Читать книгу Ill Will - Michael Stewart, Michael Stewart - Страница 11

The Man with the Whip

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.’

‘And you’ve no thirst on after all that work?’

She didn’t react or even look at me.

‘I know where there’s a stream nearabouts. And I know where there’s a well.’

She grunted and stuffed a chunk of barley bread into her mouth.

‘I’m William Lee,’ I said.

She nodded without looking up and without offering me her name. This also made me smile. I tried to engage her in conversation but she was having none of it, and when I’d finished my scran I got up and shuck the hay from my breeches.

‘Well, nice to meet you,’ I said. ‘Even though you’ve not much to say for yourself.’

She just nodded.

Young in years but old in temper, I thought and chuckled inwardly. I took myself to my den, where I read some more from the book. I read about the righteous Job, of which I’d heard many times from Joseph. He was fond of quoting from the book and fancied himself as a bit of a Job figure. The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away. He called it the grandest thing ever written. But reading it for myself was a very different experience. I saw Job and God in a different light. I despised Job’s piety, and God’s malevolence. I saw in God a Hindley-like tyrant. God killed Job’s children and he didn’t even have the guts to do it himself. Instead, he got Satan to do it. At least Hindley had the balls to kick me in the face with his own boot.

The next day, while mowing with my scythe, I saw Dick, the farmer’s son, in the field yonder. I had little to do with him, but even so, I had picked up that there was something wayward about him. Sticks had been right about that. I’d had one altercation with him a few days ago, when he had accused me of taking tobacco from his tin. When I pointed out that I didn’t smoke, he had just laughed and said that I could have taken the tobacco to sell to another man.

‘There’s money in shag, we all know that.’ I merely shrugged. But he had squared up to me and said, ‘I don’t like you, William Lee. I don’t like the way you carry off. Every gypsy I’ve ever known has been a liar and a thief.’

I stared into his black eyes but there was no life there.

I’d felt the heat of anger rise in my belly, but Sticks had been standing nearby and had signalled for me to leave it. I’d kept my mouth shut and wandered up to my den. Sticks was right. It wasn’t worth losing my work or my head over. I would just add him to my list. Beneath you and Hindley.

Now here was this Dick fellow, making his way to where we were cutting hay. There was a file of us, grafting. It was late on, and although she’d kept up until now, the girl with the white-blonde hair had got behind. I saw Dick approach her.

‘You need to keep up,’ he said, ‘no place here for stragglers,’ and he pushed her.

‘I’m going as fast as I can,’ she said.

‘Well, it isn’t fast enough,’ he said and pushed her harder. She fell over. Dick laughed.

She stood up and brushed herself off, then she said something to him that I couldn’t make out. We’d all ceased working now and were watching this. Dick stopped laughing and his face went pale. The bones of his skull seemed to protrude more prominently. He was going to say something but seeing he had an audience, he marched off. As he walked past me, I heard him mutter under his breath, ‘I’ll teach her to curse.’ But there was no more incident after that and we worked on throughout the afternoon.

Some of the workers sang songs to pass the time. Saucy and bawdy numbers in the main. Songs about drunken monks and tragic sisters, cruel brothers and comely shepherds’ daughters. I listened to a song about a farmer who, in paying off a compact with the devil, tries to rid himself of a shrewish wife. The man offers his wife gladly. But the woman proves too much for Old Nick and he returns her to the farmer. There was another song about a young woman who gives up her true love for a wealthy landowner. She marries the landowner, who she doesn’t love, and lives an unhappy life. The man she really loves goes off to make his fortune, but perishes in the wilderness. At last the girl realises she needs to be with her sweetheart and she goes off to find him. Instead she finds his corpse. I wondered when you would come to your senses, Cathy, and realise what a fool you’d been.

Although many of these songs were known to the other workers and through repetition of their verses became known to me, I did not join in. I had a voice that was hardly made for talking let alone singing. But listening to them made the work more bearable and I was thankful for them. Afterwards we downed tools and scoffed supper. I took hold of a flask of water and tucked it inside my coat, saving it for later. It was the end of the seventh week and I now had three pounds and ten shillings saved. I was almost there and was thinking about my departure and how this flask would come in useful for the journey. Just one more week, I said to myself. I would make my way west. To Manchester town.

When the pipes and cards came out, I took my leave. I walked across the fields towards the wooded area where my bag of pennies was hidden. I groped in the hollow until I retrieved it. I took out the pennies from that evening’s sale and put them with the others. I counted up the new total. Three pound and eleven shillings. In fact, I could be on the road in just five more days. I’d been spending quite a lot of time there of an evening, listening to the evensong of titmouse, finch and warbler, catching sight of an owl from time to time, either at its plucking place or roosting in the trees. I was struck by its eyes, which were made of the same cold grey glass as those of the girl with the pale blonde hair. The haymaking was nearly over. Just the top field now left to reap. The farmer had talked of further work, bringing in the harvest, but I had almost saved up my pennies now and was nearly ready for the road. The big town beckoned.

There was no showing from the owl, nor was there much evensong to soothe my ears, but the night still felt young and I was not tired. Nor was I in the mood for my usual book-learning. So I walked through the wood and onto the moor, past my makeshift den. The ground became tussocked and sopping. There were paths made by rabbits and foxes across the morass. I thought back to our moor, patterned with these types of paths. Some days we would follow them, me and you, Cathy, and they would stop dead. We used to say that those paths led to another place, beyond the physical world. A witching place from where you drew your magic. Past cottages, barns and turbary roads, turf and peat cuts healing over like scabs. Packhorse tracks, homesteads, landholdings. When all signs of human life vanished, that’s where we would stop and sit. Sometimes we’d watch fox cubs play or hares box. Other times, we’d lie back and look at the paintings in the sky that were far superior to those done by human hand and brush, for they were ever-changing from one thing to another. I’d see a castle, but you’d see a dragon’s eye. I would see the branch of a tree stretch into a withered arm, which would change again into a fish, then a bear. I’d point out the shape and try and get you to see what I could see, but you’d already spotted another thing of wonder and you were pointing it out to me: a rat, a bat, a frog, a fox.

The sun was slipping down past the horizon and the sky was closing in. The grass had given way to heather and I could hear the grouse croak like old crones cackling. Wet green moss grew like a soft woollen blanket, leggy heather, bracken, moss and sedge. Tangled sphagnum. Cotton-grass and bilberry. It was a moor like our moor where we used to watch the hatching of the peewit, whaap and sea pie. I remembered the moor as the place we had lived in and by. To run away to the moor in the morning and remain there all day. The moor was our school and our refuge. It was a place of solace and a place of wonder. Finding the gamekeeper’s heap of dead crows, or his gibbet of weasels. Once we came across a stoat trap, with a stoat still in it, miraculously unharmed, and we let it go, watching it scurry through the grass. A morning chorus of uncountable larks, uncountable beauty. Watching glead soar and hawks hover. In winter, snowdrifts deep enough to blanket the bog. In summer, the white tufts of cotton-grass waving over the same marsh. Yellow gorse, red poppies, purple heather. Every moss, every flower, every tint and form, we two noted and enjoyed. Even the smallest waterfall or heather-stand was a world of joy. The moors were an eternity where life was boundless and our bliss was endless.

No punishment could rob us of those moments. No braying deterred us. You plucked some white stalks of gorse and said they were bones. Our bones, whitened by the weather. We watched a puttock wheel in the mist and listened to the cackling moorcock flap through redding heather.

I felt such a strong yearning for those days, when it was just you and me and the moor, Cathy, that I felt it as a physical pain. Why had you let Edgar come between us? What did he have that money couldn’t buy? I ached for you. It was a sharp pang in the middle of my breast. Sometimes the longing got so bad that I could hardly breathe. It felt as though a viper was coiled around my heart, squeezing the life out of me. And I couldn’t unclasp it. I was suffocating. I was drowning. I was choking. All I wanted in the world was you. Now you had left me, abandoned me, and for what? Gold and silver and trinkets that meant nothing to you. I wanted to scream out: No, please, don’t leave me. I cannot live without you. I wanted to tear myself in two. I lay on the ground, felt the tears sting and let the acrid water drip from my eyes.

It was fully dark when I eventually came around. I made my way back to the farm by moonlight, dropping down from the moor on the other side. As I scuttled along the path in the silver light of the moon and the stars, I heard a distinct screaming. Not the screaming a vixen sometimes makes when she calls her mate or the long harsh screaming of a barn owl, but another sound. I thought for a moment that it was the screaming of a wild cat.

I stopped and cocked my head, listening more intently. As I did, I realised that the sound could only be one thing: the piercing scream of a person in pain. I followed it and found myself outside the building where the hay was stored. There was candlelight leaking from a crack in the door. I placed my eye there and saw a peculiar scene. The girl with the white-blonde hair and grey eyes was standing in the middle of the room. There were two men: one was the farmer’s son, Dick Taylor, the other I did not recognise. He was stocky with a thick mop of yellow hair, like a corn rig. The farmer’s son had hold of the girl with one arm, and his other hand was over her mouth. The man with yellow hair was uncoiling a length of rope. He took out an axe and I saw the metal blade glint in the light of the tallow candle. He chopped two lengths of rope. The axe cut through the thick rope as though it were a single blade of grass. He took one length and tied it to a wooden pillar, then took hold of one of the girl’s arms. He tied the rope firm around her wrist. Then he took the second length and tied her other wrist to a wooden post on the far side of her. I could see the panic in the girl’s eyes.

When she was firmly tied, the man who had hold of her stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth and tied another around her face, preventing her from screaming out. The man with yellow hair went to the back of the barn. I couldn’t see what he was doing but when he came back he had a black leather bull whip in one hand. The farmer’s son took out a knife and used it to cut the girl’s frock. He then tore it so that the entire length of her back was exposed. Then the man with yellow hair uncoiled the whip and cracked the air. He smiled at the farmer’s son.

‘Give it to me,’ Dick Taylor said.

‘Spoilsport.’

The man with yellow hair handed over the whip to the farmer’s son. The farmer’s son put the knife on the ground. He cracked the whip himself a few times and smiled. Then he walked up to the girl, turned around and counted his strides back. On the sixth stride he stopped and turned to face her. He stood quite still for a moment, then cracked the whip across the girl’s flesh. She flinched in pain and her eyes bulged. Her skin split where the point of the whip sliced at the flesh and blood leaked out. I saw it pour from the wound and felt a heat rise within. I thought about Hindley and the whip he had used on me. I knew how it could cut through flesh and I felt the girl’s pain as if it were my own. And then a kind of mania spiralled in my head. My thoughts were travelling upwards like a puttock in the sun, to be replaced by a cold, hard, black feeling.

I shouldered the door and burst through. Both men turned around to face me. I picked up the axe from the ground and ran at the farmer’s son, who was still clutching the whip. He pulled the whip back and tried to crack it across my face, but as he did I lunged at him with the axe, grabbed for the whip, and chopped his hand clean off at the wrist. He screamed and blood gushed from the wound. I went for the other man but before I could get hold of him he ran out of the barn, closely followed by the bleeding farmer’s son. Then I was on my own with the girl. The severed hand was on the ground on top of some straw, twitching. It was still clutching the whip. I untied the girl and removed the handkerchiefs from her face and mouth.

‘Are you hurt bad?’ I asked.

She was standing quite still, staring at me impassively.

‘I’ve had worse,’ she said.

‘Why were those men whipping you?’

‘They said I’m a witch.’

‘Why?’

‘They just did.’

‘They must have reasons?’

‘People talk through me.’

‘What people?’

‘Dead people.’

‘Then you are a witch.’

I took the flask of water from inside my coat and handed it to her.

‘Here, drink this.’

She pulled out the cork and supped from it.

‘Why did you stop them?’

‘I don’t like whips.’

She handed the flask back.

‘We can’t stay here,’ she said. ‘They’ll come back. With more. What you did – it will not go unpunished.’

‘Come,’ I said. ‘I know a place we can hide till dawn. Then we can head over the moors, away from this town.’

I cleaned the blade of the axe, wrapped it in a coarse rag, and tucked it down the back of my breeches. I found the knife further on and stashed that in my surtout.

‘Where are you heading?’

‘West.’

‘Can I come?’

‘You can come as far as you need to get away from those men. But no further.’

The last thing I needed was a travelling companion to slow me down.

I took her hand and we walked out of the barn. I could hear some commotion in the distance. Then I heard voices.

‘It’s this way!’ someone shouted.

They were coming for us already. I held onto the girl’s hand harder and together we ran up the lane and into the wood. I led us through a thicket and over brambles until we came to a tree that we could easily climb. It was close to the elm where I stashed my pennies. I reached for the nearest branch and used it to steady me as I wedged my foot into a nook. I levered myself up into the tree, then pulled the girl close to where I was crouched. I held her tight and told her to shush. I heard voices and the snapping of twigs. We were being followed by a mob armed with torches, pitchforks, scythes, knives and pickaxe handles. I could see their silhouettes and the orange flames. The men searched the wood.

‘Must be here somewhere,’ someone said. ‘Can’t have got far.’

‘I’ll lynch the pair of them.’

‘Watch out. He’s got an axe.’

Three men approached our tree. I could make out the tops of their heads from where I was crouched. One was the man with yellow hair. He leaned against the trunk immediately below us. I held my breath and put my hand over the girl’s mouth. She was rigid with fear. I could feel her heart beat against my belly. I clung onto her. The men were panting.

‘Stop a minute, I need to get my breath.’

‘Which way?’ the yellow-haired man said.

‘They must be here somewhere.’

‘Is Dick all right?’

‘I don’t know,’ the yellow-haired man said. ‘He’s lost a hand.’

‘They’ll lose more than a hand when I get hold of them,’ another said. I recognised the voice: it was the farmer, Dan Taylor. ‘No one does that to my son and lives to tell the tale.’

‘Might have climbed a tree.’

‘Lift that torch up.’

A man came over to where we stood, torch in hand. My surtout was a dark brown colour and the girl was tucked inside. I ducked my head behind a branch as the light from the torch came closer. As they raised it I held my breath again.

‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Lift it higher.’

I could feel the girl’s heartbeat quicken. I could feel beads of sweat trickle down my back.

‘What’s that?’

‘Where?’

‘Those are eyes.’

I clenched my eyes closed. I stayed as still as a statue.

‘There. See?’

‘It’s only an owl, you fool.’

‘I thought for a moment . . .’

‘Ha!’

‘You’ve got to admit, the girl’s eyes are a bit like that.’

‘Come on, they must be further in.’

The men went deeper into the forest. I waited until the lights from their torches diminished and the night was black again, and took a deep breath. Thank God for my friend the owl, who had returned to the wood at just the right time. I whispered to the girl, ‘Come on, let’s get out of here.’

We climbed down. I’d been tensing every muscle of my body and only now was I aware of it. I retrieved the sack of coins from the hollow in the tree and I took the girl to the makeshift cave. There was just a sliver of moon to guide us, obscured by mist. I put the bag of coins in my pocket.

As my heartbeat slowed, the reality of the situation struck me, and I kicked myself. I was still nine shillings short of my target. Why had I acted so rashly? For a girl I barely knew? Now I had an angry mob baying for my blood.

‘What’s your name?’ I said in the dark.

‘Emily. What’s yours?’

‘I told you the other night: William Lee.’

‘What do we do now?’

‘Get the fuck out of here.’

The moon was cloaked by cloud and the sky was black. Further protection, I thought. Their torches would burn out soon, and they wouldn’t be able to see anything without them. We managed to find our way to the cave, stumbling here and there as we did. I reckoned that we were safe here until dawn. It was far enough from the farm, and they’d never find us in the dark, even with torches, as they wouldn’t think to look around these parts. The cave was in a steep dip and well hidden. I got a fire going, knowing that it couldn’t be seen from any angle. Even so, I burned the flaights rather than the woodpile, as they burned with a lower flame. I passed her the flask again.

‘Here, drink.’

‘Have you got anything to eat?’

‘You’ll have to wait till morning.’

‘I’m starving.’

‘You’ll last. Let me have a look at the wound.’

She turned her back to me and I examined it in the light of the fire. It had ripped deep into her flesh. The wound would heal but it might get infected. I wondered if it needed stitching. It was too dark for me to make a poultice but I knew where there were some soothing herbs and I’d fix her a remedy in the morning. She was shivering. I gave her the shirt off my back. One of Hindley’s hand-me-downs.

‘Here, put this on.’

She took hold of it as though it were something dead and festering.

‘It fucking stinks.’

‘Put it on.’

She did. It drowned her but I figured it would keep her warm. Her chest was as flat as an oatcake. I thought about your chest at her age, already budding with womanhood. I put my rough surtout on, itching from the coarse stitching. I felt it scratch at my shoulders.

‘You could show some gratitude,’ I said.

‘Eh?’

‘You know, such as, thanks, William.’

‘What for? A stinking shirt?’

‘I saved you from a braying back there. Perhaps worse.’

I waited for a response but there was none. I watched the flaights glow in the fire, giving off hardly any flame.

‘We’ll be safe here for now, but we’ll have to be on our way first thing. Get your head down. You need to sleep.’

‘Do you think that man will die?’ she said.

‘Which man?’

I don’t know why I asked because I knew full well which man she was talking about.

‘The man whose hand you cut off. The farmer’s son. Dick.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I hope so,’ she said. ‘I hope he bleeds to death. My only regret is that I won’t be there to watch.’

I hoped so too, Cathy. I took the blanket and wrapped it around her shoulders.

‘Go to sleep.’

‘Where you heading?’

‘I told you: west.’

‘Why?’

‘That’s my business.’

‘I’ve never been west. Been east lots of times. York mostly. And south. Went to London with my dad. They had a big fire there, you know, a hundred years ago. Burned most of it down. My dad told me all about it. Said it was started when a baker forgot to put out his oven. Took them forty years to build it back again.’

She chattered away for some time. She reminded me of you at that age. Full of mischief and as nosey as the devil.

‘What did you say to Dick to make him snap?’

‘He’s heard rumours, that’s all.’

‘I meant in the field, when you were cutting hay.’

‘I can’t recollect exactly. He was having a dig. Fucking cunt.’

‘Who taught you to curse?’ I said.

‘No one taught me nothing. I’ll say what I fucking well like.’

I was surprised to hear such flaysome speech from one so young, but not at all offended. In fact, it amused me. It had always been me with the filthy tongue. I remembered Nelly saying she’d never heard such blaspheming and Joseph saying that he’d scrub my mouth with lye. Now I had some competition.

Eventually she lay back and closed her eyes. I watched the light from the fire flicker across her face. Less than a minute later I could hear her breathing deepen with sleep. How innocent she looked in slumber. I remembered watching your sleeping face, for hours, mesmerised. How innocent your face had looked as well, a long time before Edgar changed you for the worse. The fire was nearly out and I stared into the red embers. As I did I saw the girl’s blood. I saw the glinting bit of the axe spotted with gouts of red. I felt the bite of the axe through Dick’s thick wrist. Clean steel. Wet red blood. I saw Dick’s arm without its hand. I saw the blood pump from the wound. Had I killed a man? I wondered. It was only what he deserved. I wouldn’t be losing any sleep over it. I took the remaining blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. I lay back and listened to Emily snore. Whether I’d killed the man or not, the act of violence had felt pure, and in the moment of it something had released itself within me, the way the wind blows the stones clean.