The Bleeding Land

by Giles Kristian

  ‘He is angry, Father,’ Mun said, the words sounding to Bess’s ears like an accusation. To Sir Francis too by the set of his jaw.

  ‘Just make sure he doesn’t do anything foolish,’ he growled. ‘Bad enough that he is with the girl now. In plain sight of this mob.’

  ‘Francis!’ their mother rasped. ‘The poor girl is about to watch her father hang. Have some pity.’

  Sir Francis gave an almost imperceptible nod and cleared his throat. ‘You’re right,’ he muttered. ‘It is a thing no daughter should ever endure.’ Bess felt his hand cup her elbow and gently squeeze, a father’s reassurance that all would be well, and she gave him a smile that merely curved her lips. For Martha Green nothing would be well ever again.

  ‘Still, keep an eye on him, Edmund,’ Sir Francis said, eyes fixed on his younger son who was now in the front row. ‘He can go on glowering at me until Saint George’s Day. That’s up to him. But he looks up to you. You’ll have to be the one to make him see sense.’

  Mun nodded but said nothing, a gust whipping his hair, tangling it with his beard and moustaches as he watched them rig the gibbet. To the right of the gallows three men had scraped a patch of earth clear of snow and now Bess watched them building a pile of furze and sticks.

  ‘Death to all Catholics!’ a woman screamed. The crowd cheered this and Bess’s eye was drawn eastward to a copse of elms in whose topmost branches a parliament of rooks clamoured raspingly in what sounded to her like a derisive echo of the blood-lusting humans.

  Mun nodded eastwards. ‘Even the damned birds mock us,’ he murmured under his breath, and this, or the cold perhaps, sent an icy shiver scuttling up Bess’s spine. This was a desolate place to meet your end.

  She looked at the pale faces around them, faces full of disgust and hatred. Full of something else too. Something like greed, as though they hungered for what was coming, their murmured curses stinking of spiced wine as the snow swirled, catching in beards and lashes and melting amongst damp hair. God have mercy on us all, she prayed silently.

  Mun pushed forward, putting himself between Martha and a woman whose sombre dress of sad country colours was at odds with her florid face as she shrieked death to all Catholics, brandishing the white bony knot of a hand towards the condemned. But if Martha knew Mun was there she did not show it as she clung to Tom with both arms, as though she would fall without him.

  Less than a stone’s throw away stood the stout gallows, piling with snow now. A ladder thumped against it, being tested by the executioner whose slab of a face was grim beneath his bird’s nest beard. Beside him stood the sheriff Robert Thurloe, two miserable-looking men clutching halberds, and George Green. The minister’s uncovered, balding head was bowed, lolling between slumped shoulders, and his hands were bound behind his back. He wore shoes, breeches, a thin linen shirt that ruffled in the icy wind, and nothing more. Even from that distance Mun could see that the man was shivering violently as he awaited the hangman’s noose. This cold will kill him before the noose will, he thought.

  ‘Black-hearted bastards,’ Tom growled. Mun was about to caution his brother against making his feelings known, when a thin voice sliced through the wind like a knife between ribs.

  ‘Sitha!’ Sheriff Thurloe cried, fishing a crucifix on a length of beads from inside the minister’s shirt. ‘The baubles of a papist!’ The onlookers jeered.

  ‘Whottle yer damned trinkets do for thi na, Green?’ someone screamed, and some amongst the crowd laughed at that.

  ‘They are not his! You have put it there!’ Martha yelled. Tom pulled her against him, protecting her from the eyes that scoured them both, and a fat man lifted his walking stick and pointed it towards Martha, yelling that there was another papist, clear as a boil on a whore’s arse.

  ‘Hold your tongue, sir,’ Mun snarled, and the fat man shuddered visibly and lowered his eyes, his cane vanishing back into the throng.

  Mun could see that Green was speaking now, attempting to address the crowd through the veil of whirling snow. But his voice was too feeble and the people had come to watch him hang not hear him plead his innocence.

  ‘Silence the blasphemer!’ a toothless old man barked.

  ‘Stop ’is mouth!’ a woman yelled.

  ‘I wish warn burnin’ the wratch!’ a man chirruped. ‘Keep us warm that’d!’ And laughter rose on the sour fog of breath as the slab-faced hangman climbed the ladder and straddled the gallows, checking the hang rope’s knots with short, sharp tugs. He nodded at Sheriff Thurloe, who gave an order to the other two men at which they lowered their halberds so that the blades were inches from George Green’s throat. With that the minister turned and looked up at the gallows and the hangman sitting on it, and someone in the crowd screeched at him to get on with it so that they could all get home to their hearths.

  ‘Got hands cowd as meh wife’s heart!’ a man yelled, raising his hands to another chorus of laughter. Then, as if in reply, as though he too would be done with the thing, George Green nodded and began to climb. Slowly up he went, his legs trembling, so that the whole ladder shuddered.

  Mun felt his hands ball into fists at his sides. ‘Don’t fall,’ he whispered. ‘Don’t give them the pleasure.’

  ‘That ladder leads to Hell!’ a wild-eyed young woman screeched, spittle spraying the cloak of the man in front and turning white as frost.

  Mun glanced back and saw Bess bury her face against Emmanuel’s chest; he put his lips against her coif, as though breathing in the scent of her hair. Then he caught Mun’s eye and gave a subtle shake of his head, an inconspicuous but shared denunciation of what they were seeing. If they have any pity at all they will make it quick, Mun thought. Hoped.

  But pity, it seemed, was as scarce as sunshine, and the hangman seemed to take an age to reach down and place the noose around George’s neck, and all the while the minister’s legs trembled so much that the sheriff himself put a foot on the bottom rung to preserve the execution’s decorum. Then, one foot on the ladder and the other in the mud, Thurloe addressed the crowd, declaring the condemned a heretic and a criminal and thanking them for doing their godly duty by coming to witness the King’s justice. This was the only time they held their tongues, hanging on his every word, lapping up his praise like proud hounds after the kill. And when Thurloe had finished he took his foot off the bottom rung and stepped back, commanding one of the armed men to turn the ladder and so let the minister fall. But the man would not do it. His lips pressed into a thin line and he shook his head and stepped away, slamming the haft of his halberd into the mud, the weapon proving his role in the play so that no man could rightly expect more.

  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 Walle
r, 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.