Iain Pears - An Instance of the Fingerpost

“God have mercy.” This was her cry, and the last was lost as the rope pulled tight under her weight, and ended in a strangled sob that brought a sigh of sympathy from the crowd. And then she swung there, her face turning purple, and her limbs twitching and the stench spreading as the telltale stains on her shift showed that the noose was having its usual foul effect.

I will not continue; there can be few who have not seen such a sight, and even now the memory pains me beyond belief, although I recall that I watched it all with the most remarkable calm, despite the sudden and terrifying clap of thunder and darkening of the skies which broke from heaven as she fell. I prayed for her soul, and for my own, once again and lowered my eyes that I should not see the end.

I had reckoned without Lower, and his determination to beat the Regius professor to the body. He had, of course, bribed the hangman in advance; this accounted for the nods and winks that passed between them, and the fact that he was suffered to be so close to the tree; I did not realize he had purchased Sarah’s permission with a promise of treatment for her mother, nor indeed that the mother at that very moment lay breathing her last only a few hundred yards away from the castle. Sarah had only just stopped twitching and convulsing when Lower cried in a loud voice to his little army, “Right, lads,” and surged forward, giving a sign to the hangman who straightaway pulled a large knife from his belt and sliced through the rope.

Sarah’s body fell the three feet to the ground with a heavy thump, accompanied by the first muttering of disapproval from the crowd, and Lower bent down to see if she still breathed. “Dead,” he shouted after a proper examination, so that all might hear, and signed for his comrades to come forward. The porter from Christ Church picked up the body and threw it over his shoulder, and before anyone could react at all, began to head off, almost breaking into a run as the protests from the crowd grew. Two others in his party stood back to head off the Regius professor’s men should they try to intercept, and Lower looked around once before following his prize.

Right across that open patch of land our eyes met, and in mine he can have seen nothing but disgust. He gave a little shrug, then cast his eyes down, and would look at me no more. Then he too turned and ran off, into the rain which was already falling heavily and with appalling ferocity.

I hesitated for only a brief moment before leaving myself, but unlike the crowd, who attempted a pursuit and became blocked in the narrow gateway by all trying to run out at the same moment, I left by the other entrance. For I knew where Lower was going, and did not need to keep him in my sight in order to catch up with him and his gruesome prize.

He must have moved quickly, and knew that the faster he went the better, for the crowd was now in an unforgiving mood. They accepted the hanging as God’s will and the king’s justice, and went to see all the proprieties maintained. What they did not accept—for crowds have a fine sense of right and wrong—was any meanness of behavior. The condemned must die, but must be treated well. Lower had offended victim and town, and I knew it would go hard with him should he be caught.

They did not, however, for he had planned well; I only just caught up with him myself before he slipped in the back of Boyle’s elaboratory and mounted the stairs.

I was still cold with shock at what he had done. I knew all his arguments in advance, had heard them all before and even agreed with most of them, but this I could not countenance. You may say that, considering all I had done and not done, I had long since resigned any right to make judgments. I did so nonetheless and mounted the stairs so that, if I could not ensure justice was done, I could at least maintain appearances.

He had already posted guards on the stairs, lest the crowd realize that he had come here rather than to Christ Church, and was on the verge of bolting the doors so that no one could disturb him in his horrible labor. I, however, managed to burst in by pushing all my weight against the door before the bolts were shot.

“Lower,” I cried when I stopped and briefly took in the hellish scene in front of me. “This must stop.”

Locke was there already to assist, as well as a barber to attend on the more mechanical aspects of the dissection.

Sarah had already been stripped naked and that beautiful body which I had held so often lay on the table as the barber roughly washed it down and prepared it for the knife. That she was dead no one could doubt for a moment; her poor broken body was as drained as a corpse is, and only the thick red weal around the neck, and strangled expression of anguish on her face, destroying all beauty, showed all too well what had become of her.

“Don’t be absurd, Wood,” he said wearily. “She’s dead. The soul has gone. I can do nothing to hurt her further. You know that as well as I. I know you were fond of her, but it is too late for that.”

He looked at me kindly, and patted me on the back. “Look, my friend,” he said. “You will not like this. I don’t blame you, it takes a strong stomach. You should not stay here to watch. Take my advice and go away, old fellow. It will be better. Believe me.”

I was too mad to listen, but angrily flung off his kindly touch and retreated, daring him to act in the bestial way he intended in my eyesight, thinking, perhaps foolishly, that my presence would make him see the evil he did, and desist.

He looked at me for several moments, uncertain about how to proceed, until Locke coughed in the background.

“We have little time, you know,” he said. “The magistrate gave us an hour only, and time is going. Quite apart from what will happen if the crowd finds out where we are. Make up your mind.”

With difficulty, Lower did, and turned away from me, and back to the table, signing for all others to leave the room. I sank down on my knees, begging the Lord, anyone, to do something and stop this nightmare. Even though it had served no purpose the night before, I went over all my prayers and my promises. Oh Lord God incarnate for our sins, have mercy on this poor innocent, if not on me.

Then Lower picked up his knife, and placed it on her breast. “Ready?” he asked.

Locke nodded, and with a swift, sure movement he began to make his incision. I shut my eyes.

“Locke,” I heard him call through my darkness, suddenly angry, “what on earth do you think you’re doing? Let go of my hand. Is everyone gone mad here?”

“Stop a moment.”

And Locke, whom I had never liked, pulled the knife away from the body, and bent over the corpse. Then, with a puzzled look on his face, he repeated the movement, so that his cheek rested on her mouth.

“She’s breathing.”

I could scarcely restrain my tears at those few simple words, which said so much. Lower gave his own explanations later; how she must have been cut down too early in his efforts to get hold of the corpse first, and how, rather than life itself, merely the appearance of it had been extinguished. How the fall had merely strangled and brought temporary oblivion only. I know all this; he told me his reasons time and again, but I knew differently, and never bothered to contradict him. He believed one thing; I knew another. I knew that I had witnessed the greatest miracle of history. I had seen resurrection; for the spirit of God moved in that room, and the soft wings of the dove that attended her conception returned to beat on Sarah’s soul. It is not given to man, and certainly not to physicians, to restore life when it is extinguished. Lower would argue this proves she was never dead, but he had pronounced her so himself and he had studied the question more carefully than anyone. People say the age of miracles is past, and I believed that myself. But it is not so; they do occur, only we are getting better at explaining them away.