The Bleeding Land by Giles Kristian

foot on the ladder and the other in the mud, Thurloe addressed the crowd, declaring the condemned a heretic and a criminal and thanking them for doing their godly duty by coming to witness the King’s justice. This was the only time they held their tongues, hanging on his every word, lapping up his praise like proud hounds after the kill. And when Thurloe had finished he took his foot off the bottom rung and stepped back , commanding one of the armed men to turn the ladder and so let the minister fall. But the man would not do it. His lips pressed into a thin line and he shook his head and stepped away, slamming the haft of his halberd into the mud, the weapon proving his role in the play so that no man could rightly expect more.
    So Sheriff Thurloe turned to the other man, but he would not turn the ladder, either, and he too stepped back.
    The sheriff lifted his arms towards the crowd. ‘Someone must turn the ladder!’ he called, his breath clouding around his pale face and broad-brimmed hat.
    ‘You do it!’ someone yelled and others bayed in accord, but Thurloe shook his head and showed his gloved palms.
    ‘I connut!’ he exclaimed. ‘But the man must die. We connut leave this Godforsaken place till the sentence is carried out.’ He tried to smile but to Mun it looked like a snarl. ‘Who will do the thing? Who will earn our thanks?’ he yelled.
    Mun thought it possible that Green could leap from the ladder himself. End the whole sorry thing. But the minister was clinging to the ladder, his cheek pressed against the gibbet’s rough-hewn face, and Mun supposed that even life full of torment and misery was still life, when there was a rope around your neck.
    Martha broke away, striding out into the eddying snow.
    Tom rasped her name but she was on her way and so he thrust after her and then Mun was walking too, his boots churning the snow and mud, eyes half closed against the growing blizzard.
    ‘Ah, God bless thee, chilt!’ Thurloe called, wiping his red nose on the back of his hand, a relieved smile twitching his glistening moustaches. ‘Here we have a brave servant of the King!’ he announced, sweeping a hand out towards Martha, who was staring up at the gallows. Mun saw that the girl’s father’s eyes were closed and his face was turned towards the cold sky now, his lips moving in prayer.
    ‘You are too late, gentlemen!’ Thurloe called to Tom and Mun as they drew nearer. ‘This brave young girl was fust and shall have the credit!’ They ignored him and came on and someone in the crowd yelled that three of them would get the job done even quicker, but the sheriff frowned and ordered the two soldiers forward to block their path. Which they did, threatening them with their halberds while Martha approached the gallows unimpeded.
    Mun saw her look up at her father, hands pressed against her mouth, a barricade against what fought to be said. And yet perhaps her father somehow heard those unspoken words, for he looked down, his eyes glassy and bereft of all hope.
    ‘My daughter. My precious girl,’ he said, and Mun watched as a shade of serenity fell over the minister, like a shroud laid over a corpse, and the trembling left his limbs and he smiled down at Martha, all terror having fled from his face. In its place was an expression that spoke to Mun of acceptance. And love.
    ‘Sleep, Father,’ Martha called up to him, cuffing the tears from her freezing cheeks. ‘It will be over soon.’
    He nodded. ‘My precious love,’ he said, a tear hanging from his chin before dropping eleven feet to the mud.
    ‘Tell Mother I love her,’ Martha said.
    ‘What is this, chilt?’ Thurloe said, realizing this was something other than what he had thought. Then George Green turned his face back to Heaven and began to pray once more. Martha gripped the ladder with two hands and pushed, but it would not move, so she placed her right leg against it and shoved again and this time the ladder turned and her father fell,