In the fyres of the forges in the Black Cuntry was where I first herd tell of coinin where I learnit a little about chippin and clippin swimmers where I learnit about the yeller trade and the work of them men that darest to.
It was down neer the citty they name Burningham for reasons that shud be clear that I was apprentissed to the smithy The smithy made anything A big place it was hot and noisy and deirty like nowt yood ever seen or herd or smelled and when the men there got to torkin it was a revvalayshin to me they mite as well have been speeking in tungs the way the werds come out But thats by the by what matters is what they done and what they done is smelt and pour and hammer and mould What they done is hoist and heft and scald and steam And what they done was learn us a new trayde a new way. A way that I brung back up to the hills to tell to my kith and kin so that we can all get back at the man and maybe live more freely and comfurtable on this littul shive of tough hevven This littul patch of land I calls a kyngdum.
I’m torken about the fine art of the coinin and the clippen Makine munny and fucken the man.
Made all sorts did that forge Made nails railins locks buckels wether vaynes made ever thing from bayonetts to chatterlains Made ackses all sorts of ackses Made beard ackses bordin ackses broad ackses spiked ackses Made candul lanterns made ship lanterns three sided lantans Made horse shoos made cloth boilers and tea urns and flint strykers and cross bars for yer dutch ovens and stew pots an buckerts Made sords an all – all sorts of sords – court sords an huntin sords an cuttoes with engraved handels showing deer seens and forests and valleys and stags that did remaind us of home Made spoons and whissles and mouth harps and whizzer toys Made forged metal balls batted flat and strung on chains for the littleuns to whizz Everythynge that coud be melted and mowlded we did mayke with fire and mussel.
Dozens of men there was down there in the darkness Down in the black country swinging mallets turnin tongs and porin metal so hot it went the culler of the sun and ran like springe worter down a gill and drippin so much sweat we was there was allus a cue at the piggin to drink the water and cool your head And the steem – and the steem an the soot – so black yed be trippin over your own feet in the dork and the noise The noise of clangin an hissin and bashin and screechin
See when I struck out my brothers were but pups Issaik being seven years yunger than I and our Willyam a full nine year yunger and therefore both still hairless of the chin and not yet hardened to the world like I already was at sicksteen year or more Aye long dark thymes Davide Hartlee did spend down there Years I spent there Yers I werked all to one day become kynge of my own kyngdum And so it was And so it was And hear I yam.
And the base coin. The base coin is what else was made down in that place set close up the edges of Burningham I herd tell of it over tyme becors the secrets of the coinin is not sumthin a man tells a another man just willy nilly even when he’s in the drinke or cort at it No the clipper denighs every thin at orl thymes Its the code is that You dunt speek abart it to anywan but your own tried and trusstid Yor own blud if you can help it.
That’s a lessing Kinge David has learnt is that Hear me tell it now so that hisstory lerns from its misstaykes My misstaykes The lessuns of King David king of the Coiners no mattur what happerns And so I will tell it And so I will tell it true as is.
Like crows to the first pickings of carrion after the snow melt, from the four corners they walked.
Up they came and over they came and through they came. Many men.
Isaac Dewhurst and Absolom Butts.
Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Abraham Lumb and Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Joseph Gelder and Jonathan Bolton.
John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood.
Fathers and brothers and sons and uncles. Up they came. And others too.
From across the moors; from all horizons.
They walked through bogs dried and cracked; they came through whin and gorse and lakes of wild sedge hung heavy with gobs of cuckoo spittle. Through the rutted trenches of dried-out streams they drove. Through ghylls that ran so shallow some had become nothing but a series of still, stagnant pools.
Up they came and over they came and through they came. Men. Tough men.
Working men.
Poor men, proud men. Desperate souls of the valley.
They bore nicknames such as Young Frosty and Mad Blood and Foxface. Tom O’ Freckles and John Coughing. Foul Peter. Double Stumps.
Men of stone and soil.
Benjamin Sutcliffe came from over Halifax. Still pimple-faced at sixty and an old brown wig upon his head.
Pox-pitted Nathan Horsfall from up Warley arrived with weaver William Clayton from Sowerby, the latter broad-set and flaxen-haired and wearing an auburn shag waistcoat.
Thin-faced Thomas Clayton brought his bones along from Turvin.
Isaac Dewhurst kissed his blind wife and left their dark house by the shallow stream in Luddenden Dean, his black hair uncovered and cheeks and jaw dusted black with stubble too.
Cherry-cheeked and handsome, John Tatham downed tools and let his long strong legs lead him down the Wadsworth slopes. Crowther O’Badger came rasping from Sweet Oak.
Up through Bell Hole they strode, the woodland canopy covering them and disguising their intentions. Up through the steepest grass slopes of Bell Hole they came, climbing them hand over foot as if it were a ladder to the expansive sky.
John Wilcox took the short walk from his home at Keelham Farm just over the brow.
John Parker and James Green came up whistling together.
Jonas Eastwood from along the Erringden Moor.
Joseph Gelder was another from over Fax in a fair-coloured Drab coat and waistcoat to match.
Red-haired Matthew Hepworth had set off early and walked all the way from Ovenden.
Others too.
James Crabtree and William Harpur and Joseph Hanson in a brown bob wig worn askance to obscure his hairless curd-white pate.
Past the mere-stones that marked their turf they strode, with grass stems between their teeth and dandelion seed heads in their hair, and barbed burrs clinging to shirts that stuck to their backs in circular patches of sweat salt.
The breeze blessed their hot brows and their matted hair and the copper-bottomed stream waters ran clear, for it was an unusually dry spring day and Yorkshire was unfolding around them. The winter had been mild and the tight cloughs through which they ambled were in bloom, the first snowdrops having already been and gone, nodding as if in reverence for this clandestine gathering. It had not rained for days and as the saying went the dale without rain was as rare as the lamb that doesn’t like to leap. Soon it would come, of course. The rain. It always did.
But for now the valley was bursting in a violent flowering of flora and leaves unfurling and branches stretching and ragwort reaching and nettles – especially nettles – vying for the sky. Great dense patches of them grew, four and five and six feet deep, impenetrable swathes of dark green bracts that advertised their danger. Elsewhere lower meadows were flowing thick with the first buttercups, the fine white fuzz of drifting dandelion seeds and the silken slung threads of settled kiting spiders.
Clouds hung in billows like blankets of wool drying after the dye vat and there were new scents on the breeze: mint and thyme and woodsmoke, and the released perfume that swirls around boscage and thicket as it is trampled underfoot.
The smell of spread pig scat hung over the top fields too, fresh and strong and sweet and astringent. It was the busy spell after the first birthings, a time for growth and feeding. The season for nest-lining and house-building. A time of plenty for the insects and the lambs and rabbits, and the deer too, as they tentatively wandered down from the woodlands where they wintered, their nostrils decoding the messages in the ether.
And still they came, the men. Up and over and through. Some in pairs and some alone. They arrived an hour either side of the sun rising highest in the sky.
Jonathan Bolton.
Thommo Sunderland.
Others still. From the dells and dales and dingles. The four-house hamlets. From lone homesteads in the spinney and the dank smallholdings built where the waters ran by. From the windowless back rooms and cramped upstairs quarters of the beer inns. From the forges and farm and looms. From deep in the trees whose dark forming corridors they rarely left.
William Hailey and Peter Barker, better known as Foul Peter. His hair tied tight and hanging down his neck like a mole strung from a fence.
Jonas Tilotson, who rode a skittish horse in from Mixenden.
Israel Wilde arrived last, his ankle swollen and already berry-blue after cockling at the top of Hatherself Scout.
Up through Bell Hole they walked, stepping over moss-clogged runnels and fallen limbs half-submerged in the woodland soil. Bell Hole was the moor’s footnote, its overflow and midden pit. Its ugly sibling. Its shadow clough.
Crispin Crowther.
Brian Dempsey.
Eli Hoyle and Eli Hill.
Ely Crossley.
Their soundtrack was birdsong: dozens of contrasting avian calls that resounded through the church-like stillness of the place. Some wove into harmonious patterns before disentangling. Others still – the crows were loudest – sang with the waggish volume of vagabonds stumbling out from an ale house.
John Pickles
James Stansfield
Paul Taylor.
Slipping and sliding. Gasping and striding. Men whose family names were as much a part of the terrain as the boundary marker stones that mapped the moors and fractioned their tight territories from the days of the old wapentake. These were family handles deep rooted and double-tied to time and place, just as was the Hartleys’, for that name was as much a part of the valley’s foundation as the gritstone bed from which Bell House was gouged and sculpted.
Here on the moor edge the earth smelled like a basket of broken goose eggs, and patterns swirled on the surface of puddles that were fed only by droplets falling from the moss that tasselled the moor edge, millions of beaded specks like tiny interconnected green stars as if a manikin galaxy had sprung from the soil. Even during a drought time such as this the moor was rarely dry, a wet rag never fully wrung.
It took the stubborn scavengers and the stealthy to live up here. The cunning and the vicious. The solitary and the half-mad.
The buzzard and the raven. The polecat and the pine marten.
The hare, the fox and the adder.
Here lived those wild and red in pointed tooth and curled claw, and alongside them were those that walked on two legs and lived in houses but still emulated many of the upland creatures’ feral ways. Quarrymen and poachers. Tinkers and trappers and hermits. Men that did not want to be found. Men who made myths of their own mad delusions.
Here they gathered.
With them the men brought provisions, token offerings to their recently-found figurehead. Gifts for a king who had assumed sovereignty over his own fiefdom.
Nathan Horsfall brought a flour sack of apples, each wrapped in rags since autumn past.
On unsteady legs Matthew Hepworth carried a jug that had nothing in it but the scent of ale drunk.
Joseph Gelder had a piece of salt pork scored and saved for King David Hartley himself.
John Tatham had a loaf. John Wilcox brought berries.
Foul Peter Barker carried a pheasant he had thrown his full weight on and idly plucked on the way, the light down feathers accidentally decorating his sleeveless waistcoat. William Hailey offered a tea cake. Abraham Lumb treacle.
They brought blades and shears and hammers. Stamps and dyes and tongs. Moulds and spelters.
And some – not many, a few – brought coins.
These they had taken from their hiding places in the woods and crags, from deep in the twisted roots and bouldered cracks to stow about their bodies, wrapped in rags and held under arms or lagged to bandy legs. Tucked into waistbands, slotted into false hems.
Then out from Bell House stepped Isaac Hartley and behind him his younger brother, William Hartley II. They walked among the men nodding and exchanging words and greetings. The Duke Of York they called Isaac Hartley, and his was the familiar face to most. His hair was a heap of waxy curls and his mouth held gat-teeth between which he – but only he – joked you could pass a bootlace.
The Duke of Edinburgh was the name given to his younger brother, though that had yet to properly take because William Hartley was quieter than Isaac Hartley and time had not let his recently acquired moniker settle. He had come up younger than many of them. But they did know that he was as handy with his fists, for even as a young man of perhaps only fourteen years they had seen him on the cobbles on more than one occasion. Once he had slipped and broken a leg while fighting two packhorse lime-trail navvies single-handedly – witnesses had sworn to hearing the bone snap like stiff treacle tablet – but had fought on regardless, and still licked the pair of them, though one of his eyes had looked in on his nose for weeks afterwards.
William Hartley was red of hair and quiet of temperament, and known to speak only when necessary. The men knew that the big loud boys were rarely the ones you had to watch.
Isaac Hartley stood on the big stone that jutted from the ground like a bone and whose surface was worn smooth from years of sitting, and he said: Now listen lads there’s a fresh ferment done and there’s more than enough to go round until your head’s turned backways. Grace’s special mash, it is. There’s toasted oats and a pot of honey that goes into it.
A murmur of approval ran through the men.
Ale fit for a king is that, added his brother Isaac Hartley, the middle of the three siblings. I’ve tried it myself. Three stiff jars and you’ll think you’ve met with God.
There were smiles.
You can taste the moors on it, added William Hartley, more for effect rather than because he felt he had a particular opinion to share on the matter, but his words came out quiet so he cleared his throat and spoke more clearly: it’s the bees you see, he said. They make the best of these moors just like we intend to.
As if it had been orchestrated, at that moment Grace Hartley came out from the house carrying a jug and a fistful of pots. She passed them round and poured the ale as eyes followed her. Sitting at the back, where the cropped and cultivated patch of grass turned wild as the moors ran off to greet the sky, James Broadbent grunted and whispered to Joe Gelder.
How it would please me to get my hands on that throddy birthing body, he said.
Joseph Gelder leaned towards him.
It’s as good a way to lose your hands as any, my friend.
How’s that? said James Broadbent. I fear no man.
Well you should fear this man.
What man?
You know which man.
Joseph Gelder discreetly gestured to the figure who was standing on the protruding stone in such a way it was as if he had been raised up on it from the underworld.
This man. Hartley. This man that’s welcomed you to his house. He’d have them off with a scythe as soon as wipe his arse with docks.
Well, said James Broadbent. He’d have to catch me with that piece of his first.
And there’s plenty of men here who’d be happy to swear witness, said Joseph Gelder. And not just his brothers. Trust me. This valley’s full of sneaksbys and blabbers. Besides, you’ve got neither the stiff stem or stones to please that woman. You can tell by looking at her. And looking at you too, you daft big link of dung.
Broadbent sniffed.
If I can get it up some bracket-faced sow down at Old Rose’s nugging house I’d be as hard as a happy horse with that one, don’t you worry about that. Oh, but to spend an hour in her hot notch.
James Broadbent whistled through pursed lips as Joseph Gelder laughed.
An hour? Who goes at it for an hour?
I do on the second or third time round, said James Broadbent. I’m known for it.
Are you now.
That I am. They call me the stone hammer. Just fill me with a jug of fresh-brewed stingo and watch me go. In hay-rick and hooer room, I’ve had them all. There’s a lass at Mixenden who walks with a limp and thanks me for it. Ask around.
I think I won’t.
James Broadbent leered as Grace Hartley poured the ale.
He nodded.
Yes. She’d get it good and long and hard.
Why don’t you say it a bit louder so’s the Duke Of York can hear you, you shithouse? He’s looking this way.
Isaac Hartley was indeed watching the two men as he helped Grace with the ale. Most knew him to be the more approachable of the brothers and it was regarded that Isaac Hartley always stood a drink and suffered no fools, but he had a dash of humour with it too.
Any one Hartley brother was formidable but together the threesome were feared. Their name alone could cause children to scatter.
Everyone knew of old man Hartley too, as it was their father William Sr. who had rented Bell House up on the moor in the first place, back before his eldest had wrapped up his hammer and tongs and sent himself south to the Black Country down in the middle lands to become a man and learn a trade and much more besides in the forges there.
What the world had taught David Hartley was that life beyond the valley was a lot like life in the valley, and though they had laughed at his way of speaking down there with that fat flat tongue that rolled words around like river stones in the cheeks of the thirsty, he had thrived in the west of Birmingham.
From there David Hartley had brought back to the valley what he had learned some seasons back. Two cold winters had passed now since his return to the Upper Calder Valley and the house there, with a younger wife in tow, and fear in her eyes and a bairn in her belly and one on her back, and a third yet to be conceived, and this plan of his that had taken seed in the arid bed of necessity and desperation and wanting.
Here his enterprise had begun in earnest, and now the men had been summoned and the men sat and the men rested and the men drank. The men exchanged greetings.
William Hailey and Jonas Tilotson and Israel Wilde and Joseph Gelder.
Aloysius Smith and Nathan Horsfall and Matthew Hepworth and Abraham Lumb.
John Tatham and Jonathan Bolton and Peter Barker and William Folds and Isaac Dewhurst.
William Harpur and John Wilcox and Jonas Eastwood and Absolom Butts.
James Crabtree and Joseph Hanson and Thomas Clayton and Benjamin Sutcliffe.
Others. All men. Valley born. Valley bred.
Those they called The Coiners.
Returning to the land that birthed me the land that sporned me the land that mayde me Orl I reely wanted to do was wark the hills unherd and breeth gods own good cuntree ayre But one day wandrain this man stopps us and says no No he says No youcannut Dayvid whoah there.
This man sed this is companny land now and I sed this land this land here this land belongs to no men an all men This land belongs to the stag of the stubble an the growse and the fox an the rayvun an the rayn and the hale my frend But this man was no frend becors still the man says thats as maybe but it belongs to the companny now I have it down in riting its legully bindin is that and thurs no cort in the landull judje otherways And I don’t like his demeaner.
So I says stuff yor riting and stuff your legully bindin stuff it rite up your tyte scullery and any ways wots so spaeshel about this land that you reccons is yours and what are your intenshuns with it and whos this companny An he sniffs an he seys its none of your bissness And I says it is my bluddy bissness you bluddy doylem and he seys hows that and I seys because ahm King Daevid of Cragg Vale and if youv not herd of me ask around becors its me and myne that run these hills an they leeve us too it An he seys not for long you dunt And I says how do you reccon that How do you reccon that like.
An he says the companny the companny is running things now and I says what fucken companny you fucken doss cunt.
An he says cotton man cotton And I says what about the fucken cotton and he seys merkingeyesayshun and I says eh what you on about now cumpunny cunt An he says mills and mill wheels an waterways and industry and great bildins like cathydrals bildins like yor tiny hill dwellin sheep fucken mynd cannot imagun So keep your eyes on the horeysunn sunshyne.
And I says are you getting cheeky wirrus now and he goes no King Dayvid of Cragg Vale orl I’m saying is a change is comin and cotton is its making And I says dunt tell me about cotton me and myne have got callerses on ower hands from jennerayshuns of workin the loom you lippy licker of dog dick and he seys the loom is dead And I seys dead An he seys the day of the hand loom is over mass produckshun is cumin wether you lyke it or not aye mass produckshun and organysed laber is what I’m talkin abowt and if youv got any sens about yer yerll embrayce the new ways.
And I says fuck the new ways and fuck the companny and fuck your fucken scut with a rusted nyfe if yor still thinken on telling King David of Cragg Vale wer it is he can or cannit wander you soppybolickt daft doylem fiddler of beests And that was that for a while at leest.
Name your Gods gentlemen.
Out from the back door of Bell House stepped David Hartley.
He brought with him a jar in one hand and an empty wooden ale crate in the other. As he threw the wooden crate down and sat on it the men hushed. A flicker of something crossed his eyes like dark clouds over a full moon. He spoke.
Name your Gods gentlemen, for they are all around you.
His voice was clear. Each word was thickened in his throat and then held in his mouth and sculpted on the way out. Each word was weighted. Valley formed.
Sycamore and silver birch he said. Beech and goat willow. Oak and ash. And before them pine and hazel, aspen and sallow. Alder. Because this is our kingdom of Jórvíkshire and time was the whole island was like this once. It was coast to coast with trees, all the way up to these higher lands of ours. The wildwood they called it. We lived as clans then. Under the trees when the trees were worshipped as Gods. Under the great rustling canopy. Tribal, like. Maybe a few of us still do. It was the way of the land then. You protected you and yours. You still do.
He looked at the men and nodded. He let the words sink in.
Protection was our purpose. Protection from any incomers. That and the providing of food and fire, and seeding your women. You banded together close then and you hunted and you defended and you fought for your corner of England under the great green canopy. You lived proud and you celebrated your fathers that spawned you and honoured your mothers that birthed you; you kept their name alive whatever way you could. You passed it down in the hope that your name would one day be passed down also, so that you too would live on beyond death. Defeating death and cheating death. Life was short and life was hard in the endless woodlands of England.
Like in that song about Robyn of the Hode said one of the men, Jonas Tilotson. Or like yon Yorkshire lad Dicky Turpin.
Isaac Hartley flashed him a look and said: all Dicky Turpin got himself was a broke neck and he was no Yorkshire boy, but David Hartley ignored them both.
And Mother Nature got a look in too, he continued. Never forget her. Because it was Mother Nature that created the Gods we call alder and oak and birch and poplar – and it was she who made the rabbits that sit on your turning spit and the hogs whose backs you’d strip and the cacklers that lay the cackling farts that sizzle in your skillet beside it. It was she who made the moors wild so that men like us could walk across them and pitch up homes and live in silence.
David Hartley paused and let the words hang.
So name your old Gods, lads. Honour them. Live amongst them. And always remember your place. Because England is changing. The wheels of industry turn ever onwards and the trees are falling still. Last week I did chance to meet a man right down there in Cragg Vale who told me that soon this valley is to be invaded. He spoke of chimneys and buildings and waterways and told of work for those that wanted it, but work that pays a pittance and keeps you enslaved to those that make the money. This man – he told me this land around us was soon no longer to be our land but that of those who want to reap and rape and bind those of us whose blood is in the sod. They’re pulling it out from beneath our feet like a widow shaking out her clippy mat. He said he had it in writing. Said it was legally binding.
Mumbles ran amongst the men.
That’s right, said David Hartley. You’d be minded to care because they’re taking this patch that barely feeds us at it is; the land on which they’ll not let us settle – land that will never be ours so long as there’s boundary markers and excisemen and peppercorn rents. The bastards are coming for us but rest assured that even if they chop down the last tree and pull its stump up blackened and burnt from the soil, and set up new walls to keep us out, one name will live on round these parts. And – yes Jonas Tilotson – like the heroes of your childish ballads, generations will speak the name yet. The name of the man who stood against all that. The man who brought an army. Three words – that’s all. You tell them our Isaac.
King fucking David, he said. David fucking Hartley.
His brother nodded.
David Hartley watched the men for a moment. He noticed that some eyes were on his young wife and then he said: drink well, drink long and deep and any eyes that linger on our lass any longer I’ll scoop out with my thumb and put in the pickling jar with last season’s onions.
At this Joseph Gelder nudged James Broadbent and smirked but James Broadbent ignored him and watched as Grace Hartley passed him a jar and he took it readily for he was thirsty, and even though he had only walked up the Bell Hole woods from Mytholmroyd where others had walked half the length of Calderdale, he welcomed any ale that he hadn’t had to give coins for. Then when she turned and walked away he took a pull and said out of the side of his mouth yes – good and long and hard.
Hartley continued.
Too long now we have been scraping by clipping a coin here and there. Milling the edges and melting them down to make what? An extra coin per thirty? All that work and all that risk for what? One more coin. A coin that’ll get you hung by rope until your neck snaps and your body jerks and don’t they say you soil yourself when you’re dangling from that gallows pole? Your good wives left at home with nothing but the memory of a man who gave his life for a coin with which to buy a loaf an a jar and scratch-all else.
Some of the men made vocal their agreement.
Treason, continued David Hartley. That’s what they call this enterprise. The yellow trade. And that’s why I’ve called you here – to speak of this thing we’ve made our own. This treasonous offence that they say is an affront to the very crown that rules this kingdom. And do you know what I say to that? Fuck the king because you can be sure the king is already fucking you.
There’s only one king, said Isaac Hartley. And it’s this man standing right here.
Another mumble of approval ran through the men. Some nodded and muttered, and scratched their heads and beards. Another yawned.
Organisation. Organisation is what we need. Organisation against the man that wants to bend you over the barrel and pull your breeches down. You think I joke Nathan Horsfall?
No, King David. I was just smirking at the image.
Pity the poor rabbit whose tail is targeted white, said David Hartley. It thinks it goes unnoticed but it sits in the fox’s sight. Do you understand me?
I’m not sure I do, said Nathan Horsfall.
Well take out the spuds you’re growing in your ears and listen to what I’m saying, said David Hartley. If we carry on the way we have – a bit of clipping here and bit of grinding there – we’ll get caught, and if we get caught we’re for the gibbet and the chains. Our flesh will reek the wind. Because up until now we’ve been the rabbits that think they can’t be seen. But we can do better than that. We can be the fox. No – we can be the man that hunts the fox that kills the rabbit. We can rise to glory.
Listen to this man said Isaac Hartley. Listen to your king.
I’m saying it’s time to split the coins proper and make the money that’s ours. It’s time to clip a coin and fuck the crown. It’s time to let the bastards know that the only law is our law. That him that crosses a Coiner digs his plot. That him what crosses the clipper loses his tongue. That valley men fight and valley men sing and valley men bow to none but their king.
At this the men smiled and nodded and drank and toasted, and drank so much that in time the sun itself disappeared in fearful retreat.
Now lissen now for I tell you sum thin importent sum thin secret now When a dug misbyhayves you ponk that dug on its neb and when it misby hayves again you rub its phyz in scat and if still that dug misbyhayves a third tyme then you are doon sum thin rong so then you beet it until sum thin goes in its ays like the last ember of a dyin fyre and the spirit of that creechure will be yors and then yool have no trubble from that dug and that dug will give his lyf for you for now it nose its playce that yule have mayde for it And it will feer you an love you an protec you An that is how you run a ragged crew of desprit men That is how you run a gang that sum corl the Turvin Clippers and that uthers corl the Cragg Vayle Coiners.
The rain fell like the filings of a milled guinea bit onto a folded page of paper. It smattered and sat there in small puddles. The small puddles reached out to one another and bridged the gaps until they decreased in number but grew in size. They filled pot-holes and blocked back tracks and pathways. They turned the sod of the woods to sponge, and down at the valley’s flat base the river rose, its mood darkening.
The three brothers took to the upper fields where there was little shelter but where dug ditches drained away the water to keep the pastures clear for the few who kept cattle.
They had been waiting and watching the warren for half an hour or more when there was finally a muffled cough of excitement and the rabbit came out in an explosion of panic from one of the holes in the nettle patch that they knew had bred generations of rabbits before it.
Coney, said Isaac Hartley.
At another hole the terrier pulled itself out backwards and stood blinking for a moment, wide-eyed and red dusted. Dirt-rimmed. Confused. It was the young dog that had belonged to the Bentley boy; David Hartley had named it Moidore after the Portugese coin that brought good return when clipped anew. The cloying clay coated its maul and clogged its fell-leathered paws. Dirt-red barbs of fur crested its spine and its tail pointed straight up towards to the day-time moon. It was beginning to learn the ways of the hunt.
Isaac Hartley said geeit and William Hartley unhooked the rope looped around the neck of the straining lurcher by his side and David Hartley said nothing.
The lurcher bolted.
Seeing the soft white scut of the rabbit bob across the sloping field the terrier darted after its quarry, but with one stride to the terrier’s three the lurcher had already overtaken it, lean and true like an arrow fired from a newly-strung bow of birch curved by time and river water. Its taut shoulder muscles rippled and a string of gluey phlegm swung from its mouth before sticking to its cheek as it leaned tight into the hill-side and cut off the rabbit as it bounced full tilt to a hole dug in above the worn groove of a holloway that they called Slack’s Lane, a little used run at the back of the sun above the sheer black rocks of Hathershelf Scout.
We’ll have to watch that lot, said William Hartley. Them men’s not to be trusted.
There’s good men amongst them, said Isaac Hartley. Honest men.
Honest men would not be doing what it is that we are doing said William Hartley.
He’s right said David Hartley. Honesty isn’t worth a tinker’s cuss so long as them knows to keep their traps snapped. And fear is the only thing that’ll work on them. Fear and a few good tannings.
They fear you.
William Hartley said this.
Across the field the rabbit had gone to ground but the disturbance of the chase had put two more basking rabbits up and the lurcher quickly shortened the length between itself and the smaller of the pair. The young rabbit found itself caught out in the open. Exposed to predators from ground and sky alike, it was too far from any earthen sanctuary.
It’s us three that makes this what it is, said David Hartley.
And our Father, said Isaac Hartley.
Our Father is a tiring man. He doesn’t need to shoulder thirty or forty of the most desperate sods of the north. He’s already burdened.
Burdened with what? said Isaac Hartley.
Burdened with the three most desperate, cut-throat, skulldugging, scallywag barbarian bastard sons of all of them.
At this the younger two brothers laughed.
Turning, the rabbit faltered then flipped and rolled and the lurcher was upon it, then seconds behind it the terrier too, a streamlined blur of flexing young muscle. It clamped its jaw around its neck. The rabbit was much the same size and weight as the terrier but it locked on and lifted it, then shook it furiously. Whipped it until something gave. Across the field the brothers heard the flap and crack of breaking bones and the rabbit give a final desperate squeak before its head hung loose and its gaze froze forever in the aspect of smoke.
At this the dogs changed. Their stances relaxed and the terrier dropped the rabbit before gently nuzzling and licking its fur. It nibbled at it. The lurcher padded off with its tongue lolling in the direction of the other rabbit that it had seen.
William Hartley called it back with a shrill whistle.
Run things right and we’ll be as rich as the fattest lord that bathes himself in goose fat, said Isaac Hartley. What will you spend all your coin on, our David?
Never mind all that, said his brother. Time is plenty for spending. Coin is coin – it keeps a while. Firstly we need to name our best men and keep them close; the rest can know only what it is they need to know and thems the ones we’ll hang on the line if the storm clouds close in. And we need muscle and knuckle to persuade them that might think differently to us. There’s a few folk in this valley – the churchly ones and them that bow to the crown or who think starvation is a virtue – who don’t like it that we’re showing a bit of enterprise. They’d rather see us shackled to the loom or picking pebbles from the coulter’s path than have coin in our pocket and meat in our cold stores.
Those that speak against the Cragg Vale Coiners will be lambs to the abattoir cleaver, said Isaac Hartley.
Aye, said David Hartley. It’ll be their fresh necks that will feel the rope-burn or nick of the blade if the lawman comes knocking up at Bell House. Not mine.
Secrets, said William Hartley. We need to know those that can keep them, and those whose tongues turn loose as soon as they’re slaked with the ale.
There’ll be no more fire-side sweating for us three, said David Hartley.
No?
No. I have a man in mind for the clipping of coins. And when this man is striking, these boys of ours can’t be spending. No. This valley is too narrow for these things to go unnoticed but we’ll be on our way to glory so long we work it all rightly.
There are a few we can trust, said William Hartley. For years you were away, our David, but Isaac and me know the way things lie.
On your heads be it then.
Tom Spencer is one of them, said Isaac Hartley.
Yes. Thomas Spencer is one of us, agreed William Hartley. His blood runs close and he is good with the numbers also. Learned. His memory it has no holes. We can use a good man like him.
He paused to whistle and shout geeit again, and the terrier picked up the rabbit and trotted back between the tufts of whin and furze that dotted the field. It dropped it at their feet. Isaac Hartley picked the creature up by its hind legs and checked its eyes and teeth.
A good coney is that, he said. Good health.
John Wilcox too, said William Hartley. John Wilcox has always done us well. He speaks ill of no man – and that is a good sign. Already he has earned more coin than the others. James Jagger too we have known since birth.
Not I, said David Hartley.
James Jagger is true valley though, agreed Isaac Hartley. No two tracks about that. I agree with our William. He would kill a man that whispered a cross word about you. Loyal blood, is Jim Jagger.
Good then, said David Hartley. Thomas Clayton we know will do what is asked of him also. David Greenwood has shown himself to be a man with nutmegs of stone.
Nathan Horsfall is a worker.
William Hartley said this.
His face I do not like, said David Hartley.
His heart is good though.
And his face you do not have to see, said Isaac Hartley.
Fine.
Jonas Eastwood has brought us his share of bits and florins said the youngest brother, his red hair slick against his faintly freckle-flecked brow. He has good connections over in Fax. His father-in-law is sympathetic. He asks for nothing but our protection.
Protection from who? said David Hartley.
From them that bother him.
Then they’ll bother him no more. Who else can we trust?
Jonas Eastwood I trust also, said Isaac Hartley. And his brother too. Wiley like foxes are the Eastwoods.
I heard tell that Ben Sutcliffe has laid with all the bints from Field to Fax, said David Hartley.
What of it?
Does he not have a family to feed?
A wife and four sprats. One of them is tapped.
Well then, said David Hartley. The man that presses coins to the palms of fustilugged whores when his children are wearing rags cannot be a man of honour, no matter which side of the law he cares to step.
He’s a worker, is Ben.
Then set him working. But he will never know the true nature of this business and he will never dine at my table. Never again will he be invited.
Now, said David Hartley. About this new clipping man I have in mind.
The wherefores and the howabouts of the serky stansums of how this magikal man of metal did fynd his way to us is a story unto itself Jaykob Tillysun it was who first raised his name to I after he did see this man from Bradford make a dog fly Yes yes I know wor yor thinkin Kinge Dayvid has been at the barrel of jaylers stingo or his mind has gone kittle after too menny days sat starrin at the worls of a sell so cold that the ice wetness does seep throo them and form ice shoggles on his cruckedd neb But no what I tell you Jaycub Tillysun did see with his owern peepers and Jaycub Tillison is one of the Kinges most trussed men One of the few left hoos werd is his bond and can still be taykin so And so when Jaycub Tilltson tells you that this alkemiss did rayse a sleepin dug three foot off the grownd weethowt wires or ropes or mirras or smoke then you be knowing that this be a man of speyshul magical powers A good fellow to hayve on your side because there’s only the few who can muster majick.
At a harvest drinke up it was in the thwayte of Tryangul not but five myles from Bell Hole as the rayven goes when sum fellows Jaykob Tillyon inclooted did calle upon this majikal man to do wor it was he was allreddy nown for And so after some purswayshin and the promis of a haff duzzeen nyps of the finest harves fyment this alkemyist who only ever appeered when the werk it was dun and ther was nothink left to do but for the drinken and the eaten and the fucken of the valleys frootful vynes did corl up on the boys to put down their fidduls and tayke thur teeth out thur lassys titts for a moment and he did pray syluns and nod to the mangy dog – Boggit was its name – that was coiled up asleep in a skep that one of the wiffees yoosed for the sorting and carrying of her yarn borls And then he did mutta some werds the lykes of wich Jaykup Tillisen or no man there to bare witnes to had herd befor And with his eyes clowsed and fingers spread he did summin that wicker skep and the sleepin dug to ryse up like a dorn mussrom Up it cayme off the growd Both baskit and dug And up it cept cumin And that shut off any laffta or the slocken slurps of the greedee baylers and reepers who were neck deep in ale already for it had been a long season I tell yoo Becors to see a floatin sleepin dug is to see the work of god or the divil or hoo nose what And any man like that I can use Any man like that must be a wizzid or an alchemisst or just sumone youd sooner have on your side as not.
And thats how we cayme a cross the man wort tuck us from too bit clippers to werld infoamy.
The Alchemist wore a hood and carried with him a blanket roll strapped across his back.
David Hartley watched him as he moved across the moor at a steady pace, a dark triangle like an unlit beacon awaiting the touch of a taper’s flame. From this distance he appeared more of a man of the cloisters than the dark arts.
As he approached, he saw that the hooded figure wore a thin beard on his cheeks and chin.
They nodded in greeting and then David Hartley led him to an out building. In it there was a fire burning and he said wait here. A moment later he returned with Isaac Hartley and William Hartley and their father William Hartley the elder.
This here is the man they say is the best at the melting, he said. He’ll be doing our share now. No more burned fingers for us boys – what do you say to that, father?
William Hartley nodded and then spoke.
There’s been bits of me dropping off and drying up for years my lad, and I’ll surely be glad to keep my fingers for a little longer yet.
His sons smiled at this.
They call this man The Alchemist, said David Hartley.
And how are we to trust him, our David? asked Isaac Hartley.
Because this man knows that we’ll put him neck-deep in the moor alive and then after that we’ll take his wife and his children and his children’s children and all the children that will ever bear his family name if he so much as squeaks in the wrong direction. He comes from Bradford but if he proves himself you’ll be seeing more of him. Much more.
The Alchemist looked from one man to the other and then unhitched his heavy parcel and squatted down to roll it out on the floor before them.
The blanket held a set of clipping scissors and files. There were bellows and two small three-cornered smelting pots. Crucibles. There were rags and rubbing oil too. There was a knife and a cosh. Tongs and shears.
That’s a better kit than ours, said William Hartley.
And he’s going to show us how he uses it, said David Hartley.
The Alchemist squatted and began to assemble his effects.
Across two inverted V frames he placed a blackened metal cross piece that hung above the dying flames and then he raked the heap of burning logs and tapped at them until they flaked into fragments. He broke the fire down into a neat flat bed of silent heat and then raked it once more.
You’ll need fresh logs, said William Hartley. I’ll fetch em.
Without taking his eyes from the fire The Alchemist raised a hand to halt the youngest brother. In the dark room the glow from the shards and cinders cast his skin in a sallow hue; he was a thin man. Taciturn, and with few teeth set in his mealy gums, his cheeks appeared to have sunken pathetically inwards in sympathy. That and the wispy beard made his age indeterminate. A decade either side of forty would still not necessarily be an accurate reading. He remained hooded.
The three-cornered crucible he hung low from the crossbow and then he re-shaped the bed of burning ash once again. He squared it off at the sides. Shortened it. Intensified its hazed glare in the direction of the pot.
The Alchemist took the bellows and cleared his throat and then he pumped them. Twice. Two short bursts. The stiff gusts of stale air brought the bed of fire alive. It pulsed with a new flameless intensity and his boots scraped across the dirt floor as he shifted around the fire pit, working the bellows again so that the briquettes of burning wood chocks raged.
The three-cornered pot appeared to tighten and groan. Inscribed in its side was a sigil, a crude rendering of what looked like a lightening fork. David Hartley noticed it.
What’s that? he said.
The Alchemist followed his eyes.
That?
Yes. That. On the pot. What’s it meant to be?
That, said The Alchemist. That represents the bladed branches of the stag.
His voice was dry in his mouth. His voice was fire-cracked and heat-worn.
Why, said David Hartley. Why?
Because the stag is the life force of the moors just as fire is the life of forging. I thought you’d know that.
I do know that, said David Hartley. I do know that.
Only then did The Alchemist look at the brothers and their father, and the glances that passed between them. In the latter he saw an aged man who had lived for six long decades of turf-digging and loom-mending, of flint-slitting and rock-breaking and pond-dredging and rabbit-trapping and slate-fixing, all with nothing to show for it but twisted fingers and a locked left knee, a squint and a crooked spine. He saw that the old man’s dark eyes seemed to hold the seeds of fire too, and that his chin was pointed and one temple scarred with a white mess of flesh healed into a tight pattern like the fossilised form of flowering lichen across a wet valley rock. The mashed markings of a true coin smelter.
The Alchemist extended an arm. He held out a palm, requested alms.
David Hartley produced a pouch and poured half of it into the hand of The Alchemist who took the shears and clipped each coin in turn until he had a small pile of slivers.
With neat movements he circled the fire and roddled the coals and pumped the bellows.
The remaining coins he deftly stacked in a tower on the floor.
With his poker he tapped the pot and the four men leaned in to see that the guinea shards were changing shape. Softening and collapsing. They were gaining a liquid sheen.
The Alchemist signalled for the men to step back as he unwrapped another cloth and set down beside him a selection of moulds and dies of different sizes. He carefully arranged them. He touched them once. He touched them twice, then with tongs he lifted the pot from the fire and poured its contents into four of the moulds. The pot he set aside.
Still squatting and stock still, The Alchemist muttered words to himself. The Hartleys could not determine what he was saying. His whispered words ran into one another. Strange incantations. He uttered a song without a melody. An inaudible spell for the casting of the metal. A twisting of the tongue.
Then in a sudden burst of movement The Alchemist snatched up a spelter stamp in one hand and hammer in the other. The stamp he pressed down onto the first mould and he twirled the hammer once and then twice over the back of his hand in a conjurer’s display of showmanship before swinging it and bringing it down hard on the head of the stamp. He struck again and again, the shrill judder of metal on metal reverberating.
The stamp he cast aside before seizing the next one – this slightly larger – and swinging and striking in quick succession. Four times he did this, one after another; the stone space echoing with the hammer’s call.
Then he laid his tools aside. There were beads of sweat on his brow now. They looked black. As black as the dew that settles on the coomb of a coalman’s shovelled remnants.
The Alchemist turned the moulds upside down and tapped the bottom of each so that their contents fell into a bowl of water that steamed with each newly-forged coin. Then he spoke. He said: the white hot hiss is a vicious liquid kiss from the lady of the fire who is softer than silver and swifter than light.
What’s that? said Isaac Hartley. What’s he saying?
The mottled dirty water he threw onto the hot coals and these too hissed and steamed and spat tiny gobbets of dead and dying embers in a cloud of smothering muffled smoke that had all the men but The Alchemist, who seemed impervious to it, hacking and rubbing at their eyes.
He rattled the bowl and swirled its contents then flicked the newly-forged and stamped coins into his hand. From a pocket he produced a rag and a small snuff box of dark daubing into which he dipped a blackened digit and dabbed some of its contents onto each coin. With an economical flourish he buffed each disc.
He slowly stood and handed a coin in turn to young William Hartley and Isaac Hartley and the old man William Hartley the elder. At David Hartley he paused and held the coin aloft between thumb and forefinger and in the half-light it seemed to turn and spin of its own accord and he said come, come press a coin into my palm and I’ll return you two like a curse reversed on a gypsy’s tongue.
David Hartley took the coin.
He touched it. He studied it. It still held within it the warmth of the fire. He examined it further.
He said: this work is good.
The Alchemist said nothing.
Here, he’s milled the rim, said William Hartley, and David Hartley studied the tiny writing that ran around the side of the coin.
Do you know what these words say? asked The Alchemist.
No, I do not said, David Hartley. They are not in any language that any right-minded man round these parts would know even if they were book learners.
That’s because these words is Latin, said The Alchemist. Decus Et Tutamen. They say: An Ornament and a Safeguard. A hundred years or more this coin has carried these words and I’d wager it’ll carry them for a hundred more.
What’s all this Latin for?
Latin is the language that the crown favours, said William Hartley Sr. It’s what they speak across foreign waters and it makes the king think he’s better than common folk.
I’m not no fucking common folk, said David Hartley. I’m a king too; a king that’s more respected amongst his own folk than these betterny-bodies who think their shit smells as sweet as pollen. And I’m a king that doesn’t need no fucking foreign tongue from across no foreign waters to make him feel big about himself, nor a crown upon his napper. All I wear is the sky above me, and the only throne this man needs is that which sits above the shitting pit.
The detail is good, brother, said William Hartley. See the laurel upon my guinea. See the drapery on the neck. See the lions. This work is beyond even the best Coiner’s capabilities.
This work is nothing, said The Alchemist. This I can do a thousand-fold.
Then a fold it is I have for you.
A fold?
Aye. Sheep fold. Away from here. Over the top dip. You’ll use it.
The Alchemist looked at David Hartley blankly as the eldest brother spoke.
Once a week or two weeks or whenever it is that the valley has given up enough grubby coins to make it worth your while you will come and you will go to that fold where there is a roof and a pit and you will clip and smelt until the pile is doubled.
Still The Alchemist said nothing.
You will be watched and you will be protected, continued David Hartley. Looked after. There will be lads as lookouts checking the moor for nosey blow-ins and any man that wants to bring us down.
They will watch you too said Isaac Hartley.
Why? said The Alchemist.
Isaac Hartley smirked.
Because the man who trusts others is the first to fall. We trust no fuckers, magic man or otherways.
Isaac Hartley cast aside his coin and said: good work counts for nothing if you cannot be trusted.
Can you be trusted? said David Hartley.
I ask myself the same question of you, said The Alchemist.
At this William Hartley snorted.
Shall I knock this man sparko, our David?
Let him speak.
Can I trust you to give this man – meaning me – his share and to keep him from Jack Ketch’s rope? said the Alchemist.
You’ll get your share, said David Hartley. Don’t you worry about that. You’ll get your share and more if you do right by us. But who is Jack Ketch?
Jack Ketch is the name of the hangman, said The Alchemist. Jack Ketch is the name of all men who do all the hanging. One name to fit all; just like his noose.
Your neck’s protection I cannot guarantee any more than mine own, said David Hartley. But your name and whereabouts will go no further than these stone walls and no stranger will molest you to or from the moor. Do you trust me? Do you trust the Hartleys?
The Alchemist hesitated.
They say I should fear the Hartleys, he said.
Oh, you should. You should fear the Hartleys like you fear the reaper’s scythe. Your tongue I’ll take between these tongs and twist until your spells can be spoken no more if you durst betray a Hartley. I’ll ask you once more: do you trust me?
No, said The Alchemist.
Good, said David Hartley. Many do, but more fool them. This then makes you of a stronger mind than most men. You are more like us than you realise. The only thing you should put your trust in is that fire will burn and metal will melt and the stag will always be a-rutting on these moor tops.
Men mite laff and men mite mock behind mine back but I seen what I seen an I recorl it now so many very yers later as cleer as if it were yestadaye.
Yes it was a dark nite with the wind raised up and whisslin round the chimernee stack and arattlin the tyles it was and the moore was darke darke darke an I was but a mite of a boy A meer pup of a thynge still hairless an not yet put owt to werk An it was becors of this wind and the arattlin of the tyles and the winders that I was wide awayke and trubbled Yes my sleep it was diysturbed by the sound of the moore tryin to get into my room an the sound of the moore tryin to get into my bed and the moore tryin to get into my mind becors it can do that can the moore and no man can sleep in that state no Not unless thur in a coffing.
So I was layin there starin out into the prickly blooness of it all when the room doore did open of its own accord I herd the latch lift and the hinges creak and I spoke then I said Farther I cannot sleepe but no voice came in reply so I said Mothere what gives but all I sor for a moment was darkness No thinge but the still blue darkness of the eternel Yokshyre nite But then.
But then there was movement Yes there was bodees entring the room an I could only just mayke out the forms of them the shapes of them for ther was severul of them I durst call them men and you shall see why in a moment becors then they stept out into the frayme of moon lite that did cut throe the nite and fell throo the winder an onto the flore A patch of it layde their on the florbords there was An what did I see but men Men yes But with the heads of grayte stags Yes stags With antlas and nostrils flared and steem risin from ther pelts and the black black eyes of the deere that do rome the moores and the wuds and the glaydes and the vally edges But down below they were as I say men with mens bodees and the clothes of men and the boots an the legs and the hands of men and ther was menny of them mebbe four or fyve or six of them I recorl not.
And it was then that they did start up a dance inna circul around my roome four or fyve or sixe of them ther was These great stag men of the moors And they did dance and move so sylentlee as if there was no wayt to them at all as if they were flotin like clowds Silempt but for the sound of there breathing like the anymuls that they was Anymils as I say for no man Ive ever known has a pelt and a snouwt and antlers and does a midnite dance in the bedrooms of boys what live in the shadder of the darke dark moor.
And I did wach as they dipped and swerled an I durst not move nor speek nor breath nor nothen And the moon lite cort them in her gays and the stagmen of the moors did dance in ther circle An I watched on from beeneeth my blankyts full of fear and wunder not daring to move nor breeth nor nothing an that nite I did not sleepe a wink Instead I just sat there full of that fear not moving an hardlee brethin until the men had left so silentlee still and morning came At last my old freind morning And the moore did leeve my room did leeve my bed then it did leeve me alone and I finally found the curridge to run downstairs to my Faether and my Mothere now dead may her sowel rest in peece and I says.
I says I seenum I seenum the stagmen of the moors And they says what is it yor blethring abowt now eh And I says the grate stag men of the moores I seen them dance in a circle in the patch of moonlyt An they did laff and say what rot you gab yung Daevid Hartley what rot you tork and what dreams you have and what an imaginayshun And I says no no but I seenum and then my Mothere did say to my Farther its that cheese whats been givin him the fritely nitemares is what it is and they went about ther bisniss of cleenin the grate and yoking the ox and fetchin the eggs and porin the ale as if it were a normal daye.
But it was not a normal daye it was the day that changed me The day wot gave me fresh eyes and new beelefs and a sens of wonder and fear of what it is that this lande of mine can do and what it is that maykes these moores a place of magick and feer and what it is that goes on that we cannot understand up here and what it is that make rite minded folk stop away and keep these moors emptee and what is that maykes man and animal move as wan up heer where the land meets the sky and creechurs do dance and its all beyond boeth reesum and ecksplaynen.
Roots and radicles.
Cavities and corners. Caves and cromlechs.
Nooks and niches.
Stream heads and stream beds and rotting stumps.
Clefts and crannies. Cracks in the old cold wet rock.
Fissures and quarries. Gatepost holes. Dung traps.
Gravestone vases.
Old wasp’s nests even – tucked away into perfectly papered lanterns submerged in the crusted soil.
The coins began to appear from the pockets of men who had garnered them, some with promises and others by threat, all to be hidden away. The soil accepted them. The walls and the trees and the woodlands accepted them. The hovels and the hay-ricks too. Soon new coins and old coins were stowed there. Coins worn away on their journey through the hands of the poor and the very poor. The ill and the injured. Dirty discs. Golden guineas. Shilling pieces and florins, and silver bits scuffed black through transactions. Coins won and coins lost on dog fights and cock fights. Coins earned and spent in cups and jugs. Coins tossed. Coins lost. Coins for clipping, coins for breeding and buying and multiplying.
It was boom time.
All found their way from butcher’s aprons and baker’s flour boxes and publican’s pinafores; from draymen’s pockets and hostler’s handkerchiefs and hawker’s hats and cobbler’s waistcoats. From brogger’s wallets and colporteur’s coffers, into the hardened hands of the hardened hill men who had persuaded the traders of the valley to give up their gains for this great fraudulent venture, in exchange for a nice return and protection and discretion guaranteed.
Drawn like metal bits to a magnet, coins came in from foreign climes too. Lima shillings forged from Peruvian metal and Spanish pistoles and the Portugese moidores that had long circulated as legal tender in England, such was the imbalance of trade weighted in the English favour. Money was money. Metal metal. Coin coin. And soon the valley was flooding with the rattling rush of new money.
Into the hands of Eli Hoyle and William Hailey and Jonathan Bolton it went. Into the hands of John Pickles and Jonas Eastwood and Thomas Clayton. Into the hands of William Harpur and Joseph Hanson. John Tatham and William Folds.
Coins collected and collated and buffed and burnished, these ill-gotten gains were stashed in pouches and secreted at night – always at night, for the moon was in on the coining too – in places pre-arranged. The valley’s bank they called it. The bank of hill-tops and hidden ravines; of forest and field, of coins stashed beneath boulders and cow troughs. By rat’s nests under coops, shit-dripped and bird-pecked. In the seed of the pheasant feeder left by a gamekeeper in on another game. Squeezed flat beneath the chocks and hearting and copes of a dry-stone wall made drier still by another unexpected week of drought. In sike bottoms and clough clearings too.
Most in the valley gave up their coin readily, for the promise of getting half the value back again on top for their troubles was too good to refuse. There were those whose resistance was expected – the doctor and the book learner; the man of the cloth and the old maid who stumbled stooping to the same pew each day and twice on Sundays to hear his re-heated sermons. Those who refused to be part of the game. These received first a word of stern warning and then another visit from not one but two or three or more of David Hartley’s men. The same men each time. Those with the fullest shadows and the fewest teeth. Those with the ebonised eyes and little to lose. Knuckle men. Muscle men. Not numbers men or head men. Not Hartleys but hired hands.
Keen men. Cruel men. Chief amongst them Absolom Butts and James Broadbent.
Brian Dempsey and Paul Taylor.
Young, mad, blood-drunk Aloysius Smith.
At night they always came when the candles were snuffed and the dogs made soft and slow by the glow of the moaning logs in the grate.
The gentle rap of a cudgel on a door frame or a pebble lobbed to a lonely unlit window or the mere sight of the huddle by the log-store on a moonless night was often enough to turn uncertain minds towards the coining cause.
But still a handful resisted, citing justice, God and morality as their reasons. Honour to the king and crown.
For these men there came back-ginnel beatings and stamped ankles. Daubings on their doors, their fattened family pigs slit and left bleeding in black pools, their store-rooms burnt. There were further nocturnal visitations too, their wives or daughters dragged and shoved and groped and poked and gang-fucked down darkened lanes by Coiners with corn sacks about their heads, their rancid breath reeking of beer and bacco and beef collop.
And soon, in time, these resisting men of principle and God and righteousness gave up their coins to the cause of a new king too. Through hands and from holes and hiding places their currency reached Isaac Hartley and William Hartley, because by now David Hartley barely saw nor touched this brilliant stream of cold metal that like a miracle from the big book itself flowed uphill all the way to the crest of this new kingdom he had constructed over just two summers or so.
The back end of the cart was piled high with flour sacks and in each there was a loaf and some cured meat, some tallow fat candles and vegetables freshly-pulled from the Upper Calder Valley soil: parsnips and russet potatoes, carrots and leeks and mangelwurzels for those who kept livestock on their smallholdings. There was a plug of tobacco and some fat rascal cakes and wedged blocks of cheese and shives of pig fat and pickles and chutneys too. Beside the sack there were three barrels of ale, a jug and a bag of coins. Balls of butter bobbed in a bucket of cold milk.
The cart moved slowly crossways along Heights track from the tiny township of Midgely, the whole valley splayed out below. To the east, Sowerby Bridge and beyond it, hidden by hills, the town of Halifax. Then to the west Hebden Bridge and Heptonstall perched perilously above it on a spur of land between two densely wooded gorges on either side and the moor pressing up against its rear, its houses turned inwards like nested fledglings sheltering from a storm.
Below, the river moved like molten lead through Mytholmroyd and beyond it, where the houses ended and the hills became blurred through the wavering haze of the afternoon light, a narrowing streak of tapered woodlands darkened upwards to a tiny dot in the distance where the moors began, only visible to those who sought to see it: Bell House.
Other things sat behind the man that steered the cart and his companion who stepped down with a sack of gifted goods for every friend of the Coiners along the route: blankets and eyeglasses for the elderly, pairs of clogs old and new in different sizes, passed-down clothes cleaned and darned for a second wearing. Breeches and shirts and stockings. There were wigs. Clay pipes. Children’s toys.
The front end of the cart was stacked with split logs, seasoned and ready for burning. It was the best wood that there was – a choice pick of ash and beech, hawthorn and horse chestnut.
A lone house loomed along the Heights track, that of half-blind Robert Howland who slept before a fire with a half dozen dogs around him.
The cart pulled up and the men climbed down. The first carried with him one of the sacks weighted with produce while the second began to roll logs down into the crook of his arms.
They knocked on the door and shouted Coiners coming Robert Howland, Coiners coming, and then they waited for the old man to answer.
Screens of shimmering smoke shot through with shades of umber and sepia rose in the far distance like the ragged backdrop of a tired troupe of travelling players unveiling the day’s performance.
It was the turning time. It was the burning of the heather time.
These nebulous rectangles hung on the horizon like the flags of an unseen returning army, held in the haze a fata morgana, before dissipating into stray wisps and twists that were taken by a breeze. The scorched smoke of burned peat and the bone-dry pungent heather gave the breeze a shape and a purpose; draped in smoke it was made physical.
The best of the heather had already been clipped and picked for the making of besoms. The longest branches and thickest clusters had been cut to size and bundled around a stout pole – always willow – by those solitary bodgers and gamekeepers’ wives who had gained the landowner’s permission to do so, and who sang the same song as they worked at home with blade and cord, always to a melody that followed a descending glissando of notes:
Buy broom buzzems,
Buy them when they’re new,
Fine heather bred uns,
Better never grew.
The heather’s flowers too had been taken and set to boil in pots or hung to dry in clusters from mullions and over inglenooks, their mauve colourings turning darker with the darkening of shortened days bookended by nights that birthed new mythologies from old fears.
The remaining heather of the valley was burned at the behest of the few. Men unseen. Landowners who rarely walked the land they owned, let alone lived on. These were men from the cities, who spent their days away paving turnpikes and building mills. Sinking canals and striking deals. Buying and selling. Traders. Sons of the empire, the aristocratic architects of England’s new future. Men for whom too much was never enough.
Their estate work was done by land managers and it was these who took the heather plant and used it in brewing the ale that filled their master’s bow-roofed cellars, while others used the cleared barren moorland spaces for housing hives for their honey-making. Sheep and deer grazed up there and grouse nested in it too, but mainly the heather was used for the dyeing of the wools, its branches for besom brooms.
The slow smoke drifted down now to settle on the houses of those weavers and land workers who lived in the hamlets and farmsteads that sat below the moor line. The scent of it was the latest subtle signal to mark autumn’s tightening grip on the land.
The incoming season meant death and soon the trees were to become bone-like, and their leaves would gather in drifts down in the lanes, and the animals were already gorging themselves before the cold time announced itself in a famine of nothing but frost and fire and flickering candles.
Come April the pitch-coloured rectangles of burnt heather shadows would be dotted with the white fingers of new shoots peeping through, though as this summer past withered and died, slowly curling in on itself into crisp husks and falling tiny skeletons, the very thought of next spring’s re-birth seemed beyond realisation for most in the valley, an impossibility, a wild, fanciful vision of the deluded.
Across the moor and through the drapes of smoke he came.
His red waistcoat marked him out; he knew as much.
Indeed he wanted the eyes of the hills to be on him, to note him. To be made aware of his presence.
He carried with him a bag and in the bag was fruit and bread and meat packed for him by his wife, and a pipe that he had recently taken to smoking, though his children disliked the smell of it on his breath when he kissed them goodnight. He also had with him a crudely-drawn map with the named hamlets and farmsteads marked upon it, and beside each a list of known families and members. Against those he suspected of partaking in the yellow trade he had marked a red X. He had other items with him too: matches and a candle. A mirror. A knife.
A fine rain was coming in. William Deighton watched it comb the valley in waves.
He walked with the purpose of a man who considered the moors as much his as anyone’s. This was his belief and these hills he felt were familiar to those of a childhood spent amongst moorlands and secret darkened tributary valleys so similar.
Things had been different then. He told his wife this often.
Five decades earlier the hills and moors and woods of youth had been William Deighton’s playgrounds. Each holme and royd was there to be explored. Each thwaite and clough.
An inquisitive boy with strong lungs, he could walk for eighty furlongs through the landscape and learn much about life then. He remembered seeing secret gin stills and stone skep niches for the keeping of bees. He had crossed streams by slippery staup hoyles – the old name for the stepping rocks slick with spray and worn smooth by centuries of feet. He found hidden ponds rippling thick with pike so big they had been known to pull cats and dogs under, and in winter he saw waterfalls that had frozen solid into great glass shapes resembling strange creatures from tales of times now gone.
He witnessed strange things in quarries too. Oddness. He heard noises up top. Stalked deer. Watched foxes and brocks – and felt himself being watched too. He walked always with a sense of there being witnesses close by. Hidden but watching; and he heard further tales too of strange moortop doings.
But he had always been left alone, free to walk the valley unhindered, returning to town at night, stiff and spent and happy.
And now the valley was controlled by this insidious breed whose influence was killing the trade of the town, the Cragg Vale Coiners, whose reputation had already spread to the Palace of Westminster.
It did not look good for him, William Deighton, sole representative of the crown, tax collector for Halifax and its surrounds, excise-man and upholder of the law in an increasingly lawless land. He had been warned: the authoritarian grip was weakening and this way outright anarchy beckoned. The responsibility to restore order fell upon his shoulders alone.
So he wanted to be watched. Wanted to be seen and marked and noted by these men they called the Cragg Vale Coiners because they needed to know that their trade could not go on unnoticed. Would not go on unpunished. He had sworn to the King and the King he would serve.
He turned his collar to the drizzle and walked towards the moors on which he knew these man-animals lived.
David Hartley called his brother Isaac Hartley in and when he came to the house he was wet with a fine rain that sat about his hair and shoulders, and swept across the moors behind him like a curtain being drawn across the memory of a summer whose harvest had been bountiful.
David Hartley passed his brother Isaac Hartley a rag with which to dry himself and then they sat before the fire, even though the fire was not lit and instead the hearth held nothing but grey spent ash in the shape of logs from yesterday’s burn-up.
You look troubled, said Isaac Hartley.
Trouble is something that may be coming to our door, he replied.
Trouble brother?
Yip.
I have seen about the place a man, said David Hartley. Twice I seen him across the moor. Once rising up through Bell Hole and another coming up over the back way through the bog patch as if Erringden Moor was his and his alone.
What use is having young lads with slingshots as lookouts if a man can get through those woods? replied Isaac Hartley. Those woods is our woods and no man gets through.
This one did. But we’ll deal with that in time. For now this man gives me grief. I can feel it coming.
You always have had a way for feeling these things. Why is it you feel the grief this time?
Because he walks with purpose and his eyes take everything in, said David Hartley. You and I know that people do not come up here without reason. They do not enter the kingdom of King David unless it is to see King David but yet this man sets only a short while, watching from a distance, and then he walks on. He doesn’t hunt or eat or roll with a girl or sleep a while in the grasses or any of the other reasons that a man might make the journey up from the valley floor to the moor top. It seems our reputation is not enough to prevent the visitations of this one.
The men paused for a moment and then David Hartley continued.
Yes, there can only be one purpose. This man is on law business. I’d wager all the coins stowed in every crevice and twisted root between here and Todmorden that his is excise duty. He’s out to get us, Isaac. He’s out for Coiners’ scalps – I know it.
The younger brother nodded.
I think that I too have seen that man, brother, said Isaac Hartley. I have seen him over on the old horse track beyond Hathershelf. I too have watched him from a distance. You are right. This man is here for our coins – and our souls.
Yet you thought not to mention it?
I‘m mentioning it now.
How do you know this is the same exciseman?
Because he is not one of us, brother, said Isaac Hartley.
In what way?
He does not look like a valley man. He does neither dress like us nor carry himself like us. His is an unfamiliar face.
How does he dress then?
The man I saw wears a wig, said Isaac Hartley. I have seen the breeze lift it. I have seen it snag on a bramble.
You have seen this?
With my own eyes.
The wig I did not notice as this man kept himself at a long distance from the house, said David Hartley. And did he see you?
He did not. I was out to take some pheasants and became concerned in my head that he might be the gamekeeper the way he skulked so I did give him a wide berth. Twice this has happened. The second time I nearly took that kindling hatchet to his head-top but then I did realise he might be a man doing crown’s business and what trouble that would bring to us all.
Skulked? said David Hartley.
Yes. Like a prig-napper that’s out to rustle a still-wet foal. Like Reynard sniffing the chicken coop on the breeze.
This is the one and same man then. What else did you watch?
I watched him wear a long brown coat down to here with britches of cord beneath, and a waistcoat made from the finest wool. He dresses like a man that’s had first choice on the shalloon. Made of the best dye, it is. Red, it is. As red as oxen blood. Blood red, like. That’s how I knew he wasn’t one of us: no Cragg man could afford such a cut, nor would he flaunt his colours across this moorland of ours like that. It’s that waistcoat that gave him away because in all other manners he moves like a moor man. On his head he wore a shovel hat.
David Hartley nodded and then spoke.
Was he mounted?
Once he was mounted but the second time he was on foot. That was why I was unsure as to whether he was gamekeeper or poacher or Coiner or what the devil may know.
I too saw him on foot, said David Hartley. They say that Deighton is this bastard lickspittle’s name.
Deighton? I do not know the name, brother.
Well now you do, said David Hartley. And you’d be wise to remember it because this Deighton is the man who wants to end our enterprise. His first name I was not told but his last name is enough to know. He has the nose of a mole and the way of a weasel.
A pest then.
Worse than a pest, said David Hartley. He is poisonous. He is a predator. One word from him could bring down fifty men. Fifty men and their families. Our families.
Dangerous then.
A threat – yes. Surely. Undoubtedly.
So, said Isaac Hartley.
So, said David Hartley. So we do what any right man does to the fox that has his chickens or the mole that digs up his turf or the weasel that has his morning eggs.
Yes, brother.
We trap him or snare him or smoke him or burn him. We do whatever it is that needs to be done to remove him.
Yes, brother. This I understand.
We can’t let one man of the crown rule over fifty poor men of the soil.
No we cannot.
It’s just not right, said David Hartley. How could we sleep at night with this shadow cast over us? Too long in the past we have strived to make a living from the farming and weaving and look where it got us – nowhere but indebted to inferior men who now want to turn the soil for their own gain. They’ll have us living with the hogs if we let them.
I can make this man disappear like the owl at daybreak, our David. You leave it be and think of other things. The next time he comes up through Bell Hole is the last time he’ll come up through Bell Hole. You can trust me.
That I do, but for now we do nothing but put the hawk eyes of the valley upon him, said David Hartley. He is not yet worth risking our necks for. Our strength is in our numbers and we can make sure the hunter becomes the hunted. Not a single step he will take towards Cragg Vale without it being noted. Your job is to alert the men and make sure he gets nowhere near us. A man like this Deighton – he is out for glory. But the wrong kind of glory. He would rather persecute the poor and the needy to win favour with those that rule the land than leave them be in peace. I tell you this much: his loyalty and ambition will be his undoing. He’ll rue the day he put his beady eye on a Hartley, will this cunt Deighton.
Amen brother. A cunt indeed.