Paul Doherty: The Gallows Murders

I went up towards Newgate. The hunger pains were so sharp I even considered committing a crime so that I could be taken and perhaps be given something to eat or drink. Yet justice had also become poor: those who were caught plundering or breaking the law were summarily hanged. The gibbets along the great, stinking city ditch, some of them six- or seven-branched, each bore the corpse of a condemned felon. I managed to get in to Aldersgate, slipping across into Smithfield only to glimpse greater terrors yet to come.

Now, in Henry's day, Smithfield not only had its fair and market, it was also the city's execution ground. Catering not only for hangings and burnings, Smithfield also boasted a strong stone pillar which soared as high as the trees; from the top hung a great black iron cage. This could be raised or lowered by a pulley, and was reserved for poisoners, especially those who had killed their masters. It was very rarely used. However, on that day, as I sidled along Little Britain Alleyway leading into the marketplace, a terrible stench caught my throat and wrung my belly even tighter. It was sharp and acrid, like the foul odour from some stinking cookshop. When I reached the great common I discovered the reason. It was early in the morning but a small crowd had gathered around the execution pillar. The cage had been lowered: it still hung above smouldering embers. Ever curious, I pushed my way to the front and saw the cage contained the blackened corpse of a man, or what was left of him. His skin and his hair had shrivelled, the legs and hands were blackened stumps, the face all burnt away.

‘What happened?' I asked a fellow standing next to me, thin and miserable-looking as myself.

‘I don't know,' he replied in a sing-song fashion. 'But this morning the cage was found lowered and the fire burning. God knows who he is.' 'It's no execution!' another called.

Two bailiffs shouted for volunteers to bring buckets of water to throw over the cage and cool it off. They offered a small loaf of bread and a pannikin of wine, so I volunteered. I spent the next hour staggering backwards and forwards across the common carrying buckets of water from the great horse-trough to douse the cage and its grisly contents. The smell was so foul, the sight so horrid, that everyone else drew off. Nevertheless, I and the man I had spoken to worked on. We just licked our lips, feeling the juices in our mouths at the prospect of a loaf and a mouthful of wine. Now, being grilled to death is the most macabre of fates. I have only seen it done once since; that was to John de Rous, the Bishop of Rochester's cook: he had tried to kill his master and his entire household by mixing arsenic in the soup. (Oh, by the way, before you ask, my own cooks are hand-picked. The captain of my guard, the jolliest cut-throat you could meet, is always present in the kitchen when my meats are cooked and my bread baked. Half the rulers of Europe want me dead: the Luciferi of France, the Council of Eight in Florence, the Secretissimi of Venice, not to mention that mad bugger in Russia, the Prince of Muscovy! He still sends letters enquiring after my health. My chaplain, the little dropping, is smiling to himself. If he doesn't stop being insolent, I'll make him principal taster. As you know, there's many a slip between cup and lip!)

Ah well, back to that hot summer morning. Eventually we cooled the cage off, opened it, and dragged out what remained of the cadaver. No one would be able to recognise it, but the principal bailiff a sturdy, open-faced man, came over. Despite all the horror and death around us, he was one of those honest officials who took his job seriously, and still believed in maintaining law and order in the city. He crouched down, studying the blackened remains. My eye caught something glinting where the wrist had been and I pointed it out. The bailiff picked this up: it was an iron bracelet, a chain with a small medal bearing a death's-head. The bailiff scrutinised it then whistled under his breath. He polished it against his cloak and held it up. 'Lord save us!' he whispered. 'What is it?' I asked curiously.

The bailiff tossed the chain up and down in his hand. He gestured at the blackened, smoking remains. ‘Believe it or not, that was once Andrew Undershaft, the city executioner. A leading figure in the Guild of Hangmen which meets at the Gallows tavern just near the Tower.' ‘Was he convicted of any crime?' I asked.

The bailiff shook his head. The courts haven't sat for weeks, and Andrew had committed no crime.' He stared up at the great stone pillar. 'Undershaft was murdered,' he continued quietly. 'Hard to believe but someone brought him down here late last night, put him in that cage, lowered the pulley and lit a fire under him.' 'And no one noticed that? Surely the fellow's screams would have been heard in Windsor?'

The bailiff looked at me closely. ‘You speak well for a beggar.'

That's because I'm not one,' I replied. 'Just another unfortunate down on his luck.'

I was tempted to mention my master. How I once wore the livery of Cardinal Wolsey. But he wouldn't believe me: even when I am shaved, bathed, my hair cut and oiled, I still have the look of a born liar.

'Well, whoever you are,' the bailiff popped the chain into his purse, 'who cares what happens in London now? The city has become a murky antechamber of Hell. Sorcery is celebrated in Cripplegate, wholesale murders in the Vintry. Entire families are dying of starvation in their locked houses. Who'd care about a man screaming to death in a cage over a fire at Smithfield? It's a sign of the times.' He pulled a face. 'If he was alive when he was put in the cage, and I don't think he was, he wouldn't have screamed long.' 'What about my bread and wine?' I asked.

The bailiff rose and clapped me on the shoulder. 'You can break fast with me.'

And he led me and the other helper across to the Bishop's Mitre tavern which overlooked Smithfield. We ate outside, squatting with our backs to the tavern wall because the landlord would not let us in. The bailiff kept his word. We had bread, wine, even some strips of greasy bacon. Now, I have eaten at the banquets and feasts from one end of Europe to another. I have sat beside dark-eyed, black-hearted Catherine de Medici and supped from golden chalices: I have picked at the best food the French royal kitchens could provide. (Mind you, I was careful. Catherine's main hobby was poisoning.) Nevertheless, I tell you this, nothing equalled that beggar's banquet outside the Bishop's Mitre in Smithfield so many, many years ago. I thought the bailiff had done with us, but he came back and threw a waxen seal bearing the arms of the city into each of our hands.

'If you want a job,' he rasped, join the death-carts. It doesn't pay much, but at least you won't starve.'

Of course I accepted. I picked myself up and looked across the great common where those horrid blackened remains were being hoisted into a cart. I thought that was the end of the matter. In truth, the murder of Andrew Undershaft was simply a pointer of things to come.

I became a corpse collector. I worked with the gangs which patrolled the streets day and night, emptying the houses, collecting the cadavers of all those who had died of the sweating sickness. Godforsaken work! It hardened the heart and bit deep into the soul. The people I worked with were the scum of the earth who feared neither God nor man. Even now, years later, I cannot tell you the dreadful things I witnessed. Houses ransacked, corpses plundered. The dreadful death-bells tolling day and night; the great, yawning burial pits to the north of the city outside Charterhouse. The stories that not all the people taken there were dead are true. A living nightmare! A scene from the Apocalypse. My senses became dulled. I swear, where possible, I did good work. One sole thought kept me working: to raise enough money to be able to slip out of the city and go back to Ipswich.