Nathanial dared not look at the three corpses. They rocked in the late October wind
that lashed that part of Warwickshire and made the gibbet chains toll like Church bells. He
fixed his gaze on the muddy path as he inched closer: Not a soul in sight at this hour, he
thought. His breathing quickened. He rolled his eyes upwards as much as he dared, almost as
if he were greeting gentry in his tailoring shop. The gruesome shapes of those three
condemned men who had done their crime not far from this spot swayed in front of him, their
shrunken bodies wrapped in hardened tar that made them look like black sacks against the
night sky. Nathanial cleared his throat. It was dry and he could still taste the beer and spirits.
“How… ” he said, his quivering voice snatched by the wind and rain.
“How are you getting on up there, lads?” he repeated, louder this time.
He wanted to say more but he pushed the words away. His mind was a lost ship at sea, and he
felt his stomach lurch. He turned his back on the gibbet and began to stagger down the hill
towards home. But then he heard a voice grate behind him like the sound of a stone lid
sliding off a tomb.
Wet and cold.
Nathanial froze. I must have imagined it, he thought. It is the wind.
I said: It’s a bit wet and cold, to be honest, Nathanial.
He fled in terror. The hill’s steep curve launched him down and down in wild-roaming legs
and arms as his feet pounded the muddy path, feeling chilled water seep through the broken
leather on his half boots. Ghoulish laughter followed him from the hill, like the cackle of
crows fighting over carrion. Nathanial cursed at himself; he wished he had not been to the
gibbet. He ran for a full mile and did not slow until he reached the threshold of his home and
was able to touch the damp grain of its strong oak door. He twisted the iron handle to pull it
open as he wheezed to catch his breath.
“Claire!” he shouted. “Claire!”
“Where have you been, Nathanial?” responded his wife. “You went to the inn hours
ago.”
“I saw…I saw,” he stuttered. “At the gibbet. The others bet me I wouldn’t go up there
and speak to Moses and those two dragoons. But I steeled myself and I did it! But they
replied, Claire. They damned well replied. And then they laughed as I fled.”
“You’re drunk,” she said. “Why did you go up there? Dead men don’t talk.”
“We were in the tavern,” Nathanial stammered. “Me and James and Charles, raising a
glass to Moses. They dared me to go up to the gibbet, and to speak to the hanged corpses.”
Nathanial rubbed his eyes as he lurched into a table, knocking a metal dish full of thyme and
rosemary on to the flagstones of the hall with a dreadful clatter. He pulled a chair to the warm
hearthside, put his head in his hands, and leaned forwards, his elbows on his knees.
“Be careful! You’re drunk, you silly old fool,” said Claire, scooping the herbs back in to the
bowl. “That was your stupid friends, gone to play a trick on you. You mark my words. They
were hiding in the bushes up there, no doubt. And it’s not right to mock the dead, even those
who done evil like Moses and his cronies. Get thee to bed. I’m going now.”
Nathanial released one hand from where it was nursing his forehead and held it up to signal
agreement. As he heard Claire stomp up the wooden stairs, he remained slumped in his chair,
allowing the warmth of the fire to sooth him. With some difficulty, he rose and put his hand
on the crossbeam of the fireplace to steady himself. He ran his finger across the witches’
marks in the shape of two daisy wheels that he had carved there to keep evil out of the home,
and he turned to follow his wife upstairs.
***
Nathanial fell front-first on to the bed next to Claire and rubbed his face in to the
straw of the mattress as he wrangled off his wet clothes. Still with his left leg in his stockings,
he passed into unconsciousness. He was back in the sunshine of the day of the hanging. The
carpenters and ironsmith had completed the gibbet the day before, and one could still smell
the sawdust in the September air. The sky was bright and blue, and the rooks cawed in the
trees and picked at the fallow fields nearby. Nathanial was in the crowd, where people jostled
for a clear view as the wagon creaked along the road from Coventry to bring the condemned.
People muttered rumours that the men’s friends in Lord Pembroke’s Regiment were planning
to storm the scaffold to save their brothers in arms, but no soldiers rode to the rescue.
Just the hare came. It ran at an extraordinary speed in zigzags through the crowd, knocking
into legs as it raced beneath the scaffold. The creature froze, its flanks heaving and its vivid
amber eyes wide, before it bounded off again into the woods.
A woman called out that the hare was an omen that a reprieve was on its way to the men. And
Nathanial remembered the lurching fear on hearing that news and the worry that his erstwhile
friends would expose him. The officials dared not continue with the hanging until they had
addressed the matter of the omen. Finally, in what had been real hours but only dream
seconds, a messenger returned from Warwick with word that the assizes had not granted a
pardon, and that the execution should proceed. And Nathanial remembered his relief. The
image spun and he heard the awful creak of the wagon as the horses heaved it from beneath
the condemned men and the crack as the men’s necks broke.
Then Nathanial saw the hare had returned. It stared at him and the crowd melted away. It
grew bigger and bigger until it filled his dreaming vision.
And it stamped its foot.
***
Thud, thud, thud.
Nathanial awoke. He sat up and the room span, and his heartbeat throbbed in his ears.
“Claire,” he whispered. “Claire.” His wife lay next to him snoring. She had curled into a
small, safe shape in the corner of the bed, away from the place he had fallen in his stupor a
few hours before. A soft pattern of rain spread across the window like a cobweb over the
darkness outside. Other than the sound of the wind fighting its way through the cracks in their
wooden beams, the house was silent.
Nathanial lay back down. His heartbeat was pounding but he felt it gradually slow as he let
the sound of the rain soothe him. I’ve done nothing wrong and have nothing to worry about,
he thought.
As sleep began to claim him again, the noise returned. It was louder this time and sounded to
Nathanial like a crumpled fist beating on the oak door. He sat up, awake and alert. Oh, what
ghastly sounds, he thought, pulling his bedding to his chin. The devils from the hill have come
to drag me to my place next to them. He drew the covers closer, imagining the tarred and
putrid flesh of the revenants. What to do? What to do?
Pushing against a great weight of fear, Nathanial slid out of bed and put his naked feet on to
the floorboards causing the wood to groan. Finding his footing, he kicked off the remains of
his stockings and walked carefully across the room, trying neither to wake Claire nor to alert
the demons outside to his presence. Beer still with a hold over his head, he bumped a table
next to the window and staggered sideways, cursing with pain.
Claire’s snoring stopped. She snorted and it began again.
She did not believe me, thought Nathanial, rubbing the side of his leg. But here they are.
Come to our house to claim me.
Nathanial looked out through the window. Its four little panes revealed nothing but rain and
darkness.
“What are you doing?” Claire asked sleepily.
Nathanial did not want to tell her, but he was desperate for allies in his plight.
“There was a noise outside, Claire. A damnable knocking!”
“I will give you a damnable knock,” she said. “It is a windy night. You are a brandy-faced
fool. Come back to bed.”
“But… ” said Nathanial, cupping his hands on the window to peer closer at the inky night and
garden outside. Nothing but the skeletal fingers of the apple tree’s branches moved. Now
doubting himself, he returned to bed. Claire had taken more space this time and she had
turned her back to him, forcing him to confine himself to a space barely the width of his
body.
***
Nathanial tried to make himself comfortable by laying on his back and folding his arms
across his chest. He became briefly aware of his own snoring as he fell back into uneasy
sleep. He was returned to the gallows on the hill, where he stood in front of the bodies of the
hanged men whose dead toes spun like compasses in the wind, their chains twisting and
untwisting as they turned.
Terror struck him, and he ran down the hill to escape, just as he had earlier that night. This
time though, the hill propelled him away from home and towards the town of Kenilworth. He
ran all the way to the place on the roadside where the hanged men had committed murder.
Suddenly, he was in the bushes by the road, the scent of decaying leaves in his nose and the
rhythm of his beating heart causing his ears to pulse and redden. Moses was on his right and
the soldiers, Robert and Edward, were to his left, freed from their nooses on the gibbet and
returned to life next to him; Nathanial could hear their heavy breathing. All wore masks, like
they had on that horrid day, but here they were theatre masks in rictus smiles, instead of the
neck gaiters they had worn to hide their faces in life.
Three farmers were walking towards the hiding place along the path from Kenilworth, just as
Nathanial had planned it. Tom, one of the farmers, had been Nathanial’s customer in his
tailoring shop for years; Nathanial had even made the velvet frock coat for Tom’s son to
wear at his confirmation. Tom had mentioned to Nathanial that he and his companions
expected an excellent day at market that week. Nathanial had told his apprentice, Moses, and
they had said half-jokingly that they should charge rich Tom more for his tailoring. But the
tailors had continued the joke that night with the two soldiers who drank with them in the
Golden Cross, and the humour had gradually drained away from their conversation, leaving
only the ugly bones of a plan to rob the farmers of their takings.
All of a sudden, Nathanial’s villainous companions ran out from the bushes with their
cudgels and demanded the money the farmers had taken for their cattle at Kenilworth.
Nathanial stayed in the hiding place, just as he had that day, and he watched in horror as Tom
tried to resist the attack. Then, Nathanial flew high into the air as he saw Tom collapse on the
path, with blood pouring from the bludgeon mark on his head.
Nathanial flew away, over the trees and fields, and his heart was racing. And he awoke.
***
Nathanial looked around the room, his guts rattling in his ribs and a taste of vomit polluting
his mouth. His dream had seemed to have lasted an eternity, but the sky had not lightened,
and he reckoned it was still deepest night.
He inhaled and released a great sigh, attempting to calm himself.
It’s alright. I’m safe. He thought. But what was that?
He was certain he heard footsteps. They were heavy, dull thumps, like the leathered soles of a
dead man’s feet. And then, inspiring a lurching terror: was that the sound of a dragging
chain?
His terror became so great that Nathanial resolved he must go to face the devils. He pulled
aside the covers, where Claire still slept in the peace of the innocent, dragged on his sodden
stockings, and went downstairs.
Each step creaked but Nathanial’s beating heart would not permit him to creep, and he moved
as if it were day. As he approached the front of the house, he saw that the door was open; a
branch from a fallen tree had crashed against it and the metal bowl from the table had fallen
again on to the stone floor. The cold, wet October night air bristled on his skin as rain and
wind swept into their house.
Nathanial picked up the iron poker next to the dying fire and took a handful of salt from the
kitchen. He stormed into the night, his feet and torso bare.
The night was dark, and Nathanial howled at the wind.
“Now, listen here: I didn’t do anything; it’s maddening to me to think such a thing plays on
my mind. To think such a rhythm of doubt beats on my soul in the quiet hours of the day and
night.”
Nathanial was sure he saw a shadow-man move in the darkness. His fear had left him now,
replaced with anger.
“Begone!”
The shadow appeared to sway, as if laughing. Nathanial cast his salt at it, recalling its power
to ward off evil.
“Begone! Are you all three there? I only see one. Is it Moses, come back to the house he
spent so many hours? If I have your name, I control you, spirit. God damn it – is that not
what the cunning-folk say?”
Nathanial began pacing towards the figure, gripping the poker. He felt his flesh boil in the
cold.
“It was supposed to be a simple thing, taking their coin. I did not kill Tom, devil! I did not do
it! You did it! My place is not next to you. I gave my share to the poor and needy. I am not
like you. Be gone! Be gone or I shall dispatch you myself.”
Only the wind replied.
“I already did away with you once. T’was I who named you all to the sherif. Did you
suspect? Reckless ghouls, all three of you. Begone!”
Nathanial thought he could hear the high pitch of a screaming laughter on the wind. The rain
became heavier.
“Damn you! Is that why you did not name me in your confession? Because you planned to
punish me yourselves from beyond the grave? My guts are in tatters and my belly tightens in
a vice. It was not I who am to blame! Come and face me!”
The figure loomed like pitch against the night. Nathanial raised his poker and hurled himself
to battle.
***
Claire awoke the next morning, feeling the lightness of a restful sleep. Sunlight washed into
the bedroom through the little window. Nathanial was not there, and she noticed that the
house was cold. Silly fool has let the fire go out, she thought. Claire got out of bed and
yawned and dressed and made her way down the creaking staircase to the hall to remake the
fire and get on with the pottage for breakfast. She saw the open door. It was a beautiful day,
but the air was chilled, and she could not understand why the door was open.
“Nathanial!” she called. “Nat?”
There was no answer, and she wondered if he had already begun his tailoring for the day.
Slipping on her boots and stepping outside, Claire relished the air on her face. Such a
glorious time of year, she thought, enjoying the sight of the neighbour’s new scarecrow
across the garden. Keeps the birds off our vegetables too. Then, to her shock, she noticed two
naked feet sticking out from behind the garden wall near the apple tree. Hurrying over with
dread rising, Claire saw the ice-white pallor of Nathanial’s body lying dead in the yard, a
poker in its hand and terror locked on its face. The corpse’s neck was twisted, as if snapped,
and Claire thought she could see the shadow of tarred handprints on its neck. She felt her
stomach heave as her eyes fought with her reason.
Claire started to weep, and then to wail, and then to grasp for the soothing words of a song
from her childhood. “Adieu! Adieu!”, she sang through her tears, kneeling next to
Nathanial’s body. “Pity the fate of young fellows all. Willow-day, willow-day.”
Nearby, the scarecrow swayed, as if laughing.
***
Author's Note
This is a work of fiction and Nathanial and Claire are inventions. Nevertheless, I grew up not far from the spot where some gallows really stood, now in Coventry, England (still known as Gibbet Hill). Moreover, a sheriff really did order that gibbet built for the execution of two dragoons and a weaver, found guilty of the brutal murder of a farmer in 1765. And it is said a hare ran through the crowd that day and was seen as an omen of reprieve.
I am very grateful to local folklorists whose work was a helpful reference for this story, including the websites ‘Our Warwickshire’ and the ‘Historic Coventry Forum’, as well as books I read as a child on the topic but am unable to locate. I also drew upon the folk tales that still float intangibly in the air of Coventry. Indeed, to this day, there are rumours of ghostly chains that can be heard on stormy nights near the spot where the gibbet stood.
About the Author
Matthew is from Coventry, but moved to London several years ago via Geneva, Conakry and The Hague. He writes fiction and non-fiction, mainly on political or social themes. He was shortlisted for the 2017 Alpine Fellowship writing prize and has been published by Arachne Press.
About the Artist
Yasmine Essence Soria is a Latina photographer and writer based in Chicago. She received a Bachelor's in Creative Writing with a minor in Photography. Her photo work has been published in Mystic Owl Magazine, Outlander Zine, and displayed in the For Women, By Women Gallery from 2022-2024. She aims to create work to express core aspects of her identity while concentrating on developing new world perspectives. Currently, she is a freelance photographer focusing on portraiture, but she also enjoys street and film photography. Follow her on Instagram @yasmine.essence.
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