Gibbet

It was unseasonal.  It was late summer but a cold and damp wind was blowing down from the Cheviots, chilling Winter’s body through his cheap and tattered clothing.  It made no difference to him now though; he could not feel the cold as he was long dead, swinging by the neck from the crude gibbet hastily erected to mete out justice.   But he was still there, his memory was trapped in the dark forests, caught in the whispering moorland grasses that swayed in the northerly wind and seared in the cobbled stones of the arrow straight Roman road that ran alongside the gallows.

‘I didn’t do it’ could be heard as the wind caught the leaves in the trees, ‘’that old crow Crozier was dead when I got there.  It wasn’t my gully that did her, it’s clean.  I’ve not spilled a drop of her blood.’

‘So who was it then that cruelly murdered poor Margaret Crozier on the night of 29th August 1791?’ the gibbet creaked.

‘It wasn’t me I tell you.  We went round to sell her a few pots, me and the Clark girls but she was already laid out on the floor when we got there.  The door was open, swinging and banging on its hinges.’

‘But her possessions were found on that animal of yours, that thing you call an ass.  How do you explain that?’ enquired the gallows.

‘I took them alright, I know it was wrong but I was desperate and she wasn’t going to need them anymore.  I’ve just come back from being transported and all I had were the clothes on my back and my gully.’

‘Ah yes, the knife.’ said the knotted rope that rubbed at the dead man’s neck, twisting the corpse round as the wind lifted and fell. ‘The knife the boy saw you with up at Whisker-shield Common.  What would you be doing with a butcher’s knife like that?’

‘It’s not a crime to have a knife.  I picked it up on my travels, won it in a game.  Every man needs a knife and my gully has looked after me in many a scrape.  We were up on the common alright, Jane and Eleanor and me but that was the day before it all happened.  We were only having a bite to eat and had stopped in the sheep fold to get out of the wind.’

The gibbet fell silent for a few moments as if to gather its thoughts. ‘The boy recognised you though didn’t he?  It was something to do with the number of nails in your shoes if I recall.’

‘But that was the day before I tell you.  We were up on the common, sitting in the grass and minding our own business.  Who counts the number of nails in your shoes, especially when they are covered with grass?  It doesn’t make any sense.’

The wind rattled its joints and the gibbet groaned with the irony as it looked down at the filthy naked feet of Winter’s corpse. His shoes were gone and would be on another pair of feet by now.

‘I didn’t do it’ the leaves whispered, ‘She was dead when we got there.’

‘Hush yourself,’ said the gallows, ‘what has been done cannot be undone now.  So many innocent men have swung.’

It was no accident that the hanging took place at this spot, it could be seen for miles from the road and the lone horseman had had his eyes on it as he made his way slowly up the hill.  As he came closer a shiver ran down his back and he pulled the collar of his jacket up tight.  The horse brought him to the spot closest to where the gibbet stood and he pulled off his hat and turned his face away so as not to look at the lifeless body.  His heals dug into the mare’s flanks and he made his way guiltily down towards Elsdon.