Ponderously, like a slow moving river that would not be diverted from its course, the Chief Justice returned to the facts of the case:

"Ye speak in riddles, Lady Ann! The evidence makes it full clear that the victim was a man...."

"Evidence!" Ann gestured toward the breathless stands. "There is your evidence! Ask those women what they are doing here! Ask them what their great, great grandmothers were doing at the ancient wrestling matches!!

Ask them if they have ever known a real man--or ask your own wives!"

The Chief Justice's impa.s.siveness was shattered. His cheeks puffed out indignantly. A strange, tense silence gripped the women in the stands; the men drew back their padded shoulders, and shouted in reproof:

"Shame! For shame, Lady Ann!"

"Why don't you ask them?" Ann persisted.

Yes, ask them, Jacques thought, with a sudden, overpowering anger of his own. Ask them! Maybe their answers would tell why he, too, of all men, should have failed so many of them.

"Hold thy insolent tongue, woman!" roared the Chief Justice. "There remains before this Court only one issue--Did ye or did ye not strike a man to his death in the full view of scores of gentilmen and gentilwoomen of Coberly?"

Ann shook her long hair in defiance.

"It wasn't a man I struck with that casing, and all the FBIT's heraldic mockery can't make him a man! I struck a bloodless slide-rule, a cold filing cabinet full of equations, a set of dull geometric patterns, an automaton that tried to treat a woman like a punched holrith card! He was no more a man than this...." She brought her elbow up so sharply that the paunchy Bailiff was toppled off balance and nearly fell. He looked frightened.

"Ye admit to the killing, then?" demanded the Chief Justice.

"I'm proud of it!"

"And ye claim no special circ.u.mstances?"

"How would you understand them?"

The crowd exploded into a frantic, unintelligible babble, and the Chief Justice slammed down his gavel. He turned to his fellow judges. Two were staring at the prisoner with an indignation that exceeded his own. The other two, both very old men, sat with heads bowed and hands fumbling with their robes.

Jacques felt his pulse leap with a hope that had seemed impossible.

Could it be that after all...? Ann turned toward him, faltering for the first time, and they stared into each other's eyes.

At a curt nod from the Chief Justice, the Bailiff, still trembling, began to poll the Court.

The first two judges angrily raised their hands to signify that they were voting to uphold the death sentence of the lower court. The third judge hesitated, then held out both hands, palms down.

This brought an outburst of applause from the stands. The first palms-down vote always evoked such a demonstration, for a one-sided execution was a comparatively dull affair.

But the applause was choked off as the fourth judge slowly extended both hands, palms down. A scattering of boos and catcalls started. An ugly undercurrent rippled close to the surface. Was this woman going to win a reversal, in spite of all her insolence? If she did, the whole holiday would be spoiled, since there were no other executions on the docket.

Better to have stayed home and watched films of old executions on the FBIT's nightly vidcast!

Jacques looked away from Ann to watch the Chief Justice. The lines in Jacques' face were like gouges in a metal casting.

Acutely aware of his role, the Chief Justice stood up and drew his robe about him with great dignity, taking care to face toward the TV cameras on the north tower.

And as the Bailiff called for his deciding vote, the Chief Justice solemnly raised his right hand.

Three to two for death! A hundred thousand spectators leaped to their feet, hysterically waving their arms. Three shots for the Lord High Executioner! Two for Lady Ann! What a day this was going to be after all! Here was a truly great joute a l'outrance! Ann swayed a little, then smiled. Jacques closed his eyes.

Ritual and habit took over where Jacques' will could not function. His squire stepped forward, opened the silver box and offered the Pistolets du Mort to the Bailiff. The weapons sparkled in the sunlight. They were a modern adaptation of an ancient design, and had become official death weapons after earlier experiments had convinced the FBIT that few 22nd century men were strong enough to handle the swords and lances of chivalry. The Bailiff loaded one gun with two sh.e.l.ls, the other with three. Then he replaced both in the silver box, closed the lid and put the box on the bench in front of the Chief Justice.

Already the judicial platform was wheeled to one side of the arena; the twin pedestals were being rolled to position in the execution circle.

They were thirty inches high, and were positioned precisely sixty feet apart, each on a line with the open ends of the stands so that wild shots would not strike a spectator.

Next came the Ceremony of Confrontation, intended to symbolize that the Lord High Executioner was acting only under the compulsion of duty, without malice or any base motive.

Moving mechanically, Jacques stepped toward Ann. The jailers crossed their staffs two paces in front of her. It was the closest Jacques would be permitted to approach until the Ceremony of the Spirit, when he would kneel beside her shattered body in the dust of the arena. He also was supposed to kneel now, and silently speak a prayer for both their souls.

He knelt, but could not bow his head. Ann looked down at him, and the faint, unfathomable smile returned to her lips.

"It's all right," she said softly. "You don't have to speak to me with words."

The natural, warm scent of her body came through the fragrance of the oils with which she had been anointed in her death cell. It was a remembered scent that once again drove Jacques to the brink of madness.

Her voice, husky and steadying, came down to him:

"For two like us there is no other way, Jacques. Don't fail me again."

He rose stiffly, backing away, staring into the mystery of the lights and shadows in her wide eyes, groping for the meaning of her words.

A friar moved up to take his place, and the jailers dropped their staffs. But Ann dismissed the friar with a quick shake of her head.

The Code now called for Jacques to leave the platform and walk with measured steps around the arena before mounting his pedestal in the execution circle. A signal from the trumpets started him on his way before he was aware of what he was doing. The habits of a thousand executions demanded obedience.

Women in the front rows leaned far over the railing. Some reached their hands down to him, offering flowers and kerchiefs, hoa.r.s.ely begging him to wear their favors during the execution. Others sat still, transfixed, lips parted and moist. The men beside them shrank back in their seats, looking at him as a sparrow would look at a coiled snake. Vendors of ribbands and souvenirs, cakes and drink, stood silent as he pa.s.sed before them. The flutes, citterns and cymbals, the melodic voices of the minstrels, picked up the brooding death chanson:

"Farewell my friends, the tyde abideth no man, I am departed from hence, and so shall ye; But in this pa.s.sage the best songe that I can Is requiem eternam...."

The walk around the arena was an eternity, and then it was over and done with, and he had mounted his pedestal.

A low crescendo, like the roll of faraway surf, swept across the stands.

Ann was at the edge of the platform. She stepped out of her slippers, unfastened the velvet robe, handed it to one of the jailers. The crescendo grew, matching the surge of blood in Jacques' temples. A breeze swept the translucent death gown tight against her bare body, and she walked steadily down the steps, across the arena. Her feet stirred little puffs of grey dust that twisted and whirled away. The friar followed a few paces behind. At the pedestal, he offered her his hand.

She refused it, stepped up without a.s.sistance. Bowing his head, the friar walked back to the judge's platform.

Jacques' squire and a page boy appeared almost immediately. They walked part way across the arena together. Each bore one of the pistols on a black satin pillow. At the edge of the execution circle, their paths forked toward each of the pedestals. The trembling page offered Ann her pistol first.

"Do ye remember your instructions?" he asked in a quavering voice that was picked up for the vidcast by the microphone hung under his frock.

"Yes, thank you."

Ann held the pistol loosely at her side, and looked toward Jacques, across the abyss of sixty feet.

With frozen fingers, Jacques accepted the other pistol from his squire, and knew that he was out beyond the point of no returning.

But he did not, could not, know what he would do once the signal for the execution was given. "Do not fail me again," Ann had pleaded. But what had she meant? Even at this final moment her smile was as enigmatic as ever.