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, hoarsely 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 passed before them. The flutes, citterns and cymbals, the melodic voices of the minstrels, picked up the brooding death chanson: