Ill Will

by Michael Stewart

  ‘So where did it go wrong then?’ I said. ‘Sounds like you were on a good number.’

  ‘Sometimes a man’s luck runs out,’ Emily said. ‘And so it did with my dad. After one particular robbery of a powerful judge, a reward was put out. My dad had folk looking out for him, watching his back, but there were other folk who saw that they could profit from him. Someone squealed, we don’t know who. Some men came one morning and arrested him while he was eating his breakfast. They brought him to court in leg-irons, but he wore one of the smartest suits you’ve ever seen and carried a nosegay as big as a birch-broom. After he was hanged, I was picked up by a beadle. The parish of settlement sent me to the workhouse, but I jumped off the cart before they got a chance to get me there. Since then I’ve roamed the land, living on naught but my own wits.’

  ‘That’s some story,’ I said.

  ‘Now it’s your turn,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I’ve nothing like that to tell. Most of my story I’m ignorant of. And that which I do recall will not sufficiently entertain you, I suspect.’

  ‘Tell me anyway. I want to hear it.’

  I shrugged. I had no tongue for talk.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Why do you want to go to Manchester?’

  ‘To earn a crust.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I’m going to make something of myself.’

  ‘How can you make something of yourself when you don’t even know who you are?’

  I shrugged again. But she had touched a nerve. Perhaps in Liverpool town I would find my mother. I barely dared to think such thoughts. Did she even know I still existed? Had she been too poor to rear me and thought Mr Earnshaw could provide for me where she could not? It was the one thing that made sense. The only way a mother would give up her child was for the good of that child. I was convinced my mother had done the best by me. And how sweet it would now be to find her and hold her in my arms. To kiss her on her cheek. She would cry with joy and sorrow. Joy at finally finding me but sorrow at all the years she had missed. I would wipe away her tears. I would hang at her neck. Then we would sit and talk and fill in the missing years for each other. She would tell me my real name. Who my father was. She would tell me of my origins. How sweet that conversation would be.

  ‘Come on then. Tell me,’ Emily persisted.

  I told her of my life with you at Wuthering Heights, Cathy. I told her about the death of Mr and Mrs Earnshaw, my adopted mother and father. And of Hindley’s tyranny. I told her about Joseph’s catechisms and our life together. I told her about Nelly nursed me back to health. She was particularly taken by the tale of the time you lost your shoe in a bog and we had ended up on the grounds of the Lintons, outside looking in. I told her about the dog I’d throttled with a stone. How I’d pushed it to the back of the brute’s throat, choking it. How you had been taken in and fed soup, and how I had been expelled. Thrown out onto the wet ground, to wander moor and mire in the dark. I told her how since that moment, Edgar had come between us.

  ‘He sounds like a right dick.’

  I told her about his fancy clothes and foppish hair, and how he’d made fun of my appearance. As I told her I felt the humiliation burn my skin again, as though it were still fresh. I told her of my final night at Wuthering Heights and the overheard conversation.

  ‘So why did you run off then?’

  ‘They thought I was in the stable but I was standing by the kitchen wall. I heard everything. She told Nelly that Edgar had proposed to her. And that she had accepted him.’

  ‘Why would she do that?’

  ‘She said because she loved him. Because he was handsome and cheerful. She told Nelly that she wanted to marry him because he was going to be rich.’

  ‘But what made you run off?’

  ‘After what she said. That it would degrade her to marry me.’

  ‘You soft bastard. Even more reason to stay and get what’s yours, or else make misery for those who scorned you. If I were you, right, I’d fuck ’em both over.’

  It was difficult to argue with her reason. For one so young she had an old head on her.

  We watched a blood hawk above us, its wings fixed to the sky, its eyes pointing downwards, looking for its prey, the whole moor its larder. And I thought how I would like to be up there looking down. On you, Cathy. And everything that you had no right to have. Fuck you for saying I would degrade you. Damn your soul to hell.

  ‘How far now?’ Emily said.

  ‘Maybe ten miles. Maybe more. Maybe less. I don’t have a map. And I don’t know where we are in relation to anything else. Try not to think about it. The more you think about it the longer it will take.’

  ‘So why did you put up with it?’ she said.

  ‘Put up with what?’

  ‘With Hindley. With his beatings. With him locking you away. Starving you. Whipping you. And with that Edgar humiliating you. If you were bigger and stronger, why didn’t you bray the pair of them?’

  Why indeed, Cathy? It was difficult to explain to this girl how years of ill treatment affect you. How you get used to it. Harden to it. Become indifferent to it. How part of you even thinks that you deserve it. That they are your social superiors, and you are their servant, to be used and beaten at their whim. In reality there was nothing but the mind’s manacles that prevented me rising up and supplanting them. But even your efforts, Cathy, to bring me out of my slavish stupor had ultimately failed. In the end, the worm is happy to be trodden on.

  ‘That was the law of the land,’ I said at last.

  ‘The law can be bought,’ Emily said.

  ‘And if you have no money?’

  ‘Then you get money.’

  We came across another field of sheep. We stopped for a breather and watched the lambs leap and frolic, jostling each other, and then when things got too rough, returning to the safety of their mothers, nestling up to the soft, warm fleece. Even though they had outgrown the teat. We carried on walking and soon we could see the farmer in the distance. As we got closer we could see that he was wearing a bloodstained smock. The sheep bleated, the wind howled and the lambs gathered for slaughter.

  ‘See,’ I said. ‘The lambs offer their necks to the knife.’

  ‘Are you saying you’re a lamb? ’Cause you’re not right. You’ve got to stop thinking like that. Don’t be a loser. No one’s going to give it you on a plate, you know. You’ve got to get it for yourself, see. Like me and my dad. Be the lion not the lamb.’

  Strong words from the girl, I thought, Cathy, but words that rang true and burned like the smith’s branding iron. Words I needed to hear. Despite being called a devil, I had been the lamb – too ready to lie down and take my punishment. But now I would become the lion. I would fight for what was mine.

  The sun was fully clear of the clouds now and the moors were transformed. Huge pools of light brightened the bracken, making it almost golden in patches. Shifting shades darkened the heather. As the sun shone, I saw that it made the granite rock sparkle. Tiny jewels, white, red, gold and silver, twinkled at us. We watched the cows chew the cud and they watched us. I wondered where they’d come from. Somehow they looked wrong on the moors, as though they didn’t belong. We walked for miles without seeing a soul, trudging through thick black peat bog. Then we saw an old woman, wrapped up in shawl and bonnet, supporting herself with a stick. She dragged one leg behind her.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

  ‘We’re heading west. How about you?’

  ‘Just to the next town. My brother. He’s sick.’

  ‘Is it much further?’ Emily said.

  ‘Where to?’

  I kicked Emily on the shin. ‘Oh, just to the next farm,’ I said.

  ‘Not far, over yonder.’ The old woman pointed. ‘Mind how you go, it’s boggy thereabouts.’

  I thought it best to end the conversation there. The less she knew about us the better, if she was bound for the town we h
ad left. The last thing we needed was her spreading word of the direction we had come. It wouldn’t be hard to give a description of us. With my dark skin and Emily’s white-blonde hair, we were an easy pair to paint a picture of. We bade her good day. We watched her trudge through the peat and as she did I reflected that everyone has someone to care for them, Cathy, except me and the girl.

  ‘From now on, leave all the talking to me,’ I said.

  ‘I only asked.’

  ‘Well, don’t.’

  We carried on, wading through peat bog. Rain and oily mud. The water had penetrated through my boots now and was squelching between my toes. The blister was stinging. I wondered if I should go barefoot like Emily. But then I thought it was probably best with boots than without. They’d dry out. And although they were Hindley’s cast-offs, I was grateful for them.

  We had set off in the morning with the sun behind us, casting our shadows in front like giants. Now it was afternoon and the sun was in front, drawing our shadows behind. On and on we walked, mile after mile, hour after hour, sometimes along a path, and sometimes not. But always heading west.

  We came across a farmer. He approached us with a hammer in his hand.

  ‘Good day to you, sir,’ I said.

  ‘Where do you two think you’re going?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re heading west.’

  ‘There’s no path through here. You’ll have to turn back.’

  ‘Sir, if you let us on our way, we will be gone in no time at all. We will do no harm to you or yours.’

  ‘I don’t think you heard me proper, sunshine. Turn around and get the fuck off my land.’

  I felt the heat rise within once more. How easy it would be to take out the knife and plunge it into the man’s neck, or crack the bit of the axe through the top of his skull, like smashing an egg. But then I took stock. No sense being hung for a calf when it was a milch cow I was after.

  We walked back to where we had entered the farmer’s field, climbed over the wall and made our way around his land. It was a sizeable chunk, his estate, and it was an inconvenience to circumnavigate it. I thought about coming back at night and burning his house while he and the rest of his family were asleep. In the distance we saw the spear-like spire of a chapel surrounded by thin mist.

  ‘See, over there, that’s where we’re heading. We can get something to eat there and rest. It’s not far now.’

  ‘You would say that.’

  Conjuring the Dead

  In less than two miles we came to the next town.

  We dropped down onto a firm road with ditches either side for the rain to run off. I remembered you telling me, Cathy, about a blind man who had made hundreds of miles of roads like this. You told me how he had dug out the soft soil, laid bunches of ling and heather on the bed of the earth, covered these with stones, and dressed them with a layer of gravel, so that the rain would drain away, with ditches either side. I wondered if this road was the work of the same blind man. A man who had been born without his primary sense, who had, despite this disadvantage, achieved greatness. It was a turnpike road and we had to pay a toll. I begrudged this but handed over the money.

  ‘It’s turnpikes like this made it hard for my dad, you know,’ Emily said. ‘He hated them. It’s getting harder and harder for the honest highwayman to earn a crust. With folk squealing, and now bloody turnpikes with their hedges and fences, that’s what he used to say.’

  The town contained a tannery and a blacksmith’s, as well as a number of shops. We went from one to another. I bought some wheat bread and some cheese and butter, using up a portion of the money I’d saved from the sale of the beer. I reflected that the remainder wouldn’t last me long, even less with this limpet clinging to me. I’d have to lose Emily if I wanted to eke out what little money I had. Pretty soon I would have to find a new way of earning some bunce. I took the food outside and we found a bench close to a green where some goats grazed. We sat and ate our grub. I watched the girl shovel in the bread and cheese, so that her mouth was overfull and crumbs tumbled out onto Hindley’s shirt. She had the manners of a pig. It was nice for once not to be the slovenly one.

  ‘You can finish that, then you’ll have to be on your way,’ I said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I told you last night. You can’t come with me. You’ll be safe here. The men won’t find you.’

  ‘But I haven’t got any money.’

  I took out some pennies from my pocket and handed them over.

  ‘Here. Have these.’

  ‘That won’t last me five minutes.’

  ‘You’re not my responsibility.’

  ‘Don’t be a cock.’

  ‘You are the responsibility of this parish now.’

  ‘They’ll put me in the workhouse. Or worse, prison.’

  ‘You’ll get by. You’ve got your wits about you.’

  ‘But the beadle will come like last time.’

  ‘What do you mean, last time?’

  She wiped some cheese away from around her mouth.

  ‘I was arrested for vagrancy. I was thrown into prison. I can’t tell you what a miserable time it was, William Lee. Vagrants and disorderly women of the very lowest and most wretched class of human being, almost naked, with only a few filthy rags that were alive with vermin. I’m lucky to be here at all. Many only got out of that place in a coffin.’

  ‘Look, it’s not my problem. I said I’d bring you to a place of safety and that I’ve done.’

  I stood up, brushed the crumbs off my coat and turned to walk away.

  ‘Stop. Don’t go yet. I can help you.’

  I turned back. ‘What do you mean, you can help me? How can you help me?’

  ‘I’ve told you, dead people speak through me.’

  ‘Even if that were true, what use would that be to me? I’ve enough trouble to settle with those still living, never mind trouble with the dead.’

  ‘How long do you think you can last with a few pennies in your pocket?’

  ‘That’s no concern of yours.’

  ‘You won’t last more than a week or two with what you’ve got, I’m telling you.’

  ‘I’ll manage.’

  ‘People pay me to talk to their dead.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The lately bereaved. I can get money off them.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ‘I will, but not here. I need peace and quiet. It’s not easy to do.’

  I had no need for the girl and indeed it would be better for the both of us to go our separate ways. If we were being followed, by staying together we were loading the dice in their favour. And yet I saw that she was vulnerable on her own. Still, she had been so before I came along, and would be thereafter. In any case, I had enough on my plate. But it would amuse me to see this feat.

  ‘You can come with me until we get somewhere quiet. Then you can show me your trick.’

  ‘It isn’t a trick.’

  ‘Whatever it is, let me see it for myself.’

  ‘Then you’ll consider my offer? It’s something we can both make money from.’

  ‘I’m making no promises.’

  We turned away from the town and took to the road once more. We crossed over field and meadow until we were sheltered by a coppice.

  ‘It’s quiet here,’ I said. ‘Show me.’

  ‘It doesn’t always work,’ she said.

  I stood and waited. At first the girl looked flustered.

  ‘Give me a moment,’ she said.

  I stood and waited some more.

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘that’s your moment. It’s been nice knowing you, Emily.’

  I turned to walk away.

  ‘Hang on. I can feel something.’

  I turned back.

  She closed her eyes and began to breathe rhythmically and slowly. In. Out. Her breathing became deeper, stronger. I drew closer. Her arms lay flaccid by her side, but then I noticed the fingers trembling involuntarily. She leaned forwa
rd and started to mutter. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. At first I felt the urge to laugh but I suppressed it. The muttering moved closer to a groan and the urge to laugh came to me again. She started to shake. She raised her head. Her feet were twitching and the ends of her fingers were quivering, as though they were dancing over the keys of a piano. She stopped breathing. I counted. One, two, three . . . I got to ten and she still hadn’t taken a breath.

  ‘Emily, stop messing about. You’re going to cause yourself damage.’

  Still nothing. This is stupid, I thought. She’s fooling no one with this game. Maybe it worked on children her own age, but I wasn’t falling for it. I’d had enough of her folly and I went to shake her, but as I did, she took in a slow raspy breath that seemed to be drawn from the bowels of the earth. She opened her eyes. The same pale grey-green irises, but somehow changed. As though the candle inside had been snuffed out. She stared at me unseeing. She glared through me into another world. Her eyelids flickered erratically. She began to talk but with another’s voice. It was the voice of an old woman and it sounded broken and frail. I felt a shiver travel down my spine and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

  ‘William Lee.’

  The accent was foreign and not one I recognised. I didn’t respond.

  ‘William Lee, William Lee, William Lee.’

  Still I didn’t say anything.

  ‘You are not William Lee.’

  I felt a jolt this time, like a cold metal pike poking through my spine. I shuddered. Despite myself, I was drawn closer.

  ‘How . . . how do you know?’

  ‘Because I know who you are.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘The one who knows who you are.’

  ‘Who?’ I said, more urgently.

  ‘Can you not guess?’

  ‘Is that you? Can it really be you?’

  ‘Yes, it is me, son.’

  I felt my heart tingle with recognition.

  ‘Mother? Where are you?’