THE NAIL IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HAND

 

 

It’s reported that every time an executioner dies—the public hangman in Britain, for example—there are scores and scores of applications for his vacant post. Did you ever walk down a crowded street and wonder whether you were passing a man who wrote after the job, think that behind that civilized expression and smart suit of clothes might be a person desirous of being licensed to snuff out lives?

Not only the act but the apparatus of judicial murder retains its horrid fascination. Think of the unhealthy adoration which one way and another has been lavished on the Cross. It could as easily have been the saltire cross or Saint Catherine’s wheel or the gallows.

More mesmeric yet than the act or the apparatus, though, is the man who kills. And at the most celebrated execution of all time: who was he?

What became of him?

 

* * *

 

Outside in the warm spring night there suddenly began an irregular hammering. After the first half-dozen blows, a raucous voice with neither tone nor sense of rhythm to justify it was raised in what was probably meant to be song.

In the well-lighted, comfortable room—as barrack accommodation went—where he was visiting his friend the centurion, the elegant young man from the governor’s staff wrinkled his nose in distaste. He said, “Do you enjoy that abominable row?”

“By the Bull God, no!” said the centurion. “But it would be more than my rule over my men is worth were I to tell him to shut his mouth. You don’t know who it is, eh?”

“How should I know?” said the elegant young man, and sipped at his goblet of wine. “This Samian of yours is excellent, I must say. Who ships it for you?”

“A rascal of a Greek brings it in. I’ll get you a barrel if you like. As I was saying, you honestly don’t know?”

“I keep little company with the rank-and-file soldiery,” the elegant young man said sarcastically.

“Does the name Decius Asculus mean anything to you?” the centurion said, and gave a faint smile as he saw understanding dawn on his friend’s face.

“The one they call the Expert?” The elegant young man bent forward eagerly in his seat. “Is he really among your men?”

“Yes! I’m surprised I haven’t mentioned it to you. Want to take a look at him?”

“I certainly do!” The elegant young man jumped to his feet. With the centurion he crossed to the balcony overlooking the courtyard of the barracks and stared down. A thickset man, stripped to the waist in the hot night air, was working at a rough wooden table by the light of a torch held by a young legionary. His work consisted of stamping out big bronze nails with a mallet; at every blow the courtyard rang.

“So he’s the one,” the elegant young man said softly. He put his hand on his friend’s arm.

“Indeed! The reason he’s singing like that—I agree it’s awful, but it’s his way—is that he has three to do tomorrow, and it always sets him up.”

“Is he as good as they say?”

“And even better. Precise, careful, accurate—all the right things. You should see him at work! If you like, I’ll arrange for you to watch him tomorrow.”

The elegant young man gave an elegant shudder. “The idea thrills me,” he said. “Of course, I can’t regard it as lightly as a man of action like you, but one must harden oneself, mustn’t one?”

“You’ll forget your qualms fast enough, believe me. It’s purely a pleasure to watch a real expert like him at work.”

 

Decius Asculus broke off his singing—he’d been rendering a whorehouse ballad called “The Spear and the Target,” which had nothing to do with either spears or targets. He looked up at the balcony across the courtyard, and his big-jowled face split in such a grin that his eyes almost disappeared in creased rolls of fat flesh.

“I’ll lay a denarius to a fish-scale that the centurion’s promising to take his fancy friend up the hill tomorrow!” he said. At the words “up the hill”—which meant more than simply that—the young legionary gulped and the torch wavered.

“You on execution duty tomorrow, son?” the big man said. The boy nodded, and he went on, “First time, hey?”

“Y-yes, it is.”

“You’ll get used to it.” Decius Asculus picked up one of the nails he had beaten flat, inspected it critically, and exchanged his hammer for a file. The nerve-racking rasp of metal on metal punctuated the rest of his talk, as he put barbs on the narrow end of the nail to make sure it could not possibly be tugged loose.

“Besides,” he said, “the little parties we have here are nothing compared to what they had in the old days. Ever hear tell of the Slave Revolt? When they cleared that one up, they put more than five thousand slaves alongside the roads—as a lesson, so to speak.” He swapped nails and began to file another. “I often wish I’d been there. I’ll lay a denarius to a fish-scale that there was sloppy work done on that occasion. It isn’t everyone who has the knack of it, boy!”

The young legionary muttered something.

“Know what they call me?” Decius Asculus went on. “They call me the Expert. Not just an expert, but the Expert. They send novices to me for training.” He glanced up and looked the boy straight in the eye. “You take advantage of it while you can,” he counseled. “You watch carefully tomorrow and any other time you’re on duty up the hill. It could be worth a good posting to you, and a bonus, to say that you learned the trick of it by watching Decius Asculus! More than that, I’ll do you a special favour, seeing as how you’re a good lad and I like you well. Give me your hand.”

The boy hesitated. Decius Asculus shot out a brawny fist and seized him by the wrist. With the skill of long practice he turned the hand over, spread the fingers back, and held them with his thumb, while selecting a prepared nail from the table.

“See?” he said. “Doesn’t matter how reluctant they are—you can always open the hand up ready for the job. Keep the hand still, that’s very important. I’ve seen sloppy work done you wouldn’t believe, where the man only had to pull and because the nail was ill-placed, he just naturally tore his hand away. Painful, as you’d think, but a man hung up and sick with thirst and sure of death if he doesn’t pull won’t worry about a little thing like ripping off a finger if he can escape the nail.”

The boy’s face was very white in the light of the torch, and his hand was limp in the big man’s grasp.

“So!” said Decius Asculus, poising the nail. “You put it there, d’you see? Always get the nail in the middle of the hand!”

He jabbed the nail down playfully, and roared with laughter as the boy doubled over, letting fall the torch, in order to vomit between his feet.

 

Not a bad day, and not a bad crowd following the condemned men. And three was certainly better than two, just as two was better than one. But Decius Asculus had to sigh whenever he thought of the aftermath of the Slave Revolt long before he was born. Five thousand and more hung up for the crows! Ah, that was execution on the grand scale, while the most he, the Expert, had ever dealt with at one time was a measly dozen, the crew of a pirate ship taken off Caesarea.

However, that was no reason for failing to do a perfect job.

He hadn’t thought to ask who the three were, lined up for today; he didn’t concern himself with such matters very much. Waiting on the hill among the standing posts for the condemned men to arrive, whipped along the road with the crossbars on their backs, he turned to one of his assistants and inquired.

“Couple of robbers,” the man said. “And this holy man who’s been kicking up such a row in the town lately.”

Small fry. Decius Asculus went back to where he’d laid his nails and hammer and checked them over yet again.

When it was at last time for the job, he grinned, rubbed his hands together, drew himself up, and—fully aware that he had admirers in the crowd—gave his orders as crisply as a general planning a battle. Crossbars up! Ropes over the bars! Arms out, ropes over ’em! Haul away! Hold ’em steady!

He spat on his hands and took up the first nail.

This was his climax. This was the thing he lived for, the thing he had made his own: the poising of the nail between thumb and finger, his own little finger extended, strong as a bar of iron, pinning the fingers of the condemned man flat on the wood while he made the final minute adjustments, and then bam.

Sometimes they screamed as the single gigantic blow drove the metal crunching through the flesh and the bone, and sometimes they fainted. He preferred them to scream. It indicated that they were strong and likely to live for a while. It was a boast of his that—unless there was a knot in the wood of the crossbar—he never used more than two blows, i the second being a light tap to fold the nail upwards so that it bent over and jammed the hand hard against the wood. The blood oozed from the holes; almost at once the flies swarmed down and began to sup at it.

Then he called for one of his larger nails and attended to the feet, first having the ropes removed which held the arms while the hands were being nailed, because it was very hard to swing the legs and try to kick when the weight of the whole body was being carried on the nails in the middle of the hands. Long practice had taught him how best to gather the man’s ankles both in one vicelike grip, slam them against the upright post, break the feet downwards with his knee, and then follow the knee blow with the driving of the final nail. The feet usually bled much more than the hands, but that was to be expected.

There was considerable racket going on among the crowd, but he scarcely noticed. He was concentrating so hard that his head was buzzing; his breath came fast, and the tautness in the pit of his stomach grew and grew. It was always like this. To see the nail go home, watch the blood run, and the flies come down to taste it, was more to Decius Asculus than food and wine—almost more than women. But whenever he had done a first-rate job, he let the women of the town know about it afterwards, sometimes as many as eight or ten of them before the accumulated excitement had been worn away.

The robbers were good value. They struggled; one of them defied the pain and almost managed to kick him in the face before he secured the feet and smashed them flat against the wood.

The third one, though, was a disappointment. He was so spiritless, Decius Asculus thought with contempt, that it was hardly worth hanging him up. He made no attempt to resist—just spread his hands out ready for the nails. Worse yet, he did not scream as the robbers did when the nails went home, but simply closed his eyes and hung his head. That annoyed Decius Asculus. It suggested that he would not live long, and some people might assume his early death to be due to a mistake on the executioner’s part. It came near to spoiling his exhilaration.

To pay the man out for it, when he came to nail the feet he gave an extra vicious twist to flatten them, and made sure when he turned the nail over that the whole of its head sank deep into the flesh.

“There, you liverless weakling!” Decius Asculus muttered under his breath, and looked up, feeling the wonderful sense of buoyancy that always followed an execution go through every limb. He began to turn away.

And stopped.

The eyes of the man on the cross were open and gazing directly into his.

 

“You were so right about your Expert!” the elegant young man said warmly, holding out his goblet for more of the fine Samian wine. “I was tremendously impressed with his skill the other day. You have another execution tomorrow, don’t you? I must say I’d like to be there and watch him again.”

The centurion frowned. “You can be there if you like,” he said. “But Decius Asculus won’t be.”

“Why not? Oh!” The elegant young man chuckled. “Don’t tell me! Some covetous visiting general spied him and had him posted out from under your nose. I can tell by your expression.”

“No,” the centurion said. He went on frowning. “No, it wasn’t like that. It was another of the peculiar things that have been happening around town lately. I was doing my rounds that same evening, after the execution you came to, and I happened to pass the barrack room where Decius Asculus was supposed to be sleeping, and I heard a banging noise, and then I heard his voice sort of—well, trying to sing that awful song he’s so fond of. You heard it. So I called up the patrol and went in to see what was happening. And there he was.”

“What did you find?” The elegant young man sipped his wine.

“I found—” The centurion looked uncomfortable. “For the sake of all the gods, don’t let this get around, or people may start talking. Well, there he was, sitting at the table in the middle of the room, with a little flaring lamp in front of him, and his hammer, and a stack of nails, and he had nailed his own hand down on the table. He was just sitting there looking at it, with the other men in the room starting up from their sleep because of the sudden noise. And when I asked what he was doing, he just shrugged and said he was trying to work out how he could nail down the other hand as well. Perhaps by holding the hammer in his teeth, he said.”

“What an extraordinary thing!” exclaimed the elegant young man, and started to talk about something else.