I woke twice in the night, the first time from a dream in which I was being chased by the villagers. The second time I was being flogged by Hindley. I felt the sting of the whip and turned to see his malignant glare. I was shivering. The wind had picked up and was blowing rain into the cave. I looked over to the girl but she was sleeping soundly. I wrapped the blanket tightly around me. The cloth was damp. I hugged the damp blanket but sleep would not come. Emily tossed and turned. She cried out, ‘No, no, fuck off.’ But she didn’t wake up. I must have drifted off because the next thing it was almost morning. It seems she woke first because when I opened my eyes she was standing over me. It gave me a shock. The sun was behind her, peeking over the horizon.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Wondering when you’d wake up,’ she said.
I stood up, stiff all over. It felt as if the rain had crept into my joints. I walked around in an effort to cast off the stiffness. Last night’s fire was a pile of ash. I heard a lark high above our heads. I looked up, but the sky was still dim and even with my head stretched fully back, it was too high in the heavens to observe. How easy it is for birds to escape. How effortlessly they find freedom. While we remain manacled to the earth.
‘We’d better make a move,’ I said. ‘Let me have a look at your wound first.’
‘It’s all right.’
‘Let me look.’
I pulled the shirt up so that I could examine the cut. It had healed some overnight and didn’t look as though it would need any further treatment. I’d seen Mr Earnshaw stitch up one of the hogs when it had cut itself on a jagged piece of metal, but I’d never done it myself, so I was glad it didn’t need stitches. I collected together my few possessions, but I left the bible where it was. I’d got what I wanted from it and was not interested in its moral lessons. I made sure I had the flask, the axe, the knife and the bag of coins. I rolled up the blankets and tied them separately with some string.
‘Come on. We need to get moving.’
‘I’m hungry,’ she said.
‘If you want to eat, you’ll have to wait till we get to the next town.’
‘How far is that?’
‘I don’t know. I know one thing: we can’t go back to the village. There will be a witch-hunt for you and when word gets round there will be a manhunt for me.’
‘Obviously.’ She looked at me with contempt.
‘Here, carry one of these,’ I said.
I handed her the smaller of the two blankets.
‘Let’s get moving.’
We headed west with the sun still a golden line behind us. As we walked it rose but was obscured by clouds. The ground was damp with dew and last night’s rain, and a lingering mist carpeted the moor. The view opened up to a green-and-grey patchwork quilt. Below us, field after field, fence after fence, wall after wall, hedge after hedge, land that was once open and free, according to Sticks. A few years ago this had been common land. Now it was all sectioned and marked like a slab of mutton ready to be butchered. Sticks had told me how it had been stolen from its people. How they’d been kicked off the land of their birth, evicted from their cottages, which were razed to the ground. The wind was strong and blowing against us, and the cold crept under our skin.
‘Walk quicker.’
We traipsed along rabbit paths and beside becks. Through fields of mud. The sky was clearing but there were still lots of grey dark clouds and the grass was sodden from the rain. But the wind was blowing eastwards and the clouds were moving away and things were brightening. The rooks and crows above us called out across the moor. In the distance, on a bare branch, a raven preened its glossy wings.
We trekked for some time, walking on paths made by farmers, labourers, dogs and cattle, all churned up by boot and hoof. Sometimes paths made by rabbit and hare. Sometimes no path at all. We did not choose the easy route; instead we walked as the crow flew, keeping to the tops so that we had a vantage point.
‘Can we stop now?’ Emily said, after a while.
‘No, we’ve only just got going.’
‘We’ve been walking for hours.’
In fact, I didn’t think it was more than an hour, but without a timepiece it was hard to say.
‘We’ll stop at the next town.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We should nick a couple of horses,’ she said.
‘One lot of trouble is enough.’
‘What difference does it make? Trouble is trouble. And the quicker we get away from it the better. That’s what I say. If my dad was here now, he would have found a stable, nicked a couple of decent nags and had them saddled. You wouldn’t see us for dust.’
‘He’s not here. And we’re doing things my way, not your dad’s.’
‘I’m just saying.’
‘Well, don’t.’
‘Smart fellow, my dad. Knew a thing or two. Not a bit like you.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m not saying anything.’
‘I know what you’re getting at, so button it.’
‘We rode from London to Leeds in three days one time. You need to keep your strength up when you’re on the run. No sense in wasting energy. My dad used to say that there are two ways of doing things: the easy way and the right way. No sense in doing it the right way when there’s the easy way.’
‘When we get to the next town we can stop for something to eat and drink. We can sit down and rest for an hour.’
In fact, my plan was to ditch her once we got there. I was responsible for me and no one else, and that was the way I wanted it. No hangers-on and no freeloaders. We dropped down off the moor and followed a stream until we approached a hamlet. We walked through a small graveyard. Even in a remote spot like this, the dead linger. It was good to see the rabbits making burrows beneath the graves. Flowers sprouted from between the stones. Harebells, lupins, foxtail and forget-me-nots. Daisies, milkweed and love-in-the-mist. A dog rose clung to the wings of an angel. The stones were marked as they always had been, but now I could read their inscriptions: ‘here lyeth a good Christian’, ‘sacred to the memory of’, ‘a good wife’, ‘a dear husband’, ‘a cherished son’. But I had no one. No one to love and no one to mourn me when I was gone. I was no one’s son or brother, and no one’s husband. And it suited me fine.
We passed the backs of people’s houses, washing pegged and drying on the line, heaps of sticks and wood ready for chopping. I thought maybe we could stop here, but aside from a few houses and outbuildings, there was nothing. Our path narrowed, the clouds thickened. I could hear the braying of cows in the distance. As we got closer I could see the farmer with a stick counting them in ready for milking. The lowing of cattle was soothing. Hooves, bracken, cow parsley, the verdant hawthorn, twisted and prickly. Thick peat smoke billowed from the chimney of a farmhouse. Tentacles of ivy grasped the trunk of a wych elm. A dead grouse in a draining ditch. And still the flaysome wind blew in our faces. I felt a wet drop on my cheek. I looked up at the clouds that were darkening again. Another wet drop on the back of my hand. On the nape of my neck. Then the rain poured down.
‘I’m getting wet,’ Emily said.
‘Keep walking. When the sun comes out you’ll dry soon enough.’
‘This farm stinks of shit,’ Emily said.
There were heaps of horse manure and swine ordure. The air was thick with the rich stench.
‘How do you think farmers go on all the time when it stinks of shit?’
‘You get used to it.’
‘I wouldn’t want to get used to it. Shit should stink of shit, it shouldn’t ever stop stinking of shit just ’cause you get used to it. It stinks of shit for a reason. You’re meant to stay away from it.’
‘Put a peg over your nose.’
‘I haven’t got a peg. Why would I have a peg? You don’t half talk bollocks sometimes.’
Fences, walls, hedges. We climbed over a stile and across another mud-clad field.
‘My knee’s giving me gyp,’ Emily said.
‘What do you mean, your knee’s giving you gyp? How old are you – ten, or ten and sixty?’
‘It keeps locking.’
‘It will be fine.’
‘Then why does it keep fucking clicking?’
I shrugged.
‘Why don’t we stick to the roads? It will be easier on our feet. This isn’t even a proper path. I don’t know what you’d call it, but not a path in any case.’
‘The roads aren’t safe. They’ll be on horseback. This is the only way we can be sure they won’t find us.’
‘Horses can travel across country, you know. We used to do it all the time, me and my dad.’
‘But not by choice,’ I said. ‘They won’t want to risk laming them.’
‘They could take it steady. They won’t lame them if they take it steady, not even on this route. I’m telling you, me and my dad travelled loads of miles over worse than this without laming the horses. You’ve just got to be careful how you go.’
Past birch, beech, bracken and bog, black mounds of molehills. We saw a long wire between two posts and hanging from the wire were the moldwarp corpses, their velvet grey fur wet with mizzle. Their huge white teeth and claws, glittering. Waiting to be skinned.
‘My dad had a jerkin made from fifty moleskins. He got it off a nobleman. Lord so-and-so. Though he didn’t look noble standing in a ditch.’
We walked through more fields until the moor opened out again and below us the river snaked and frothed.
‘You a gypsy?’ Emily said.
‘No.’
‘You look like a fucking gypsy to me.’
‘Well, I’m not.’
‘My dad said that gypsies were thieves.’
‘Did he?’
‘And that they kidnap girls and eat babies.’
‘You’d better watch your step then.’
‘Thought you weren’t a gypsy?’
‘Look, just keep your mouth shut, right?’
A white linnet settled on a prominent stoop about ten yards ahead of us. As we walked on, it took flight again, flitting down the path where it settled, bobbed its tail and watched us approach. As soon as we got within ten yards it flew onwards, and so on for half a mile or more.
‘What’s that bird doing?’ she said.
‘Showing us the way.’
‘No, it’s not. You don’t half talk some tiff.’
We passed a post that a goshawk must have used as a plucking place. Beneath a scattering of feathers was the flesh and elastic of the meat membrane.
‘If you’re still hungry, you can eat that,’ I said.
‘Don’t be disgusting.’
‘Beggars can’t be choosers.’
‘Yes, they can. I’m not eating that. I’m not that desperate.’
In fact, I was only half-joking. The meat was fresh and likely to be better than any we got in the next town. We walked on in silence, past half-quarried boulders furry with green moss, abandoned slabs of granite slippery with mud, until we came to a working delph and we stopped and watched the bearers break stone. There were four men with pickaxes, wedges, chisels and hammers. I thought about Joseph and me up at Penistone Crag, him lecturing me on hell and damnation, and the sins of the flesh. But I had only ever experienced the pleasures of the flesh and the pain of boot and whip.
‘Do you think they get much money for breaking stone all day?’ Emily said.
‘No.’
‘Then why do it?’
‘It’s honest toil.’
‘It’s a mug’s game, if you ask me.’
‘What other work is there?’
‘There’s lots of things you can do. I mean, you’ve got a choice. You don’t have to whack bits of rock all day. You’re not telling me that’s a good way to spend your time?’
‘Someone’s got to do it.’
‘That’s all well and dandy, William Lee, as long as that person isn’t me.’
More farm buildings, old barrows, spades, shovels, hoes, pitchforks. Past fern and bramble. The rain was luttering above us. And a relentless patter on leaf and grass. The blades were lying flat.
‘My feet are hurting.’
‘I can’t do anything about that.’
‘Let’s just stop.’
‘We’re not stopping.’
‘Why not?’
‘If you want to stop, you can stop, but I’m keeping on going.’
‘I need some boots,’ she said. ‘Ones with laces. Then my feet wouldn’t hurt. And I need stockings.’
I ignored her. I had a blister but I didn’t say that my feet were hurting too, as I didn’t want to think about my own pain. Best to push it to one side. Ignore it and it would go away. Physical pain was easy to master. The pain inside was much harder to bridle.
‘I need a new frock too,’ she said. ‘They’ve wrecked this one.’
‘I need lots of things,’ I said. ‘Need doesn’t get.’
‘You can’t expect me to wear this stinking shirt all the time. It doesn’t even fit. I mean, where did you even get it from? It’s falling to bits. Look, the stitching is coming away at the sleeve.’
I thought, there’s nothing wrong with this girl that a few good clouts around the ears wouldn’t fix. But hadn’t I been clouted often enough? And what good had it done me?
Beneath our feet the earth yielded to our tread. I didn’t think it was a good idea for her to go barefoot but I didn’t say anything. The moss tramped down and the grass gave in. We ploughed on. We came across a heap of sticks, twigs and branches. Someone was going to have a fire tonight if the pile dried. Out here, in the middle of nowhere, it seemed like an odd spot. Perhaps it was for two lovers, who came to the moors to escape.
The rain fell in angry drops. I thought about God in his heaven, looking down on us, and how he was lauded, but it was the devil beneath us who had a nice fire to keep us warm.
Emily stopped and rubbed her feet.
‘I’m wet,’ she said. ‘And cold. My feet are sore.’
‘Keep walking. It’s only water.’
We trudged on and as we did the rain slowed to a patter, then stopped altogether. I could feel the heat creep from behind the clouds. I thought about your sweet breath on my neck, Cathy. I thought about when we put our lips together and you passed the air from inside you into me. You said, ‘That’s us.’ It’s true, Cathy, I missed you. I missed your caresses and your soft kisses. But fuck you, you bitch.
I tried not to think of that cunt Linton writhing naked on top of you, like some sick worm, kissing you, fucking you, his cock inside you. I looked around instead and tried to forget you. Puttock, twite-finch and white-crow. I listened to the whooping call of the whaap. I focused on the black-and-white flash of the sea-pie, and the ragged flapping of peewit. And in this way I extricated you from my thoughts.
Above us, the high-pitched screech of the peewit heightened with the ragged flapping of their wings. Around us, the green fern, the purple heather, the ripple of the wind on the surface of peaty puddles. Then our view opened out onto a bigger moor, but not our moor, Cathy, one far more bleak and barren. It was black. Broken only by the heavens above, and the majestic flight of a heron, its head tucked into its neck like a bib. Its beak like a spear. Our feet squelched where the sheep had churned up the ground beneath us.
‘This bit reminds me of the moors past Pickering,’ Emily said. ‘You been there?’
‘No.’
‘You ride out of Pickering to Cropton Forest. Or in your case, walk. We spent the night there once, me and my dad. It’s a nice forest. You come out the other side and you get onto a Roman road. My dad said it was nearly two thousand years old. It’s as straight as a washing line. Takes you all the way to Goathland. There’s a big waterfall there. We stopped at a tavern one time. There was a billiard table but we didn’t play. My dad got the cards from behind the bar, and we played noddy all night . . . Ow! I think I’ve broke my ankle.’
She was limping. We stopped. She sat down on a boulder. I took her foot in my hand and turned it around. I’d seen more meat on a wren. And the bones were nearly as delicate as that tiny bird. I could crush her foot in my fist.
‘It’s not broken,’ I said, ‘just sprained. Best thing to do with a sprain is to keep on walking.’
‘What do you know?’ she said. ‘Are you a doctor now?’
‘I’ve had sprains before. I know what I’m talking about.’
‘If I had boots they’d support my ankle. I could tighten the laces. How far do you think we’ve walked?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe five or six miles.’
‘It must be further than that.’
We carried on walking, with Emily, still limping, just behind me.
‘How far is Manchester?’
‘Maybe ten miles or maybe forty.’
‘That’s helpful.’
I had no real idea, Cathy. I just knew that Mr Earnshaw had walked to Liverpool and back in three days. It might be just over the hill for all I knew, or several days away.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said.
‘We’ll find a stream.’
‘Where’s the flask?’
‘It’s empty.’
We walked downwards, over tussock grass until we came to running water. We stopped and I stooped down, making a cup with my hands. I drank. The water was fresh and cool.
‘Here, have some.’
She stooped where I had stooped and did the same. I looked down at the spiky green moss all around us. I reached for it and plucked a stem. Despite its spiky appearance, it was soft. You called it star moss, Cathy. I recalled you picking some and saying that it looked fierce but that the things that look fierce are often gentle. I filled the flask and corked it. We carried on our way.
‘This is boring. Why won’t you talk to me?’ she said.
‘Talk to you about what?’
‘Anything. Just say something.’
I’ve really got to get rid of this brat, I thought. The next place I could drop her, I would.
‘Tell me who you are, where you came from. I don’t know – anything.’
But Cathy, how could I tell her that when I didn’t know myself?
‘You tell me your story. If it’s good, I’ll tell you mine,’ I said at last.
‘Right then.’
She paused before commencing.
‘My dad was a highwayman.’
‘Was?’
‘He was hanged by the neck last year. Knavesmire gallows. He hung for three days, shrieking in pain. A kind gentleman came in a passing carriage. He stopped and took out a pistol. Shot him through the brains.’
What would you make of this girl, Cathy? She could certainly tell a tale.
‘What about your mother?’
‘My mother was a whore. She died giving birth to me.’
‘And was it your dad who taught you that trick?’
‘What trick?’
‘The dead-people-talk-through-me trick.’
‘It’s not a trick.’
‘No, course it’s not.’
Although not fully credulous, I did think, Cathy, that it might have been a trick, but it might also have been witchcraft, or demonic possession. You’d told me once that the devil could possess the mouths of mortals. And make the sounds of others.
‘And was he always a highwayman?’
‘He was not, no. We had our land stolen from us and we were made outlaws. At first we tried to live by honest crust. We found work in a coal mine. I was employed to drag bunches of furze along the galleries to send off the choke damp. It’s not as glamorous as it sounds. The fire damp was dealt with by the fireman, who was my father. He wore wet leathers. Didn’t half look funny in them. He carried a pole with a lighted candle at the end, with which he exploded the gas. It was a risky job. Water was the next problem. We lined the shafts with sheepskins and wooden tubbing. When the water drained into the sump of the pit bottom, we had to set up a chain of buckets. It was a right pain in the arse. We rode the shafts by clinging to a winding rope. I saw heads split in two and young’uns fall from the ropes to the bottom of the shaft. They never bothered to shift the corpses. Left them down there to rot. We moved the coal by panniers, slung across the backs of horses, or wagons moving along ill-made roads. Horse gins drew the coves to the top shaft. It was hard slog. I tell yer, you think farm labour is tough, but it’s nothing compared with mine labour.’
‘So what happened?’
‘Eh?’
‘If you were in regular employment, the two of you, how did he end up an outlaw?’
‘They say he was a bad’un. That he had bad blood running in his veins. They said even his bones were bad. That he had badness in the marrow. He didn’t like the work. It was dicing with death, he said. He didn’t want me down the pit. Said it was no work for a girl. Least not his girl. He had higher hopes for me, he said. He got into an argument about pay. The gaffer was trying to dock his wages over something or other. Said he’d been shirking.’
‘And what happened?’
‘The gaffer ended up down the bottom of the shaft with the young’uns. That’s all I know. We had to make a run for it. He said it was good riddance. No better than the workhouse. One night we kipped at an inn and we came across a counting clerk in a drunken stupor. My dad stole some keys to the man’s strongbox and rifled it. That were two hundred pounds and after that my father got a taste for fine living. He bought a prize mare and saddled her. He purchased a sword and a good set of pistols. He got me a fine frock and some leather boots. We worked the Great North Road. There were regular stagecoaches. And mail coaches. He felt no guilt about it. He said the rich had stolen his land from him and now he was taking from them. He was only getting what was his.’
You’d told me about the outlaws and highwaymen of this land, Cathy, and I have to say, we both had a sneaking admiration for them. I remembered you reading out stories from the local paper that Mr Earnshaw would bring back on market day, of the outlaws of the road and of the riches they had acquired. It was rare that anyone got hurt and it all seemed like harmless fun to us. Listening to the girl recount her story, I became fascinated by a life of crime once again. In truth, the highwayman was a man of my own heart. He was a freebooter, a libertarian, a don’t-give-a-fuck bastard, who scorned conventions. Why should life be lived as a crushing tedium and unrewarded toil? Why should the haves live in splendour and the have-nots in squalor? Although I did not envy the highwayman his vices – neither drinking, gambling nor whoring were my game – I did envy his freedom. But here I was now, on the open road, as free as any highwayman. I loved the stories you told me of Robin Hood. Of how, not by force but by cunning, he had outwitted his enemies. In this man who haunted the thickets and forests of England, I saw myself, and we talked about how we could live on the moors, feasting on its bounty of rabbit, hare and grouse. We wouldn’t need society or any of its laws. We wouldn’t need anyone, just us.
‘It wasn’t all stealing though,’ Emily said. ‘One time we came across a farmer who’d had fifty pounds robbed off him, and my dad said to him, show me the way the robber went and I’ll get the money back for you. So the farmer did and my dad went after the robber. The thief denied having stolen the money until my dad put a pistol to his head. He bloody well coughed up then, I’ll tell you. True to his word, my dad handed the fifty pounds back to the farmer. You see, the farmer wasn’t a rich man and my dad only stole from them that deserved it. He hated thieves who stole from their own. The farmer only had that money because he’d just sold his cattle at the market. He needed that money to prevent his family from being homeless. He had to raise enough money to pay his rent. Not only that, a few nights later, my dad went to the farmer’s house when he and his family were sleeping and placed a bag of gold on his doorstep. Imagine that, going to bed poor and waking up rich.’
As Emily chattered away we walked across some of the most barren moors I have yet seen, where not even a stunted hawthorn could find purchase. There was darkness at the heart of this moor, that I could feel creep under my skin and seep into my bones. I found Emily’s stories helped, not only to pass the time, but also to soften the feelings of melancholy that the landscape evoked. The wind picked up and the sky darkened. We could see black rain fall like rods in the distance. Then sheet lightning and thunder so loud it sounded as though the sky was cracking open. Thankfully, the storm soon passed over, leaving a shower in its wake. Even this dried up.
For many miles we walked where there was nothing of any significance to note. Then we came to huge grey boulders strewn here and thereabouts, as though they were giant dice tossed by a gambling god. We passed over a part of the moor that was covered in grass so white that it was almost like bone. And I thought about the straw in the stables where I’d been locked from time to time when Hindley got it into his head that beating me senseless was insufficient punishment. I thought about turning to Emily and recounting the stories of Hindley’s whip and boot and the outbuildings that were so often my prison, but she had plenty on her plate and the land was bleak enough without making it bleaker.
Fortunately the view changed. The black barren peat moor softened as heather sprouted. Then all we could see for miles around was purple. The heather blooming in every direction, alive with bees collecting nectar from the cups of the flowers. Dropping down off the moor, we could see around us, in every direction, farm buildings, fields, coppices and forests. The beck below. I remember when we talked about how the moors were really the scars left from the trees that had been cut down and uprooted. What we were looking at was a once-fresh wound now hardened. If the trees were still here, we would have no sense of the landscape at all, and no moor. We came to a cobbled path. More fields, fences, walls and hedges. The hoarse rattle of a long tail. The path opened out onto a bridleway with steep stone walls either side. The ground now was sandstone and grit. The wall was covered in moss and the path stretched out above us back onto the moors.
‘On another occasion,’ Emily said, ‘we overheard a conversation at a village pub where we were staying. There was talk of a wealthy bailiff who’d made a lot of money by extracting it from the poor. We went to bed that night, letting the landlord lead the way with his lamp, then we climbed out of the window. We pursued the bailiff, who gave us every farthing. My dad returned the money to those that deserved it. He liked to rob usurers and lords and any other cunt that had wealth that wasn’t theirs.’
‘So where did it go wrong then?’ I said. ‘Sounds like you were on a good number.’
‘Sometimes a man’s luck runs out,’ Emily said. ‘And so it did with my dad. After one particular robbery of a powerful judge, a reward was put out. My dad had folk looking out for him, watching his back, but there were other folk who saw that they could profit from him. Someone squealed, we don’t know who. Some men came one morning and arrested him while he was eating his breakfast. They brought him to court in leg-irons, but he wore one of the smartest suits you’ve ever seen and carried a nosegay as big as a birch-broom. After he was hanged, I was picked up by a beadle. The parish of settlement sent me to the workhouse, but I jumped off the cart before they got a chance to get me there. Since then I’ve roamed the land, living on naught but my own wits.’
‘Now it’s your turn,’ she said.
‘Well, I’ve nothing like that to tell. Most of my story I’m ignorant of. And that which I do recall will not sufficiently entertain you, I suspect.’
‘Tell me anyway. I want to hear it.’
I shrugged. I had no tongue for talk.
‘Where are you from?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Why do you want to go to Manchester?’
‘To earn a crust.’
‘To do what?’
‘I’m going to make something of myself.’
‘How can you make something of yourself when you don’t even know who you are?’
I shrugged again. But she had touched a nerve. Perhaps in Liverpool town I would find my mother. I barely dared to think such thoughts. Did she even know I still existed? Had she been too poor to rear me and thought Mr Earnshaw could provide for me where she could not? It was the one thing that made sense. The only way a mother would give up her child was for the good of that child. I was convinced my mother had done the best by me. And how sweet it would now be to find her and hold her in my arms. To kiss her on her cheek. She would cry with joy and sorrow. Joy at finally finding me but sorrow at all the years she had missed. I would wipe away her tears. I would hang at her neck. Then we would sit and talk and fill in the missing years for each other. She would tell me my real name. Who my father was. She would tell me of my origins. How sweet that conversation would be.
‘Come on then. Tell me,’ Emily persisted.
I told her of my life with you at Wuthering Heights, Cathy. I told her about the death of Mr and Mrs Earnshaw, my adopted mother and father. And of Hindley’s tyranny. I told her about Joseph’s catechisms and our life together. I told her about Nelly nursed me back to health. She was particularly taken by the tale of the time you lost your shoe in a bog and we had ended up on the grounds of the Lintons, outside looking in. I told her about the dog I’d throttled with a stone. How I’d pushed it to the back of the brute’s throat, choking it. How you had been taken in and fed soup, and how I had been expelled. Thrown out onto the wet ground, to wander moor and mire in the dark. I told her how since that moment, Edgar had come between us.
‘He sounds like a right dick.’
I told her about his fancy clothes and foppish hair, and how he’d made fun of my appearance. As I told her I felt the humiliation burn my skin again, as though it were still fresh. I told her of my final night at Wuthering Heights and the overheard conversation.
‘So why did you run off then?’
‘They thought I was in the stable but I was standing by the kitchen wall. I heard everything. She told Nelly that Edgar had proposed to her. And that she had accepted him.’
‘Why would she do that?’
‘She said because she loved him. Because he was handsome and cheerful. She told Nelly that she wanted to marry him because he was going to be rich.’
‘But what made you run off?’
‘After what she said. That it would degrade her to marry me.’
‘You soft bastard. Even more reason to stay and get what’s yours, or else make misery for those who scorned you. If I were you, right, I’d fuck ’em both over.’
It was difficult to argue with her reason. For one so young she had an old head on her.
We watched a blood hawk above us, its wings fixed to the sky, its eyes pointing downwards, looking for its prey, the whole moor its larder. And I thought how I would like to be up there looking down. On you, Cathy. And everything that you had no right to have. Fuck you for saying I would degrade you. Damn your soul to hell.
‘How far now?’ Emily said.
‘Maybe ten miles. Maybe more. Maybe less. I don’t have a map. And I don’t know where we are in relation to anything else. Try not to think about it. The more you think about it the longer it will take.’
‘So why did you put up with it?’ she said.
‘Put up with what?’
‘With Hindley. With his beatings. With him locking you away. Starving you. Whipping you. And with that Edgar humiliating you. If you were bigger and stronger, why didn’t you bray the pair of them?’
Why indeed, Cathy? It was difficult to explain to this girl how years of ill treatment affect you. How you get used to it. Harden to it. Become indifferent to it. How part of you even thinks that you deserve it. That they are your social superiors, and you are their servant, to be used and beaten at their whim. In reality there was nothing but the mind’s manacles that prevented me rising up and supplanting them. But even your efforts, Cathy, to bring me out of my slavish stupor had ultimately failed. In the end, the worm is happy to be trodden on.
‘That was the law of the land,’ I said at last.
‘The law can be bought,’ Emily said.
‘And if you have no money?’
‘Then you get money.’
We came across another field of sheep. We stopped for a breather and watched the lambs leap and frolic, jostling each other, and then when things got too rough, returning to the safety of their mothers, nestling up to the soft, warm fleece. Even though they had outgrown the teat. We carried on walking and soon we could see the farmer in the distance. As we got closer we could see that he was wearing a bloodstained smock. The sheep bleated, the wind howled and the lambs gathered for slaughter.
‘See,’ I said. ‘The lambs offer their necks to the knife.’
‘Are you saying you’re a lamb? ’Cause you’re not right. You’ve got to stop thinking like that. Don’t be a loser. No one’s going to give it you on a plate, you know. You’ve got to get it for yourself, see. Like me and my dad. Be the lion not the lamb.’
Strong words from the girl, I thought, Cathy, but words that rang true and burned like the smith’s branding iron. Words I needed to hear. Despite being called a devil, I had been the lamb – too ready to lie down and take my punishment. But now I would become the lion. I would fight for what was mine.
The sun was fully clear of the clouds now and the moors were transformed. Huge pools of light brightened the bracken, making it almost golden in patches. Shifting shades darkened the heather. As the sun shone, I saw that it made the granite rock sparkle. Tiny jewels, white, red, gold and silver, twinkled at us. We watched the cows chew the cud and they watched us. I wondered where they’d come from. Somehow they looked wrong on the moors, as though they didn’t belong. We walked for miles without seeing a soul, trudging through thick black peat bog. Then we saw an old woman, wrapped up in shawl and bonnet, supporting herself with a stick. She dragged one leg behind her.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘We’re heading west. How about you?’
‘Just to the next town. My brother. He’s sick.’
‘Is it much further?’ Emily said.
‘Where to?’
I kicked Emily on the shin. ‘Oh, just to the next farm,’ I said.
‘Not far, over yonder.’ The old woman pointed. ‘Mind how you go, it’s boggy thereabouts.’
I thought it best to end the conversation there. The less she knew about us the better, if she was bound for the town we had left. The last thing we needed was her spreading word of the direction we had come. It wouldn’t be hard to give a description of us. With my dark skin and Emily’s white-blonde hair, we were an easy pair to paint a picture of. We bade her good day. We watched her trudge through the peat and as she did I reflected that everyone has someone to care for them, Cathy, except me and the girl.
‘From now on, leave all the talking to me,’ I said.
‘I only asked.’
‘Well, don’t.’
We carried on, wading through peat bog. Rain and oily mud. The water had penetrated through my boots now and was squelching between my toes. The blister was stinging. I wondered if I should go barefoot like Emily. But then I thought it was probably best with boots than without. They’d dry out. And although they were Hindley’s cast-offs, I was grateful for them.
We had set off in the morning with the sun behind us, casting our shadows in front like giants. Now it was afternoon and the sun was in front, drawing our shadows behind. On and on we walked, mile after mile, hour after hour, sometimes along a path, and sometimes not. But always heading west.
We came across a farmer. He approached us with a hammer in his hand.
‘Good day to you, sir,’ I said.
‘Where do you two think you’re going?’ he asked.
‘We’re heading west.’
‘There’s no path through here. You’ll have to turn back.’
‘Sir, if you let us on our way, we will be gone in no time at all. We will do no harm to you or yours.’
‘I don’t think you heard me proper, sunshine. Turn around and get the fuck off my land.’
I felt the heat rise within once more. How easy it would be to take out the knife and plunge it into the man’s neck, or crack the bit of the axe through the top of his skull, like smashing an egg. But then I took stock. No sense being hung for a calf when it was a milch cow I was after.
We walked back to where we had entered the farmer’s field, climbed over the wall and made our way around his land. It was a sizeable chunk, his estate, and it was an inconvenience to circumnavigate it. I thought about coming back at night and burning his house while he and the rest of his family were asleep. In the distance we saw the spear-like spire of a chapel surrounded by thin mist.
‘See, over there, that’s where we’re heading. We can get something to eat there and rest. It’s not far now.’
‘You would say that.’