The Gallows Pole

by Benjamin Myers

  Yes, the gaoler said breezily. Hundreds before and hundreds more to come.

  Then I hope their crimes will be worthwhile ones.

  Were yours?

  David Hartley looked at the residents of York. They were town people, not country folk. Not valley faces. Yet still they had turned out to bid him goodbye. All knew his name, his story. They had heard of the gang known as both the Cragg Vale Coiners and the Turvin Clippers. They had eyes, they had newspapers. They had read of the yellow trade. They had surely read of the murder of William Deighton too, and most of them at least knew it wasn’t his finger on the trigger or his boot on the exciseman’s face, even if the devil deserved it. They knew too how most of their wealth had been given away and those coins – his coins – had fed the starving of the Calder Valley for over two years; no widow or child or old-timer without work was left wanting. They had been clothed and fed and given hope, and that was more than any landowner or dignitary or law-maker or mill-owner had done. It was more too than the King of England himself had offered.

  David Hartley turned to the gaoler. He squinted at him even though their heads were only a foot apart.

  I don’t know your name, he said. Neither do any of these people, of which there are many thousands – not mere hundreds. Thousands. More people than I ever did see gathered in one place.

  Now it was the gaoler who was puzzled.

  So?

  So they all know my name, cunt. They will carry it on their tongues for their rest of their lives and then their children will carry it too. And their children’s children will one day talk of the day their grandparents saw David Hartley paraded through the streets of the city like a king.

  You leave behind a wife.

  David Hartley inched closer to the gaoler.

  Do not speak of my wife at this time, he said, then he added: you will leave behind nothing. You are naught but a key-turner. Your life has no meaning whereas mine has been one of enterprise and greatness and I would sooner bow out now with my name planted in the ground of my Jórvíkshire and left to grow there for centuries than be nothing more than two words scratched onto a headstone that casts a shadow over a lonely weeded plot. That surely is the destiny of you, brother – and all the other men who choose authority over freedom. You, my friend, will die old and worthless in a pool of piss and shit while I will be young and strong and handsome forever. Now shut your flapping mouth and let me have my moment. I’ve still got enough vinegar in my piss to kick the living fuck right out of you.

  Did I say lassed confayshun becors eyell be a Dutchman if you thinke King David Heartly is going to whittle when the hangmans got his neckweed around his scrag Hell no any learnit man nose a confayshun is what a man maykes when rong it is that he has done Confayshun is when he wants to make his pease with God and is seeking penans for them sins that he has cermitted And I tell you now with hand on both hart and borls it is no sin I have cermitted except those that any man cermitts over the cors of his lifetime.

  Dippin my bill dippin my wick and slakin my bacon on occashun and breakun some bones and putting the feer in men onlee as and when nessassuree Thees are my crimes Maybe some blastfeemin But steelin from the needy or the hurten of chillum or the beatin of wimmen No none of this did I do My crimes were agaynst only those who could afford to lose a little.

  So when it is they leed me from this sell and out into the sitty where it is the fowke will gather and whisper to ther nippers Looker its King David its King Dayvid of the Crag Vayle Coiners King of the Turvin Clippers lookit that man and remember his face see how he warks with dignutty and pryde becors that is a man who fed his famlee and the famlees of others that is a man who lucked after menny that is a man of the people a man who can wark with his headup That is a man who brort magic to the valley of the Calder people Who brort magic to England Becors that man is the troo king of Jorvikshyre Thass what theyull say and I will no I have only dun my bestest.

  There are thynges I will miss when I’m gone like a nice jugg of stingo and Grayces throddy boddee and the smiles of my children and a thick slice of greesy dock pudden fresh from a wite hot skillet but the boys in here dun give me a rite gud send off it fair brung a tear to my peepers and anyroad when yor gone yor gone so whats to miss anyway.

  Of cors therll be those hool be bendin ther elbows and raisin a cup and glad to see me go but these are not my lot No they have never nown suffrin and hunger and this is why I rite these werds down for you now becors historee is only ever remembud by the powerfull and the welthy the booke lerners in the big howses with thur fancy kwills and ink blotters And to these I say no No I say to these I say this is my story not my confeshun My story as I sor it These are not the werds of a man turned sower with regret and if I had another chance Id do it all the sayme again but bigger and better and I’d forge coynes of marigolde an yool all know when that noose is tytund and David Hartlee is left kicking the wind all you will hear is the sownd of crying cockulls All yool hear is the choken sounds of a man hoos life itself was liyved like a pome Hoos every thort and ackshun was poetry And who rose to graytnuss and his final ritten words and his lassed dyin breath Well that was poetry too.

  As they skirted the wide open space of the boggy Knavesmire David Hartley thought he saw a familiar face in the crowd. A man gesturing for his attention amongst the hundreds of others. He stood.

  Isaac, he shouted. Brother, is that you?

  But hands were upon him again, pushing down on his shoulders and pulling him by his shirt-tail so that he stumbled backwards and knocked the lid from his own coffin.

  He looked back and shouted one more time: Isaac.

  But the horses kept walking and the cart kept moving and the hands of the gaolers held him tight and the past, like the pale faces of the people that stood on either side of the street, slipped away behind him.

  And then the crowd thickened into a bottleneck as the cart turned onto turf and David Hartley was being manhandled down, and he felt soft damp ground beneath his feet. Behind him the crowd closed in to block the road.

  Ahead of him stood the gallows, and then everything felt unreal.

  He was led to the Three-Legged Mare, a wooden triangle standing on three wooden pillars. Three weathered beams were supported by three weathered uprights. It was happening too fast. It was all happening too fast.

  In the shadow of the gallows Jack Ketch was waiting.

  David Hartley turned to the gaoler and said what is the hangman’s name? but the gaoler just shrugged as he helped in bundling him towards the wooden structure upon which the hangman now stood.

  David Hartley saw the steps and David Hartley saw the rope and David Hartley saw the door they called The Drop.

  And then his feet were on the steps and the crowd was getting louder and everything seemed to be moving in double time: clouds flitting low across the Knavesmire; a dog far beyond the crowd that was running across the grass, followed at some distance by its owner, oblivious to or uninterested in the spectacle of death that was about to occur; Jack Ketch turning to him and putting a hood over his head and David Hartley crying out no, but the words not leaving his body. Instead they remained trapped inside him like a kitten down a well, a tiny desperate voice heard by no-one. Eternity’s loneliest echo.

  There was no offer of a chance to say any last words as the noose was placed over his head. It sat there loose; The Drop would take care of the rest, which it did as the floor fell away, quickly, too quickly, and it was really happening, and the crowd were roaring and only now was David Hartley aware that his life had a limit like everyone else’s.

  When the rope jerked and tightened he felt nothing for a moment and then his head seemed to swarm with an unfamiliar warmth, a not unpleasurable feeling of hot blood coursing. He heard it in his ears. A crackle then a snapping. A popping. The noise of the crowd became distant and calming, like the wind in the trees of a copse. It had no individual voice but
was instead a rhythm driven by a form of lust, hunger and sexual excitement.

  But then that blood kept coursing and it felt as if it was engulfing him, like he was drowning in himself. His head swelled in an instant, or so it felt, and David Hartley thought of the times he had swum in the river and dived down too deep and the mute water had pressed down on his chest and then stolen his breath, and he had come up gasping just at the final moment that the water was beginning to fill his mouth, and he rose, gasping and spitting and coughing, all the sounds of the world gushing back at him, his senses enlightened, everything amplified, everything brightened. His head pounding to the heart source. To the life force.

  But now he could not do any of that and his breath was being squeezed out of him and blood was everywhere. It was pushing at the back of his eyes and filling his lips and twisting at his tongue. His head raged and screamed with a pain that he felt in every muscle, bone, hair, organ and sinew. And in every memory. Every desperate memory.

  He was flooded with blood, black blood, hot in his every urgent thought, so much of it that there was no room for anything else; only a scorched and roaring sensation of everything accelerating at once towards a finite redness, a deep roaring screaming to a place beyond pain and on into a poetic silence.

  And he welcomed it.

  On, Saturday, 28th April, about half-past two in the afternoon, David Hartley, commonly known as King David, under sentence of death for coining and diminishing Gold Coin, was executed at Tyburn, near York. At the fatal tree he behaved every way suitable to his unhappy circumstances, though we do not hear that he said anything by way of a confession. The report of him having had a reprieve was not true, the Judge having left a discretionary power with the High Sheriff to put off the Execution.

  Leeds Mercury. May 1st 1770.

  The casket shifted as the hearse wheels rolled over uneven stones and crested the Northowram bank to descend in to Halifax. Twice on the journey over from York they had stopped the cortege and opened the casket to secure David Hartley with ropes to stop his body sliding around, and a third to reinforce the casket’s lagging on the carriage.

  Here Grace Hartley joined the procession from the cart of a neighbouring farmer.

  She called him to stop and wait, and then she climbed up onto his carriage where they lifted the lid for her one more time.

  Down the hill Halifax spread out before them.

  She saw her husband’s bloodless face staring upwards to an equally bloodless sky, his lips blue and eyes grey. He seemed so much smaller in death, she thought, than he had in that large, large life; it was difficult now to imagine the ideas and power and potential that his body once carried. It looked so helpless now.

  Like a tiny bird that had fallen from its nest.

  Well husband there it is then, she said. The town that brought you down and strung you up. One last time you’ll get to see it. One last time and then no more the Lord will anoint you and I with the oil of gladness. Husband, you are dead now and to your grave in the soil that spawned you we shall go, to bury you like the king that you are, for it is the king that they called you.

  She wrapped a scarf around a neck swollen to twice its size to cover the rope burns and bruising. Then the lid was pressed down again. She walked back to the farmer’s cart.

  The cortege resumed its journey.

  On the street corners of Halifax there gathered people. Bodies with faces pale and curious. Wool workers and weavers and traders and pen men from the offices and meat men and dray men on their carts, and street walking ginnell lurkers and mothers with their children and navvies passing through, all now drawn to the growing crowd like flies to something fallen and rotting.

  The name King David Hartley was on their lips, just as he had predicted.

  A voice said here he comes, and the people jostled to see the carriage that carried the casket that carried the man whose brutality had put the fear in many and whose wicked practices had damaged the trade of the common man, but whose efforts had rewarded the brave too, and whose rumoured generosity had put clothes on the backs and food on the tables of the starved communities of the upper moorlands when everyone else had failed them.

  At the passing of his carriage one or two spat or cursed quietly but no-one laughed and no-one threw fruit because everyone was aware that other Hartleys still stalked the valley and who knew where the rest of the coining gang were; for surely not all of them resided in York Castle.

  The Coiners still had sons and sisters and brothers and cousins and eyes and ears in every back room and trading floor the length and breadth of Calderdale. They had borne witness to what had happened to those that had gone against them. Hot coals and tongues removed, some said. Fingernails pulled out and eyes gouged and balls stamped. People buried not yet dead. Some said their enemies had been made to drink mercury; others claimed Coiners fed turncoats to their pigs with their hearts still beating. There were stories of rats and cages, of river dunkings, of a hollow far up on the moor, where unspeakable things happened by firelight. A hooded man. Inexplicable reckonings.

  The procession left Halifax and moved deeper into the valley. It followed the new turnpike’s curve and soon the town was behind them, and the green slopes of spring flowed down to meet them on either side, and the people gathered by the road in smaller clusters.

  These were true valley folk, down from the hamlets and farmsteads. They had walked from the hills to greet their king.

  From Warley and Friendly.

  Hathershelf and Luddendenfoot.

  Boulderclough, Brearley and Banksfield.

  The tone was different now. Here they threw flowers and wreaths and garlands and daisy chains onto the carriage and they shouted words of praise and lines like valley boys clip and valley boys sing, valley boys kneel to none but their king and clip a coin and melt the crown, if a lawman comes knocking, chop him down.

  They approached the meeting of the two waters at Mytholmroyd. High off in the far distance to the west, where Bell Hole woods led up to Cragg Vale, unseen from the turnpike, sat above it all Bell House, a tiny dot shimmering in the haze of the first day of May on the moor’s lip. From its chimney there plumed a thick green smoke.

  The crowd deepened. The men, women and children of the village watched as dead David Hartley made his last journey. They lifted their hats and raised their hands, and others muttered silent prayers. Children stepped forward to place loaves or potatoes on the carriage. Cups of ale and plugs of tobacco, too. There were more flowers, more garlands, more wreaths. Sprigs of heather. Many were thinking of their own brothers and husbands and sons and cousins and fathers locked away, facing, perhaps, a similar fate.

  The procession followed the River Calder for a mile to the town of Hebden Bridge, and here too many more lined the streets. The walls of the valley squeezed in.

  Their destination was Heptonstall, perched up on that spur of land between two densely wooded gorges, a stone island of the sky. The only way up was via The Buttress, a paved packhorse track that took the shortest route straight up the hill, a steep climb of five hundred feet.

  At its foot was the Hole In’t Wall Inn, the last building at the town’s far boundary.

  Here the cortege paused and the drivers of the carriages and their men climbed down and entered the inn. They quickly drank an ale each and then returned to their carts where a crowd had gathered outside in silence. Grace Hartley did not join them; she was not invited to.

  Instead of taking their seats the men led the horses up the hill by hand.

  Grace Hartley walked on foot behind them. She was joined by the familiar faces of friends and distant relatives.

  The hearse-bearing horse struggled with its load as its shod feet struggled to gain a purchase on the stones. People stepped forward from the quiet crowd then to lend a hand. Men got behind the carriage and put their shoulders to it, King David Hartley’s coffin dead in th
e centre as they heaved and pushed and sweated and puffed.

  The cart creaked up the bottom half of the hill and then turned onto the track that cut a final diagonal stretch to Hepstonstall village with its soot-blackened frontages, and then moved along the main street, Town Gate, a tight passage of squat houses with dimly-lit windows like eyes squinting into a storm, that ended abruptly where the flag stones met the turf, and after which nothing but miles of moors lay beyond.

  They reached the churchyard of St Thomas a Becket. The men untied the coffin. They shouldered it and lifted it down.

  They carried it to the hole that sat in the rich red soil like an open wound, glistening in the Yorkshire sunshine.

  They held it there.

  Epilogue: 1775

  Five hundred and sixty pounds in circular discs of grubby metal takes up a lot of space. At a quarter ounce a coin, it weighs heavy in the hand too. One hundred and fifteen ounces of metal in all.

  She has the boy hoist it across the moortops for her. There is no need to fear thieves or highwaymen up here, for he carries the family name and that still means something up on the moor.

  Her oldest boy is growing. He will be bigger than his father. Stronger and taller. He is filling out young, and already Mary and Isaac the younger look up to their older brother David, born the year after his father returned from the Black Country.

  He knows the moors well. He has a feel for every porous bog and calamitous fissure. He knows the archipelago of remote farmsteads, and those that live there; he knows whether their owners had been a friend or foe to the Coiners and his late father whose face he no longer remembers.

  His uncles have told him so. Schooled him. Old grudges have been carried over and vendettas remembered, but most profited well enough from what the King had done for them. A martyr, some call his father now. The Martyr Hartley. A gentleman. One of their own.

  And they show gratitude still. His father’s headstone is never bereft of phlox flowerheads and ale bottles both full and emptied, or yarn balls and sprigs of summer heather. Apples in the autumn, the occasional coin from those that can spare it. And once a stag skull sliced at the scalp, its young antlers flowering like coral, the dark ridges of its twisted bone stems stained dark by the Pennine peat.