The Diary of Caspar Kruse III, Executioner: Goslar, June 29, 1636 — Dietrich Henning, his last words

 The sky above the High Court was heavy, that kind of clammy heat one feels before a thunderstorm, where sweat mingles with iron and blood. I had risen early – not out of duty, but because the night had woken me with the echo of Henning’s voice, resounding in the Ulrich Chapel like a tear in the mind. He had screamed, not from malice, but from fear, from pain, from something beyond reason. I remember how, still strapped to the bench, he shook his head like a beast bitten by invisible wasps.

Today I would take the sword.

In the days after his “confession,” he had spoken no more. The preacher – a gaunt man with trembling hands – claimed that the devil had left him. But I saw only what pain had left behind: an empty vessel, trembling flesh surrounded by eyes that recognized nothing. The Council had signed the verdict: beheading, followed by the burning of the body. Not for witchcraft – his sins were never clearly defined – but for dealings with evil, for calling forth “storms,” and for cursing the sacraments. The latter weighed, as always, the heaviest.

I wore my work attire: leather apron, black overcoat, my gloves with reinforced backs. I had sharpened the sword again yesterday, rubbed it with oil so it would find its path without faltering. The assistants already stood by the gallows hill: Bastian held the horse, Hans carried the kettle of pitch. Little Hans Caspar watched from beneath a tree. I had asked him to be present, not because he had to learn – but because I hoped his presence would preserve something human in me.

Henning was brought in a wooden cart, lying down, like a sack of barley. He could scarcely stand. His knees buckled as they led him to the block. Two men of the guard had to hold him upright. I saw his shoulder, where the skin was still torn open from the thumbscrews. His ribs protruded through the shirt. He had nothing human left. Only the eyes, which flared so brightly at the sight of the pyre, still recalled what he had once been.

“Have you anything more to say, Dietrich Henning?” asked the preacher.
A faint rattle, then:
“The wind... is not mine.”
That was all.

I commanded him to kneel. He trembled, but obeyed. I placed his head on the block, pulled the hair aside, and saw the scar of the torture iron above his ear. I spoke a short prayer – not for him, but for myself, out of habit, to steady my hand.
“God forgive us both,” I murmured.
Then I raised the sword.

There was no scream. The first stroke did not sever the head completely. His body stiffened, the muscles contracted. Blood poured, warm and dark, across the block. I set my foot on his back, raised again, and finished the work. The head rolled from the block, the mouth still half open. I did not look into the eyes.

The onlookers – a dozen silent citizens from the Rosentor quarter – turned their faces away. Only a child kept staring until his mother dragged him off by the arm.
The servants dragged the body to the pyre. The pitch caught quickly. The smell – burning flesh, hair, entrails – was old, familiar, and yet as repulsive as ever. I withdrew to the edge of the field, sat upon the stone wall, and watched the fire.

Hans Caspar cried bitterly. He wanted to go home.
I looked at him, but said nothing. The flames licked at the skull, which slowly split open. A crow landed in the oak above us.
“Now,” I finally said, “now he is with God. And we are not.”
Then we went home. I washed my hands in rainwater, but the smell remained. That night I did not dream of fire. I dreamed of wind – endless, without direction, without voice.




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