Gallows at Twilight

by William Hussey

  Adam gasped at the power of these memories. He realized that, although he had good reason to despise the man, without Holmwood the greatest joy in his life would never have existed. Holmwood had sent Jake to his death, and yet it had been the old doctor’s power, wealth, and influence that had been responsible for giving the boy life. Surely that had deserved a scrap of thanks?

  Adam turned his thoughts to the Codex. Staring into the grain of the parchment, he pleaded for the phantom quill to begin writing again. Somewhere in the distant past, his son’s life was hanging in the balance.

  ‘The shadows lengthen,’ said Mr Lanyon. ‘The hour is almost upon us.’

  After the trial, Jake had been taken down into the dank cellars beneath the Shire Hall and imprisoned in a little cell filled with empty wine barrels. The thief-proof door was sturdy and the room was windowless. Jake was to be held here until the gallows were ready to receive him. With their construction almost complete, Jake had thought that his appointment with the hangman would come soon, but the afternoon had worn on and no one had come for him.

  The delay was explained by Mr Lanyon. It seemed that a committee of local merchants led by the landlord of The Green Man had begged Earl Richard to hold off on the witch’s execution until twilight. England’s Civil War had taken its toll on their trade, and it was in the interests of the town that this unexpected festival should not be wasted. While the crowds waited for the hanging, they would eat and drink and their purses would become ever lighter. Always mindful of his popularity with the powerful merchants, the Earl had proclaimed:

  ‘Let the rushes be lit, for there will be gallows at twilight … ’

  ‘Will you tell me who you really are?’ Leonard Lanyon asked. ‘And why you came to Cravenmouth?’

  His hands still manacled, Jake sat on the floor while Lanyon hitched up his buff coat and climbed onto one of the wine barrels.

  ‘Let’s make a deal,’ Jake said. ‘I’ll tell you who I am if you tell me who you are.’

  The vicar’s eyes flitted to the cell door.

  ‘If you’re worried, why don’t you speak with your thoughts?’

  The reply flashed into Jake’s mind—Hush!

  How do you do it?

  My mother. Lanyon gave a sickly smile. When I was small, I’d go out walking with her, into the fields and forest, following the roads and the streams. My father was a preacher: a man who could only find God inside the cold walls of his church. But my mother and I, we saw the goodness of the world manifest in trees and animals, in the water and the air. While we walked we would talk to each other, and yet we never once said a word. She called our talk ‘the Whispers of Oldcraft’.

  Oldcraft, Jake echoed.

  You know the word?

  It’s where all magic comes from. The ancient spirit of this world.

  You mean God? Lanyon asked, and shivered, as if something troubling had touched his heart.

  Maybe, Jake thought, I don’t know.

  Deep inside, Jake caught a glimpse of a hidden light burning just beyond his reach. A secret he had glimpsed before but which always eluded him. He glanced back at Lanyon.

  Sometimes I think I know where it comes from. Oldcraft. Magic. Who created it. Who placed it in the Earth. Who allowed humans to feel its touch … He shook his head. So, your mother, she was a witch, then?

  That’s what they called her. In the end.

  They?

  The townspeople. The witnesses and the magistrates. Him.

  Who?

  My father. It was by his word that she was condemned. They took her out to the gallows and they hanged her high. My father made me stand beneath and watch every kick, every shudder, every spasm. For long years he had used the Bible as a whetstone to sharpen his spirit into a blade of righteousness. He laid that blade at my mother’s throat and thrust it deep into her flesh.

  I’m sorry.

  Do not say that! Silent tears rolled down Lanyon’s face. Do not apologize to me. I, who through cowardice, have trod my father’s path and have condemned an innocent to the gallows.

  ‘You were afraid,’ Jake said aloud, ‘that’s not a crime.’

  It is. My mother’s spirit tells me so. And yet even now I cannot bring myself to save you. I remember how she died, and my soul quakes at the thought of it.

  Jake levelled his gaze with Lanyon’s.

  You wanted to hear my story? Then listen carefully.

  Jake told the tale of how he had come to Cravenmouth:his life in the twenty-first century; his discovery of his true identity; his battle with dark witches and their demons; and finally his journey on the Scarab Path to find Josiah Hobarron’s witch ball. By the time he had finished, Lanyon’s eyes were wide and staring.

  ‘It’s madness,’ the vicar said. ‘Everyone knows that we are living in the final days of this world, and yet you tell me that life continues four hundred years hence?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jake said, ‘but maybe not for much longer. That’s why I came back. Without the witch ball, the world will fall to demonkind.’

  ‘And the beetle that brought you here—that was the creature we saw in the hall? The stone scarab?’

  Jake nodded. ‘Dr Holmwood said that the beetle would only leave me if it sensed that my death was near. Mr Lanyon, if I don’t escape from here, if I don’t find the witch ball, then the demons will win.’

  ‘But haven’t they won already? You lost the scarab—how can you return home now?’

  ‘I’ll find a way. Maybe the witch ball will have the power to send me back. All I know is, unless you help me, then four hundred years from now the demons will break free from their prison dimension. Billions of people will be slaughtered, the entire world will fall.’

  Jake rose to his feet.

  ‘I know you’re frightened, but the future is in your hands.’

  He heard the sound of a bolt being drawn, the rasp of a key in the lock.

  Lanyon wrenched his gaze away from Jake.

  ‘God forgive me, I cannot help you. I dare not!’

  The cry was taken up by the crowd.

  ‘Hats off! Hats off !’

  At first Jake thought that it was said as a mark of respect; a scrap of dignity to be afforded to the condemned man. As he saw the tall Puritan hats being batted off heads, however, he realized that it was because the people behind simply wanted a better view of the execution. The leering faces, almost inhuman in their hunger for death, made Jake’s heart tremble.

  He was led by Monks and Utterson down the steps of the Shire Hall and towards the baying mob. The crowd seemed to have doubled. They packed the windows and rooftops and perched on the groaning boughs of the trees like a gallery of strange birds.

  At the foot of the stairs stood the gallows: a spindly man-made tree, leafless and starkly black against the sunset. The scaffold was surrounded by a ring of watchmen armed with pikes and muskets who struggled to keep back the crowd. As Jake was dragged up a rickety ladder to the gallows platform, he felt a hand clutch at his leg.

  ‘Any last words, sir?’

  Jake looked down into a dirty, eager face. The man took a quill from behind his ear and a scrap of parchment from his pocket. He licked the quill tip with an ink-black tongue.

  ‘Who are you?’ Jake asked.

  ‘An Ordinary Man. That’s to say, I write little stories for the broadsheets. Always good to get a gallows confession from a witch—helps sales immensely, don’t you know.’ The man winked. ‘So, you gonna spill your guts or have I got to make it up?’

  Monks growled like a bulldog and the Ordinary Man shrugged and scuttled away.

  ‘Shame,’ Jake smiled, ‘I was just about to tell him everything. Make a full confession of my witchery ways.’

  ‘You were?’ Monks frowned.

  ‘Wow. You really are thick, aren’t you, Sergeant Monks?’

  Jake flashed a grin and was bundled up the ladder. On the platform, three figures waited in the dying light: the Earl, the Witchfinder, and Leonard Lanyon. Ea
rl Richard held a posy of flowers to his nose to ward off the stink of the square. Like a ravenous jackal tasting the kill, Matthew Hopkins’s tongue flickered across his thin lips. Lanyon fixed his eyes on the wooden floor and seemed unable to look at Jake, even as the prisoner was paraded in front of him.

  Having only caught a glimpse of the gallows, this was Jake’s first opportunity to see how it had been constructed. The simplicity of the death machine chilled him to the core. The upright post of the inverted L stood at the back of the platform while the shorter horizontal beam jutted forward towards the square. A sturdy rope hung down from the beam to a point just level with Jake’s head. He had thought that there would be a trapdoor below the noose, and that the drop of four metres to the ground would be enough to snap his neck. A clean, quick death. He should have known better. In this barbaric age, death was a hard and brutal thing, even for the innocent. For a witch it must be seen to be a lingering exercise in agony.

  Instead of a trapdoor, a large rectangle had been cut out of the platform and the cart that had brought Jake from the keep had been backed into the space. Jake was led onto the back of the cart and forced to stand on the wooden box that would soon be his coffin. The manacles were struck from his wrists and his hands were tied behind his back. Monks took Jake by the scruff of the neck. The sergeant forced his head into the noose and pulled the rope tight behind his right ear.

  ‘Ready for the drop?’ he whispered.

  For the first time, Jake’s voice faltered.

  ‘H-how long will it take?’

  ‘Depends on many things,’ Monks shrugged. ‘On a man’s will, on God’s pleasure. I’ve heard tell of men hanged from the Tyburn Tree in London who didn’t die for days. Even when the birds pecked out their eyes, still they gagged and struggled. But a scrawny little thing like you? I’d wager ten minutes, twenty at the outside.’

  ‘And after?’ Jake said, forcing the words out. ‘What happens then?’

  ‘We’ll bury you under these gallows and drive an iron stake through your heart,’ Monks sneered. ‘Only sure way to keep your damned ghost from haunting the town.’

  Due to hunger, fear, or the effects of his recent torture, Jake suddenly weakened. He stumbled across the box but managed to remain upright.

  ‘See the tears upon his cheeks!’ a voice called out from the crowd. ‘The witch cries for his miserable life!’

  Jake felt the single teardrop slide down his face, but the man was wrong. He did not cry for himself. As he watched the fiery sunset dip behind the black houses, his thoughts turned to the future: to his dying father and his doomed friends; to the victory of the Demon Father and the destruction of the world. Fire, death, unimaginable suffering, and every evil thing made possible by his failure.

  A lone drummer standing at the foot of the gallows began to beat out a dirge. The heavy rhythm caught at Jake’s heart. He twisted his neck and stared at Lanyon through tear-blind eyes.

  ‘Please … ’

  Matthew Hopkins’s brow furrowed. His curious gaze slipped between Jake and the vicar. Lanyon shuddered and kept his eyes on the ground.

  ‘Make way there!’ Monks shouted at the crowd.

  They parted and a narrow path was made for the cart. An expression of self-importance on his face, Monks turned to Hopkins and the Earl.

  ‘My lord,’ he bowed, ‘Mr Hopkins, sir—might I lead the cart?’

  ‘You have been a faithful assistant, Mr Monks.’ Hopkins nodded. ‘Indeed, you shall have this last honour. Go now, put an end to the Cravenmouth witch.’

  Grinning from ear to ear, Monks hauled himself down from the cart and waddled around to the front. A guard placed the reins in Monks’s podgy fist. Jake felt the cart move beneath him. His bare feet slid back across the coffin lid and the noose tightened around his throat. He snatched at the air and filled his lungs. It was now or never.

  Every day since his imprisonment Jake had tried to summon his magic. Every day he had failed to find it. His last desperate attempt had been in the cellar of the Shire Hall just before Lanyon had come to talk to him. Yet again he had delved deep into his soul, conjuring memories that might inspire the Oldcraft. Memories of anger and fear and dread. Now, in his dying-hour, he strove with every psychic fibre of his being to locate that hidden place where the magic was stored.

  The mob had fallen silent, the drummer had ceased the dirge. The sound of Monks clicking his tongue, the rattle of the bridle, the creak of the cart, even the pad of the pony’s hoof upon the dusty ground sounded out, crisp and clear in the stillness. Jake’s feet slipped back another few inches across the coffin lid. He gasped as the noose hitched tighter, tighter …

  No longer able to turn his neck, he hissed through gritted teeth, ‘Pllleeeassseee.’

  The plea was addressed to both Leonard Lanyon and himself. As fear and desperation mounted, he continued his search into the dark and twisting avenues of his mind. He found … nothing. The Khepra Beetle, that strange creature that perceived all of time and space, had seen what was to come and had abandoned its host. There was no hope of Jake escaping his fate.

  The old pony whinnied and the cart rumbled forward.

  Jake’s toes scraped to the edge of the coffin. His legs scrabbled, desperate not to lose their footing. Glancing back, Monks saw that another cruel inch would do it. He slapped the whip against the pony’s flank and the cart jolted forward.

  Jake dropped.

  The noose snatched at his neck and his body swung back and forth like a grisly human pendulum. A roar went up in the square; a ragged cheer that was troubled at its edges by a few isolated cries of horror. Behind him, Jake’s hands clenched into fists. His toes curled and his knees bent as he struggled to breathe. Little sparks of pain crackled along his stretching spine. His mouth gaped and his tongue lolled over his teeth. He could hear the blood pounding in his head as it tried to squeeze below the stranglehold of the rope. In the barrel of his oxygen-starved body, his lungs fluttered like the crippled wings of a bird.

  The rope began to twist in steady circles. Jake could feel the unbearable pressure of blood building behind his eyes. The pain of it blasted his vision into shards until it was like seeing the world through the facets of a diamond. The laughing, jeering, haunted and sorrowful faces of the crowd came to him in jagged pieces. He saw Earl Richard, posy still held to his upturned nose; Lanyon on his knees, eyes tight shut, praying with all his might; the Witchfinder, nodding and smiling, gratified at a job well done. Through the blood roaring in his ears, Jake heard the euphoric cry of Matthew Hopkins:

  ‘WOE UNTO THE ENEMIES OF GOD! DEATH TO ALL WITCHES!’

  A long and sickening rattle worked its way down the length of Jake’s spine. His teeth clamped together as the tarred rope burned into his neck. Still he struggled. Still he fought.

  A young woman stepped forward from the crowd. Her face wet with tears, she tried to fight her way through.

  ‘Let me catch at his legs!’ she screamed. ‘For the love of God, let me pull him down and shorten his suffering!’

  Another woman joined her, beating her fists against the guards.

  ‘Have mercy, you knaves!’

  But there was no mercy. Not for Jake and not for the women. One of the guards raised his musket and dashed it against the first woman’s head. Blood splattered the guard’s face and the woman dropped to the ground. Kneeling beside her, the second woman shrieked in horror:

  ‘You’ve cracked her skull wide open! She’s dead! Murderer! MURDERER!’

  The news caught like wildfire: one of the guards had killed a woman—butchered her—smashed her head to a pulp and was now laughing over the corpse. Even Jake, his ears filled with the dull thud of death, could hear the hollers of outrage. Fired by calls for justice, red-faced men took the clubs and cudgels from their belts and marched on the gallows. Women and even children joined them, breaking heavy branches from trees, picking sharp stones from the ground, finding weapons where they could. With their fury fixed on the circle
of guards, the crowd seemed to have forgotten the witch.

  The first stone struck the guard who had killed the woman and he fell screaming to his knees. A barrage of stones followed. Three more guards dropped, their faces bloodied. Jake felt the rocks hit his legs, but against the agony of the gallows the pain was dull and distant. The rope twisted and he turned to face the platform. Always alert to danger, the Witchfinder was already beating a retreat to the safety of the Shire Hall. Earl Richard had followed Hopkins’s example. The nobleman was halfway up the steps when a large brick hurtled through the air and smashed against his skull. Like the peasant woman before him, the Honourable Richard Rake was dead before he hit the ground.

  Only Leonard Lanyon remained. In the chaos that had erupted, the vicar saw his chance. He took a dagger from his belt and made a dash for the gallows rope. Just before he reached it, a hand locked down on his shoulder and spun him around.

  ‘And where do you think you’re going?’ Monks panted.

  ‘For God’s sake, have pity!’ Lanyon bellowed.

  ‘For God’s sake, I will not.’

  Monks drew back his big fist and slammed it into Lanyon’s stomach. The vicar gasped and the dagger fell from his hand. Sergeant Monks took his own knife from its scabbard and pressed the tip against Lanyon’s throat.

  ‘Master Hopkins had the measure of you, sir. He told me that you were a filthy witch-lover; probably even a sorcerer yourself underneath all that godliness!’

  Jake’s vision dimmed. The rope righted itself and he turned again, away from Monks and Lanyon. The square was now a seething mass of people, a rabble fighting against the guards and each other. Screams and musket fire echoed on all sides and the smell of gunsmoke filled the air. To the west, the sunlight scattered in blood-red shafts while the heavens sank into a deep and desolate black.