Chris Nickson: Come the Fear

It was the last day of March and the sun had risen bright and pale. There was a crispness in the early morning air; Richard Nottingham felt it cold against his face as he walked and it cut sharply through the old wool of his breeches, a reminder that spring hadn’t fully arrived yet.

Last night there’d been a large full moon that hung low over Leeds. He’d stood at the window and watched its light spread across the fields.

It had been a damp, chill winter, a time of aches and pains, agues and rheums. He’d felt enough of them himself with sniffles and coughs that hadn’t wanted to leave. Now, though, there was new life in the air, and not before time. In the city the last of the season’s understanding and compassion had been scraped dry. Tempers frayed quickly and violence fired all too readily in words and fists.

He crossed Timble Bridge, seeing the light shining like sparks on the water and feeling the strange clarity of the air, his boots clattering flatly over the old wood, before walking slowly up Kirkgate towards the jail. He glanced at the churchyard as he passed, and his eye rested on the headstone for his older daughter, Rose, buried a year before. Loved in death as she was cherished in life, it read. Last month, once the earth had finally settled enough, it had finally been put in place. He’d knelt at the graveside and traced each single letter, feeling the clear marks of the chisel and thinking of the girl who’d grown so fast, and had been barely married when the fever took her away. In time the inscription would wear and weather to nothing and the stone might split or crack. But by then he’d be long dead, along with Mary and Emily and all who might have held the girl in their heads and hearts. By then she’d just be another fading, forgotten entry in the parish register.

He shook his head to clear the memories and strode on. It was still early enough for the air to smell fresh, before the night soil was thrown out and the ripe press of humanity filled the streets. All around him Leeds was coming alive, servants chattering quietly in the yards, and behind the closed shutters of big houses, the smoke of kitchen fires pillowing up into the blue sky, the soft sounds of grumbling and laughter. The poor were coming from their tenement yards for another day of work. On Briggate the weavers would be starting to set up their trestles for the cloth market, laying out their finished lengths of wool and warming their bones with a hot Brigg End Shot breakfast of roasted beef and ale.

Nottingham opened the door and walked into the jail. Rob Lister was sitting at the desk completing the last of the night report. He looked weary, and his red hair stood out wildly from his scalp where he’d run a hand through it.

‘Anything?’

‘Nothing much, boss.’

So far 1733 had been an uneventful year, and as Constable of the City of Leeds, Richard Nottingham was grateful. There had been the usual robberies and killings, rapes and fights. The poor suffered while the wealth of the rich grew until all that anchored some of them to earth was the weight of their purses. But that was how the world had always been, the way it would remain until the end. The crimes had been easily resolved, the product of drink, rage or desperation that would leave men to hang or spend years transported across the ocean. It had been normal business.

‘Go home and sleep,’ he said, though Lister seemed in no hurry to stir. He knew the boy would wait, glancing eagerly out of the window, his eyes searching for Nottingham’s younger daughter Emily, as she walked to her position as an assistant teacher at the dame school. They’d been courting for half a year, and Nottingham approved of the match. He liked the lad, he was quick and clever, and in his short time as a Constable’s man he’d learned the fine difference that separated law and justice. He’d changed, grown deeper into his skin.

Finally Rob smiled and dashed out into the sunshine. He’d barely been gone a moment when the door opened again and John Sedgwick, the deputy constable walked in laughing.

‘I thought he was going to run right through me to catch up with your lass.’

‘Come on, John, you remember what young love’s like,’ Nottingham said with a smile.

‘Was always young lust with me,’ the deputy snorted, taking off his battered tricorn hat and tossing it on the bench against the wall. He looked drawn, his face pale, ringed and deeply shaded under the eyes, but that was hardly surprising, Nottingham reflected. In February his woman had given birth to a pair of girls. One had died before the day was through, but the other was healthy enough, growing and hungry and keeping them sleepless.

‘Go down and keep an eye on the market,’ Nottingham told him. ‘We had that cutpurse there a fortnight ago, we don’t need any more of that.’

‘Yes, boss.’ He poured a mug of small beer from the jug on the desk and drank. ‘By the way, someone was telling me there’s a new pimp in the city.’

‘Another one?’ Nottingham asked in quiet exasperation.

Sedgwick nodded. Since Amos Worthy had died the previous autumn, too many others had scuttled into Leeds, eager to establish themselves and their girls and become king of the trade.

‘Do you have a name for him?’ Nottingham asked.

‘Joshua Davidson.’

The Constable sighed.

‘I’ll find him later and have a talk.’

In his time Worthy had been untouchable, supplying girls and loans to the city’s merchants and members of the Corporation in return for their protection. He was violent and unscrupulous, yet he and Nottingham had enjoyed a strange relationship, a mix of hatred and curious affection.

The new pretenders didn’t have his power and the Constable was determined they’d never get the chance to take his place. Whenever one surfaced, trailing his whores like treasure, Nottingham would talk to him. Men were going to buy prostitutes; that was simply the way of the world and no laws or punishments would ever change it. But he’d give his warning; with the first trouble, the slightest complaint or whisper, the pimp would be gone, banished from the city.

So far there had been no problems. The men kept an uneasy, watchful truce while the girls befriended and helped each other. As sure as tomorrow, though, it would change. Sooner or later the violence would begin and then they’d have to spill blood to keep order. But the longer the inevitable waited, the happier he was.

‘Anything after the market, boss?’

‘Just look around. You know what to do.’

John Sedgwick walked down Briggate at his usual lope, greeting some of the weavers with smiles. The merchants stood together in small groups in the middle of the street, some in their finery and best powdered periwigs, some subdued, and the Quakers apart in their plain coats. But all of them gave off the distinctive smell of money, he thought. He watched as they passed idle time until the bell rang and the earnest business of Leeds began.

Thousands of pounds changed hands at every Tuesday and Saturday market as coloured cloth was bought, ready to be finished then shipped to Spain or Italy or America, anywhere the merchants could sell it at a profit. It had gone on for centuries, first on Leeds Bridge and now here. It had become the biggest in England, they said, so large they’d built a grand hall for the white cloth sales, as imposing and beautiful as any church. Trade had made wealthy men of the merchants, with money to spend to insulate themselves behind thick walls in large houses. They ran the Corporation and ruled the city.