Hannah No More.
A feeble sun was declining towards the horizon on the western side of the abbey. It appeared wearied, beaten, eager to be quit of its daily task. To cast its beams daily on the market towns of Wiltshire is a labour of small gratitude. So too is the office of sexton in the abbey. Yet both sun and sexton had employments of absolute necessity. The rural folk around Malmesbury in 1703 depended on the sun for the wellbeing of their crops and flocks. The abbey’s vicar and sexton sustained the spiritual comfort of their human flock – the villagers and farming folk.
Nathaniel Whitlock was three score years of age and the sexton of the abbey. He emerged from the rear of the stone abbey, in failing light of day, knowing full well that his tasks were not concluded. As guardian of Malmesbury Abbey, his day had included tending the churchyard, maintaining the burial area, and ringing of the bells at the direction of the Reverend Mr Hanley. The usual honeyed hue of the abbey’s Cotswold stone was dimming as the sun withdrew. Nathaniel trudged past pock marks of musket-shot in the walls, inflicted by Cromwell’s troops during the Civil War. He bore a pick-axe and shovel and his mind was sorely vexed. The burial was appointed for the morrow, 23rd day of October 1703 in the year of our Lord. The vicar had insisted the grave be made ready this evening. There should be sufficient moonlight, and the soil lay softened by recent September rains.
The Rev. Mr Hanley had sought a speedy burial. The horrors of the accident on the preceding eve lay heavily on the parish. He wanted swift closure for his flock, hence his request that Nathaniel prepare a burial site tonight. Plodding from the abbey towards the village’s Market Cross, the sexton halted at the appointed spot and cast his felt hat and digging implements onto the damp soil. Removing his plain woollen coat and waistcoat, he withdrew from his pocket a modest ploughman’s supper wrapped in a kerchief. Nathaniel arrested his pangs of hunger; he had not lunched today. Clad in a loose linen shirt, knee-length breeches and woollen stockings, Nathaniel commenced his melancholy task. Like many of the townsfolk, he knew the victim.
Pick… pick… shovel… cast.
Pick… pick… shovel… cast.
Thus he fell into a mindless rhythm, blessed to divert his imagination from the tragedy. He should attain the required depth around midnight…. Hannah would be laid in the earth come the morning. At least, thought he, she would rest in noble company; Aethelstan, the King of Wessex, lies interred in the nearby abbot’s garden.
***
I was but three and thirty years of age and fully expected to have further life yet to live. I took pleasure in drawing ale at the bar in the White Horse Tavern in Malmesbury. I am Hannah Twynnoy… I belonged here. I loved the weight of tankards brimming with ale and mead, the clamour of merry folk, the jingle of coins changing hands, the exchange of tidings, laughter and wanton jest. As the daughter of a poor, illiterate farmhand, I felt a becoming pride in my employ and that I gave others cheer.
This life of mine should have never been so crudely torn away. Must I now become fearful of resurrectionists and body snatchers? Like the trembling patrons in the White Horse Tavern, I demand answers to questions. Why must old Nathaniel labour in the chill of evening preparing a place in the soil to receive me? Why had the tavern-keeper granted lodgings to the troupe of travelling performers? Who had permitted their strange beasts to be kept behind the tavern? Who examined the iron spike driven into the ground to secure the tiger?
A tiger! I had never countenanced a tiger before. It was chained fast to the iron spike when I foolishly prodded the beast with a birch broom desirous to mark its reaction. There was a flash of heavy paw which splintered the broom’s hazel stick. The tiger’s blood-curdling roar overwhelmed the clang of the freed iron spike as it bounced onto the cobbles. A second blur of paw crushed my temple, slashed my throat. Oh, that blood-curdling roar… that dreadful roar. And so… Hannah no more.
***
Footnote
Hannah Twynnoy is the first person to have been killed by a tiger in England. Buried in the graveyard outside Malmesbury Abbey in October, 1703, this poem appears on her headstone:
In bloom of Life
She's snatchd from hence,
She had not room
To make defence;
For Tyger fierce
Took Life away.
And here she lies
In a bed of Clay,
Until the Resurrection Day.
