We watched the gloaming spread its shade until the sky was dark and sparkling. We left the Gallows and headed out of town towards the north-east. It was a clear evening and the sky was the colour of spilt ink. Emily led the way along a packhorse trail.
‘That’s the North Star, right?’ she said, pointing to the heavens.
I nodded.
We were carrying the blankets and a bag. I followed in Emily’s footsteps, still taking it all in. I pictured my mother. Alone. Confused. Desperate. Not speaking the language of her persecutors. Being passed from one man to the next. Starving herself to death. I wondered how Hardwar had been sure that I was the seed of Mr Earnshaw, when my mother must have been meat for so many. Perhaps Jonas Bold would know. I was barely aware of our surroundings as we traipsed across meadow, mire and moor.
‘We need to get far enough away,’ Emily said, ‘so that they won’t find us when they come looking. And they will come, you can be sure of that.’
I thought about the trail of people that were after us: Hardwar’s associates, the man we tricked in the graveyard, Dick and his companion. We were building up an army against us.
‘We need to be ready for them. Word will get out soon enough. They’ve probably already started the search.’
We climbed up and into a dense forest. We clambered in the mirk, with just a sliver of moon and a few silver stars to guide us over bracken and bramble. We stumbled at various points, but the earth was soft and we came to no harm. Eventually we arrived at a clearing that was deep enough into the forest to offer us sufficient protection. We lay down where the ground was yielding and Emily wrapped the blankets about us.
‘This will do for tonight,’ she said. ‘In the morning we’ll scout round for somewhere better.’
Emily wanted me to tell her the details of what I’d heard. I told her the gist of it but skipped over the rest. I felt nothing. My violent frenzy had left me hollow.
‘I saw my dad kill this bloke once. He kept killing him but he wouldn’t die. My dad had his hands round the man’s throat, and he was squeezing the life out of him. The man had a neck like a tree trunk. No matter how hard my dad tried he couldn’t squeeze the life out. My dad was so close to the man. They were staring into each other’s eyes. It was intense.’
Had my mother tried to keep me with her? Had she protected me? Hidden me away? Had the men wrenched me from her arms? Did she plead for mercy? Had she cried herself to sleep? I closed my eyes and tried to picture her. Alone. Confused. Desperate. I kept going over it in my mind. She would have fought the men. She would have fought with all her strength. They would have beaten her. Kicked her, whipped her. Tortured her. Used her. Then I tried to rid my mind of the images that came rushing in.
In the morning we searched the forest. We found a clearing deep in the trees and set about making a shelter. I found a fairly straight, young tree and chopped off the branches. Then I used the axe and hacked away at the base of the trunk until I was able to snap it. I found two trees that were close together with branches at a similar height and suspended the felled trunk horizontally across the trees so that the branches cradled it. While I was doing this Emily went off to collect firewood.
Then I cut down lots of leafy branches and draped them over the felled trunk on both sides until there was an A-framed shelter big enough for the two of us to sleep side by side. I collected some more lengths, which I wove in horizontally so that there was a strong cover on both sides. It took several hours and by the time I’d finished Emily had collected a big pile of firewood. The weather was still clement, but all the same, it was good to have a roof over our heads and a means to stay warm.
‘We’ve got nothing to make snares out of,’ Emily said. ‘We could dig a hole along a rabbit track and cover it with bracken. If it’s deep enough the rabbit won’t be able to get out. There’s only really two ways into the clearing. The bushes are too thick roundabouts. Why don’t we block one of the entrances off, then dig a pit along the path of the other entrance and conceal it? A giant rabbit trap, only for people, so that if someone does sneak up on us, they’ll fall into it. We’ve no spade, but we can use our hands and your axe. It’s better than nothing. William, are you listening? I know what you’re thinking about, you know. But it won’t do any good. Do you think your mother would want you to go to pieces? No, that way they win. You owe it to your mum to see this through, so come on, snap out of it. We’ll need to eat something first. And I don’t much fancy munching on bracken. Let’s have a look around.’
Emily had lied to me. But I wasn’t angry with her. She’d lied to save her own skin. As anyone would do in her situation. Besides, she’d been right about one thing – my mother was dead and there was nothing I could do to bring her back. The only thing was to get the man responsible. I’d dispatched Mr Hardwar. Now I had to dispatch Mr Bold.
We spent the morning getting to know the lay of the land. The forest was dense, dark and impenetrable in places. Further on there was a steep clough, with a beck at its base. A felled birch made a bridge over the wider part. We found sorrel and berries. We dug a rabbit trap and a bigger pit for anyone trying to sneak up on us. We blocked the way of the other entrance with layers of thorny branches. We built a fire and found a piece of flint. I used the knife to spark it off. It wouldn’t light at first and I had to peel the bark off the silver birch trees for tinder. Eventually a spark took. We sat around the flames and ate the small amount of foraged food.
‘This Jonas Bold, preaches in Kirby?’
‘That’s what Hardwar said.’
‘Well, let’s take him at his word. He’s hardly likely to lie with a knife under his balls. So this Jonas is a religious man. We can use that. And elderly, I’d imagine,’ Emily said.
‘He set up a hospital to help the poor.’
‘Good, that’s another weakness. I reckon what we do is wait until Sunday. Go to the chapel there and watch him at work. We need to get as much on him as we can. I’m sorry about what happened, William. I really am. This is the only way we can make it good.’
Part of me wanted to just find him and kill him. But I knew that Emily was right. We had to take our time. We had to do this properly. I needed to be sure Mr Earnshaw was my father and Bold was probably the only man on earth who could confirm this.
We dug some more rabbit traps and drank water from the beck. We played cards by the fire. Later we checked on the traps but they were empty. We searched some more and found a warren.
‘We could dig them out,’ Emily said.
‘They’ll just run off.’
‘Well, let’s dig some more traps, closer to the warren.’
The earth was soft near the warren holes and came away in damp clumps in our hands. We dug three more traps and covered them with bracken. We went back to the fire and the cards. We added wood so that the fire stayed at a constant size. Some of the wood was rotten and burned through quickly. Some of it was damp and hissed and whistled as it heated up. Other timbers made a cracking sound as the flames ripped them apart. We checked on the traps every few hours. Nothing. That night we went to bed hungry.
The next day we had no better luck. One of the traps had been disturbed but the hole mustn’t have been deep enough because there was no rabbit inside and claw marks where it had climbed out.
‘We need to dig them deeper,’ Emily said.
We modified three or four of the best-placed traps and waited. But when we checked there was still nothing. We saw two roe deer: a doe and a buck. But we didn’t have a hope in hell of catching them. They were too quick. They flashed their white rumps as they leapt into the dark. We collected more leaves and berries. But we went to bed hungry again that night. In the morning we checked the traps once more.
‘This is ridiculous,’ Emily said. ‘We can’t live like this.’
We were half-starved by now. Crippled with hunger pangs.
‘I’ll go back,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘To Liverpool. I’ll get us some food. I’ll go at night so I won’t be seen.’
‘I don’t like the sound of that,’ Emily said.
‘It’ll be all right.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said.
‘No. No way. That’s asking for trouble. Look, we can’t go on like this. We’ll be dead by the end of the week.’
Reluctantly Emily agreed. So that was the plan. I would go back to Liverpool town in the dead of night. I built the fire up and made sure there was plenty of good dry wood. I left Emily guarding it with instructions to keep it going for when I got back. I walked through the dense forest, over moor and meadow, back into the town carrying the bag. I proceeded very cautiously, making sure to stick close to the edges, ensuring no one could see me. Not that there was anyone around at first. My dark skin was, for once, an advantage. I came across a tavern on the north side of town. The dimpled windows were steamed up and the orange glow of candles flickered along the glass. I went around the back and peered into the kitchen window. The cook was clearing up for the night and putting away some utensils. I watched her cleaning plates and cutlery, washing them, then drying them before putting the plates away in a cupboard and the cutlery in a drawer. She wiped the damp from her hands on the sides of her apron.
When she had finished, she blew out the tallow candles and extinguished the lanterns and then left the room. I waited for a minute or so, then tried the back door. It was open. I sneaked in and crept across the room. It was hard to see what I was doing, with just a little moonlight to guide me, but eventually I fumbled over some matches and a striker and lit a lantern. I had my bag with me. I found a bottle of brandy, some bread, some cheese and some cuts of meat. I found some apples and some tea. I also found a pan. I put all these things into my bag, along with some knives, spoons and forks, two bowls, two plates and two earthenware tankards. I found a reel of brass wire and a pat of butter. My bag was full. I blew out the lantern and took that as well. Finally, I pocketed the matches and the striker, and then sneaked back out again.
I wandered back along a different street. As I came to the end and was about to turn up the lane, my eye was caught by a notice nailed to a fence. I stopped to examine it. Along the top of the notice it said: ‘WANTED’. Underneath there were two drawings. One of a dark-skinned man and the other of a pale-skinned girl. Beneath this it read: ‘Hath robbed and murdered. 50 GUINEAS REWARD. Come forward with any information leading to arrest.’
I felt an ice chill travel up my spine.
Several hours later I returned to our camp. It was raining now and I expected to find Emily lying down in the shelter fast asleep, but she was huddled by the fire in the mouth of the shelter, prodding it with a stick.
‘You were ages,’ she said. ‘How did you get on?’
I emptied the bag and shared out our rations across the two plates, then poured a measure of brandy into each of the earthen tankards. Emily devoured first the meat, then the cheese, then the apple slices and finally the bread and butter. She slurped down the brandy in two or three gulps.
‘You did well, William Lee,’ she said, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You did really well. And you’re sure no one spotted you?’
‘There was a notice nailed to a fence,’ I said.
‘What sort of notice?’
I told her about what I had discovered.
‘That didn’t take them long.’
We sat and watched the flames die down to glowing embers. After a while, Emily said, ‘So what do we do?’
‘I’ve been thinking,’ I said. ‘The best thing is to hide out here for a few days. No more night raids. It’s a risk we don’t need to take.’
Emily nodded. ‘We’ve got a pan now and some wire to make snares. There’s plenty for us to eat round here. The snares will make it easier to catch a rabbit.’
‘There’s bear leek, dandelion and sorrel leaves, berries, seeds, nuts, plenty of good mushroom picking. This wood is a larder. And we’ve got it to ourselves.’
‘Have you ever skinned a rabbit?’ she said. ‘It was something my dad enjoyed doing, so I never got a chance.’
‘It’s not difficult,’ I said. ‘I’ll teach you.’
The next day we went back to the warren and placed some snares in strategic places, using sharpened sticks to stake them around the holes. We collected mushrooms and bear leek. I showed Emily which mushrooms were edible and which were poisonous. After a few hours we had a pan full of penny buns, blue-gilled blewits, horse mushrooms, blushers, yellow caps and Jew’s ears.
‘Why are they called Jew’s ears?’ Emily said.
‘It’s short for Judas’s ear. After he betrayed Jesus he hanged himself from an elder tree. They cut his ears off and stuck them to the tree as a warning to other traitors.’
‘You know your scripture, don’t you?’
‘So would you if you were brought up in the same house as Joseph.’
We filled the pan with a sufficient amount of water from the beck. We went back to where we’d placed the snares. We checked them one after the other, but no luck.
‘We’ve just got to be patient,’ I said.
‘Yeah, that or starve,’ Emily said.
We went to all of the traps throughout the day at regular intervals until at last we struck lucky. A rabbit was caught by its back leg and it was jerking and kicking. I took hold of it and wrung its neck.
‘Watch how I do it,’ I said.
I started at the back end, pushing the bone of one of its back legs through the fur. I did the same with the other back leg and pulled the fur free of the bones. I yanked the fur coat entirely free of the body, cutting the last of it off with my knife. Then I held the rabbit by the back legs and sliced down from nave to chop. I pulled out its guts and slopped them onto the floor. I thought about Hardwar’s guts. I thought about Hardwar’s blood. I thought about Hardwar’s one eye staring at me. Still I felt nothing. We took the dead flesh back to camp.
We cut the meat into chunks and chucked them in the pot with the mushrooms and bear leek. I placed the pan in the middle of the fire and we watched as the water came to the boil. Emily added a splash of brandy to the pot. She sat over it, using one of the spoons to stir as the mixture thickened. When the stew was ready, I added a bit of salt and poured it into two bowls. It was actually rather good. The meat was succulent.
‘Do you think we can live like this?’ she said.
‘Well, for now. I don’t see why not.’
‘Let’s think about what we know about this Jonas,’ Emily said. ‘We know that he’s made a lot of money from slaves and probably from other investments. We know that he’s done a lot for the poor. We know that he’s found God. In other words, he’s a bit of a cunt.’
‘We don’t know anything about him really,’ I said.
‘So on Sunday we walk to Kirby. We find the chapel. We find Jonas Bold. What we do with him when we find him—’
‘If we find him.’
‘What we do is nothing. We bide our time. We don’t act in haste. I know your feelings are strong, William, but you’ve got to temper them.’
She looked to me for reassurance. I nodded.
‘Good,’ Emily said, shovelling in some more of the stew. ‘These are a bit weird,’ she said, picking out a Jew’s ear. ‘I keep thinking I’m eating human meat. My dad told me about a famine. Happened about two hundred years ago. He told me that’s why they brought the Poor Laws in. They used to hang you for begging in those days. The first time you got caught you got bored through the ear. But the second time was neck time. Anyway, during this famine, things got so desperate that they used to play a game of straws. You’d each pull a straw and if you pulled the shortest one you were that day’s dinner. They ate unwanted babies. So, you know, thinking about it, these are not so bad.’
She took the Jew’s ear between her teeth and bit it in two.
After she had emptied her bowl she scraped what was left from the pan, scoffing every last remnant. I poured us a nip of brandy each and handed her a tankard. I raised mine aloft and made a toast.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘here’s to whatever comes next.’
‘Here’s to that,’ she said. ‘As long as it doesn’t involve eating babies.’
I saw the naked flesh of an infant. And blood. I saw my mother clutching me to her chest. I was no bigger than a kittlin. The men were all around, trying to grab me from her arms. They say a mother will fight to the death to save her young. But they were stronger than her, and there was an army of them.