Michael JECKS - The Sticklepath Strangler

‘The evidence of my eyes, Keeper! The man is here, the body is in his stable. I demand that he be attached ready to attend the next court, and if he won’t pay his surety, he must be sent to Exeter’s gaol to await the Justices.’

Thomas threw a glance at his wife as he was led away by the Reeve under the guard of William Taverner and Henry Batyn.

It was a curious feeling, this deadness in his soul. For some time while he was standing before all these people, his friends and neighbours, he had felt threatened only by the Coroner and the tall, grave knight. Swetricus had helped accuse him, but Swet wasn’t an evil man; he just naturally missed his daughter and sought anyone who could be her killer. Aline was his own, even if Swet had never much liked her. He was always telling the other men in the vill that she was a waste of good food, whenever he was in his cups. Too ugly to be married, even though everyone else thought she was nice-looking, and without the brains the Good Lord had given her, he grumbled that she would no doubt remain in Swet’s house until he himself died, a permanent drain on his purse.

That all changed, of course, when she disappeared. Then she became the perfect daughter, the most loyal, the warmest in his bed, the little one who always brought him a warmed ale on a cold winter’s day, or who kept his ale cool in the summer, dangling his firkin in the river. None of his other girls was so thoughtful or kindly, Swet would say, his eyes red and filled with tears. It was only natural that a father should feel that way about his daughter, though. Faults and misbehaviour were forgotten when a child died.

For his part, Thomas was wishing he had remained in France with Nicole. He had seen enough of the Justices’ tourns before, to know how they proceeded. All the hundreds would meet to present their veredicta , their responses to the questions asked in the rolls: one referred to murders to be reported. And the case would be called before the Justices.

It was a speedy process. The accusation would be registered, and the man who appealed the guilt of the accused would be questioned, together with any witnesses he brought to support his case, and then the accused could give his reply, again with his supporters, and the matter would be put to the jury. The Justices didn’t mind how the decision went, they were too busy looking at how much they could fine the vill, take from the guilty man, or fine the man appealing the murderer because of presenting his case wrongly. There were always good sums for the King from dispensing justice.

Thomas knew his own case would take little time. No one would speak for him. He would be listened to, then the jury would speak, and immediately he would be taken outside and hanged. Just as Nicole’s father had been. He was an outsider too.

They couldn’t really have stayed in France. That was clear as soon as the old man was hanged. No one liked an executioner, but Nicole’s father was detested still more because he was a drunk. Perhaps he hated ending young lives unnecessarily; for whatever reason he would drink wildly before attempting an execution. He was a bleary-looking man, with dribbling mouth and sagging eyes under a tousled thatch of grey hair, with large hands that looked too thick and unwieldy to tie a knot. And often they wouldn’t. When Thomas first met him, he was begging the priest to help him, and when the priest refused, old man Garde had looked about him at the angry crowd with a fearful eye, like a horse shying from a flapping cloth in a hedge.

Thomas himself offered his help, not because he wanted to assist an executioner, but because he hated seeing the victims waiting, and he feared that the executioner would botch the job, leaving them to throttle too slowly, or mistying the knots so that the victims fell to the ground, and must wait while another noose was fashioned in order that they might go through the whole process again.

The thought of the poor devils’ torment spurred Thomas on. He ducked under the polearms of the two nearest men-at-arms while they laughed – two of the waiting convicts had soiled themselves in their terror – and walked over to the pathetic executioner. Taking the slack rope, he swiftly fashioned a knot, English-style, with a large loop to allow the rope to travel quickly. At home he knew that the local executioner smothered it in a thick layer of rendered pig’s fat to make it slip all the more easily, for any countryman disliked the thought of protracting death. Whether it was a hog, ox, rabbit or man, the slaughterman tried to make death as swift as possible.

Old man Garde bobbed his head and flapped his hands while his mouth slobbered his gratitude, and then Thomas found himself helping move the four convicted men into a line. While they shivered, staring about them with the terror that only a man about to die can know, Thomas thrust the executioner from him and gently slipped the nooses over the men’s heads. As they sobbed and prayed, one loudly declaring his innocence, another calling on the devil to hear his plea that the crowd should themselves be burned in Hell’s fire for eternity, Thomas rested his hand on their shoulders and tried to calm them.

Not for long. The old man gave the signal, and the teams began to haul on the ropes, yanking the four high into the air; twisting and jerking, their legs kicking madly, bound hands tearing at the ropes that choked their lives away as their women and friends came and pulled on their legs, trying to end their suffering more speedily.

Later he heard of the executioner’s own trial. Thomas felt no sympathy for him. Garde had tried to rape a woman and she had later died, living only long enough to point him out. Garde was hanged.

Thomas went to watch it. It wasn’t often you got to see a hangman’s end, and at least the old man went gamely, cursing his gaoler and executioner. Then Thomas saw men punching a woman and making for her daughter, shouting lewd obscenities and taunting her. One pulled down his hose and displayed his tarse, beckoning the terrified girl to him.

It was enough. Thomas saw red. He took his iron-shod staff and thrust it at the man’s ballocks, then sprang to Nicole’s side. With his staff he was able to beat back the crowd, and although a few hurled rocks in a lacklustre manner, Thomas bellowed to some men-at-arms for protection, and finally they grunted assent and stood between them and the mob.

Within a week Thomas and Nicole were wedded, and she soon fell pregnant with Joan. That was 1311, and for a while they were happy, but Thomas didn’t want his daughter brought up in a vill where all pointed at them, saying, ‘Her grandfather was the executioner.’ No child of Thomas’s should have to live with that. In 1317 he returned to England with his little family to make a home.

He had found things peaceful until Ivo had turned up, causing trouble, and then Swet’s girl had gone missing. Many had looked at him askance, but nobody had actually accused him. Now of course he understood why. Everybody knew that there had already been two earlier deaths, long before he had arrived here – during the famine years, while he had been in France.

As he and his guard reached his house, he considered that again. No one had accused him before, even though he was a stranger; only today, when Emma’s body had been found. Swetricus couldn’t really believe him to be guilty, or he would have killed him long before the inquest. He was the sort of man who’d pick up a baulk of timber and beat to death any man who harmed one of his darling daughters, even if Aline hadn’t been his darling before she died.

There was no money in the house. He knew that as well as the Reeve, but he did have chattels worth a few pence. After some consideration, he selected the large iron pot. He had little choice.