It was a time for change; the emperor's realm was broad as his patience; too many uneasy thoughts found favour within it; in the places he could not see the seeds of dissent were sown, to paint the lines of darkness the sharper, to twist a new shape into history, to raise a voice against the indifferent humanity of the day. They came suddenly, without ultimatum; they left him tumbled at the foot of the steps down which he had bounced marbles as a child; by dawn the horsemen had secured the town. There was little resistance, for there was little understanding; nothing could be easily determined in the cold and darkness that morning; nothing could be easily distinguished within the darkness of their covenant, among the torches and cries and the jingle of harnesses, with the squeak of the ice sheets sliding and cracking along the river. I saw their heads and shoulders all together, in the market square, like the shadow of one thing cast upon another, multiplying the same destiny without division; and so the curious pronouncement went out, and the villagers were long deciding, for the pronouncement was this: either they were to be scourged, and then put to death; or else they were simply to be put to death. That was their choice, and that was a thousand years past; the anvil is pitted with long use; the town has wandered away to dust; too little remains even to fathom the skeleton of its streets.

“So what happened to them?” you ask.

“Well, clearly, they died.”

“Yes, but what choice did they make?”

But the answer was never recorded, since a hollow had already been set aside which either answer might fill. It was the question itself – the initiative of that question – which was important, opening up, as it did, the space of answering. Forced to decide their fate that wintry day, those who answered were already defeated, and defeated not by arms, but by their obligation to answer. Perhaps that is why – more as a parable than a punishment - the only choice offered them was the manner of their death.