Ill Will

Then the brown one flew up, making a piercing squawk, striking out with his spurs. The black one retaliated by jumping over his opponent. They turned to face each other again. There was a stand-off before the birds squared up once more, strutting and sticking their chests out, clucking and squawking. A flapping of wings and the birds flew up. The black one was on the back of the brown, but then the brown bird flipped over and the table was turned. More strutting, then they squawked and pecked some. They started to spar more aggressively and it was hard to follow the action. There was screeching and blood. Feathers and dust. I couldn’t make out the details. The men cheered on.

I noticed Dick Taylor, standing apart from the men, not joining in or cheering, but smiling inwardly. His black eyes seemed blacker in his red face. Unlike the other men, his pleasure didn’t seem to come from the game itself. His joy was derived from the suffering of others. After a time, the commotion was over but I couldn’t tell who had won in the chaos and confusion. Both birds seemed to be bleeding badly. Neither was the victor. Dick was still smiling as money changed hands, the smile only a skull makes from the grave. I realised it was a different kind of battle I wanted with Hindley. Where the scars are worn on the inside. Whoever the loser and whoever the victor, their cuts would heal in time and they would be ready to fight again. But I didn’t just want Hindley dubbed, I wanted to watch his very spirit crushed.

With the exception of the red-skinned Dick, and the politically minded Sticks, the farm labourers were a simple enough bunch of men. As long as they had work during the day, ale and bread at night, card games and somewhere to lig down, they seemed agreeable. We all slept together in the barn, with a chaumin dish burning flaights. The arrangement being not that much more than I’d found in the hog barn, but I couldn’t really complain. It was dry and it was warm. We ate together in the kitchen in the morning. Cages hung from the ceiling beams with songbirds trapped inside. A blackbird, a nightingale and a throstle. An oak chest, a chest of drawers, a long table that accommodated us all around it, and chairs for us to sit on. The floor and tops were strewn with bowls and tins, jugs and mugs, syrup tins and porridge thibles. In the back kitchen the food was stored, beer brewed and oatcakes baked. The farmer’s wife was helped out by Mary, the peevish wife of Dick.

I decided I would stay here for a while. The work suited me and I enjoyed the company of this Sticks character. Or at least he didn’t lock me in with the beasts or take a whip to me. I kept my head down, sold my ale rations to the other men, and saved my pennies. I was biding my time until I had enough bunce to move on to Manchester town, maybe even Liverpool. I would save four pounds. That seemed a sum that would keep me from destitution and set me up wherever I found work next. I calculated that I could be back on the road again in eight weeks, if I kept clean.

We worked all week on the wall and by the Sunday it was finished. We stood back and admired our work. The wall was good and strong. No wind and no beast would break it. I looked around at the landscape all around me. Meadow, pasture and field enclosed by stone walls and beyond that moorland. Walls that reached up steep cloughs and bridged over fast-flowing becks. Walls that marked who owned what and marred the land they squatted upon.

It was the end of the first week and the farmer insisted that I accompany him to church. As you know, Cathy, I am no lover of the chapel, but it was easier to keep the peace. He loaded up a coach with the members of his family and me and Jethro and a few others followed on foot. Sticks refused to accompany us, saying that he could worship his God any place he liked. He didn’t need churches. When we got to the place of worship, we were expected to walk up the church and bow to the parson. The squire and other parish notables sat in state in the centre of the aisle and erected a curtain around their peers to hide them from the vulgar gaze of the likes of me and Jethro and the other men. The minister talked of virtue and charity. But I had neither virtue or charity, just bile and contempt. God was not my friend. I sought only the company of the devil. Indeed, I had much in common with him, for had he not been cast out of heaven and was he not now wandering the earth in search of his revenge?

Days went by, then another week. I had saved a full pound as I’d planned to do and was a quarter to my goal. There were more walls to build and we worked steadily every day, taking it in turns, using hammer, wedge and chisel to break stones in the morning, then hand and eye to build the wall in the afternoon. The next day, we’d swap it around. It helped to break up the monotony of the job. I mostly partnered with Sticks and we grafted with me listening and him talking. His conversation ranged from the political to the personal within the same breath.

‘Have you heard of the tithe awards, laa?’

‘What’s that?’

‘A tenth of produce given to the rector of the land. One pig in ten, one egg in ten, one cow in ten. But the mill dun’t have to give a tenth of their produce. What do you think about that then?’

I shrugged.

‘I tell yer, it’s unfair is what it is.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘We’ve got to fight for a fairer system, laa. No one is going to make the world fairer, only us. By hard graft. You’ve got to fight for everything you get in this life. Even love. My first love was Mary. Fourteen years of age. I was seventeen. What a beauty. Like a painting. At the very first sight I was taken, I remember it like this morning. I had a feeling so strong for her that I forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I just wanted to be with her all day, morning, afternoon and evening. As soon as I’d finished my work I’d be there, like a dog. It was just like in the songs, when a temptress puts a spell on a man.’

Oh, I knew that feeling all right, Cathy.

The wall-building was slow but satisfying work. I liked holding the stones in my hands, turning them over. I liked their weight and hardness. Something that was solid and dependable. And it was good to stand back at the end of the day and look over what we’d achieved.

When the wall was done there was more work for me. Dan had stable work I could do and to which I was accustomed, and plough work to which I was not but soon became so. Every morning I rose before four of the clock and would go into the stable. There I would cleanse the stable, groom the horses, feed them, then prepare my tackle. I would breakfast between six of the clock and half past the clock. Then plough until three. I took half an hour for dinner, attended to the horses until I don’t know what hour, when I would return for supper. After supper, for extra bunce, I would either sit by the fire to mend the shoes of the farmer’s family or beat and knock hemp or flax, or grind malt on the quern, pick candle rushes, or whatever the farmer bade me do until eight of the clock. Then I would attend to the cattle. There was not much time for leisure, but the pennies were piling up and I kept a bag of them hidden in the woods in the hollowed-out trunk of an elm.

The other workers began and ended each day by thanking God, but I would do no such thing. And so this became my routine for the next few weeks. The work was hard but I grew strong and my thoughts turned again to my plan. I now had two pounds. I was halfway there. Perhaps in Manchester I could set myself up and be my own master. Every night I would wander to the hollow and count my pennies. Once I had counted them, I would pile them all carefully back into the bag and hide it in the hollow as a squirrel does an acorn. It was a disturbed night in the barn with the other labourers, as some of them snored or else talked in their sleep. When slumber did visit me I dreamed about you. Sometimes I would wake with you on top of me, but when I reached out to touch your skin you turned into air. In another dream, I came into your chamber and you were there in bed with Edgar and he was leering at me. Other times I’d dream I was with Hindley, with my hands around his throat, squeezing the life out of him, and I would wake with a jolt and the disappointment of an empty grasp.

I would lie on my back, trying to block out noxious smells and the noisy racket, filling my head with plans of revenge. Yes, I would make my fortune in Manchester or Liverpool, but at some point in the future, I intended to return to you, an improved gentleman. I remembered the adage of the hare and the tortoise. I would take my time. I would savour my vengeance. I would linger as it lied.

With this in mind, one day I got into conversation with Sticks and asked him what I could do to improve my situation.

‘You need to read and write, laa.’

‘I know my alphabet,’ I said.

‘That’s a start. But you look around you at those who can read and write and those that can’t. Every labourer here is illiterate, me excepted. Do you think the squire is illiterate? Do you think the parson is? Or the doctor or the lawyer or the judge?’

‘So why do you choose the life of a farm labourer if you can read and write?’

‘Like I’ve said to you before, laa. There’s them that’s running to something, and them that’s running away.’

‘Which one are you?’

‘No matter, laa, no matter. Look, you want to improve your station in life then you start with your letters and your words. Everything comes from that.’

Sticks was right: if I were to gain dominion over Hindley’s mind and over his estate, and also gain your true respect and be a worthy adversary to Edgar, I would have to go beyond the rudimentary lessons you taught.

‘So how would I go about it then?’ I said.

‘I tell you what, laa, there’s a Sunday school that’s been set up in the village by the Methodists there. Been going a few years now, and it’s not just for bairns.’

Sure enough, when I went into the village the following Sunday I was informed that there was indeed a school for youths of both sexes, from fourteen to twenty-one years of age, and that it was in a commodious room at number four Sheppard Street. I attended one of the sessions. There were about twenty pupils sitting on the floor as there were no chairs. Most of them looked to be farm labourers. The teacher was a Methodist called George, simply dressed in black with a white silk scarf. His skin was pale and his hair was short and parted on one side. He copied out some passage from the bible in neat handwriting, using chalk and a slate, and said it was our duty to learn to read it for ourselves. He turned to us and picked up a bible. He held it aloft.

‘God gave you eyes and a brain. This book is not just for priests and nobility, it is for you and your kin, and it’s your duty to read the truth within.’

He called us ‘children of wrath’. He chalked up the letters of the alphabet on the board and we had to join in as he sang them out. It was a joyless and repetitive experience. I tallied that the classroom was not for me. I tried to take instruction but something in my head resisted. I was familiar with the alphabet in any case and would as much be able to self-learn given a book or two and some time. I went on three or four separate occasions and was by then further on with my learning but not sufficient as I’d hoped. When George was taken up with tutoring one morning, I took hold of one of the bibles in the room and secreted it inside my surtout. I knew its stories well from Joseph’s sermons, and figured this would help me to sightread. I waited for the lesson to come to an end, then walked out of the school bidding George good day and saying that I would see him the following Sunday, even though I had no intention of going to the school ever again.

So, the next Sunday, after telling the farmer and his wife that I was off to school, I walked up and onto the moor and, after some searching, I found a shallow cave where I could self-school. It was a good spot, a long way from any path, and well hidden. I spent every spare hour I had there. When the workers were playing cards and drinking ale, I would sit with my book. I brought blankets and made the space comfortable. I found a flint and steel in one of the barns, collected kindling and wood, filched a few flaights from the lower barn, and there I’d stay, with a fire to keep me warm, nicely sheltered. Once or twice I even spent the night there, waking at dawn and sneaking back into the barn while the others were still sleeping, joining the rest of the labourers without anyone the wiser. But mostly I studied. It was hard-going to begin with. I opened the book on the first page and commenced my learning. The first word was easy. I knew the sound of ‘I’ and ‘n’ and could put them together. ‘The’ I also knew. The third word was my first challenge, but by saying it aloud in stages, I got there. First ‘beg’ then ‘inn’ then ‘ing’: ‘beginning’. Many hours those first few pages took me and I was glad I had no company to hear my clumsy efforts. A Hindley or a Joseph would soon have made me regret my efforts, sure enough.

It was all God said this and God said that. And God made this and God made that. I always liked the story of the Garden of Eden. And I was pleased when I got that far. The story was familiar to me but it was good to reacquaint myself with its lesson. Though it was not the orthodox one. God lied to Adam and Eve. He said that if they ate the forbidden fruit then they would die. But the fruit was not poisonous and they did not die. In any case, God had made the tree and made the fruit. Then the serpent came along and talked to Eve. But the serpent did not lie because he said that if they ate the fruit they would know good and evil and the snake was right. They did learn good and evil when they ate the fruit. God lied. The devil told the truth. When they were cast out of Eden, I thought that this was for the best. Who would want to stay in Eden under the authority of a tyrant? I was on the side of the snake. For wasn’t the snake also a child of heaven?

I recalled that day when we clambered down Duke Top, through the wooded clough past Cold Knoll, resting in the heather near Lower Slack.

‘What’s that?’ you whispered.

I didn’t see it at first, so well hidden was it in the undergrowth, but as my eyes adjusted, I saw it, a viper’s nest, the mother with her babies underneath her belly. They were all curled around each other for warmth. The mother bobbed her head and flicked her tongue. She saw us watching her and coiled protectively around her brood. We sat and watched, as stiff as rocks, not wanting to disturb the scene. We hardly even dared to breathe. At last we crept away, leaving them alone again. There was something majestic about that creature and we had both been bewitched by her finery.

And I read of Cain and Abel, of Cain slaying Abel, and I realised that Cain had acted in haste and could have punished his brother much worse by not killing him. In this way Abel escaped his true punishment. I was determined that Hindley would not escape his. On I read, it getting easier verse by verse and chapter by chapter. So that by the time I got to Exodus my reading was accomplished. I read all the culinary advice God offered Moses. I read the Lord’s commandments and vowed to disobey them all: I would steal, I would bear false witness, I would covet my neighbour’s oxen, and I would kill if I felt like it. But better to kill a man’s spirit, to crush it entirely, while saving his flesh for the devil.

The Man with the Whip (#ulink_47ba276c-fed1-55e1-84bd-5e11c34bba65)

One morning towards the end of August, after I had finished my work in the stable, the farmer approached with a scythe and said he needed me to do some different work.

‘No time to stand there idle, lad. The hay needs cutting. I need to gather as many hands together in yonder hayfield.’

He handed me the tool. I walked up to the hayfield where a small gathering of farm workers loitered. Men and women and children. We waited for Dan’s instructions, then we got to work. We grafted all day, me in shirtsleeves, swinging the scythe so that it cut the stalks, then catching up armfuls of moist, reeking grass, and tossing it out to the four winds. Each swathe of cut grass was shaken out with a fork, then turned and turned until it was as dry as a bone. From dawn till dusk, a file of servants and hirelings toiled in the field. Some of these hirelings were no older than bairns.

There was a girl working beside me, with very pale blonde hair and striking grey eyes. She couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years of age and there were no signs yet of comeliness. She was dressed in a simple white frock and her feet were bare. She was surrounded by people and yet seemed all alone in that field. Like there was an invisible wall all around her. She looked at no one and spoke to no one. She grafted but never seemed to toil. When all the hay was cut, we gathered it in stacks, ready to be carted to the top barn. At the end of the day we went down into the yard and found places to sit, while the farmer’s wife served barley bread, cheese and ham, and the farmer rolled out three barrels of ale.

‘Will you partake?’ he asked the girl with the white-blonde hair, who was sitting on a bale of hay, eating her bread and cheese on her own.

‘I will not,’ she said, without looking up at the farmer.

‘Please yourself,’ the farmer said and went to the next worker.

This made me smile. I went over to her and sat at the end of the bale.

‘Not a disciple of ale then, are we?’

‘I don’t mind.’