The Gallows Pole

by Benjamin Myers

  Well what the dusty fuck does that mean? said the old man.

  It means that any man caught clipping will be pardoned so long as he gives up two or more of his fellow Coiners, said Isaac Hartley.

  No Cragg Vale clipper would durst do such a thing, said their father.

  It is already happening, said William Hartley the younger.

  It is true, said Grace Hartley. The valley has already turned for the worse. People are talking.

  There’s more, said William Hartley as he continued to read the advertisement. It says here that if such person be an apprentice, he is thereby declared to be a freeman, and hath thereby liberty to exercise any lawful trade, profession or mystery, with all liberties and privileges, and in as full and ample manner as if he had served the full time of his apprenticeship, and is moreover by the said act entitled to the reward of forty pounds for every person convicted.

  He paused. There was nothing but the sound of the sleet lashing at the window. The cough and sigh of the fire.

  These are just words, said their father. And long-winded ones at that.

  No, said Isaac. These are more than words. Don’t you see? This is a challenge to any man, woman or child, Coiner or otherwise, to become turncoat and speak out on this yellow trade of ours. Look, there is a footnote to this declaration: the towns of Halifax, Leeds and Bradford have offered a reward of ten guineas for every person convicted, over and above the reward allowed by act of parliament.

  The elder William Hartley stood. He raised his voice.

  Who is this Chamberlayne? Who is this Rockingham? You should chop them both down.

  Isaac Hartley shook his head. He spoke in a low voice barely audible over the thrash and rattle of the windows.

  Not this time.

  Why not? No government man has brought us down yet. Coiners bow to no monarch but their own.

  There’s too many men, father, said William Hartley. We can’t shoot or stab or stamp every man into the moorland dirt who pries into our enterprise. If we kill one, two more will replace them.

  He’s right, said Grace Hartley. My husband is done for and now the real King of England’s men are coaxing cowards out of their stone hiding holes. People will surely talk when the crown is on their side.

  Then the tongues of those that do will be cut out and shoved up their arseholes, said the old man. Isn’t that right Isaac? It is up to you now.

  Isaac took the paper and screwed it into a ball and threw it into fire. It burned briefly and brightly, a blue flower unfolding into the flames.

  Grace is the one who is right, he said quietly. Informers are already informing.

  Again I ask: who would durst to? said their father.

  Many. Not everyone is a friend. We have enemies too. There are those whose businesses have suffered.

  Only the greedy and the wealthy. Them that deserve sufferance.

  It is the greedy and the wealthy who wield the power, father, said Isaac Hartley. There is much talk of this Rockingham, whose intention it is to end the coining once and for all.

  Coining will never end, said the elder William Hartley. He snorted and then continued. It has been done in the valley for years; we were the ones who got organised. That’s all. Clipping is in our blood. Don’t they say on certain days the valley rivers flow gold?

  Things are changing, said Isaac Hartley.

  Well change them back. We’ve got a fucking army out there.

  Isaac walked over to the window. The sleet was coming in on a diagonal now.

  You’re an old man, he said.

  Yes. And I’m tougher than the lot of you, the way you’re talking.

  I do believe you are. But it’s a different world that’s coming.

  Listen to Isaac, agreed William Hartley.

  More sleet came down the chimney. The wind picked up and rattled the panes again. Outside a basket was upturned and it tumbled across the grass before snagging on the bean poles of the vegetable plot that was little more than a sad patchwork of winter decay now.

  I’m old enough to know that the world stays much the same, continued their father. Rain falls and puddles gather. Puddles become streams and streams become rivers. Leaves grow and leaves fall and the sun always sets westwards. The moor is the moor and the wind always blows.

  I’ll say it again, said Isaac Hartley. You are an old man and your eyesight is failing in more ways than one. There’s none of us can see into the future but I have glimpsed it, and so has our David. All this clipping was his last chance – our last chance – to protect our little corner of the world and profit from it. To have our name writ in stone. Because the future of this valley is not for the likes of you and me. We are born free men; we are not to be enslaved, for that is what surely beckons when the wheels of industry do grind onwards.

  You’re talking dotty now, said his father, then turning to William said: our Isaac’s nerve has gone.

  Listen to him father, said William Hartley again. He’s speaking the truth. If only we’d put more coins aside when we could we’d have enough to leave this world behind, the all of us.

  The sky-line is thick with factory smoke now, said Isaac Hartley. The land is being sold off. They say there are mills the size of cathedrals in Lancashire. They’re putting up great chimneys of stone that are twice as tall as any tree and there are machines that do the work of a hundred men, and it takes mountains of coal to feed them. They’re sinking mines just to get the dusky diamonds from the ground to fuel the mills. Children are in their employment now. Children the age of your grandchildren. The hand-loom is over. The smallholdings are being bought off and people are turning each other over just to make a coin anyway they can. It’s every man working for themselves now, father. There are men who are said to be making fortunes far greater than anything we can imagine. We’re fucked. The weaving is finished and the farming is finished and the clipping is finished and we are finished. Fucked, I say.

  I refuse to believe it, said the old man.

  Perhaps it is better that way, said Grace Hartley. Hope it is that keeps a heart beating.

  I’d rather die than be owned.

  Die then, said Isaac Hartley. For our days of clipping coin and wandering the moor unmolested are over.

  Christmastide morning and along the length of the valley houses were rich with the scents of the season – of stew pots full with broth flavoured thick with spice and dried fruit that had been bubbling overnight, and mulled ale, and plum cakes lifted steaming from side-ovens.

  For many it had been a better year than most; the Coiners had made it so. Those who had clipped but were still free were licking their lips at the thought of the plump turkeys or geese or the fowl pies they had baked, some for the first time.

  Yet for others their businesses had suffered with the devaluing of the coin. Those who had laboured all year and chosen not to join the Coiners’ enterprise found their wives and children wanting. The economy was bent out of shape; supply had swamped demand and the innocent were paying a high price for it.

  The valley had turned. With David Hartley facing rope they now spoke, these victims of the valley. The slighted and the godly. Small unheard voices were heard now.

  Already there was a child-like rhyme in circulation about the coming fate of King David and his motley Cragg Vale crew. That Christmas evening, as children played games of frog-loup outside, the King David song was as popular as any traditional feast-day ditty:

  The hangman sings,

  as Hartley swings –

  a-yip, a-yip-yay,

  God give him wings.

  Not all the valley homes had their menfolk to carve the meat, nor those in Halifax either. For many of the men were absent: some now in seclusion at York, but others called upon to do their civic duty by the sheriff’s officer who had the full support of Parker who, in turn, was backed by Rockingham and
others all the way up the chain. Volunteers were called upon this day of all days, and all added to the payroll and promised Christmastide bonuses.

  For this was the biggest mobilisation of co-ordinated authoritarian force the town had seen, and any non-coining man deemed physically strong and of good standing was welcomed. Some bore grudges for the down-turn their enterprises had seen, others volunteered for theological and moral reasons. Some men had nowhere else to be on the twenty-fifth day of December. All were united in their disgust for these rogues.

  At first light there was a knock at the door. At first light there were many knocks at many doors.

  In clusters of three or four, and armed with guns and clubs and cudgels and knives, these new bailiffs arrived at the hillside homes of those identified as defacers of the crown’s coinage, or of distributing the newly-forged coins, or of acting as go-betweens for the Hartley’s gang. Every man deemed a suspect received a visit from these state-sanctioned militia.

  They knocked on the doors of John Bates and William Varley.

  Of Peter Barker and John Sutcliffe and John Dewhurst.

  Of Crowther O’Badger and James Crabtree and John Cockroft and Eli Hoyle.

  They forced their way across the thresholds of Brian Dempsey and David Greenwood and Daniel Greenwood and Thomas Varley and James Oldfield.

  They cornered Joseph Gelder and William Harper and Jonas Tillotson and Paul Taylor and Thomas Sutcliffe and Thomas Stansfield and James Stansfield and John Pickles and Abraham Lumb and James Oldfield.

  They seized these men and had their wrists in chains right before their crying children. All were presented with warrants for their arrest for the diminishing of the crown’s coin.

  Some went fighting – Brian Dempsey bit the tit right off one of the bailiffs who had tried to drag him away from his family and his fire. Paul Taylor ran into a nearby field and when cornered fought three of the hired men for ten long minutes in the frozen ruts of mud until one of them struck him cold with a rock to the temple.

  It was not yet light when William Hartley, who had chosen to sleep late, heard the metallic tinkle of bells of his rigged alarm system. He was already opening his bedroom window when the string was pulled at his front door and the sneck band quietly lifted.

  He was hanging from the stone sill before the foot of the first bailiff reached the bottom stair, and then dropped down onto frosted ground, barefooted, his night shirt flapping up to reveal his nakedness before the same bailiff reached the landing, the soles of William Hartley’s feet feeling every brittle blade and every scratched cluster of heather as he turned and ran, and men piled into his bedroom to find only tangled blankets where once a man had slept.

  He looked back and when he did the younger William Hartley saw the shadows of men growing tall across his bedroom wall, their lamps swinging so that it appeared that those shadows were locked momentarily in a frenzied dance. Then the shadows came to rest as one of the bailiffs bent and touched the straw-stuffed sheets and said: the impression’s warm.

  Another bailiff said: this one they call the Duke Of Edinburgh must have been as quick as a jackrabbit.

  A third said: these hill-folk are born into different ways, they’re half-animal this lot, feral beasts they are. Then the bailiffs crowded the window but all they could see was endless miles of rumbling sky shot through with the first streaks of daylight, and through it William Hartley ran, into the moor’s dark interior where he knew he could lose them, and himself.

  In York Castle cells James Broadbent could not sleep. James Broadbent could not eat. James Broadbent had been beaten and burgled. James Broadbent had been spat at. James Broadbent had been stabbed in the leg and he had had piss pots thrown in his face. James Broadbent had wet bedding and then he had no bedding at all. James Broadbent was forcibly fellated and made to do the same in turn. James Broadbent had live rats and burning rags of excrement fed through the bars of his cell door. James Broadbent was beaten by guards who had been given money. James Broadbent was set upon by different men every day and he was violated and he was humiliated. James Broadbent could not sleep. James Broadbent could not eat. James Broadbent was the key witness for the prosecution in the forthcoming spring trial concerning the murder of excise officer William Deighton. These were his twelve days of Christmastide.

  Part VI: Spring 1770: Windkicker

  The night came in like a bruise of purples and blues and then finally gripped so tight that the sky was black and broken by the weight of time impressing upon it. Dawn would melt the night in fading yellows but for now the sun seemed like an impossibility; a dead concept. A foreign country.

  Geese flew in a V flight down through the centre of it, the chevron following the hollow cleft of the valley and the black and silver waters of the River Calder below.

  The noise they made was a music of sorts: the measured rhythmic honk of the lead bird was like an unoiled gate in the rising wind that signals the coming of a storm, and the fine feathered sound of seven sets of wings pistoning in perfect precision a symbol of their stamina and stream-lining. Their beautiful grey blades sliced the air and sheared the sky as they crossed a large Imbolc moon. And the moment of silence that followed in their wake created a brief window in the night, a space soon to be filled by the rustling of leaves, the clicking of branches, the snittering of tumbling young badgers at play and the lone distant scream of a fox in search of a mate.

  The night was not eternal though. It was shortening, and at first light fresh snowdrops quivered like rung bells, the peal of dawn birdsong their accompanying soundtrack. Their delicate, oversized white crowns hung heavy on thin green stems like the heads of newborn babies, then as the sun rose and spread its rejuvenating rays across the valley base, the snowdrops moved with it, slowly tilting their chins skywards to drink in the warmth. They turned and lifted as one, nested chicks in search of sustenance, and found it there in the Yorkshire sky.

  Spring.

  Dear reeder I rite this with shaken hand in neer darkness with deths breth on my collar for to day was the day I reseeved my sentuns of deth by hanging of the neck until dead for the crime of coinen after a trial wich wud be comickal in all ways were it not my lyfe at stake.

  Let me tell you about this tryal lest the hisstree books rite it down rong This tryal was a jesters farce This tryal was wayted agaysnt King David before it even began This tryal was what is known as a foghorn concollusion as if my fate was alreddy rit in the stars.

  The ratt Broadbent who cud barely stand in the cort room he was so battered and bandy leggd after four months in the York cassel with the boys was the mayne witness and he did tell the cort that he had seen Me King Daevid clip four ginnees with a pair of sissers and that poor Jimmy Jagger did hold a peece of paper to reseeve the clippens and that I King David said I would go and smelt and strike them golden shards in a speshul secret place made out of stone out back of Bell Howse on the moor of Eringden.

  Well wat a lot of shyte.

  Then they brung another witness one Joshuar Stancliffe now let me tell you I dunt know no fucken Joshuar Stannliffe from Adam espeshelly not this one who they said was a watch maker from Hallifax who stood up and said that some time before the devil Dyetun became cold meat Our Isaak did go into his shop and declare that the devil Dyetun would find hisself murdered very soon and furthermore that if Dieghtun could not be waylayd in the street he would instead be kilt in his bed rather than live to give evvydence against me King David.

  Well wat another barrer load of shyte As if our Isacc would do such a thynge Honestly a jesters farce all this Lyars cummin out the woodwork like scuttling slaters.

  This Joshua Stancliffe did then produce a letter which was read out in cort and which I include a copy of bellow for possterrytee and whose hand I know not by which it was ritten but I do no it was not mine This letter it was left on the inside shutters of the mans shop and it seems to me now that the cort saw this as furthe
r proof of my bastidly dastidly ways even though I’ve been in this place for months now with no way of riting anything but these scribbuld hidden confesshuns They sed this letter proved a thret was on his lyfe from the lads but so what if it was Thats not my business if folk want to go round killen folk for speaken out So what I says So fucken what.

  Allso they did say that this Stancliffe was reedin from a staytment that was in the handritin of this Roberd Parker I’ve heard tell of He is the one behind all this The one who along with the taxman planned to bryng us all down and bryng us down he did They say he has the ear of the Kynge but every man knows there is only wan kynge round here Yes King David you cunts.

  Anyroad this day April Sickth I was sentunsed as I say to death and me never even haven kilt a man least not that devil Willyam Dyeton Bastids the lot of them Heartless bleeden bastids.

  Heres the cursed letter.

  Halifax, 12th April 1770

  Joshua,

  An affair happened on Friday night last which is of the utmost consequence to you. Pray God grant that you may take this friendly warning; otherwise you will be an undone man. It’s a matter of no less moment than the preservation of your life. To speak plain with you, there is an agreement entered upon by very near a dozen to take your life, if David Hartley suffers. I durst not say anything against it, as they avowed that whoever dissented in that company should undergo – you may guess what. They all sworn upon the Bible to stand true; besides they affirm that you deserve shooting for some others thing which little becomes one of your profession.

  I am shocked at the Thoughts of this affair, and was resolved to take this secret method to warn you of your eminent danger. I could not with safety do it any other way, as I would certainly have been discovered and my life placed in danger as well as yours, for it’s resolved and sworn as above to stand true to one another, etc; and, if you cannot be catched out of doors at nights, it’s resolved upon to take a shorter method. My hand trembles while I write.