The Skeleton Man

St Swithun’s Day Sunday, 15 July 1990

It was a child’s high stool, commandeered for the execution.

I stood with my back to the wall, part of the crowd, not the mob, but even then I knew that such a line could not be drawn: a line to separate the guilty from the innocent.

Twelve of us then, and the accused on the stool, the rope tight to the neck.

Again the question. ‘Why?’ Each time marked by a blow to the naked ribs, blood welling up beneath the skin.

I could have answered, ended it then. But instead I pressed my back against the cool wall, wondering why there were no more denials, wondering why life had been given up.

The victim’s knees shook, and the legs of the stool grated on the cellar’s brick floor. Outside in the night there was a dog’s bark, heard through the trapdoor above, and twelve chimes from the church on the hill.

Then the ringleader did it, because he had the right that was in his blood. Stepping forward he swung a foot, kicking the stool away.

The body, a dead weight, fell; but not to earth. The plastic click of the neck breaking marked the extent of the rope, followed by the grinding of shattered vertebra as the body turned, its legs running on air. The moment of death stretched out, calibrated by the rattle in the throat. Urine trickled from the bare feet, yellow in the torchlight.

I fainted, standing, for a heartbeat. When I looked again the arms, bound and ugly in death, were lifeless.

It was justice, they said, licking parted lips.

Justice in Jude’s Ferry.