The Stranger House. Reginald Hill

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       Satisfied with his handiwork, he now led his companions out of the wood and they made their way back to the village, leaving the murderer to die.

      That appetite for the macabre still existent in our own day and catered for by the new literature of sensation and the Police Gazette was at its ravening height in an age when our greatest poet could soil his pen with the foulness of Titus Andronicus, and to this we owe the illustrative woodcut of the event reproduced overleaf, which was attached to a broadside ballad allegedly composed by one of the posse.

       (Readers of tender stomach are advised not to raise the veiling tissue.)

      Recognizing a come-on when she saw one, Sam turned the page and lifted the sheet of almost opaque tissue paper covering the woodcut. It wasn’t pretty, though why one whose profession abounded with images of a man nailed to a cross should have feared that his readers’ sensibilities might be offended she couldn’t understand. Indeed, it wasn’t the crucified man who took the eye, but the representation of the blasted stump to which he was nailed. It was engraved with a vigour that made it look as if its shattered branches were embracing the figure hanging there and drawing into their ripped bark the life that ebbed out of that pierced flesh, while above the executed man the jagged wood metamorphosed into the head of a wolf thrown back to howl in triumph at the moon.

      She let the tissue fall and read on.

      So far we have a story in which the bare bones of truth are easily detectable. That there was a murder we need not doubt. The grave of Thomas Gowder is still viewable at St Ylf’s, its stela bearing the ambiguous words most foully slain by unknown hand. And after the murder it is certain a hue and cry was raised and a fugitive cornered in Mecklin Shaw where the enraged Andrew took upon himself the roles of jury, judge and executioner. But now matters become mysterious.

      During that evening the tale of such events would naturally have circulated widely among the community and early next day the parson of St Ylf’s led a large group of villagers back to Mecklin Shaw to recover the crucified man. We have the parson’s own account of what it was they found, which in fact was nothing, or rather no one. Some stains there were on the blasted oak which might have been human blood, and some holes which might have been made by wooden nails. But of the fugitive murderer’s person, living or dead, they found no trace. Baffled, they returned to the village where neither prayer in the church nor speculation in the ale-house produced any rational solution other than that the man had somehow freed himself and crawled off into the night, only to be consumed by Mecklin Moss which had once, according to tradition, swallowed up whole a horse and cart and the drunken carter who was driving it.

      Myself, I think it more probable that Andrew Gowder, as the murderous rage in him declined, began to reflect more coolly on what he had done. As stated supra while certainly the age was more violent than our own, yet this was by no means a lawless time. Such an action as Drew’s, no matter how approved by his neighbours, in the eyes of the guardians of the law would have been judged most culpable, worthy at least of a large fine and religious penance; perhaps the confiscation of land; or even incarceration.

      A further incentive to make Drew Gowder view with unease the possible consequences of his action may have been, as we learn from another source, the presence in the vicinity at that time of a small posse of soldiers under the direction of Francis Tyrwhitt, the northern agent of that most dreadful of Elizabeth’s pursuivants, Richard Topcliffe, the notorious rackmaster.

       Tyrwhitt by all accounts matched his master in zeal and often outdid him in brutality. A Yorkshireman, and first cousin of the Protestant judge, Sir Edward Jolley, famed for passing swingeing sentences on Catholics, he was permitted use of the dungeons of Jolley Castle near Leeds for his interrogations.

       Jolley Castle! Can ever an edifice have been less aptly named?

       Thwarted in his main purpose by the discovery of nothing but an untenanted priest-hole at Illthwaite Hall, Tyrwhitt might have been ready to take an interest in any other anti-religious practices he chanced on in the district. At the very least he and his posse were a strong visible reminder that even Illthwaite was within reach of the mighty power of the Law.

       So what more likely than that Gowder should rise in the middle of the night and return to Mecklin Shaw, perhaps accompanied by a few of his closest confederates, to take down the lifeless body of his victim and hurl it into Mecklin Moss?

      A coroner’s report of the period tells us no more than Tom Gowder’s gravestone, viz. that he was murdered by unknown hand. Of the events in Mecklin Shaw, no mention is made. How should there be? No body was ever found and no witnesses were forthcoming. Even those (probably very few) who had scruples about what had happened would think twice before offering evidence which would incriminate themselves and draw down the wrath of Andrew Gowder, an even more powerful figure in the community now that he was sole owner of the Gowder farmstead.

       However, such a general conspiracy to suppress the truth in public record did but provide fertile ground for the growth of those wild chimerical tales we have been examining here. Worse, the gross mimicry of the passion, death and resurrection of our own Beloved Saviour contained in the most popular version soon led to the blasted oak stump becoming a focus for forms of worship that were blasphemous and pagan. Imitation of the holy by the unholy has always been a feature of devil-worship, and in this instance there was also an ocular encouragement in that it was possible to see in the jagged edge of the trunk a simulacrum of a wolf’s head. The Viking Cross in St Ylf’s churchyard had, as I describe elsewhere, been thrown down by iconoclasts in the 70s. Its sad overthrow probably lent strength to the stories surrounding the stump which soon became known as the Other Wolf-Head Cross. It may also be significant that ‘wolf-head’ was an ancient term for outlaw, dating from the Middle Ages and still in use at this time.

       Does this mean that Illthwaite was a centre of diabolism? I think not. I doubt if there were more than one or two benighted souls who adhered wholly to what they called the Old Faith. Yet in remote areas full of stone circles and tumuli and other sites once sacred to the gods of the druids, and the Vikings, and the Romans, it would be surprising if some of these simple peasant folk did not occasionally glance back to the old days when a pair of magpies foretold a death and a full moon was the time for curing warts.

       Have I not myself seen devout parishioners making their way up the aisle to partake of Holy Communion in a series of strange hops and skips to avoid standing on the cracks between the flagstones? Such foolish superstitions, bred in the bone, are hard to eradicate but it is best to remove their visible objects, and commands were soon given by the Church authorities for the offending stump to be destroyed while at the same time the toppled cross in the churchyard was to be repaired and reconsecrated.

       Like many commands from on high, the order for destruction of the stump proved easier to give than to execute.

      The first attempts soon ran into difficulties. Experienced woodmen found their axe-edges blunted. Finally Barnaby Winander, the village blacksmith and a man of prodigious strength, swung at the cross with an axe so heavy none but he could raise it. A contemporary account tells us that the razor-sharp edge rang against the stump with ‘a note like a passing-bell’, the shaft shattered, and the axe-head flew off and buried itself in the thigh of a fellow worker.

      Winander. Had to be one of Thor’s ancestors. Just as the crucifying Gowders had to be the same as the grave-digging Gowders. Nice family. Come to think of it, probably most of the drinkers in the bar had names she’d seen earlier in the churchyard.

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