The Hangman's Hymn Read online

  Simon handed it over. The coins were dropped into his outstretched hand and the door slammed shut. Immediately, the sergeant-at-arms ordered the cavalcade to continue.

  They left the city, entering the winding country lanes. Now the sergeant-at-arms rode back.

  ‘Deershound will be waiting for you at the crossroads. He’ll be hooded, carrying a bow and quiver.’

  The cart was now rattling over the potholes and ruts in the lane. Simon heard the Ratoliers’ curses and Shadbolt’s cheery insults back.

  It was a clear night. The rain clouds had broken and the full moon provided some light. Even so, at the crossroads Deershound appeared as if from nowhere, stepping out from the trees on to the trackway. The sergeant-at-arms reined in, and leaned down to whisper to the hooded man, who nodded.

  ‘You know what to do,’ the sergeant-at-arms shouted. ‘This is as far as I take you.’ He waved farewell and thundered back down the lane.

  Shadbolt climbed down. The verderer Deershound introduced himself, a tall, slender man, with a shock of red hair framing his pale face.

  ‘You can find your way in the dark?’ Shadbolt asked.

  ‘I can find my way blindfolded. Are the bitches in there?’

  ‘Shackled and chained,’ Shadbolt replied. ‘They’ll soon be gone and we’ll be back in the city.’

  ‘I was there, you know,’ Deershound continued. ‘I was there when they captured the three hags.’

  ‘Aye, and we shall remember that.’ Agnes Ratolier’s voice rang through the darkness.

  Deershound swallowed hard and turned his back on the cart.

  ‘How was it done?’ Flyhead asked, climbing down.

  ‘The council laid a trap. They hired a whore from the city to leave every night through different gates. She was followed by archers who kept to the fields the other side, well away from view. The night before last she left by the east gate. The poor girl didn’t know what she was doing except that she was well paid to walk for at least an hour and then come back to the city. Old Ratolier stopped her and begged for money. The whore became frightened, cursed her and walked on.

  ‘A short while later, much to the surprise of the archers, a cart pulled out of a lane and went alongside the whore. She was offered a ride but refused. She had been paid to walk for an hour and walk she would. They tried to coax her in and, when this failed, one of the young women got down and struck her with a club.’ He blew his cheeks out. ‘The cart then took the forest paths. I was with them then. We seemed to journey for hours. We crossed Devil’s Brook, a place deep in the forest, you’ll see it, and went into a small clearing. They took the girl out and laid her on a slab of stone. By then she had recovered her wits and was screaming. It’s a wonder she wasn’t heard in Gloucester. They had candles lit; the old one had a knife in her hand when we burst out of the trees. The whore was released and well paid.’ He grinned. ‘She was told to go to Bristol and never return.

  ‘The hags put up little resistance. Your sergeant-at-arms, there, the one who brought you here, noticed fresh graves had been dug in the clearing. The ground was still soft from the rain so, well, you know the rest.’ Deershound shook his head. ‘I’ve been twenty years a verderer, I’ve seen things in that forest which would chill your blood but, those corpses, their throats slit, their eyes and mouths sewn together . . .’ He lowered his voice. ‘God knows what powers these women have.’

  ‘Perhaps they just like killing,’ Merry Face declared, loud enough for the witches to hear. ‘They like to wield their power and see the hot blood spilt. Not very powerful now, are you?’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Who’ll come and rescue you now, eh?’ He made a mournful sound. ‘Where are the creatures of the night and the lords of the air?’

  ‘All around you!’ came the soft reply.

  ‘Enough!’ Shadbolt ordered and climbed back on the cart.

  Merry Face also climbed up; Deershound went ahead and they entered the forest. Simon, plodding behind, tried to keep his wits, thinking how much silver he had earned and quietly vowing that when this business was done perhaps he, too, should slip away to Bristol and start again. He had had enough of gibbets, dungeons, whispers in the dark, the likes of the Ratoliers. He could stomach it no longer. He would take his small treasure hoard and buy his own shop. Perhaps, one day when he had become accepted, join a local guild, meet a comely wench, marry and settle down. He’d forget his nightmare days as a hangman of Gloucester.

  Simon kept quietly repeating this to himself as they went deeper into the forest. The route they followed was clear though it snaked and turned. From either side came the sudden dark sounds of the night: the hoot of an owl, the yip of a fox, the crashing and slithering in the undergrowth.

  On one occasion Simon climbed on to the cart where Friar Martin and Flyhead guarded the witches. The two men sat huddled in the corners while the three women whispered among themselves, now and again chuckling as if they shared some secret joke. The atmosphere was oppressive, the stench of ill-washed bodies offensive. Simon was pleased to get out and go and walk along the moonlit trackway. He felt as if he were in a dream. Here he was, walking in the dead of the night, taking three witches to an execution. Now and again he would step sideways and glance further up where Deershound loped through the night, stopping now and again to urge Shadbolt on.

  They must have journeyed for hours. Simon’s legs grew heavy and his eyes began to droop. Sometimes he’d stumble or slip in and out of a dream. Then it was over. Deershound shouted, the cart abruptly stopped then turned, following the verderer into the tangle of trees. The ride was so jolting Friar Martin got down from the cart and helped walk the horses. Simon noticed how the friar had become very silent since they had left the Guildhall. Usually he was jovial, the life and soul of the company, but now he acted like a frightened, beaten man plodding unwillingly onwards.

  They reached the glade. Deershound and Friar Martin took cresset torches out of the back of the cart. They lashed these to a pole, stuck it into the ground and lit them. Simon looked about. A sombre, hidden place, where a stream gurgled and bubbled as it slipped through its narrow banks. The trees were squat and ancient, rounder and thicker than even the pillars in the Abbey of St Peter. He glimpsed the large white slab of rock which came thrusting up from the earth, shallow pits beside it.

  ‘A place of sacrifice,’ Deershound told him. ‘In ancient times the tribes who lived here hung their victims from the oak trees.’

  ‘In which case,’ Shadbolt remarked merrily, coming in between the verderer and Simon, clapping both of them on the shoulder, ‘the ancient rites are about to be repeated.’

  ‘I’ve done my task.’ Deershound broke free of Shadbolt’s grasp.

  ‘Come, come,’ the chief hangman said angrily. ‘We are in the Forest of Dean at the dead of night. We need to know the way back.’

  ‘You are supposed to stay here three days,’ the verderer replied. ‘And I can’t stay with you. Go back, turn left on to the trackway, keep to it and it will take you back out of the forest.’

  And, with Shadbolt’s curses ringing in his ears, Deershound loped back into the trees.

  ‘He has got more sense than any of you!’

  Simon turned. Agnes and her two daughters were now sitting in the mud at the back of the cart.

  ‘Yes!’ The torchlight made Agnes’ face look even more evil and grotesque. ‘He knows better than to stay here. Your God doesn’t reign in these dark parts.’ Agnes Ratolier turned and, stretching out her neck, clicked her tongue at Friar Martin.

  ‘Christ rules over all!’ the friar insisted, but he turned away.

  Simon heard the low rumble of thunder in the far distance.

  ‘Well,’ Shadbolt said. ‘I’m not going to sit and be baited in the darkness by these three hags!’

  He strode away, shouting orders as if any sound or movement would break the dark oppressiveness.

  Merry Face and Flyhead soon had three ropes attached to the overhanging branches of the o
ak trees. The canvas canopy of the cart was removed. The three witches were made to stand and, under Flyhead’s directions, the cart was backed under the execution tree. It was a slow, cumbersome exercise. The dray horses, usually placid and calm, now became restless, rearing their heads, bucking within the shafts.

  Eventually Shadbolt quietened them but the witches started to laugh, bodies shaking till their chains rattled. Simon hastened to help Flyhead and Merry Face, who were already up on the branch. The nooses were tied round the witches’ necks. Simon climbed on the cart, making sure each noose was tight, the knot just behind their left ears. As he did so, Agnes tried to brush his groin with the back of her hand but he pushed her away. The other two hags stared, eyes bright with excitement, and Eleanor even pursed her lips into a kiss.

  ‘Cotterill!’ Ratolier turned, her head slightly askew with the tightness of the noose and the hempen knot pushed in behind her ear.

  ‘What is it?’ he snapped.

  ‘Did you deliver my message?’

  ‘Yes.’ He jumped down from the cart.

  Friar Martin approached.

  ‘Is there anything you wish to say before sentence is passed? Is there any comfort Holy Mother Church can give?’

  ‘Go back to your drinking!’ Agnes shrieked. She forced her head back, looking up at the stars, and muttered something in a tongue they couldn’t understand. ‘I shall see you all again!’ she yelled, even as Shadbolt struck the horses and the cart pulled away.

  Chapter 6

  At last the three corpses stopped jerking and hung silent, swaying in the breeze. Merry Face called them rotten fruit. For a while the hangmen studied their handiwork; the cadavers, the chains still round their wrists and ankles, moved eerily in a clink and clatter.

  ‘You heard what the lord mayor said,’ Shadbolt reminded the others. ‘They are to hang for three days, then we are to spike their hearts and bury them.’

  ‘Why three days?’ Flyhead asked, staring round the firelit clearing. ‘Why can’t we just cut the bitches down and have it over and done with?’

  ‘It’s a powerful counter against witchcraft,’ Friar Martin broke in. ‘If the body hangs for three days, the soul truly leaves. Once body and soul are completely separated, the corpses are nothing!’

  ‘It’s also the law,’ Shadbolt added. ‘In London.’ He put his head down.

  Simon realised that this was the first time any of them had talked about their past.

  ‘In London,’ Shadbolt continued quickly, ‘river pirates must stay on the gallows for three turns of the tide.’

  ‘What did they really do?’ Simon asked. He stared across at the shallow graves. The soil was now falling back as if the earth wanted to forget and cover up the horrors revealed there.

  ‘Do you know.’ Friar Martin leaned against the cart and stared, hands outstretched to the fire. ‘I was going to ask our Dominican friends that. Why did these three hags sacrifice young women?’

  ‘And what did they get in return?’ Simon persisted.

  He looked across at the corpses, heads down, necks awry. In the dancing firelight their faces looked grotesque. Friar Martin followed his gaze.

  ‘Well, I’m not looking at that for three days!’ the friar muttered.

  He opened a chest in the cart and took out three white hoods which, with Flyhead’s help, he put on the cadavers. Simon tried to repress the qualm of fear as the friar stretched up. It seemed as if the three corpses came to life, pitching and moving. Shadbolt came and crouched by the fire.

  ‘I had a word with the sergeant-at-arms,’ he said. ‘Apparently the witches were interrogated in his presence by the Dominicans. He wasn’t too sure who the dark lords or demons were these night hags sacrificed to. Whether they be devils or the old gods who used to be worshipped here. Anyway, the witches mocked their interrogators. When asked what they received in return: was it life or wealth? old Agnes Ratolier replied, “Powers which people like you can only dream of!” When the Dominicans persisted, she just went back to her chuckling and mocking insults.’

  ‘Where did they live?’ Flyhead gestured round the clearing. ‘I mean, this was their temple, their chapel, but they must have had a cave or a house?’

  ‘It was never found. They had a lair but it would take an army to comb the forest and find it.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I suppose one day some lovers, looking for a place to hide, will stumble upon it. A place of horrors, of skulls and bones of young men whose flesh they have chewed.’

  ‘Shut up!’ Flyhead snapped.

  The teasing would have continued when, abruptly, out of the darkness a large owl floated, wings softly beating the air, its shadow racing across the glade. Simon froze and looked up. The bird seemed to be hovering as if there were quarry below, then it went and sat on the branch of the gibbet tree, its head turning, looking towards them.

  ‘A bird of the night,’ Friar Martin whispered.

  Simon swallowed hard. Flyhead sprang to his feet.

  ‘I don’t like this!’ he gabbled.

  A rumble of thunder echoed through the night.

  ‘There’s a storm coming,’ Merry Face said but Flyhead was running towards the trees, a rock in his hands.

  ‘Piss off!’ he screeched and threw the rock with all his might. The owl simply lifted off, feathered wings beating the night air. It disappeared into the darkness, floating like a ghost among the trees. Simon was so tense he jumped to his feet and, collecting more bracken, placed it on the fire.

  ‘Why don’t we bury the bodies now?’ He glanced at his companions. ‘We’ve got three days of this.’

  ‘Cotterill’s right.’ Flyhead came back, crouching before the flames, eyes rounded in his white, liverish face. ‘I don’t like this at all, Master Shadbolt.’

  A long, ululating howl came out of the trees.

  ‘In God’s name!’ Flyhead’s hand went to his dagger.

  Again the howl, long and sombre.

  ‘It’s like that of a wolf,’ Shadbolt declared. ‘When I was a hangman in London we had quarters in the Tower: that’s where our guild used to meet. The old king had a wolf, a present from some prince. At night, when the moon was full, it used to howl like that, fair chilled our blood.’

  Again the howl shattered the silence. Flyhead was now dancing from foot to foot.

  ‘For the love of God!’ Shadbolt snarled. ‘Keep your nerve! It’s only some wandering farm dog; it’s well known they bay at night.’

  Simon was not convinced. Friar Martin was also agitated, his usual jovial face now slack and pale, Ave beads wrapped tightly round his fingers. Simon thought he saw a movement among the trees, something silvery, shadowy, like a plume of smoke. He got up and walked across, passing the sacrificial stone. He turned and gasped. Was that blood? A dark, wet stain spreading across its white surface? He knew when this was over how they would all tease each other about how frightened they were. He drew his dagger and approached the great wedge of rock. However, when he crouched down, he could see nothing, no stain, no mark, so he rose and walked into the trees. Hiding his fear he undid the points of his hose and relieved himself. Afterwards he walked even deeper into the forest, drawing his dagger again. He wanted to show the rest that he was brave, that it took more than the sounds of the night to alarm him.

  ‘Simon!’

  Someone had called his name. A whisper as if someone was playing hide-and-seek. He turned; a movement caught his eyes but, when he looked, that grey shape, what seemed to be a plume of smoke, had disappeared. He stared up through the branches; the sky was overcast, the clouds massing. The rumble of thunder grew louder and, through the trees, Simon caught a flash of lightning. He walked back to his companions.

  ‘There’s nothing there. Master Shadbolt, let’s bring out the wine.’

  The chief hangman did, sharing out the pewter cups, filling them to the brim. They toasted each other but Flyhead threw his down and sprang to his feet.

  ‘What on earth! It’s blood!’ Flyhead screamed. ‘Sh
adbolt, is this a trick?’

  Shadbolt’s face was full of fear, tears glistened in his eyes. Simon smelt his own cup. It was fragrant, so he sipped and tasted good burgundy.

  ‘You are letting your wits wander.’

  Simon picked up Flyhead’s cup and sniffed at it, but all he could smell was wine. Shadbolt grasped Flyhead’s arm.

  ‘Sit down!’ he whispered hoarsely. ‘Otherwise you’ll have us all jumping at the elves and goblins out in the woods. You are letting this place affect your humours.’ He refilled Flyhead’s cup. ‘There!’ He sipped from it. ‘It’s only wine. Come on, man, drink it!’

  Flyhead drained it in one gulp. The jug was passed around as well as the linen cloth carrying salted bacon. The fire, the food and the wine soon had them merry. They were laughing and joking when Simon heard the singing, a low crooning through the darkness. He put his cup down. Now the others heard it.

  ‘It’s the old bitches’ song,’ Merry Face said. ‘Some ditty they were singing.’

  Simon turned. It was as if old Agnes Ratolier, swinging on the end of the hempen rope, had opened her eyes and was staring at him through the white hood, singing him to sleep, a macabre lullaby. Simon recalled her insolent eyes, the twist to her lips. He glanced across at Friar Martin.

  ‘Brother, can’t you do anything? A prayer? A blessing?’

  ‘God knows, Simon, I’ve been praying since I came here.’

  Simon rose and crossed the glade. The singing had died away. He ignored Friar Martin’s protests and took the white hoods off the condemned.

  ‘Flyhead!’ he shouted. ‘Bring across a firebrand!’

  The hangman obeyed. Simon surveyed the grisly scene, all three witches hung, eyes closed.

  ‘Put the hoods back on!’ Friar Martin ordered. ‘Come back and finish the wine. This is a gloomy place, it’s playing tricks with our minds.’

  Simon hastened to obey. He was just about to slip the final hood over Agnes’ grey, wiry hair when he was sure the head moved, the eyelids blinked. After he pulled the hood down, he found he couldn’t stop trembling. He walked back and joined his companions by the fire.