, but only just sufficient to
realize the horrible surroundings of the place. The builders of the tower had
evidently intended that only they who should gain the top should have any of
the joys of light and prospect. There, as we had noticed from below, were
ranges of windows, albeit of mediaeval smallness, but elsewhere in the tower
were only a very few narrow slits such as were habitual in places of mediaeval
defense.
A few of these only lit
the chamber, and these so high up in the wall that from no part could the sky
be seen through the thickness of the walls. In racks, and leaning in disorder
against the walls, were a number of headsmen’s swords, great double-handed
weapons with broad blade and keen edge. Hard by were several blocks whereon the
necks of the victims had lain, with here and there deep notches where the steel
had bitten through the guard of flesh and shored into the wood.
Round the chamber,
placed in all sorts of irregular ways, were many implements of torture which
made one’s heart ache to see—chairs full of spikes which gave instant and
excruciating pain; chairs and couches with dull knobs whose torture was
seemingly less, but which, though slower, were equally efficacious; racks,
belts, boots, gloves, collars, all made for compressing at will; steel baskets
in which the head could be slowly crushed into a pulp if necessary; watchmen’s
hooks with long handle and knife that cut at resistance—this a specialty of the
old Nurnberg police system; and many, many other devices for man’s injury to
man.
Amelia grew quite pale
with the horror of the things, but fortunately did not faint, for being a
little overcome she sat down on a torture chair, but jumped up again with a
shriek, all tendency to faint gone. We both pretended that it was the injury
done to her dress by the dust of the chair, and the rusty spikes which had
upset her, and Mr. Hutcheson acquiesced in accepting the explanation with a
kind-hearted laugh.
But the central object
in the whole of this chamber of horrors was the engine known as the Iron
Virgin, which stood near the center of the room. It was a rudely-shaped figure
of a woman, something of the bell order, or, to make a closer comparison, of
the figure of Mrs. Noah in the children’s Ark, but without that slimness of
waist and perfect rondeur of hip which marks the aesthetic
type of the Noah family.[15]
One would hardly have recognized it as intended for a human figure at all had
not the founder shaped on the forehead a rude semblance of a woman’s face. This
machine was coated with rust without, and covered with dust; a rope was
fastened to a ring in the front of the figure, about where the waist should
have been, and was drawn through a pulley, fastened on the wooden pillar which
sustained the flooring above.
The custodian pulling
this rope showed that a section of the front was hinged like a door at one
side; we then saw that the engine was of considerable thickness, leaving just
room enough inside for a man to be placed. The door was of equal thickness and
of great weight, for it took the custodian all his strength, aided though he
was by the contrivance of the pulley, to open it. This weight was partly due to
the fact that the door was of manifest purpose hung so as to throw its weight
downwards, so that it might shut of its own accord when the strain was
released.
The inside was
honeycombed with rust—nay more, the rust alone that comes through time would
hardly have eaten so deep into the iron walls; the rust of the cruel stains was
deep indeed! It was only, however, when we came to look at the inside of the
door that the diabolical intention was manifest to the full. Here were several
long spikes, square and massive, broad at the base and sharp at the points,
placed in such a position that when the door should close the upper ones would
pierce the eyes of the victim, and the lower ones his heart and vitals.
The sight was too much
for poor Amelia, and this time she fainted dead off, and I had to carry her
down the stairs, and place her on a bench outside till she recovered. That she
felt it to the quick was afterwards shown by the fact that my eldest son bears
to this day a rude birthmark on his breast, which has, by family consent, been
accepted as representing the Nurnberg Virgin.
When we got back to the
chamber we found Hutcheson still opposite the Iron Virgin; he had been
evidently philosophizing, and now gave us the benefit of his thought in the
shape of a sort of exordium.
“Wall, I guess I’ve
been learnin’ somethin’ here while madam has been gettin’ over her faint. ‘Pears
to me that we’re a long way behind the times on our side of the big drink. We uster think out on the plains that the Injun could give us points in tryin’
to make a man uncomfortable; but I guess your old mediaeval law-and-order party
could raise him every time. Splinters was pretty good in his bluff on the
squaw, but this here young miss held a straight flush all high on him. The
points of them spikes air sharp enough still, though even the edges air eaten
out by what uster be on them. It’d be a good thing for our Indian section to
get some specimens of this here play-toy to send round to the Reservations jest to knock the stuffin’ out of the bucks, and the squaws too, by showing
them as how old civilization lays over them at their best. Guess but I’ll get
in that box a minute jest to see how it feels!”
“Oh no! no!” said
Amelia. “It is too terrible!”
“Guess, ma’am, nothin’s
too terrible to the explorin’ mind. I’ve been in some queer places in my time.
Spent a night inside a dead horse while a prairie fire swept over me in Montana
Territory—an’ another time slept inside a dead buffler when the Comanches]
was on the war path an’ I didn’t keer to leave my kyard on them. I’ve been two
days in a caved-in tunnel in the Billy Broncho gold mine in New Mexico, an’ was
one of the four shut up for three parts of a day in the caisson what slid over
on her side when we was settin’ the foundations of the Buffalo Bridge. I’ve not
funked an odd experience yet, an’ I don’t propose to begin now!”
We saw that he was set
on the experiment, so I said: “Well, hurry up, old man, and get through it
quick!”
“All right, General,”
said he, “but I calculate we ain’t quite ready yet. The gentlemen, my
predecessors, what stood in that thar canister, didn’t volunteer for the
office—not much! And I guess there was some ornamental tyin’ up before the big
stroke was made. I want to go into this thing fair and square, so I must get
fixed up proper first. I dare say this old galoot can rise some string and tie
me up accordin’ to sample?”
This was said
interrogatively to the old custodian, but the latter, who understood the drift
of his speech, though perhaps not appreciating to the full the niceties of
dialect and imagery, shook his head. His protest was, however, only formal and
made to be overcome.
The American thrust a
gold piece into his hand, saying: “Take it, pard! it’s your pot; and don’t be
skeer’d. This ain’t no necktie party that you’re asked to assist in!”
He produced some thin
frayed rope and proceeded to bind our companion with sufficient strictness for
the purpose. When the upper part of his body was bound, Hutcheson said:
“Hold on a moment,
Judge. Guess I’m too heavy for you to tote into the canister. You jest let me
walk in, and then you can wash up regardin’ my legs!”
Whilst speaking he had
backed himself into the opening which was just enough to hold him. It was a
close fit and no mistake. Amelia looked on with fear in her eyes, but she
evidently did not like to say anything. Then the custodian completed his task
by tying the American’s feet together so that he was now absolutely helpless
and fixed in his voluntary prison. He seemed to really enjoy it, and the
incipient smile which was habitual to his face blossomed into actuality as he
said:
“Guess this here Eve was made out of the rib of a dwarf! There ain’t much room for a full-grown
citizen of the United States to hustle. We uster make our coffins more roomier
in Idaho territory. Now, Judge, you jest begin to let this door down, slow, on
to me. I want to feel the same pleasure as the other jays had when those spikes
began to move toward their eyes!”
“Oh no! no! no!” broke
in Amelia hysterically. “It is too terrible! I can’t bear to see it!—I can’t! I
can’t!”
But the American was
obdurate. “Say, Colonel,” said he, “why not take Madame for a little promenade?
I wouldn’t hurt her feelin’s for the world; but now that I am here, havin’ kem
eight thousand miles, wouldn’t it be too hard to give up the very experience I’ve
been pinin’ an’ pantin’ fur? A man can’t get to feel like canned goods every
time! Me and the Judge here’ll fix up this thing in no time, an’ then you’ll
come back, an’ we’ll all laugh together!”
Once more the
resolution that is born of curiosity triumphed, and Amelia stayed holding tight
to my arm and shivering whilst the custodian began to slacken slowly inch by
inch the rope that held back the iron door. Hutcheson’s face was positively
radiant as his eyes followed the first movement of the spikes.
“Wall!” he said, “I
guess I’ve not had enjoyment like this since I left Noo York. Bar a scrap with
a French sailor at Wapping—an’ that warn’t much of a picnic neither—I’ve not
had a show fur real pleasure in this dod-rotted Continent, where there ain’t no
b’ars nor no Injuns, an’ wheer nary man goes heeled. Slow there, Judge! Don’t
you rush this business! I want a show for my money this game—I du!”
The custodian must have
had in him some of the blood of his predecessors in that ghastly tower, for he
worked the engine with a deliberate and excruciating slowness which after five
minutes, in which the outer edge of the door had not moved half as many inches,
began to overcome Amelia.
I saw her lips whiten,
and felt her hold upon my arm relax. I looked around an instant for a place
whereon to lay her, and when I looked at her again found that her eye had
become fixed on the side of the Virgin. Following its direction I saw the black
cat crouching out of sight. Her green eyes shone like danger lamps in the gloom
of the place, and their color was heightened by the blood which still smeared her
coat and reddened her mouth.
I cried out: “The cat!
look out for the cat!” for even then she sprang out before the engine. At this
moment she looked like a triumphant demon. Her eyes blazed with ferocity, her
hair bristled out till she seemed twice her normal size, and her tail lashed
about as does a tiger’s when the quarry is before it.
Elias P. Hutcheson when
he saw her was amused, and his eyes positively sparkled with fun as he said: “Darned
if the squaw hain’t got on all her war paint! Jest give her a shove off if she
comes any of her tricks on me, for I’m so fixed everlastingly by the boss, that
durn my skin if I can keep my eyes from her if she wants them! Easy there,
Judge! don’t you slack that ar rope or I’m euchered!”
At this moment Amelia
completed her faint, and I had to clutch hold of her round the waist or she
would have fallen to the floor. Whilst attending to her I saw the black cat
crouching for a spring, and jumped up to turn the creature out.
But at that instant,
with a sort of hellish scream, she hurled herself, not as we expected at
Hutcheson, but straight at the face of the custodian. Her claws seemed to be
tearing wildly as one sees in the Chinese drawings of the dragon rampant, and
as I looked I saw one of them light on the poor man’s eye, and actually tear
through it and down his cheek, leaving a wide band of red where the blood
seemed to spurt from every vein.
With a yell of sheer
terror which came quicker than even his sense of pain, the man leaped back,
dropping as he did so the rope which held back the iron door. I jumped for it,
but was too late, for the cord ran like lightning through the pulley-block, and
the heavy mass fell forward from its own weight.
As the door closed I
caught a glimpse of our poor companion’s face. He seemed frozen with terror.
His eyes stared with a horrible anguish as if dazed, and no sound came from his
lips.
And then the spikes did
their work. Happily the end was quick, for when I wrenched open the door they
had pierced so deep that they had locked in the bones of the skull through
which they had crushed, and actually tore him—it—out of his iron prison till,
bound as he was, he fell at full length with a sickly thud upon the floor, the
face turning upward as he fell.
I rushed to my wife,
lifted her up and carried her out, for I feared for her very reason if she
should wake from her faint to such a scene. I laid her on the bench outside and
ran back. Leaning against the wooden column was the custodian moaning in pain
whilst he held his reddening handkerchief to his eyes. And sitting on the head
of the poor American was the cat, purring loudly as she licked the blood which
trickled through the gashed socket of his eyes.
I think no one will
call me cruel because I seized one of the old executioner’s swords and shore
her in two as she sat.
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