It was those earliest hours when the day has claws and still belongs to the creatures of tooth and feather and snout.
Soon he knew the steel soil underfoot would soften, and soon too the sky would wheel away its stars of winter.
Once wolves had inhabited these woods. David Hartley was sure of that. The old tales told of these noble animals sighted padding across clodded fields or circling shrinking copses. Stalking the choking carrs. Skulking in the vales. Bear and lynx too; their bones had been found. Deep in cold dark caves their remnants had lain untouched for centuries. Fireside stories told of the night calls of the wolf ensuring the moor was a place to be avoided; their ghosted howls were still said to be heard now by the fearful and lost.
And still now they spoke of wolves in corner snugs and kept them alive in song and paintings, though it had been three centuries since the last great wild dogs had been hunted off this island. Their skulls had been found. Their corpses flayed and pelts rack-stretched. Claws kept as mementos. Teeth scattered in rituals. Alive only in myth and superstition.
What it must have been to have shared this space with them, thought David Hartley. To see a wolf at day-break with hot breath droplets hanging from its matted maw like ruby jewels.
Alerted to his presence, a squirrel leapt from branch to branch. Another behind it.
David Hartley followed the stream to a hidden hollow where there was a fallen log by a clear pool. He knelt and scooped water into his mouth and then he washed his face, neck and hands. He patted his cheeks and brow. Slicked back his hair. Sat.
He closed his eyes and listened to the sound of Bell Hole awakening. He bathed in the shrill birdsong. He listened to the falling leaves. The crackle of insects unseen. The rustling of life.
He thought on William Deighton. He thought on him in this still place as he had always thought on those topics that troubled him. He listened to the sound of the water and the way it sang over the smoothed rocks of flint and grit. The way it danced down through the woods like a child.
In time the day arrived in a crescendo of chatter and warming sun and the problem of William Deighton faded from view until all that remained was a soft orange sensation behind David Hartley’s eyes.
But then he was aware that he was not alone. He felt himself watched. Felt a gaze falling upon him.
David Hartley turned and looked to the trees. To the wall of green. He felt another heartbeat nearby. A heartbeat and blood. Hot blood. Close. The pulse of something living.
There was no movement but that of the silent inner workings of whatever it was that lurked there deep in the green cathedral of limbs and timber and branches and leaves that tilted and turned to the lifting breeze. Bell Hole was his domain.
David Hartley looked through the green wall and as he did something stepped out from the unknown within. It was a stag.
It arrived as if an apparition. No sound or movement heralded it – it was simply there, proud and curious. Alert. Its ears cocked. Nostrils searching for the scent of him – and finding it: strong and sour. The musk of a man dressed in the dirt of the land.
The stag’s eyes were wet dark pools of brackish black water settled in moor hollows. Its young antlers were still in bloom, the bony fuzz set in a base of matted fur and brilliant velvet bone.
Never before had he seen antlers at such close range in day-light – not unless they were attached to a stag skull – scalp-stripped, sun-bleached and mounted on an inn wall for men to hang their hats and crooks from.
He knew that once the whole of old Erringden moor was a deer park whose boundaries took in all of the old farmsteads.
Cragg Vale. Turvin.
Hollin Hey. Stoodley Clough.
Once it was a wooded, managed manorial place to be hunted all the way down to Mytholmroyd hamlet, where a fosse and a border fence met to create the old palisade. Once there were keepers and lodges and venison aplenty for whoever owned the manor some four or five centuries ago, and nothing but grief and punishment for any peasant that might dare to enter the hunting grounds.
The eyes of man and creature met and David Hartley did not move. He stored his breath in his chest and rationed it. He did not blink. The stag read the language of scent written in the air. It noted the message. It too knew that something was close. It searched the woods with its nose a moment longer and then it dipped, snorted and shook its head. It stepped forward.
David Hartley allowed himself the luxury of movement as his eyes glanced down at the creature’s hooves. This tiniest flicker of movement caused the deer to pause again. Sniff at the air again. David Hartley saw that the stag’s hooves were strangely small and elegant, two delicately cloven pivot points perfect in both form and function. They allowed traction and gave the stag poise.
He noticed the dewclaws too, small and useless, and so insignificant as to rarely register even in footprints.
Then he blinked and the deer was gone. Like that. Gone. As if lost in a lightning flash.
He walked to the spot where the deer had stood and he crouched. He studied the soil for footprints but he could not see any footprints, so then he got on his hands and his knees and he carefully scoured the dirt and the wet fallen leaves and the wet moss that held the weight of the fallen sky in them, and he looked more closely but still he could not see the mark of the deer. It left no print.
Sike an seede and sod is my song for theese are what the moore is bilton Sike and seede and sod I say Sike to worter the seede the seede that does growe in the sod and a biddy blasd of the suns rayes to bring up the grass whose tussocks russel thur in a shimrinn bundance These are the things of my song And synge them long and lowd and prowd I shooly will.
Aye sike and seede and sod and the sownd of the breese as it blows throo and the sun risin and the sun setten over it orl And some dayes it feels like sike an seede and sod is just eneuyf.
Butt wayte there is sum thayne ells Sum thayne ellls that does tred along the moors edyge Yes the Stagmen The Stagman dose feel the sike an seede and sod under foot that is to saye under hoofe and on boggy wet days you can follow his run and you can get downe low and put yore ayes to the grownd and see his markings there See his sunken prins there Freshen wet And they are nyethur foot print or hoof hole but sumthynge in between And thur they sit in sod a messayge from this grayte creachur wich has followed mine for all mines lyfe Wached over me Proteckted me Gyded me Warked with me And still he waches now and so too he will be there when im drug up to that gallis pole that awaytes us Heel be thur I no it Waytin o me.
Heel be thir.
Yet still sumtymes I do feer for mine mind here in the prisum sells of yorke cassel.
Too longe it has bean sinse I warkt or werkt the mooer.
It not be rite to cayge a man so.
A man laike me no.
Not rite is that.
No.
It was raining as David Hartley returned to Bell House. It was falling in mist-like swirls; a light, playful rain deceptive in its ability to nevertheless soak to the skin. Soon his trousers stuck to his legs and his leather boots first creaked with damp and then became clodded with clumps of heavy red mud.
As he cut across to the house and avoided the back bogs David Hartley saw the arrival of the men. Men from across the moor. Coiners from all directions. Men up from Mytholmroyd and Cragg Vale old village; men who had taken the back way up Swine Market Lane and past the farm at Stony Royd. Men from over Stannery End and Sowerby Bridge. From Brearley and Boulder Clough.
Men blowing snot from their nostrils, their wet hair pulled back with thick fingers or hanging down in dripping ringlets. Above them a mosaic of crows fell to pieces.
Only those who could receive the message and be up at Bell House in half a day came; those who had got out of the mill or were free from the loom – or those who made enough from the clipped coins to afford the luxury of no longer having to weave a blanket a
week or dig drainage runnels or burn charcoal for a living. True Coiners, they came.
The smell of the men filled Bell House. Turned it tight with the funk of the moorland. Sweet and sharp. A tang of leather and mud and smoke and wood.
Dusted in ash and grime, unused old looms dominated the room and the men crowded in there between them, some standing, their heads dipped and shoulders hunched to mind the crooked beams, others squatting with their damp backs against rough stone walls.
You know why I’ve gathered my best and meanest, said David Hartley when the men had settled down. Because it is clear now that the black devil Deighton is out to ruin us.
Words of recognition ran through the room.
Just last night this man dared to show his face at my door.
He continued:
From this I know two things. Firstly that this exciseman who is content to do the other king’s dirty work for little pay does not fear the Cragg Vale Coiners enough. And secondly this interference cannot be allowed to continue.
He’s a milksop, said Brian Dempsey.
No, said David Hartley. You are wrong. A milksop he is not. This man shows courage in taking us on. Don’t you see that?
But he’s not alone, said William Hartley.
No, said David Hartley. Deighton does not work alone.
I heard tell there is a lawman behind him said Nathan Horsfall. A man of power who has a big house in the new square. A man with friends in that London.
His large frame squeezed into the corner of the room, James Broadbent said nothing. He just watched, nervous by the request for his presence.
And you would be right Nathan Horsfall, said David Hartley. They call him Robert Parker and it seems half the money in Halifax is not enough for him. No bribes can buy this man, for it is not money that drives him or William Deighton to pursue us, but moral superiority. Do you know what that means, James Broadbent?
James Broadbent looked up.
What?
Moral superiority. Do you know what it means?
The eyes of the room turned to James Broadbent.
No I do not.
It means thinks he’s better than us, said David Hartley. This lawman thinks there is only one king worth recognising. But what does this man do for us and our families? What has he done for this valley but help carve it up and sell it off? What have any of them done? Because it is lawmen and money men like this Robert Parker and flunkies like this William Deighton who serve the wealthy bastards who for years now have staked a claim on these moorlands, these woods, these waterfalls. The same rich pheasant-fattened bastards who’ll have us out on our ears when the cotton men come. And they are coming – mark my words. The machines and the mills are coming, but it’ll not be enough for them to have us living in hedgerows and ditches like the cursed Diddakoi of the road. No. They won’t even let us make a penny to put scran in our cupboards. They care nothing for the people of the valley like we do. Every brogger, every butcher, every milliner, every drayman and landlord that has given up their coin has made it back two-fold. We share our gains with our people because they are our people. We do not take our money and build castles to keep them out. We welcome them in for victuals. The young widow forced to scratch a life for herself and her children on two flooded acres of a marshy carr after her husband has fallen face to dirt in the king’s name on some distant battlefield does not scratch alone. She has friendly faces at her back door, food to fill her pantry. Her children will never walk barefoot because they are children of the valley just as the purblind toll keeper should not be affrighted that he is going to be diddled by some passing vagabond because this is our valley and those who come and go do so by our rules. This I have proven through my actions, just as was promised this spring or two since.
David Hartley paused to let his words settle.
The men nodded and muttered in agreement.
Robert Parker and William Deighton won’t be stopped until they see our wives and children starved and naked, and our bodies swinging on Beacon Hill.
Fuck the lawman and fuck them that try to kill our King, said John Tatham. His vocal declaration roused the men further.
It is true, said Jonas Eastwood. Down in town last week Samuel Duckett refused to give his monthly tithe. And Duckett is as hog-like greedy as they come. He’s been got at. Warned. Must have. He is afraid.
I too had a clipped coin refused for ale in town, said James Stansfield. This landlord would not take my guinea – and in front of people too. So this landlord will be fixed. I’ll take his teeth out with my toe cap one of these nights.
And then all the men were talking at once. Their voices overlapped, their words worn and chipped down into vowels uneasy in the mouths of the men like stones. Stones that fell clattering to the stone cottage floor. A cottage on the crest built in a nest of shadows. Shadows that never ceased to stretch. They spoke at once.
I have seen him out there, the bastard William Deighton.
More than once he has watched me go about my business. That man has the eyesight of a hawk.
Clip a coin and fuck the crown.
No chains so strong, no cell so small, no noose so tight to kill us all.
Cross the Coiners and dig your plot.
Valley boys fight and valley boys sing, valley boys fight for none but their king.
Aye. No law but our law.
Above the melee of voices rose one louder than the others. It was that of Absalom Butts, a man usually known for his silence, his expressionless face and cold indifference to the many victims who had felt the force of his fists and feet. Absalom Butts was the man who most in the valley feared above all other Coiners. Very few had resisted his silent persuasions. None had seen him smile.
The moors are ours and the woods are ours he said. And the marshes are ours and the sky is ours and the fire is ours and the forge is ours. The might is ours and the means are ours and the moulds are ours and the metal is ours and the coins are ours and the crags are ours and this grand life in the dark wet world is ours.
It was more words than most of them had heard him speak at any one time. Encouraged and cheered on by the men, Absalom Butts stood and addressed David Hartley.
King David, he said. You have shown me another way. In this short time you have made me rich in mind and heart.
Go on our Absalom, shouted a voice. You tell him.
You have saved this valley from starvation in lean seasons. You have given my life purpose where there was none. Any man that wants to bring you down will have to go through me first.
The men cheered.
I would rather die fighting than live long and prosperous on my knees, he solemnly added.
No law but our law, shouted one of the men.
Cross the Coiners and dig your plot, shouted another.
And these mill men with their new machines, continued Absalom Butts, gaining confidence now. I will smash every one of them. And after that I will break every waterwheel, every spindle. I’ll fill their foundations with rocks. I’ll poison their ponds and burn their horses from fetlock to mane. I’ll fuck their womenfolk and fuck them again. This valley is your valley, King David. And I will protect it from the bastard scheming offcumdens.
Again the men cheered and Absolom Butts was slapped on the back as he returned to squatting on the floor.
You are a loyal man, said David Hartley. I know of none better at splitting and breaking bones.
There was laughter at this.
And your loyalty will be tested because as well as this Deighton and Parker there is a greater threat. And it is closer than you know.
My brother is right, said Isaac Hartley, beside him. Too many times the bastard taxman has known our whereabouts. Too many times we have evaded him as closely as the cut-throat avoids the neck vein. But one day soon we will slip up.
Deighton has extra
senses, chimed John Wilcox. He has extra eyes and ears, does that one. There is something of the stalking animal about him.
That he does, said David Hartley. And those eyes and ears surely belong to one of us.
One of us? said John Wilcox.
There is a turncoat, said Isaac Hartley. William Deighton has a valley man in his pocket – of that much we are certain.
Then the turncoat will die firstest and slowest said Absolom Butts. And by my own hand.
The men nodded.
A rat walks amongst us, said David Hartley. One who would rather take the taxman’s coin than give it back to his own. One who would sell a soul to the hangman’s collection than live as a glorious Turvin Clipper.
Then this bastard will die by midnight, said Brian Dempsey.
Aye said Absolom Butts. Death will be merciful when we are through with him.
I’ll snap his neck like winter kindling, said James Broadbent from the corner.
David Hartley fixed him with a stare and spoke as if to him and him only.
A turncoat will be nothing without a lawman to turn to, he said. It is Deighton who has the power – and Robert Parker more power still. The turncoat is nothing but shit on my shoe. When the power is gone the turncoat will be left alone. We shall smoke him out, even if he sits in this room today. Know this though: William Deighton will be the first to fall.
A man came out of the woods and onto the moor with a pack on his back. Below it a blanket roll contained his tools: a selection of chisels, a bowl gouge, a spindle gouge, a round nose scraper, a skew chisel, a sharpening stone, a drawknife. The handles of an axe, an adze and a coarse saw protruded from one end. A leather strap sat across his chest and his hat was worn askance. He was a bodger.
It was nothing but ill timing that he chose this hour of this day to wander onto Erringden Moor above Cragg Vale. Ill timing and ill fortune. Iller still that as he straightened after catching the breath stolen from his lungs by the arduous incline up to Bell House, his feet slipping once again on the dank carpet of leaves that shifted underfoot like a widow’s rug on a polished floor, he should be met by three black forms blocking the sun before him. The shapes of men. Moor men descending.
The Gallows Pole Page 14