Rough Justice - Part 6 (of 6)

The Execution of Jane Daniels

Standing in front of Jane, Ketch asked quietly “Have you anything to say miss?”. Jane looked at him “I’m a good girl aren’t I Mr Ketch?” “Yes Jane. Yes you are” he said, as Bridges held her steady. Ketch produced a white hood. “Would you like one of these miss, to put over your head-like?”. Jane shook her head. “No sir. I am told those are for cowardly people and I am brave. I am sorry for what I’ve done and I must accept my punishment bravely” she said, giving Ketch a wink.

Ketch sighed, took the heavy noose in his meaty palms, opened it up and then carefully placed it over her head, tightening it around her neck just under her left ear, the brown hemp in stark contrast to the whiteness of her skin. Jane winced as the rope scratched her skin, and let out a small gasp as Bridges pulled on the other end to draw up the slack, so that the excess rope draped over the top of the crossbeam. She turned to Kate and Sarah, with a heartbreaking smile and said “Be brave Kate. Be brave Sarah. It’ll be all right….really it will” and as she turned to face the crowd, head held high, the clock in the bell tower began to strike noon.

As the bell tolled for the sixth time, Bridges stepped back and nodded to Ketch, letting him know he was clear of the trap. Ketch in turn nodded at the drummer at the base of the gallows, who immediately started a drum roll on his snare drum. Someone in the crowd shouted out “Hats off!!”, not as a mark of respect, but to ensure that those with top hats did not obscure a view of the drop. The tension was unbearable. The sound of the bell was barely audible over the sharp beat of the snare drum as it tolled for the tenth time. Sarah and Kate both had their eyes firmly fixed on Jane as she stood, waiting, without a clue that she was about to die. Sarah could hear every beat of the snare drum in slow succession, and then, as suddenly as it started, it stopped. As the bell tolled for the twelfth and final time, out of the corner of her eye, Sarah saw Ketch violently pull the first of three levers. She felt something shift under her feet and momentarily panicked, until she realised she herself was not noosed.

The lever released the bolt holding the trap in place under Jane’s feet. There was a sickening crash as the trapdoor opened under her and banged against its buffers. Jane let out a terrified scream as she dropped through the trap about four feet, before hitting the end of the rope. Sarah heard a nauseating crack, rather like someone snapping a carrot in two, as the rope drew taut with a “twang”. Kate had fallen to her knees in horror and looked on the verge of total collapse.

The gathered crowd let out a collective gasp, followed by a moment of silence as the rope swung to and fro, gently creaking. There was a murmur of discontent, and the sound of weeping, before a few people, clearly disgusted by what they saw, turned away and left, shaking their heads as they went.

The view from below was enough to turn any stomach. Jane Daniels inert corpse slowly turned half-round and back, her head lolling at an unnatural angle. Despite the short drop, her neck had broken cleanly, sparing her from a slow death by strangulation. Her face was white and her eyes wide in death, with none of the red/blue congestion associated with asphyxia. Many would remark later that she looked surprised, as if she had not at all expected what had befallen her. There was a sudden shout of “Quick! Stand away!!” from Ketch above, who clearly knew what was coming, as Jane’s muscles relaxed in death, opening her bladder and sphincter and splattering the straw covering at the base of the gallows with excrement.

The Brief be Damned

Kate was now inconsolable. It was as if she suddenly realised that her new found faith would not benefit her in this life, and that the miracle that she thought would save her was not going to materialise. Her escorts hauled her to her feet as Ketch approached her. “Have you anything to say miss?”. Kate looked at him, pleading, imploring – “Please sir. Oh please make it quick sir, I don’t want to die horribly sir. Isn’t enough that I must hang?” Her eyes were begging him for mercy. There was none to be had. “I’m sorry miss. I have my brief miss.” He produced a hood. “Miss?” Kate, openly weeping now, shook her head. “No sir. Please. I want to see. Please let me see.” He nodded, and signalled Bridges to take her arms to steady her. The noose was swiftly passed over her head and secured at the back of the neck. Sarah knew that she was about to witness a mirror-image of her own fate. She could barely look.

Ketch was nothing if not a seasoned professional. He had sensed the mood of the crowd turn as the Daniels girl had been dropped, and having no desire to bear the brunt of the fickle mob, opted for once to disregard his instructions and use his common sense. As Bridges stepped back and signalled he was clear, Ketch hesitated and then made his decision.

Bridges Takes His Revenge

“Bridges – Let’s do both, or this may turn ugly. You’re not an apprentice for nothing. See to the murderess.” Bridges looked like all his Christmases had come at once. “Delighted sir!” he exclaimed, moving quickly to Sarah’s side, and whispering in her. “I shall enjoy this you arrogant wench. Teach you to say no to Bridges I will!”. Sarah’s nose twitched at the stench of rotten meat emanating from his mouth. She was helpless. Trussed and bound, soon to be noosed, and it seemed her last human touch would be from this wretch – the same sort of character that had put her here in the first place.

Bridges put his hand on her exposed shoulder, thumb and finger forming a semi-circle around the right side of her neck. He gently squeezed, causing her to gag. “Anything to say?” he said, grinning evilly as his other hand cupped and squeezed her left breast, massaging the nipple. “There’s a few things about hanging I haven’t told you” he sneered as he continued to move his hand down her front, finally sticking his hands between her legs. She was astonished to find herself aroused, completely involuntarily aroused, as she squeezed his hand between her legs through the fabric of the dress and let out a low moan. “Have you anything to say miss?” he repeated, as she put her head back. Suddenly aware of the watching multitude, she blushed deeply, before her brain engaged, overcoming her senses.

She smiled at him, and he waited expectantly, but he did not expect the face full of spittle that greeted him. “Go to hell bastard” she said coldly.

Bridges face turned red with fury.

“After you” he replied, grabbing the noose in both hands, and violently tightening it around her neck. The coils were out of position, so he yanked them roughly behind her neck. She winced in pain as the rope chafed the delicate skin of her neck, drawing blood. The rope was tight around her throat, and she was already finding it difficult to breathe. She turned to look at Kate, who was quivering like a leaf, and who had been noosed and waiting for the drop for the best part of two or three minutes. Her guards were hovering close by in case her legs gave way, but she was just about holding it together. For a moment, their eyes locked, and Kate mouthed “Goodbye Sarah. Goodbye….” before turning away, whispering “oh sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus be with me now. Oh sweet, sweet Jesus…”

Waiting for the Trap

Bridges withdrew, and motioned to Ketch who had placed a piece of dowel between the two levers so he could pull them out together. Sarah heard the snare drum roll. She tried not to think about what was coming. Looking for a friendly presence in the crowd, but finding nothing but gawping faces, she shut her eyes and tried desperately to imagine a better place, far away from here. She could feel the impact of each raindrop on her skin, each individual fibre of the rope around her neck. She was breathing in quick gasps and so started to concentrate on her heartbeat to try and calm herself down. It wasn’t working. Like the tide coming into shore, wave after crashing wave, fear began to wash over her. She felt exhausted - tired beyond imagination, yet she was alert and cruelly conscious of everything around her.

An anguished cry from Kate prompted her to open her eyes, and from the corner of her vision she looked on with pity as Kate, bubbles of snot forming in her nostrils, wet herself, a stream of yellow piss pooling under her left foot and draining away through the cracks on the scaffold. Eyes front again, she found herself looking directly at the upper windows of The Haywain, where mug of ale in hand, she could just about see the Tavernier and his wife happily toasting to their good fortune with a group of well-paying gentlefolk. She felt like she was stood there for five minutes, an object of pity and ridicule, waiting for the trap to open, waiting to fall, waiting, waiting, waiting….

The Drop

And then there was silence. Ketch yanked the two levers in unison. There was a knot in the wood under her feet. She could feel it, slightly proud of the plank, under the sole of her bare foot. The floor shuddered as she felt and heard the metal bolt holding the trap closed slide open. And then, the knot was not there. She was falling. She heard a muffled scream and instantly recognised it as her own. Suddenly, there was a terrific jerk as she hit the end of the rope, but as the noose had been positioned at the nape of her neck, her neck did not break and the darkness she craved did not come.

Her eyes flew open involuntarily as the world before her swung left and right, forward and backward as a terrific pain assaulted her throat. Her legs kicked, flexing violently, as her feet, pointing straight down searched vainly for some purchase. Her struggles shifted the coils of the noose to the side of her head, forcing her head to one side as she gasped for breath. As she swung at the end of the rope, her doomed fight to survive turned her body to the right, and any morbid curiosity about what it looked like to hang was satisfied as she found herself face to face with Kate.

Kate was close to death. She had ceased her struggles and swung gently from side to side as the light slowly ebbed from behind her eyes. She died slowly, and painfully. Her face was contorted and purple, engorged with trapped blood, with tongue slightly protruding from between her lips in a deathly grimace. She had been a pretty girl, but in death she just looked grotesque. The rough hemp rope had bitten deeply into the soft flesh of her neck, choking the life out of her. The beautiful black dress clung to her lifeless body, making her look for all the world like a porcelain doll.

Death Comes to the Maiden

As Sarah’s own body twisted and turned back, she felt herself slipping away. The pain and stress to her body were so terrific that her nerves were numb to it now, except for the burning in her throat and lungs as the rope constricted, tightening, choking. It was now almost impossible to draw breath, her wheezes turning into rasps as she took what little air she could muster through her closing windpipe.

Her legs kicked a little more, but it was a wholly involuntary reflex now, and she felt herself shudder and spasm. The sounds around her were diminishing, replaced by the rising, hammering crescendo of her pulse in her ears as her heart beat ever more urgently in a Herculean effort to get blood to her oxygen-starved brain. Her vision was getting blurry and black around the edges. The effort of keeping her eyes open became too much as they fluttered closed for the last time. She sensed the welcome approach of death as it crept ever closer.

The rain had stopped, and as the sky took on a brighter hue, the improved light illuminated the capillaries in her closed eye-lids, making them look to her like the branches of a tree.

She was back in the clearing she had dreamt of earlier that day, in the forest, with its canopy of branches and leaves towering above her, occasional shafts of light illuminating patches of the dark brown woodland earth beneath her feet. She smelled lilies, and sighing deeply, rested a tired hand against the trunk of an ancient oak tree. What was it about that oak tree? she wondered. Exhaustion overcame her. Sarah lay down on the warm earth, bathed in a ray of sunshine, closed her eyes and fell asleep.

Aftermath

The crowd watched in respectful silence, seemingly afflicted by a collective sense of sadness. Ketch kept a careful watch, wary of any interference with the hanging bodies, and also in the interests of his self-preservation should matters turn ugly. He was eager to bring matters to a close, collect his fee and leave Braley for another year.

As was customary, he had been paid half up front, with the rest on completion, and a bonus for following his instructions to the letter. He expected to have to haggle for the bonus – Sir Hughes, who held the purse, had been most adamant that the women be executed exactly as instructed, but Ketch hoped they would see sense and shell out in any case, given his concerns about public safety.

The proceedings obviously over, the crowd began to drift away in small groups, with more than a few determined to find a drink to wash over the uneasiness of having observed such a chastening spectacle.

Within minutes the town square had all but emptied. Only a dozen or so diehards remained, overcome by morbid curiosity. The grieving Daniels family huddled together, finding shelter and comfort under the fixed awning of the local boot maker. The stillness was punctuated every now and again by the pitiful wailing and weeping of Jane’s newly bereaved mother and sisters as her father looked stoically on, wracked with guilt, trying his best to come to terms with the execution of his youngest child. Together, unkind observers would comment that they looked like a clutch of crows, dressed head to toe in black mourning clothes, as they waited - determined to stand vigil over their deceased daughter until her body was cut down and returned to them for burial.

Bridges was under the gallows now, motioning for two of the guards that had escorted the condemned to offload the pine coffins from the second cart. Each crudely constructed box was placed at the foot of the gallows, in front of the dangling corpse it would eventually receive. Bridges made a cursory examination of Jane Daniels, and seeing her head lolling to one side at an unnatural angle, called up to Ketch “Excellent work master! This one went off right quick – just as you said she would.” Ketch frowned in displeasure, before chastising his apprentice “Watch your words boy! Have some respect! That’s her kin over there. No need to make it any harder for them than it need be.”

He looked down through the second open trap, tapping the taut rope gently, and, being satisfied that there was no reaction or movement from below, moved to the third opening and did the same. Bridges watched with keen interest as Sarah’s body quivered, her breasts wobbling slightly, as Ketch flicked the rope from above. Ketch shouted down “Is it done boy?”

Bridges saw his opportunity. “I’ll make sure master. Hold one moment” he said as he fetched a short ladder from under the gallows steps. Placing it against the frame of the scaffold, he climbed up five rungs and, holding the frame with his left hand he grabbed her manacled arm at the elbow and swung the body toward him. Leaning across, he placed his right hand against the top of her still-warm chest, feeling for the heartbeat he knew had long since ceased.

After a long pause, which he hoped any onlookers would dismiss as thoroughness, he lifted up her head by the chin and pushed it his left. Although the noose had bitten deep into her throat, framing the rope with two thin red welts around the circumference of her neck, the blood it had drawn had made the noose slick, so that the coils at the back of her neck slid easily toward her left ear. Now that her head was angled toward him, he was able to lift her eyelids one at a time with one hand, seeing only white, as her eyes had rolled up into her skull as she died. Having taken all the time he reasonably could, he called up through the open trap “She is most certainly gone master. The job is done”, and then, casting one long, last, lingering glance at his victim, he stepped down.

Although the women were clearly dead, Ketch let the bodies hang for the regulation hour as prescribed by law. The town square, while not exactly a hive of activity, began to resume the few activities normally associated with a Sunday afternoon. To the uninitiated, it would have been strangely incongruous to see people going about the normal, mundane necessities of life as the bodies of three young women hung grotesquely still in the rising heat of a humid summer’s day.

Very few stopped to look at the aftermath of man’s cruel justice. Most stayed away, and those that had business in the square did their best to studiously ignore the stomach churning tableau by shuffling past, heads bowed. One man did take a keen interest however. He remained concealed in the doorway of the counting house, diagonally opposite the gallows, watching and waiting as the hangman and his assistant prepared for their final task.

Their roles now relegated to those of prop men after the grand show had finished, Ketch and Bridges set about their business with cold efficiency. As the bell in the clock tower chimed a quarter hour after one, at a signal from Ketch, one of the empty carts was unhitched from its horse and wheeled by four of the guards underneath Jane Daniel’s body, which now dangled a foot or so above it. The guards climbed aboard the cart, ready to take the weight of the woman’s body. Producing a large knife with serrated edge, Ketch quickly sawed through the rope, and as the last strands parted and gave way, watched through the trap as the guards caught the Jane’s corpse as it dropped and lay it gently on the floor of the cart.

Bridges hopped on, clambered over her and then loosened and removed the noose from around her neck. Unceremoniously flipping the body over, he unfastened a ring of keys from his belt, and, selecting the appropriate one, unlocked the manacles around her wrists, and threw them into a corner of the cart. Jumping back down, he motioned two more guards over, and with the help of two of the four still in the cart, they transferred the body to the waiting coffin and laid her down inside. Bridges placed her hands across her chest and straightened the dress. Had it not been for the obvious bruising to her wrists and the slight elongation and abrasion to her neck, she could have been asleep. Finished, Bridges finally waved, beckoning the Daniels family to come and collect her, before returning to deal with the other two corpses.

The procedure was much the same for the other two executed women, but as no one appeared to claim their bodies, the coffins were nailed shut, placed side by side on the cart that had carried them to their death, and conveyed to the undertakers, where they would be buried without fuss in the Potter’s Field.

With their tasks completed, Ketch went in search of payment, leaving Bridges to collect the nooses and place them in a cloth bag. These were the perks of the job. Many people believed that such rope had restorative and healing properties, hence the phrase “money for old rope”, and they would fetch a fair price in due course, especially given the pretty necks that had filled them.

William's Revenge

William Miller had watched every moment of the execution in anguish and abject horror. He realised that part of him had died with Sarah, scarcely allowing himself to admit that even after all that had happened, despite how she had treated him - he still loved her. His grief at watching her awful death slowly began to build into a deep-seated anger, which turned instantly into an incandescent rage as he witnessed Bridges disgusting display of voyeurism as he ostensibly checked for Sarah’s heartbeat.

Bridges had finished tidying up, and with Ketch nowhere to be seen, he decided that some refreshment was in order. Looking up, he grinned as he saw the sign for the Haywain and chuckled, as he thought to himself “Bound to be short-staffed today, thanks to me…” he never saw it coming. He felt a heavy blow to the back of his head, and stood, momentarily shocked and confused as a trickle of warm blood ran down the back of his neck. The second blow connected with the side of his head with a sickening crunch. Bridges eyes rolled back into his head, unseeing and unknowing as his knees gave ay and he collapsed in a heap, quite dead.

William looked out cautiously from his hiding place and seeing that there were no witnesses, dragged the body by its feet back into the alley where he had laid in wait. He covered the body with some refuse, disposed of the iron bar he had used to kill Bridges, wiped his hands and nonchalantly walked out into the square in quiet satisfaction. Sarah had been avenged.

The End.