Ill Will. Michael Stewart

sorry, sir.’

      I was too weak from sleep to fight the brute.

      ‘What do you think this is, a doss-house?’

      ‘I had nowhere to stay,’ I said.

      ‘That’s no excuse.’

      ‘I was tired,’ I said.

      ‘Get up and get out. This isn’t a hostel for gypsies.’

      ‘I’m no kettle-mender.’

      ‘What’s your name?’

      I thought for a moment; I wracked my brains.

      ‘Come on then, lad, speak up. Have the hogs gobbled your tongue?’

      I remembered that young boy at chapel, Cathy, you were friendly with him. Died of consumption a few years since. I always liked his name. It was good and whole and clean.

      ‘My name, sir, is William Lee.’

      I’d stolen the name of a dead child. A boy we laiked with before and after sermon.

      ‘Well then, William, Will, Billy, that doesn’t sound gypsy to me, I give you that. What kind of work can you do?’

      ‘I can dig, build walls, tend fowl, tend swine. Any work you have.’

      ‘Are you of this parish?’

      ‘I’m an offcumden, sir, from the next parish.’

      ‘I do need hands, as it happens.’

      ‘What for?’

      ‘I’ve a wall that needs building. And stone that needs breaking. A bloke did a flit after a drunken brawl a few nights back. I’m a man down.’

      ‘I’m that man, sir. I’m a grafter.’

      ‘Sure you’re not a pikey?’

      ‘I’m sure.’

      ‘I don’t employ gyppos.’

      He took me over three fields, two of meadow, one of pasture, to where there was a birch wood and a small quarry. As we stood by the delph I realised, in fact, that he wasn’t as large as I’d at first thought. Though still heavyset and big of bone, he was not the giant my waking eyes had taken him for.

      ‘This is where you get the stone. There’s a barrow there. Don’t over-fill it, mind. I don’t want it splitting.’

      He showed me where it had been parked for the night. Next to the barrow were several picks and wedges, as well as hammer and chisel. Then he walked me across to another field where a wall was partly constructed.

      ‘And this is the wall. In another hour or so there will be some men to join you. Some men to break stone and others to build. The one they call Sticks will tell you what to do.’

      ‘Thank you, sir.’

      ‘The name’s Dan Taylor. I own this farm.’

      With that the farmer walked back down to the farm buildings and I sat on a rock. I amused myself by pulling grass stalks from their skins and sucking on the ends. I gathered a fist of stones and aimed them at the barrow. I watched the tender trunks of the birch wrapped in white paper. A web of dark branches. The leaves and the catkins rustled in the breeze. I waited an hour or two before the first of the men arrived. He was skinny as a beanpole and his hair was dark. He had a bald patch to the side just above his ear, in the shape of a heart. His beard grew sparsely around his chops. He told me the farmer had spoken to him about me.

      ‘Well, William Lee, you do as you’re told and we’ll get along fine, laa. The name’s John Stanley. Everyone calls me Sticks.’

      He unfurled his arms the way a heron stretches out its wings and offered me his willowy hand to shake.

      We broke stone for a time before two more men appeared and joined us. When we were joined by another two men, Sticks put his pick down.

      ‘Right, men, we’re all here and there’s lots to do. Looks like the weather will hold out despite the clouds.’

      He pointed up. There were patches of blue but mostly the sky consisted of clouds the colour of a throstle’s egg. Not storm clouds though.

      ‘Good graftin’ weather,’ one of the men said.

      ‘This is William Lee. He’ll be working with us today. Me, William and Jethro will work here to begin. Jed, you barrow, and you two start walling. We’ll swap after a time. Come ’ed.’

      We set to work again.

      ‘You from round here then, laa?’ Sticks said as he loaded up a barrow with freshly broken stones.

      ‘The next parish. About thirty miles east.’

      ‘So what brings you to this parish then?’

      ‘I’m just drifting. No particular reason.’

      ‘People don’t just drift. They always have a purpose. You’re either travelling to somewhere or running away from someone. Which is it?’

      ‘Neither.’

      ‘Suit yourself. Give me a hand with this.’

      I helped him lift a large coping stone.

      ‘Had a southerner here last week. From Sheffield. Think he found us a bit uncouth. Only lasted two days. Could hardly tell a word he said, his accent was that strong.’

      ‘You don’t sound like you’re from round these parts yourself,’ I said.

      He had a strange accent and not a bit like a Calder one. He had a fast way of talking and a range of rising and falling tones that gave his speech a distinctive sound.

      ‘You travel around and you take your chances. I’ve done it myself. Got turned out of one village one time. The villagers threw stones at me and called me a foreigner. It’s getting harder and harder for the working man to make a living.’

      ‘Why’s that then?’

      ‘Because a bunch of aristocrats are stealing the land beneath our feet. They’ll turn us all into cottars and squatters. Before you know it there won’t be any working men, just beggars and vagrants, thieves and highwaymen, prostitutes and parasites. Mark my words, laa.’

      ‘Is that so?’

      ‘The days of farm work is coming to an end. They’ve got Jennies now across the land that can spin eighty times what a woman can spin on her tod. A lot of the labourers hereabouts have gone off over to Manchester, doing mill work, building canals. I’ve done canal work myself, built up the banks, worked on the puddling. Dug out the foundations. It’s back-breaking work, I’ll tell you that. It’s said that on the duke’s canal the boats can travel up to ten miles an hour. And not a highwayman to be seen. Done dock work as well, in Liverpool. That’s where I’m from, you see, laa.’

      I liked the way he pronounced ‘Liverpool’, lumping it up and dragging it out.

      I thought about where I had come from. All that I knew was that Mr Earnshaw found me on the streets of that same town. Perhaps I would go back there. Seek out my fortune in that place instead. I wasn’t fixed. No roots bound me to the spot. Where there was money to be made that’s where I was heading. Enough money to get you and Hindley. If I were to make the journey, I could use Sticks’s know-how.

      ‘I’m heading that way myself,’ I said.

      ‘Be careful how you go, laa. It’s not safe to walk the roads. A man’s liable to be picked up by a press gang or else kidnapped and sent to the plantations. They’re building big mills over in Manchester. But you won’t get me going there. Worse than the workhouse. Have you heard of the men of Tyre?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Pit men. They cut the winding ropes, smashed the engines and set fire to the coal.’

      ‘Why?’