Ill Will

by Michael Stewart

  I walked over to where the water was deep and still and examined my reflection. My hair was short and neat, and my beard had been trimmed so that it followed my jawline. The effect was to civilise me to some end.

  ‘What do you think?’ Emily said when I returned.

  I nodded. ‘It will do.’

  ‘Another thing to remember,’ she said. ‘When you talk to him, let him take the lead. He’s got to think that this is his idea. He’s got to think he’s the one making the moves. You take your cue from him.’

  ‘But I’m still not sure what we’re doing?’

  ‘We’re getting under his skin.’

  ‘So we can get his wealth?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘That’s what we’re going to find out.’

  The following Sunday we returned to the village. We both attended the service but agreed to split up afterwards. I waited close to the grave of Annabel Bold, concealed by a holly bush, and bided my time. I watched Jonas approach his wife’s grave. He stood there in silence for a while. He muttered some words I couldn’t hear. Then I watched him shuffle off and sit on a bench further on. It was then I decided to do as we’d agreed. I walked across to where he was sitting.

  ‘Good day to you, sir.’

  He looked up and wished me good day, not really taking that much notice.

  ‘Forgive me for intruding but I’ve just attended your service and I wanted to say how moved I was by your words.’

  ‘God’s words, not mine.’

  ‘I was travelling through and was in need of communion with the holy scripture.’

  ‘A need we all have hour by hour in our daily lives,’ he said.

  ‘May I sit beside you while I rest a moment?’

  He moved the cloth of his coat so that I could join him on the bench. I copied his posture, crossing my legs and clutching the other arm of the bench, mirroring his position.

  ‘I’ve travelled many a mile.’

  ‘To attend my sermon?’

  ‘I am a lay preacher, sir, only recently accredited.’

  ‘You have the same right to preach as the next man.’

  ‘I am an itinerant preacher, you see. I travel from town to town to spread the word of the Lord.’

  ‘Bless you, for that is a noble pursuit.’

  ‘In truth, I have little experience so far. I came here today to see you teach the word of God. A holy man of some standing recommended you to me. Your sermon inspired me.’

  ‘It is God’s words that inspired you. I am merely his receptacle.’

  ‘I have had much need of God.’

  ‘Aye.’

  ‘I am recently bereaved. And my grief feels like a fortress wall around me.’

  ‘And I too. My dear Annie. I come here often and ask her for forgiveness. She’s buried just there,’ he said, pointing to her grave. ‘God bless her soul.’

  ‘My sister and I have recently lost both our parents. My father was a baker. There was a fire. He hadn’t put out the fire in the oven. My parents’ bedroom was directly beneath the bakery. My sister and I had a room further away. The Lord works in mysterious ways.’

  ‘So he does. So he does. I’m very sorry for your loss.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. It’s been hard, especially for my sister, who is much younger than I. And much in need of divine comfort. Many a morning I have woken, to find her drenched in her own tears.’

  ‘The poor thing. It must be hard for one so young. Well, I must get back home. I have the Lord’s work to do. Will I see you again?’

  ‘I am in the area for a time. I have some business hereabouts to attend to. So I expect you will.’

  I recalled the shady corner of a churchyard, a flower-strewn shrine and the name inscribed thereon.

  ‘My name is Adam Watkin.’

  ‘Pleased to make your acquaintance. My name is Jonas Bold.’

  We shook hands.

  ‘Come next Sunday, Adam. I’d like to see you again.’

  ‘I’d like that.’

  Jonas got to his feet and took hold of his silver-tipped cane. I could see now that he was really quite infirm. He had to get up from the seat in various stages. First shuffling to the edge of the bench, then using the arm of the bench to lever himself up.

  ‘Here, let me help you.’

  I stood up and offered him my hand.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He took hold and I brought him to his feet. I watched him hobble back down the path.

  Emily and I purchased a few provisions in the village, mostly edible ones, but I also bought a bar of soap. Perhaps Bold’s sermon had rubbed off on me. He had spoken again about cleanliness. In any case, neither of us had bathed for a week now and the stench was starting to offend my nostrils. More importantly, I didn’t want to offend the nostrils of Jonas Bold. We loaded up the bag and made our way across country, back to the forest. As we walked back I told Emily about my conversation with Jonas Bold.

  ‘I think that went as well as to be expected,’ she said. ‘You didn’t rush it. Good. It’s important for us to gain his trust. We need to let him take the lead. We need him to be curious about us. It’s good that you gave yourself the name Adam. Clever thinking. It will plant a seed. It’s the subtle things. Somewhere in his head now he will think of you as God’s first son.’

  In fact, I’d thought of no such thing. The name had just caught my eye, that was all. I wondered again about my mother. About the name she had given me when I had come out of her belly. The name she had given me when she had washed the grease from my body. The name she had given me when she had pressed my lips to her teat. Mr Earnshaw had called me Heathcliff after his lost son. And I now realised why, Cathy. I was his lost son. I was your half-brother.

  ‘We’ll go back next Sunday,’ Emily said.

  ‘I’ll introduce you to him. It will help our cause.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘Definitely. That we are both orphans. With you being so young.’

  ‘In which case I’ll need to have a new name too. When did his wife die?’

  ‘June, according to her epitaph.’

  ‘Very well. June Watkin it is.’

  We found a decent-sized plunge pool, where the river gathered, and I stripped off. The pool was in the shadows of a rocky crevice; a waterfall frothed over the precipice and tumbled into the black water. Flies buzzed and martins skimmed the surface. I dived in first. The water’s coldness took my breath away and tightened my chest, but as I swam, the heat soon returned.

  ‘Jump in,’ I said. ‘It’s lovely.’

  ‘Fuck that,’ Emily said.

  She stood and watched me splash about. Then she took off her boots and dipped a toe in.

  ‘It’s freezing.’

  ‘Don’t be soft.’

  She took off her dress, took a deep breath, then lowered herself in. She faffed about for a bit, clinging to an overhanging branch and kicking water into foam.

  ‘Can’t you swim?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I’ll teach you.’

  I tried to teach her crawl but she couldn’t get the rhythm right, so then I tried to teach her breast stroke but she soon tired of the lesson and we settled on a sort of doggy paddle. I remembered the time you taught me to swim, down at Devil’s Beck. You’d laughed at my attempts at first, but I soon overtook you, diving the depths, pulling you under. Letting my hands slide over your naked skin. Feeling the coarse hair between your legs. The animal part of you.

  We bathed and I scrubbed our clothes clean. I hung them from the branches of a tree to dry. I looked at Emily’s wound. It was almost healed. We checked the snares but none of them gave us a reward. And we ate just greens and what berries were left. We’d foraged most of what there was. The next day we set up some more snares but there was only wire left for another two. We talked about our new identities, Adam and June. Our parents had been poor but of good stock and breeding. Through tireless charitable labour they ha
d raised some money for an orphanage. But not enough. Our father had gone to sleep one night and God had visited him in his dreams and told him what he was destined to do.

  We checked the snares over the course of the day, but none yielded. When there were still no rabbits the day after that I turned to Emily and said, ‘There’s only one thing for it.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Emily said.

  ‘I’m going to go back to Liverpool tonight and see what I can get.’

  ‘It’s not worth the risk,’ Emily said. ‘We can buy some supplies from the village. It’s not much further.’

  ‘We need to keep hold of the money we’ve got. It will be fine. There’s no danger there now, as long as I go on my own, like I did last time.’

  ‘If you’re sure.’

  In truth, I fancied a change of diet. I also anticipated the excitement of another trip. And so that evening I left Emily guarding the fire and I made the journey again. I found a sizeable domestic dwelling of a wealthy family and broke into their pantry. I filled my bag with cuts of meat, strings of sausages, a cabbage, carrots, potatoes and cake. I found a bottle of wine also. I was making my way back when I came across a tavern with people spilling out. I heard raised voices and when I got closer I could see that two men were questioning some of the drinkers, who were sitting at a bench, supping ale and sucking pipes. Even from this distance, in the near-dark, just a dim light from the lantern close by, I recognised the men. It was Dick Taylor and his yellow-haired companion.

  Yellow-head was clutching a creased sheet of paper. It was the drawing of me and Emily, and he was pointing at it. There were men standing about, in conversation with them. I strained to hear what they were saying, but there was a door between me and the men.

  I darted into a doorway as quick as a hare. Luckily the men hadn’t seen me. How had they tracked us down? Had the wanted notice spread beyond Liverpool town, perhaps as far as Manchester? I crouched there and waited, feeling the vein pulse in my neck, until the men had finished their inquisition with the revellers and were walking off in the opposite direction. When I was certain that the coast was clear, I hurriedly made my way back to camp.

  I let Emily feast on our midnight picnic before I broke the bad news.

  ‘I saw them.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The farmer’s son, Dick Taylor, with his companion.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘This evening, outside a tavern. They were questioning some of the customers.’

  She bit into one of the cakes. I passed her the wine bottle.

  ‘And you’re sure it was them?’

  ‘They had the wanted notice with them.’

  ‘How did they know to come to Liverpool?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe they’ve put up notices there? Maybe we’ve made the papers?’

  She uncorked the bottle and took a swig before saying, ‘What are we going to do?’

  ‘Nothing. They won’t find us here.’

  ‘You said that before. You said they wouldn’t follow us to Manchester. But they followed us to Manchester. You said they wouldn’t follow us to Liverpool but now they’ve followed us to Liverpool. Now you’re saying they won’t follow us here. One thing we know about them, they’re persistent. They are never going to stop looking until they find us.’

  ‘So what do you suggest?’

  ‘I don’t say this lightly, and if there was any other solution to the problem I’d be happy to go along with it. But there’s only one way out of this. You need to dispatch them before they dispatch us. You need to go back there and kill them, William Lee. Like my dad used to say, it’s kill or be killed.’

  She was right, of course, once again. While they were waltzing and gavotting, we could never truly be free. The only solution was to end their lives. Something I should have done that night, when I had the chance.

  ‘It’s too late tonight, Emily. They’ll be in bed now at their lodgings.’

  ‘Tomorrow night, then.’

  ‘Yes, all right, tomorrow night.’

  She passed back the wine. I uncorked it and glugged it down. I would go back. I would do what had to be done. I would grab the adder by its tail and snap it like a stick.

  The Man with One Hand

  The next night it was raining rope and bucket. We watched it sluice and sile between the trees and heavy drops pearl on the underside of the leaves. We saw slugs climb down from their hiding holes. The moon and stars were concealed behind clouds and I took this to be a good omen. Darkness was my companion and ally. I sharpened both the blade of the knife and the bit of the axe until they could cut through the hairs on the back of my hand without pulling. Then I said goodnight to Emily.

  ‘Don’t wait up for me. Get some sleep.’

  I kissed her on the forehead. She put her arms around me and wouldn’t let go. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered in my ear. I left her, with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sitting by the fire.

  By the time I got to town, my hair was dripping wet and my shirt was clinging to my skin. The sky was black and the streets were shadowed between the faint orange glow of the lamps. The rain came in pencils of silver, puddling between the cobbles. I went from street to street and from tavern to tavern, ducking in doorways at the first sign of any passer-by. I saw the wanted notices nailed to fence and door. Someone had been busy. The rain made the ink blur, so that our faces looked as though they were melting.

  I approached the first tavern and very cautiously peered through the window. The room was busy with revellers of every description. I quickly scanned the room. I couldn’t be sure but it didn’t look as though the two men were there. I must have done a dozen inns in this way before I struck lucky. As I peered through the dimpled window of the Black Bull, there they were, standing to the side of the bar. A tall man with blond hair and a dark-haired man with a red skeletal face and one hand.

  I found a doorway close by and waited. An hour or so passed as I stood in the shadows, wet and shivering. Eventually the inn door opened and the men left, making their way up Dale Street, their gait loose with ale. I noticed that Dick’s gait in particular was lopsided and I wondered if that was down to drink or having a stump instead of a hand. I stayed as close as I could while remaining inconspicuous, until the men came to a coaching house with a stables at the back. They went inside. I waited another hour in my hiding place, watching raindrops plash up puddles and gloss the cobs, before going around the back of the building. I climbed over the wall, then up onto the roof, until I came to a window that I thought was big enough for me to climb through. I took out my knife and wedged it between window and sill, forcing the latch and opening it.

  I climbed inside and found that I was at one end of the landing corridor. There were doors to each side. I walked slowly and quietly along the corridor, checking each floorboard, before lowering my weight onto it, until I came to the first of these doors. As gently as I could muster, I lifted the latch and nudged the door open just a fraction. I waited and listened. All I could hear were the heavy breaths of someone deep in sleep. I opened the door enough to place my head inside. I stared into the gloom. I could hardly make anything out. It was almost completely dark. I opened the door wider, so that the faint light from the corridor illuminated the room just enough for me to make out a dark rectangle that was less dark than its surroundings. This was a bed and I approached it cautiously. I tiptoed very slowly across the room, until I got close enough to the sleeper to see the long hair of a woman splayed on the pillow. Her cheek kissed the patterned cotton, a hand tucked neatly under her head. I retreated, closing the door silently behind me.

  I did the same in the next room and the next after that. It was only when I got to the bed in the fourth room that I recognised the supine figure within. Like before, I started with the door slightly ajar, then slowly placed my head into the room, widening the gap. Then, and only when I could hear the heavy breaths of sleep, did I make my way to the dark rectangle at the other side of the room. As I go
t closer I could just make out the straw-like thatch of hair and the long thin neck. For a moment it looked like a mop, not a man.

  I stood close by before very slowly closing the gap between me and the bed, but as I did I stepped on a creaking floorboard. I froze. The sleeping figure stirred. He mumbled something but he didn’t wake. His lips parted and a trail of silver mucus dribbled down his cheek. I thought about a slug and how it spills itself over every surface. I stood over the man. He was the companion of Dick Taylor. I took out my knife and with my free hand I covered his mouth. He woke immediately and his open eyes bulged with fear as he saw me and the glinting blade. He struggled beneath my grip. Sleep had made him weak, but his fear was strengthening him. I bore down heavy upon him, shifting all my weight. He wriggled beneath me like a jack pike. Nevertheless, I held my grip and fixed his head to the pillow with one hand, while with the other, I slit his throat. He convulsed beneath my grip. Blood spurted from the wound. His whole body juddered up. I pressed myself against his chest. I gripped him harder and held him down as his body spasmed beneath me. Blood gushed like a foss, until at last his struggle ceased and he returned to sleep once more – only this time the sleep of eternity.

  I wiped my hands and the blade of the knife on the bed sheets and tiptoed out of the room. The next two rooms were empty, but the seventh room held the object of my wrath, wrapped snug in blankets like a loaf. I made my way to his bed and took out my knife once more. Once again I stood over the sleeping figure, waiting for my moment. He lay on his side, with his handless arm on top of the cover and the other underneath. I looked at the stump. The skin had grown over the severed bone and there was a ridge of ragged flesh where the flaps of skin had been roughly stitched together. It looked like something that had been plucked ready for the pot. The vein on his neck was a pulsating worm. His mouth was closed and he breathed out of his nose. His face in profile was all bone. His cheek and jaw jutting out of his skin and the bony ridges of his forehead seemed almost naked. I watched the muscles in his nostrils expand and contract. I listened to him breathe. In. Out. In. Out. The air was sweet and warm with liquor. Then I gagged him as I had done his companion, but as I held him down, his eyes opened and his one hand appeared from under the covers, holding a pistol. Before I had time to thrust my knife into his flesh, a loud shot rang out. The man had pressed the trigger, but the bullet had missed me. The stench of gunpowder was a hot sting at the back of my nose.