The Killing Man

by Andrew Wareham

  Sam was not sure what he wanted, not yet. He tagged along behind, politely, while his mother greeted her brother and his wife and exchanged their news; his father brought him into the party after a few minutes.

  “Sam been out with the Yeomanry this last few months, like what I told you, Abe. Got a discharge and back with us for the while, a few coins in his pocket due to prize and bounty and whatever. Looking to set ‘imself up now as ‘is own man; maybe in the gin line, selling up to Manchester or across towards Sheffield, over to they coal pits what are starting up thereabouts; into Stoke maybe, it’s barely an hour for pony and trap from here. I thought maybe you could show ‘im the way of running a still, if so be ‘e was to drop you a tenner, say, for the time and effort and maybe the wasting of some stuff.”

  Abe looked Sam over, decided he had become a man; he was not the boy he had seen only a year before. Sam was much the same age as his own son, but seemed far older, he thought. He quickly decided that Sam was one to go places – to the gallows, most likely, but just possibly to become a comfortably placed merchant sort of chap.

  “Been up the ‘ill and over the mountain, ain’t you, Sam? Was you at the big battle?”

  “Culloden, Uncle Abe? I was there, and at a good few little scraps as well.”

  “Shows on your face, young man. They say the Army can make you into a man; don’t say what sort of man, that’s all… Tell you, what, our Sam, I’ll take you on and show you just how a still works, and the building of your own, but not for money – for labour instead. You could do me a substantial favour, young Sam, and I ain’t one to ask for something for nothing. I been talkin’ with old Josh Banford, what got the freehold to a great patch of moorland over back of here. Calls ‘imself ‘Squire’, so ‘e do, but ‘e ain’t really so. Sounds rich, but he ain’t – can’t run one sheep to twenty acres up on top, useless land, but it’s ‘is and it’s the better part of five square mile and that’s something in itself; and there’s a bit of decent arable in the bottom of the dale what makes ‘im more than a living. Three parts of the way up to the tops, there’s an outcrop of coal what ‘e takes winter firing from for ‘is own house. Bit of a track leads down to the lane here and down into town. I reckon there’s folk in town would pay a bob or two for a chaldron of house coals. What we got in mind is finding out if it makes sense. Old Josh got a pair of draught-horses and a heavy cart what will take a full chaldron, what be the biggest they lets out on the highways, by the old law. Bit more than two and a half ton, so that would be; fifty-three hundredweight, each of eight stone of fourteen pounds weight, when it comes to coals. If so be folks would pay fourpence, or a penny or two more, for a hundredweight of coals, then we might do very well for usselves, young Sam. If there was the sale for coals, then we could hire on a pair of labouring men for their two shillings a day and send a chaldron or more out each day so long as folks were in the way of buying, that is.”

  Sam nodded – if it worked out, then it would make a profitable little business, but they were only guessing that people would buy at all. For the start, it would not make sense to hire on labourers for their year and spend out extra money on a cottage for them, perhaps, for there being no place to live up on the moors.

  The selling would cost a bit in the first instance, for needing some way of splitting up a chaldron into smaller loads for people who wanted less. Woven willow baskets, probably, of a size to take a half-hundredweight apiece, tipped out into barn or cellar, whichever the buyer possessed. Just having a little coal mine wasn’t enough in itself – there had to be some way of getting the stuff to the fires.

  “So, Uncle Abe, if so be you ‘ad a strong young chap what was willin’ to cut coals for a few months, and load them up onto the wagon, no doubt, then you could find out if there was money to be made. Once you’d got the know of the trade, then you could set it up permanent, with a couple of men hired on.”

  “Just that, young Sam. My boy Tom could work the cart – good with ‘osses, so he is - and take the loads into town and perhaps stand in the marketplace or whatever, but ‘e ain’t got the muscle what you ‘ave, nor the willingness maybe to cut coal. The two of you could see to making it work, if so be it does, in your different ways. In exchange, Sam, you get a place to lay your head and your grub – five days a week up on the moor at the working, two days more comfortable down ‘ere. I don’t pay nothing, but after three months, which is a fair try, I reckons, I shows you all I knows about the stills. I ain’t goin’ to bullshit you, Sam, it ain’t no great secret mystery like they use to ‘ave in they old guilds – any bloody fool can work a still after learning for a month, so long as he can remember what to do and he’s shown the proper way so as not to poison folks. But you do ‘ave to know the rights and wrongs of it, and getting a good taste can be ‘ard if you ain’t shown proper.”

  Sam nodded – he had nothing better to do with the next few months, and he was sure there was money to be made in booze. He held his hand out to shake.

  “I got a few quid in bounty money and that, Uncle Abe. Can you put it away safe for me? I don’t want to keep it tucked away in me pocket while I’m workin’.”

  “Can do better nor that, Sam. Old Martin, the goldsmith as was, set up a banking house what works out of Chesterfield, but ‘e still lives in Leek and will take your money at his own place there and hold it safe, and pay thee a few pennies in interest the while. He holds some of my savings for me.”

  That was a concept that had to be carefully explained to Sam, but he was prepared, eventually, to give it a try. He decided to keep back some of his cash, but to put the bulk of it into Martin’s hands.

  Mr Martin was amazed when Sam stood in front of him and emptied an exact one hundred pounds in gold and silver onto his desk.

  “Bounty and Prize Fund, sir. Which, thinkin’ it might be asked about, I kept the ticket from the Paymaster at Derby barracks, sir.”

  Sam produced the official documents, pointing to his own counter-signature.

  “Corporal Heythorne, young man?”

  “Yes, sir. We was busy, sir, with rousting out them Jacobite rebels and Captain Wakerley needed men to help, sir.”

  “And he chose you, despite you not being the oldest, I suspect.”

  “Not the oldest, sir, but I learned ‘ow to be a trooper, sir, and the right ways of doing things on the march.”

  “You have the look in your eye, young man, that says you may have learned how to shoot straight as well.”

  Sam was getting used to that question.

  “Only at the King’s enemies, sir.”

  “Well said, young man! I could wish there were many more of your sort. I shall keep your money safe, and will pay you two per centum, compounding. If I should happen to come across a business proposition, which might earn more, then I might wish to speak with you again, Corporal Heythorne. What are you to do the while, sir?”

  Abe explained about the coal, how they were to examine the possibility of a local market for winter fuel.

  “I prefer a sweeter-smelling wood fire, if possible, Mr Makepeace – but wood is uncommon hard to come by these days. The call for charcoal is so high now that logs are not easily found. There are great wagon loads of charcoal going to the iron foundries in Shropshire, and to the lead and silver mines in this county, and the forests of Old England will soon be a thing of the memory, no more. I much suspect your coals will be the future for every household that can afford them. I shall speak to my lady wife, sir, and it is not impossible that we may beg you to unload a chaldron or two in my own firing barn!”

  Sam nodded and smiled in the background while Abe promised to meet Mr Martin’s order the instant it was laid.

  “That old bugger ‘as got ‘is finger in just about every pie worth baking in this part of the world, young Sam. Treat him very polite and doff thy cap to ‘im whenever ‘e comes in sight – might be you’ll never need a favour from ‘im, but you very much don’t want ‘im against you.”

  Sam promised to
be good. No innkeeper dared be on the wrong side of the local masters; one word from them and he could be closed down for brewing bad beer or selling short measures, with no investigation and not a thing to be done about it.

  “Is ‘e right about charcoal, Uncle Abe?”

  “The forests are disappearing fast, Sam. The Navy takes what trees it can for ships, but mostly it’s the iron trade that’s killing them. Thing is, Sam, that charcoal needs good timber – you don’t bake trash to make charcoal for the foundries. A ton of iron uses I don’t know ‘ow many tons of charcoal – might be eight or even ten, from what I’ve been told – and there’s a good few thousand tons of iron cast each year now. Word is, and just ‘ow true, I know not, that over on the River Severn there’s ironmasters what is working pit-coals into some sort of charcoal for their iron, for the real stuff being so short. Like I say, I dunno one way or the other about it being true, but I do know firewood’s getting less easy to get ‘old of.”

  Sam listened and thought and wondered and tried to make sense of it all.

  “The roads ain’t much good for carrying any distance, but might be, Uncle Abe, that a man who found a pit for digging coal what was close to a river what you could float a boat on to take it to town – it might just be a bloody good way of puttin’ a few quid together.”

  “Wrong part of the country hereabouts for that, Sam. But over Sheffield way, maybe, or down on the flat lands towards Manchester, you might be onto a pretty good thing, Sam.”

  “Need more than a ‘undred quid though, Uncle Abe. Get that old gin and whisky up first and, start the money comin’ in, then it might be time to look at coal.”

  Sam and Abe walked up the hill next morning, following the track past Josh Banford’s sheep holding and over the shoulder of the moorland. He noticed that the Banford’s house was large, big for a farm but far smaller than any squire’s manor; there was some money there but no great fortune. The track wound and twisted its way along the easiest route, avoiding all steep slopes, and showed evidence of the passing of a heavy two-horse cart; it was practical, it seemed. They came to the working after more than an hour of hard walking, perhaps two miles distant from the crossroads leading into Leek.

  “One load a day, no more. Too much for the ‘osses to try more.”

  “Reckon you’re right there, Uncle Abe.”

  The pit was a simple cave-like opening in the side of the moor where a seam of coal had surfaced and had been worked for generations on a small scale, perhaps no more than three or four tons taken in a year, sufficient for the single set of house fires.

  “Might be you could cut down the hillside, Sam, and uncover more that way. Might be safer than digging back into the side itself and sort of making a tunnel.”

  “How wide do it go, Uncle Abe?”

  “Dunno – it sort of spreads out a bit inside, but they never needed to find out.”

  Sam stared about him, decided his first step must be to make it easier to load up the wagon.

  “Drop the track three or four foot just outside the entry way ‘ere, Uncle Abe, and it’s goin’ to be a bloody sight easier than shovelling up high onto the cart. Do that first of all. What do I do for sleeping and eatin’ up ‘ere?”

  “Round the corner, look, where the old track goes round the side of the slope.”

  They followed the track some fifty paces and came to a clean stream running off the moors and into a sheltered and small dale, perhaps fifty feet wide and twenty deep and curving back for some forty yards before levelling off on the moorside. Loose rock had been stacked against the valley side over the years to make a solid wall six feet high by ten long, coming round at the back to make a closed-off ‘L’. The enclosed space was some eight feet wide and roofed over by the trunks of half a dozen saplings layered with uprooted heathers and a thick bed of gorse; turfs had been cut and laid on top of the gorse years before to make a solid and warm and reasonably rain-proof roof. There was no door, but more rocks had been stacked to block most of the front and to create a wide fireplace with a rough chimney. It might not be too hospitable in the deep snows of midwinter, but it would be tolerable for most of the year.

  “Cut theesself a layer of heathers to make a bed, Sam, up on the higher side of the floor. Put a canvas groundsheet over all and a blanket or two. Could be worse. Sit up at the front in the firelight, of an evening.”

  “Slept rougher nor this up on the moors when we was chasin’ they bloody rebels, Uncle Abe. It’ll do.”

  “Right enough, Sam. Come up and get started in the morning, do you reckon?”

  “Sounds right to me, Uncle Abe. Needs a couple of shovels and a pick-axe, and a billhook for cutting the heather. Can’t see no kindling-wood to ‘and on the moorside, so maybe we’d better bring some of that up. Needs a plate to eat from and a billy for boiling tea up. Got me own mug and knife and spoon.”

  “There’s a hook in the wall over the fireplace for the billy, so’s you can make tea, or even boil up a bit of a stew. Ain’t seen much sign of rabbits up ‘ere, though. The missus will put up bread and cheese and onions and a bit of beef or somesuch when the wagon comes up, Sam.”

  They agreed it was practical and wandered downhill again, Sam going the few furlongs further into Leek and its one store to buy tea and a few other little luxuries in the way of salt and sugar. There was a selection of hardware and he was able to pick up a billy with an iron handle as well as a pair of earthenware platters. There was a small keg of gunpowder in one corner, together with a sack of birdshot; he bought an amount of each, saying it was to scare off rooks and jackdaws from his garden. A dragoon pistol would fire a load of birdshot very effectively, if need arose, and he was going to be alone in a very isolated part of the hills, and he knew that some of the rebels had escaped onto the moorland, and there were robbers in ordinary times.

  Next morning saw Sam making a start on his labours. He began to cut down below the level of the coal seam to make his little loading bay, scraping a section flat so that he could shift coal out and onto a heap from which it would be easy to throw it onto the cart. The working face was no more than six feet distant from the bay, easy to push the coal behind him for the while. He worked steadily for the rest of the day, mostly on cutting out the thin turf and rolling the exposed stone to the side, stacking much of it towards the front of his little cabin where he intended to build a bigger chimney over his fireplace so that he could risk keeping his fire alight overnight when the cold weather came in. He did not much fancy sleeping in a little room filled with coal smoke, thought it might not be good for him.

  Once ready he inspected the tiny pit itself.

  There was a thick seam of coal exposed, almost half his own height and running slightly downhill, left to right. The farmer had simply cut back where it showed above ground, but Sam wondered just what shape it was and how far it extended on either side and just how much of it there might be going back. There would be far too much digging, he realised, to find out the answers – he could not afford to spend days, weeks even, mapping out just how much coal there was. He glanced up at the hillside, stretching up above him, the peak perhaps two hundred feet higher than his work place; he would be forced to cut a tunnel, carving the coal out and leaving a hole through the rock… If that rock fell in, he would not be coming out. It might be a good idea to pull out the coal for a few feet and then build a kind of pillar of rock, sort of like the ones he had seen in churches, holding up the roof.

  He spent a while sorting through the country rock he had shifted, putting the flattish pieces that would stack neatly in a pile together.

  Finally, he dug out some coal, enough for his own fire. He was not sure he had a lot to show for his day’s labour, but he had some idea of what he was doing.

  The last couple of hours of daylight were spent with the billhook, cutting heather for his bedding and then stringing it into bundles under the sacking Uncle Abe had sent up. With two heavy blankets, he would be comfortable.

  He made t
ea and ate bread and cold meat and told himself he was not lonely – it was just that there was nobody to talk to.

  He woke before dawn, brewed up a billy of tea to set by the fire and keep warm all day, army fashion, and then set to with pick and shovel, cutting along the edge of the coal face. He did not know just how much coal would make a hundredweight – he had no means of weighing it – but guessed when he had cut a chaldron. A glance at the sun told him that he would probably be able to cut out two or three wagon loads a day – which meant that he would be able to pace himself, to take time off when he fancied.

  Tom brought the dray towards midday, and then sat down in the sun to watch as Sam loaded it; his share of the work ended with driving the wagon, it seemed.

  Sam was not entirely surprised; he had wondered why Uncle Abe had not set Tom to work on the little pit already – but it seemed that hard labour was not part of Tom’s way of life. He was a drooping youth, skinny and by way of being a weakling, Sam thought. He might do well enough with his father’s inn when the old man died, but he would never make more of it, would not expand the business. No matter, if that was the sort of man he was, so be it.

  An hour of the easier labour, shovelling the coal down into the bed of the wagon, and Sam had filled the cart level with its top, which had been Abe’s instruction. A chaldron was a measure of volume, not of weight, although people would buy part loads in hundredweights – which was rather confusing.

  “Ready to go, Tom. All yours.”

  Tom had said almost nothing during his hour’s wait.

  “Be back in the morning early, Sam. Make sure you got a load waiting ready for me.”

  Tom could see there was at least another wagon load sat in the bay already – he was giving orders for the sake of sounding important, to show that he was boss.

  “You just bring the old wagon up, boy. I’ll be ready for thee.”

  Sam picked up the sound of hooves on the track.

  “Rider comin’, Tom.”