The Pale Companion (12 page)

“Some say he was hung up, sir, because he saw things he oughtnter.”

“Who hung him up, Davy?”

“The fairies and the woodwoses and other creatures of the forest.”

I thought of the fairies in W.S.’s
Dream.
Airy beings whose very names (Cobweb, Mustardseed) signified their lack of size and strength.

“I do not think so, Davy.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, but what do you fine people from Whitehall town know about country matters?”

I told him that I stood corrected and asked what other stories were doing the rounds.

“There is one among our fellows, Kit he is called, says he was the – the devil’s own in human form, was Robin, and that the old gentleman came to collect his dues. We do not pay much heed to him because Kit says that of anybody he does not like, and he does not like anybody. He wishes them all to . . . go and see the aforementioned gentleman. Even so . . .”

“Yes,” I urged Davy, seeing that there was something he was reluctant to utter.

“Even so, sir, Audrey of our kitchen says that she glimpsed Robin’s feet when he was a-hanging from the tree. And one of them was – was cloven. She says.”

Davy looked round apprehensively at this point. His shoulders hunched and a shudder passed through his diminutive frame.

“There, Davy, I can put your mind at rest – and Audrey’s mind too. I saw Robin’s feet and, though somewhat blackened and hard, they were human feet.”

“Are you sure, sir? The . . . person I was referring to . . . is a cunning gentleman.”

“Robin was as human as you or me, almost,” I said, realising that this wasn’t exactly complimentary or reassuring as soon as the words were out of my mouth. “Anyway, you told me before that he was harmless and so on. That he brought good luck on the house as long as he was in the woods.”

“I don’t know what to think, sir. I leave that to those up in Whitehall town.”

“Very well,” I said.

But it was not very well. Something about Robin’s death troubled me, in a different way to that in which it disturbed people like Davy, and it took me a little time to realize what it was. The wild man of Instede woods was speedily buried a matter of hours after he’d been cut down from the hanging tree, not in the consecrated ground belonging to Rung Withers church, the one which stood nearest the estate, but in an unmarked spot on the far side of the woods where he’d spent his strange life. As a suicide he was lucky – if one can ever call the dead lucky – to avoid interment in the public highway at night. Lucky to avoid the stake through the heart which, they whisper, is sometimes the final obsequy of the self-slaughterer.

Some of the workers from the estate farm, under the direction of their bailie, took down the corpse, wrapped it in a winding-sheet, dug a shallow trench and covered the remains with the freshly turned soil. I believe that the Rung Withers parson said some words over the makeshift grave. I do not know what they were – he could not have read the office because Robin had quit this life in such a way as to ensure his eternal damnation – but they would surely have been a comfort to Robin’s soul as well as a testament to the Christian spirit of the parson.

I remember my own father burying a man whose body had been recovered from our river. The villagers of Miching said that he had thrown himself in on purpose to drown but my father would have none of it and insisted that the young man had lost his footing and been swept away by the torrent. Yet it was summer and the banks were dry, the river low and sluggish. Neverthless, said my father, since none of us was there to see him fall and since he had given no notice of his intentions, he deserves Christian burial and will continue to do so as long as I’m parson in this place. It seemed that the gentleman at this church was cut from the same cloth as my father.

Anyway, poor Robin was duly dead and buried – but not forgotten. In fact the sense of his presence seemed to grow larger in his corporeal absence.

Stories continued to fly about the place, the kind of thing which Davy had repeated to me, that Robin had been set swinging by the wood-sprites, that Old Nick had come to claim his own, &c. The question which snagged on my mind, however, had to do with a more practical consideration. It wouldn’t have occurred to me if I hadn’t found out by chance that the halter which he’d been wearing when they cut him down had been preserved. The bailie of the farm, an oily individual by the name of Sam, had loosened the rope from off Robin’s neck, coiled it up and kept it as a prize.

I’d heard that the rope from London’s Tyburn tree was often chopped up into little lengths and then sold by the hangman for several shillings apiece, it being supposed that the sweat and grease of the man on the gibbet had peculiar life-giving properties. I’d even heard that those who despaired of a cure at the hands of a physician would sometimes pay – and pay highly – to be allowed to hold their infected parts against the raw and reddened neck of a man newly cut down. I’d heard of these things, I say, but this was the first time I’d ever encountered the practice.

It turned out that Sam the bailie wasn’t yet as advanced as his London counterparts. He was keeping the rope with which poor Robin had turned himself off, true, but not with the aim of profiting by another’s misery – or at least not profiting unduly. Rather he was charging the simple folk on his own farm, as well as others on the estate, a mere halfpenny to gaze on this fatal cord and a full penny to touch it. What claims he made about it, I don’t know. Perhaps that its touch would cause the blind to see and the halt to walk without limping. Or perhaps he was merely building on that secret delight which we all have in seeing (and sometimes touching) those items which are linked to death. I dare say he extracted a kiss or a grope from some of the women. He was an oily man was Sam. This knowledge I had from Audrey of the kitchen via Will Fall, her beau.

When I heard that the bailie had saved the cord with which Robin had suspended himself, I paid him a call. He lived in a tiny two-storey house near the farm, from which he kept a close watch on all the doings of his workers. He stayed a little aloof from them, to enhance his mystery, and his house was set behind low hedges. He expressed surprise that a gentleman player from London should be interested in examining a suicide’s rope. Maybe he thought we were surrounded by the hangman’s impedimenta all the time up there, stumbling over scaffolds, running into ropes, and would think nothing of a country hanging. Anyway, Sam the bailie didn’t hesitate when I showed him my penny and, after securing the outside door to his downstairs room and slipping the coin into a practised pocket, he went straight to a coffer in a corner. This he unlocked, blocking my view with his back. From the coffer he produced, with a touch of ceremony, an item wrapped up in some kersey cloth. He bent forward to lay it out on the floor in a patch of sunlight, and wheezingly peeled away the coverings to reveal a grimy, tangled length of rope. After this he stood back, as proud as if he’d just given birth to this mortal coil.

“You may touch, Master – ?”

“Nicholas.”

“You’ve paid your penny, you may touch.”

I wasn’t that eager to finger the rope but I did get down on hands and knees to peer closely at it. I felt my skin crawl slightly and my neck began to itch in expectation of the cord. Without straightening out the rope, I estimated its length to be about five or six feet. One end had been cut through, but not cleanly. A few strands of fibre frayed out. There was a crude but effective knot securing the noose at the other end. It didn’t look as though it would have given even under the weight of two men. I thought of Robin’s thin raggedy frame, swaying in the summer airs. Standing up again, I made a business of extracting a whole sixpence and holding it aloft so it caught the light which streamed through the small grubby window. The room was close-pent, airless. Sam was on the alert to meet my requirements.

“I have a question or two.”

Even as I said this, I wondered why I was saying it, why I was going to this expense to establish how Robin had met his end. Sixpence was no great matter but it was still half a day’s pay. I placed the coin in Sam’s greasy palm. We stood with the coil of rope between us.

“You cut him down?”

“Not I personally, Master Nicholas. But the men under my direction.”

“Can you describe how you did it? How they did it.”

“They cut him down, is all.”

“But how? Sixpennyworth of how.”

Sam paused. His oily brow furrowed. I believe he considered that I was deriving some queer pleasure from his description.

“Oliver climbed up the tree and then out along the branch from where the body was hanging. He had to come down again to get a knife.”

“Why?”

“The rope was tied about the branch with a knot. The knot was too fast to be untied. Oliver fumbled with his hands but he could not unpick it when all the time he was trying to keep balance on the branch. I saw the rope must be cut and I told Oliver so.”

“He used a knife.”

Sam nodded, as though he was humouring a slow child.

“Whose?”

“Why, his own,” said Sam, looking at me in puzzlement (and indeed I could not have said why I was asking some of these questions). “He had taken it off his belt when he first climbed the tree. A man can fall on his own knife.”

“He found it easy to climb the tree?”

“Not so much, but he is young and limber. He likes these feats.”

“And then?”

“Then Oliver cut the cord, though it took some time because his knife needed sharpening.”

Sam gestured at the rope lying in the sunlight. That explained the frayed end.

“Who else was present?”

“There were two others who held – held – Robin’s legs.”

“Why?”

“We did not want him to fall in a heap on the ground.”

“Of course,” I said. “That was thoughtful of you.”

“Not me. We had Brown with us. Brown told us.”

“Ah,” I said, wondering just how much of a crowd had attended this deposition. “Brown?”

“The parson of Rung Withers.”

“The one who also attended when you buried Robin, and said a few words?”

“He’s an odd one,” said Sam. “To care for a poor worthless body.”

“Just one more thing, Sam, for my six pennies. They’re saying it was the wood spirits who did this or – or something else.”

“Thought is free,” said Sam.

“Yes,” I said. “But let us suppose that Robin did this to himself. How do you think he did it? How did he hang himself?”

“He climbed the tree, Master Nicholas. He fastened one end of the rope about the branch and the other end about his neck and then he fell off into the empty air.”

I admired the touch of poetry in my friend’s answer but the rest of it left me dissatisfied. However, I asked nothing more in this line.

As I was making to leave, Sam said, “Have a look in the barn before you return to the big house.”

“Why?”

For answer, Sam tapped the little protruberance that served him for a nose.

“Do you believe in this?” I said, glancing down at the dirty rope on the floor. It seemed to swell and writhe under my gaze. The room grew hotter.

“There are things in the woods which might drive a man to despair.”

“No,” I said, reluctant to make myself clear, “I mean – that touching this cord will bring luck and so on.”

“Thought is free,” he repeated. “Go on. You have paid.”

I bent down and touched the rope with my fingertips then turned quickly about and, after fumbling for a moment with the door, walked out of his dwelling and into fresh air. My fingers burned.

Outside all was calm. The afternoon sky was cloudless. Farm buildings were dotted among clumps of elm and sycamore. I wondered why Sam had directed me to go to the barn. It was easily identifiable as the largest of the buildings hereabouts. The path to it was scuffed and rutted. As I drew nearer I heard someone speaking inside in low, even tones but was unable to make out what was being said. The double doors to the barn were wide open. At the far end among the shadows stood a pale figure. I wondered that a man could stand so tall. Then something thickened in my throat, for the figure was not standing but swaying slightly from side to side. I blinked and rubbed my eyes but the image did not disappear. I felt my gorge rise. Even so, I continued to advance towards the black, gaping entrance with an almost mechanical tread.

I halted on the threshold. I wasn’t the only one drawn by this spectacle. Knots of people stood about in the interior of the barn. They were looking at a man hanging from a rope which was attached to a beam. The body, clad in a white smock, swung gently from side to side. The tie-beam creaked under its weight.

“Well,” said Will Fall, “I thought it was nearly as good as the real thing.”

“I have never seen one,” I said, “and I’m not sure I want to either.”

“No true Londoner then, Nicholas – not until you’ve been to Tyburn and seen someone turned off. My father would drive me miles to see the sight.”

I’d been told this before: that I was no true Londoner until I’d done or seen something . . . usually something unpleasant, even if exciting. My normal response would have been to shrug it off or make a joke of it. But this afternoon I felt unequal to laughter. The session with Sam the bailie had left a bad taste. My fingertips still tingled from touching the rope with which Robin had hanged himself. Then to witness, immediately afterwards, the body of a man swaying from the beam of a barn, watched by an appreciative crowd as if it really had been a Tyburn turn-off. No, I didn’t see much to applaud here.

“What you should do,” said Will Fall, his voice dropping low and glancing behind him, “is take along a wench, especially one who has not yet come round. There’s nothing they like more than to see a man turned off. Even better if he struggles somewhat. It’s more efficacious than a love-philtre. You’ll hardly have time to find a dry patch of earth.”

“I’ll remember that,” I said, wondering if Nell had ever been present at an execution.

Will looked behind him once more. Audrey, his “wench” from the Instede kitchens, knew her place and followed us at a respectful distance. She was red-faced in the sun. She it was who had discovered the swaying body of Robin the woodman, and gained a certain fame thereby, particularly with the claim that one of Robin’s feet was cloven. I wondered that she had any desire to see the scene re-enacted in play. But there is no accounting for human taste – and, more particularly, no accounting whatsoever for the leanings of the female half. As Will Fall showed by his next comment (he was unable to shift off the subject of women and executions):