Another from Ziggyred's site. Not mine

Clarissa & the "Widow" (Maiden on the Scaffold)

The light from the early morning sun filtered through the window which was high up in the wall. It bathed the bed and the far side of the cell in a warm yellow light. A beautiful day's weather seemed assured.The girl who was slowly dressing herself by the side of the bed did not seem to share the joy of a glorious spring day in prospect. She moved slowly but deliberately as she pulled on her clothes making sure that each item was just so. The night had been a long one. Over the last few weeks Clarissa had found it hard to sleep properly and since the visit from her lawyer last Thursday virtually impossible to sleep at all. The news Maitre Delon had brought was bad, terribly bad. Clarissa's appeal for clemency had been rejected and the last possibility of escape from her sentence was ended. Clarissa wished then that they would do it straight away. Just get it over with. But in France things did not happen like that the lawyer explained. It was not something that could be rushed.
The sentence was assured now, there was no further avenue of appeal to follow, but the actual execution would not happen until Monday morning. So Clarissa had spent the past three and a half days pacing in her cell and trying to resign herself to the inevitability of her death. Last night had been particularly nightmarish. Not just because of the imminence of the execution of her sentence but also because of the sounds in the courtyard below her window. Although it was impossible to see out as the window was too high Clarissa could clearly hear men talking and the sounds of some construction work. She knew that the widow as the guillotine was called was kept permanently in the courtyard. Although this device was much smaller than the one at the mens prison at La Santee it was still too large and too frequently used to be taken down and packed away between executions. She had seen it, still menacing , in spite of the large black tarpaulin that shrouded it, as they had brought her allong the low windowed corridor to her cell in the death block. Two of the regular guards who sat with her while she ate her meals spoke little but the third, an older woman of peasant stock chattered on incessantly and unfeelingly. It was from her that Clarissa had learned that the blade of the machine was removed for sharpening and to prevent rust in the damp air. The executioner would refix it into the terrible instrument on the evening before the execution and make sure that everything was in working order. Also she learned that she would not lie down for the execution but that because of the smaller size of this guillotine she would have to kneel. "Don't worry Dear. They will have a mat for you to kneel on so you do not hurt your knees on the cobbles." Clarissa had giggled hysterically at this but quickly managed to get a grip of herself realising that she was near to breaking.
She left her desert, claiming that she did not like it, just to get this awful woman and her terrifying revelations out of the room. For nearly two hours Clarissa had listened last night as the instrument was made ready in the courtyard below and the voices and occasional laughter of the men floated up to her cell. Then just as dusk was falling the sound of a winch clanking followed by a loud click and a few seconds later a thud that echoed around the courtyard in the still evening air showed her that the preparations had been completed.
Now the morning was here and the next time that thud was heard it would signal the end of Clarissa Clark's short life. A gate opened and then clanged shut in the courtyard below the window and again the sounds of muffled conversation floated up to the cell. Clarissa checked herself in the mirror on the wall to make sure she looked just right. She had tied her hair up as instructed to keep it clear of her neck and not impede the blade and she was dressed in a new prison uniform dress,carefully ironed in the laundry and sent here for her on Saturday. It was thin cotton, dyed black with a high shirt style collar and buttoning to the waist at the back. It stopped just above the knee leaving her legs bear and pale above the flat black lace up shoes that she wore. Her arms too showed pale against the the black of the sleeveless dress. It was a good job that the morning was sunny or it would be very cold outside in just this dress she thought. Keys sounded down the corridor and then footsteps approached and stopped at her door. The jingle of the keys again and the sliding of the bolt and the door opened. Two guards entered. Clarissa had not seen either of them before. They took her arms firmly without saying a word and then fastened them tightly behind her back with a strap around the wrists. When they had finished they led the young girl out of the door and down the corridor still without saying a word. As soon as Clarissa and her two escorts had gone her regular guards entered the cell and began to pack up her megre posessions for collection by her next of kin.
The walk down the corridor was slow and deliberate. Clarissa wished they would not hold her arms so firmly but they were imune to her pleas to ease their grip slightly. Perhaps they did not speak English.The prisoner and escort turned a corner and descended a small flight of stairs where a door was being held open by a male guard. Sunlight poured through the doorway and when they reached the it Clarissa blinked several times dazzled by the brightness. When her eyes adjusted to the light she saw, uncovered, for the first and last time the device that was to bring about her death and, in spite of herself, a shudder passed through her as her step faltered for a moment. The guillotine was set firmly on the ground with a simple yoke like construction, the lunette, near the bottom at just the right level for a kneeling woman of average height to rest her head in it. Above this was the long blad runner like a narrow doorframe with the top piece of the lunette and the awsome angled blade on its heavy weighted wooden runner locked in position near the bottom. Clarissa knew from the confidences of her talkative guard that the blade would not be raised until her head was firmly fixed in the lunette to avoid 'accidents' if she struggled. She seemed to see the whole scene as if from outside as she was led to the mat placed in front of the guillotine and made to kneel down on it. She could see clearly the drainways in the cobbles on either side and a long hose pipe waiting to sluice her blood down them once the blade had done its work. An elderly man was next to her now smiling and muttering words of encouragement that she could not understand.
A priest perhaps although she had said she did not want one but then she realised her mistake as he undid the two top buttons at the back of her dress and having beared her neck and shoulders pushed her firmly down on to the lunette. A second man, younger than the first by some thirty years took hold of her head with his hands on either side of her ears and kept it in position while the top piece of the lunette was released, dropped and locked into place. Clarissa was now firmly in the grip of the widow. She looked down and saw the wicker basket waiting for her head and then averting her eyes she saw a matronly woman, the prison governor who was reading in French from a large piece of official looking paper that she held in front of her. The courtyard was silent appart from the governor's voice reading in measured tones the death sentence that the subject did not understand. After about two minutes the governor finished and with a nod to the executioner stepped back to join the small group of officials who were gathered at a safe distance to watch this 18 year old girl have her head cut off. Clarissa could not look up but the clanking of the cogs as the blade was wound up made her realise that the end was now very near. With a loud click the lock at the top engaged and the blade was ready. She heard the slight creak as the catch that had held the blade in position just above the lunette was removed to clear the way for it to rush down onto her exposed neck.
These things she had been expecting from the information given to her by the talkative guard but she was taken completely by surprise when a pair of hands suddenly gripped her firmly at the waist. She tried to protest, she had come here calmly and there was no way she could now escape, holding her down was unnecessary and demeaning but then she realised that they were holding her, not to control her body before death, but afterwards when freed of its head it would fall from the lunette pumping blood. Clarissa started to apologise and explain her mistake in a low voice to people who were not listening and would not understand if they did. Her lips were still moving when the catch at the top of the guillotine was released and the blade attached to its heavy weighted frame hurtled down. I hit the top of the lunette with an echoing thud and bounced back up slightly. Clarissa's head with the lips still moving mechanically lept into the air and fell into the carefully positioned basket.
At the rear of the device, out of plain site of the witnesses, Clarissa's body jumped as the blade struck and, guided by the strong grasp of the assistant executioner, fell to one side with its stump pumping her blood on to the cobbles. The courtyard was silent for a minute or so after the blade dropped and then the witnesses began to talk quietly as they filed out through the gate into the main prison. Less than fifteen minutes after Clarissa Clark had entered the courtyard her lifeless and blood drained body was carried out again in a wicker basket with her severed head lying on her chest. As the guards left with the basket the executioner's assistant began to hose down the guillotine and the surrounding cobbles. The bright sun, warm for a spring morning, made rainbow patterns in the water. It was good to be alive.

 

Exquisite!

 

I remember that one. I saw it on Ziggyred's site, shame it isn't there anymore. Great story.

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