The Twice-Hanged Man

by Priscilla Royal

  Eluned coughed.

  Her mistress’ cheeks flushed a charming pink. “Oh, I forgot that! At the time, I did ask my husband if he could just let the man die in prison rather than hang him. Rainold had once said the fellow had never shown any rebellious tendencies. His two brothers, on the other hand, were rogues and had always been troublemakers.” She lifted a hand to her mouth and tittered. “They once stole a horse from my husband’s family and ran it almost to death before releasing it into a nearby field. My husband swears the horse was never the same after.” She giggled again. “Maybe he never forgave the crime, and that’s why my husband insisted on hanging Hywel.”

  Men had been murdered, let alone hanged, for lesser reasons, Eleanor thought with disgust, but she refused to be dragged off the subject. She was sure the Lady Mary betrayed discomfort in tone and manner when forced to admit she had taken the defense of Hywel a step further than what any noble’s lady might offer.

  The deposition was simple enough. No one would think anything was strange about that. It was likely a kindness by a woman of rank on behalf of any remaining kin of Hywel’s dead English wife. That it might have been a favor to a maid as well was irrelevant. The men at the brigand’s trial would listen to it read, pity a woman’s benighted heart, and then proceed to ignore her plea by ordering the man’s death.

  Yet her husband seemed to think his wife’s gesture was a little more than social custom. Perhaps because she had gone a bit further and begged him to spare the man’s life?

  Sir William’s brusque departure, when the matter of his wife’s defense of the Welsh stonemason arose, made Eleanor think. Might the husband have had cause, real or perceived, to be jealous? Perhaps he caught his wife peering through a window at the probably muscular Welshman with a less than innocent smile on her lips? After what she had already observed about this woman, that would not surprise her.

  It was unlikely that the sheriff had actually found his wife in bed with the Welshman. Had that been the case, he would never have allowed the affidavit to be sent and most certainly would not have allowed her time to speak alone with two nuns. By now, he would have sent the Lady Mary to a nunnery, announcing with profound sadness that it was her desire to do so as penance for her many sins. No man wanted to be fitted with horns in the jests at the local inn.

  “You must be thinking it is time for us to return to the lodge, my lady,” Sister Anne whispered to the prioress.

  “Indeed,” Eleanor replied, realizing she had fallen silent too long and had no further questions. “You must look in on my sister-in-law.” She smiled at Lady Mary. “My brother’s wife has just given birth.”

  The woman raised both hands to her mouth in affected delight. “Your brother has been blessed! God never answered the prayers offered by my husband and me for a son.” Again, the Lady Mary giggled.

  Eleanor forced her grimace into a more courteous look of sympathy.

  “But we have not given up hope. Abraham’s wife laughed when His angels said she would bear a child although she was already aged. Soon after, she bore a son.” Then she arched her back so that her youthfully high breasts became more prominent. “And I am not yet old!”

  “I shall add my prayers to yours that this wish will be granted in the near future,” Eleanor dutifully replied.

  Then the two religious gave courteous farewells and were accompanied to the door by the stone-faced Eluned.

  Soon after they left the house, Sister Anne turned to her prioress. “Sir William may suffer from gout and a tendency to diseases of choler, but treatment for that is the responsibility of his physician. Yet he was not pleased that the Lady Mary spoke on behalf of the rebel. I think there is far more to be learned about her and the stonemason. A pale skin is often the best detector of lies, and her cheeks turned quite rosy when Hywel’s name was mentioned.”

  Eleanor laughed. “And we must also find a way to talk to the maid without her mistress present. Her responses were better masked, but I think she may have much to tell us as well.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Wido, the innkeeper, showed no sign that he recognized Thomas. He greeted the band of cheerful merchants as if they were old friends invited to his house, chatted briefly with them about family and business, then sent his smiling wenches to tend to their needs.

  This time the drink was of good quality. The evening grew brighter, jests seemed cleverer, and Thomas began to care less about ghosts.

  He forced himself back to his task. “Is it true that your village is haunted?” He very carefully enunciated his question to the man sitting next to him.

  The man belched. “Aye, or so I’ve been told.” He was a balding, red-faced man.

  As if this were a vital clue, Thomas strove to recall if the high color had been evident earlier but could not. A tiny voice deep inside his head whispered that he had drunk more than was needed to share in the jollity and the man’s red face didn’t matter.

  “Master Spicer! What do you know of this?” the man bent forward and gestured at the young merchant sitting on the monk’s left.

  Lambard leaned against Thomas and put his hand on the monk’s thigh as if to maintain his balance. “All of you! Tell what you know. I already have.” He leaned back and looked around the table. “Have any seen this spirit or heard others speak of it? I understand that Abbot Gerald is profoundly concerned, and our good brother here will take your tales to him.”

  The red-faced man laughed. “The abbot is the man to solve the problem. He speaks to God. What need has he of us?” He raised his cup with a flourish.

  “To better learn the nature of the spirit so he can banish it back to Hell,” Thomas replied and knew his speech was slurred. Although Lambard had removed his hand, the spot on his thigh still felt warm.

  “Very well, Brother, then I will say that I have never seen the sprite, but I have heard of it.” The red-faced man leaned over to grab the ewer and poured himself the last of the ale.

  Lambard gestured to a woman for another and, when it was quickly brought, he poured a fresh drink for the monk.

  Even though Thomas knew he should stop, he drank deeply and felt a rare contentment. For the first time in weeks, the black dog of melancholy had not only left him, but the void was filling with an increasing appetite for uncomplicated pleasure. He smiled back at the spice merchant in thanks.

  “I have heard the tale too,” another man at the end of the table said and thumped his jack firmly on the table in emphasis. “Might have seen it once on the way home from here after the last market day.” He elbowed the merchant next to him, and they both laughed.

  “What did you see?” Thomas knew his words stumbled against each other but doubted anyone noticed. They all seemed beyond caring—as was he.

  “Well, she wasn’t a pretty sight, Brother. Smelled like a ram in rut, owned a beard to match, and had teats down to her ankles.” He winked broadly to show he jested.

  “I thought that was your wife!” another man shouted.

  “And I that she was your whore,” the first man retorted.

  Thomas waited for the ensuing roar of laughter to pass. “Has no one seen the ghost?” he asked when the gaiety ended.

  “Come, my friends,” Lambard said, patting the monk’s back in sympathy. “This is a serious dilemma. We are all too wicked not to dread emissaries from Satan.” He pointed to the man who had started the jest. “You made a mockery of Brother Thomas’ question, but we all have good reason to fear such a thing hiding in the shadows, waiting to steal our unshriven souls and then carrying them back to the Dark Master. It is our Christian duty to aid in the abbot’s fight against hellspawn if any have made a home here.” He scowled. “Now who has seen signs or heard tales?”

  The men fell silent. A few looked sheepishly at Thomas but shook their heads. A few admitted they had heard tales of the ghost but struggled to recall who had told them. None
confessed that he had actually witnessed it.

  “What have you heard about it?” Thomas looked down at his cup. The leaping joy he had so briefly felt was beginning to wane, and he longed to hold it close for a while longer. He drank more of the ale.

  “It always appears at night, Brother,” one man said, before taking a deep swallow from his own jack. “Or so I heard told.” He looked around at his fellows. A couple nodded in agreement.

  “And who told you the stories? Someone must recall.” Thomas’ small yet stubborn core of sobriety kicked at him with impatience. Why do they all deny knowing the source of the tales, yet insist they have heard them from someone?

  Again, the men looked at each other. Finally, one of younger merchants said, “I think my wife mentioned that her neighbor told her that her husband had witnessed an odd creature skulking about in the shadows at dusk after the death of the priest.”

  The blacksmith frowned as if lost in weighty thought. “The sheriff’s brother joked about it once when he came to my smithy to have his sword repaired, but, now that I think on it, I don’t remember if he said he had actually seen it.”

  “My wife said Eluned, Lady Mary’s maid, asked her what she had heard about the creature too. But my wife doesn’t go out at night so cannot have seen it. She claims she heard tales of sulfurous imps from the baker’s wife on market day.”

  “Sounds like the tales are just women’s fantasies, Brother,” another mumbled, “and we should all be ashamed that we have listened to their foolishness.”

  The company lowered their eyes, a few colored in embarrassment at their folly, and silence fell.

  Thomas knew he would hear no more from them.

  Lambard looked around, then raised a coin, and shouted to the serving women for more ale.

  His fellow merchants cheered. All discomfiture vanished, or even any residual terror over Satan’s imps, and their voices rose once again in jest. Witty stories quickly replaced tales of phantoms.

  Thomas stared at his cup of ale two finger-lengths away. His hand looked outsized as he reached out, pulled it close, and gulped down the little left in it. The room felt unnaturally warm, and he was beginning to feel the weight of how much he had to confess in the morning. And what had he achieved for his sins? Nothing of use. The monk bowed his head.

  “Pay no attention to them, Brother.” Lambard whispered into the monk’s ear. “I think you have learned all you can from them tonight. No one knows who started the tale, or else they blame it all on their women. The only thing they do know is that the story is being bruited about.”

  With the warm brush of the man’s breath on his cheek, Thomas felt a jolt of long-forgotten pleasure. Hidden by the table, the merchant slipped a hand into his groin, and Thomas knew there was nothing he could do to hide his obvious longing for more than a mere touch. Nor, he suddenly realized, did he care to do so.

  The merchant removed his hand and sat back, but his smile never wavered. “Let us leave, Brother. If the ghost is abroad, I know from rumor where he is most likely to be seen.”

  Not trusting himself to speak, Thomas nodded and rose. When he almost lost his balance, the merchant steadied him, tossed a fat purse on the table to pay for more drink to cheer his fellow merchants, and led the monk from the inn.

  The men raised their jacks and shouted thanks.

  As the two men walked out the door, the chill air embraced Thomas but did nothing to calm his lust. As if content to leave his body to sin, his soul seemed to have fled upwards, perhaps intending to join those cold stars that glowed with such a hard light. With no conscience, he was utterly bereft of any strength to resist temptation.

  Lambard put a hand on his shoulder and directed him into a dark space between two buildings. When he gently pushed him against a damp stone wall, Thomas raised his eyes, stared at the star-speckled blackness above, and moaned.

  The merchant knelt in front of him and slid his hands up the monk’s thighs.

  The sky above was as grim as death and as bleak as eternity without hope. Thomas knew he was weeping, but the sorrow was not about the transgression he was committing. It was because Durant was not the man with whom he was sinning. “If you insist on going to Hell,” an unknown soft voice murmured inside his head, “then go hand in hand with him to the eternal flames. Do not do so with this man.”

  Thomas cried out and shoved Lambard away.

  Sobbing like a wounded child, Thomas fled from the narrow alley. His body now shivering with the cold, and a grief that had completely vanquished desire, Thomas ran as if chased by the Prince of Darkness himself.

  Any joy he had felt that evening abandoned him, and the black dog of melancholy howled with fiendish abandon as it clawed its way back into his heart.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Despite the bitter wind, the sharp night air, and the fleeting appearance of the cloud-scarred moon, Bardolph was in a merry mood.

  He had drunk little ale tonight, being a temperate man by custom. Only twice a year did he drink more than was meet. The first was before his confession on Shrove Tuesday, the day after which Lent began. The second was on the night the Hallowmas season began, a period of three days when all the dead were honored.

  Some claimed that the curtain between the worlds of living men and the souls in the afterlife thinned during Hallowmas, and mortals could communicate with the dead. True or not, he chose to honor the idea and drank to salute those he had hanged. He bore no malice toward most of them. Some were weak-witted or possessed by the Devil and blinded to the enormity of their acts. Only a few did he haul up on the beam with satisfaction.

  His mistress always asked him, as she handed over that first jack of ale, if he truly feared the hellish things that might return to the Earth and haunt the ones remaining on Earth who had sinned against them. Although her tone was always jesting, her eyes betrayed worry that those he had executed might seek to do him harm. He inevitably laughed. It wasn’t he who had condemned them, he retorted. He was simply doing his job.

  What had made him happy tonight was the time he had spent with his mistress, Maud. A few hours with this jovial woman always brightened his spirit. Had he not become the village hangman, they would have married years ago, but he didn’t want people turning their backs on her because her husband was an agent of death.

  She didn’t deserve that. The villagers all knew the two of them were lovers, but they could ignore that he slipped into her home in darkness and left before the sun turned the sky rosy. Sadly, he didn’t even earn his bread primarily with a noose in hand. He was a carpenter, but only the abbey had steady work for him in that trade—and, occasionally, the sheriff.

  Bardolph shrugged away that longtime complaint, as he was wont to do, and began singing a song he and his mistress had always loved, “Merry It Is.” The lyrics about birdsong changing into fierce winds were melancholy, but neither of them was prone to sadness and the tune especially delighted them.

  As he walked, he began to hum other songs and mused that all the talk of ghosts, coming after he had seen the specter of Hywel bending over Father Payn, had caused many villagers to come to him as if he could explain why the creature was haunting the town. Perhaps they thought his close connection with violent death made him an expert on malign spirits?

  At first he had been amused. As he had told that red-haired monk, he didn’t believe in such things. Of all the people here, he should have been the one surrounded by angry souls, damned by their own sins, whom he had thrust into the arms of the Prince of Darkness. But he could not deny what he had witnessed. Hywel, it was, and he knew the man was dead.

  Then he grew annoyed by the queries. He was no expert, he began to reply when questioned. Go to the abbot, he advised. Gerald was the holy man to consult, now that Father Payn had been murdered and no new priest had arrived.

  A gust of icy wind from the rain-soaked earth and nearby river stru
ck him with such force that he almost toppled.

  With no reason, he suddenly felt as if a bony hand had steadied him and something, not quite human, was close behind.

  He spun around.

  There was nothing there but darkness, or at least nothing corporeal.

  Shivering, he forcefully reminded himself that he had walked this way many times. He was passing by the gallows and was almost home. Never before had he been bothered by anything from the Devil’s realm. Why should he now?

  Perhaps he would allow himself a rare mazer of ale when he got home. The thought cheered him a little but did nothing to warm the chill that enveloped his pounding heart.

  On a slight dip below the road where the gallows rose, he saw his hut silhouetted against the ashen moon. Once inside, he would forget this unsettling experience. Forcing himself to laugh, he decided he must tell his mistress that she was, once only of course, quite right. This night he might have been stalked by something hostile from the world of angry spirits.

  Bardolph reached out to open his door when he felt a touch on his shoulder. He froze. This time he had imagined nothing.

  He turned around, slowed by terror.

  A silent dark form stood there. Slowly, the creature lifted a hand and pulled back a hood.

  Bardolph stepped back. “Why are you here?”

  That was the last thing he would ever say.

  * * *

  The night watchman sighed with relief. It had been a quiet night, albeit a desperately cold one, and his work was almost done. If she were feeling well enough, his wife would greet him at the door with a cup of mulled wine when he came home. If not, she would have left something in the warm ashes of the fireplace for him to eat.

  Trudging up the main road through the village, he braced himself for this last part of his required route. Sometimes he thought he would be wiser to patrol this arduous part first. Most of the time, he could never bear to start his night by walking past the gallows and the few huts on that sparsely populated side of the town. Tonight, he had chosen to do it last. If nothing else, he could then run down the hill away from the execution site and toward his home. Should anyone see him, he would explain that he was trying to warm himself, not flee any lurking ghosts of the dead.