The journey to Manchester town took a day and a night, and we slept under the stars. We found a sheltered area beneath a blackthorn and I made a fire to keep warm. We suppered on faggots we’d purchased along the way. As we lay looking up at the many constellations, I taught Emily what you had taught me all those years ago. I pointed out the Dog Star and the Northern Cross. I showed her Leo and told her the story of Hercules strangling the great beast with his bare hands. I pointed out the swan and the bear and the ram and the bull, and all the other animals that filled the night sky.
When we got to Manchester town there was much commotion and mulling about. I was taken first by the sights, then by the sounds, and finally by the smells. In truth they must have hit my senses at the same time, but the magnitude of the vision I saw before me was too much to take in. The town in front of us was like nothing I had ever seen. It was more like a picture from one of your story books. A fairy-tale kingdom with palaces and princesses. Ladies and gentlemen of fine attire. Some wore fancy clothes, silk coats and embroidered waistcoats. Brightly coloured frocks, coloured ribbons and outlandish nosegays. Men with coloured strings through their breeches. My nose was assaulted with their perfumes. But also there were those in tattered rags, ravelled dugs and barefoot.
The buildings towering above us, reaching up to the clouds, were fit for giants. Like the Nephilim that Joseph spoke of. Doorways and arches that reached up to accommodate Goliath. Spires that pierced the blue canvas of the sky. Stones patterned with grotesque carvings and the roofs set with domes and decorated pikes. My ears were pricked with the clamour of industry. The clanking of metal plates. The clatter of iron-rimmed cartwheels on cobbles. Walking sticks, silver-tipped, tapping on the bevelled sets. Shouting, laughing, wailing. Street sellers hoarse with their own boasts. Pigeons and gulls grabbing at crumbs spilling from hand baskets and carts. Squawking and screeching. The stench of burning coals, of rotting offal and festering fruits. Piss and shit and vomit. A beggar sleeping in the gutter. A painted chaise pulled by fine mares. I saw the driver crack his whip and drive his vehicle over the fingers of the beggar, slicing through two of them as though they were breakfast sausages. Not stopping to help the man, but cracking the whip for his horses to go faster. I grabbed hold of Emily. This was a place where you had to keep your wits about you. The vision before me was one part heaven and one part hell. I could barely decide what to make of it.
We walked down a street signposted ‘Shudehill’, then along another signposted ‘Withy Grove’. There was such an array of accents, from every corner of the kingdom, and even from the Emerald Isle. I remembered that was one of your other theories to my origins, Cathy. You said that the Spanish Armada had planned to attack England but that there had been a severe storm and that some of its vessels were wrecked on the west coast of Ireland. I was the son of a Spanish duke and an Irish gypsy. The duke had been saved from the storm by the gypsy girl. She had pulled him out of the water half-drowned and revived him, then she had nursed him back to health in her caravan. She had fallen in love with the duke. Then one day, some sailors came for him and he was called back to his ship and she never saw him again. Only now she was carrying his child. I used to laugh at some of your ideas, but I was comforted by them too: I was from somewhere, I was someone, I wasn’t just an orphan.
As we walked further into town, past Cannon Street and along Market Street Lane, there was an overpowering stench of industrial refuse and of open sewers. Children played among the garbage and privy middens. There were buildings everywhere; some looked like they’d only just been built. And all around these were buildings in different stages of construction. Some were just a few walls and others were wanting roofs. Others again were merely marks on the ground. There were skeletons of buildings waiting for their flesh and skin. There were builders, sawyers, carpenters and various men at work. There was a hubbub and a swarm. There was gin being sold from wheelbarrows in the street and, later we learned, privately in garrets, cellars and back rooms. We saw many partakers stagger around in their bibulous stupors. We saw Methodist ministers reading from the Bible and other religious scripture; harlots selling their bodies; and beggars, their flesh rotting with distemper, covered with scorbutic and venereal ulcers. Among all this, stalls of every description selling their wares. Sweetmeat stalls, rope makers, chair menders, knife sharpeners. There were lanterns for sale and brimstone matches, sealing wax, silver buckles, snuffboxes.
There were a great many shops. We approached the most sizeable. Inside there was an impressive variety of articles: tea, coffee, loaf sugar, spices, printed cottons, calicoes, lawns, fine linens such as you were now accustomed to wearing: silks, velvets, silk waistcoat pieces, silk cloaks, hats, bonnets, shawls, laced caps, and a myriad of elegant things, Cathy. In short, all the finery that you were now taking for granted. There was a druggist selling pomatum, fever powder, angel water, Jesuit drops. Hemlock for tumours and burdock for scurvy.
We came across another shop that sold every kind of offal. Many items to fill our appetites. There were red herrings, bloaters, cow-heel, sheep’s trotters, pigs’ ears, tripe and black pudding. The black pudding looked the most appetizing and I asked the shopkeeper what it consisted of.
‘It’s a sausage made of blood.’
‘What blood?’ Emily asked.
‘Pork blood. There’s oatmeal in there too, and pork fat. It’s a health food,’ she said. ‘It’ll keep your strength up.’
I liked the idea of feasting on blood, and in the absence of a good supply of Hindley’s, we bought two slabs and the vendor wrapped them in paper and lathered them with malt vinegar. We took our food outside and ate it. The taste was unlike anything I’d ever had before but very pleasant. Emily had eaten hers before I was even halfway into mine.
‘Lovely,’ she said, licking her lips. ‘I could eat another one of those.’
‘We’ve not got much money left now,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to get to work soon.’
But there was too much to see in these bustling streets and we wandered around for hours. Along Deansgate and King Street, there were soup kitchens and Irish vagrants. There were people living in sheds made of clot and clay and others made of brick. There were rats running in and out of the building and dogs running wild. We saw many a deformed infant, with knees swelled or ankles swelled, one shoulder lower than the other, round-shouldered or pigeon-breasted. Or in some other way deformed. There were younger infants still, hardly able to walk, with rag dummies in their mouths. We saw children not much older than four or five, leaving a cotton mill: small, sickly, barefoot and ill-clad. Children on street corners selling pins and needles. Women selling tapes and laces, fruit and cakes. I bought myself an orange and Emily a gingerbread man. I cut my orange in two and sucked the juice out. It was only the second time in my life I’d ever tried one, the first time being when I stole one from a bowl that was meant for the Lintons. So its sweetness was still a novelty. I watched Emily savage her gingerbread man, gobbling down his head first, then his legs.
‘They taste better if you eat them like this,’ she said. ‘Before they get a chance to complain and run away.’
Then we saw before us, Cathy, such a peculiar object of misery, that my own history of affliction seemed as fortune.
Emily turned to me. ‘Look at that boy. What the hell happened to him?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said.
I couldn’t stop staring at this poor freak. He had neither a hat for his head nor a buckle for his shoes. He was no more than twelve years of age but much shorter than Emily. A cripple on crutches, little more than three feet in stature. His legs and feet were as crooked as twisted willow branches. His hair looked like a hog’s bristles and his head like a black cinder. My own was as white as Edgar’s in comparison. He was blind and used his crutches as feelers, testing the ground before taking a step forward, like a snail with its tentacles. The boy coughed with such a hacking sound, I thought he was going to hawk his guts up. I saw him spit blood onto the cobs. I overheard a conversation between two men who were standing beside us.
‘He’s still employed in his work. Would you believe that?’ the first man said.
‘And what work would that be then?’ said the second.
‘He’s a sweeper of chimneys.’
Emily moved closer to me and clutched the arm of my coat.
‘Poor bastard,’ she said, under her breath.
No torture Hindley rent on me could compare to the daily torture this boy suffered at his place of work. I glanced around. Everywhere I looked I saw routine cruelty and everyday misery. Alongside which there were fancy coaches and gentlemen and ladies, in and out of tailors’ shops, milliners’, candle shops and fine bakeries. So much wealth and privilege alongside so much privation. Not one of these gentle folk stopped to assist, or even seemed to notice this miserable wretch.
I watched Emily eye a wealthy family with envy. They were standing outside a milliner’s, looking in the window. Their daughter appeared to be about the same age as Emily. Her father was wearing a black tricorne, with a knee-length red silk coat. He had a gold-tipped walking cane, and two gold chains dangling from his waistcoat. His wife had a dress of green silk and a hat decorated with feathers. The girl wore a powder-blue silk dress, quite simple in design in comparison with her mother’s dress. Likewise, her hat was a simple white with a powder-blue ribbon. Still, it looked expensive. I saw Emily clock all this.
We roamed the streets all day until at last I said that we needed to find somewhere to lig for the night. Our money would run out sooner than I’d anticipated. Everything here was twice what it would have cost in Keighley. I wondered if we could go to work. Now was as good a time as any. We walked along the river, past the cathedral, until we found a large graveyard on the outskirts of the town. There we waited.
‘I think we should use different names,’ Emily said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Just as a precaution.’
I looked about the chiselled graves; some were headstones, and some lay on the ground. Some were fresh and others pockmarked with lichen. I read out names: ‘Edward, Arthur, Henry, Obadiah, Solomon.’ I watched Emily scan the stones as well.
‘I’ll be Clarissa,’ she said.
‘Pleased to meet you, sister, my name is Obadiah.’
The first four mourners we approached dismissed us in various ways. One called us minions of Satan, another called us devil’s spawn. I was starting to think that our business was doomed to failure.
‘Well, we’ve given it our best shot,’ I said.
‘No, we’ve not. Takes longer.’
‘One more go then, Emily.’
‘Let’s try it different next time.’
‘How?’
‘I’ll stay concealed till you give me the word. You work them round a bit. Then call me over.’
‘What difference will that make?’
‘Just try it.’
I shrugged. I supposed it was worth a go.
Eventually we saw an old woman approach a grave and stand in its shadow, muttering under her breath. The mound of earth in front was newly turned. We did not approach but watched from the shade of an oak. She was dressed in black widow’s weeds, which even from this distance I could see were cut from an expensive cloth. She wore a long black headdress that covered her back, which was trimmed with a white lace edge. Then she commenced sobbing. She took out a white handkerchief from under her shawl and wiped her eyes. I waited until she had spent some of her grief and the tears had dried. Emily waited in the shadows.
I tentatively approached the woman. The grave was grandly carved and of an ostentatious decoration. I noted the name cut into the stone: Tom Hardy.
‘Good afternoon, madam. I am very sorry for your grief. Please accept my condolences. Mr Hardy was a fine man. We all thought the world of him, I just wanted you to know that.’
She looked at me properly for the first time, studying my attire.
‘Did you know him?’
‘Not so well, madam, but a little.’
She observed my scuffed boots and the loose stitching on my surtout sleeve.
‘Did you work for him in the mill?’
I was thinking on my feet – so he was a boss of some sort.
‘That’s right, madam. It was a pleasure to work for your husband. He made our labour light. My name is Obadiah Bell. Pleased to make your acquaintance.’
We shook hands and she told me her name was Elisabeth Hardy.
‘He was a kind man,’ I said. ‘Some of the other managers at that mill are cruel taskmasters. I’ve seen some dock a man a day’s wage for being a minute late to the job. But not Mr Hardy. He was an honest man and decent. I only wish the world had more men like him.’
‘I knew the mill would be the death of him,’ she said. ‘It was all he could think about. It wasn’t enough to make a profit – he wanted to improve conditions for the workers. Shorter hours, better pay. He even talked about fitting bigger windows so that the workforce could enjoy the light of the day. He said it was the devil who toiled in the dark. Such long hours. I know that’s what killed him. He said he couldn’t claim to have built the first mill, but he could claim to have built the best mill. The one that was closest to God.’
‘I’ve worked for tyrants in my time, madam. What can I say? Men more like monsters, who thought nothing of people, only of pounds, shillings and pence. I’ve had to leave some jobs just to save my own skin. To stay would have been to perish. God bless your sweet husband.’
‘I wish my Tom had realised that to do good, one has to start by doing good by oneself.’
‘If only he had realised, madam. May I introduce you to my sister? We are both grief-stricken ourselves.’
‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
‘Our parents are both dead. Burned to death in our family home, just a few days ago. They are just now buried yonder.’
‘That’s awful. You poor things.’
I beckoned Emily over.
‘This is my poor sister, Clarissa Bell.’
I observed the woman’s reaction.
‘I know what you are thinking: there is no family resemblance. In truth, she is not my sister by birth but the only sister I have known. Her parents took me in off the streets when I was still a bairn, and they became my parents also.’
A good lie embellishes the truth, Cathy.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ Emily said.
The girl and the woman shook hands.
We spoke gravely of our respective deceased before I brought the conversation to the place I wanted it to be.
‘My sister has a peculiar gift but one that may serve to comfort you in your grief.’
‘Oh really, what is that?’
‘The dead speak through her.’
The woman looked shocked. She took a moment to compose herself, then said, ‘I’ve heard of this gift. Some say it is the work of the devil.’
I lowered my voice. ‘Some do, madam, that’s true. But tell me, if it be the work of the devil, would it offer such comfort to the virtuous?’
‘Well, I don’t know. I just know what the minister said.’
‘And what was that?’
‘That sorcery and witchcraft is the ken of Old Nick.’
‘But this is neither sorcery nor witchcraft, madam.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Didn’t Jesus raise Lazarus of Bethany four days entombed? Would you call that witchcraft? Would you accuse Jesus of sorcery?’
‘No, never.’
‘And isn’t the devil’s job to meddle in the affairs of men? To bring down those with virtue so that they reach his level? And if that is so, why would he waste his time, offering solace to good Christian folk like yourself?’
‘That’s true,’ she said, but then shook her head in doubt. ‘I don’t know. I just don’t know.’
‘It takes a lot of strength out of my sister to perform the rite. But it makes her happy to comfort the bereaved. It is God himself who has given her this gift. The Lord has blessed her.’
‘But I’ve been told that sometimes the devil does good work in order to turn us to his side.’
‘Would it not be a great comfort to be able to speak to your dear Tom again?’
‘Yes. It would.’
She nodded gravely. I could see my words were having an effect. That we were winning her over. She was at the point of change and I just needed to push now ever so carefully.
‘The dead also pine for the living. Tom wants to speak to you. My sister is the vessel for his voice.’
‘Are you sure it will be all right?’
‘I promise you.’ I took her gently by the arm. ‘Please, step under this tree and we’ll see if she can be of assistance, for she is not always able to perform the rite. It is dependent on so many things. Let’s pray that the powers work inside her, God willing.’
We walked over to our secluded spot under the cover of the old oak. Jack Nicker and Betty Tit twittered about the boughs.
‘Do you have anything about your person that belonged to Tom, by any chance?’
‘This,’ she said.
She unlatched a gold chain from around her neck.
‘I had this made a few years ago. It’s Tom’s old watch chain.’
She handed it to me and I gave it to the girl, who clutched it in her fist. It was a spontaneous idea, but I know how people can attach themselves to things. Emily closed her eyes and her arms went flaccid by her side.
‘I hope she can offer comfort,’ I said to the woman. ‘May the good Lord bless us today.’
For a moment nothing happened. We stood under the tree and waited. Then Emily began to shake. She bowed her head.
‘Is she all right?’ the woman whispered.
I put my finger to my lips. ‘Please, she needs silence to perform the rite,’ I whispered.
Emily went into her trance as the dead crept into her flesh. Her extremities tremored with the feeling of another. Until she raised her head level with the old woman’s and opened her eyes. Again, I witnessed the same transformation. The same eyes, but not the same eyes. These were the eyes of one who had passed. The old woman standing before me gasped. I gave her a reassuring nod. I noticed that the graveyard had fallen silent. No birds now sang.
This time when the girl spoke it was with the voice of an old man.
‘Beth, is that you, my love?’
The woman grabbed my arm to steady herself. She turned to me. ‘Can this be true?’
I nodded. ‘Believe your own ears.’
The woman was speechless. She shook her head.
‘Beth, it’s me. I am here.’
The old woman turned to me once again for reassurance.
‘Please, it’s all right. Talk to your husband.’
She turned to Emily. ‘Tom?’
‘Yes, my love?’
‘Oh, Tom, is that really you?’
‘It is.’
‘But . . . how can it be?’
‘I am come. I speak through another.’
‘Oh, Tom!’
Tears flowed freely from the woman’s eyes and she dabbed at them with the handkerchief.
‘Oh, my love. Please don’t weep for me. I see you at my grave and I see you weep and it makes me very sad. For I am in a better place waiting for you to join me.’
‘Oh, Tom, it’s so good to hear your voice. I’ve been so lost without you.’
‘And I lost without you, my love.’
‘I’ve prayed for you every day and every night. I’ve spoken to you at your grave, wishing each time that you could answer back.’
‘I wish I could be there by your side but I know that one day you will join me and I will no longer be alone.’
‘Aye, my love, but don’t worry for me. Time passes quickly. A day in your world is but a minute here. The hands of the clocks in heaven whizz round like the wings of a snipe fly. And I’m not on my own. There is a child by my side.’
‘Is he with you? Oh, that’s wonderful. Not a day goes by when I don’t think of him. Not even an hour.’
‘We are both waiting for you, my dear. Fear not. Death hath no dominion.’
The girl’s eyes closed, then her body went rigid, before collapsing on the floor. She lay there with her arms by her side and her head resting on one cheek.
‘Is she all right?’
‘She’ll come round. Best to leave her for a minute or two. It takes a great deal of strength. The effort required to connect the two worlds, the material and the spirit, takes a huge amount of energy. Sometimes she sleeps for days afterwards.’
‘Oh, the poor thing. Will you take something for your trouble?’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it, madam. Our payment is your loving face when you spoke with your late husband. And our wages are your comfort.’
‘I insist. Please.’
She took out her purse.
‘Really, that’s not necessary.’
‘I’m afraid I won’t take no for an answer. Please, it will make me happy.’
‘If you insist, it will ensure my sister and I will be able to have a hot meal and somewhere to sleep. But only a shilling if you can spare it.’
‘Here, have a shilling each. One for you, Obadiah, and one for your dear sister, Clarissa. Please, it’s the least I can do.’
I pocketed the two shilling pieces.
‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’
I unclasped the watch chain from Emily’s fist and handed it back to the woman. I helped fasten it around her neck. I walked her back to her husband’s grave and bade her goodnight. As I did I noticed the gravestone. Under the inscription of her dead husband was that of another: it was the inscription of her son who had died at just five years of age. Had Emily seen this? Was it a trick? But I’d heard the voice of Tom uttered from her lips. A ten-year-old girl was capable of many things, but not to change her voice entirely to that of a man’s. It wasn’t possible. Then there was my mother, whose words I’d heard tumble from Emily’s tongue. That had to be real. My mother had spoken to me. I was sure of that.
As I was walking away, the woman said, ‘She will be all right, won’t she, your sister?’
I nodded solemnly. ‘It’s a gift from God,’ I said. ‘God will restore her.’
The woman smiled and thanked me again. I walked back to the tree. The girl had recovered her faculties.
‘Did I do well?’ she said.
‘Yes, you did well. Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s eat.’
We walked back into the town along its crowded streets. We’d done it. We’d actually done it. It had taken five attempts and several patient hours but we had done it by hook or by crook. Down Fountain Street, we passed more gin barrows and harlots selling their flesh.
‘Where’s my money?’ Emily said.
‘How do you mean?’
‘One shilling is mine.’
‘I’m keeping it safe,’ I said. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
‘Do I fuck.’
We passed an open privy, where people were pissing and shitting in full view, then entered the largest alehouse we could find. Emily ordered hasty pudding and pease-kail, and I ordered roast beef, the first real meat I’d eaten in weeks. We sat by the fire and waited for our supper. The flames lit up Emily’s face, making her skin glow and her eyes sparkle. We were both in an ebullient mood and we chatted about this and that as we waited for our grub. My mouth was watering with anticipation of the meat. I rubbed the coins in my breeches pocket. Two shillings was the equivalent of two days’ labour. Not bad going for two minutes’ work. On top of this, I still had pennies in my sack.
‘That was good going back there,’ I said as we tucked into our supper.
‘All in a day’s work,’ she said as she heaped in spoonfuls of food. ‘We’ll do all right, me and you.’ She smiled at me as she ate with her mouth wide open.
What a pig, I thought. But even pigs can raise a pretty profit.
‘And tomorrow?’ she said.
‘Well, my feeling is that there’s plenty of brass round these parts. Why don’t we stay for a few days, make a few guineas so that when we get to Liverpool we’ll be comfortable off.’
‘Suits me. Can I get a new dress?’
‘Well, let’s see how rich we get. I don’t see why not.’
‘I liked the one that girl was wearing.’
‘Which one?’
‘Outside the milliner’s shop.’
I tried to recollect. I saw in my mind the couple with the girl the same age as Emily and the same white-blonde hair.
‘The blue one?’
‘Yes, the blue one.’
‘We’ll see.’
‘Don’t be a cunt.’
‘I said, we’ll see.’
‘And some boots?’
‘That all depends on how lucky we get.’
‘Oh, we’ll get lucky,’ she said, and stuffed some more food into her mouth. ‘There’s loads of folk round this town with grieving hearts. I can just tell. It’s us doing them the favour, you know. They’d be lost without us.’
I watched her load up another fork. She was some girl, for sure. Had she really conjured the dead? I weighed it up. She’d just earned us an outstanding supper, so what the hell. And I wanted to believe. Not that my mother had died on the ship, but that I had a mother and I had spoken to her and that she was now in heaven watching over me.
I picked up my knife and fork and cut another slice of beef. It was still red in the middle with the blood of the beast, and I thought again about Dick Taylor’s wound, pumping blood on the floor of the barn. Surely he had bled to death. No one could survive a bloodlet of that scale. After we had finished our food, I ordered some tea and some cordial for Emily. She started to cough. It was just a tickle at first, but then it built into a hacking cough. She took out a handkerchief and covered her mouth with it. I noticed that it was the white silk handkerchief the widow had used.
‘Emily, where did you get that?’
She just shrugged.
‘Listen to me – we need to keep a low profile. No filching fogles, or anything for that matter. Do you understand?’
She nodded.
‘I’m not laiking about. They can hang you for that. No fucking stealing, do you hear?’
‘Do you think we can get a pudding?’ she said. ‘I’m still hungry.’