The Tainted Relic by Michael Jecks, The Medieval Murderers

behind at the inn, John reluctantly left for Martin’s Lane and another cheerless supper with his wife.
     
     
    Two hours before noon the next day the coroner, together with his clerk Thomas, were at the gallows field on Magdalene Street, half a mile outside the South Gate. Executions took place once or twice a week, depending on how many felons had been sentenced by the Shire Court or the Burgess Court. When the royal judges came to the city, either as Commissioners of Gaol Delivery or at the very infrequent Eyre of Assize, the gallows was busier, but this morning there were only three customers to be dispatched into the next, and hopefully better, life. The coroner had to be present, as he was responsible for confiscating all the worldly goods of the victim for the King’s treasury and recording the event on his rolls.
    Though mutilation, either cutting off a hand, castration or blinding, was a common penalty for serious assault or minor theft, murder or stealing anything worth more than twelve pence was a hanging offence, as was the capture of anyone previously outlawed. One of today’s felons was such an outlaw, another being a tanner who had beaten his wife’s lover to death on catching them in flagrante delicto and the third a boy of fifteen who had stolen a pewter jug worth twenty pence.
    A small crowd had assembled to watch the proceedings, some of them relatives of the condemned, the others spectators who came regularly, regarding the executions as a form of entertainment. These were mainly old men, housewives and grandmothers, with a horde of toddlers and urchins running around them. A few pedlars and pie-men always attended, making a reasonable trade as the spectators waited for the show to begin. Even the town beggars and a couple of hooded lepers lingered on the edge of the crowd, rattling their bowls and crying for alms.
    The gallows was a massive beam supported at either end by two tree trunks. Five rope nooses dangled from it and ladders were propped at both ends. There were a number of hangmen in Exeter, all part time, as they also followed other trades. Today a slaughterman from the Shambles was officiating; he favoured the use of an ox-cart, rather than pushing the victims off a ladder. Hands lashed behind them, the victims were stood together on a plank across the cart, directly underneath the gallows. The executioner climbed up, put a rope around each neck, then gave the ox a smart smack across the rump, though it was so used to the routine that it hardly needed such a signal. As it trundled forward, the three poor wretches were left hanging momentarily in space, their screams abruptly cut off as the strangling rope cut into their throats. Immediately, members of the families of two of the condemned rushed forward and dragged down violently on their legs to shorten their suffering, but the outlaw, who had no one to see him off, was left to kick and twitch for several minutes until death mercifully overtook him.
    John watched the proceedings impassively, as violent and sudden death held no novelty for him, after more than twenty years on the battlefields of Ireland, France and the Holy Land. Thomas de Peyne was not made of such stern stuff and always turned his head away as the ox-cart began to move. As soon as the bodies had stopped dancing on their ropes, the crowd began to drift away, except for the wailing families, who lingered with their handcarts to claim the bodies for burial.
    The coroner waited for his clerk to gather up his writing materials and stow them away in his shoulder bag, then began walking back towards the city walls. It was hardly worth saddling up his stallion Odin for such a short distance, and within a few minutes they were approaching Exeter’s massive South Gate, where they saw a large figure coming towards them with a familiar rolling gait.
    ‘Here’s Gwyn. What’s he want?’ demanded Thomas.
    The usually phlegmatic Cornishman was agitated. ‘I’ve found a man who saw