The Gallows Pole

by Benjamin Myers

  He saw hanging from the ceiling onions strung in garlands. He saw on the window sill a row of corn dollies. Below them a basket of washed sheep wool. A roe deer’s skull mounted.

  William Deighton bolted up crooked stairs. Here was one room containing three looms and baskets and trimmings and combs. Half-spun wool was strung everywhere. It stretched from ceiling beams to hooks in the wall. There were reels and bobbins. Yarn cleats and knotted tangles.

  And tucked into recesses in the walls where bricks had been removed for this very purpose, there sat dripping stubs of candles. He went to one and touched it. The wax was soft. He pinched the wick. Still warm.

  He quickly walked downstairs to the back door. It was ajar. It was opened to the anthracite night into which Thomas Clayton and possibly other Coiners had fled.

  William Deighton went back into the house. He looked in the dresser and under the bed. He checked the stores. Checked the drawers. He looked up the chimney and felt the radiating warmth of the dampened fire in its stone, then he put his fingers into every nook and cranny. Between every cold stone. He tested loose floorboards. Lifted sheepskins still stinking of flesh. Scoured a raggy mat stitched from dyed scraps. Rifled through tangles of wool. Upended furniture then carefully replaced it.

  Nothing.

  He found nothing.

  Not a sliver of metal nor a set of shears.

  Not a single coin. Not a stamp or a crucible or tongs or buffing rags.

  There was nothing but the presence of people recently departed to the hill behind. To the hill to hide and bury. To bury their counterfeit coins. Coins to clothe and feed. Here they surely watched and waited as William Deighton left Stannery End and began the long walk home back across the fields to the low lights of Halifax in the far distance, that flickered as if the sky had fallen in defeat, and draped itself across the rise and fall of the bloodless, smothering land.

  With this stump of lead and wat papyre it is I have wangled from the turnkey I have writ a poem that I corl the Song of the Crag Vayle Coiners and it goes like this it goes Hot yorkshyre blood an tough yorkshyre bones Stiff yorkshyre prick and stout yorkshyre stones Theres no man can map where it is a afeersum Cragg vale clipper goes

  An thats real mans poetree is that.

  Many more nights he stepped into darkness and darkness was all around him. He wore it like a comforting shawl. It felt a part of him; an extension of his physical form.

  William Deighton made darkness an asset and an ally and his feet began to find their way through the deepest blue so that in time he did not need even a stump of a candle. Soon he began to know the camber of the track over the hump-back hills from Halifax. He gained a feel for the undulations of the moorland’s edge and saw the moon turned silver in the puddles and sump holes that never seemed to dry up. His muscles gained memories and the memories guided him.

  Occasionally he went on horseback but mainly William Deighton walked.

  He felt his thighs fatten and took pleasure from the way his feet gained traction and his entire body responded. The hills registered in his bones and joints. He felt the pull of them in each tendon and sinew. Nature’s gymnasium.

  He was not a young man but the ten Roman miles or more he covered on his night wanderings made him feel as if his blood was bubbling anew, just as a fresh spring stream bubbles after a flash of rain. The repetition of one foot after another, the corset of cold sweat sticking him to his undershirt, the gratifying burning in his lungs and the matting together of hair and hat all created a coursing sense of energy, the likes of which could not be mustered, summoned or experienced when wandering the town streets. He was surprised to learn of his own heightened levels of stamina.

  Half a dozen times or more Robert Parker had insisted he took with him a young bailiff for his own protection but the excise man William Deighton dismissed the idea outright. The hunter, he said, works best alone. Many times his wife, too, tried to persuade him to stay by the fire in the house, where his younger children filled the floor and letters home from their eldest three sons sat stacked on the mantelpiece, but after Stannery End he was more determined than ever.

  Stannery End was an affront. He said as much to Robert Parker. Stannery End was a snub to all lawmen and a puzzle too, for he had yet to work out how it was that the house’s tenant, Thomas Clayton, knew Deighton was coming for him; how it was he was able to flee with only seconds to spare.

  Only when he had flattened out across his kitchen table a crude pen and ink map of the Upper Calder valley that marked the hamlets and larger hilltop farmsteads and messuages did the thought enter his head that it was possible that the Coiners were operating some sort of advance signalling system. From its elevated position Bell House sat a crow’s mile across the Cragg valley from Stannery End, and forming a third corner equidistant from the two across Calderdale, was the house at Wadsworth Banks, where it was known that one Thomas Greenwood – who the turncoat James Broadbent had informed him was also known, in typical gang-style, as Great Tom or Conjurer Tom – kept a home. Wadsworth Banks looked back directly across to the blackened cliffs and tree-lined basin of Scout Rock along which he himself had stalked. Together these three houses formed a triumvirate of eyes able to watch all the main roads and routes in and out the valley.

  Could, he wondered, the men be signalling one another, with mirrors or flags perhaps? Or something even more sophisticated. It was a trick not beyond their capability, but one he did not raise with Robert Parker for fear of being ridiculed.

  Robert Parker was a reasonable and learned man and to be outsmarted by these illiterate hill-dwellers was not something William Deighton wanted known.

  He made a note to visit Wadsworth Banks. Thomas Greenwood would be receiving a visit. His was another name for the list.

  For many nights he walked alone and soon these journeys gave him a deeper understanding of darkness. They gave him a greater understanding of place. Plunged into the night, William Deighton refined his senses and let sound and touch – the whistle of the wind and the scratching and snittering of animals; the creak of leather sole on grainy cart stone – guide him as the laminated layers of night peeled back to reveal a state of mind.

  Through the valley he tigered as if in a dream and often he wondered if this was all indeed a dream for when he returned home in the early hours it was not sleep that greeted him but a strange limbo where day and night, dream, nightmare and reality overlapped. Coming home he brought the soft darkness with him. They were inside him now, these hinterlands. He carried the moor everywhere – or perhaps the moor carried him.

  Each time he returned to town, to home, to lie in bed perfectly still beside his sleeping wife, his senses enlivened, William Deighton felt utterly exhausted, yet he was nevertheless imbued and infused with a sort of joyful drunkenness too, and increasingly a part of him was still out there, stalking the moor, a half-feral man whose very dreams were now scented by heather and lit by moonlight, crackling with the mute power of all things connected.

  Wans in the forges wesst of Burmincham I did have to fite a man A rite big lump of a bastid he were A man they did say hayled from Scotlan from Glasger on the Clide I believe it was Now this lump had tayken a dislyken to King Daevid for wot reason I no not ecksept perhaps for me good lucks that sum have lycund to the Gods of olde or maybe it was my natril witt and gile but this big carrot topped bran faysed bastid did corner me wan day down in the forjes and I swear he was the size of an ocks up on its back legs As big as fucken beest of the feeld he was Bigger mebby.

  And I sed I dunt want no trubble with you Jocky but he says oh you will get it for that bigg head and cruel tung of yours Hartlee and the daft bugger ript off his shirt and underneath he was hard as teek and his brisket boddee had mussels on mussels and I thort oh fuckerduck Hartlee you are in trubble now sunshyne An the lads were all gathrin rownd then becors they loved a good roar up as it was a nice brake from the werk and the m
anigers leffed us to it and most of them were just glad it wassunt them that were havven to duke it owt with the big boy And tho sum were happy to see King Dayvid who of cors at this pointe was not yet kynge get a rite rummelling this ginjer jock was known to be a bullkybuck too and tho this was no even handed scware straytunner somewan hayted was goan to be given a goan over wich ever syde you were so inclyned to take so it were summat to see It were sport.

  An thats when this cunt comes chargen attes but I was one step on him becors as he did I reached into my arse pocked and I pullt out my snuff bocks an with a flick of the thum it was open and before he could grabbus I did flinge the hole fucken lot in the mans fayse and puff the browne powder was in his eyes and his eatin hole and up his bigg brokain snozz the daft cunt Well after that it was easy becores I booted him ones in the nutmegs and ones more for luck An at that he toppuld like a felled tree falls at the last chop of the acks blayde in a woodland cleerin Fell wimpering he did Fell like a lass he did and wan more punch to the hed did nigh on finish him sparko cold Dun up like a split kipper reddy for thur smokehaus.

  Well aftur that he had no spit in him to get back up neythur I meen that man was leffed pissen blud for dayse and not a werd he sed to me when we were back at the smeltin and the pourin and the hammerin Not a werd And no man did trubble me after that in the Black Countree becors I tell you what a seed was planted that day A seed that sed I was to become a leeder of men A seed that I new would grow into sumthin big and strong and speshul and hoos roots would reech deep into the soil of my land and wud stay there and my name wud be planted too and it wud grow to graytness and so it did.

  And so it did.

  Evening eyes followed William Deighton all the way down the sunken hollow of Stake Lane and across the valley floor towards the permanent eventide of Bell Hole.

  Eyes. The eyes of Stannery End. The eyes of Thomas Clayton.

  When William Deighton left the lane and headed out across the open fields it was still light so Thomas Clayton sent his best boy out to get a closer look for all the Coiners and their children knew the face of William Deighton. They knew his brown coat and cord breeches, the red waistcoat and the shovel hat pulled low over the brow.

  This man does not give up remarked Thomas Clayton from this window. But this time he has not given us a second glance. This time he has foregone us for the King’s sky palace instead.

  The boy ran back up the hill, past the rabbit warren that spanned a hundred or more burrowed feet, through the pasture where foxes wrestled and tumbled at dawn in the dew-soaked grass, and up toward the post where a buzzard had often been seen tearing apart its morning feed, the fur and feather and tiny bones of its prey littering the grass around it as if ritually placed to demarcate a sacred feeding circle, a testament to its routine.

  He ran into the house and said it’s him – it’s the wretched William Deighton. Thomas Clayton stood and opened up the wooden box and scooped a spoon of the powder mix made from the leached ash of wood and leaves and sodium mineral salt and the special unnamed, unknown compound that King David Hartley himself had supplied him with and he said step back, step back, and he flung the mixture onto the fire where it crackled and spat and the flame burned a fierce blue for a few fleeting seconds before the smoke turned into a heavy green colour that slowly spiralled from the Stannery End chimney, twisting upwards in an astringent column.

  He repeated the process one more time and the spiral grew taller and stronger and the gusting back-draught of green smoke filled the front room and had Thomas Clayton coughing and his wife coughing and his children coughing. All of them hacking as the dense and acrid smoke burned their chests and sent them running to the windows to gulp in the clean sharp air of a settling Yorkshire autumn evening. Up at Bell House and Wadsworth Banks the signal was read.

  Night. He circled Bell House as the hawk circles a freshly-cut field, awaiting the opportunity to swoop down upon its prey. He viewed Bell House from all angles until it became first a portentous looming presence and then an abstract thing, a crude shape, and then a ghostly light like the famed will-o’-the-wisps of the fenlands, something unanchored from its heather bed moorings, a Jack-o’-lantern sneering into a darkness so infinite and eternal it seemed as if daylight was a figment of his imagination, an impossibility forever out of reach. He felt first an excitement, and then an emptiness.

  William Deighton saw Bell House as a vessel. A mask. A beacon. A torch.

  Bell House was a lure, a pit, a cursed place.

  A quarry, a foe, an insult. It was his.

  Because viewed from afar night after night the solitary orange flame that burned tiny on the horizon had become for William Deighton a symbol for society’s undoing. It represented lawlessness. England’s downfall. The home of Hartley was a fertile bed for criminality and barbarism. Theft and forgery. Violence and mendacity. It was against progress. It was anti-empire, anti-monarchy, anti-government. No county or country could ever hope to flourish so long as people like Bell House’s inhabitants and their many pin-eyed, low-browed, dirty-fingered acolytes continued to ply their illicit trade without redress.

  He walked to the house and he rapped on the door and when the door opened onto the night it was David Hartley himself standing there, and he raised one arm up against the door frame and said William Deighton is it and William Deighton said yes it is and David Hartley said thought so and then there was an awkward lingering moment of silence as the two men examined each other at close quarters for the first time.

  I suppose you’ll be wanting to come in and take a look around then said David Hartley.

  His words – his invitation – threw William Deighton. It unsettled him further. The casualness of his demeanour did not quite match everything he had imagined and expected David Hartley to be. No surprise had registered with the man.

  Because David Hartley had known that he was coming. Of that he was certain.

  This man they called King was, William Deighton noted, smaller in height too, as if perhaps the distance from which he had only ever previously been viewed had given him stature. It was a strange reversal of perspective. And his own fertile mind had perhaps played its part too, for in the endless hours of plotting and planning and rumination, William Deighton had surely elevated his prey. Inflated him. He was guilty of flattering him with imaginary abnormal attributes and making a myth from a man, just as the valley folk mythologised this gang leader whose behaviour they saw no harm in, so long as there was food on their tables and logs in their log stores.

  Yes said William Deighton. I have a warrant.

  You need no warrant here, tax-man. Come.

  David Hartley turned and William Deighton followed him into Bell House.

  As he crossed the threshold he felt as if the house were taking him. Consuming him.

  And as he entered, William Deighton felt himself enfolded within its walls and beams, its secrets and its history, as if he were entering a realm whose architecture was comprised entirely of smoke and shadows.

  William Hartley and Isaac Hartley were fastening an iron shutter to the fireplace when David Hartley said brothers this is the taxman that’s been out wandering the moors night after night like a lost sheep, and he gestured for William Deighton to step forward. William Hartley and Isaac Hartley looked over their shoulders and then turned back to the fireplace where the younger of the two brothers was turning some screws while the other held the new grate in place.

  Will you have ale with us taxman? said David Hartley and William Deighton shook his head and said no you know it’s not an ale I’m after but a look round your abode, and David Hartley said you’ve been invited so now you’re a guest, but I’ll take it as an affront if you won’t share a pot with me and my brothers here after you’ve been watching us for all these weeks and even just this night have walked all the way over from Bull Close in Halifax.

  To this William Deighton said how is it you know
where I live? and David Hartley said you have two eyes but the king has many and they do see everything, and William Deighton said is that a threat? and David Hartley laughed and said you must be the first person to receive the offer of the best ale in Calderdale as a threat.

  Just as he had seen in Tom Clayton’s vacated place at Stannery End, William Deighton found nothing incriminating in Bell House except the smirking soot-lined faces of the brothers Hartley, and the derisive whistle of the wind around the sharp stone corners of a dwelling that cowered beneath the ceiling of cloud.

  Later, when their business was done, William Deighton stepped into the rectangle of dull lamplight that meekly lit across the back flags of Bell House and into the night. He had only taken a few paces when he heard the three splintering crashes of David Hartley breaking a chair down into a heap of kindling.

  There are rats amongst us he heard David Hartley say to his brothers. One of them is known as the taxman and that rat must fall but there is another who has not yet shown his face. Fetch them all. Fetch them all. Bring them here, the rats. Tell them their king is calling.

  Todaye a boy cum to me in the yard just a sprat of a thin and he says he says to me Are thoo David Hartley the king and I says wor of it and he says who do thoo feer and I says I feer no man never have feered a man and never will And with wyde eyes he says to me they say if thoo cuts King Daevid they say thoo bledes golde and thet thoo drinke moulten lead an eat ginees and sleepe on a duck fetha bed an be fucken all the wimmen and wherein a crown of silver an sittin on a thrown above they kindom An still with wide eyes he says is what they say all troo an I says Nay lad its fucken goose fucken fethas I sleep on an nowt fucken elsel do.

  He walked down into the trees in the palest of diminishing light.