by Mary Hooper
I waited while Rebecca went to speak first to the turnkeys and then—for she sent a message to say so—to the prison bailiff to pay what was owed and to organize the delivery of some of the items. She warned me that she drove a hard bargain so this could take some time, but said she’d be back well before midday and hoped to have the boiled ham with her. She suggested that we drink a couple of measures of spiced wine with it in order to heat our bellies, and I thought this a most agreeable proposal.
It was about midday when a turnkey brought the bread, but Rebecca hadn’t returned. It got later and later, and as I sat watching the darkness creep down the walls, it finally dawned on me that she wasn’t coming back at all. I’d been cheated out of my money! I’d been taken for a fool, and Rebecca—or whatever her real name might be—was probably even now in one of the private rooms upstairs, drinking a toast to her good fortune.
Later that evening I spoke to a watchman and tried to make a complaint against her, only to discover that she was not a prisoner at all, but a well-known trickster who would bribe a turnkey now and again to let her into the jail so that she might prey on gullible newcomers.
I spent that night in devastating loneliness, feeling that I had not a friend in the world and might die of cold, hunger, and misery, and no one would care. I thought of my ma and pa, and my sister, Jane, and my brothers, and wondered what they were all doing; how they would have heard the news; and what they thought of me. In that very low time I felt that even they had forsaken me.
I was woken—for I eventually slept, despite every-thing—by someone shaking my shoulder. Opening my eyes, I found my sister standing beside me holding her nose, her face horror-struck at the surroundings in which she found herself. For a moment I thought that I must be dreaming, but then I looked past her and saw my ma there, too, looking around, as frightened as a fawn, and immediately jumped up and threw myself upon them, hugging them both.
We wept many tears together, and Jane and Ma could not desist from looking about them and shuddering and bewailing my situation, and saying how could I stand it and that I’d surely run mad in such a place. And while they were speaking, a prisoner was relieving himself in the kennel, another was gnawing at a dead rat, the man who stood on his head was happily doing so again, and yet another, covered in sores, was skipping around naked—so that it did indeed look like Bedlam, and I was dreadfully ashamed to have caused Ma and Jane to come there.
They told me they’d started off from Steeple Barton on farmer Smith’s turnip cart at three o’clock that morning, and my poor dear mother, exhausted from the journey and the shock, looked as though she’d aged twenty years. They wanted to know all that had happened to me, and what was expected to happen, and this I told them and could not hold back my tears as I did so, being so very thankful to have them there.
“But who will speak up for you at the trial?” Ma asked, after I’d told them all.
I said I didn’t know.
“Should you not have someone on your side, to give their opinion of you?” asked Jane.
Ma nodded. “Or otherwise Sir Thomas will have it all his own way, and being a man of the law, he will take his advantage.”
I thought for a moment. “But ’twill be known from the size of the babe that ’twas not full-term. And the gentlemen of the jury will be on my side, for they’ll discern that I was telling the truth and surely feel pity for someone so deceived.”
“But as you said, they are gentlemen of the jury,” Ma explained, “landed gentry all, and probably kin to Sir Thomas for all we know. They will naturally be on his side, Anne, for they are of his persuasion.”
I frowned, thinking on this.
“And just suppose . . .” she went on with a tremor in her voice, “you are found guilty, what then?”
“But I will not be—for I didn’t kill the child!” I said. “And even if the jury should go against me, then surely the judge will not.”
Ma said nothing more, but turned away and could not speak.
Sadly, they only had an hour with me while farmer Smith took his turnips to the market and then came to collect them from the prison for their return, but before they left, Jane gave me seven pence, which I knew was all her savings, and Ma gave me a whole chicken, which she’d roasted on the spit the previous day, and also two silver shillings.
“’Tis from your father and ’tis his cow money, Anne, so use it well,” she said, pressing it into my hand. This was the first word I’d had of my father, for I’d been scared to ask after him in case he’d disowned me, and hearing now that he’d sent me his precious cow money touched me deeply.
I took them both to the iron door of the prison, where we said our goodbyes, and they promised to visit me again before the trial. They wept pitifully as they left, and so did I. To see them going off into the freezing fog of the morning, knowing I was the cause of all their sorrows, fair broke my heart.
Chapter ~ 18
Robert turned to a new section of his notebook and wrote:
Monday, 16 December 1650
11.15 a.m.—The dissection of the body of Anne Green was halted on her eye being seen to move by several of the assembled scholars.
He looked at this note and then changed the word eye to eyelid, for Dr. Petty was known to be a pedant for precise language.
Having decided to bleed their patient, the doctors sent for a bowl and tourniquet; as, providentially, they were working above an apothecary’s shop, these items were located just down the stairs. They also called upon Martha to obtain some extra candles and two large cushions, these latter enabling the corpse to be placed in a semi-upright position.
Anne Green, reclining on pillows, looked less like a cadaver and more like a person—though the trembling of her eyelid had ceased, and there was absolutely no animation about her at all. Robert glanced out the window at the mob; he was sure he could pick out Anne’s mother. How utterly bewildered she’d be to see Anne sitting up and being bled, just as if she were alive.
Perhaps, by fair means or foul, she was alive.
His heart quickened as he thought of foul means, for a horrifying thought had just occurred to him: maybe Anne Green was a witch. Maybe she had foiled the hangman and secured her life by the use of magic—and without stopping to consider the soundness of such an action, his eyes moved over her body, looking for teats at which a familiar might have suckled.
He could see none. And then he scolded himself, because this was the middle of the seventeenth century, and he was a student at the most forward-thinking institute for learning in the country. A mere five years ago, the Puritan Matthew Hopkins had instituted witch hunts all over the rural Southeast and been instrumental in the hanging of nearly three hundred alleged witches, but Hopkins had since been discredited—and they were now, surely, living in more enlightened times, when a woman might grow old and bent without being accused of consorting with the devil. Besides, the comely person of Anne Green did not in any way fit that description.
Dr. Willis applied a tourniquet just below Anne’s shoulder. This was tightened, a small incision made in her fleshy upper arm, and the bleeding bowl held underneath.
A short moment passed, during which time everyone in the room held their breath, then a drop of blood was seen at the site of the cut. This grew larger, then formed into a ragged line that slowly trickled down Anne’s arm and into the bowl beneath. Wren let out a cheer, echoed by several of the other scholars, and Robert wrote with shaking hand:
11.20 a.m.—Anne Green’s arm was lanced and she was seen to give blood to an approximate amount of
“Not so fast with your cheering, boys,” Dr. Bathurst said. “I have seen dead corpses bleed before now.”
Wilton frowned and asked, “Is it true, sir, that a corpse bleeds when it is in the presence of its killer?” and just then—at that precise moment—Sir Thomas strode into the room at the head of a small party consisting of the Puritan, Mr. Stegg the prison governor, a legal scribe, and a uniformed sergeant at arms.
There was a murmur of astonishment from the rest of the room, loaded glances were exchanged, and the scholars shuffled around to allow the new party access to the corpse.
“Are you bleeding her, Dr. Willis?” asked the scribe, surveying the body on the table with amazement. “How so? Since when does one bleed a dead corpse?”
“When one suspects she may not be entirely dead,” Dr. Willis answered, with scarcely a glance at the deputation.
“You must stop this nonsense at once,” said Sir Thomas. “Tell them, Stegg! Order them to stop.”
Mr. Stegg scratched his head, but no one else moved. Every person present continued to stare at Anne’s arm as her lifeblood, its color showing bright in the dull-hued room, trickled into the metal bowl until it was a quarter full. A strip of linen was then wrapped around her arm, and the bleeding stopped.
Robert wrote approximately five fluid ounces in the space left in his notes.
“I think we will apply a clyster next!” Dr. Petty said, with some levity to his voice. “This will bring heat and warmth to her bowels and may have some significant effect.”
“Dammit, sir, I tell you that you will not do such a thing!” Sir Thomas shouted. He gestured around at the prison officials. “Can’t someone stop all this? What does a person have to do to make this madness cease?”
The Puritan stepped forward. “The very idea that you should attempt to raise the dead is improper and profane.” He extended his arms in preacherly pose. “Every man and woman has a time to be born and a time to die. It is not meet to interfere with the holy scheme of things. Man should not be raised again.”
Dr. Willis looked at him keenly. “What of the raising of Lazarus? His time to die had come, but Jesus raised him up once more.”
“Do you dare to compare your works to those of the Lord, sir?”
“I believe the Lord said afterward that Lazarus had merely been sleeping,” Mr. Clarke said and, over an anguished cry of “Blasphemy!” from the Puritan, hurriedly addressed Dr. Petty: “What do you require for the clyster, sir? I shall go downstairs and obtain whatever’s necessary.”
“Something mild. Hot rainwater, perhaps, with a little pepper or warming spices in it?” Dr. Petty mused. “What think you, Robert?”
Dr. Willis nodded his agreement. “And—while you’re in your stock cupboard, John—perhaps we should have some cantharides to try and produce blistering.”
As Mr. Clarke went off, Dr. Petty put his fingers to the neck of Anne Green and felt around for a pulse. “Perhaps . . . perhaps . . .” he said, shaking his head doubtfully. “Though if I feel anything, it is so faint as to hardly be there at all.”
Robert wrote: 11.30 a.m.—Faint pulse?
“Observe the color of her face, however,” Dr. Petty suddenly said with some excitement, studying Anne’s cheeks closely. “She grows pinker, surely . . .”
“Damn you for your ignorance!” Sir Thomas shouted, making everyone start. “Am I to understand that you are going to act outside the law and will continue to try and resurrect this woman?”
“Yes,” said Dr. Petty curtly. “And ’twould be better if you just left us to it and stopped causing these constant interruptions.”
“Please remember, sir, that these rooms are our domain,” said Dr. Willis.
“But the law is mine!”
Footsteps sounded along the corridor, and two fellows of Christ Church ran into the room. They had dressed hurriedly, for one was without his gown and the other still struggling into his at the door.
“We heard the rumor!” the first said.
“Is it true?”
“Does the hanged woman truly live?” asked the first, incredulously. “There are whispers of it about the quad.”
The face of Sir Thomas showed total rage. “See what’s happening? All and sundry will prattle of this, and ‘twill become a freak show! You are using this woman for your own ends.”
“Not so, sir,” Dr. Petty said mildly.
“You are using her to endeavor to increase your fortune!”
This last remark was ignored, and the two new fellows took their places around the body of Anne Green, staring at her with a still and silent absorption.
“Her feet are extreme cold,” Dr. Bathurst said to his fellows. “While the clyster is being prepared, perhaps we could anoint them with spirit of turpentine. ‘Twill make the skin hot, and she may feel the benefit.”
“Indeed.” Dr. Willis nodded. “And her legs and arms should be rubbed to increase the circulation of her blood to her extremities.”
“Very well,” Sir Thomas suddenly roared, “then let her live!”
At this strange and unexpected change of heart, the medical men turned to stare at him.
“And as soon as she is on her feet—nay, as soon as she can answer to her rightful name—then I will see to it that she is taken back to the prison yard and re-hanged. And this time I will personally insure that the matter is carried out with no opportunity for error. Even if I have to knot the rope and push her off the damned gibbet myself!”
There was a pause, and then Dr. Petty corrected him. “You will not take her, sir.”
“For we shall see that you do not,” said Dr. Willis. “And if by some miracle we do cause her to live again, and she thrives, then we shall put her on the witness stand, and all shall hear the truth of it: the reason why, when a woman has clearly miscarried a child which was but nine inches long, she should be found guilty of murder.”
Sir Thomas seemed about to say something else, but then choked on his words and clutched at his chest. For several moments he seemed to find it difficult to draw breath, and although Dr. Petty called for a chair to be brought so that he might examine him, Sir Thomas would have none of it. “None . . . none . . . of you bloody quacks here will lay a finger on me!” he croaked, backing away.
Dr. Petty bowed. “As you wish, sir.”
“Do not think I shall allow you to continue with this,” Sir Thomas railed when he had gathered a little more strength. “I shall return here with greater authority . . . I shall call upon Cromwell himself to judge whether this . . . this profane act should be . . . be . . .”
But he had gone a strange yellow color—as yellow as his teeth, someone was later to report—and seemed to find it difficult to say more. He backed out of the room, his feet shuffling as if he could barely move them along the ground, his eyes always on Anne Green. The Puritan, protesting once more that the revival of corpses was ungodly work, left at the same time, supporting Sir Thomas on his slow progress down the corridor.
Mr. Stegg, the prison governor, approached the doctors with deference, for earlier that year Dr. Petty had saved his wife from choking to death on a cherry stone. “Good gentlemen all, I feel this is none of my business,” he said expansively. “The girl was hanged, she was dead, and there’s an end to it. What happens now is naught to do with me.”
“Wise words, sir,” Dr. Willis said, giving him a short bow from the other side of the body.
“So if you’ll excuse me, I’ll return to my duties.” Nudging the scribe, he bowed toward the doctors, and both men turned away.
“But hold one moment,” Dr. Willis said. “If you wish to cooperate with the divine providence that may have saved this woman, then perhaps you would do so by contacting the court usher and asking him that a reprieve may be granted until such time as she is recovered—if this be God’s will—and an official pardon obtained for her.”
“At your service, sir.” The scribe nodded. “I’ll do it myself,” he added as he left the room, for he had fallen foul of Sir Thomas’s temper in the past and was pleased to have this occasion to thwart him.
Spirit of turpentine was applied to the soles of Anne’s feet, and these, and her arms and legs, were rubbed vigorously. In spite of each of the doctors by turn using considerable energy to try and ignite a warmth, however, her feet and limbs remained as if frozen.
The students fell back, disappointed. Robert wrote:
11.45
a.m.—Anne Green’s feet were painted with turpentine and her legs and arms rubbed with vigor. These attentions did not appear to make any difference.
The enema was mixed and applied.
12 noon—A clyster of hot rainwater and spices was applied to the bowels of Anne Green to increase the warmth of her privities. She gave no reaction.
Dr. Petty gave a cry of exasperation. “We must have definite proof she is alive—and quickly!”
“Quite so,” said Dr. Willis, “or I fear Sir Thomas, on recovering from his ague, will use his influence to have her taken out of our care.”
Dr. Bathurst approached the corpse and took up her hand. “Anne Green!” he called urgently. “Anne! Do you hear us?”
“Can you speak?” asked Mr. Clarke.
“Give a sign that you are alive—squeeze my hand or open your eyes!” urged Dr. Petty.
There was no reaction.
12.20 p.m.—She was called to know whether she could either hear or speak. She did not move her hand nor open her eye to command, however.
“What do you say to giving her a cordial?” asked Dr. Petty.
Dr. Willis nodded eagerly. “One with restorative properties.”
“Barley julep?” suggested Mr. Clarke, and this was obtained.
12.25 p.m.—Drs. Petty and Willis, by gradual force, unclenched Anne Green’s teeth. A quantity of barley julep was poured down her throat, but the swallowing action could not be produced, and most of the liquid was seen to run out the sides of her mouth.