Why don’t you say it a bit louder so’s the Duke Of York can hear you, you shithouse? He’s looking this way.
Isaac Hartley was indeed watching the two men as he helped Grace with the ale. Most knew him to be the more approachable of the brothers and it was regarded that Isaac Hartley always stood a drink and suffered no fools, but he had a dash of humour with it too.
Any one Hartley brother was formidable but together the threesome were feared. Their name alone could cause children to scatter.
Everyone knew of old man Hartley too, as it was their father William Sr. who had rented Bell House up on the moor in the first place, back before his eldest had wrapped up his hammer and tongs and sent himself south to the Black Country down in the middle lands to become a man and learn a trade and much more besides in the forges there.
What the world had taught David Hartley was that life beyond the valley was a lot like life in the valley, and though they had laughed at his way of speaking down there with that fat flat tongue that rolled words around like river stones in the cheeks of the thirsty, he had thrived in the west of Birmingham.
From there David Hartley had brought back to the valley what he had learned some seasons back. Two cold winters had passed now since his return to the Upper Calder Valley and the house there, with a younger wife in tow, and fear in her eyes and a bairn in her belly and one on her back, and a third yet to be conceived, and this plan of his that had taken seed in the arid bed of necessity and desperation and wanting.
Here his enterprise had begun in earnest, and now the men had been summoned and the men sat and the men rested and the men drank. The men exchanged greetings.
William Hailey and Jonas Tilotson and Israel Wilde and Joseph Gelder.
Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Abraham Lumb.
John Tatham and Jonathan Bolton and Peter Barker and William Folds and Isaac Dewhurst.
William Harpur and John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood and Absolom Butts.
James Crabtree and Joseph Hanson and Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Others. All men. Valley born. Valley bred.
Those they called The Coiners.
Returning to the land that birthed me the land that sporned me the land that mayde me Orl I reely wanted to do was wark the hills unherd and breeth gods own good cuntree ayre But one day wandrain this man stopps us and says no No he says No youcannut Dayvid whoah there.
This man sed this is companny land now and I sed this land this land here this land belongs to no men an all men This land belongs to the stag of the stubble an the growse and the fox an the rayvun an the rayn and the hale my frend But this man was no frend becors still the man says thats as maybe but it belongs to the companny now I have it down in riting its legully bindin is that and thurs no cort in the landull judje otherways And I don’t like his demeaner.
So I says stuff yor riting and stuff your legully bindin stuff it rite up your tyte scullery and any ways wots so spaeshel about this land that you reccons is yours and what are your intenshuns with it and whos this companny An he sniffs an he seys its none of your bissness And I says it is my bluddy bissness you bluddy doylem and he seys hows that and I seys because ahm King Daevid of Cragg Vale and if youv not herd of me ask around becors its me and myne that run these hills an they leeve us too it An he seys not for long you dunt And I says how do you reccon that How do you reccon that like.
An he says the companny the companny is running things now and I says what fucken companny you fucken doss cunt.
An he says cotton man cotton And I says what about the fucken cotton and he seys merkingeyesayshun and I says eh what you on about now cumpunny cunt An he says mills and mill wheels an waterways and industry and great bildins like cathydrals bildins like yor tiny hill dwellin sheep fucken mynd cannot imagun So keep your eyes on the horeysunn sunshyne.
And I says are you getting cheeky wirrus now and he goes no King Dayvid of Cragg Vale orl I’m saying is a change is comin and cotton is its making And I says dunt tell me about cotton me and myne have got callerses on ower hands from jennerayshuns of workin the loom you lippy licker of dog dick and he seys the loom is dead And I seys dead An he seys the day of the hand loom is over mass produckshun is cumin wether you lyke it or not aye mass produckshun and organysed laber is what I’m talkin abowt and if youv got any sens about yer yerll embrayce the new ways.
And I says fuck the new ways and fuck the companny and fuck your fucken scut with a rusted nyfe if yor still thinken on telling King David of Cragg Vale wer it is he can or cannit wander you soppybolickt daft doylem fiddler of beests And that was that for a while at leest.
Name your Gods gentlemen.
Out from the back door of Bell House stepped David Hartley.
He brought with him a jar in one hand and an empty wooden ale crate in the other. As he threw the wooden crate down and sat on it the men hushed. A flicker of something crossed his eyes like dark clouds over a full moon. He spoke.
Name your Gods gentlemen, for they are all around you.
His voice was clear. Each word was thickened in his throat and then held in his mouth and sculpted on the way out. Each word was weighted. Valley formed.
Sycamore and silver birch he said. Beech and goat willow. Oak and ash. And before them pine and hazel, aspen and sallow. Alder. Because this is our kingdom of Jórvíkshire and time was the whole island was like this once. It was coast to coast with trees, all the way up to these higher lands of ours. The wildwood they called it. We lived as clans then. Under the trees when the trees were worshipped as Gods. Under the great rustling canopy. Tribal, like. Maybe a few of us still do. It was the way of the land then. You protected you and yours. You still do.
He looked at the men and nodded. He let the words sink in.
Protection was our purpose. Protection from any incomers. That and the providing of food and fire, and seeding your women. You banded together close then and you hunted and you defended and you fought for your corner of England under the great green canopy. You lived proud and you celebrated your fathers that spawned you and honoured your mothers that birthed you; you kept their name alive whatever way you could. You passed it down in the hope that your name would one day be passed down also, so that you too would live on beyond death. Defeating death and cheating death. Life was short and life was hard in the endless woodlands of England.
Like in that song about Robyn of the Hode said one of the men, Jonas Tilotson. Or like yon Yorkshire lad Dicky Turpin.
Isaac Hartley flashed him a look and said: all Dicky Turpin got himself was a broke neck and he was no Yorkshire boy, but David Hartley ignored them both.
And Mother Nature got a look in too, he continued. Never forget her. Because it was Mother Nature that created the Gods we call alder and oak and birch and poplar – and it was she who made the rabbits that sit on your turning spit and the hogs whose backs you’d strip and the cacklers that lay the cackling farts that sizzle in your skillet beside it. It was she who made the moors wild so that men like us could walk across them and pitch up homes and live in silence.
David Hartley paused and let the words hang.
So name your old Gods, lads. Honour them. Live amongst them. And always remember your place. Because England is changing. The wheels of industry turn ever onwards and the trees are falling still. Last week I did chance to meet a man right down there in Cragg Vale who told me that soon this valley is to be invaded. He spoke of chimneys and buildings and waterways and told of work for those that wanted it, but work that pays a pittance and keeps you enslaved to those that make the money. This man – he told me this land around us was soon no longer to be our land but that of those who want to reap and rape and bind those of us whose blood is in the sod. They’re pulling it out from beneath our feet like a widow shaking out her clippy mat. He said he had it in writing. Said it was legally binding.
Mumb
les ran amongst the men.
That’s right, said David Hartley. You’d be minded to care because they’re taking this patch that barely feeds us at it is; the land on which they’ll not let us settle – land that will never be ours so long as there’s boundary markers and excisemen and peppercorn rents. The bastards are coming for us but rest assured that even if they chop down the last tree and pull its stump up blackened and burnt from the soil, and set up new walls to keep us out, one name will live on round these parts. And – yes Jonas Tilotson – like the heroes of your childish ballads, generations will speak the name yet. The name of the man who stood against all that. The man who brought an army. Three words – that’s all. You tell them our Isaac.
King fucking David, he said. David fucking Hartley.
His brother nodded.
David Hartley watched the men for a moment. He noticed that some eyes were on his young wife and then he said: drink well, drink long and deep and any eyes that linger on our lass any longer I’ll scoop out with my thumb and put in the pickling jar with last season’s onions.
At this Joseph Gelder nudged James Broadbent and smirked but James Broadbent ignored him and watched as Grace Hartley passed him a jar and he took it readily for he was thirsty, and even though he had only walked up the Bell Hole woods from Mytholmroyd where others had walked half the length of Calderdale, he welcomed any ale that he hadn’t had to give coins for. Then when she turned and walked away he took a pull and said out of the side of his mouth yes – good and long and hard.
Hartley continued.
Too long now we have been scraping by clipping a coin here and there. Milling the edges and melting them down to make what? An extra coin per thirty? All that work and all that risk for what? One more coin. A coin that’ll get you hung by rope until your neck snaps and your body jerks and don’t they say you soil yourself when you’re dangling from that gallows pole? Your good wives left at home with nothing but the memory of a man who gave his life for a coin with which to buy a loaf an a jar and scratch-all else.
Some of the men made vocal their agreement.
Treason, continued David Hartley. That’s what they call this enterprise. The yellow trade. And that’s why I’ve called you here – to speak of this thing we’ve made our own. This treasonous offence that they say is an affront to the very crown that rules this kingdom. And do you know what I say to that? Fuck the king because you can be sure the king is already fucking you.
There’s only one king, said Isaac Hartley. And it’s this man standing right here.
Another mumble of approval ran through the men. Some nodded and muttered, and scratched their heads and beards. Another yawned.
Organisation. Organisation is what we need. Organisation against the man that wants to bend you over the barrel and pull your breeches down. You think I joke Nathan Horsfall?
No, King David. I was just smirking at the image.
Pity the poor rabbit whose tail is targeted white, said David Hartley. It thinks it goes unnoticed but it sits in the fox’s sight. Do you understand me?
I’m not sure I do, said Nathan Horsfall.
Well take out the spuds you’re growing in your ears and listen to what I’m saying, said David Hartley. If we carry on the way we have – a bit of clipping here and bit of grinding there – we’ll get caught, and if we get caught we’re for the gibbet and the chains. Our flesh will reek the wind. Because up until now we’ve been the rabbits that think they can’t be seen. But we can do better than that. We can be the fox. No – we can be the man that hunts the fox that kills the rabbit. We can rise to glory.
Listen to this man said Isaac Hartley. Listen to your king.
I’m saying it’s time to split the coins proper and make the money that’s ours. It’s time to clip a coin and fuck the crown. It’s time to let the bastards know that the only law is our law. That him that crosses a Coiner digs his plot. That him what crosses the clipper loses his tongue. That valley men fight and valley men sing and valley men bow to none but their king.
At this the men smiled and nodded and drank and toasted, and drank so much that in time the sun itself disappeared in fearful retreat.
Now lissen now for I tell you sum thin importent sum thin secret now When a dug misbyhayves you ponk that dug on its neb and when it misby hayves again you rub its phyz in scat and if still that dug misbyhayves a third tyme then you are doon sum thin rong so then you beet it until sum thin goes in its ays like the last ember of a dyin fyre and the spirit of that creechure will be yors and then yool have no trubble from that dug and that dug will give his lyf for you for now it nose its playce that yule have mayde for it And it will feer you an love you an protec you An that is how you run a ragged crew of desprit men That is how you run a gang that sum corl the Turvin Clippers and that uthers corl the Cragg Vayle Coiners.
The rain fell like the filings of a milled guinea bit onto a folded page of paper. It smattered and sat there in small puddles. The small puddles reached out to one another and bridged the gaps until they decreased in number but grew in size. They filled pot-holes and blocked back tracks and pathways. They turned the sod of the woods to sponge, and down at the valley’s flat base the river rose, its mood darkening.
The three brothers took to the upper fields where there was little shelter but where dug ditches drained away the water to keep the pastures clear for the few who kept cattle.
They had been waiting and watching the warren for half an hour or more when there was finally a muffled cough of excitement and the rabbit came out in an explosion of panic from one of the holes in the nettle patch that they knew had bred generations of rabbits before it.
Coney, said Isaac Hartley.
At another hole the terrier pulled itself out backwards and stood blinking for a moment, wide-eyed and red dusted. Dirt-rimmed. Confused. It was the young dog that had belonged to the Bentley boy; David Hartley had named it Moidore after the Portugese coin that brought good return when clipped anew. The cloying clay coated its maul and clogged its fell-leathered paws. Dirt-red barbs of fur crested its spine and its tail pointed straight up towards to the day-time moon. It was beginning to learn the ways of the hunt.
Isaac Hartley said geeit and William Hartley unhooked the rope looped around the neck of the straining lurcher by his side and David Hartley said nothing.
The lurcher bolted.
Seeing the soft white scut of the rabbit bob across the sloping field the terrier darted after its quarry, but with one stride to the terrier’s three the lurcher had already overtaken it, lean and true like an arrow fired from a newly-strung bow of birch curved by time and river water. Its taut shoulder muscles rippled and a string of gluey phlegm swung from its mouth before sticking to its cheek as it leaned tight into the hill-side and cut off the rabbit as it bounced full tilt to a hole dug in above the worn groove of a holloway that they called Slack’s Lane, a little used run at the back of the sun above the sheer black rocks of Hathershelf Scout.
We’ll have to watch that lot, said William Hartley. Them men’s not to be trusted.
There’s good men amongst them, said Isaac Hartley. Honest men.
Honest men would not be doing what it is that we are doing said William Hartley.
He’s right said David Hartley. Honesty isn’t worth a tinker’s cuss so long as them knows to keep their traps snapped. And fear is the only thing that’ll work on them. Fear and a few good tannings.
They fear you.
William Hartley said this.
Across the field the rabbit had gone to ground but the disturbance of the chase had put two more basking rabbits up and the lurcher quickly shortened the length between itself and the smaller of the pair. The young rabbit found itself caught out in the open. Exposed to predators from ground and sky alike, it was too far from any earthen sanctuary.
It’s us three that makes this what it is, said David Hartley.
Our Father is a tiring man. He doesn’t need to shoulder thirty or forty of the most desperate sods of the north. He’s already burdened.
Burdened with what? said Isaac Hartley.
Burdened with the three most desperate, cut-throat, skulldugging, scallywag barbarian bastard sons of all of them.
At this the younger two brothers laughed.
Turning, the rabbit faltered then flipped and rolled and the lurcher was upon it, then seconds behind it the terrier too, a streamlined blur of flexing young muscle. It clamped its jaw around its neck. The rabbit was much the same size and weight as the terrier but it locked on and lifted it, then shook it furiously. Whipped it until something gave. Across the field the brothers heard the flap and crack of breaking bones and the rabbit give a final desperate squeak before its head hung loose and its gaze froze forever in the aspect of smoke.
At this the dogs changed. Their stances relaxed and the terrier dropped the rabbit before gently nuzzling and licking its fur. It nibbled at it. The lurcher padded off with its tongue lolling in the direction of the other rabbit that it had seen.
William Hartley called it back with a shrill whistle.
Run things right and we’ll be as rich as the fattest lord that bathes himself in goose fat, said Isaac Hartley. What will you spend all your coin on, our David?
Never mind all that, said his brother. Time is plenty for spending. Coin is coin – it keeps a while. Firstly we need to name our best men and keep them close; the rest can know only what it is they need to know and thems the ones we’ll hang on the line if the storm clouds close in. And we need muscle and knuckle to persuade them that might think differently to us. There’s a few folk in this valley – the churchly ones and them that bow to the crown or who think starvation is a virtue – who don’t like it that we’re showing a bit of enterprise. They’d rather see us shackled to the loom or picking pebbles from the coulter’s path than have coin in our pocket and meat in our cold stores.
The Gallows Pole Page 4