THE HANGED MAN

Set in what may well have been medieval England or medieval anywhere, justice was harsh...

Edith Reaper was truly grateful that her much loved husband was condemned to be hanged. He was much loved, both by her and their children. No man was the equal to her Tom: she knew that with a fervour that went beyond mere love.

He did everything humanly possible for them, which was why he had been condemned to the ultimate punishment. Maybe he shouldn't have stolen that lamb, maybe he should have let them go hungry and the little ones starve, but that wasn't the kind of man he was. If times were hard he was always proactive.

So they had met, fallen in love and now lived in almost total harmony despite the hardships. He laboured in the fields for the big man at the big house, and received meagre leftovers offered him with what seemed like gratitude. And the big man appreciated him. He knew that.

So life passed along, babies came and grew into angels, and the long winter came. Later it might be called a mini ice-age, but to him living through it it was a time of hunger, cold and almost unbearable misery. Their youngest was to die. It was bound to happen. One bad thing invariably followed hard on the heels of another.

Then the gypsy had come to their door.

She wandered, homeless, through the land, and was offered a corner to lay her head here and another there in return for a gypsy's word. And her words were shining beacons on the future. That - or dark portends and shadows, and when she came to Edith's door it was to bring a dark shadow.

She gazed at Tom's hand, studied the lines etched in the grime of labour on it, and turned away with a suddenness that made their hearts lurch.

“I see bad things,” she said, when pressed to explain her sudden attitude.

“What bad things, mistress?” asked Edith.

The gypsy glanced miserably at the ground at the troubled woman's feet.

“Beware the night, Master,” she mumbled, looking at Tom fleetingly. “Beware the devils of the night. One week this very day it will be, at night, under the moon... evil will fall on you, Master, and … I cannot say!”

“Say, woman!” urged Tom, fearful of what thoughts might lurk in the gypsy woman's mind.

“Blood … I see blood … too much blood … and pain, great pain, and a wooden box guarded by a grieving widow … I'm sorry, sir, but I only tell what I see and what I see from these sacred lines on your hand is great darkness. One week from today!”

“Tell ... tell me … what more can you see?” whispered a suddenly anguished Tom.

Her eyes, slate-grey, swept over him. “I see the darkest of times...” she breathed. “I see empty bellies and cold nights. I see children weeping. I hear them! The very sound of tears hurts my mind! And … I fear to say it, but … I see death!”

Tom pulled his hand back from her grasp. “My death?” he hardly dared to ask.

She nodded, her limp grey hair sweeping across her brow. “And another's...” she croaked. “And another's...”

Then she scuttled off. Afraid that her words might invoke great rage, she made her way into the countryside, and Tom remained where he had been standing, staring at his hand and shaking his head.

The very next day the baby died. One moment it was crying raucously for food that couldn't be found and the next, Heavens help us, the little boy passed from this life.

Tom was smitten by grief. The gypsy woman had said, without malice and without any selfish intention to cause distress, that there would be two deaths, and this was the first. In six more days, Tom knew, he would fail in the freezing darkness, for it had been foretold and prophecies were always true. In six more days he would be no more. The wise woman had said, and she was privy to both wonderful and dark secrets.

And anyway, he lived in a time when death was never a stranger.

Filled with the dull ache of unwanted grief, and with a family hungry to the core yet with no food available even though he slaved away throughout the daylight hours on the cold fields of the Big Man from the Big House, Tom decided to take their life and health in his own hands.

Not so far was the field where the sheep were kept, and it being cold spring the ewes were lambing. It would be no hard task, sneaking in and grabbing a beast and taking it to his family. It would mean bellies would stop aching with hunger. It would mean the little ones would grow strong rather than wither and die. It had to be done, surely?

So in the very dark of night he crept out into the frosty world. There was a crescent moon, casting just enough light for him to see the familiar pathways by. And so he went. He might have told Edith what he was about to do, but he knew she would try to stop him. So he went out into the cold world, saying nothing to her, and plunged into the darkness.

He truly believed he had but six days to live, and in that time he could do one huge thing and save those who would live on after he had died. And this was to be the night, before it was too late. There would be unaccustomed meat for his family, reduced as it was by one. And they would thrive!

But the Big Man in the Big House also knew there was hunger about. He was fortunate and could take what he wanted from the plates of others, could pay to keep fat and bloated, and see his woman, fair and wonderful to his eyes, with flesh on her bones. But he knew that the more he consumed the less there would be for those who actually produced the food. Sometimes he didn't quite like it, but to his mind it was the natural, God-ordained order of things

He couldn't afford to care that they starved. He daren't care that their families went hungry. He had no opinion whatsoever when their children died - as long as his belly was full.

And so shepherds and gamekeepers were employed, thin men hoping to grow a little fatter if they caught thieves and vagabonds, and took them to justice.

And so Tom was caught. The gamekeepers numbered amongst his neighbours. They were distant friends. They waved at him across fields as he toiled. But now that they had him gagged and bound, friendship, comradeship, things like that counted for nothing. They, too, were hungry with nagging pains in their bellies.

Justice back then was a rough affair and the Big Man from the Big House was judge and jury. It was unfortunate, in his opinion, because Tom was a good worker and worth two of many others, but, it seemed, he was a thief. He must be made an example of what happened to thieves. Such dastardly, cowardly behaviour as stealing from him must be punished. It had to be

And punished by death.

There could be no other way.

So Tom was harangued in the courtroom. He was called all manner of foul things " a thief, a vagabond, reprehensible … and all the name-calling led to one thing.

He was to hang. In one week's time.

And that would, remorselessly, be that. There was nobody who could offer a reprieve. The king was off on some foreign adventure against the infidels in the East, and he was the only hope for those convicted of a crime that was rewarded by the noose.

Tom recalled the prophecy of the gypsy woman and knew that, by her reckoning, he had but four days left once the sentence was pronounced. She had said it. Yet he was to be hanged in seven days!

Would they hang a corpse, a man already taken by the gypsy's prophecy?

Or had the Big Man's judicial sentence offered him more life, rather than less?

On the day before the noose was to be placed around his neck he was still alive. It shocked him. He knew that the future was an open book to old gypsy women, and that he should already have been claimed by the winter's extended cold as she foretold.

So when Edith visited him on that day he hugged her to him and she pulled him ever closer. They lay in the corner of his crude cell and said their goodbyes on a day that should never have been.

Which is why she was truly grateful that her loving man had been condemned to be hanged.

And nine months later that gratitude spilled over into tears of anguish married with joy as little Tom was born.