Ill Will Read online

  MICHAEL STEWART is from Salford but is now based in Bradford. He has won several awards for his scriptwriting, including the BBC Alfred Bradley Bursary Award. His debut novel King Crow was the winner of the Guardian’s Not the Booker Award. Ill Will is his latest novel.

  Copyright

  An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2018

  Copyright © Michael Stewart 2018

  Michael Stewart asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780008248178

  Version: 2018-02-21

  For Lisa and Carter

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1780

  On the Straw with the Swine

  Flesh for the Devil

  The Man with the Whip

  Throttling a Dog

  Conjuring the Dead

  Tripe and Black Pudding

  In the Shadow of the Gallows

  A Game of Skittles

  Jonas Bold

  Pierce Hardwar

  Penny Buns and Jew’s Ears

  Humility, Cleanliness and Pure Thinking

  The Man with One Hand

  Vying the Ruff

  1783

  Acknowledgements

  About the Publisher

  1780

  You are walking through Butcher’s Bog, along the path at Birch Brink. Traipsing across Stanbury Moor, to the Crow Stones. A morass of tussock grass, peat wilderness and rock. There are no guiding stars, just the moaning of the wind. Stunted firs and gaunt thorns your only companions.

  Perhaps you will die out here, unloved and unhomed. There was the tale of Old Tom. Last winter, went out looking for a lost lamb. Found a week on, icicles on his eyelids, half-eaten by foxes. Or was it the last wolf said to roam these moors? The ravens will eat out your eyes and the crows will pick at your bones. The worms will turn you into loam. You’ve forgotten your name and your language. Mr Earnshaw called you ‘it’ when first he came across you. Mrs Earnshaw called you ‘brat’ when first she took you by the chuck. Mr Earnshaw telt to call him Father and Mrs Earnshaw, Mother, but they were not your real parents. Starving when they took you in. They named you after their dead son. The man you called your father carried you over moor and fell, in rain and in snow. When finally you got to the gates of the farm it was dark and the man could hardly stand. He took you into the main room and plonked himself in a rocker. By the fire you stood, a ghost in their home. Next to you a living girl and living boy, who spat and kicked. This was their welcome to your new hovel. Nearly ten years ago now. You’d spent weeks on the streets, eating scraps from bin and midden. Kipped by the docks and ligged in doorways. You’d trusted no one, loved no one, believed in nothing.

  It was tough in the new place but you’d had it worse. You’d almost died many times. You’d been beaten inside an inch of your life. Gone five days without food. Slept with rats and maggots. Nothing this new place had in store could harm you more than you’d been harmed before. Or so you thought. The girl was called Cathy, the boy Hindley, and you hated them apiece.

  Almost ten years ago. But you can still feel her hot spit on your face, and his boot in your groin. None of it ever hurt you as much as her words. Words that cut to the bone. Words that stab you in the back.

  You stand on top of the Crow Stones on the brink of the wilderness. It is said that the stones were used for ritual sacrifice. The slit throat of a slaughtered goat. The gushing blood of a lamb seeping into the craggy carpet beneath your feet. The wind tries to blow you off your perch. Blow harder. You are the goat, the lamb, you care not for sacrifice. Let them take you. Let them bleed you. Fuck the lot of them.

  For two years your adopted father tried to protect you from Hindley. From his maniac beatings, with fist and boot and club. Sometimes it worked. Until your adopted mother died and your father retreated into himself. The jutting stones of your borrowed home were fitting symbols. The grotesque carvings and crumbling griffins were your companions. But not now. Walking without direction. It doesn’t matter where you go as long as you go away from that place of torture, that palace of hate.

  They called you dark-skinned gypsy, dirty lascar, vagabond, devil. You’ll give them dark, dirt, devil. Cathy wanted a whip. Hindley a fiddle. You’ll give her whip, him fiddle. You took a seat at the end of the hearthstone. Petted a liver-coloured bitch. There was some warmth in the room and it came from an open fire. Flames that licked, peat that steamed, coals that glowed, and wood that hissed.

  Hindley called you dog and beat you with an iron bar. Mr Earnshaw tried once more to stop him. He sent Hindley to college, just to get the maniac away. And things picked up for a while. Then you watched your father die, watched the life drain from his eyes, his last breath leave his lips. You knelt at his feet and wept. You held onto his lifeless hand, the skin as brittle as a wren’s shell. Cathy wiped the tears from your eyes. Hindley came back from the funeral with a wife. She was soft in the head and as thin as a whippet. Always coughing her guts up. Things got bad again. Banished from the house, set to work outside, in the pissing wind and whirling rain. You were flogged, locked out, spent your evenings shivering in a corner while that cunt stuffed his face, supping ale and brandy. Eating and drinking, singing and laughing with his slut.

  The wind has lulled now and you listen to its hush. You hear a fox scream and an owl cry. The night gathers in pleats of black and blue. The cold rain falls. You teeter on the brink. It would be so easy to tumble and smash your skull on the rocks. Let the life bleed out of the cracks and let the slimy things take you. No one would miss you. Not even you. The only thing that is real is the hardness of the rock and the pestilent air that festers. You could dive head-first onto the granite. Dead in an instant. Released from the teeth of experience.

  You remember another night as black as this. Your love had lost her shoes in the bog beneath Whitestone Clough. You crept through a broken hedge, groping your way up the path in the dark, planting yourselves on a flowerpot, under the drawing-room window. They hadn’t put the shutters up and the light poured out. You clung to the ledge and peered in. It was carpeted in crimson and there were crimson-covered chairs. A shining white ceiling fretted with gold. A shower of glass drops hanging on silver chains, shimmering. It was Edgar and his sister Isabella. She was screaming, shrieking as if witches were ramming red-hot needles in her eyes. Edgar was standing on the hearth weeping. In the middle of a table sat a little dog, shaking its paw and yelping. They were crying over that dog, the silly cunts. Both had wanted to hold it and neither had let the other do so. You laughed, you and Cathy. They were like toy dogs themselves, all prim and prettified. Milksopped and mollycoddled.

  They stopped yelping. The
y must have heard you laugh. Then Edgar saw you at the window and started shouting. You ran for it, but they’d let the bulldog loose, a big bastard with a big bastard head, and it had got Cathy by the ankle. It sank its bastard teeth in and wouldn’t let go. You got a stone and thrust it between its bastard jaws, crammed it down its bastard throat, throttled that bastard dog with your bare hands. Its huge purple tongue was hanging half a foot out of its mouth, and blood and slaver dripped from its lips.

  Then there was a servant running towards you. A big bear of a man. He grabbed Cathy and dragged her in. You followed him. Mr Linton was running down the hallway, shouting ‘What is it?’ The man grabbed you inside too and pulled you under the chandelier. Mr Linton was looking over his spectacles. Isabella said, ‘Put him in the cellar.’ ‘That’s Mr Earnshaw’s daughter,’ said another. ‘Her foot is bleeding.’ You cursed the servant, swore like a trooper. He dragged you into the garden, threw you on the grass, then went back to the house and locked the door behind him.

  You went to the window again. Thought about smashing it in. She was sitting on the sofa. A servant brought a bowl of water. They took off her shoes and stockings. They washed her feet. They fed her cake. Edgar stood and gawped. They dried her wild hair and combed it sober. They wheeled her to the fire. The Lintons stood there staring.

  You should shelter. Soaked to the bone and shivering, teeth chatter in your skull. You think about a nook beneath Nab Hill where the earth is soft and the rocks block the wind. It was the first place you and Cathy fucked. She took hold and put you inside her. Her white thighs astride your black hips. Your teacher, your lover, your sister, your mother. She was all you needed in the world. The rest could go to hell.

  She stayed at Thrushcross Grange for five weeks. Till Christmas. Hardly knew her when she returned. Turned up on a black pony, hair all done, wearing a fancy hat with a feather in the ribbon. Even her speech was altered. She was dressed in a silk frock. You felt ashamed of your appearance, felt dirty. Your hair was coarse and uncombed. She said you looked grim and laughed in your face. You couldn’t stand to listen to that laugh, couldn’t stand to be so black next to one so white. You ran out of the room, burning with shame. Your flesh was a fire of disgust. The next day the Lintons were invited to the house. You were banished to the outbuildings. They called you dog, called you devil. You’ll give them dog, give them devil.

  Your thoughts are jumbled. They whirr like the storm around you. They make a flaysome din in your skull. Shelter. There’s a cave under Penistone Crags. A roof over your head. A hole to lig in. Get out of the storm. Where are you? Somehow you are lost. The moor so familiar, but you don’t recognise the landscape. You make out black shapes, skeletal outlines of withered hawthorns. Whinstone and mud. The ground keels. You are somewhere. You are nowhere. You are here. The night is as black as your shame, as black as your face. You are wandering like a blind man. You don’t know anything any more. Not what’s up. Not what’s down. You don’t know who you are, where you came from. You don’t even know your own name.

  On the Straw with the Swine

  I woke the next morning with my head on a pillow of mud, Cathy. I could hear the worms crawl through the earth beneath. I imagined them poking their blind noses through the loam. I ached all over. Every bone was a bruise. Everything I touched and everything around me was cold and wet. I watched an ant crawl over the back of my hand, clambering over each hair as though it were a hillock. It was a bright June morning. The sun was shining, making the dew glisten. I stood slowly, painfully, and looked around. I recognised where I was. Somewhere between Harbut Clough and Shackleton Knoll. Not far from the prominent stoop where you first kissed me on the lips. Lips so soft. Kisses so sweet. The lark and the linnet sang to us.

  I walked along a faint path, past Lumb Falls, towards Abel Cross. My head was pounding and my mouth was parched. My eyes stung and my legs throbbed. I was shivering. I picked up pace. Got to gather heat. I walked past a cluster of farmhouses and stone outbuildings. By a mistal I could hear the milch cows lowing inside. Maybe they would let me have some barley bread and buttermilk. No, got to keep on going. I contoured over the hillside, Crimsworth Dean in the distance. The forest beneath, a verdant roof of leaves. I could see at the top of the woods the outline of Slurry Rock jutting out like a boar’s fang. I walked along the grassy bank of the beck until it sloped gently down to the water. I stooped to drink where the flow was strong. I let the cold of the water flurry in the cup of my hands, then supped greedily. My mouth and throat unclagged as the cool liquid slooshed.

  I could live out here, a wild man in a cave. I didn’t need anyone else, want anyone else, have anyone else. I could catch rabbits with snares I’d make myself and cook them on the fire. I could make a rod out of willow and fish for trout and pike. I could make a bed out of fresh heather and, like the titmouse, I’d gather the soft heads of cotton grass to line my nest. Fuck people, I didn’t need them. People only brought you pain. Better to stay away from people. At least until I had a plan.

  I thought about you with the Lintons that day, when they came to visit. I vowed to get you all or die attempting it. Supping mulled ale from silver mugs. I was a stain on their polished tray. I was the muck on their well-scrubbed floor. Leave them to it. I had turned my back on them and gone inside to feed the beasts. Fuck ’em. Fuck the rotten lot. Spoke to no one except the dogs. And when you had all gone to church, I went onto the moor. Fasted and thought. I had to turn things around. I had to get you back.

  I came in through the kitchen door, went to Nelly and said, ‘Make me decent.’ I was younger than Edgar but taller and twice as broad. I could knock him down in a twinkle. I wanted light hair and fair skin. Nelly washed and combed my curls. Then she washed me again. But she couldn’t wash the black off my face. Then I saw you all, descending from a fancy carriage, smothered in furs. Faces white as wealth. I’ll show the cunts, just as good as them, and I opened the door to where you and they were sitting. But Hindley pushed me back and said, ‘Keep him in the garret. He’ll only steal the fruit.’ How ashamed I’d felt that day. How cold and lonely I’d been in that garret with just the buzzing of the flies for company.

  I stopped by a ditch and picked some crowfoot. I looked at the white petals and the yellow centres. Some call it ram’s wort; it is said to cure a broken heart. How pretty it looked with its lobed leaves, and how desolate. I crushed it up and threw it on the ground. I had no use for pretty things. Bring me all that is ugly and I will serve them all my days, the henchman to all that is loathsome. I laughed at my own grandiosity. What was I? Even less than the muck on my boots. Which weren’t even my boots, but Hindley’s hand-me-downs. How he’d gloated over that. Another detail he could use to show the world that I was beneath him. Almost everything I owned had once been his property. I had nothing that I could call mine. Not my breeches nor my surtout, not even the shirt on my back. I walked a little further through grass and moss and rested by a rowan tree. It is said that witches have no power where there is a rowan tree wood. Do you hear me, Cathy?

  My mind snapped back to that day. That cunt Edgar had started, saying my hair was like the hair of a horse. I’d grabbed a bowl of hot sauce and flung it right at him. Edgar had screamed like a girl and covered his face with his hands. Hindley grabbed hold of me, dragging me outside. He punched me in the gut. When I didn’t react, he went for the iron weight and smashed it over my back. Go down. Kicking me in the ribs. In the face. Stomping on my head. Then he got the horse whip and flogged me till I passed out.

  I gripped the root of the rowan to help me to my feet. I needed something to eat to stop the pain in my gut. I saw some chickweed growing by a cairn and clutched at the most tender stems. It tasted of nothing. I found some dandelions further on and chewed on the leaves. They were a bitter breakfast. I carried on walking. Something of the plants must have nourished me because as I walked I could feel some of my strength restored. The sun was getting bigger and higher in the sky and my wet clothes began to stea
m.

  Cold stone slabs. When I had woken the next day from Hindley’s flogging, Cathy, I discovered that he’d locked me in the shed. I was aching all over, bruises everywhere, caked in dried blood. It wasn’t the first time he’d beaten me senseless, nor was it the first time he’d shoved me in the shed. I could cope with the beatings, and the cold stone flags for a cushion, but the humiliation still stung like a fresh wound. A razor’s edge had a kinder bite. I could hear you and them in the house. There was a band playing, trumpets and horns, clatter and bang. I could hear you and them chatting and laughing as I lay in the dark, bruised and battered, my whole body a dull ache and a sharp pain. I swallowed and tasted the metal of my own blood. How to get the cunt? I didn’t care how long it took. I didn’t care how long I had to wait. Just so as he didn’t die before I did. And if I burned in hell for all eternity it would be worth it. At least the flames would keep me warm and the screams would keep me company. Kicking the cunt was not enough. He must suffer in every bone of his body and in his mind too. His every thought must be a separate torture. He must have no peace, waking or asleep. His whole life, every minute of every hour of every day, must be torture. Nothing less would do.

  I’d been walking for a good hour and my clothes were almost dry. I’d walked off the stiffness and the pains all over my body were abating. But not the pain in my head. That was growing. I walked through Midgehole and along the coach road to Hebden. I’d walked it before, once with my father and several times with Joseph. With horse and cart. I was hungry again and thirsty. The chickweed and dandelion breakfast not enough to sustain me for long. I hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday morning, and only then a heel of stale bread with a bit of dripping. Along the roadside was a row of cottages. Sparrows flitted from the ivy to the hedges. A cat sat and watched. The world was waking up. I saw a man load up his horse and cart with woven cloth and earthen pots. It was market day then. Rich pickings for some. Perhaps there would be opportunity to work for some food or like the vagabond you all think I am, I might find a way to steal some victuals.