The Gallows Pole

by Benjamin Myers

  William Deighton nodded to the bailiff and then with fingers curled around his biceps they led David Hartley through a corridor of bodies that had appeared in the packed tap room and out along the hallway, where Robert Parker watched as the king of the Coiners was taken out into the square where people were already gathering in a throng of whispers.

  Not a single word had been spoken except that which now came from David Hartley himself, hissed with venom through crooked teeth clenched shut as a cloud crossed the autumn moon and a despondent mizzling rain fell, and the night decided that rain was not enough for such an occasion, and it turned the raindrops into a hail shower, the first of the season.

  Bastards.

  He did not sleep. Instead he sat shivering in wet clothes on the cold stone floor of the small square lock-up by the side of the Duke Of Leeds Inn. Outside was a pick-up point for the stagecoaches, and periodically through the night there was the scrape and clatter of wheels and hooves on the cobbles, followed by low murmured voices tired from long rides, and the sweet stench of horse scat and wet hides hanging heavy, tumaceous and steaming close by.

  In the early hours the door was unlocked by the landlord of the Duke and the bailiffs Arkle and Baker brought another man in. The door was closed behind him. He was just a shape in the dark. The shape had a voice, dry and cracked. The damp walls held it and flattened it. Muted it.

  Now then, King David.

  Is that you James Jagger?

  It is me.

  A pause. The two men looked for each other in the near darkness.

  They strong-armed you then? said David Hartley.

  Aye, said James Jagger. Dipping my bill alone in the Cross Pipes, I was. They had a written warrant. It was that bastard William Deighton. Clipping and defacing the king’s coin he is claiming, to which I said there is only one king I follow and that is King David Hartley of Bell House, Cragg Vale, Eringden Moor, Upper Calder fucking Valley, Yorkshire cunting England. That’s what I told him. Thems the very words I used.

  And then what happened?

  I gave these two big bastards who were with him a clump each and they gave me a dozen more in reply. Bailiffs I reckoned them to be. Blow-ins from Huddersfield. And now a tooth is loose and I think some ribs are cracked. Listen to me wheeze, brother.

  David Hartley spoke quietly.

  Not one man stepped in when they arrested me.

  Not one?

  Not one. Between the best of us we could have buried the devil Deighton in the soil by sun-up, and his burly bastard blow-in bailiffs by his side too, and the silence of the inn would have been ours, there’s no doubt about that, the town and the valley is on our side, but instead they froze like ice shoggles. They just stood and stared. Gloared at the lawman. They shit it.

  David Hartley felt James Jagger move closer and then sit beside him on the cell floor.

  Maybe they have a plan.

  What plan?

  A plan to get us out of here.

  There’s no fucking plan, said David Hartley. It’s me that does all the planning round here. Without me they’ll neither be able to lace their boots nor wipe their yellow cowardly backpipes.

  They fell quiet for a moment.

  What’ll become of us? Will they let us out tomorrow?

  David Hartley said nothing.

  Another long silence followed. The street was empty now, and the inn was shut and no stage coaches had stopped to alight.

  I said what will happen to us, King David?

  I heard what you said.

  What do we do?

  We keep our mouths shut.

  But they know what we’ve done, said James Jagger.

  They know nothing. They can prove nothing. There’s neither of us been caught at the clipping red-handed.

  They say a man would hang for forging coins.

  David Hartley spoke quietly again.

  How many men do you know who have clipped a guinea James Jagger?

  Many. Scores I would say.

  Scores in the Upper Calder Valley alone.

  Yes.

  And how many have swung for it?

  None.

  Well then. That is what is going to happen.

  What?

  Nothing.

  Nothing, King David?

  Nothing. You keep your mouth shut and your teeth clenched, and best keep your fists curled and ready for whatever them bastards bring to us for breakfast because you can be sure it won’t be eggs and ham hock. These bastards are out for us but no one keeps this king down. We’ll get out fighting if need be. Just bide your time, Jagger. Bide your time.

  To the darkness David Hartley said this, and his voice was so calm and steady he almost believed it himself.

  At nite now I taykes to singin sum of the old songs The songs that the boys did synge an some they rote themselves Songs they say is good for the mood and I reckon that to be true enuyff because weed always singed when weed worked our fingas to the bone clipping a goode haul Singen too before that when farmen or loomin or bildin and the man had given us good coyne honest coyne then weed filled our skin with ale and slakund ower tungs and be feelin like all ower trubbles had been drowned like rats to the ayle barrel That was wen weed tayke to singing the old songs Aye songs like Sing one sing orl Coiners tayke your hole and steal your sorl or maybe King Daevid king Daevid he is the graytest king that ever warked the earth or maybe weed sing summat like Clip a coyn and fuck the crowne if a lawman comes knocken choppum down.

  Or maybe even a vers of Valley boys clip an valley boys sin Valley boys kneel to none but ther Kinge.

  Good songs old songs new songs Songs that tell the tayle of me and mine So at nite now I sing them lowd an prowd an that’s when the men start showting at us to turn it in Turn it in they says Turn it in you bellowing thundercunt But I jest larfs at this an I gets to singin even lowder and make sure I waken all the silly sossidges soes that I’m sure they orl no about King David because I do this nite after nite Aye nite after nite for weeks on end I sing my good songs and now ther all bangin and moanin but none of them says wat it is theyll do to us if I don’t stop my singin becors they knows I is King Daevid of the Crags and to mayke a threat against King Daevid of the crags you mite as well take that hemp rope an not that hemp rope an sling it over the gibbet yersel becors to do that wud be to lose an eye or your tung or wark only on broken bones for ever more or maybe even greet death himsellf Jussed as the cundemt man nose his fayte.

  An so I showts out I shout Get a wash yer blacc Lancastreen bastuds becors even tho the most of them is Jórvíkshire men lyke myself its the bestst way to get theyr blud and piss boilin by corlin them black Lancayshite bastids like that and so on and on I sings on with my good song I sings Valley boys clip an valley boys singe and Valley boys bow to none but ther King over and over and sure enuff in time I do beleef my mood now begins to lift just as I thort it would An my hart too it swells beneath my ribs so strong Rite good it is Rite bluddy good.

  Away from the eyes of the valley the brothers William Hartley and Isaac Hartley met deep in Bell Hole. They walked down through bosk and spinney to a clearing by the stream. They took circuitous routes, made sure they were unseen. It was a place of their childhood. A place of conspiracy.

  Here the water ran down through small falls and spouts and levels. Often when it rained for days the stream flooded the surrounding lea and turned it into a thick dark mire.

  They have our brother, said William Hartley, the younger of the pair.

  Yes, replied his sibling. But not for long.

  Not for long?

  No. I don’t believe they can hold him, said Isaac Hartley. He’ll be out from Halifax gaol by nightfall.

  But he is not in Halifax,

  Not in Halifax? Where then?

  They have already moved him to York castle. Have you not heard? T
hey say there is a testimony.

  What testimony?

  That one belonging to the cursed black devil Deighton, said William Hartley. They say he already has a signed testimony that is enough to have our David committed for trial at the assizes. It is a witness statement.

  Who would go against the Coiners and bear witness to this lawman? There is no-one in the valley who would have the hide to cross us.

  Do not be so sure, brother. I believe someone has turned – just as David predicted.

  One of our own?

  Perhaps.

  But who?

  Someone who has seen enough to spill his guts, said William Hartley.

  But why would they do this?

  William Hartley walked to the stream. He crouched and scooped cold water into his mouth. He looked for fish – a habit of a lifetime – but there were none. This stream ran straight from the moor; none had ever made it this far up.

  Choose a reason. Spite or jealousy. Perhaps the devil Deighton has them blackmailed. But most probably it is greed. Wanton greed. An offer of money can turn any man.

  Not our men, said Isaac Hartley. They have plenty of money. A river of coins does flow from these moors and down through this valley. Between us we have made sure that them and theirs want for nothing.

  A river can always run deeper and wider.

  But why ask for more?

  Because some men are never satisfied.

  Greed then it is, said Isaac Hartley.

  Yes. Or power. Perhaps this turncoat fancies the crown of the valley for himself.

  You mean one of our own would sell on our brother’s soul to the lawman so that he could take over? Anyone that would do that is ready for the asylum. It could never work.

  No. It could never work.

  From high up in the slopes of the woods William Hartley could hear the raven’s croak, dry and throaty. Another one joined it in a slightly higher pitch. A nesting pair. William Hartley stood and searched for their blue-black shapes against the sky but he could not see them. He looked to the tree tops for their bowl-shaped nests lined with mud and bark and roots and softened with snags of deer or sheep fur. He could not see them.

  As boys they had climbed these trees here in Bell Hole to seek out such nests and take eggs. Scores they had collected, from the nests of birds of dozens of varieties, David Hartley always scaling the most obscure trees to heights where the branches seemed too thin to hold the weight of an adolescent swaying in the breeze. Cliffs they had climbed too, to find the eyries of falcons and their woody, nut-coloured eggs. Kestrels they hunted down for their clusters of mottled cackleberrys. Owls also, their eggs often as perfectly pure white as the moon.

  Such rare finds were kept as treasures or occasionally traded with other valley boys, the brothers’ collection set on the beam above the beds where they slept so that their translucent shells were best illuminated by a morning sun that crept over the brow of the moor.

  William Hartley turned back to his brother who had lit a pipe and was letting the smoke swirl around his face like the unravelling bandages of a shot-blasted soldier back from the far-flung killing fields of the bloody rebellions.

  So what do we do to free him? he asked.

  There is only one way.

  Tell me.

  We must flush out the rat, said Isaac Hartley. He passed the pipe to his brother who took the mossy smoke into his mouth.

  And cut strips off him? he said.

  No, said Isaac Hartley. We flush out the rat and we get him to change his testimony. Without that, any trial would surely crumble. There’s none of us have been caught at it. It’s all hearsay, is that. The black devil man Deighton has not seen the clipping, nor does he have the tools of our trade or any evidence save surely for a few coins he has accrued from barmen and butchers here and there. They mean nothing. Anyone could clip a coin. It all rests on this rat. This turncoat.

  We must find him.

  We must.

  And we shall.

  James Broadbent felt the warm ale slip down his throat and wished that he had a pipe because although he rarely took one he felt like scorching the anger that was burning in the pit of his stomach. He felt like burning his insides and raging and smashing and breaking all in sight. He felt like punching chunks out of the valley. Great holes into it. He wanted to bite boulders. Burn houses. Slit the throats of calves and daub William Deighton’s name in blood across the face of the Halifax clock tower. Of all that he felt capable.

  Without the money to drink all day the bitter embers within him were only further fuelled by thoughts of poverty. He ruminated on the work he had done for two opposing sides and the outcome was always the same: neither had given their dues.

  He poured his drink down quickly and shouted for Barbara to bring him another. With each swallowed mouthful those one hundred guineas that were owed to him seemed further beyond reach, intangible and nebulous like early morning bog fumes. They were mythical coins now, less real even than those they had milled and stamped and sent back into circulation. Because at least those moidores and shillings and half guineas and pennies had been something to touch and hold and feel and bite with your teeth to confirm they were real. Deighton’s guineas had been nothing but a lure. Mythical money. He saw this now. He saw this and he cursed William Deighton and he cursed David Hartley and he cursed himself.

  In the early afternoon the day outside spilled into Barbary’s and a shaft of autumn sun crossed James Broadbent. He raised an arm to screen his eyes, to block it out, and with it came James Stansfield, looking first to the left where a small huddle of turnpike workers were taking their beer and then to the right where James Broadbent sat slumped, one foot raised onto a stool, eyes squinting into the momentary brightness. He made straight for him.

  Have you heard? said James Stansfield. They’ve got the king.

  James Broadbent looked and leered. Sneered. He did not like James Stansfield. Never had. Stansfield was slight and weak and blond. One of the soft ones. Everything about his appearance annoyed him: his small wet mouth, his beardless chin, his girlish blue eyes. Stansfield was under the Hartley brothers’ thumb and without the Hartleys he was nothing.

  Without the Hartleys most of them were nothing. They could never stand alone; not like him. When the Hartleys swung – and that was surely soon – this lot would go back to being land labourers and weavers and farmers scratching at the soil for vegetables in their shallow, barren plots. They did not have the courage that he, James Broadbent, had. They were as low as field mice that seek the warmth of a man’s home in winter; they were nothing but rodents but he was the mythical wolf of old England that stalked the woods alone, crunching skulls. By season’s end he would be gone.

  He said nothing. He just looked at James Stansfield, flush-cheeked and short of breath. James Stansfield stared back and saw a man whose eyes could not focus and a jaw that was slack. The face of a savage in his cups.

  The Jagger lad too, said James Stansfield. They got Jagger.

  James Broadbent wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and then rubbed his neck.

  Much money, he said, his words sticking in his throat.

  What’s that you say?

  Many guineas.

  Yes, said James Stansfield. Between us we have milled many coins. They say The Alchemist can work magic with metal and fire. But now they say this bastard devil Deighton has pulled in our king and James Jagger on false charges. They say he has sworn statements.

  James Broadbent rolled his head around on his neck until it cracked and then he took a drink.

  William Deighton is indeed a bastard, he slurred. A bastard of the very worst kind.

  James Stansfield saw that the big man’s eyes were wet and glassy, his teeth crooked and chipped. He saw the dirt beneath nails that never got scrubbed and the dirt too that coloured the creases of hands
too large and cumbersome to ever properly make the working of a loom worth a man’s while; hands only good for cleaving, pummelling and pounding. Wasn’t that why the Hartleys had taken him on – because James Broadbent had been turned out of the army and had failed at the loom and was too lazy to burn the charcoal like his father, but yet had greater strength and fighting skills than almost any other valley man?

  Deighton is as worse a bastard as the bastard David scatmouth Hartley, said James Broadbent.

  James Stansfield looked around him then pulled up a chair and sat. He leaned in.

  You’d be minded to watch your drunken words, James Broadbent. People will get to talking.

  You don’t tell me what to do, growled James Broadbent in response. You’re nowt but a cunny-thumbed Miss Molly, just like Queen David Hartley, you.

  James Stansfield ignored the insult.

  Again I warn you to mind that tongue of yours less someone cuts it out.

  Beneath lidded eyes James Broadbent stared back.

  No sane man would durst to.

  They say there is a rat amongst us, said James Stansfield.

  And the rat is me.

  James Broadbent said this and then began to chuckle quietly to himself. But it was laughter without a smile. James Stansfield saw that it disguised something ugly and damaged; a harlequin’s mask worn askance.

  Aye, he continued. It was me what put the men in. Hartley and Jagger.

  You’re ligging, said James Stansfield.

  James Broadbent’s smile faded. The laughter crumpled in on itself and died in his mouth. He looked away, indignant.

  Please yourself.

  James Stansfield studied his face.

  I think I do believe you, he said.

  A wise man would.

  Then your life has a limit.

  All life has a limit.

  Let me test my head handles one more time, said James Stansfield. Are you saying now that you have turned against your own? That it is you that has spoken to the exciseman they call William Deighton of Halifax?

  The Coiners aren’t my own, said James Broadbent. Your own looks after you, protects you. The Hartley’s have done nowt for me. Fuck all.