Ill Will

by Michael Stewart

  ‘There’s bear leek, dandelion and sorrel leaves, berries, seeds, nuts, plenty of good mushroom picking. This wood is a larder. And we’ve got it to ourselves.’

  ‘Have you ever skinned a rabbit?’ she said. ‘It was something my dad enjoyed doing, so I never got a chance.’

  ‘It’s not difficult,’ I said. ‘I’ll teach you.’

  The next day we went back to the warren and placed some snares in strategic places, using sharpened sticks to stake them around the holes. We collected mushrooms and bear leek. I showed Emily which mushrooms were edible and which were poisonous. After a few hours we had a pan full of penny buns, blue-gilled blewits, horse mushrooms, blushers, yellow caps and Jew’s ears.

  ‘Why are they called Jew’s ears?’ Emily said.

  ‘It’s short for Judas’s ear. After he betrayed Jesus he hanged himself from an elder tree. They cut his ears off and stuck them to the tree as a warning to other traitors.’

  ‘You know your scripture, don’t you?’

  ‘So would you if you were brought up in the same house as Joseph.’

  We filled the pan with a sufficient amount of water from the beck. We went back to where we’d placed the snares. We checked them one after the other, but no luck.

  ‘We’ve just got to be patient,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, that or starve,’ Emily said.

  We went to all of the traps throughout the day at regular intervals until at last we struck lucky. A rabbit was caught by its back leg and it was jerking and kicking. I took hold of it and wrung its neck.

  ‘Watch how I do it,’ I said.

  I started at the back end, pushing the bone of one of its back legs through the fur. I did the same with the other back leg and pulled the fur free of the bones. I yanked the fur coat entirely free of the body, cutting the last of it off with my knife. Then I held the rabbit by the back legs and sliced down from nave to chop. I pulled out its guts and slopped them onto the floor. I thought about Hardwar’s guts. I thought about Hardwar’s blood. I thought about Hardwar’s one eye staring at me. Still I felt nothing. We took the dead flesh back to camp.

  We cut the meat into chunks and chucked them in the pot with the mushrooms and bear leek. I placed the pan in the middle of the fire and we watched as the water came to the boil. Emily added a splash of brandy to the pot. She sat over it, using one of the spoons to stir as the mixture thickened. When the stew was ready, I added a bit of salt and poured it into two bowls. It was actually rather good. The meat was succulent.

  ‘Do you think we can live like this?’ she said.

  ‘Well, for now. I don’t see why not.’

  ‘Let’s think about what we know about this Jonas,’ Emily said. ‘We know that he’s made a lot of money from slaves and probably from other investments. We know that he’s done a lot for the poor. We know that he’s found God. In other words, he’s a bit of a cunt.’

  ‘We don’t know anything about him really,’ I said.

  ‘So on Sunday we walk to Kirby. We find the chapel. We find Jonas Bold. What we do with him when we find him—’

  ‘If we find him.’

  ‘What we do is nothing. We bide our time. We don’t act in haste. I know your feelings are strong, William, but you’ve got to temper them.’

  She looked to me for reassurance. I nodded.

  ‘Good,’ Emily said, shovelling in some more of the stew. ‘These are a bit weird,’ she said, picking out a Jew’s ear. ‘I keep thinking I’m eating human meat. My dad told me about a famine. Happened about two hundred years ago. He told me that’s why they brought the Poor Laws in. They used to hang you for begging in those days. The first time you got caught you got bored through the ear. But the second time was neck time. Anyway, during this famine, things got so desperate that they used to play a game of straws. You’d each pull a straw and if you pulled the shortest one you were that day’s dinner. They ate unwanted babies. So, you know, thinking about it, these are not so bad.’

  She took the Jew’s ear between her teeth and bit it in two.

  After she had emptied her bowl she scraped what was left from the pan, scoffing every last remnant. I poured us a nip of brandy each and handed her a tankard. I raised mine aloft and made a toast.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘here’s to whatever comes next.’

  ‘Here’s to that,’ she said. ‘As long as it doesn’t involve eating babies.’

  I saw the naked flesh of an infant. And blood. I saw my mother clutching me to her chest. I was no bigger than a kittlin. The men were all around, trying to grab me from her arms. They say a mother will fight to the death to save her young. But they were stronger than her, and there was an army of them.

  Humility, Cleanliness and Pure Thinking

  At first, sleeping beneath the trees was discomforting. No stars and no moonlight penetrated the forest’s canopy and it had a blackness that was complete and absolute. The forest in daylight was a place of intrigue – the green light filtering through the leaves had a warmth and a beauty – but by night it took on a different shape. It thickened around us. Bats would drop from the boughs, their tattered wings like ashes. The darkness took on a depth and a weight, and it started to press down on us and creep over us. We would hear unfamiliar noises and imagined men coming to get us. We would see their eyes in the distance, cold and penetrating. But they would turn out to be the eyes of owls or the eyes of badgers. We would hear the call of the nightjar and we couldn’t be certain if it was in our heads or out there somewhere. It sounded like someone tiptoeing towards us. It sounded like someone tapping at a window. It sounded like someone scratching on a skull. We would go to sleep and dream. We would wake up in the black, and it felt like we were at the bottom of the ocean. We would hear gnats whine. Sometimes a fox sounds like a child screaming. And you don’t know where you are. Who you are. And you don’t know if you are awake or asleep. The hand that grabs you by the throat. The rancid breath on your neck. And you have to pinch your skin to know what’s real. We would wake in the morning and see a silver trail over our bodies where snails and slugs had crawled. Spiders would weave threads through our hair. Ants would crawl up our legs. Earwigs would seek refuge in warm orifices. Some nights I would wake to the sound of Emily crying out in her sleep and I’d hold her and rock her until she fell back to sleep again.

  After a few days and nights we began to get used to the darkness. If not entirely ever settled there. I’d slept under the stars before but there was just something about this wood. It was holding something back. Some terrible secret. Something buried. Something hidden. I was thinking about my mother, and the terrible secret the world had kept from me. Perhaps all dark places had their secrets. Emily continued to have nightmares and I continued to provide what insufficient solace I could.

  On the next Sunday morning, just before dawn, when the light was an amber glow through the gaps in the trees, and the magpies made their mechanical rattle, we set off in a north-easterly direction. The trees thinned out and the bracken fell away and our view opened onto a moor. The moor dropped down onto farmland. We trekked across fields until we saw the spire of a chapel in the distance.

  We came to a dirt track, which led to a stone bridge over a beck and a coaching road that took us past a tanning yard into the heart of the village. There was a sign announcing that we were in Kirby. It wasn’t a very expansive place. A butcher’s, a grocer’s, a blacksmith’s, plenty of cottages. Horses and sheep grazed on the green. There was a watering trough and a pillory. The pillory was a hinged wooden frame erected on a post. The post was on a stone platform and there was an old man with his head and hands poking out of the device. But it was too early for people so there was no crowd gathered to taunt him. His hair and face were covered in dried remnants of whatever rotten food he’d been pelted with the day before. We walked close by but he didn’t look up. I thought for a moment he might be dead but as we got nearer to him I could hear his low moaning. He smelled of the toilet.

  We made our way
to the chapel. It was a small stone building with large stained-glass windows and a rounded tower. It was still too soon for Sunday service so we sat and waited in the burial ground among the resting dead. Rooks were waking up, mice were bedding down, rabbits scratched for roots. At last the villagers, dressed in their Sunday best, started to congregate outside the gates. There were children playing and much chatter among the adults. A man in a smock and cloth cap, who I assumed was the sexton, opened first the gate, then the door of the chapel, and the flock entered.

  The air was cool and musty inside, and people spoke in hushed tones. The sun poured through a stained-glass window, projecting red, yellow, blue and green light into the room. In one pane of the window was a picture of Adam and Eve being tempted with an apple, next to this a picture of Moses holding a stone tablet and a staff. Further on was Jesus on the cross with blood pouring from his wounds. On the other side of the room was another brightly coloured pane, this time of a woman in a blue shroud, holding up the naked baby Jesus for all to see. She had a blue and yellow halo around her head. I thought about my own mother and her plight. I wondered if she’d ever held me up to the world so hopefully. In my mind’s eye I saw men wrench the baby from her arms. I saw my mother fight with them. I saw them beat her into the ground. Tearing at her clothes. Holding her down.

  We found an empty pew at the back. Motes of dust seemed to float up to the source of light. Eventually a portly man in a powdered wig, matching the description of Jonas Bold that Jack Lancaster had provided, mounted the pulpit. He was an elderly man, probably in his seventies. His gait was crooked and his movements slow and stiff. He was dressed in simple attire. The audience went quiet. Jonas turned the pages of a large bible that was open on a wooden lectern and addressed the crowd. He began his sermon.

  ‘Good morning to you all,’ he said.

  The crowd answered him.

  ‘Let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Receive us, Lord. Pacify us, oh God! So that we have wronged no man, we have corrupted no man, we have defrauded no man. I speak all of this to you not to condemn you but to uplift you. To witness your clean hearts to our Lord. Great therefore is my boldness of speech towards you, as our gracious Father glories in your sinless state. I am filled with comfort. I am exceedingly joyful in all our tribulation.’

  I’d heard the bombast of base fustian many times before from both Joseph and the preacher in Keighley. I’d heard that the preacher in Keighley frequented the brothel there. It seemed to me that the more a man pleaded his innocence and virtue, the bigger a cunt he was. Emily gave me a look and rolled her eyes.

  ‘I want to talk to you today about godliness and wickedness. As you know, I am a wealthy man. I have spent many years accumulating my wealth. I own an iron foundry, a sugar refinery, two distilleries. I own several large ocean vessels as well as a plantation abroad. But these riches do not bring me closer to God. For in truth you cannot serve both the Lord and Mammon also. I mean to do some good with my money. To this end, as many of you good people know already, I have set up a dispensary in Liverpool town to give free medical treatment and medicine to the poor. It has been there nearly two years now and many a sick man and woman has passed through its gates, healed by the physicians within. The physicians carry out God’s work, for did not Jesus himself make the blind man see? And did not Jesus himself cure the leper and the lame?’

  There were cheers from the congregation. Mr Bold held up his hands. The congregation became quiet again.

  ‘This is not what I want to talk to you about today. What I want to talk to you about today are the Christian virtues that I hold closest to my heart: humility, cleanliness and pure thinking. Know that you are here to serve God. Know that filthiness of the flesh and spirit offendeth the Lord. Know that to be pure of thought is to be closest to God. For what is wealth and power without godliness? By all means go out and seek your fortune, become fabulously wealthy as I have become, but never forget, if you do not have God in your heart, your wealth hath no value in the eyes of the Lord.’

  On and on he preached until his words blurred in my ears and his vision faded from my mind. This was my mother’s killer. And worse. This dumpy frail old man with a daft wig on. Where was God’s great vengeance and furious anger? Here we were in His house, with this poisonous dwarf, the destroyer of my mother, standing under His roof. My God had abandoned me.

  I looked up at the crucified Christ, and imagined Jonas Bold nailed to that cross instead, wearing a crown of thorns instead of a periwig. With blood dripping down his fat face and pouring from the wounds in his hands and feet.

  The congregation stood and sang a hymn. We waited for Mr Bold outside the chapel as the congregation thinned out. Some stayed and chatted, others hurried on their way. We saw Mr Bold leave the chapel by the back door and make his way to the burial ground. He walked with a cane in one hand. His gait was unsteady. We followed some distance behind, making sure we weren’t spotted. He approached a grave. He stood over it and made the sign of the cross on his breast. He spoke to the grave but we were too far away to hear the words. After he had gone we went to the grave where he had stood. It said: ‘Here lyeth Annabel Bold.’ From the date on the tombstone, I was able to work out that she was only forty when she died and had only gone recently to the grave. Just three months under the earth. The grave was not ostentatious, as others were around it, but rather plain. This surprised me from one so wealthy, but it was clear that Jonas had loved her dearly and that he was still in the midst of his grief. We stood over the grave in silence.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ Emily said.

  ‘The same thing as you,’ I said.

  When we got back to the forest we checked the snares and gathered some greens. We built up the fire for the pot. Emily was unusually quiet.

  ‘I’ve been doing a bit of thinking,’ she said after a time. ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

  ‘About what?’ I said.

  ‘We only get one chance with Bold. If we meet him at the grave next Sunday and he turns us down, where do we go from there? Have you thought about that? We know from experience that most people don’t go for it. Some fear us, others are hostile. What’s to say Jonas won’t reject us in some way also? Then we’re screwed.’

  ‘But he’s a religious man. He’s lost his love. He is still fresh in grief. He’s the perfect target,’ I said.

  ‘He is also pious. He will see the trick as devilry. We can’t risk it. We know something about the man. We know he has wealth. We know he has been a powerful figure. We know his wife has recently died. He talked about humility and cleanliness and pure thinking. His past rests heavily on his head. He carries guilt on his back.’

  ‘So what then?’ I said.

  ‘My dad used to do something he called catting. You ever come across it?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘It’s where you copy your victim. You dress like them, you talk like them, you act like them, you even think like them. You be them. My dad was really good at it. He was an expert mimic. People like people who are like them.’

  ‘I don’t get you.’

  ‘We make you in Jonas’s image. We dress you like him, we make you sound like him. We make you be like him in every way we can. You strike up a friendship with him. We take it slowly, over time.’

  ‘What for? I just want to make him pay for what he did to my mother.’

  ‘Then you’re missing the point and you’re missing a trick. You’ve talked before about wanting to get an education. Well, you can’t do that without a lot of money. This Jonas can give you what you want. If you play it straight.’

  She was right again. His head on a pike was not enough. I could have his wealth as well. His wealth was mine in any case. For hadn’t he made his money by breaking the will of my mother and others like her?

  ‘But I can’t talk like him. There’s no way I can do that.’

  ‘Yes, you can. I can teach you. How do yo
u think I learned to do different voices? From my dad. Anyone can learn. It’s just practice.’

  I agreed to give it a go and that evening, after we had suppered, Emily gave me my first lesson.

  ‘We are going to say some tongue twisters to get you started,’ she said. ‘Say with me, “Round the rugged rocks the ragged rascal ran”.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘Just say it.’

  I did as I was told. Emily made me repeat the phrase, lengthening the first ‘a’ in rascal.

  ‘Your “a” is a flat “a”. But posh people lengthen it to “aaaa”.’

  The next phrase was even stranger. Emily kept stopping me and getting me to repeat certain words.

  ‘Slow it down. We’ve got to get rid of these flat sounds. They’re a proper giveaway.’

  It was hard going at first and my mouth resisted these foreign imposters, but with practice it became easier. Like new shoe leather around feet, the shape of my mouth began to form around these unaccustomed sounds. All week we practised until Emily said it would do.

  ‘We’ll have to do something about your appearance. We can get away with your clothes as they are simple and unadorned like the clothes of Mr Bold, but you need to be clean-shaven, and your hair needs to be neater.’

  ‘But we haven’t got a razor. How do I shave without a razor?’

  ‘All right, scrap that. I can use the knife to cut your hair and beard. As long as it’s neat, that’s the main thing.’

  I sat down and let Emily cut my locks and trim my beard. The knife was sharp but still it took her a long time – standing back and circling around me, making a range of dissatisfied tuts – before she was happy with the result. Clumps of black locks fell all around me.

  ‘I think that will do,’ she said, standing back from her work. ‘Go and have a look in the beck and let me know what you think.’