Less truculent than his accomplice, the fair man trembled at the prospect of a noose around his neck, but tried to remain defiant. ‘I know nothing of it. I was but one in the crowd outside the inn when a fight broke out.’
Gwyn pushed him roughly in the shoulder, making him stagger. ‘A pair of liars, then! We have a dying declaration to say that you stabbed the man mortally in the chest.’
He was again stretching the truth, but it had the desired effect. The Saxon, who was no more than nineteen, sagged into the mud, held up only by his wrists bound to the post behind him. ‘It was an accident,’ he sobbed. ‘The man was pushed on to my knife. I was holding it out to protect myself.’
Gwyn grunted. ‘A likely story!’
The cathedral bell chimed in the distance and Gwyn reminded the coroner that other duties called.
John called to the two men-at-arms loitering beyond the gate, ‘Take these prisoners to the castle and lock them up. Try not to lose them on the way.’ Then he and his men made their way back through the inn, and walked back along Butchers Row towards South Gate Street, dodged down Milk Lane and thrust through the throng of shoppers, porters, carts and animals that congested the narrow streets.
‘The hairy one will hang, no doubt,’ squeaked Thomas, crossing himself in anticipation as he scurried behind the two big men.
‘If Gwyn’s witnesses so testify at the inquest I’ll hand him into the tender care of my brother-in-law to appear before the royal justices who, no doubt, will condemn him.’
‘What about the boy?’ asked Gwyn.
‘Depends on the holy sister’s care – and her God’s will. If he dies, the boy hangs. If he survives a year and a day, the lad may only be charged with assault.’
Thomas pondered this for a moment as they passed into the Serge Market, heading down to the South Gate. ‘So he’ll lie in gaol for a year?’ he asked, crossing himself again.
John thought about this. ‘I think I’ll let him free, if he has a family to go surety for him. The best chance the injured man has of survival is if his assailant must provide for his care, for if he dies, so does the Saxon – at the end of a rope.’
Gwyn was doubtful about this proposed leniency. ‘Let him out of the castle dungeon and he’ll vanish into the forest within the hour – or else claim sanctuary in a church.’
John was philosophical. ‘He may prefer to gamble that the man will live, rather than become an outlaw. In any event, the city burgesses will be saved the expense of keeping another prisoner in the castle gaol.’
Gwyn grunted. ‘Cheaper still to cut their throats or drop them in the river.’
By now they were past Holy Trinity church and nearing the South Gate. A steady stream of townsfolk was converging on one of the main exits from the city, which led to the London and Winchester roads. They were not going far, only to the gallows site, which lay a few hundred yards outside the city walls. Beyond the gate, the road divided into Holloway and Magdalene Street, which skirted Southernhay, a wide strip of pasture, gardens and trees that lay on the slope below the town wall. The first part of the London road beyond Magdalene Street was known as Bull Hill and, after the few houses petered out, the hanging tree stood starkly at the side of the highway.
It was a chillingly simple structure, just two stout posts twelve feet high, with a longer crossbar joining the upper ends. Nearby were several single posts with a short arm at the top, from which were suspended gibbets, hooped iron frames the size and shape of a body. Inside, the rotting remains of previously executed fellows wafted a foetid stench to remind the populace of their mortality and the wages of sin, which meant the theft of anything worth more than twelve pence.
By the time that John de Wolfe and his party arrived, a crowd of a hundred or more was assembled around the gallows. Hangings were a popular diversion for those who had an hour to spare on Tuesdays and Fridays. It was a social occasion, where people could meet and gossip, even conduct business while waiting for the felons to be dispatched.
Hawkers stood by with their trays of sweetmeats and fruit, yelling their wares at the matrons with babies at their breast. Old men and cripples fended off the children and urchins who dodged about, yelling and playing hide-and-seek in the bushes at the side of the road. Only when the moment of death approached did the crowd become silent, better to savour the vicarious thrill of a life extinguished in the final agony of strangulation.
John disliked hangings, though he was not sure why this was. As he approached the foot of the empty gallows, he felt a vague unease. Violent death was so familiar to him that he gave it not a second thought – men mutilated on the field of battle had been part of his way of life for years, and he had killed more than his share with his own hands, sword, mace and dagger. Yet there was something about this cold-blooded ritual of snuffing out civilians that bothered him, irrational though he knew it to be. Justice must be done, examples must be made of miscreants or the whole fabric of society would tumble about their ears … and yet…
He shrugged the mood off and motioned to his clerk to set out his pen and ink on a nearby cart, which would be used to turn off the condemned after the ropes were set around their necks.
‘Thomas, take the names and dwellings of the felons – though today we are wasting our time. They haven’t a pennyworth of goods between them.’
It was the task of the coroner to record all executions and make sure that the property of the hanged was collected, as it was forfeit to the Crown. But most criminals were penniless ruffians, whose only possessions were their tattered clothes, fit only to be burned or buried with them, if they avoided rotting in chains or on the gibbet.
Gwyn had wandered off to buy a pie, so the coroner sat on the edge of the cart to await the ceremony. Soon a small procession wound its way from the South Gate and there was an expectant buzz from the crowd, which parted on the road to allow another cart to trundle through, escorted by a dozen soldiers from the castle. As it came nearer, he could see a woman running alongside the wagon, throwing herself at its side every few yards. Nearer still and he could hear her screaming and wailing, as she tried to clutch its rough rails. The cart, pulled by a stolid mare, slowly rolled up to the foot of the hanging tree, the mob rolling in behind it like a human wave.
Standing inside, their hands lashed to the front rail to keep them upright, were the victims of today’s ritual. An old man, grey hair falling in unkempt strands over his threadbare smock, slumped uncaringly, his chin on his chest, bereft of any hope. John sensed that his death might be a welcome release from a long, miserable life.
In stark contrast, the other was shaking with fear, worsened by his poor mother’s hysterical screams as she scrabbled at the side of the wagon. He was a thin waif of thirteen, his red hair heightening the pallor of his face, a white mask with red-rimmed eyes, from which tears dribbled down his sallow cheeks.
The babble and screams of the woman, herself less than thirty years old, were almost incoherent, but John picked out repeated exhortations to God to save her only son.
As soon as the cart stopped, one of the soldiers walking behind it pulled her away. ‘Come on, Mother, there’s nothing you can do.’
She fell to her knees in the muddy earth and clasped his legs, her terror-racked face upturned to him in agony worse than that her child was soon to suffer.
‘My son! Save him! Let him go, sir!’
More embarrassed than angry, the sergeant-at-arms pulled his feet away and she fell to her face in the wet soil. A yeoman, obviously her husband, pulled her gently to her feet and led her away towards the edge of the crowd, as she continued alternately to sob and howl.