The Gallows Murders

strong head, yet for two days after my drinking bout, I-felt heavy-headed, thick-tongued and lack-lustre. I am sure Quicksilver mixed something with that wine. Nevertheless, I grew better and, as I did, hungrier by the minute. What could I do? Quicksilver had taken my horse and sumpter pony. Every item and possession.
    For a day I wandered the streets but the shops were closed, the bakeries empty. No one would bring food into the city. Others, hungrier and more violent than I, were also roaming the streets. For a while I sheltered in Quicksilver's house, desperate at what I should do next. To return to Ipswich was out of the question. I had no boots, never mind a horse to ride. I admit I did try that. I went up Bishopsgate, only to find that the gates were now guarded and sealed. The city fathers, who had fled, were very determined that no one should follow their example and take the infection out into the countryside. I wandered back and sheltered in a derelict house near the Austin Friars just off Broad Street. I thought I was safe, but a gang of riflers attacked me, stripping me of my jerkin. The next morning, cold and sore, I joined the other beggars outside the friary, desperate for a morsel of bread and a pannikin of fresh water.
    I continued to wander the city; it was a descent into Hell. The contagion had grown worse. Whole streets were sealed off. Houses daubed with red paint mocked me from every side. Soldiers, armed to the teeth, drove me off with blows when I tried to beg outside a church. The death-carts trundled by. The corpses were stacked high; their legs and arms flailed as the cart rumbled across the cobbles, putting a strange life back into these grey-white cadavers. The mounds of refuse grew higher: fires burned in every street and the city reeked of smoke and sulphur. At night, dark shapes flitted up and down the alleyways, armed with knives and dirks, to fight like wolves over the most paltry possessions. Now and again, those city fathers who had remained tried to impose order. Soldiers were sent into the streets to enforce a curfew, and everything became as quiet as death until they passed.
    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