Chapter 23
Richard witnessed the commotion, and he very nearly strangled the despicable Russian soldiers with his own hands. Instead of restoring order as they were supposed to they had the nerve to complain that they didn’t get a prime view of the gruesome spectacle on stage.
He thought of Friedrich Schiller’s play Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who’d been beheaded, and about Henry VIII’s unfortunate wives Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, who’d been beheaded as well. It seemed to be a recurring pattern in history that public executions of those considered traitors attracted the masses and made for good entertainment.
A shudder crawled up his neck, but when he returned his eyes to the deck with the gallows, Katrina had vanished. The guards yelled in panic after their prisoner, but she’d
