Climbing up the street's incline, an executioner boy hurried past me with quick, brisk steps. In his hand, he held a rusty bowl and headed toward the houses whose doors had been marked with a red cross. The boy knocked on each and every door, taking two silver coins from each household. These coins were not for burning the bodies of their loved ones—the ones who had just passed away—but for burning their own bodies: the bodies of the sick who had no one to care for them after death. Before death, they felt their own death coming.
It is painful, but it must be done. Once the boy had collected the coins from the dying, he began to run toward the town center, heading for the "House of God," the priest's home. There, the priest would keep a portion of the coins for himself—ostensibly to help the needy, though he never would—and then give the executioner his share according to the number of corpses burned.