In The Bastard Executioner recap, Wilkin finds his man, Love tries to reason with Jessamy and Annora makes a revelation…
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
It looked like a week ago that the hunt for Piers Gaveston might take us through the season finale of The Bastard Executioner in one week’s time, but Milus Corbett and his forces along with Wilkin Brattle tracked down the treacherous Frenchman in no time.
While they were searching for a traitor to execute, Lady Love had her hands filled back at Castle Ventris as she tried to talk/threaten some sense into Jessamy, who has been a few bricks short of a building all season long.
And then there’s poor Father Ruskin, who wants nothing more but to stand up for his faith but as many people in 12th century England found out — going up against the church is like going up against an army and rarely did they ever lose.
With that said, let’s recap the latest episode of The Bastard Executioner titled ‘The Bernadette Maneuver/Cynllwyn Bernadette’….
Find the Frenchman
Milus, Wilkin and the rest of the troops are on the road to the monastery where reputed criminal Piers Gaveston is hiding out despite being banished to leave England all together after he was exiled. They’ve brought along the other twin whore, who is also Gaveston’s half sister, who watched her sibling get tortured to death before giving up information on his whereabouts.
The other twin is able to sweet talk her way out of her ropes by cozying up to simple Ash, but once she runs away and he gives chase, we find out later in the episode that he wasn’t letting her go — he was just letting her get a head start.
With the girl ‘escaped’, Milus and the others make great haste to find the castle where Gaveston is being hidden so they can ransack it before the whore has a chance to warn them.
When they arrive, Wilkin and Leon scout the building and find that while there are several guards, they aren’t on alert which means they have no clue what’s coming for them. Still, the group from Ventrishire is outnumbered so they need a distraction that could help them pull the guards away from the gates to kill them swiftly before working their way inside.
There’s no way of knowing for sure Gaveston is inside, but Milus is convinced.
“He’s there — I can smell the arrogance.”
~ Milus
Finally it’s Ash who actually gives them a way into the castle when he introduces the group to his new ‘girlfriend’ named Bernadette — who is actually a deer he managed to rope down by the stream. According to Ash she doesn’t talk too much, which is fine by him.
“That is the desire of every man — a beautiful silent doe.”
~ Milus
Everyone has a laugh but this is the perfect distraction to get the guards to pay attention without raising suspicion. So Ash and Wilkin approach the main gate as ‘game traders’ with a deer that they are willing to sell for slaughter. When the guards approach, Wilkin quickly kills one of them while Toran and the others spring from the bushes to kill the rest.
Once they are inside the castle, Wilkin and the other men dispatch the guards and the monks with relative ease but they leave one alive to ask him where Gaveston is hiding. He’s not talking so Milus threatens to cut the cocks off of all the dead men and shove them in his mouth.
Needless to say he’s chirping like a canary and a second later they spring into an upstairs room, kill two more guards and find Piers Gaveston right in the middle of dinner.
Two Choices
When Jessamy Maddox wakes up after a night filled with madness (like most nights with this one) she finds herself tied up to the bed and Lady Love Ventris looking over her. Jessamy attempted to attack Lady Love after she caught her faux husband kissing her the night before and thanks to her constant delusional state, she’s convince that Wilkin is actually her dead husband Gawain Maddox.
Lady Love doesn’t have time for therapy or a good cry with Jessamy so she offers her a choice of where she goes from here.
“You have two choices, woman — if you stay lost in this distorted dream you will face the claim of assault on the Baroness. No one will believe what you say about Wilkin and myself. It will be taken as the madness of a tortured woman. You’ll be put to death and your children turned over to servitude. Let that harshness settle in you, Jessamy. Use it to tear down the wall between you and God’s truth.”
~ Lady Love
The other choice is to accept the truth that Wilkin Brattle is not her husband and she will stay under the protection of Castle Ventris with work and food provided for her and her children at all times from now until forever.
Jessamy eventually calms down and opts for option No. 2 where she will give up Wilkin in favor of rasing her children. Of course, Lady Love has no clue that Wilkin had sex with Jessamy a few nights ago and it’s virtually guaranteed that she’s pregnant, right?
At this point, Jessamy knows she’s lost Wilkin so she asks instead to see her children. Lady Love brings the baby but her son Luca is nowhere to be found. He went with the priest a day earlier but they aren’t in the village and they aren’t in the castle and Father Ruskin never notified Lady Love that he was leaving to go anywhere.
That’s a big problem.
A Divinity They Can Understand
Father Ruskin has been tortured since Archdeacon Robinus and his men captured him in Ventrishire the day before, but his No. 1 man Absolon is find out that this priest’s resolve won’t be tested by blades and blood.
So Archdeacon Robinus tries another method — talking to Father Ruskin about the book of the Nazarene that he read and the danger of the order of Seraphim spreading these lies about Christianity to the masses.
“You know as well as I do that these people are ignorant and lost. Driven by fear and fantasy. Our church gives these simple believers a sound, moral structure. A divinity they can understand. Money and influence are needed to provide that foundation.”
~ Archdeacon Robinus
All he wants is Father Ruskin to give up the location of Annora and her templar knight. Out in the caverns, Annora senses something is desperately wrong and she gathers up the dark mute and they make a run for it just in case Ruskin has loose lips.
He gives Father Ruskin time to think it over, but all he’s really doing is plotting an escape. Father Ruskin manages to get his shackles off thanks to some bones he kept after they fed him dinner and once free, he stabs Absolon in the neck and explains what his job was while still a soldier — Father Ruskin was an assassin. A fooking legend if you will.
Father Ruskin kills a few more men before freeing Luca and heading outside.
Unfortunately when they make it out of the cavern where they are being held, Archdeacon Robinus and his student Cormac (played by Ed Sheeran) have arrived with a garrison of forces and it’s clear the priest isn’t going home today.
A Traitor Silenced
Once they capture Piers Gaveston there are only two more orders of business to handle. The first of which is getting the Earl who was keeping him safe to sign off on an order that he handed the criminal over under no duress. When the Earl refuses, Milus decides to torture his whore until he’s willing to sign the paper that will absolve them of any crime that happened in the search and capture of Piers Gaveston.
Milus calls on Wilkin to do the job, but he refuses because this woman isn’t guilty of anything and he’s only there to punish the guilty. Milus gives him an alternative plan — torture the woman so her Earl will sign the paper and they have his permission to gain complete vengeance for the raid on their village. That means both Locke and Leon are fair game once this job is completed.
“Only you Corbett would use death to buy pain”
~ Wilkin
Wilkin agrees but before he begins to torture the young woman, he whispers in her ear to feign an extreme amount of pain but in reality he will only be pinching her thighs instead of jamming a wedge in a place where that would hurt really, really badly. She screams bloody murder and eventually the Earl relents and signs the paper. Milus, however, can’t help but notice that when they let the pair go that there’s not even a trickle of blood where the girl once sat being tortured.
Meanwhile, Milus has his own plans for Gaveston after the humiliation he suffered during his last visit to Ventrishire. Milus gets Gaveston alone in a room and begins to make promises about what he could do for the turncoat except his mouth isn’t working very well right now to tell him what he wants to hear.
“It seems my tongue only loosens when my cock rests in a handsome mouth.”
~ Milus
Gaveston gets down on his knees but unlike Milus, who he slapped away and humiliated, the chamberlain of Ventrishire follows through and makes the Earl of Cornwall swallow him until he chokes. He then pulls away and slaps Gaveston to the floor.
“How can you rally the king when you can’t even excite a simple dirt born rod?”
~ Milus
Finally, the Earl of Warrick and the Ordainers show up to pass judgment on Gaveston for his crimes. The guilty verdict is handed down and it’s ordered that he will get beheaded for his death sentence.
Unfortunately, neither Milus nor the Earl of Warrick want to do the dirty work, mostly because if it gets back to King Edward II that his paramour has been murdered, he will undoubtedly lash out against the man swinging the sword.
“Wanting my head but too frightened the truth may find its way to Edward. And he will surely take the head of the man who takes mine.”
~ Piers Gaveston
Finally, Wilkin steps in and says this is a job for the executioner and he wields the blade before Gaveston utters his final words — a prophetic statement that Wilkin should pay attention to given his status with Lady Love.
“I do not regret loving someone above my status. Even if this is the fate.”
~ Piers Gaveston
Toran stabs Gaveston in the back and Wilkin lops his head off with one swipe of the blade. The Earl of Warrick hands over a slip good for the funds they agreed upon of Milus and the soldiers of Ventrishire captured Gaveston.
On the way back to Ventrishire, Ash looks down from driving the cart and he sees the body of the twin girl he allowed to escape. Except she’s dead — her hands and feet cut off and her head turned around backwards — just like those tortured dead bodies we saw at the beginning of the series several weeks ago. It seems Ash is quietly a psychopathic serial killer, who keeps the hands and feet of his victims as trophies.
Mother
Back in town, Milus shares the good news with the Baroness before he spots his chamber boy in the hallway. Remember that’s the kid he beat the living hell out of after Gaveston humiliated him weeks ago. This time around, Milus gently caresses the boy’s cheek before moving on through the hallway. Toran goes to have dinner while he quietly plots about a way to kill both Locke and Leon as promised. Unfortunately he starts to feel some remorse when he spots Locke in the dining hall with his wife and children, who are clearly innocent and don’t carry the same stink of murder on them like he does.
Wilkin reconvenes with his Lady Love and he receives even better news that Jessamy has agreed to release her claim on him so they can be together. The two kiss and it seems like all is right with the world until she tells him about Father Ruskin and Luca going missing.
Wilking promises to find them both so Jessamy doesn’t get alarmed and freak out, and he heads back to his house where he runs into Annora, who has been hiding out there ever since she got her vision of Father Ruskin being tortured and nearly giving up her location.
Inside, Wilkin lashes out at her because for all her foresight and vision, she didn’t see an innocent boy get kidnapped and he’s tired of playing her games where Annora manipulates him with her visions and really she’s just ordering him around like a puppet.
“You are the devil, Annora of the Alders.”
~ Wilkin
Annora breaks down in tears before she finally calls out to Wilkin before he’s able to leave the room and it looks like a prediction I made last week finally came true.
“Please, Wilkin, no! My son.”
~ Annora
It appears Annora was the nun who had Wilkin despite her vows and her dark mute Ludwig was the templar knight who swore to protect them both. He may also be Wilkin’s father but that part isn’t clear just yet. Either way, Wilkin has to go on a hunt to find his pseudo-son while trying to wrap his head around the fact that Annora may be his mother.
Next week is the season finale of The Bastard Executioner so don’t miss out at 10pm ET on FX.
