The Bleeding Land (11 page)

So Sheriff Thurloe turned to the other man, but he would not turn the ladder, either, and he too stepped back.

The sheriff lifted his arms towards the crowd. ‘Someone must turn the ladder!’ he called, his breath clouding around his pale face and broad-brimmed hat.

‘You do it!’ someone yelled and others bayed in accord, but Thurloe shook his head and showed his gloved palms.

‘I connut!’ he exclaimed. ‘But the man must die. We connut leave this Godforsaken place till the sentence is carried out.’ He tried to smile but to Mun it looked like a snarl. ‘Who will do the thing? Who will earn our thanks?’ he yelled.

Mun thought it possible that Green could leap from the ladder himself. End the whole sorry thing. But the minister was clinging to the ladder, his cheek pressed against the gibbet’s rough-hewn face, and Mun supposed that even life full of torment and misery was still life, when there was a rope around your neck.

Martha broke away, striding out into the eddying snow.

Tom rasped her name but she was on her way and so he thrust after her and then Mun was walking too, his boots churning the snow and mud, eyes half closed against the growing blizzard.

‘Ah, God bless thee, chilt!’ Thurloe called, wiping his red nose on the back of his hand, a relieved smile twitching his glistening moustaches. ‘Here we have a brave servant of the King!’ he announced, sweeping a hand out towards Martha, who was staring up at the gallows. Mun saw that the girl’s father’s eyes were closed and his face was turned towards the cold sky now, his lips moving in prayer.

‘You are too late, gentlemen!’ Thurloe called to Tom and Mun as they drew nearer. ‘This brave young girl was fust and shall have the credit!’ They ignored him and came on and someone in the crowd yelled that three of them would get the job done even quicker, but the sheriff frowned and ordered the two soldiers forward to block their path. Which they did, threatening them with their halberds while Martha approached the gallows unimpeded.

Mun saw her look up at her father, hands pressed against her mouth, a barricade against what fought to be said. And yet perhaps her father somehow heard those unspoken words, for he looked down, his eyes glassy and bereft of all hope.

‘My daughter. My precious girl,’ he said, and Mun watched as a shade of serenity fell over the minister, like a shroud laid over a corpse, and the trembling left his limbs and he smiled down at Martha, all terror having fled from his face. In its place was an expression that spoke to Mun of acceptance. And love.

‘Sleep, Father,’ Martha called up to him, cuffing the tears from her freezing cheeks. ‘It will be over soon.’

He nodded. ‘My precious love,’ he said, a tear hanging from his chin before dropping eleven feet to the mud.

‘Tell Mother I love her,’ Martha said.

‘What is this, chilt?’ Thurloe said, realizing this was something other than what he had thought. Then George Green turned his face back to Heaven and began to pray once more. Martha gripped the ladder with two hands and pushed, but it would not move, so she placed her right leg against it and shoved again and this time the ladder turned and her father fell, the creak of the gibbet drowned by the crowd’s sudden murmur.

‘There ’e goes!’ a man yelled.

‘Swing, yer bastard!’ another spectator screeched.

‘Get her away,’ Thurloe commanded one of his men, but Martha had already turned her back on the gallows and was
walking
towards Tom, her eyes on his. Only his. The crowd cheered as George Green’s legs thrashed wildly and the hangman clung on desperately to the shaking gallows, a grimace splitting his bushy beard.

Martha stumbled and fell to her knees, retching, and then Tom and Mun were there and Tom took off his cloak and put it round her shoulders and Mun saw the girl’s anguish reflected in his brother’s eyes.

‘What have I done?’ Martha asked, staring at Tom, then at Mun.

‘Get her away from here,’ Mun growled. Tom nodded, gently lifting Martha to her feet, then led her off across the field towards Isaac and the waiting horses.

For a moment Mun watched them go, then he turned towards the bellowing crowd, seeking anonymity again, though it was too late for that, as George Green convulsed like a fish on a hook.

‘It’s done then. One less bloody papist,’ a man said flatly.

In the nearby elms the rooks continued their raucous conversation and it struck Mun how much the sound resembled the tumbling tide on a pebbly shore. But there was no ocean here, just bleak rolling hills and muddy trackways and snow that was settling properly now, dulling the edges of all sound. He smelt wood smoke and looked over to see that the men had at last nurtured a flame within the heart of the furze, though it was as yet fragile and could be extinguished by a good gust. He glanced around him at the leering, frozen faces until he found his father, whose eyes were already locked on him. Then Sir Francis shook his head dismally. Because George Green was still alive.

‘Show some mercy!’ someone yelled. ‘Pull on ’is damned legs!’

‘No mercy for papists!’ a woman screamed in reply.

‘Let ’im dance!’ a farmer bellowed and Mun recognized the man as one of his father’s tenants.

Then, peering through the whirling snow, Sheriff Thurloe called for John Waller to make himself known. A murmur rose from the crowd, some repeating Waller’s name, and then, reluctantly it seemed to Mun, a thin, ill-looking man slunk from the throng. One arm shielding his face from the blizzard, this Waller tramped through the thickening mantle, spindly legs making hard work of it as he bent into an icy gust. He had a sailcloth knapsack slung across his back and Mun heard a man announce proudly that Waller had trimmed his hair and beard that very morning.

‘I hope you dudn’d pay him,’ someone teased.

‘I’d not have the fellow near
me
with a razor!’ a portly man said. ‘I’d fear him dropping dead and slicing me damned neck!’

For Waller was a barber, though it was not for his skill and eye for a good beard-trimming that Sheriff Thurloe had summoned him to Gallows Ledge. Not that he wouldn’t have been among the spectators anyway, even on such a day as this, Mun supposed.

George Green had stopped his thrashing, though his legs still twitched now and then and his eyes bulged wildly, accusing everything they looked upon. His mouth was a bloody rictus twist, teeth puncturing his tongue which was horribly bloated. Straddling the gallows above him, his composure regained, the hangman sawed a knife through the taut rope and Green dropped five feet to the snow. There was a collective gasp as Sheriff Thurloe bent and held a hand before Green’s mouth to check if he was still breathing. Then the minister coughed and Thurloe started, snatching his hand away, so that the crowd laughed at him and he flushed crimson beneath his snow-covered hat.

‘Earn your pay, Mister Waller,’ Thurloe commanded with a grimace, stepping back and waving a gloved hand at the man lying still as a corpse in the snow. But not a corpse, Mun knew. Not yet.

The barber nodded and, pulling off his knapsack, took from
it
a leather bundle, laying it reverentially on the ground. His fingers fumbled at the thong, pulling it loose, then he unrolled the bundle to reveal an assortment of implements, which he pushed to one side of the leather wrapping so that he could kneel on the rest of it to keep his breeches dry. Those instruments, all tooth and wicked blade, reminded Mun of a carpenter’s tools. He heard his mother implore God’s mercy under her breath, and he peered through gaps in the crowds, looking for Tom and Martha, hoping that they were gone.

‘If the lad’s got any sense he’ll have the girl half a mile away by now,’ Sir Francis muttered as though he had read Mun’s mind, and Mun nodded grimly. The two soldiers were tasked with kneeling – no layer between
their
breeches and the freezing earth – and holding George Green still so that Waller could commence his work. And grim work it was. The frail-looking barber took up a knife whose blade glinted dully through the blizzard, and put the blade beneath Green’s shirt, pulling it up towards his neck, slitting the soaking linen to expose the man’s bare chest. Then using the same knife he sliced into Green’s belly and the minister jerked and writhed, and though his hands were still bound behind his back it was all the soldiers could do to keep him down. Waller made two more cuts, these down either side of Green’s belly as far as the first incision, and then he turned this gory flap up and laid it on the man’s chest and steam rose from Green’s insides, clouding in the freezing air. A low murmur spread through the crowd.

Waller looked back at Sheriff Thurloe, who nodded, and then the barber shoved his sleeves up to the elbows and plunged a hand into Green, grimacing, his face turned up to the wintry sky as he worked by touch rather than by sight. After a moment he pulled out a piece of liver, which steamed and glistened wetly, spilling blood down the barber’s claw-like hand and spindly white arm.

‘Jesu, Jesu, Jesu! Mercy!’ George Green shrieked in a strangled, tormented voice. The crowd fell silent but for some
gasps
and muttered curses, because Waller was getting it all wrong.

‘His heart, damn you, man!’ Mun yelled, stirring a few ayes. In went Waller’s hands again and this time he pulled out the man’s gut rope, which gleamed bright purple and blue against the white skin and snow, unravelling as in his panic Waller tried to find the beating heart.

Sheriff Thurloe stepped up and bent over the grisly scene. He was growling at Waller, who was tumbling the guts every which way as he delved deeper into the gory hole, blood even soaking his bunched sleeves. Then he took up his blood-slick knife again and raked it inside Green and there was another moan from the crowd as the condemned man convulsed, blood and mucus frothing at his nose and mouth and choking him, so that his cries to Jesus decayed into a pathetic gurgling that made the hairs on Mun’s neck bristle. One of the soldiers holding Green down turned his face away from the barber’s work then fell on all fours and vomited. The other man watched it all wide-eyed, his face spattered with Green’s blood.

‘Show some mercy, Sheriff!’ Sir Francis bellowed, and men turned to glare at him, though some gave up ayes, for they all knew Sir Francis Rivers – knew him to be a friend of the King – and most respected him. ‘He is a man, Thurloe, not a beast! Show some mercy, damn you!’ It seemed to Mun that even this crowd’s blood-lust had been sated now and more than a few added their voices in support of Sir Francis.

Sheriff Thurloe peered into the throng and when Mun craned his neck he saw who Thurloe was looking at. It was Lord Denton, wrapped in a bear fur against the bitter day, his hat, which sported a bright purple plume, angled so that it partly obscured his face. But that purple feather dipped and Thurloe gripped Waller’s shoulder and told him to end it. The barber nodded and with a trembling hand put down the knife, taking up a saw instead. He put its cold teeth on Green’s neck
and
slashed the thing back and forth, and blood sprayed across his face until at last George Green died.

But Waller’s work was not done yet. Next, he hacked off Green’s genitals and Thurloe made the soldier who had watched it all carry them, grimacing, through the blizzard and throw them into the pathetic fire, where the grisly meat smouldered and blistered and blackened. The barber found Green’s heart then and cut it free, holding it aloft triumphantly, but no one cheered and it too was cast into the fragile flames. Lastly, and with no little struggle, Waller cut off Green’s head and some at least cheered this. The barber held it up for all to see, his puny, bloodstained arms trembling with the weight of it, then he threw it towards the crowd and a woman ran and picked it up, screaming with delight.

‘Let us be away from here,’ Sir Francis said and Emmanuel nodded, leading Bess through the press behind Sir Francis and Lady Mary. But Mun stayed a little longer, watching in horror as a group of young men began to kick George Green’s head – the eyes still staring – through the snow, cheering and roaring with the thrill of it. In no time there must have been a hundred people running this way and that across Hilldale’s uneven ground, kicking their grisly ball about to keep warm.

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘I HEAR THERE
are those who even accuse the king himself of being a Catholic. It is madness.’ Sir Francis thrust the poker into the fire, jabbing at the fuel. The wood crackled and spat, expelling a spray of bright, angry sparks.

‘Because his wife is one?’ Mun said, tying one corner of a huge tapestry to a rail that he and Bess had moved into the room and set before the parlour door. The bitter draughts that swept through Shear House’s entrance hall had slender fingers that eked into every downstairs room despite closed doors, and Lady Mary hoped the old wall tapestry would keep the worst out, enabling them to keep at least the parlour warm. ‘By that token, Father, you love the plays,’ Mun added, smiling at his mother who smiled back, for Sir Francis was happier in a stable than the theatre, whilst his wife could quote Shakespeare and Massinger and loved nothing more than a skilfully wrought plot.