We lodged that night in the alehouse and the next day we breakfasted on boiled milk and oatmeal, sweetened with thick syrup. I was still smiling inwardly from yesterday’s success. It was raining when we set out but soon cleared to a fine mist, then passing altogether, revealing a window of blue. In the town square there were pigeons feeding on the scraps of last night’s supper. A man with no legs, perching on a short-wheeled cart, was making his way across the paving using his hands to propel his body. The pigeons scattered in his wake. The man grasped greedily for the crumbs they left behind. Manchester town was a place of contradiction and for every story of triumph there were two stories of despair. I tossed the man a coin.
We walked up Deansgate and across Market Place. Along Withy Grove and Shudehill until we climbed up out of the town to another burial ground. This one was about the same size as the first, but the graves were more ramshackle. The ones placed flat were in the shadow of a looming chapel. There were beech trees where rooks reeled and ragged, and beneath my feet my heel crunched on last year’s husks. We walked over to the other side, where the headstones were planted. We noted the flowers placed by. There was a grave with the name Bartholomew; next to this someone had placed a glass of claret. I watched Emily scour the stones.
‘Well?’
‘I’m Arabella.’
We found a clump of trees and waited.
We encountered several grief-stricken victims during the course of the morning and once again we were met with various forms of rejection – suspicion, accusation, fear and indifference – before we struck gold once more. It was close to noon when we saw a frail old man approach. He wore a blue frock coat and a cocked hat with a wide brim. He stopped by a grave and laid down a wreath of white flowers. The mound was still fresh. I left Emily under the bough of a tree, picked up a bunch of red flowers from a grave nearby, and approached the man. He looked to be in his eighties. Beneath his coat he wore a black suit with a long blue kerchief wrapped around his neck, and an embroidered waistcoat. There were gold buckles on his shoes.
‘Excuse me, sir. Could I trouble you for the time of day?’
He noticed me for the first time. He took out a gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and flipped the lid. He examined the face of the watch.
‘It’s half past the hour of eleven,’ he said, tucking the fob back into his pocket.
‘Is it really? Then I’m not late as I’d thought. You see, I have a very important appointment but I had to come and see my mother first. Today is her birthday. She would have been forty years of age, if the Lord hadn’t taken her from me.’
I thought about my own mother in heaven, but pushed the thought away.
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It was many years ago. Bless her soul. She’s buried in yonder corner,’ I said, pointing. ‘I’ve never missed her birthday. I always bring her red flowers. Red was her favourite colour.’
I produced the flowers and held them out for the man to see.
The man was aloof at first and looked over my tattered surtout with disdain, but as I spoke of my own tragedy in more detail, he softened to my cause.
‘I’ve just lost my last child. I had four but now they’ve all left me.’
We chatted for a while until I found a place to introduce the subject of Emily. The man was initially reluctant, but I assured him of the virtue of the endeavour as I had done with the woman yesterday. I ushered Emily over.
‘My name is Bartholomew Stone and this is my stepsister, Arabella.’
‘I had four daughters each as pretty as you, Arabella. And now I have none. Four of the sweetest creatures to bless this world have left me and gone to heaven. My wife died after giving birth to our youngest. My girls all died of the slow fever. ’Tis a cruel disease. The last one took months. She was delirious by the end. Kept calling me Tessa. Refused to wear clothes. The maids didn’t know what to do or where to look. She died in my arms while I tried to feed her semolina and honey. Her last words were, “I prefer chicken.” I died too in that moment. What you see before you is a walking shell. Life is a tedious, senseless business.’
‘Indeed, it is a mystery at best. Only God understands our purpose.’
The man nodded sagely.
Emily carried out her work conjuring the man’s wife. I watched again as her body, flaccid at first, became animated by the vigour of a restless spirit. Her eyelids flickered involuntarily and when they opened once more, her pale grey eyes were alive with a sleepless spectre from the hereafter.
The visitation moved the old man to tears. I pocketed our reward and we both stood and watched him depart, still trembling from the experience. The morning’s work had been difficult, but our efforts had paid off. I reflected that we would have more luck if we appeared in our attire more respectable. When he had gone I turned to Emily and noticed that she was holding something in one hand.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
She unclenched her fist to reveal the old man’s gold watch.
‘You bloody fool, what did you steal that for?’
‘Worth a few bob, that.’
I took the fob watch from her and examined it. The gold was polished and shiny and the casing was carved with an ornate pattern. I turned it over and there were three initials: ‘E.B.T.’
‘Look at this,’ I said, holding it up so she could see. ‘This mark will give the game away. A man like that, with so much wealth, he’s no doubt very influential hereabouts. It’s not worth it. If we get caught with this, we’ll hang.’
‘So what are you saying?’
‘We have to give it him back.’
‘He’s not going to fall for that. He’ll know we’ve stolen it.’
‘Well, you managed to pilfer it off him under his nose, you can put it back under his nose too. We need to find him, quick, before he discovers the theft.’
We ran out of the burial ground and down the street but the man was nowhere to be found.
‘Maybe he came by coach,’ Emily said.
‘I didn’t see one parked outside.’
‘You weren’t looking for one.’
‘Where do you think he’s gone?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
We carried on down the street, past houses and shops. But there was no sign of him.
‘Perhaps he’s gone for something to eat,’ Emily said.
We searched some of the taverns, pie shops and coffee-houses. Nothing. We spent an hour or more looking for him, combing each street, checking in each shop. We wandered around the market. It amazed me how such a frail old man had managed to give us the slip. It was early afternoon, and we were about to give up, when we saw him outside a bookshop, leafing through a leather-bound tome.
‘Now’s our chance,’ I said.
‘He’ll know the watch is missing by now,’ Emily said.
‘All right, I’ve got another plan.’
I went up to the man and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned with a start.
‘Thank the Lord, we’ve found you,’ I said. ‘You see, my sister and I have been looking everywhere for you.’
‘Oh, really?’
I took out the watch. ‘It was after you’d gone that we spotted it by the side of your family grave.’ I handed it over.
He took hold of the watch and examined it.
‘I thought I’d lost it. A gift from my wife. The chain needed replacing. My own fault. I can’t thank you enough. Here, let me give you something for your trouble.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ I said. And refused the offer. He shook my hand and smiled.
‘You are both good Christians.’
Later, when we were some distance from the man, I turned to Emily. ‘What have I said about not stealing? It’s not worth it. We need to keep as low as stoats. We’re conspicuous enough as it is, without drawing more attention. So no more fucking stealing, right?’
‘I suppose,’ she said, grudgingly. ‘Can we get that dress now?’
I took stock at breakfast the next morning. Yesterday had been productive and my pockets were heavy with gold and silver, but we’d also had a near miss. I’d had a hard word with Emily and I believed she had learned from her mistakes. The watch had been returned and our excuses had been accepted. I put the incident in perspective. Manchester was a big town. We weren’t done with it yet. My plan was to have a leisurely breakfast, then get kitted out with some new garments, explore some of the further-out places, and find some more stately graves to get to work on. There were bound to be several places of burial where the rich were entombed. It was just a case of wandering around and taking our chances. I was learning that it wasn’t just worms who could feast on the remains of the dead. I went to look for the innkeeper. I wanted to ask him if we could arrange for a bath when we returned from our work. It had been many days since I had washed properly, and I reckoned we both probably stank like sewer rats. I couldn’t find the man and asked his wife, who was standing at the sink in the kitchen, if she knew of his whereabouts.
‘He’s out back,’ she said. ‘Seeing to the horses. Got late guests last night, in a carriage.’
I went out to the stables, but before I had a chance to find the innkeeper, I heard voices coming from one of the outbuildings. One of them was familiar, and I felt a tightness grip me. I approached cautiously. Without looking behind the stable doors, I was close enough now to hear clearly the voices of two men alongside the innkeeper’s. I couldn’t be absolutely sure, so very tentatively I peeped through a hole in the wooden door. It was him: Dick Taylor. The man with one hand and his straw-haired companion. I didn’t stop to listen, but ran back to where Emily was still eagerly stuffing her face. When she saw me she dropped the spoon.
‘What’s the matter? You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.’
I grabbed hold of her and lifted her out of her chair. I took her hand and yanked her from the room.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘No time,’ I said, and ran out of the tavern and down the street, pulling Emily along. ‘This way.’
I turned off the main street and down an alley. Halfway down I turned off again. It was only after a good five minutes of running turn and turn-about that I stopped and let us get our breath.
‘Are you going to tell me what’s going on?’ Emily said, panting.
‘It’s them. They’re here.’
‘Shit.’
‘Dick and his mate.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I saw them in the stables. Talking to the innkeeper.’
‘What did they say?’
‘I didn’t hear it. I ran as soon as I saw them.’
‘What do you think he told them?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Do you think he said where we were?’
‘I don’t know. Come on, let’s keep on going.’
We walked down another road. Then another street and through another alley. It was still early and there weren’t that many people around. The cobbles were glistening from the evening’s rain.
‘We’re fucked,’ Emily said.
‘No, we’re not. Even if the owner ratted on us, they don’t know where we’ve gone. Manchester’s a big town. Tens of thousands of people. They’ll not find us.’
‘But what if they do?’
‘They won’t.’
I felt that we were far enough away now to be out of any immediate danger, but I walked at a pace nevertheless, without arousing suspicion, pulling Emily along with me. We said no more about it and walked on in silence. We turned down Long Lane, where, despite the hour, already there was much activity. There was a fruit-seller on the street corner. I stopped and bought a few apples for the trip. I asked for directions to the canal.
The man pointed over in the distance. ‘Head for Deansgate. Hit a left when you get there and follow the road straight down until you get to Castle Field. You’ll see a brick mill by the quay. The duke’s canal is further on.’
‘And it goes to Liverpool?’
‘Turn and turn-about, if that’s where you’re heading.’
I pocketed the apples and thanked the man. We made our way down Peter Street until we came to the junction at Deansgate. When we came to Bridgewater Street, I guessed that the canal must be close.
‘How do you know about the canal?’ she said.
‘A man named Sticks, worked with him on the farm – the tall thin bloke, do you remember?’
‘Not really.’
‘I told you about him. He used to be a navvy. Sticks said that the man who built it was a duke and that this duke had travelled Europe as part of his education. And in France he had fallen in love with a lady of some standing. I can’t remember her name now. Anyway, this lady had spurned him. Returning to England, licking his wounds, he vowed never to fall in love again, and instead devoted himself to industry. When he came back to England he was resolute. He’d seen a canal in France and decided he wanted to outdo the French.’
‘So the canal was his revenge?’ Emily said.
How many great things had been achieved, Cathy, because a woman spurned a man? Perhaps in a peculiar way your cruelty would prove useful to me.
‘I think my dad loved my mum,’ Emily said. ‘I’m sure he did. He said he only hit her because he loved her.’
‘Well, don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘I’m no expert.’
We came to a market square. As we did, a noisy procession of people blocked our way. There was no possibility that we could force a path through so we stopped and watched the procession. I kept my eye out for Dick and his mate. There was a cart of people. Men in gaudy attire and women in white with baskets of flowers and oranges. We watched the women throw the oranges to the crowd that had gathered around the procession. There were pedlars and tinkers. Ballad-singers and hawkers. And then I saw it, high above us – the gallows.
The men in the cart were the condemned and they had come to meet their end. By the gallows the hangman stood, biding his time. We waited in the shadows until the crowd thinned sufficiently for us to make our way. I observed Emily staring up at the wooden scaffold.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s get going.’
‘He gave a speech, you know, before they put the noose around his neck.’
‘Best not to think about it,’ I said.
‘It was a very cold day, not like today, and he was shivering from the cold. People said he was chicken, but it was freezing. I was cold myself even in my woollen shawl. I was with his friend Lizzy Lawrence. She was shivering too. There were icicles hanging from the boughs of the trees. It was unusually cold that day. They released him from his fetters and a pair of leg-irons. There was no one else to hang that morning so he was the star turn. He was alone on that platform, just him and the hangman. Then the priest came and they prayed together. They sang one of the psalms. It was so cold that his voice faltered. You could see his breath mist in front of his face. There was a huge crowd. He stood perched upon the gallows ladder. Then he turned to his audience and made his speech.’
Emily stared up at the wooden construction again. It looked like a giant pointing finger.
‘And?’
‘He said, “Good people, I forgive you all, as you should forgive me. There will be no peace in hell. I have done many bad things in my life and I will have plenty of time in an eternity of damnation to recall them. I’ve murdered men, women and children, and things much more wicked than that besides.”’
‘Did he really say that?’
‘Lizzy said she thought he was drunk. He was slurring his words. I kept waiting for him to notice me in the crowd. To give me a wave. Or just to look at me.’
‘And did he not?’
‘There were so many people there. It couldn’t have been easy.’
I looked over to the gallows once more, Cathy. The condemned men were at their stations now and the hangman was tightening the rope around the neck of the last one. I pulled Emily away.
‘Come on, you don’t need to see this.’
I took her by the hand and we wove through the throng, being jostled as we did so. It was not a pretty gathering and I was glad when we got to where it was thinning and were able to leave it behind. We soon came to the mill and the quay as the man had directed. I looked around to make sure we hadn’t been followed. The coast was clear. By the quay there was a large flat barge loaded with coal. It was being pulled by a horse. A man jumped off the barge and tied a rope that was attached to it around a thick wooden post. The horse came to a standstill and bent down to chew the grass by its feet. We heard a cheer in the distance, emanating from the direction of the gallows, and I guessed the men had made the drop and were now dangling from a rope. The last dance of the damned.
I looked over to Emily. She had her face in her hands and her chest was heaving. I stopped for a minute to let her shake it out. I thought about what she must have seen. Her own father swinging by his neck. She tried to stifle her sobs, but I saw the wet drops fall from between her fingers onto the cobs below. I put my hand on her shoulder. She wrapped her arms around my waist and clung on, burying her face in my coat. Her body shook violently. I placed my hand on her head and stroked her hair. We stayed like that while it worked itself out of her. She pulled away. I wiped the wet from her cheeks.
‘Are you all right?’ I said.
She nodded.
‘Let’s go.’
A little further by the mill entrance were more boats. They contained a system of square boxes filled with coals. The boats were manoeuvred under a well, where they stopped and the rope fixed to the crane above was let down with hooks. At the end the boxes were fastened and then drawn up. The crane was powered by a waterwheel. Two men and a boy were employed in the unloading. They took no notice of us as we walked past them. I looked back one more time to make sure we were not being followed.
What I saw next was a scene of industry like no other. At the mouth of the canal was a door fastened on hinges at the bottom of the water, which stopped the water entering a trapdoor. Further on a large timber yard, well stowed with all sorts of wood and timbers for framing buildings and constructing boats, barges and all kinds of floating machines. Next to this was a stonemason’s yard, where vast piles of stones lay, ready squared for loading onto barges. The barges here were drawn by mules, until they came to a tunnel. What we saw next, Cathy, was quite ingenious. The towpath ran out at the tunnel, and instead a boy led the mules the long way, over and around the tunnel. Here is the clever part: at the point where the barge entered the tunnel, the men onboard lay on their backs and used their legs to power the barge through its length, making the boat look like a giant scurrying insect. The engineer had left just the right distance from the barge top to the ceiling of the tunnel so that the men were able to ‘walk’ on the brick ceiling of the tunnel until they appeared out of the other end to be reacquainted with their mules. In this way they were able to power the boats at the same rate as we had observed them being pulled by mule. We stopped for a while observing the scene, neither Emily nor I saying a word. After we had got a good eyeful we carried on our way.
It was easy walking by the side of the canal. We just had to avoid the horses and mules that were pulling the barges, and the canal workers. Most of the barges were loaded with coal. There were a few passenger boats as well, and interspersed were other barges carrying a variety of goods. The canal itself was an impressive structure, Cathy. You would have been impressed by this feat of engineering. I remember you telling me about the pyramids of Egypt. You said that’s where gypsies were from. You told me about these huge constructions built by the hands of hundreds of slaves. You showed me some drawings in one of Mr Earnshaw’s books. You would be equally impressed by this canal though, I assure you. It was dug out of the earth, and completely level, so that the water didn’t flow like a river but sat like the water in a bath. The canal itself snaked through the landscape, remaining level at all times. It had taken some toil to dig it out, no doubt. Although not the duke’s toil, I suspect. Hundreds of men with pickaxe and spade. Sweat and blood. It had a peculiar smell. A metallic tang. The walls were constructed of large flat stones, with heavy top stones to finish the job.
‘Here,’ I said, and handed Emily one of the apples. I bit into the other one.
It was pleasant going on this towpath, no uneven tussock grass or boggy peat moor. The land was level and it was good to walk by the water, with the occasional flash of orange and bright blue of a kingfisher. We saw one dive for fish, then re-emerge, like a flame from a fire pit.
I tried again with Emily.
‘We’ll need lodgings when we get to Liverpool. We’ll need money. We’ll have to work the graves.’
She didn’t respond.
‘I’ve heard it’s a very splendid town. More splendid even than Manchester. Have you ever been?’
She shook her head.
‘We’ll have to go to the docks.’
‘Why?’
‘The voice that spoke through you, my mother, she said that I came to England on a ship. Do you remember the voice?’
‘No.’
I wondered whether I should get Emily to do her conjuring again. I needed more answers. But the experience had spooked me badly and in truth I was a little afraid of speaking with the dead. I was fearful that they would drag me across, into their world. And I wasn’t ready to go there yet. Or that they would come across and possess me in this world, so that I would look like me but inside be the soul of another. And I hadn’t yet worked out who I was.
‘Do you remember? When you conjure the dead?’
‘No. It’s like going to sleep.’
Had I travelled on a ship? I tried to recollect. I used the constant river traffic and the water to trigger buried memories.
‘I remember a dark confined space,’ I said.
Could this have been on-board a ship? It wasn’t clear in my mind. I just had a memory of the light from a small window and the sun pouring in. The heat on my skin. Motes of dust sparkling. My shirt wet with sweat.
I remember being under a table, or was it a chair? The room was full of men. But I could only see their feet and their legs. The air was filled with clatter. There was muck on the floor, mashed-up peas and orange peel. The man with the black teeth was reaching for me, with a knife in his other hand.
It was something of a shock to remember it so clearly. But at the same time I questioned these new memories. Had I really remembered that, or was it the voice that had come from Emily’s mouth? I wasn’t even convinced that the voice was that of my mother. It sounded older than I imagined her to be. But what age are the dead? And what do they sound like?
‘Where were you?’
I couldn’t recall anything else. There was nothing boatlike about the memory.
‘I remember being asleep on the knee of a woman,’ I said. ‘Only I wasn’t asleep. I was pretending to be asleep. People were talking about me. I remember opening one eye very slowly, leaving just a crack to peep from, and seeing a black cat staring back at me with pale green eyes. All around were shiny objects, reflecting and distorting the scene.’
But I couldn’t remember a boat. Or even a deck. I remembered walking barefoot on a stone floor and stepping on a pin, but holding back a cry of pain. I remembered climbing up a wooden staircase and avoiding the third stair because I knew that it would creak. How old was I? I remembered watching a boy and girl play with a ball. It was a sunny day and they were catching the ball and running across a field. I remembered wanting to join in the game.
‘I remember a boy throwing a ball into the tree and the ball getting stuck. It was a red ball.’
‘Then what happened?’
‘I don’t remember. I don’t remember being on a boat. Trees, fences, stone walls, high buildings. There were four-wheeled carts and horses. Men loading and offloading. There were ships of every size. Sails flapping in the wind. Rowing boats. Dogs. Fishing nets. I was taken to a room. About six-foot square. The floor, ceiling and walls were all stone. There was an iron gate.’
‘And?’
‘I don’t remember. I remember sleeping on the streets. I had nothing to eat. I had to fight the gulls for scraps. I had to chase the rats from the bins. That’s when I must have come across Mr Earnshaw.’
‘Your adopted father?’
‘Yes. Or rather he came across me. He said he’d take me home with him. He said he’d look after me.’
‘And did he?’
‘He kept his promise. Things weren’t so bad at first. His wife didn’t like me. Mrs Earnshaw. She said she didn’t trust me. Didn’t know where I was from. But Mr Earnshaw persuaded her to look after me all the same. I remember one night, I couldn’t sleep. I could hear raised voices in the kitchen. I crept from my sleeping place and put my ear to the door. It was Mr and Mrs Earnshaw. They were talking about me. “Why have you brought this filthy creature into my home?” “I felt sorry for him. He had no one.” “You can’t bring every waif and stray back with you. You silly man.” I must have been a force of conflict between them, which they never truly reconciled. A few years after I arrived, Mrs Earnshaw got a fever. I used to watch Mr Earnshaw mop her brow. I’d fetch fresh water for him. He doted over her. Still, she never recovered from that fever. When she died Mr Earnshaw changed. He withdrew, became more distant. He’d spend hours in his study reading his books. Long into the night he’d sit, with just a candle for company. Or else he’d stay by the fire and stare into the flames. But he never neglected me. When Mr Earnshaw was around, he kept Hindley in check. He even sent him away so that he couldn’t beat me. But when Mr Earnshaw died, it all changed again. Hindley came back and he seemed to blame me. Not just for being sent away, but for the death of his father. Somehow, in his warped mind, I was responsible.’
‘This Hindley sounds like a right cock.’
After a time the barges thinned out and working men became scarcer. The sun rose high and I was grateful for such clement weather. There were two puttocks above us and I watched them soar upwards. Emily came out of herself properly and started to chat again beside me; her talk helped to pass the time.
‘How did they know we had come to Manchester?’
‘Who?’
‘Those men. Dick Taylor and that other knob.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Someone must have told them.’
‘How? We didn’t tell anyone where we were going.’
‘Well, how did they know then? They’re not bright enough to work it out for themselves. Do you think it was that old woman we passed on the moor, the one with the stick?’
‘I suspect they just guessed. Perhaps they’d tried other places first. They got lucky, that’s all.’
‘But they came to the inn where we were staying. A minute later we’d have been mincemeat.’
‘Just a coincidence, I’m sure. Don’t worry about it. They won’t get lucky again.’
I wondered how many inns they’d tried. Was ours the first or had they tried a great many others?
‘Are you sure?’ Emily said.
In attempting to convince Emily, I was in fact attempting to convince myself of this. In truth, Cathy, I was deeply perturbed to consider that the men had tracked us to the inn.
‘There are as many people in Manchester as there are rats in the sewers. There are inns on every corner, gin bars in every cellar, a dark skin for every half a dozen pale skins. That will keep them busy for a while. They’ll have travelled by horseback no doubt, so have that advantage. But we have the advantage of being only two in a world of millions. Like looking for a needle in a haystack.’
‘But it’s easy to find a needle in a haystack,’ the girl said.
‘How so?’
‘You set fire to it, and all that is left is the needle.’
‘Well, let them set fire to the whole of England, they’ll still not find us.’
We came to an area with lots of boats toing and froing. You should have seen those boats go, Cathy. Faster than any horse and carriage, each one floating through the water like a swan. The surface of the water was a mirror of the sky, fringed with trees and green foliage. Occasionally we would come across a hump-backed bridge and the arch would complete itself in the glass of the canal, forming a perfect circle. There were herons perched on the edge of the bank, still as statues, their bills like spears waiting to stab a fish. Although there couldn’t have been many fish in this water, I didn’t think. But I was wrong. As I looked across the surface I saw that there were circles forming on the film of the water, as the fish came up for insects. Life seeps into the cracks everywhere you look.
‘It’s all right this, in’t it?’ Emily said.
‘How far do you reckon?’
‘I don’t know, we just need to head west.’
‘Does this canal go all the way?’
‘As far as I know.’
‘Never been here before, but I remember my dad talking about it. There was a load of blabber about whether they’d do it or not. It cost a lot of money.’
‘Made a lot of money too, I expect. One thing you can be sure about, if some rich bastard is prepared to splash out, he’s doing it because he knows he’ll make a shitload of bunce.’
‘My dad talked about working it.’
‘Robbing?’
‘He preferred to call it redistribution. He looked into it but decided it were too risky. Too many people about.’
There were still sections that were incomplete and navvies grafted on the banks either side, shifting the stones into place. Mostly Irish by the sound of it. The sky was as grey as ton slate and I wondered if it would rain again. My coat had only just got fully dry and I didn’t fancy another soaking. The rain made the walking twice as hard. There was a mist over yonder but nothing significant. I recalled one time with you when we’d been up on Penistone Hill and a witch’s mist had set in, thick white smoke, rolling and settling beneath our feet. It had looked like it was solid, like we could walk straight across it to Crow Hill. You’d told me the tale of King Arthur’s father, Uther Pendragon, who had disguised himself as his enemy and slept with his enemy’s wife at Tintagel. Where she had conceived of Arthur. How he had walked across the mists that Merlin had magicked into being. Deceit and treachery never far away. I told Emily the tale to pass the time.
‘My dad could work magic,’ she said.
‘Could he? What sort?’
‘You name it. He could make things disappear off the face of the earth.’
‘Really?’
‘That’s what the magistrate said.’
As we came out of Manchester there wasn’t much to look at. The landscape was flat. By the side of the canal was bramble and blackberry. Linnets picked at the berries. Every now and again we would have to stop to make way for the horses pulling the boats. They were harnessed with thick ropes and they dragged the cargo along the length of the canal. The towpath was wide, but the horses were big, muscular beasts, bigger than the horses around Wuthering Heights. Occasionally we saw a boat being pulled by a pair of donkeys, and often, smaller boats being dragged by mules. The snaking of the canal, I found out later, was to avoid locks. Locks being one of the main reasons for the slowing of traffic. It made our journey more interesting as the path curved and our view in front continually changed. Some of the barge workers stared at us. I supposed we made an odd couple.
‘How will you go about it?’ Emily asked. ‘Finding out who you are?’
I’d given this a great deal of thought, but knew not the first thing of how to go about tracing my roots.
‘Go to the docks. Ask around. Do a bit of digging. Someone must know something.’
‘You say that, William Lee, but it’s been nine years. That’s almost as long as I’ve been on this earth. A lot changes in nine years. There might be no one left with a memory for those days, for all you know. In any case, suppose you do find out, what will you do then?’
‘I don’t know. It’s a hell of a thing. Finding out who you are, where you’re from.’
The towpath ran out as we came to a sign: ‘Throstle Nest Bridge’. We had to cross to pick up the towpath on the other side. Boats queued while the horses were transferred over. I wondered why they’d designed it this way. The next thing I saw were concentric circles forming on the surface of the water, spreading outwards and morphing into each other. Then I felt the cold drops of water on my neck.
‘Oh fuck, it’s raining again,’ Emily said.
I looked up; the sky didn’t appear too threatening and I hoped it would pass over.
‘The one thing about my dad,’ Emily said, ‘he might have been a highwayman, but he never lied to me.’
‘Well, you’re lucky there,’ I said.
‘Why do you think he brought you back?’ she asked. ‘Mr Earnshaw, I mean.’
‘That’s one of the things I want to find out. It doesn’t make a great deal of sense right now. But I intend to make some sense of it.’
Bright yellow lucifer grew tall along the towpath where the canal forked. One side going left, the other side right. We stopped.
‘Which way?’ Emily said.
The clouds were thickening and the rain was now siling. The film of the canal water was a chaos of creases. Everything was sopping. We looked for a passing boat to ask for directions, and as we waited we picked the plumpest blackberries from the nearby bush. After a short time, a boat approached. The bargeman told us to go right. We crossed over another bridge and joined the yonderly towpath. I still had a handful of blackberries. I ate them as I walked. They were sweet.
The canal straightened out for a time and the barges thinned by. There wasn’t much to see. A crow. A wagtail. Trees. Grass. Canal. The plash of rain.
‘This is boring,’ Emily said.
‘Can’t win with you. One minute you’re moaning because it’s hard going. The next minute you’re moaning because it’s too easy.’
‘I’m getting wet.’
‘No kidding.’
‘I’m fucking soaked.’
‘Yep.’
‘Tell me more about this Hindley,’ she said.
I told her of another time when I had inadvertently saved his son’s life. I don’t know where you were, Cathy, probably at the Lintons’ with your feet under their table.
‘Hindley was drunk and carrying on,’ I said. ‘He was standing on the stairs and he held his son with one hand and a bottle of brandy with the other. He dangled Hareton over the balcony.’
‘What was he trying to do?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps in his drunken madness he thought his child would enjoy the excitement of being on the precipice. I happened to be walking past as he dropped the brat, either by accident or by design, I don’t know which, but I remember catching it in my arms. It was instinct. I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I’d let it fall to the floor and dash its brains out. But it was good to see the brat scream when Hindley tried to make amends and stroke its cheek. It hated Hindley almost as much as I did. And it gave me solace to know that. Nelly told me later how Hindley had held a knife to her throat when he had caught her hiding the brat. He had grabbed it and threatened to break its neck. She had watched him carry the brat upstairs and hold it over the banister.’
‘I’m glad that you saved the brat’s life,’ Emily said.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Gives you something else to beat Hindley with.’
As we walked by the water, I thought about this. It made a great deal of sense.
We came across a flock of Jack Nicker. A dozen or so, feasting on thistle seeds. They flashed gold and red, the only colour for miles around. Everything else was grey and the falling rain was like lead pellets. All this time I kept my eye on the way we’d been, looking back furtively so as not to alarm Emily, but I made sure we were not followed.
‘I’ve got seeds stuck between my teeth,’ Emily said.
So had I. We stopped and I picked two stems of woody grass and fashioned them into toothpicks.
‘I like crunching the seeds between my teeth,’ Emily said. ‘You get a sort of satisfaction, destroying things.’
‘I suppose you do.’