Ill Will. Michael Stewart

      With the exception of the red-skinned Dick, and the politically minded Sticks, the farm labourers were a simple enough bunch of men. As long as they had work during the day, ale and bread at night, card games and somewhere to lig down, they seemed agreeable. We all slept together in the barn, with a chaumin dish burning flaights. The arrangement being not that much more than I’d found in the hog barn, but I couldn’t really complain. It was dry and it was warm. We ate together in the kitchen in the morning. Cages hung from the ceiling beams with songbirds trapped inside. A blackbird, a nightingale and a throstle. An oak chest, a chest of drawers, a long table that accommodated us all around it, and chairs for us to sit on. The floor and tops were strewn with bowls and tins, jugs and mugs, syrup tins and porridge thibles. In the back kitchen the food was stored, beer brewed and oatcakes baked. The farmer’s wife was helped out by Mary, the peevish wife of Dick.

      I decided I would stay here for a while. The work suited me and I enjoyed the company of this Sticks character. Or at least he didn’t lock me in with the beasts or take a whip to me. I kept my head down, sold my ale rations to the other men, and saved my pennies. I was biding my time until I had enough bunce to move on to Manchester town, maybe even Liverpool. I would save four pounds. That seemed a sum that would keep me from destitution and set me up wherever I found work next. I calculated that I could be back on the road again in eight weeks, if I kept clean.

      We worked all week on the wall and by the Sunday it was finished. We stood back and admired our work. The wall was good and strong. No wind and no beast would break it. I looked around at the landscape all around me. Meadow, pasture and field enclosed by stone walls and beyond that moorland. Walls that reached up steep cloughs and bridged over fast-flowing becks. Walls that marked who owned what and marred the land they squatted upon.

      It was the end of the first week and the farmer insisted that I accompany him to church. As you know, Cathy, I am no lover of the chapel, but it was easier to keep the peace. He loaded up a coach with the members of his family and me and Jethro and a few others followed on foot. Sticks refused to accompany us, saying that he could worship his God any place he liked. He didn’t need churches. When we got to the place of worship, we were expected to walk up the church and bow to the parson. The squire and other parish notables sat in state in the centre of the aisle and erected a curtain around their peers to hide them from the vulgar gaze of the likes of me and Jethro and the other men. The minister talked of virtue and charity. But I had neither virtue or charity, just bile and contempt. God was not my friend. I sought only the company of the devil. Indeed, I had much in common with him, for had he not been cast out of heaven and was he not now wandering the earth in search of his revenge?

      Days went by, then another week. I had saved a full pound as I’d planned to do and was a quarter to my goal. There were more walls to build and we worked steadily every day, taking it in turns, using hammer, wedge and chisel to break stones in the morning, then hand and eye to build the wall in the afternoon. The next day, we’d swap it around. It helped to break up the monotony of the job. I mostly partnered with Sticks and we grafted with me listening and him talking. His conversation ranged from the political to the personal within the same breath.

      ‘Have you heard of the tithe awards, laa?’

      ‘What’s that?’

      ‘A tenth of produce given to the rector of the land. One pig in ten, one egg in ten, one cow in ten. But the mill dun’t have to give a tenth of their produce. What do you think about that then?’

      I shrugged.

      ‘I tell yer, it’s unfair is what it is.’

      ‘I suppose it is.’

      ‘We’ve got to fight for a fairer system, laa. No one is going to make the world fairer, only us. By hard graft. You’ve got to fight for everything you get in this life. Even love. My first love was Mary. Fourteen years of age. I was seventeen. What a beauty. Like a painting. At the very first sight I was taken, I remember it like this morning. I had a feeling so strong for her that I forgot what I was supposed to be doing. I just wanted to be with her all day, morning, afternoon and evening. As soon as I’d finished my work I’d be there, like a dog. It was just like in the songs, when a temptress puts a spell on a man.’

      Oh, I knew that feeling all right, Cathy.

      The wall-building was slow but satisfying work. I liked holding the stones in my hands, turning them over. I liked their weight and hardness. Something that was solid and dependable. And it was good to stand back at the end of the day and look over what we’d achieved.

      When the wall was done there was more work for me. Dan had stable work I could do and to which I was accustomed, and plough work to which I was not but soon became so. Every morning I rose before four of the clock and would go into the stable. There I would cleanse the stable, groom the horses, feed them, then prepare my tackle. I would breakfast between six of the clock and half past the clock. Then plough until three. I took half an hour for dinner, attended to the horses until I don’t know what hour, when I would return for supper. After supper, for extra bunce, I would either sit by the fire to mend the shoes of the farmer’s family or beat and knock hemp or flax, or grind malt on the quern, pick candle rushes, or whatever the farmer bade me do until eight of the clock. Then I would attend to the cattle. There was not much time for leisure, but the pennies were piling up and I kept a bag of them hidden in the woods in the hollowed-out trunk of an elm.

      The other workers began and ended each day by thanking God, but I would do no such thing. And so this became my routine for the next few weeks. The work was hard but I grew strong and my thoughts turned again to my plan. I now had two pounds. I was halfway there. Perhaps in Manchester I could set myself up and be my own master. Every night I would wander to the hollow and count my pennies. Once I had counted them, I would pile them all carefully back into the bag and hide it in the hollow as a squirrel does an acorn. It was a disturbed night in the barn with the other labourers, as some of them snored or else talked in their sleep. When slumber did visit me I dreamed about you. Sometimes I would wake with you on top of me, but when I reached out to touch your skin you turned into air. In another dream, I came into your chamber and you were there in bed with Edgar and he was leering at me. Other times I’d dream I was with Hindley, with my hands around his throat, squeezing the life out of him, and I would wake with a jolt and the disappointment of an empty grasp.

      I would lie on my back, trying to block out noxious smells and the noisy racket, filling my head with plans of revenge. Yes, I would make my fortune in Manchester or Liverpool, but at some point in the future, I intended to return to you, an improved gentleman. I remembered the adage of the hare and the tortoise. I would take my time. I would savour my vengeance. I would linger as it lied.

      With this in mind, one day I got into conversation with Sticks and asked him what I could do to improve my situation.

      ‘You need to read and write, laa.’

      ‘I know my alphabet,’ I said.

      ‘That’s a start. But you look around you at those who can read and write and those that can’t. Every labourer here is illiterate, me excepted. Do you think the squire is illiterate? Do you think the parson is? Or the doctor or the lawyer or the judge?’

      ‘So why do you choose the life of a farm labourer if you can read and write?’

      ‘Like I’ve said to you before, laa. There’s them that’s running to something, and them that’s running away.’

      ‘Which one are you?’

      ‘No matter, laa, no matter. Look, you want to improve your station in life then you start with your letters and your words. Everything comes from that.’

      Sticks was right: if I were to gain dominion over Hindley’s mind and over his estate, and also gain your true respect and be a worthy adversary to Edgar, I would have to go beyond the rudimentary lessons you taught.

      ‘So how