World From Rough Stones

by Malcolm Macdonald

  With falling spirit, he surveyed the new, resilient cords that bound each slender limb and mopped the sweat from his brow and neck. Mrs. Cobb, her mother, came out and tested the bindings with a vicious tug. Finding them to her satisfaction she snubbed Eph with a nod and returned indoors. Emily Ann nodded and laughed. Moments later, Mrs. Cobb raised the downstairs sash and called to him: "Yon pig'll be 'alf-way up Summit Tunnel—way tha'rt loiterin', Eph."

  "Aye," he grumbled, "or Todmorden pound, more like." And, with a last regretful look at Emily Ann—who laughed and nodded yet again—he ran heavily, sweatily off toward the turnpike and the errant pig.

  He met it "'alf way theer but comin' back," as he later had to explain. On reflection, he knew he ought to have tried to drive it off, back toward Deanroyd, for it would then have made a bolt for home between his legs and all would have been well. But memories and thoughts of Emily Ann were still confusing him and, seeing the pig already headed for home, he foolishly stepped aside to let it pass. To the pig there could be no plainer sign that something underhand was intended and it naturally turned and made for Deanroyd as fast as it could scuffle, leading Eph—though he did not yet know it—into the deepest trouble of his life.

  The sight that met his eyes when he reached the bend was as startling as the one John Stevenson had seen from that same spot about eight hours earlier. Now a battle was raging across the cutting, from canal bank to turnpike, the like of which the valley had never seen. He had been dimly aware of some commotion or other as he had chased the pig down over the fields, but only when he came as close to it as this did he see how serious it really was. For one thing the constabulary was there—and they had never been seen in the valley before—certainly not in such numbers. And most serious of all, his pig—or his master's pig, Mr. Randall's pig—was darting in and out among the fighters like a creature demented.

  It was one thing to bring an animal home from the pound and face a tonguelashing from Mr. Randall; it was quite another to take that pig home dead a full month before Christmas—even if he were lucky enough to extract a whole corpse from that embattled mob. He could, with very little imagination, easily picture Mr. Randall's response to that. With a cry of torment, and heedless of his personal safety, he hurled himself along the turnpike toward the heart of the storm in a do-or-die effort to save himself from that intolerable fate.

  As civilian onlookers are often known to wander miraculously unscathed across a field of war while men in uniform are falling and dying all around, so Eph was somehow enabled to chase Farmer Randall's pig once, twice, and then thrice around and among that bloody melee. Single images, seen at haphazard during the chase, etched themselves into his mind—a man with a steel shovel splitting another's scalp from crown to neck; another hopping to safety with half his calf muscle hanging free; two men holding a corpse already stiff and using it as a ram to batter down a constable; two more alternately punching each other and sharing a bottle of spirits; another too drunk to know that his punches found no mark at all, yelling imprecations at the air he battered with such want of mercy; another stopping his fight by pinning his opponent to the wall with a hand and a boot while he fished in his own mouth with the other hand for the stump of a broken tooth; another pinching into place a severed lip so that he could drink with greater facility.

  But these were mere lightning images caught—literally—in passing while he doggedly chased "yon fookin' pig" in and out among the legs and fallen bodies. His excitement grew as he noticed that the creature, already fat for Christmas and already winded by its long run, was visibly tiring. At last came the supreme moment—the moment when he leaped on its back and grasped its ears, ready to throw it and tie its feet. The pig, however, made one last great effort and bolted—straight between the legs of Police Captain Starr.

  On its own the pig would have made it. If Eph had let go, no great harm would have followed. But this long hour of frustration and peril now past urged him at all costs to hold what he had and take the world with him. He certainly took Police Captain Starr with him, towering backward hopelessly off balance, with the rippling face of Walsden Water rushing up to swallow him. Eph swears to the day he dies he will remember the horror and disbelief frozen on the Captain's face as he lay supine in the curtains of white water his impact flung out in all directions—moments before he himself landed on the policeman and thrust him hard upon the shallow bed.

  The next thing he remembered, after some moments of pardonable confusion, was being marched in a catch-as-catch-can hold to a waiting cart. It cannot have been long since his tumble in the icy stream—for across the canal he saw the pig, pink and black against the snow, limping slowly back across the fields to the safe haven of its sty.

  Chapter 27

  The following morning the police had had more than they could take of the Irish. If there's anything worse than a drunken band of Irish navvies in a fighting mood it's that same band sobering up the following day. Captain Starr asked for a special court of summary justice to be held that same morning.

  The usual upstairs room at The Dog and Duck being too small for such a crowd, the bar parlour and public bar downstairs were cleared. Twenty-eight of the Irish were charged; none of the English had been held, they being the defenders rather than aggressors—or so it was said. The proceedings were simple and very quick. All twenty-eight pleaded guilty in unison to a charge of riotous assembly and making an affray. Then, a constable led them forward one by one to let the magistrates, the Reverend Doctor Prendergast and a Mr. Cyrus Love, get a good look at them. If a man was badly wounded, he was fined only threepence, on the ground that he probably got worse than he gave. If he were unmarked, he might be fined as high as thirty pence, on the opposite ground. In between, they operated to a sliding scale.

  The penalties were made deliberately nugatory, for heavier ones would imply that the troubles had been serious and so would have supported a petition for special constables to be appointed at the expense of the directors of the railway under an act of 1838. Prendergast was having none of that.

  At last, to the grateful relief of all, the Irish were released into the street and left to make their way back to Todmorden. As they looked around, one of them noticed John Stevenson standing by the gate to the inn yard, beckoning them over. In a mixed mood of anger and surprise—for, of course, they considered him to be the author of all their misfortunes—they hastened to where he stood.

  "That was a puir fok'n jape, Lord John," one cried.

  "Ye're a man so mean as'd take the turf, let alone the bread, from an honest

  man's mouth," said his neighbour.

  Another dashed forward and bared his flaming gums at Stevenson. "Luik at that!" he shouted, pointing to where two teeth had been—as if whatever their loss demonstrated were too obvious to state.

  "You lot look at that," Stevenson said, pointing to a pair of dray horses, harnessed to a large cart, ready to go.

  Gingerly they approached it, looking back at him every second step, fearing another trick.

  "I made a mistake when I told ye where that ale an' spirits were," he said disingenuously. "It were in this cart all't time! I'm reet sorry 'bout that."

  When they found that this time he was speaking the truth and that the floor of the cart was, indeed, lined with kegs and barrels, they forgave all and, crowding around him, clapped him on the back, clasped his hand, told him he was the Christian and the darlin' and if ever he was short of labour to send for them, and may his prick and his purse never fail his honour.

  The driver, a Todmorden man, came from the inn kitchens, buttoning his coat against the cold.

  "Ye'll go round via Bacup," Stevenson reminded him. "We'd not want another misunderstandin' at Deanroyd!"

  They laughed and piled in, eager to broach the spirit kegs and get this terrible day back on its normal keel. Before they were all aboard, a policeman threw open one of the ground floor windows and shouted: "Oy! Mick! Don't ye want this corpse?"

  Guilty
at having forgotten poor Swimmer in their own misfortune and excitement, they slunk back across the yard. Two policemen inside, not wanting to touch the cadaver, took the table on which it lay to the window and tilted it, as for a burial at sea. At a certain critical angle, it shot downward with a speed that almost foxed them, but they caught it just before the head took a further battering on the cobblestoned yard. The rigor had gone and Swimmer lay limp in their arms. His role as bludgeon and ram had not improved him, for his head was now flat and his lower jaw was wedged inside the top of his ribs.

  "Best get yon underground quick," the constable said. "'E'll not last out th'day—'is balls an' guts is already green."

  When they got him on the cart, back, so to speak, in his element, one of the navvies shouted across to the constable, who was on the point of closing the window again: "Hey you! Where's his fok'n hand?"

  The policeman held up his finger. "Oh ah! I forgot." He rummaged among the papers on the captain's desk and found an old ten-pound sugar sack with its drawstring pulled tight. He brought this to the window and swung it out to them. "It come off this mornin'," he said. "We tied it up in that."

  "Sure he'd be a lost man without it," said the one who had noticed its absence. "It's the hand be boxed the Jesuit with."

  Stevenson did not understand the reference, though the ensuing laughter told him it could only be sexual.

  About an hour later, when the world was rosy again and the cart had reached Bacup, they decided to do their best to tidy poor Swimmer before his interment. It was only then they discovered that the sugar bag, in fact, contained three slices of a very tasty game pie. At almost the identical moment, Police Captain Starr opened an almost identical sugar bag and discovered, in somewhat nauseous circumstances, that he was not, after all, going to enjoy any game pie that lunchtime. It did not improve his temper for the more serious proceedings of that afternoon.

  Chapter 28

  Metcalfe, Borroughs, and Hope were all unmarked, for Whitaker had been able to point them out to Captain Starr the moment the constabulary had arrived. Their case was heard separately, after the charge against Eph Ackroyd had been dealt with.

  Stevenson and Nora, attending the afternoon proceedings, met John Randall, the owner of the pig, going in.

  "Come to get your man?" Stevenson asked.

  "'Ave-I-buggery-yer-pardon-ma'am," he said in one word.

  "I've told yon. If I've told 'im once, I've told 'im a thousand times: 'Get yon bloody sty mended-yer-pardon-ma'am.' And 'e's done nowt. I s'll teach 'im a lesson t'way 'e'll remember it, this time, see tha." And he went gleefully upstairs to the regular courtroom to await his moment for revenge. They followed him and took seats near the back. On the way they passed the three bricklayers, wedged between two constables, their eyes fixed ahead of them, recognizing nothing. McLeish was not there but Fox and Findlater sat nearby.

  It was unfortunate for Eph that Captain Starr, cheated of his pie, had gone from the Dog and Duck in search of a substitute lunch. For though many could swear that a pig had been loose among the rioters and that Eph had been chasing it, only the Captain could give it as certain evidence that Eph had not so much charged him as been pulled onto him by the pig.

  Prendergast made several scathing references to the absence of the Captain, for, of course, there was little affection to spare between the magistracy and these newfangled usurpers of the magistrate's power, the police. "Perhaps if Captain Starr could be prevailed upon at least to bring his tea to the Dog and Duck we could all Starr-t!" he said amid howls of sycophantic laughter.

  But in the event, he did not let the absence hold up proceedings. Eph was bundled forward to the chair that served as a dock, and the charges—joining an affray and assaulting an officer of police—were read.

  "What d'you say to those charges, Ackroyd?" Prendergast asked him.

  "I say I were only there chasin' yon pig."

  "Yes, but do you plead guilty or not guilty?"

  "Nay, I know nowt about it, sir."

  "Come—you must know something."

  "I know as when I pushed yon captain into't watter I 'ad fast o' yon pig an' couldn't elp missen."

  Love turned to Prendergast. "Must be a plea of guilty with mitigating circumstances," he said.

  Prendergast looked back at Eph. "Is it? Come, you're wasting time."

  "Is it what, sir?"

  With the thinnest of patience Prendergast interpreted: "Are you saying you were there? You did strike or push Captain Starr, but it was all because of some…pig or other?"

  Eph's face glowed with relief that his case was understood so quickly, and he was full of admiration for the magistrate who had pieced it together so exactly. "Aye!" he said happily. "That's just 'it it. It were just like that!"

  Prendergast, with a thin-lipped smile, said to his clerk, "Guilty." He looked up again. "The only element of doubt would seem to be this pig. Did the pig push this unfortunate fellow into our gallant, gourmetizing head of police? Is there any man present who witnessed the incident?"

  One of the policemen had. At least, he had turned to see Ackroyd falling into the stream on top of the captain and in such a way that it could have been one other who pushed the captain. He saw no pig but could not swear that none had been there.

  The farmer, John Randall, with undisguised satisfaction, swore the pig had been in its sty when he had done his last round before retiring for the night. He had no personal knowledge of any escape.

  "So"—Prendergast turned back to Eph, who could now see the world falling around him and was wondering what he would say to his Mary that night— "your story evaporates beneath the hot searching light of inquiry. It turns into a tissue of lies!"

  "No, sir!" Eph cried. "It were…"

  "Silence!" Prendergast thundered. "You struck down Captain Starr and threw him into the canal."

  "I never seen 'im, sir—bein' so intent upon't pig!"

  "If you do not hold your tongue, I shall have you gagged and placed in irons." Eph squirmed. "You struck him down, I say. And moreover, I tell you that you may consider yourself fortunate to have escaped with your life. If Captain Starr had drawn his sword on that dreadful night, I cannot answer for…"

  "Sir! It were broad dayleet! In't middle o't afternoon!" Eph could not restrain himself.

  "Will you be quiet, sir!" Prendergast roared. "I warn you for the third and final time!" Then, in a voice only slightly moderated, he continued. "Afternoon, eh! Broad daylight, eh! So much the worse for you, my man. It makes your story even less credible. You understand? We do not believe this…this farrago of falsehood…this pack of prevarication…this mountain of mendacity…this cock-and-pig story."

  The laughter in the court drowned his conclusion: "Guilty, fined two pounds."

  "What, your honour?" Eph had to call. "I never 'eard."

  "Guilty!" Prendergast shouted. "Fined two pounds."

  "Two pounds!" Eph's cry brought a momentary lull in the laughter. "Your worships, that's five weeks' wages. I'll never find two pounds."

  "Then you may go to jail for five weeks instead—as you have been good enough to place an exact value on your own time. What could be fairer?"

  The renewed laughter drowned Eph's last agonized cry. "But, sirs! Oh please, sirs! What of me wife and bairns?"

  But Prendergast, Love, and the clerk were already conferring on the next, and far more serious, case.

  Nora looked up at John beside her. "What is it?" she asked.

  "I've no love for magistrates nor courts," he answered.

  "Metcalfe asked for it," she reminded him. "We warned him every way." She looked at the back of the strike-leader's head, two rows in front; all the stubbornness for which he now had to pay was carried there.

  "'E'll get a fairer 'earin nor Eph Ackroyd," Stevenson said. "Fox is representin' 'em."

  "Fair hearing, aye," Nora said. "But in the end, it'll be the same brand of justice they give Ackroyd. Gave Ackroyd."

  The charge was the singl
e one Stevenson had predicted—one of obstruction, brought under 4 George iv cap 95. Captain Starr, back again, gave evidence of the arrest—to fulsome praise from Prendergast, who, judging by the "snug fit of the prefectorial paunch within its pantaloons," predicted an uninterrupted trial of possibly as long as an hour.

  Fox's questioning elicited that the three defendants had stood apart from the fray that was also in progress when the constables arrived.

  "What made you pick these three?" Fox asked. "Out of all the hundreds assembled there, some of them behaving with extreme violence, these three were the very first to be taken into your custody."

  "That is correct…"

  Starr would have continued but Fox turned to the bench and said: "I make this point to explain my clients' lack of wounds or bloodstains, which lack—or so I understand from this morning's proceedings—goes hard against defendants in this court."