The procession slowly marched towards the loaded stake. The guards tied Anneken Hendriks to the rungs of a ladder and placed it on the back of a tumbril. She lay on her back facing the sky.
Facing the sky … the chaplain thought and was overcome with intense shame.
The Spanish guards held back the onlookers. Most of them shouted and threw leftovers and rotten fruit towards the procession. The crowd waved and followed the tumbril as it advanced—the people went around the weigh house to get closer to the convict. Some of them even climbed the storey-high scales used to weigh carriages loaded with goods. And then there were those insensitive citizens who occupied every possible window in the houses around Dam Square to see the spectacle. This was not the first public execution they had ever
