Ill Will

Ill Will
Michael Stewart

‘An astonishing novel’ The IndependentI am William Lee: brute; liar, and graveside thief.But you will know me by another name.Heathcliff has left Wuthering Heights, and is travelling across the moors to Liverpool in search of his past.Along the way, he saves Emily, the foul-mouthed daughter of a Highwayman, from a whipping, and the pair journey on together.Roaming from graveyard to graveyard, making a living from Emily’s apparent ability to commune with the dead, the pair lie, cheat and scheme their way across the North of England.And towards the terrible misdeeds – and untold riches – that will one day send Heathcliff home to Wuthering Heights.

MICHAEL STEWART is from Salford but is now based in Bradford. He has won several awards for his scriptwriting, including the BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award. His debut novel King Crow was the winner of the Guardian’s Not the Booker Award. Ill Will is his latest novel.

Copyright (#ulink_577f48a0-6b53-5582-a7dd-efc04cce932d)

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

Copyright © Michael Stewart 2018

Michael Stewart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008248178

Version: 2018-09-17

For Lisa and Carter

Contents

Cover (#u7d48bea7-1d42-5e12-ac1d-7f01cc1464c3)

About the Author (#uddca71ce-e4e8-5f49-b985-446bff72ecc2)

Title Page (#u4b5fb0a8-2f4e-5aaf-b63e-e48352c18d08)

Copyright (#ulink_eeaf6de5-5da2-5906-834b-c4cf6ef57b8f)

Dedication (#u03d4700f-646e-563c-baed-6e72ea21ce78)

1780 (#ulink_0aaac624-bf62-54b8-a745-b93ceaf27cd6)

On the Straw with the Swine (#ulink_ba0164cc-f1b1-5df3-9a64-385770ca5dbe)

Flesh for the Devil (#ulink_d313e6a4-7023-521b-a7d0-fb9bcfae3540)

The Man with the Whip (#ulink_402c8af3-a3d7-579d-9145-3ee2c420953c)

Throttling a Dog (#ulink_06b0f3ee-7929-5176-8ab1-3eff49952f8d)

Conjuring the Dead (#litres_trial_promo)

Tripe and Black Pudding (#litres_trial_promo)

In the Shadow of the Gallows (#litres_trial_promo)

A Game of Skittles (#litres_trial_promo)

Jonas Bold (#litres_trial_promo)

Pierce Hardwar (#litres_trial_promo)

Penny Buns and Jew’s Ears (#litres_trial_promo)

Humility, Cleanliness and Pure Thinking (#litres_trial_promo)

The Man with One Hand (#litres_trial_promo)

Vying the Ruff (#litres_trial_promo)

1783 (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

1780 (#ulink_658cd1e0-64ad-5f43-873e-c187fbae5c20)

You are walking through Butcher’s Bog, along the path at Birch Brink. Traipsing across Stanbury Moor, to the Crow Stones. A morass of tussock grass, peat wilderness and rock. There are no guiding stars, just the moaning of the wind. Stunted firs and gaunt thorns your only companions.

Perhaps you will die out here, unloved and unhomed. There was the tale of Old Tom. Last winter, went out looking for a lost lamb. Found a week on, icicles on his eyelids, half-eaten by foxes. Or was it the last wolf said to roam these moors? The ravens will eat out your eyes and the crows will pick at your bones. The worms will turn you into loam. You’ve forgotten your name and your language. Mr Earnshaw called you ‘it’ when first he came across you. Mrs Earnshaw called you ‘brat’ when first she took you by the chuck. Mr Earnshaw telt to call him Father and Mrs Earnshaw, Mother, but they were not your real parents. Starving when they took you in. They named you after their dead son. The man you called your father carried you over moor and fell, in rain and in snow. When finally you got to the gates of the farm it was dark and the man couldhardly stand. He took you into the main room and plonked himself in a rocker. By the fire you stood, a ghost in their home. Next to you a living girl and living boy, who spat and kicked. This was their welcome to your new hovel. Nearly ten years ago now. You’d spent weeks on the streets, eating scraps from bin and midden. Kipped by the docks and ligged in doorways. You’d trusted no one, loved no one, believed in nothing.

It was tough in the new place but you’d had it worse. You’d almost died many times. You’d been beaten inside an inch of your life. Gone five days without food. Slept with rats and maggots. Nothing this new place had in store could harm you more than you’d been harmed before. Or so you thought. The girl was called Cathy, the boy Hindley, and you hated them apiece.

Almost ten years ago. But you can still feel her hot spit on your face, and his boot in your groin. None of it ever hurt you as much as her words. Words that cut to the bone. Words that stab you in the back.

You stand on top of the Crow Stones on the brink of the wilderness. It is said that the stones were used for ritual sacrifice. The slit throat of a slaughtered goat. The gushing blood of a lamb seeping into the craggy carpet beneath your feet. The wind tries to blow you off your perch. Blow harder. You are the goat, the lamb, you care not for sacrifice. Let them take you. Let them bleed you. Fuck the lot of them.

For two years your adopted father tried to protect you from Hindley. From his maniac beatings, with fist and boot and club. Sometimes it worked. Until your adopted mother died and your father retreated into himself. The jutting stones of your borrowed home were fitting symbols. The grotesque carvings and crumbling griffins were your companions. But not now. Walking without direction. It doesn’t matter where you go as long as you go away from that place of torture, that palace of hate.

They called you dark-skinned gypsy, dirty lascar, vagabond, devil. You’ll give them dark, dirt, devil. Cathy wanted a whip. Hindley a fiddle. You’ll give her whip, him fiddle. You took a seat at the end of the hearthstone. Petted a liver-coloured bitch. There was some warmth in the room and it came from an open fire. Flames that licked, peat that steamed, coals that glowed, and wood that hissed.

Hindley called you dog and beat you with an iron bar. Mr Earnshaw tried once more to stop him. He sent Hindley to college, just to get the maniac away. And things picked up for a while. Then you watched your father die, watched the life drain from his eyes, his last breath leave his lips. You knelt at his feet and wept. You held onto his lifeless hand, the skin as brittle as a wren’s shell. Cathy wiped the tears from your eyes. Hindley came back from the funeral with a wife. She was soft in the head and as thin as a whippet. Always coughing her guts up. Things got bad again. Banished from the house, set to work outside, in the pissing wind and whirling rain. You were flogged, locked out, spent your evenings shivering in a corner while that cunt stuffed his face, supping ale and brandy. Eating and drinking, singing and laughing with his slut.

The wind has lulled now and you listen to its hush. You hear a fox scream and an owl cry. The night gathers in pleats of black and blue. The cold rain falls. You teeter on the brink. It would be so easy to tumble and smash your skull on the rocks. Let the life bleed out of the cracks and let the slimy things take you. No one would miss you. Not even you. The only thing that is real is the hardness of the rock and the pestilent air that festers. You could dive head-first onto the granite. Dead in an instant. Released from the teeth of experience.