Devil's Day

by Andrew Michael Hurley

I wedged the stock into my shoulder and Dadda adjusted my hands.

  ‘Here,’ he said. ‘Set your feet apart a bit more an’ all.’

  He kicked at my boots and moved me into the right position.

  Looking down the sight, the darkening moorland blurred as I tried to settle the weight of the rifle. I swung past the whole herd before tracking back and putting the young stag’s pretty eye in the circle.

  ‘Got him?’ said Dadda.

  The stag ducked down to tear at the ferns and then lifted his head again, working his lower jaw as he ate. His ear flicked and he blinked away the rainwater, his attention on the hinds.

  ‘Have you got him, John?’

  ‘I’ve got him,’ I said. ‘I’ve got him.’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Dadda. ‘Before he disappears.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Don’t tense up,’ he said. ‘If you tense up you won’t hit owt but thin air.’

  ‘I’m not tensing up,’ I said.

  ‘You are,’ he said. ‘There’s no creep on that trigger. Just pull it straight back.’

  The stag looked up and the crosshairs met on his forehead. But before I could shoot he turned away, distracted as I was by the sound of a voice that drifted in on the wind; a vague and distant cry that quickly died away. However small the noise, it was enough to send the deer bursting out of the ferns, the hinds running close together and the stag behind them.

  I tried to keep track of him as best I could but he shuddered in and out of the scope and as soon as the butt of the rifle kicked against my shoulder I knew that I’d missed. While my ears whistled, Dadda took the gun off me, emptied the chamber and loaded it again before the stag was out of range. Following the antlers with the muzzle, his eye wide and unblinking as he looked down the sight, Dadda waited, waited, then fired. The shot struck something and reverberated in the hollow but the stag carried on, splashing through the bogs and losing himself in the mist.

  Dadda coughed and spat into the rocks.

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘I heard it too.’

  ∾

  It was almost dark by the time we got back to the farmhouse. Musket and Fly came out sniffing at our clothes, smelled death on us and went away to their kennels.

  Having been out for so long, Dadda was fretting about the ram but I managed to persuade him to at least change into a dry coat before he went to check on him. As we’d come down Fiendsdale Clough, his cough had got worse and he’d had to stop a number of times at the cairns on the path to catch his breath.

  ‘Who would have been out on the moors in this weather?’ I said. ‘You don’t think it was the Sturzakers, do you? Ken and Vinny?’

  ‘What would they be doing up there?’ said Dadda.

  ‘I don’t know, poaching?’

  ‘They’d have had their dogs with them,’ said Dadda. ‘I didn’t hear any dogs, did you?’

  I hadn’t. Just that single, falling cry.

  ‘It were probably birdwatchers,’ said Dadda.

  ‘Birdwatchers?’

  ‘Aye, they come over from Wyresdale and get themselves lost,’ he said. ‘We’ve found a few behind the Wall before now.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be anyone up there birdwatching at this time of year,’ I said. ‘There’s nothing much to see, is there?’

  ‘Look, I don’t know who it were,’ said Dadda. ‘Perhaps it weren’t owt at all. But don’t mention it to Bill. It’ll only make him worse.’

  He knocked again on the scullery door and waited for someone to let us in out of the rain.

  ‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ said Angela and we could hear her humming the tune to ‘The Winter King’ as she wrestled with the key and the handle. It was what they always sang as they made the Ram’s Crown. Out of all the old songs, it’s Adam’s favourite. The line about the tup doing his business with the ewes makes him laugh.

  When the Devil has been and gone,

  Jump on their backs, sire, one by one.

  Take your crown, oh Winter King,

  Fill the ewes and give us spring.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Angela, when she finally opened the door. ‘Look at the state of you. I hope you didn’t get piss-wet through for nowt.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Dadda. ‘We found them.’

  ‘How many were there?’ she said.

  ‘Three,’ said Dadda, taking off his coat and hanging it as a shapeless fish skin on the hook by the door. ‘Three that we saw anyway. There might be more, but they won’t come over this way now.’

  ‘And you got them all, did you?’ said Angela.

  ‘Aye, we did,’ said Dadda, giving me the briefest of looks.

  We needn’t have worried about telling Bill what we’d heard, as the Dyers had already gone home to talk about reorganising the house. Since Jeff had been out of prison, Laurel, at least, had been hoping that he, Liz and Grace would all come back to live with her and Bill instead of with Angela. Theirs was a much bigger cottage. And anyway, Liz was a Dyer now and it would be the Dyers’ farm that she’d be running with Jeff when the time came.

  To persuade Liz would be a struggle but Jeff would move quite happily back across the valley to his parents’ place and Angela would have gladly carried his bags. She was one of the few people who saw through him and he knew it. Had Liz’s union with Jeff on the riverbanks in Sullom Wood that summer I’d left for university not been blessed nine months later by the arrival of Grace, then she would have made sure that she steered well clear of him. Though I suppose it would have been difficult to keep them apart when they lived within sight of each other all the time.

  ‘I don’t know why Laurel’s bothering to make plans with Jeff in mind, to be honest,’ said Angela, taking Dadda’s cap and beating off the wetness with her hand. ‘If he turns up tomorrow it’ll be the first promise he’s kept in his life.’

  She went back to the kitchen and joined in the loud conversation Grace and Liz were having, the three of them criss-crossing Kat, who sat at the table dressed in Liz’s old jeans and woollen jumper. The sleeves were rolled back to thick brown rings that sagged from her wrists, and the neck was so stretched that it almost slipped off one shoulder.

  ‘Where have you been?’ she said when I sat down next to her. ‘You’re soaking.’

  ‘You know where I’ve been,’ I said.

  ‘Until this time?’ she said.

  ‘It’s a long walk,’ I said.

  ‘Why didn’t you wake me before you left this morning?’ she said.

  ‘I thought you might need the sleep,’ I said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ she said, but I could tell that she was trying to cover her nose without making a show of it. Whatever she thought she could smell the night before had come back and was making her nauseous. It was a phase of pregnancy that would pass and no doubt there would be something else even worse to take its place as the baby grew. It was the curse of the first-time mother. Nothing was familiar. Nothing felt natural. How could it be, when it caused such disruption to the body and the mind?

  ‘Katherine,’ said Angela, taking her attention away from me and back to the spread of leaves and flowers in the middle of the table. ‘Come on. You wanted to know how to do it, didn’t you?’

  It was after the first successful Devil’s Day just after the Great War that they’d made a crown for the ram, handing the privilege of coronation to one of the children. It had been quite a plain thing in those days, the Gaffer said, nothing more than a small hoop of bent willow wands and hay. But over the years, it’s become a much grander creation that takes all day to make, mostly because there is more talk than work. The crown on the table was a large wreath of dried flowers and dogwood stalks, holly prickles and rowan leaves. Acorns in their cups had been carefully tied into the weave of dried hay, with beechnuts threaded on to string and the chain festooned around the rim.

  ‘Look, Granddad Tom,’ said Grace. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘That’s very nice is that, love,’ sa
id Dadda, patting the back of his head dry with a tea towel.

  ‘Do you think Daddy will like it, Uncle John?’ said Grace.

  ‘I’m sure he will,’ I said.

  ‘What time will he be home tomorrow?’ she said. ‘Will he be there when I wake up?’

  ‘I shouldn’t think so, Grace,’ said Angela. ‘Like this,’ she said and showed Kat how to wind the ivy through the green ribbon strapped around the crown.

  Kat took over, pricked herself almost immediately on the holly and sucked her finger.

  ‘She’ll have to toughen up, John,’ said Liz. ‘What’s she going to be like when she comes back at Lambing if she’s fussing over a little cut?’

  ‘I’m not fussing,’ said Kat and, for a moment, I wondered if she might drop the baggy jeans she was wearing and show them the scars on her thigh. Proof that she hadn’t lived her life unscathed.

  ‘Don’t worry, Auntie Katherine,’ said Grace. ‘I’ll show you what to do when the lambs come. You can help me feed the runts.’ And she went into great detail about the various weaklings that she’d bottle-fed that spring.

  ‘Tell Katherine another time, Grace,’ said Angela. ‘Tom will want a bit of peace and quiet after the day he’s had.’

  ‘Aye, come on,’ said Liz. ‘Fetch your coat. Time for home.’

  ‘But I want to practise my magic trick for when Daddy comes,’ said Grace.

  ‘Another time,’ said Liz. ‘Granddad Tom’s tired, aren’t you?’

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ said Dadda, putting on his raincoat. ‘I’ve to check on the ram.’

  When he went out, Grace moved her chair very close to Kat’s, so that their shoulders were touching. The dressing on her hand had come off now and the wound had scabbed over in a three inch crust.

  ‘Do you like magic tricks, Auntie Katherine?’ said Grace.

  ‘Yes,’ said Kat, doing her best to brighten up. ‘Why, do you know some?’

  ‘The Gaffer used to teach me all the time,’ she said.

  ‘That must have been fun,’ said Kat. ‘What were they, card tricks or something?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Grace. ‘Or there’s one with a coin.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Kat.

  ‘Everyone’s seen it,’ said Grace.

  ‘I haven’t,’ said Kat.

  Grace leaned to the side and put her fingers in her pocket, teasing out a penny that had the likeness of a Roman emperor crudely minted on both sides.

  ‘Nero?’ said Kat.

  ‘Caligula,’ said Grace.

  ‘Didn’t he marry his horse, or something?’ said Angela as she swept the table.

  ‘No, he made his horse a priest,’ said Grace.

  ‘And his pig the Pope?’ said Liz. ‘Where do you get this stuff from? School?’

  ‘He’d roast people alive in the brazen bull,’ said Grace. ‘And he got his sister pregnant.’

  ‘Did he?’ said Angela.

  ‘Aye,’ said Grace. ‘He cut the baby out of her and threw it on the fire.’

  ‘He couldn’t have done that,’ said Liz.

  ‘He could do owt he wanted,’ said Grace. ‘He were the emperor, weren’t he?’

  ‘It was no wonder he was mad,’ said Kat.

  ‘He weren’t mad,’ said Grace. ‘I think not being able to do what you want makes you mad, don’t you?’

  ‘That’s a difficult philosophical question,’ said Kat.

  ‘It’s what me and the Gaffer used to talk about,’ Grace shrugged and reached over for the empty water glasses on the table, upturning them and putting the coin under the one on the left.

  ‘Now watch,’ she said. ‘I’ll make it move.’

  She covered both glasses with a teatowel that had been left on the back of one of the chairs and when she lifted it again, the penny had switched places.

  ‘Very clever,’ said Kat. ‘Show me again.’

  ‘That’s for kids,’ said Grace. ‘I can do better tricks. I can read your mind. I can tell you what you’re thinking.’

  ‘All right then,’ said Kat. ‘What am I thinking now?’

  ‘It doesn’t work like that,’ said Grace, nudging her with her shoulder. ‘I have to say a word first. Mummy, will you show her?’

  ‘You don’t want to know what I’m thinking,’ said Liz, and Angela laughed and they took the offcuts from the Ram’s Crown out through the scullery to the compost bin.

  ‘Hold my hands, Auntie Katherine,’ said Grace. ‘I need to connect to your thought waves.’

  Grace clamped her fingers in hers and Kat tried to smile but couldn’t help watching Grace’s thumb as it smoothed a little circle on her knuckle.

  ‘Colour,’ said Grace, closing her eyes. ‘Green.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Kat.

  ‘Animal. Blackbird.’

  ‘Right again,’ said Kat.

  ‘Number. Six.’

  ‘You’re very good at this, aren’t you?’ said Kat.

  ‘Happy,’ said Grace. ‘Baby.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Kat.

  ‘Home. Daddy’s house. The vicarage’

  ‘Perhaps once,’ said Kat. ‘Not now.’

  ‘Fear. The Endlands.’

  ‘I’m not frightened here,’ said Kat, looking at me. ‘Why would I be frightened?’

  ‘Love. John.’

  ‘Definitely.’

  ‘Womb. Relief.’

  ‘Relief? What do you mean?’ said Kat.

  ‘Tick-tock, tick-tock,’ said Grace. ‘You were worried, weren’t you?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘That it would be too late.’

  ‘Perhaps you should go and get your coat,’ said Kat. ‘I think your mum wants to go home.’

  ‘You didn’t like the other men enough, did you?’ said Grace. ‘But then when you heard the tick-tock you thought that perhaps you should have let them.’

  Kat looked at me.

  ‘Leave Kat alone now, Grace,’ I said.

  ‘That’s why you let John stay after that party, isn’t it?’ said Grace. ‘Tick-tock. Tick-tock. He’s the only one who’s ever seen your scars.’

  Kat stopped wrestling with Grace’s hands and looked at her.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘What did you say?’

  When Liz and Angela came up from the scullery Grace let go and opened her eyes.

  ‘Is she going to be sick, John?’ said Angela, nodding at Kat.

  ‘A little cut on the finger and she’s white as a sheet,’ said Liz. ‘Jesus, John, I think you’d better take her home.’

  ‘What do you think of the trick, Auntie Katherine?’ said Grace. ‘Do you think Daddy will like it?’

  ‘Who told you those things?’ said Kat.

  ‘I can’t show you how it’s done, can I?’ said Grace. ‘If everyone could do magic tricks then it wouldn’t be magic any more.’

  ‘You look worried, Mrs Pentecost,’ Liz said, patting Kat’s arm as she went past her to get her coat. ‘Are you nervous about Devil’s Day tomorrow?’

  ‘Perhaps you’d better hide yourself in the sheep pen when the Owd Feller comes,’ said Angela and laughed as she gathered up her things.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Liz. ‘It might be good to have a vicar’s lass in the house as bait.’

  ‘I don’t want him to eat her,’ said Grace, getting off her chair and looping her arm through Kat’s.

  ‘He’d go to bed hungry if he did,’ said Angela.

  She put on her wax jacket and was tugging the zip over her chest when someone started banging on the front door. Laurel’s voice came urgently and then Bill’s as he rapped at the glass.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ said Angela. ‘He’ll have his hand through in a minute.’

  Dadda must have heard them outside and he came in with Bill shouting and Laurel apologising.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tom,’ she said as she came down the hallway. ‘I’m sorry for coming over like this.’

  ‘Summat wrong?’ said Angela, when Laurel appeared at the kitchen doo
r.

  Before she could answer, Bill sidled past her, his coat spattered with blood.

  ‘You’d better get yourself home, Angela,’ he said. ‘Make sure your animals are all right.’

  ‘Jesus, what’s happened?’ said Liz, and Grace slid down from the table and stared.

  ‘It’s our Douglas,’ said Laurel. ‘They’ve torn chunks out of him. When we got back, he were lying there dead.’

  ‘Who’d done that?’ said Angela.

  ‘Bloody Sturzakers’ dogs,’ said Bill.

  ‘What, you saw them, did you?’ said Liz.

  ‘No, I didn’t see them,’ said Bill. ‘I didn’t need to see them.’

  ‘Were the cows all right?’ said Angela.

  ‘Aye,’ said Bill.

  ‘And the geese?’

  ‘Aye, aye,’ said Bill, distracted.

  ‘You didn’t lose any geese?’ said Angela.

  ‘No, thank God,’ said Laurel and crossed herself.

  ‘How can it have been dogs then?’ said Dadda.

  ‘Tom’s right,’ said Angela. ‘If the Sturzakers’ dogs had got on to the farm, you’d have a yard full of dead birds.’

  Bill dismissed her with his hand. ‘I’m going to see them first thing tomorrow morning,’ he said. ‘That’s it. I’ve had enough.’

  ‘I still don’t think that’s a good idea,’ said Laurel.

  ‘Aye,’ said Dadda. ‘Without any proof, there’s nowt you can do. Just bury your dog and leave it at that.’

  ‘No proof?’ said Bill. ‘I’ve all the proof I need wrapped up in an owd blanket in the toolshed.’

  ‘Oh, stop shouting, Bill,’ said Laurel. ‘It’s bad enough.’

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘It’s about time we had words with that bastard family.’

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘First the fire and now this.’

  ‘Keep out of it,’ said Dadda.

  ‘So you’ll come with me, John?’ said Bill.

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  ‘You stay put,’ said Dadda. ‘If anyone’s going with Bill, it’ll be me. It’s nowt for you to concern yourself with.’

  ‘Why would the Sturzakers go to so much trouble?’ said Angela. ‘It doesn’t make any sense.’

  ‘It’s obvious,’ said Bill. ‘This is him warning me off after yesterday, isn’t it?’