Ghosts of Yorkshire

by Karen Perkins

  ‘What?’ she asked in response to Vikram’s raised eyebrow. ‘It adds to the atmosphere.’

  He didn’t reply.

  Lara pulled three pillar candles from her large handbag and set them on the table.

  ‘You came prepared,’ Vikram said.

  ‘Always,’ Jayne answered for Lara, and gave Vikram’s arm a friendly squeeze. ‘You haven’t done anything like this before, have you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Shouldn’t mess with things you don’t understand.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Lara knows what she’s doing.’

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, then flicked off the overhead light at Lara’s instruction.

  The room seemed to glow; the pink of Lara’s floral scarf complementing the candlelight, and all five of us jumped as a rook pecked again at the cracked pane.

  Vikram twisted suddenly.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I thought I saw something.’

  Silence for a moment – even from the birds.

  ‘I think we should get started,’ Lara said.

  We took our seats and joined hands.

  Lara took a deep breath.

  ‘Is anybody there?’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Please come forward, we would like to help you.’

  I gasped as the candle flames flickered.

  ‘If you would like to talk to us, please knock or rap the table.’

  The candles flickered again.

  ‘It’s just the draught from the window,’ Vikram said as a second bird cracked another of the small panes.

  ‘One tap for no, two for yes.’

  ‘You’ll have no sound windows left at this rate,’ Vikram said as a third pane split. ‘Mind you, you could probably claim on the insurance if the birds are doing it.’

  ‘Shh,’ Jayne said and squeezed his hand.

  ‘One tap for yes, two for no,’ Lara repeated. ‘Please talk to us.’

  Another pane broke.

  ‘It’s the birds,’ Jayne blurted out. ‘They’re tapping –answering.’

  I screamed as glass showered to the floor, and hung on to William’s hand as the others jumped to their feet. The table juddered and thumped against my new rug, and all three candles extinguished as one.

  More smashing from the windows and the room was suddenly full of beating wings and outstretched talons.

  I heard Jayne shriek as she dived under the table and Lara jumped out of the way as Vikram swung his chair at the invading birds.

  ‘Out, out, out!’ he shouted, and I screamed as a bird pecked at my hand.

  William threw himself at me, and I fell from the chair to the floor, William’s bulk landing on top of me. I welcomed the dark as it rushed to embrace me. I did not want to be inside The Rookery a moment longer.

  Part Three

  1830-1848

  “Terror made me cruel”

  Wuthering Heights

  Emily Brontë, 1847

  Haworth, West Yorkshire

  1.

  Martha used the foot-treadle to shift the warps then sent the shuttle flying through the resultant gap between the two rows of woollen yarn. Weft picked, she beat the new pick up against the fell of the woven piece, ensuring the new weft was snug against the one before, then worked the treadle and flicked the shuttle back with the next pick. Then repeated. Endlessly.

  She had been at this near a year now, and could match most of the men for speed, now that she’d built up the strength needed for beating-up. Though she was still waiting for the day when Old Man Barraclough dropped his chisels for good and Harry could take over the mason’s shop.

  She wouldn’t need to work at all then. She could stay at home, or swan about on the moors like that Brontë lass. She avoided even thinking her name these days, and was furious that Harry still gave her the time of day.

  ‘Her father’s the parson,’ he’d say. ‘They’re important in the village. And if I’m to take over from Mr Barraclough one day, I need to keep in with ’em. Most of our trade’s memorials. Thee kens that, Martha. Where would we be without the church?’

  Martha had no answer.

  A cough interrupted her thoughts and she brought her attention back to the piece she was weaving, checked the let off and take up to ensure everything was regular, then glanced down at Edna who was in her basket, playing with her poppet and a couple of bobbins. Happy enough.

  She was finding her feet quickly now and Martha did her best to tire the child out throughout the morning, so that when she took over the loom from Old Dan after dinner, Edna would stay in the basket where she put her. The rhythm of the looms seemed to calm the child, but then she’d heard it all her life.

  Martha smiled at her daughter, then checked her piece and picked the shuttle. This was the only machine Edna would know, Martha was determined to it. No mill for Edna Sutcliffe, not if she could help it. As a daughter of the master stonemason, she’d be in line for a decent husband who’d keep her in a fine house.

  She coughed, adjusted the take up a little on the loom and worked the treadle. That’s better.

  Aye, mebbe it is worth putting up with the Brontë girl if it means Edna and whoever comes next have a decent chance at life.

  She caressed her belly, certain more life was growing there, then returned her hand to the loom.

  She thought back to that wonderful day in the bluebell woods, certain that was when the child had started. Aye, she was a lucky one to have snared Harry Sutcliffe, though it had taken long enough to get him to the altar. Sarah was green with envy when she told her.

  Martha smiled again then glanced down to check on Edna. The basket was empty.

  Sighing, Martha scanned the floor of the weaving gallery for her independence-seeking offspring, then a shout alerted her. ‘Ower ’ere!’

  ‘Thanks, Alf,’ she called and halted the loom to retrieve Edna. Crawling around the way she did, she could easily get trapped under a working foot treadle.

  Standing, Martha stretched, then put her hand to her mouth as a more violent cough shook her. She looked around in alarm at the gallery of weavers mesmerised by the rhythm of their looms, recognising a smell that every textile worker dreaded.

  Smoke.

  ‘Edna! Edna! Where is she?’

  A couple of weavers looked up at her, recognising the note of alarm in her voice.

  ‘Smoke!’ she cried. ‘There’s a fire! Where’s my baby?’

  2.

  ‘Fire!’

  Harry heard the shout, dropped his chisel and mallet – mindless of the memorial stone for Richard Smith’s second wife – and dashed outside.

  ‘That’s Weaver’s Row,’ he shouted. ‘Martha! Edna!’ He ran downhill to his family.

  Men flocked to West Lane: slaughtermen, innkeepers, cloggers, druggist; every trader on Main Street. No one from the mills though, they were too far away. It would be up to the village tradesmen to save the cottages; home to near a dozen families, including the Sutcliffes.

  ‘The gallery, is the gallery afire?’ Harry cried as he pushed his way through the throng of men.

  ‘Nay, ’tis woolcombing shed. Gallery’s safe for now.’

  ‘Where are the weavers?’

  No one answered him, and Harry could do naught about Martha as a full bucket was pressed into his hands. A line of men already stretched from the well to the wooden woolcombing shed attached to Weaver’s Row, and Harry was one of the closest.

  He threw the water at the flames that were singeing the whiskers on his jaw. He didn’t notice.

  Despite his panic, he knew he had to fight the fire, however much he wanted to find his wife and daughter. Controlling the flames would give them the best chance of getting out.

  ‘There’s good men up in that gallery,’ Harry muttered to the next man in line as he swapped his empty bucket for a full one. ‘They’ll get ’em out.’

  The man, Edward Stutterghyll, the proprietor of Haworth’s largest ironmongery, nodded, and shouted, ‘Happen
it’ll be all right.’ He couldn’t have heard Harry’s mutter, but didn’t need to, to understand the mason’s distress.

  Everyone in the village knew of Martha’s deal with Old Dan Walker, and whilst few approved, no one could argue it didn’t make sense for them to share the loom, it was too much for either Dan or Martha to work at for a full day. Besides, fool be the man who denied Martha Sutcliffe anything she’d set her mind on. Including her husband.

  Harry swapped another empty pail for a full one, stepped forward and launched the water. They were making progress.

  He cursed Martha for insisting on weaving here. Aye, he knew they couldn’t yet manage on his wage alone, not with a growing family, but still. Barraclough was getting on now; Harry couldn’t see him yet and wondered if he’d managed to shuffle down Church Lane to help out.

  He’d have to ask for a raise. He did most of the work now anyway, forty years of working the chisel had left the old man’s scarred hands with a never-ending tremble, and he stuck to facing the stones, while issuing a stream of advice to his protégé.

  Harry threw another bucket load. Blasted woolcombers! This shed, shack really, had been a fire waiting to happen for years. The combers stoked their charcoal fires till they could have forged new combs, never mind heating their existing ones so they slid easier through the greasy wool fibres, pulling at noils and neps to leave the long fibres needed for spinning into worsted yarn.

  ‘Leave shed, leave shed,’ Stutterghyll’s shout penetrated Harry’s thoughts. ‘It’s gone. Save cottages!’

  Harry redirected the path of the water he was throwing on to the stone wall of the first weaver’s cottage.

  Not afore time, he thought, as steam rose from the stone of his neighbour’s home, before being overcome by smoke.

  He took a few steps to his right, to better direct the flow of water, and flung his next bucketful.

  He noticed more folk had joined the firefighting effort, including Barraclough, and more and more buckets and ewers were being emptied on the cottages. There was barely anything left of the woolcombing shed now, and the steps leading down the stone wall from the gallery were open to the sky for the first time in years.

  ‘Harry, Harry!’

  He turned and stared at Edward Stutterghyll. The ironmonger jerked his head, indicating Martha, standing and staring at her workplace, Edna on her hip. Safe and well the pair of them.

  ‘Praise the Lord.’ Harry raised his eyes skyward, thrust his bucket at Edward, and rushed to take his wife and child in his arms. Whatever else had been lost this day, he still had them.

  3.

  ‘After three,’ John Brown said. ‘One, two, three, heave!’

  Harry and the sexton bent their backs to the altar gravestone. It shifted three inches.

  ‘And again. One, two, three, heave!’

  Six feet long and three wide, the heavy memorial shifted another few inches, and the two men strained their backs to lift it enough so that they could slide it on to the neighbouring slab.

  ‘Thanks for giving me a hand, Harry,’ John panted while they took a breather.

  ‘It’s nay bother, glad to help,’ Harry replied. ‘It’s that busy with the smallpox, I may as well just set up shop in churchyard, especially now Barraclough’s succumbed an’all.’

  ‘Aye, there’s half a dozen graves left open after funerals with so many ill. Can’t be shifting these things backwards and forwards every time the pox takes another, not when there’s whole families taken out at times.’

  ‘I reckon some of graves’ll need to be dug deeper,’ Harry said. ‘And I’m running out of space to add names on the older ones.’ He indicated the older, lower part of the churchyard, abutting the Black Bull.

  ‘How do, Miss Emily,’ the sexton called. ‘Watch thy footing there, there’s open graves by path.’

  ‘Will do, Mr Brown, thank you. Morning, Harry.’

  Harry returned Emily’s greeting and watched her pick her way down the path from the parsonage, the graves so close, her skirts brushed the flat stones clear of dead leaves and twigs. The cleanest graves in the churchyard were those regularly swept clean by Brontë skirts.

  ‘She’s a rum ’un, that lass,’ John said. ‘Can’t get two words out of her normally, in a world of her own she is, but her and her sisters have been out every day taking food and water to the worst-hit families.’

  ‘Aye, I just hope they don’t catch it themselves.’

  ‘Aye, our Tabitha has them burning their gloves at end of day, and she’s constantly washing gowns. The Reverend’s torn; it’s their duty to call on the sick, but he don’t want to lose any more daughters. He ain’t even complaining about buying so many gloves, though they’re making do with shoddy.’

  ‘They won’t be bothered about that, not them lasses,’ Harry said, nodding after Emily. ‘They’ve got more important things going on in their heads.’

  ‘What, poems and them tiny magazines they make? Have you seen ’em then?’

  Harry nodded. He still didn’t quite know what to make of Emily and her siblings’ fascination with Branwell’s toy soldiers, or why they wasted their time making inch-long ‘magazines’ for the toys to ‘read’.

  ‘So have you moved into Barraclough’s cottage?’ the sexton said as he indicated they should resume lifting.

  ‘Aye. Martha’s burnt every scrap of fabric and scrubbed every surface, but at last she’s happy and Edna’s allowed out of her basket.’ Harry laughed. He hadn’t wanted to move in quite so quickly after Mr Barraclough’s passing, he thought it unseemly, but Martha had waved aside his objections.

  ‘And how’s new bairn coming on?’ John asked, puffing after another heave.

  Harry frowned. ‘Martha’s not carrying this one so well,’ he confided. ‘I don’t mind telling thee I’m concerned about her, but Martha won’t ruddy listen.’

  John grimaced and shook his head. He’d had his run-ins with Martha Sutcliffe over the years, he knew exactly how forthright she could be. ‘Here she is now,’ he warned, spotting the newly large figure making her way into the churchyard.

  ‘Lord above, what now?’ Harry muttered. ‘Let’s take five, John.’ He turned to meet his wife.

  ‘I’ve just seen that Emily Brontë,’ she said before he had chance to greet her. ‘Rushing off with her baskets, doing God’s work, that ruddy dog at her heels.’

  Martha hated Emily’s new pet, an enormous mastiff called Keeper. And to be fair, he was a beast; Emily was the only one able to control him.

  ‘Well she’s Reverend’s daughter,’ Harry said, trying to mollify her. ‘She has pastoral duties.’ He winked at Edna, who had just peeked out at him from behind her mother’s skirts. She hid again as soon as she’d seen her father take notice of her.

  ‘Pastoral duties?’ Martha screeched and Harry winced as he realised his mistake. ‘Thee’s been talking to her again, hasn’t thee? Using her fancy words!’

  ‘Martha, calm down. It’s unavoidable, she’s been helping people sort funerals and what wording they want on stones.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  ‘Martha, love. I keep telling thee, thee’s nowt to worry about.’ He winked as Edna peeped out a second time. She ducked behind Martha again with a giggle.

  ‘That had better be true, Harry Sutcliffe. God help thee if it ain’t.’

  ‘Martha!’ Harry was shocked she’d cursed him out in this of all places, and in front of the sexton too.

  ‘Aye, well,’ she said, embarrassed, but too proud to take it back. ‘Anyroad, I’m off to see Sarah Butterworth.’

  ‘Nay! I’ve told thee afore, Martha. Thee’s not to visit any house where there’s smallpox.’

  ‘I’ll be all reet, Harry.’

  ‘Nay, thee won’t. I won’t have thee risking thyself nor our child.’ Harry stroked her belly and she softened.

  ‘Thee does love me, don’t thee?’

  ‘Aye, ’course I do, thee daft apeth.’

  Harry ran his hand around her wai
st, and squeezed. Her answering squeal told him he’d won this one, at least. ‘Now get thee back home and get the weight off thy feet. I’ll be late with all this work on, but I’ll be home as soon as I can.’

  ‘Aye, all reet then. I’ll make sure there’s some supper left for thee. Come on, Edna, say ta ta to thy papa.’

  The little girl peeped again from her mother’s skirts, face beaming. Harry picked her up, swung her round, carefully, then sent her on her way with her mother, both his girls receiving a pat on the rump in farewell.

  Harry watched them go, concerned. Martha was hiding it from him, but he knew her too well, and the child she was carrying was paining her; far more than Edna, or Baby John before her. He swallowed his grief for his firstborn, buried just two rows over, and was overwhelmed with concern for his wife and next-born.

  Would she tell me if owt serious were wrong? he thought, Or just refuse to believe it were happening?

  4.

  Martha clung to Harry’s arm as they negotiated the treacherous lane. Half-frozen slush and leather soles, her first pair of proper shoes rather than her usual wooden-soled clogs, did not mix well and she’d nearly been over three times already, even on this short walk homeward from the church.

  Harry’s hobnailed boots, which she was now glad he’d insisted on wearing to early morning Christmas Mass, were far better suited, and he was as steady on his feet as a newly shod horse.

  They still had to hurry though, slush or no slush. It was their first Christmas in the big house. Well, it’s small next to the parsonage, Martha thought. But bigger than any I ever had any reet to expect. She blessed Mr Barraclough yet again for making Harry his heir, then her thoughts returned to the day ahead. Most of her family and Harry’s were coming to be fed and were expecting a Christmas feast.

  She shuddered at the thought of all the coins and notes she’d handed over to the butcher in exchange for ham and beef. Not to mention the raisins and brandy for the Christmas pudding. But Harry had insisted on ‘doing things proper’.