The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  Sam pointed with the pistol, shook his head at the splashing noise as the man wet himself.

  “Listen, you nasty little object! Bury the bodies. Get them out of sight. Anything they have, including their horses, is yours. Say a word to constable or squire or vicar, and I shall come back for you. Understand?”

  “Yes. Silent as the grave I be, sir.”

  Sam trotted back from the window, took the reins and led his horse back down the lane. Once out of sight he stopped and reloaded both weapons.

  “Neat and tidy, young man. Thank’ee for your assistance. You are sure that was Fanshawe?”

  “It was before you blew ‘is bloody ‘ead off, mister.”

  “Ah well, that will teach him not to make threats against friends of mine. Back to the Rose, if you please.”

  Two hours saw Sam fed and on the road again, making his way south.

  Three days later he dropped into Rufus’ shop and told him that Fanshawe had repented of his evil ways.

  “He has?”

  “He will never make threats again, Mr Rufus. I much expect to see you tomorrow, sir. My young helper should have run off several mashes over the past week.”

  “Excellent, Mr Heythorne. Your uncle tells me that you have it in mind to rent another place and to expand your production, sir?”

  “That is my intent, certainly, Mr Rufus.”

  “I may know of a warehouse on clean-flowing water, not so far distant from town, over on the north and uphill a little…”

  “I would be interested indeed to look at it, Mr Rufus.”

  “I will make the arrangements, Mr Heythorne. It will take a few days.”

  Chapter Nine

  The Killing Man

  “So, Uncle Abe, that little job is done, a favour for a favour, and Rufus has immediately offered to help me discover a warehouse on a hillside with a good, clean stream nearby.”

  Abe was not surprised.

  “You have shown that you understand how things work, Sam. You have accepted his first offering and repaid fully. He will now look for something a bit bigger. He has been taking a profit from the gin, even if not much more than a penny on the gallon, I expect; so that counts almost as no favour at all, more of a business deal. This time he will put himself out of pocket for you. Not money, as such. There will be some other man who owes him some consideration, and he will be the owner of the warehouse and will let it to you at a generous rental, as a return to Rufus. Then, of course, Rufus will act as your agent again, to move the extra gin, and may take just a farthing a gallon more, perhaps. One day, he will ask another particular service of you, probably the same sort of thing as you have just done so well.”

  Sam was pleased with himself – he had worked out that sequence before he had asked the question. He had not explained in any detail all that he had done. Better, perhaps, for Uncle Abe to guess rather than be told in gory detail.

  “Thought that was it, Uncle Abe. Glad to be of assistance to him and to Captain Wakerley – not that you have ever heard that name, of course. He was my officer in the Yeomanry and a good man, better far than most of his sort.”

  “I know of him, in fact. Local people. Got an estate a few miles back over the moors. Rich land, for these parts, down in a dale, wheat growing, and there ain’t much of that around here. Picked up another place up Lancaster way, so I heard.”

  “Reward for finding out the names of a bunch of papist squires and such what was supporting of the Pretender. Bit of luck – a groom, apprentice really, what had ridden out with the messages and letters and talked to us in exchange for the money that would buy him a passage out from Glasgow to Virginia.”

  Abe nodded approvingly.

  “Bloody traitors, turning the country upside-down for nothing more than a bunch of priests. We had enough of that sort in this country. Don’t want more of them, Sam. Right or wrong, no king in London’s worth a war up here; even less an Archbishop in Canterbury – who cares what sort of church one of them runs?”

  “So says I, Uncle Abe. Seen one war in this country and don’t never want another. Don’t matter to us who the king is. We just do as we’re told anyhow, and it don’t matter who’s doing the telling. Same with priests – none of them work for a bloody living and they all have got their hands in our pockets, whatever sort they are. Mind you, Squire’s brother back home is a kind-hearted sort of gentleman, but I don’t reckon there’s many like him.”

  Abe nodded; England had seen enough of priests of any sort.

  “None of my business if you don’t want to tell, Sam, but what did you do for Captain Wakerley this time?”

  Sam shrugged – he would have preferred not to explain, but he had been asked the direct question. Abe listened and then gave his measured approval.

  “Threatened to kill his wife, and any children there might be? Then a bloody good thing you did for him, Sam. Killing the man who had taken the estate he had expected to inherit, that’s understandable. Going for the innocents? No – that’s just wickedness. Well done, young man! The world is a better place without that sort in it.”

  “So I thought, Uncle Abe. On top of that, I owe Captain Wakerley for being a decent sort of a man. Some officers was real bastards – whip and noose men. But he was willing to listen to us, and to help us out. I reckon I owed him a little bit of a debt, so this business brings us all square.”

  It occurred to Abe that if two deaths paid off a small debt, then Sam might indulge in a full-scale massacre to pay off a large one. Perhaps the young fellow lacked a sense of proportion, or maybe he regarded a killing as a very minor piece of business. He was glad the boy had a sense of what was due to family – he would not wish to cross him.

  “What next, Sam? Good quality whisky to sell to the gentry?”

  “No.” Sam shook his head vigorously. “I thought about but it’s too visible, Uncle Abe. Keep selling the gin, by the thousand gallons a week, or more. But not good stuff that gets talked about. You know what these gentlefolk are like – boasting of ‘their man near Stoke’ who distils the very best for them. The Revenuers would hear my name inside six months, and then I would have to pay them off or risk being raided.”

  That was true, Uncle Abe agreed. He quickly calculated in his head – four thousand gallons a month at one shilling and eightpence, that came to more than three hundred and thirty pounds and should drop a profit of close to two thousand a year. That was more than many a squire saw from his lands.

  “Buy yourself a farm, Sam?”

  “No. More work than money in the land, Uncle Abe. I reckon there might be a lot to be said for a coal mine, or two. Close to town, or on a river. Maybe turning the coal into this new coal-charcoal stuff they talk about, if I ever find out how that’s done. The big thing with coal, though, is moving the stuff to where it’s wanted, Uncle Abe. It’s heavy, and the roads ain’t no good.”

  Abe agreed – they had had problems enough simply shifting a single chaldron a day downhill from their little drift up on the moorside.

  “Thing is, Sam, that coal mines seem to be found in hillsides far more than on the flat. I suppose it’s because the coal sticks out there. Down on level ground it might be ten foot below the surface, but you’d never find out it was there, not except by accident if you was digging a well. So, moving the stuff is the real business of mining coal, because of the hills in the way. Easy if there’s a river down in a valley close to hand. Not so simple, otherwise.”

  “How do they go about it in other places, Uncle Abe? They must have been mining for years in some parts.”

  It seemed likely, but neither knew where.

  To Sam’s surprise the answer came from Josie; she had read of it, in a book, so she said.

  “’A Guidebook to Newcastle and the Coast Thereabouts’, Mister Sam. It was in the bookshop in town, in the penny box, second-hand, and looked interesting, for I have never seen the sea, or know that part of the country. They have mines there, for sea coals, which are put aboard ships called co
lliers which sail all the way to London. They have done since the days of Good Queen Bess, so the book said. The mines are mostly in the hills to the back of the town and above the big river there, and they bring the coal down on ‘trackways’, so they call them.”

  She produced the book next day and showed them a woodcut of the Newcastle chaldrons rolling loaded down to the wharves on the river.

  “They have a small boy to each, Mister Sam, who stands on a ‘brake’ which means it cannot go too fast and fall off the track. They bring them uphill again empty, towed by a donkey.”

  The woodcut was printed in thick, fuzzy, sweeping lines – sufficient to give an indication, inadequate to build a copy from.

  Josh Banford joined them in peering at the plate in the book.

  “Down the moorside from the drift, Sam. Drop off at the bottom here, on the flat, where the dray can pick it up. Could go into town three and four times a day, not just selling to households, but to some of the pottery furnaces as well. More nor one dray, I much expect. Might want to put half a dozen men to work up at the drift. That is, of course, if we can see just how to build the thing.”

  It seemed obvious to them that a machine of sorts must be better than a simple horse and cart – it was new, and novelty created profits, everyone knew that, in the real world of making money.

  “Best go to this Newcastle place and take a look, Mr Banford. Up on the coast, it is, by the looks of it, a good few miles off. I think it was a few miles south of where we was at Hexham over the winter when we could not march. Take a while to get there and back and I need to be working my new place up, Mr Banford. One thing to have a week off, going up Lancaster way, but this would take a month, or so I suspect, from all I remember of marching up north, sir.”

  Josh agreed, said what a pity it was that Mister Charles could not possibly go…

  “Then, Father, perhaps we could go, you and I?”

  Josie had never travelled further than Stoke, although they had debated going as far as Derby on occasion. Her longing showed in her voice.

  “A long way and costly, Josie, and not lightly to be considered… I should certainly go.”

  He thought for a few seconds, decided that he could not possibly leave her alone, in effect, in the house. Her brother could not be a chaperon, not in his enfeebled state of health, and she could not be left in Sam’s company, day after day, not as a young girl and not to be trusted not to be foolish, even if she was more level-headed than most; no girl of her age could be expected to behave with common sense, for females did not possess that quality, as was well-known. If he was to go, then she must come with him – and she would enjoy a holiday, away from the gloomy house where every morning she woke up to wonder if her brother had died during the night.

  “We shall go just as soon as I can make the arrangements, Josie. The hire of a travelling coach and horses, and a driver, and your maid to go with you as well – that will take a day or two to arrange. A holiday, for the both of us! I shall talk to Mickleby at the livery – he knows the roads and will tell me how we must travel.”

  Josh had been canny with his money for years, mostly because he could discover little to spend it on, and he had several hundreds tucked away in his locked box in his bedroom and more in Martin’s hands, earning interest. He winced as he dug into his leather purses and paid for a travelling carriage and four horses for six weeks, the extra to be returned if he came back before his time. Driver and boy alone accounted for six guineas and the horses came to twenty-four, good horses being far less easily come by than the men. Add to that, the cost of rooms overnight and their dinners was as much again. Just getting there and back and living on the road was sixty guineas, and might be more, perhaps, if they were forced to use the most expensive inns because the road was busy.

  “A man’s wages for a year – and not a common labourer at that!”

  Travel was not only expensive, it was also uncomfortable, for the coach was hardly sprung and most of the roads were unmetalled. It was slow as well, for the horses must be protected, must not be overworked.

  “A long journey, Josie, for we must keep to the south of the hills where we can and work our way east on the lower ground until we reach the Great North Road, which we will then follow all the way to the North Country.”

  She was excited at the prospect, not really knowing what flat country might look like.

  Sam waved his farewells and rode into Stoke, astride his own cob, recently purchased – no more than a hairy-hooved working beast, of little elegance but long endurance, but still all his own, his first sign of prosperity, bought rather than stolen. Rufus gave him his directions and he made his way some three miles out of town and reached a warehouse, less than ten years old and placed next to a derelict kiln. The owner of the building was waiting for him.

  “Mr Heythorne? My name is Parsons. Mr Rufus tells me that you are willing to take this mistake off my hands, sir!”

  It was a promising beginning, Sam thought.

  “I may well be able to, Mr Parsons. A warehouse with a clean stream that flows in the summer as well as winter and close to hand, that was what I asked for.”

  Parsons pointed to a watercourse a bare fifty yards away.

  “Comes off the hills and runs the year round, Mr Heythorne. No farms up its course either, so no animals to foul it. A good fall on the water, you could put in a small weir and have a millpond easily, sir.”

  They walked across and inspected the site. Sam saw rock in plenty, sufficient to build his pond cheaply. He looked inside the warehouse, found it to be stone built, to have been constructed for many years of use.

  “If you will pardon me for asking, Mr Parsons, why did you build here, out of town and on a track going nowhere?”

  Parsons laughed, a little embarrassed.

  “A good question, Mr Heythorne. I did not, sir. I own the land and leased it to a gentleman who believed there was good clay hereabouts, and who wished to make use of it in a kiln. Better than average quality, the clay, and he would make finer pottery than most, and no doubt earn a higher price. Not my business – I know nothing of the trade, but I was happy to get involved and give him the lease and take a rental from him. Because he was starting up, I treated him as I would the tenant of a new farm, bringing in uncultivated land – a low payment for each quarter for the first three years, to rise to normal levels for the area over the next four, step by step. He set up his kiln and this warehouse and dug his clay and produced his earthenware for a year and more, and all seemed well – but then, the clay ran out! Instead of a great deposit, there was no more than a little pocket of the good stuff, a very few tons. There he was, all set up and nothing to work. He lost his all, of course, some three years ago now, and left me with a hole in the ground where his clay pit had been and with a useless kiln and a very fine warehouse in a place where no man wishes to store goods!”

  Mr Parsons said all this with a rueful smile, his air that of a man who had discovered that he had not been quite as clever as he had thought.

  Sam grinned, said that the best laid plans could go astray.

  “I am in the gin trade, Mr Parsons. I need water and roots or barley, a little of sugar, yeast and malt and coals for my fire. If I run out of water, then my business cannot continue, but all of the rest will come in by wagon. It is an advantage to me to be out of town, and out of sight, sir. But, I have no doubt Mr Rufus will have explained that.”

  Mr Parsons agreed that Mr Rufus had been most explicit; he would not be announcing to the world just what his new tenant was doing.

  “I have some wastes from the distilling, Mr Parsons, and would wish to bury them in the old clay pit for convenience.”

  “They might perhaps be dug into the fields, Mr Heythorne. I suspect they might add to the fertility of the soil, which is on the thin side in the hills here.”

  Sam was unaware of the possibility, was happy for Mr Parsons’ tenant farmers to take the used mashes off his hands. It occurred to him that
the effect would be to destroy the evidence of his activities – there would be no waste heap to announce what he had been doing.

  “I will be needing to hire on some hands, Mr Parsons. Would that be possible in the locality?”

  Every farmer had younger sons, Parsons told him, and most of them with no occupation, no future other than to drift into town and hope to find work in the potteries. It would be easy to take on all the men and boys he needed.

  “A sale for potatoes or barley without the expense of time and labour of taking them to market would be welcome too, Mr Heythorne. You could be a very useful addition to the estate, sir.”

  Sam was happy to be of such utility, he said, and discussed the terms of the lease, found them remarkably cheap. He left with a half-commitment; he must talk with Mr Rufus before he made any final decision, he said, he was not entirely his own man in such matters. Mr Parsons smiled very knowingly at that, agreed that Mr Rufus was a man not to be ignored.

  Sam rode off, mind busy. The warehouse was a true bargain. He could make a very substantial profit, he did not doubt, close to town and yet well out of sight of the Revenue Men. Why? What was wrong?

  He sat down with Rufus and asked the question.

  “Read this, Mr Heythorne.”

  Rufus handed a letter to Sam, sat back to savour his surprise as he perused the few lines.

  “A pledge to His Royal Highness, King James the Third, of loyalty and support in his son’s endeavour to regain his stolen throne. The sum of one hundred guineas gold as an earnest of good intent. Reference to a promise to be made Lord Lieutenant in the County, with a title. A promise of his own to raise men for the cause and add them to the ‘loyal army’ when it marched by.”

  Sam raised an eyebrow, returned the sheet to Rufus.

  “That would hang him, even now, if it was placed in the proper hands, Mr Rufus.”

  “It would indeed, Mr Heythorne, and I obtained it by merest luck. His messenger delayed in town here to say farewell to his young lady, and to take a drink for the road. She, one must explain, was the companion to any man with a few shillings in his pocket and informed another friend that he was carrying a large sum in gold… That friend possessed a pistol and the willingness to use it. The letter was brought to me, though, naturally, the gold was not. I informed Mr Parsons of my possession of the document immediately after the invading army departed again for the north. The rest, one might say, Mr Heythorne, should be obvious to you.”