The Clouded Hills

by Brenda Jagger

  It was perhaps a tribute to my grandfather’s strength of will that he accepted this landed gentleman’s advice in a silence that was malicious, resentful, but absolute.

  We were ready, or so we kept telling each other, but suddenly everything outside was quiet: an ordinary evening, deepening, cooling, so much like yesterday that riot, arson, bloodshed receded, became tinged, if only faintly, with ridicule. The soldiers were still waiting in the yard; the engineers and loom tuners and such of our operatives who had elected to stay – Ira Agbrigg among them – were waiting, too, all of them uneasy, some of them afraid, fortified at regular intervals by mugs of ale sent down by Mrs Stevens, who still declined to come herself.

  Then, when we had almost stopped looking for them, when all the tension of the day which had frayed our nerves and made us so peevish began to seem unnecessary; then, at that moment, there they were, not violently and clamorously with the great parade of torches we had expected, nor the raucous shouts of hate, but simply there, a dark wedge of silent men, appearing as if they had been there all the time and had only now become visible. Silent and dark, dream figures, lacking substance, so that I was slow to recognize the sound of glass shattering on the cobbles, the bark of musket fire, and unwilling to believe that they were stoning the mill and that the soldiers had fired their warning shots – one hoped – into the air.

  I no longer knew if I was afraid. The day had lasted so long, so wearied me, that I simply wanted it to end. With my mother and Hannah, I followed our menfolk as far as they allowed us, to the limit of our garden gate, and watched, listened, drifted a little way from reality, since if all seemed so strange and I felt so tired.

  I heard the bulldog rasping of my grandfather’s voice, some muttered reply: a wavering, I thought, of ranks, as those who had perhaps not meant to come so far hung back, while others stood their ground. Sheep, Squire Dalby had called them – these ordinary, decent men who, if given the choice, would always prefer right to wrong, good to evil, and who now, feeling the cold, the peril, would have been glad to go away. But no one could fail to recognize the wolf hunger in the men who stood in front, shoulder to shoulder: the true, sworn brotherhood, their thin, taut faces yellow-pale in the moonlight. I understood dimly that although they numbered no more than nine or ten, their intensity, their total fixity of purpose could be well-nigh impossible to resist. If one of them had come whispering to me of injustice and exploitation – a man who was fierce and frail, pitiful and formidable all at once – perhaps I too, had I been poor and uncertain, would be standing there now, somewhat against my will but fascinated, mesmerized, clutching a shawl around me, with a hatchet or a meat cleaver hidden-beneath it. And although I knew they were wrong and foolish, and that if it was justice they sought this was not the way to obtain it, it troubled me deeply that I lacked Hannah’s certainty, that unlike her and Edwin and my grandfather – or Jabez Gott – I could not tell myself we were absolutely right.

  One man, I saw now, had detached himself from the crowd: a thin, youngish man with narrow shoulders clothed in dark corduroy, a shock of sandy hair, hands that seemed made of veins and knuckles – Jabez Gott, no other – making uncoordinated gestures that spoke, somehow, of nerves frayed beyond endurance, of emotions that were running wild, out of control, like a horse that terrifies its own rider. But his voice failed to reach me as, talking excitedly to the men at his back, pleading with them, I thought, to remember the pledges that had been made, he strove to rally them. I wanted desperately to hear him, not because I hoped to hear anything profound or even sensible – for I did not – but because his violence, his hot, fierce energy reminded me of my grandfather, as he might have been had Fate kept him poor. They were alike – this thin, ragged young man, that heavy, self-centred old one – alike in their need to set their mark on the world, to displace the air around them, and surely they should be able to understand each other?

  But Squire Dalby had not come to listen, required no explanations. Advancing as near as he could, quite fearlessly, he drew himself up to his full height, which was not considerable, and bellowed, ‘Silence for the making of this proclamation.’

  And because he was the squire – even in the Law Valley men knew what that meant – there was a hush, a shuffling of feet, a doffing, in some cases, of caps.

  ‘Now then,’ he said; his eyes on the chimney stack, I imagine you all know me and what I’m about to do. I’m not sure just why you’re here, and maybe some of you are not too sure about it either, but the law doesn’t allow these little get-togethers, I’m afraid. And since I represent the law – yes, be very sure of that – it is my duty, as a properly authorized person, to send you all to your homes so that I may go to mine. I am come to read the Riot Act to you, my good fellows, and you must take heed, for once it is read, unless you obey it to the letter, such of you as are apprehended will be adjudged felons, and the penalty for that, as you well know, is death. And if we don’t hang you – and I see no reason why we shouldn’t – at the very least you’ll face transportation to Australia, which I daresay amounts to ‘the same thing.’

  And taking a mighty breath, he pronounced tonelessly, tediously, the words which, by their own weight, had crushed the fighting spirit of mightier crowds than this.

  ‘Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business upon the pains contained in the Act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God Save the King.’

  I thought, perhaps we all thought, that it would be enough, for even before the squire had finished speaking men had begun to slip away; not many at first, but enough to unsettle the ones who had wanted to fight it out, who had believed in their own desperation and hate, and although I could not hear their mutterings, I knew they were saying, ‘What good can we do if we hang?’ and ‘Who’ll feed our bairns if they send us to Australia?’ and ‘If we make this sacrifice, make martyrs of ourselves, how long will it be remembered?’ For them it was over.

  But the sandy-haired man – Jabez Gott, surely? – and the half dozen around him were beyond the fear of hanging. As they tried frantically to rally their mates, my heart tore for all of them: for the ones who turned dully away and the ones who hysterically persisted; for my father, standing ashen-faced and sick-hearted; for my brother, looking puzzled, not having expected to be so moved; and for myself, standing somewhere in the wasteland between them, belonging nowhere.

  ‘Desperate measures,’ I heard Jabez Gott shout. ‘Desperate measures. Remember what we vowed – what we promised.’ And then, ‘Cowards!’ he shrieked. ‘It’s always the way – always the way. I’m not the first man to look over my shoulder and find no one behind me. But I’ll leave my mark – make sure I’m not forgotten. I’ve not come this far – made this sacrifice – to go away empty-handed.’

  But it was over. No more than a handful of men stood around him now, unwilling to leave him but wanting to take him away with them rather than stay, and we all expected him to go. The soldiers had already relaxed their guard, the engineers had crept gratefully back inside the sheds to sample more of Mrs Stevens’s ale, Squire Dalby and the Barforth men were already walking back towards the house, making a summer Sunday stroll of it, congratulating themselves and each other. And perhaps it was the loud, self-satisfied note of Squire Dalby’s laughter that entered Jabez Gott’s mind and pushed it over the edge of reason.

  The strolling group had almost reached the gate.

  ‘Well done, Edwin. Oh, well done,’ I heard Hannah say; and I heard Squire Dalby answer her, his eyes on my mother, ‘No more than one expected, my dear. Just a little talking-to, that’s all it ever takes.’

  And then, because they were all looking at each other, admiring each other, perhaps I was the only one who saw Jabez Gott break jerkily away from his mates; the only one who saw his yellow-pale face growing, taking on features and
textures as it came nearer; the only one who saw the blank eyes, the tears spilling down his cheeks, the thin mouth twisted with the all-consuming, unreasoning need to destroy.

  So appalled was I, so fascinated, that my scream of warning came too late.

  ‘Barforth swine!’ he shrieked, scattering them with the force of his madness. ‘Swine – slayers of the innocent! I said desperate measures – I said it – and you’ll never forget me.’

  Screaming now with the hysteria of a sacrificial victim – the role he had cast for himself – he dragged a pistol from under his coat and, mistaking his true enemy, pushed my grandfather aside and fired straight into my father’s chest.

  Chapter Four

  I saw it happen, not once but over and over again through that first unspeakable night, over and over through the months that came after, through the years, the image fading for a while, almost deserting me, and then, when I thought myself free of it, returning to spread tentacles of horror through every recess of my mind.

  I saw my father’s chest break open and his life pour out of it. I saw Jabez Gott, making no attempt to flee, tear open his shirt, baring his own scrawny chest to the sacrificial knife. I saw the soldiers advance to the slaughter and Jabez Gott begin to bleed. I saw his mates running like hares in every direction, with the soldiers and my cousin Joel after them, their shouting and clattering and the bark of their muskets growing to a sea-roaring in my ears. I saw my brother Edwin sink his head in his hands and Hannah stretch out a hand towards him, wanting to go to him, I think, and finding that her feet had taken root. I saw Squire Dalby, his elegant coat spattered with blood, move to my mother’s side, and heard his startled exclamation as, with a long, sighing whisper, consciousness drained out of her and she folded bonelessly to the ground.

  I remember, after that, only fragments of the night: the soldiers carrying my father back to the house, only pretending to be careful since they knew he was dead; my mother telling them to lay him on his bed and then, sitting at his side, drawing the bed curtains around them both, shutting herself away with him until the doctor came to tell us what we all knew and to help her to make him decent.

  I remember my grandfather stamping, shouting with a gigantic fury which was partly grief-inspired, since he had lost his only son, partly shame-inspired, since they had quarrelled and it could never now be mended.

  ‘You’ll get them all, every one of them,’ he kept on saying, ‘Round them up and hang them. And anybody who gives them shelter is as guilty as they are – isn’t that so, Squire? Twelve men. I saw twelve men with that mad devil, and I’ll see twelve men hang, if it’s the last thing I do, I’ll hang them all.’

  I remember Hannah, determined as always to do the right thing but doing it awkwardly, wanting to give comfort but unable to hide her disapproval of those tight-drawn bed curtains, her conviction that my mother’s insistence on remaining in such close, solitary confinement with a dead man – albeit her husband – was somehow not quite right.

  I remember Edwin, not really knowing what to do with himself, the master of the house now, ready to accept his responsibilities but surprised, I thought, at his own tears.

  And then I remember myself, drifting like a shadow from place to place, feeling cold and far away, with that loud sea-roaring still in my head, preventing me from hearing or answering when anyone spoke to me.

  ‘Your father is dead,’ I kept on telling myself, but they were just empty words that rattled in my mind, so that even when morning came and I had slept a little, my birthday puppy sharing my bed, I would not have been surprised to see him crossing the yard, returning from the mill for his breakfast and his mug of ale.

  Downstairs, in the thin, cool light of early morning, nothing seemed changed. In the kitchen I met the same gleaming copper, the same black-faced, evil-tempered stove as yesterday, the same stout countrywoman, our maid Marth-Ellen, baking the day’s bread, red-faced with, her exertions. There was the same supercilious black cat, the same lazy tabby, my brother’s yellow bitch getting up stiff-legged from the hearthrug, my own gangling, enthusiastic puppy, Marth-Ellen calling to me from her bread board to ‘get that little demon out of here.’

  The same. Except that my body was tight with tears I could not seem to shed; except that I was cold and could not warm myself, and there were sea waves still, rolling around my head, washing me away from too close, a scrutiny of the truth. And when, suddenly, those sea waves receded, I was, for a moment, most appallingly empty, a hollow shell through which a sharp wind was, painfully blowing, bringing me, one by one, a procession of images I did not wish to see.

  ‘Your father is dead,’ I told myself once more, and, abruptly, the harsh daylight was an assault on my eyes, unbearably, horribly bright.

  He had given me a kitten once, long ago, bringing it up from the mill in his pocket and allowing me to find it there, laughing at my delight, pleased perhaps to have stirred the quietness of me to such excited laughter. And now he gave it to me again, the dainty three-cornered face, the velvet striped body nestling in the palm of his broad Barforth hand, my own face eagerly upturned, wanting him to kiss me, wanting to nestle against him, too, yet unable – afraid of a rebuff – to tell him so. And so, through the years, uncertain of his affection, I had half reached out my hand and, fearing he would refuse to take it, had drawn it back of my own accord.

  ‘May I sit beside you in the carriage, Father,’ my mind had asked, my feet wanting to carry me across the yard to him, to tug at his sleeve, to jump on his knee, but I had not spoken and he, impatient with my silences, my pleading, uncomfortable eyes, had driven off without me.

  And so we had continued.

  ‘Am I pretty, Father?’ I had needed to know on the day of my first ball gown when, back from the dressmaker’s, I had come demurely downstairs, white-taffeta’d, blue-sashed, hopeful.

  And although he would have answered, ‘Aye, the prettiest girl I’ve ever seen,’ whether he meant it or not, it was so important to me, I so badly wanted it to be the truth that I had not asked.

  And now, no longer a child, I knew that in his solitude he had needed my love, anybody’s love, and still I could find no way to release the tumult inside me, the bitter, futile grieving. A dome of glass, it seemed, like the ones they place over dried flowers, had descended over me; smooth glass, untroubled to the casual eye, while, against the inner side, my emotions beat frantic hands, unable to show themselves. And, one by one, as the memories and the pains had come to me, they trooped back again to lock themselves away in my heart, growing heavier as they remained unspoken.

  ‘She’s well enough,’ he had said of me to my grandfather, and so it remained; ‘well enough,’ no more than that, and even then, feeling at last the relief of tears, I could not support the easy sympathy of Marth-Ellen and Mrs Stevens, both of them so willing to comfort me, and rushed out into the garden to find a secret corner in which to cry.

  Yet, outwardly, I must still have seemed calm, earning myself a nod of approval from Edwin when I served him his breakfast, and when Hannah came down from the Top House, where she had spent the remainder of the night, I was able to answer her questions and follow the drift of her advice.

  ‘You should go to your mother,’ she told me. ‘Indeed, you must go to her, Verity, for it can’t be good for her, it can’t be right, sitting all this while behind those curtains with – it is most odd and I have asked Edwin to send for the doctor again, except that he has no time to go himself and the stableboys are afraid to meet a felon on the way, Joel shall go presently, but in the meanwhile you must do what you can, Verity. Take her a tray of tea and then persuade her to come down or at least to go to another room. And when she is feeling stronger, there are things which really must be done. I appreciate her loss – indeed, I feel deeply for her, considering my situation with Edwin – but your grandfather and Edwin have suffered, too, and really, it is always best, however tragic the circumstances, to keep oneself gainfully employed. I don’t wish to put myself forw
ard, but no matter how painful it may be, one has certain duties that simply cannot be set aside. There is mourning to be got ready, for one thing, and since it is the master of the house who has died, the servants should be put in mourning too. Luckily, Elinor and I have plenty of black crepe left over from our own parents, but in your case – well, the most economical way, of course would be to dye the dresses you already have, but I can’t really ask them to get a dye tub ready without your mother’s permission. And people will be calling or sending to convey their sympathy, and someone must receive them. Really, I am not at all sure what we should do. You are the daughter of the house, but you have only just gone, sixteen and may not be up to it – people may not quite like it. Yet if, on the other hand, I do it myself, it may be thought presumptuous, my engagement to Edwin being so recent and no wedding date being set. Verity, do just run upstairs and tell your mother that if she won’t come down she absolutely must let me know how she wants things done.’

  But my mother had nothing to say to me, and when my grandfather and Mrs Stevens arrived later in the morning she would not speak to them either.

  ‘She was always half cracked,’ my grandfather said, stumping his way downstairs, ‘and now she’s gone altogether. Well, so much the better, for I never liked her – she was never good enough for my son. And now we’ll have a fresh start. Where’s Edwin, eh, and Hannah? Send them to me, will you, Mrs Stevens, for I’m weary-bone-weary. I’ll sit awhile in my wife’s kitchen and take a glass of wine, if such a thing’s to be found in this house since my wife died. And send the Boy to me, and his lass, and we’ll talk of the future. There’s no sense now, is there, Mrs Stevens, in looking back? I did what I could, didn’t I? And what is there now but the Boy and the future? A good boy, and if the lass has no money to bring with her at least she’s straight and plainspoken – at least when she opens her mouth I understand what comes out. So – the wine, Mrs Stevens, and then my lad.’