The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  Tom scrambled up on the cart, peered downhill, evidently ready to run. He relaxed, jumped down again.

  “It be Banford’s Josie, Sam. She do often ride her pony about the moorside. Saw the wagon on the track, I reckons, and come on up to see what’s happening like.”

  Tom made a play of raising his hat to Miss Banford, and made no attempt to introduce Sam.

  “Good day, Miss Josie.”

  “Good morning, Tom. My father said you were to be working on the coal pit. Who is this with you, Tom?”

  “My cousin, Sam, what went for a soldier with the yeomanry and has come back to work for my father.”

  Sam gave his best smile and nodded, irritated by Tom’s deliberate attempt to put him down.

  “Good morning, ma’am. The rebellion is over and I am to look for a more profitable way of spending my days.” He very carefully tried to imitate Captain Wakerley’s way of speech. “I am to put my prize money to work, perhaps in the coal trade, possibly in some other business. Mr Makepeace is to give me the benefit of his advice while we discover whether the winter firing trade will make a profit.”

  Miss Banford was little younger than the pair, at a glance, a grown girl, and not unhandsome – bright blue eyes and fair. She was attractive enough, Sam thought, to explain why Tom had wished to denigrate him.

  “I see. You are to do the hard labour while Tom Makepeace drives the wagon, Mr…”

  “Sam Heythorne, Miss Banford. I shall spend part of the week up here, cutting coals, while Tom does his part as he can. Nearly a year of soldiering, chasing Jacobite traitors back into their mountains, has left me better equipped for the harder labour, ma’am.”

  “Did you see the field at Culloden, Mr Heythorne?”

  “I did, Miss Banford, and an unpleasant sight it was. Traitors, rogues and villains they may have been, ma’am, they were still men lying dead or wounded under the light of day, a thousand or more of them in a small compass. A section of moorland flatter than this, and much of the turf shining red with blood. I have no wish to see another battlefield, ma’am – one such was sufficient for me. Apart from that, there were little skirmishes, a dozen or two men on either side meeting and fighting and the rebels hunted back to their Highlands, as was necessary. I shall not go for a soldier again, ma’am, though my captain and sergeant thought I could do well in the Army. They say that every man should go to war once, so as to know what it is – but I am not so sure, ma’am. I have carried gun and sword to battle, and I shall not do so again, no matter how much they tell me it makes a boy into a man.”

  Tom stood silent, aware that Sam had made him seem no more than an untried youth in Miss Banford’s eyes.

  “I got to be goin’ down to Leek, Cousin Sam. Fare thee well, and you, ma’am.”

  He stood to the dray horses’ heads, twitched on the lead and started them slowly down the shallow slope, round the first bend in the track and out of sight.

  Sam watched him go, not too fast, the wagon well under control despite its load.

  “I must cut more of your father’s coal, Miss Banford. A load a day, at least, we must supply to the town.”

  She turned the pony’s head, accepting her dismissal.

  “My father prefers me not to ride wholly on my own on this top part of the moor, Mr Heythorne. I shall catch up with your cousin and allow him to escort me. It looks like rain soon, as well.”

  “I shall be dry in the pit itself, ma’am, or in my little shack.”

  She peered where he pointed, spotted the smoke from his little fire.

  “You are to live up here, Mr Heythorne? Is it not very lonely, sir?”

  “It is not impossible, ma’am. Four or five days at a time up here and then a couple down at the White Horse. I must borrow a book from Mr Makepeace when next I am there, and perhaps purchase a lantern to read by.”

  “I have books of my own, Mr Heythorne. I could bring you one when I ride out tomorrow. Shakespeare, perhaps?”

  That seemed a good idea – Sam had heard of Shakespeare, from the Rector when he had learned his letters. He looked at his dirty hands and clothes and decided that he must get into the habit of washing himself if he was to handle the lady’s books. He had a piece of soap in his bag, he remembered.

  Miss Banford rode off to catch up with the wagon and Sam turned back to pick and shovel, after taking a final look at the trim figure atop the pony.

  ‘Very smart’, he thought, trying to recall the name of the red-headed girl in Hexham, who had been his last bed-companion. She had been a handsome lass, and anxious to please him, and herself. He had promised to return to her, now he thought about it; soldiers said an awful lot of things, one way and another, and Hexham was a long way distant… He poured himself a mug from the billy, hot and powerful, true army tea, and set to at the coal seam.

  It was easy to fall into a routine, cutting in with the tine of the pickaxe, levering against the handle so that the coal slipped out of its bed in great chunks that cracked into smaller pieces under their own weight as they fell to the ground around his feet. Twenty minutes working his way from one end of the short face to the other, then the rest of the hour shovelling back to the heap, then start again with the pick.

  He washed up in late afternoon, stripping off by the little stream, freezing cold where it ran off the moors. He looked at his dirty clothes and then dived into his little bothy and rummaged through his pack for his sole spare set. He finished his billy of tea and set the iron pot back to the boil, used the hot water to scrub out stockings and underclothes and shirt, army style; he brushed at his trousers, would put them on again in the morning – he could not wash thick flannel every day. He laid the wet clothes out to dry on the heather; it might make more sense to do his washing first thing in the morning, perhaps, so they could have a whole day in the weak sun. He rinsed the soap out of the billy and put it back to the boil – he needed tea for the evening.

  He gave some thought to his household needs, decided that he might well go into town, perhaps as far as Stoke or one of the other, bigger places, where he could buy another shirt from a reach-me-down shop. The army had supplied the pair of shirts he possessed, and they would not last too long, not having been the topmost best quality in the first place. If he bought some lengths of wool or flannel, his mother would sew him up some more, but he would not be seeing her for a good few weeks yet. He did not think that he could ask Aunt May, Uncle Abe’s wife, to do for him – her son Tom took after her, he thought.

  He looked in the little bag Tom had left – good bread, baked that morning; cheese that was better than army rations, though most things were, thinking on it; a white onion to peel and slice; a generous cut of roast beef. Uncle Abe was not stinting him – this was food one might offer to a guest rather than to a hired hand. There was a small glass jar as well with a muslin cover tied on with string; he opened it carefully to disclose horse-radish sauce, recently made, good for a week, really tasty on his beef. It was the wrong time of year for apples, perhaps a fortnight early, but if he looked about the sheltered little valleys on the moor he might well come across damsons or sloes on the bushes; he would have a look about on a warm afternoon when he had a good supply of coal cut and ready to load.

  He supposed that Miss Banford would know where the fruit bushes were to be found – he would ask her when she next turned up. A handsome young lady – he would like to see more of her… Thinking on it, he would be well advised to behave himself – she was not one to give a casual tumble, or so he suspected. A would-be gentleman’s daughter must be treated with care, or he could end up on the run, the constable chasing him with a writ of rape in his hand. He wanted to make his fortune, and he would not do that by molesting the daughters of the local gentry, with or without their cooperation.

  Miss Banford rode up next morning, less than an hour after Tom had taken the loaded wagon downhill. That suggested she had kept an eye out on the track, had timed her visit deliberately. Sam was not too surprised – he beli
eved that he was far more of a man than Tom might be.

  She had a book in her bag and took it into his shelter, laid it down on a dry stone not too near the fire.

  “I shall bring a piece of leather up, Mr Sam, to wrap it in and keep it dry and clean.”

  Sam agreed that it was hard to keep house up on the moorside, but said that he did what little he could, having been taught to keep himself tidy in the Army. He allowed her to persuade him to talk about the campaign and the places he had seen. She had never travelled ten miles from home, knew nothing of the outside world; compared to her, Sam was cosmopolitan, knew more, had seen much.

  “What of the war itself, Mr Sam?”

  “Vicious, cruel and wicked, Miss Josie. We do not want such things ever again in our little country. Men killed each other and hurt those who had nothing to do with their cause; they stole the food of poor farmers and left them with nothing to face the winter; they burned down houses, rich and poor alike. Men who saw nothing of the real war have told me since that it was a glorious defeat of the wicked Jacobites. Well, those rebels needed killing, but so many others died who should not have; I can see no glory in that. Many of the rebels were not much more than boys who were given orders to pick up a musket or sword and march at their masters’ heels – yet they died from cannon ball or sword, often while their masters spurred their horses and made their own escape. I don’t like war, Miss Josie, and shall see no more of it, if I have my way. I was a good soldier, I think, but war is a bad thing.”

  She was much struck by his words, saw him as a hero indeed, a man who could fight, but would not if he could avoid it.

  Sam sensed her feelings and knew that a very few days could see her stretched out on his pallet in the little shed. It was tempting – he was young, and she was handsome. It was also unwise if he was to make anything of himself; he needed to learn, to make a start to his new life, and running from an irate father, or marrying his pregnant daughter, would not be a good beginning. A marriage in two or three years might be a different matter – but a tumble in the bushes now was not a sensible way of doing things. Add to that, she was green and sheltered, had probably never been alone with a young man before – it would not be fair to her.

  He kept well clear of the shed while she was there, spoke kindly, affectionately, but avoided all sense of passion. She fell in love with so kind and gentle a man.

  Friday afternoon saw Sam walking back down the hill to the White Horse, looking forward to a weekend of leisure, or to a different sort of work.

  There was a spare room, a tiny space in the attic which might be used by a live-in chambermaid one day, if the White Horse ever grew so prosperous. For the while, it would do for Sam’s needs. Abe took him down into the cellar next morning.

  “Mild beer and bitter, which I brews meself, Sam. Sends the barley what I grows in me own fields at the back over to the malt loft in Leek and gets it back ready for work. Costs a few pence, so it do, but it makes more sense than trying to do that meself. Lucky we got a loft hereabouts – makes for a better beer, steady, the same every year. This time of year, the most important thing what I got to do is to scrub out the old casks and barrels. You let them get mould in ‘em, Sam, and you’re buggered. Same with wild yeast – get that on the walls of the cellar and you’re in trouble. Scrub everything down with boiling water – no other way around it, not if you wants quality. Simple sort of thing, just keeping clean, but it’s the important bit. Same if you uses glass or earthenware bottles, what some does for off-sales – they got to be shining clean. When you makes your gin, or whisky, if that’s what you want to try, make good and sure everything is clean first.”

  Sam nodded and watched and gave a hand with the scrubbing; it made good sense, he supposed – he did not want to be drinking dirt.

  “After that, all you needs is good water, from a clean stream off the high hills, Sam.”

  Again, that made sense.

  He worked slowly – there was no need to rush – and talked and tried to remember all he was told. In the evening he sat in the bar and drank a little and listened to the local men talking. Most of them were skilled tradesmen – carpenters and masons, or journeymen to the shopkeepers - earning a better wage than the farm labourers and patronising an inn rather than a cheaper beerhouse - but they talked only about local matters, the weather, the price of bread, the state of trade, the chance of a good crop of apples, orchards being big in the area. They said almost nothing about the Rebellion, were not interested in the Old King, or the New, for that matter. The Sheriff had passed through and made a proclamation in the square, telling of the trials and executions of the traitors, and that attracted a little of comment, mostly on the lines of regretting that the nearest hangings were to take place at too great a distance. They could not take days off work to traipse up to Manchester or across to Bakewell or Buxton or even to Derby, even though it would have been a fine spectacle.

  “They do say as ‘ow it were goin’ to be done old style over at Derby,” said the keeper of the hardware store who had actually heard the Sheriff, for his shop being in the square. “Each felon, one after another. All treated the same. Going to pull him out on a hurdle, as ever is, and drag him through town to be seen by the crowds in the streets, and then to the gallows to be hanged by the neck until he be well-nigh dead, and then have his parts cut off and his guts pulled out of his living body before the head be chopped off and the body cut in quarters, what is to go on display on the walls.”

  “They ain’t got no walls in Derby, Jack.”

  “Well, they used to ‘ave, so they going to put up a stake where it used to was.”

  “Sounds a bit bad-tempered to I, our Jack. Get the cribbage board – I shall thrash thee this time.”

  A game of cards was far more important.

  Sam was quietly amused – all of the great fuss, the armies and the bloodshed, yet a horse of cribbage took ordinary folk’s attention far more. He said as much to Abe, who was inclined to think it a good thing.

  “We ain’t got no use for wars and fighting round these parts, Sam. Don’t know anybody here what has. Got better things to do than go killing folks just because there’s a wrong king in London, or a right one, for all I know or care. None of our business. Have you thought about going off to the wars again, Sam? Not much to life in these parts, not like marching off with a musket in your hands and a battle to fight tomorrow.”

  Sam shook his head, definitively.

  “Bugger battles, Uncle Abe. Men get killed in they, and ordinary folks get nothing from ‘em. Captain Wakerley, ‘e ended up with two estates and worth a couple of thousand a year. I did better than most of the lads, for making corporal, and I got a hundred quid and can find some way of makin’ a living. The boys thought themselves lucky to come out of it with the chance of a job. It’s all right for the officers, and only for the lucky ones of them, but there’s nothing much in war for the likes of us.”

  “That’s what I always heard, Sam, but there’s still boys run off to follow the drum. Hoping for excitement.”

  “Hoping to avoid working for a living, Uncle Abe. They’re right in a way – half your time as a soldier, you’re sat on your backside, drinking bad tea and pretending to like it and doin’ nothing at all. The rest of the time, you’re marching or parading or sleepin’ in a damp bed with just one blanket on a cold, bitter night. You’re lucky if there’s beds enough for one each in the barracks, so Sergeant Wright said, and the food is so bad that you only eat it acos of starving otherwise. Out on campaign, you might smell powder one day a month, so they say. We was out up front, lookin’ for trouble, and we didn’t fire our muskets a dozen times. Most of they soldiers in the big battalions fought on one day only, at Culloden. The rest of the time, they just marched and waited and waited and marched – if they reckon that’s exciting, well, bloody good luck to ‘em!”

  Abe laughed, said Sam was not allowing for being away from home, for having a few coins in their pockets and drinking an
d making merry when they could.

  “Not so bad out on your Da’s old farm, Sam. You can have a bit of a laugh there sometimes. Nothing at all to laugh about in town, not when you’re poor.”

  Chapter Seven

  The Killing Man

  Sam worked steadily at the little pit, cutting coals for five or six hours every day and then spending another hour shifting rock to build small pillars in the hope of holding up the tunnel he was making. The coal seam sloped slightly downwards along the side of the moor, and back below the top, two and three hundred feet of rock above it. He gained the impression that it was a wide, flat sheet, thinning out a little towards its edges; he followed the thickest part, the easiest to cut.

  Tom came every day, took a full chaldron down to town and, presumably, sold it there.

  Josie rode up most days, sitting in the sun, if it shone, and talking about very little, making it clear that she was happy in his company. Sam was pleased to welcome her, was happier still when she left – there was far too much of a chance of trouble, he thought. He would be glad to meet her in her parent’s house but did not like the potential for anger in what amounted to clandestine contact with a maiden of the upper classes. He had never met her father, thought that he must do so, and soon.

  Autumn turned into an early winter; Sam wondered whether he was to continue on the moors, or if it might be wiser to close down the pit for the coldest months. The decision was made for him on a bitterly freezing night in November.

  The frost had set in early on a clear evening, moon almost full and Sam sat over his fire, surprisingly warm and comfortable. He had managed to extend his fireplace and build a solid stone backing that reflected the heat into his little room. He had stacked rocks on the outside to make a dogleg entrance with heather tied to a hurdle as a roof, still without a door but at least dry and keeping the warm air inside. The great drawback to his bothy was that the very rough little privy he had cobbled up was some fifty yards distant, well downhill of the stream and his water supply. The need was upon him and he wrapped his heavy overcoat about him and stirred from the fire, picking up the pistols which he always kept loaded and close to hand. He much doubted that he would ever need the hand guns, but if he did, then he would want them instantly – they would be of no use at a distance or sat empty.