Michael Stewart - Ill Will

I left the barn and wandered some more, not tired enough to lie down on God’s cold earth. I walked down a tree-lined track, back into the village. As I did, I heard music in the distance, a cheerful jig, and, drawn to the noise as a moth is to a lantern, I tried to find its source. I wandered along cobbled roads and muck tracks until I came to a village hall. It was a large barn, painted white, with light pouring from its windows. The music was coming from inside. I walked around the back. There was a small leaded window and I peered in. There were lines of lanterns and a huge fireplace with a roaring fire. There was a long table laid with food and drink. There were people lined up dancing: men and women of all ages. The women wore colourful frocks and bonnets. The men wore smart breeches, bright waistcoats and fancy hats. The hall was decorated with brightly coloured ribbons. There was a fiddle player in a cocked hat, playing a frenetic tune. I watched the group dance and sing and sup flagons of ale. I watched them smile and laugh and talk excitedly. The men held their women in their arms and drew them close to their bodies. I felt sick at the sight of them.

Then I saw a black, repulsive face staring back at me. Half-man, half-monster, just as Hindley said. My reflection in the glass pane. A black shadow of a man with not a friend in the world nor a bed to rest, barred from life’s feast. I wanted the night sky to swallow me up, to be dust. I could never be one of those people in there. My life would never be one of mead and merriment. Condemned to stand outside the party. Not like you, Cathy, with your fancy frocks and fancier friends. With your ribbons and curls and perfumes. I wandered back to the farm, crept into the animal barn, and lay down on the straw with the swine.

Flesh for the Devil

That night I dreamed we were on the moor; the heather was blooming, and you were teaching me the names of all the plants of the land: dog rose, gout weed, earth nut, fool’s parsley, goat’s beard, ox-tongue, snake weed. Your words were like a spell. I watched your lips form the sounds. I saw your tongue flit between your perfect teeth. Witches’ butter, bark rag, butcher’s broom, creeping Jenny, mandrake. We looked around at the open moorland, but it had all been hedged and fenced and walled. There were men, hundreds of them, burning the heather, digging ditches, breaking rocks. There were puritans, Baptists, Quakers, inventors, ironmasters, instrument-makers. Our place had been defiled. The flowers of the moor had been trampled on. The newborn leverets butchered. The mottled infant chicks of the peewit had been crushed underfoot. Guts in the mud. You were in the middle of the mob, a heckling throng, staring around. I held my hand out but I couldn’t reach you. You were lost to me.

The next thing I was aware of was someone taking me by the shoulders.

‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

I was in the barn with the swine, and a lump of a man with a bald head was shaking me roughly. He wore big black boots and a leather jerkin. He looked more like an ogre than a man. It was morning and light from the open barn door poured in.

‘I’m sorry, sir.’

I was too weak from sleep to fight the brute.

‘What do you think this is, a doss-house?’

‘I had nowhere to stay,’ I said.

‘That’s no excuse.’

‘I was tired,’ I said.

‘Get up and get out. This isn’t a hostel for gypsies.’

‘I’m no kettle-mender.’

‘What’s your name?’

I thought for a moment; I wracked my brains.

‘Come on then, lad, speak up. Have the hogs gobbled your tongue?’

I remembered that young boy at chapel, Cathy, you were friendly with him. Died of consumption a few years since. I always liked his name. It was good and whole and clean.

‘My name, sir, is William Lee.’

I’d stolen the name of a dead child. A boy we laiked with before and after sermon.

‘Well then, William, Will, Billy, that doesn’t sound gypsy to me, I give you that. What kind of work can you do?’

‘I can dig, build walls, tend fowl, tend swine. Any work you have.’

‘Are you of this parish?’

‘I’m an offcumden, sir, from the next parish.’

‘I do need hands, as it happens.’

‘What for?’

‘I’ve a wall that needs building. And stone that needs breaking. A bloke did a flit after a drunken brawl a few nights back. I’m a man down.’

‘I’m that man, sir. I’m a grafter.’

‘Sure you’re not a pikey?’

‘I’m sure.’

‘I don’t employ gyppos.’

He took me over three fields, two of meadow, one of pasture, to where there was a birch wood and a small quarry. As we stood by the delph I realised, in fact, that he wasn’t as large as I’d at first thought. Though still heavyset and big of bone, he was not the giant my waking eyes had taken him for.

‘This is where you get the stone. There’s a barrow there. Don’t over-fill it, mind. I don’t want it splitting.’

He showed me where it had been parked for the night. Next to the barrow were several picks and wedges, as well as hammer and chisel. Then he walked me across to another field where a wall was partly constructed.

‘And this is the wall. In another hour or so there will be some men to join you. Some men to break stone and others to build. The one they call Sticks will tell you what to do.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘The name’s Dan Taylor. I own this farm.’

With that the farmer walked back down to the farm buildings and I sat on a rock. I amused myself by pulling grass stalks from their skins and sucking on the ends. I gathered a fist of stones and aimed them at the barrow. I watched the tender trunks of the birch wrapped in white paper. A web of dark branches. The leaves and the catkins rustled in the breeze. I waited an hour or two before the first of the men arrived. He was skinny as a beanpole and his hair was dark. He had a bald patch to the side just above his ear, in the shape of a heart. His beard grew sparsely around his chops. He told me the farmer had spoken to him about me.

‘Well, William Lee, you do as you’re told and we’ll get along fine, laa. The name’s John Stanley. Everyone calls me Sticks.’

He unfurled his arms the way a heron stretches out its wings and offered me his willowy hand to shake.

We broke stone for a time before two more men appeared and joined us. When we were joined by another two men, Sticks put his pick down.

‘Right, men, we’re all here and there’s lots to do. Looks like the weather will hold out despite the clouds.’

He pointed up. There were patches of blue but mostly the sky consisted of clouds the colour of a throstle’s egg. Not storm clouds though.

‘Good graftin’ weather,’ one of the men said.

‘This is William Lee. He’ll be working with us today. Me, William and Jethro will work here to begin. Jed, you barrow, and you two start walling. We’ll swap after a time. Come ’ed.’

We set to work again.

‘You from round here then, laa?’ Sticks said as he loaded up a barrow with freshly broken stones.

‘The next parish. About thirty miles east.’

‘So what brings you to this parish then?’

‘I’m just drifting. No particular reason.’

‘People don’t just drift. They always have a purpose. You’re either travelling to somewhere or running away from someone. Which is it?’

‘Neither.’

‘Suit yourself. Give me a hand with this.’

I helped him lift a large coping stone.

‘Had a southerner here last week. From Sheffield. Think he found us a bit uncouth. Only lasted two days. Could hardly tell a word he said, his accent was that strong.’