Simon finishes his work for the afternoon, writing to the end of the sheepskin parchment paper in his packed Latin script before ringing the bell next to his desk. A secretary materializes from the dark hallway leading in, shuffling in with his overlong robe and greeting Simon as he approaches.
“Quite finished, Sire?”
“Quite. Think I’ve had my fill for the day. Summa Arthuria, Prima Secundae, questions one hundred four through one hundred six. Same script and type as the rest of the text, please.”
“Of course, Sire. You’ve made such excellent progress these past few weeks. No minor errand this is. Tomorrow, early morn, we will have it written and set, ready for your review.”
“Good. And we’ve executions today, yes?”
“Oh, yes, Sire. Three I believe. I was just about to say. The convicts are ready for you. Sheepish ones they are. Gelt is ready as well. The big oaf. The crowd has already begun to gather.”
“Good. Please, on your way out, call the servingwomen and have them meet me in my chambers. I want the golden robe today.”
“Of course, Sire. Hail Arthur.”
“Hail Arthur.”
He leaves with the parchment paper in hand. Simon sits for a minute, tapping the desk and ruminating on all he’s just written, the solemn duties that now await him. He rises. Once in his chambers, the servingwomen wash him and apply the spiced ritual oils to his naked body, murmuring their prayers and incantations as they gently knead his skin. Next they dress him in his executioner’s robes, white with a fine golden trim, and lay his long golden stole over his shoulders and his heavy metal cross around his thick neck. A scholar and a cleric, yes, but he always cuts an impressive figure in his ritual and liturgical garments.
Simon waves them off. He says a prayer and takes the secret passage from his bedchambers down to the clandestine chamber known only to him, the King, and a select few engineers. Once inside, a great stone vault sectioned off in the middle with a heavy curtain, gently lit with torches that sputter and burn in the solemn quiet, he removes his shoes and steps onto the great thick carpet that graces the floor. Parting the curtain now, he passes on to the other side and finds the humble iron chalice awaiting him, rough-cast and misshapen but beautiful, standing alone on its heavenly pedestal, the air stale and damp but without a jot of rust on its holy surface. He kneels, prays, and takes the chalice in his hands before planting a suppliant kiss on the clammy metal.
The drawbridge comes down. Simon leads a small procession out of the gates, a coterie of knights following close behind, great war-boards at their arms and chests heavy with coats of thick mail, a pair of halberds in something like a modest goose-step out front. “Hail Arthur!” the townspeople exclaim as they pass. “Hail Arthur!” the halberdiers respond in their martial call. They make their way to the courtyard at which the executions are scheduled to occur, the crowd still gathering in size and energy. At the top of the courtyard, a trio of convicts look about, solemn looks on their faces, dressed in their rancid cotton tunics and heavy iron bondage. Behind them is a suite of guards, more modestly armored than Simon’s retinue, and standing at a dark anvil spattered with dry blood are Gelt, the Executioner, and Karl, the Warden.
“Well met, Simon,” the Warden says, waving him on.
“Well met, Sir. Always a pleasure to see you.”
Gelt, burlap mask and thick cotton butcher’s apron wrapped around his torso, greets him. “Well met, Father. A right nice evening this is!”
“Oh, good evening, Gelt. Good to meet ye once again.”
“How fare ye, Father?”
“I fare well. Much to attend to but attend we must. Tell me, who all do we have today?”
“Three convicts, Sir, nasty work they are. A rapist, a murderer, a blasphemer.”
“A blasphemer! How fun. All slated for execution, yes?”
“That’s right, Father. I’ve got me hammer here.”
“Good. Have their convictions, do ye?”
“Yes, Father, I do. In this leather pouch here.”
“Hand them over please.”
“I’m not sure which the convictions are. I can’t read the papers, Sir.”
“Just the pouch, please.”
“Oh. Yes. Here you are, Father.”
“Thank ye. Let’s see here.”
The first two executions went smoothly. Simon read aloud an abbreviated summary of the facts in each case and the formal findings of the King’s Bench, all the conclusions of fact and law and the non-binding recommendations of the juries in each case. Justice is a learned man’s business, Simon would tell you, can’t leave the last word to its subjects.
The crowd’s reaction ebbed and flowed with the highs and lows of each narrative—gasps, whispers, and groans at the lurid details of the rape and the gory minutiae of the murder, but cheers, applause, and audible exclamations of relief at the verdicts. And at the pronouncement of each sentence, the same for every case that day, the swift and complete obliteration of the convict’s skull by Gelt’s hammer—sweet and fulsome delight. Men cheered, women kissed their husbands, and little girls handed out bouquets of blood-red flowers to commemorate the event. Even the convicts, waiting in their chains, ankles bound in heavy sets of crude iron, couldn’t help but smile, share a little bit in the mood before their passage into the beyond.
The first, the rapist, was a widower and longtime officer of the shipwright’s guild, a bit too old and infirm for the labors of a proper shipwright’s work but a fine administrator for guild purposes. His wife long dead, his desires persisted, so much so that his flirts and passes at other men’s wives had become a common cause for complaint. Eventually, leaving old man Gulliver’s inn one night, he met in the street one of the objects of his most intense desires, his neighbor’s dear young daughter, long flaxen hair and slim nubile build that to which her dresses would so jealously cling. He just couldn’t help himself—he attacked her—cornered her against a low stone building, tasted her face with his soggy drunken breath and fondled everything he could before her screams summoned the guards who made the arrest. Slight penetration with his index finger was enough to run afoul of the statute for rape. Simon delivered a few extemporaneous words about the contemptibility of rape and non-marital sex more generally, of deflowering a young girl who wanted nothing to do with the man. When Gelt brought the hammer down, his skull folded like an orb of origami paper, his brain matter painting the surface of the anvil in a fresh, wet patina of grey-white goo and crushed bits of bone.
The second, the murderer, his story was a bit less sympathetic, couldn’t boast of the life well lived and the formerly respectable station of the rapist. A list of petty convictions going back to his adolescence, he’d always been a nuisance, a thief, a serial loiterer and adulterer, a drug addict and a regular customer in the dens where Eastern merchants make clandestine deals with selective clientele for the sale of the hashish and opium. One day, one of these Easterners sold him a pouch of an unfamiliar herb cut up to look like hashish, and the murderer was so incensed by the deception that he killed the man, went right back into the den and drove a sword into his face before the man had a chance to realize what was happening. Gelt misaimed the hammer a bit on the downswing that time, such that it obliterated the top half of his skull and left the lower jaw intact. When he brought the hammer up, the jaw hung on, moving erratically in something like a seizure, and there was the man’s tongue, still flapping about as it took one last taste of the cold evening air.
Now comes the third. The blasphemer. Simon unrolls the bill of his conviction this time and takes a closer look before beginning his pronouncements. He’s silent as he studies the long scroll of parchment paper, his face souring as his eyes scan their way down, taking considerably longer to do so than before.
Simon, in a breach of protocol, looks to the Warden and ventures a question. “He’s been about asking about the Grail?”
“Oh, that’s right, Father. He’s been about making inquiries.”
“Inquiries!” Simon looks at the convict, Gelt’s massive paw gripping the top of his head with a fistful of hair. “Been about making inquiries about the Grail, have ye?”
The convict doesn’t answer, just stares back with a sheepish face. Gelt shakes head and says with growl, “Simon asked ye a question. Answer, damn you!”
“Y-yes, Father” he chokes. “That’s right. I made some inquiries about the Grail.”
“And what inquiries are these? Pray tell. What’s there to tell about the Grail that I’ve not written or preached? That the Church has not already asked and answered? The doctrines about the Grail are settled, and every disputation has been addressed, answered, rebutted. All interpretations have been thoroughly exhausted in the King’s commentaries. That book is closed, lad, and ye best not reopen it, lest ye sail too close to the wind. Pray tell,” Simon’s voice picking up volume, speaking out to the crowd and seeing all the eyes trained with such rapt attention on them now, “enlighten me as to this theory of yours. What of the Grail doctrines trouble ye, and I’ll answer thy concerns now, right here in front of all these decent people. After we’ve finished that business, we’ll get on with putting an end to all this.”
The man cleared his throat, hair still bound up in Gelt’s fist. “I didn’t mean to make any offense Father. It’s just that, well, I’ve traveled around the Isles, some lads and me—we’re merchants, Father, and we deal in all kinds of wares with all kinds of men. We met these Orientals, Easterners of some stripe or another, and they got to asking questions about the Isles. They had a translator with them. They were very curious, Father, and they were asking about our history, all in good faith I thought. Someone mentioned The Grail. And one said, ‘oh, yes, the Grail, a fine Christian poem but which bears the unmistakable Celtic stamp—”
Horrified outbursts from the crowd. “Damn ye!” followed by a worrisome “Hail Arthur!” from the back of the crowd, with the rest shortly joining in unison, the chanted affirmations silencing the blasphemy that has just passed the man’s lips. Simon signals the crowd asking it to quiet down. “Yes, Hail Arthur, very good. Quiet! Let me speak with the man.”
They obey. The clamor fades, the focus falling back on the exchange between Simon and the convict. “The Celtic stamp,” Simon says, voice dripping with venom. “The nerve with which you voice this blasphemy, lad, in front of all these decent folk here. The nerve with which you carried on with inquiries. You should’ve slain him right there. The King would’ve pardoned you for it.”
Another lone “Hail Arthur!” from the crowd.
The man clears his throat again. A look of true sorrow on his face. “I know that, Father. It was a mistake, honest. But I’d heard the same thing voiced before, when I was a very young lad, by a boy I knew, one of the forest dwellers in the little pagan camps. And when I heard it again on the tongue of a foreigner, I couldn’t help meself, I got to wonderin’ I did. And making inquiries. The merchant, he said the Grail unmistakably bears the—yes….”
Quiet again. Gelt spits on the ground, a great phlegmy ball of saliva, an impact of considerable force and volume against the stone.
Simon’s face contorts with anger, an emotion he lets pass. He turns away to face the crowd. “Sir Galahad and the Grail is a Christian poem! Passed down by Christian tongues, memorialized in a Christian script, carries a divine meaning of pure Christian provenance! Tell me, lad,” turning back now to the convict, “what interest in the blood of Christ do the pagans have? Why, pray tell, would they trade in a tale about a chalice graced with the blood of our Heavenly Father? And what would they know of Joseph? And what say the pagans to the attestations in Nicodemus? Or of Arthur’s quest? Of the Grail’s recovery by Galahad? Or its transcription by Sir Map, the Lord bless him? And what would they know of its heavenly properties? None of it is of any interest to their ilk. The Christian lineage is unbroken, and they are fools—fools!—to ever besmirch its name with the breath they waste on their puerile fairy tales. We have plumbed the Celtic myths, yes, and have concluded that all these whispers of pagan parallels are groundless. Groundless! And the divinity of the Grail itself can hardly be impeached. Why, I saw it just this evening, privileged as I am to do so. Fourteen centuries on, and there is not a spot of rust on it! Pure, spotless iron, the same as it was when his Holiness bestowed its status upon it. And who can endow it with such divine properties but the Lord himself? Ye can’t even read, ye dog, ye can’t tell me what the scriptures say, what myths are suitable to its lines and form. The Christian lineage is unbroken, unquestionable, lad, and you do the Devil’s work with lies like yours, those you dared to repeat then and repeat to us now. I pray that the Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on your soul, lest you the rest of eternity under Satan’s boot, and I pray that never again does that vile lie find any purchase here, amongst all these fine, God-fearing, decent people. Hmph!”
A delirious “Hail Arthur!” from the crowd, soon joined in by the rest, all chanting in unison in breathless exaltation of Simon’s rejoinder to the pagan lie. It doesn’t stop, it stretches on for over a minute and soon devolves into an orgy of religious ecstasy. Wives kissing husbands even harder now, young boys’ arms straining with their fists in the air at chants of Hail Arthur!, little girls dancing in arm-locked circles and singing sweet songs. Simon signals for them to calm down, but they do not listen, lost in themselves. The mood infects the convict, too, his face thick with admiration for their belief, their zeal, their joy.
“On with this,” Simon says to the Warden, doing his best to speak over the crowd.
“Sorry, Father? Can’t hear ye.”
“On with this! Gelt, end him! Now.”
Gelt kicks the back of the man’s knees. He goes down and responds by pressing his own face against the anvil and readying himself for the fatal blow. A tear going down his cheek now, laughing with joy. “Hail Arthur!” he says. He starts laughing harder now. “Hail Arthur!” he screams.
“Too late for all that now, lad. Now comes the King’s mercy,” Simon screaming over the crowd’s fevered cheering. “We answered blasphemy with torture in my day. And a King’s summary conviction, most often. The King, gracious as he is, is more partial to trials these days. Gelt!”
The hammer goes up. The crowd begins to swarm them—Simon, the knights, the guards, Gelt, the Warden. The knights form an armored circle for crowd control, beating back the crowd. “Hail Arthur!” the convict screams one more time as the hammer sails down, his skull exploding against the anvil to the ferocious peal of metal beating metal.
— Nick Mace is a writer, mediocre lawyer, and all-around lowlife based in the Lone Star State, around which he drifts, at random, at all times of the year. His first novel Salomon’s Garden is forthcoming on Farthest Heaven in late 2026. You can find him on twitter @hostileUAVabove and hit him at his email nickmace@proton.me.