The Wolf of Whindale, page 4
Lead-mining was seasonal work, and if you’d got snowed in you’d bide at home and work on your spar box. Most of us kept a few sheep and all, or maybes a cow; if you’re a miner, you’ll never can afford to higgle a pig – and you’ll not can grow much in the way of crops in the uplands either, as you’re that high up and the soil’s that poor and the winter’s that long. Mind, some folk tried to make a go of it, all the same – but all of us would tinker with our spar boxes while we waited for the thaw. Some fellows would angle little mirrors inside to bounce the light about or trick the eye into believing impossible perspectives, while others would place birds’ eggs here and there, or even stuffed birds or other curiosities. For instance, though I never saw it and cannot vouch for it, they reckon that, after Mr Muffin’s daughter died, he put the clothes-peg figurines from her doll’s house in his spar box.
Not having had the benefit of a donation from my dad, my own spar box consisted only of my own gleanings and the things I’d bought. Now, some fellows had opinions on whether a box should properly contain bought stones, but then some fellows hold opinions on every bit thing. My scheme was to have stones arranged around the floor and the walls and the ceiling of the box, not random as in nature, but organised so as to represent the passing year. The idea had come to me in one of my queer fits, but I never let on about that, and generally stayed tight-lipped about the vivid dreams I had when the fit was on me. I started the box with a piece of red sard, maybes because it put me in mind of holly berries; and then yellow chrysolite, for mistletoe berries, or else for the candle flames that were also in season; and then sea-green beryl, because the only time I’ve seen the sea was one time in spring when I was a bairn, and I thought, then, that it must have been frozen solid in the winter and only recently thawed; and after that a cluster of fire garnets; after that, I’d wanted a carbuncle, but never found one to my liking, so I placed a blood-alley marble at that point in the construction; and after that came a beautiful piece of lapis lazuli, deep blue as the sky in summer can be; and then white carnelian, which must have been for the clouds; and yellow cairngorm for the sun; and the banded red agate that followed was bonny as a sunset; amethyst was next, which was said to be a charm against getting caught in drink; and then yellow serpentine, for the yellow berries of the ivy, like as not; and then clear green jasper; and finally I closed the loop with dark green malachite, with both greens for the ivy leaves, no doubt. And I set each of these bought stones in amongst the brightest bits of galena and spar that I’d come across. And somewhere along the ways I’d acquired a lump of amber, and I stuck that in right beside the green malachite, where it made a nice contrast, so I reckoned.
The quiet was broken again. Says Mop, ‘Jenny was boasting today that William Lamb has gone to Spain.’
Says Mam, ‘Spain! That lad’s so daft he couldn’t make his way to Emble and back.’
Says Mop, ‘Oh, but he has! They reckon he’s been and got the boat from Oldshield last week. They don’t expect to hear from him now for two month, but, once he’s settled and that, his brother Michael’s going to join him …’
Says Mam, with finality, ‘If you go to Spain, you’ll have to can speak Spanish.’
Of course, we’d all heard about Spain, where the ore contained more silver than lead, and just rolled off the mountains into your hand, and the lasses were all bonny, and bottles of beer grew on every tree. Many were the miners who nurtured a secret plan to up and sail for the Sierra Almagrera, but the few who actually took such a trip tended to do so out of debt, shame or desperation, rather than out of hope. Except, it seemed, for William Lamb; and the idea of him packing his knapsack and setting out on the road from Whindale Town with a true determination to cross the sea made me feel – well, I couldn’t put a name to what I felt. It wasn’t as simple as envy, nor as mean as jealousy.
I tried to block out the chatter, and focus on arranging my spar box. In the centre, I’d had an idea to construct a free-standing bull, which I’d model out of wire first, and then fix stones on top. But over time this plan changed, and I set about making just a bull’s head, consisting of firestone in the main, but with eyes of jasper, and horns encrusted with quartz, and ears of schorl, and a nose of jet, and cheeks of black jack, and a face and forehead of red sard, and all crowned with a poll of fool’s gold.
Had you asked me, then, where I got the idea for all of this, I’d have said I didn’t know. Or I’d have said that it simply occurred to me to make a bull’s head, the fancy of a moment that I’d caught at on a whim, like any other affectation that a young man might grow into. But the truth was the idea for the bull came to me by way of a seizure-vision, just as the stone calendar scheme had. Considered in the light of what came after, I’m not so sure there wasn’t more than chance at work.
Mop had given up trying to speak of William Lamb, and was trying a different tack. ‘They reckon there’s a lady preacher going to be visiting Whindale next week.’
Says Mam with a snort, ‘The Lord help us!’
Says Mop, ‘There’s lots of lady preachers these days. Reverend Wrather said—’
At this point, Mam heaved a sigh that communicated a great deal concerning her church’s allowance of itinerant female preachers, and the limits of Mam’s patience with such newfangledness.
Says Mop, very quietly, ‘Well, I was thinking of attending, to see what’s what.’
Says Mam, ‘You’re needed here. Why do you want to be gallivanting off to hear some …’ Here Mam paused, and regarded Mop, very like a poacher taking aim at a plover, and then, as Mam was sometimes able to do, she read Mop’s mind. ‘You’re not thinking of trying your hand at it, are you, Mary?’
Mop said nowt, and she said it very guiltily.
Mam at once intuited that absolute interdiction might not be the most effective method in banishing this trace of ambition in her daughter, and said, ‘Oh, Mary, don’t be so silly. You could never preach to a room with your quiet little mousy voice – you’d be scared stiff! You cannot put God in their hearts if folk cannot hear a word you’re saying. “Eh? What? Speak up, lass!”’
This poisonous counsel continued to drip for a while longer, but I fixed my attention more resolutely on my spar box, and tried to hold off the disturbing possibility that Mop might conceivably escape Mam’s clutches afore I did.
It was some time the following week when word went round the village green that something was up, and that blacklegs were being brought in, which is to say miners from Wales who cared not a feather for our disputes and our strikes, and who would work for the mine owner and render our action ineffectual. The next morning, we all turned out at the picket line at the daisy – the daisy is what we called the entrance to the grove, it being the day’s eye to a fellow underground – only to find that a gang of seven or eight candymen were already there waiting for us.
Now, the candymen were loathed as bad as scabs. They were bum-bailiffs, you see, and if a fellow on strike wound up owing over much back-rent, the mine owner, who was also your landlord, would send in a candyman or three to carry out the notice of ejectment. They were so called because, when they weren’t running honest fellows out of house and home, they could be found ganging door-to-door selling sweeties to bairns, or cadging on Oldshield’s high street, crying ‘Dandy-candy, three sticks a penny!’ – such being the only work they could find, apart from as cracksmen and fences. It was said that some of them had once been soldiers and had fought in Kabul, either surviving the massacre of forty-two or as part of the army of retribution that was sent in consequence, and it made sense to think of them having heard the cannon rattle too long while they saw their fellows being butchered in the desert, or while they themselves fell to butchering … yes, it made sense to imagine them having escaped that, with their brains turned brutish and their hearts fed on horrors. They wore their candyman outfit of an apron and a top hat – to hide their jailcrop, like as not – as if it were a uniform.
I will not attempt to replicate the many oaths and insults with which they larded their every utterance, but they enquired as to our purpose in being there, seeing as we were a parcel of workshy fellows.
I will likewise not reproduce the means by which we coloured our riposte, but we asked them what their purpose was, for we had no need of sweeties.
They assured us that they had no sweeties for us today, only brass knuckles and billy clubs, but if we came again the morn-morn, we’d get to see their rifles.
We said we’d go where we pleased, and they could bring a cannon if they liked, we didn’t give a tinker’s wank.
The ensuing silence was first heightened and then broken by the distant sound of labouring wheels and the steady rhythm of horses, and presently a cart appeared over the rim of Tod Law.
‘Here come the blacklegs!’ bellowed George Henry, superfluously.
Some of the candymen were sneering now – the nearest their faces could manage to a smile, I thought.
And then, like that, the fight was on. Excepting Heavens-Evans, who had by then left us in disgust at our big swears, we acquitted ourselves with valour; but we were no match for the candymen, who had all of their military training and ten lifetimes’ worth of brutality stored up inside of them. They tore into us like berserkers. Soon Mr Crow was lying curled up, covering his face, and I heard later that they had broken his cheekbone, and he never regained the sight in his left eye. Within minutes, the skirmish had been lost and won, and the candymen – albeit newly possessed of some black eyes and bloodied noses – had retaken possession of the daisy.
The cart pulled up at last. The blacklegs had seen enough of the fighting to know that they would have safe passage into the grove, but also that they’d do well not to hang about too long or speak to any of us. They piled out, careful to remain herded together as far as possible. We watched them warily. I poked a finger in my mouth and spat out a tooth that had been loosened. I felt strange and light-headed, as after one of my turns. I had of course received some blows to the head.
Now, what I did next requires some sort of introduction, or explanation, but I’m at a loss as to what I could offer you in that way. It was a thing that changed everything for me thereafter, as I would have anticipated had I given the matter a moment’s forethought; but I did not. The idea simply came to me – or, rather, I found it waiting for me in my mind, like a forgotten key, long polished in my pocket. I could not then, and I cannot today, give a clear account of my motives. When I thought about it afterwards, I’d offer myself reasons, but – and I knew this, even as I was telling myself them! – in doing so I was merely speculating and imputing, as I might do had I seen a stranger do what I did. And I might even say that I became a stranger unto myself in that moment; in my mind’s eye, when I recollect it, I always see myself from a distance of about ten feet or so, and always from a vantage point high in the air above me: I can see the look of shock and disgust and rage on the faces of my workmates, whereas in reality I didn’t see this, for I didn’t look back once I’d commenced walking. Today I can hear the things my workmates are calling me, whereas I did not, at the time.
I crossed the picket line.
The blacklegs were gathered at the daisy, jabbering in their backwards language. They were more than a little surprised to see me join them, and must have been half expecting a trick of some sort, and the candymen formed a wall in front of me, letting their arms hang heavy at their sides, as fellows do when they sniff there’s a fight in the offing. What was my idea, they wished to know. I told them that it was no trick or foolery, and that I had merely differentiated myself from my fellows. This was a fearful moment for me, caught as I was betwixt my old life, in which I was as one defunct and exanimate, and a new life into which I was yet to be born. I was balanced on the still fulcrum of the machinery in spin about me. I hardly breathed as I looked into the head candyman’s grey eyes, waiting to see if he would let me pass.
With regard to my workmates-as-was, they had – as if awakening from a troubled dream and remembering the reason they went to bed in such a twisty fettle – become suddenly animated, waving their arms and making gestures, and bequeathing me a variety of scatological epithets. Things was heating up again, and my position was looking a dubious one, but then there was movement, and the blacklegs and the candymen closed around me, protective-wise, and then, rather than test the stand-off too long, the blacklegs and I all scarpered through the daisy, and were soon blinking in the dark again.
3 The Scab and the Iron Devil
Having me with them convenienced the blacklegs a good deal, and they let me lead the way. Soon enough, we reached the face, where I was partnered with a hulking great fellow who stood about a foot taller than I. He always addressed me in good English, and soon established himself the spokesman for his group. I never knew precisely how much English the others had, for they spoke it as little as possible and with the thickest accent imaginable. With them, I soon discovered, there would be little in the way of a sharing of terms, which was a shame, as it’s one of the few pleasures afforded a miner. For many years, the trade had drawn folk from all over these islands – and from beyond, too – and we’d been thrown together underground, hardly able to make sense of each other until, needs must, we enlightened one another as to whether the ore required ragging or cobbing or spalling, or whatever. We had to agree on such terms. You had to be sure that a fellow knew gubbin from grundy. But these blacklegs were sullen bastards in the main, excepting my partner, who seemed a good sort.
We asked each other’s name, and I told him mine, and he said he was Aneurin Derfel.
‘An Iron Devil! That’s a good one. A very good one. At least you’re not called William Williams or William Jones like the rest of your lot. And can none of them speak English?’
‘I have a turn for the Saxon; they have not. Why did you join us, Caleb? If you don’t mind me asking, that is. What made you cross the line?’
I felt the anger blow through me like a sudden wind. It’s exasperating for a young man to be asked about his behaviour when he doesn’t know the answer. I told him that I had my reasons, and said it in such a tone as to close the matter, but he affected not to understand this, and ceased his work to rest on his pick, giving me a more respectful hearing. In as peremptory a way as I could manage, I told him – oh, I don’t know now what I told him. Anything, something. I said that I did it in spirit of contradiction. That I did it because all the arguments tended one way, and that it had to fall to a body to oppose the general drift. That we should not all behave like sheep; that Playfair was not a bellwether. The account I gave of myself disgraced the universe. And all this time the Iron Devil listened to my dreary ramblings with that same polite, lending-an-ear expression, until I was all but furious at my own inarticulacy.
Now, I will tell you something about Aneurin that, if events hadn’t gone the way they did, I suppose I might keep to myself: he had the most pleasant and soothing voice you can imagine. Very low it was, very calming and reassuring, and these are qualities greatly to be valued in our line of work, which can be so maddeningly frustrating and precarious. I don’t think I ever heard him utter a word without I felt the benefit of that voice, which seemed steadier at times than the rock we were quarrying.
And so the work continued, albeit with surly workmates who said little in my hearing and less in my understanding. But I knew that this would change, on account of me being so capable of attracting words and having them stick to me, and I was right: within a day or two, I was learning phrases such as llais craic yn syrthiaw, which meant ‘the voice of a falling rock’, which is to say the sound of blasting in a mine. And the Iron Devil said his home was in pentref y dwr, which meant ‘the village of the water’, for it had a river running through it, and he accounted it very pretty. It was to be found in an area called bôn-y-maen, which meant ‘base of the stone’.
I said that every village within fifty miles of Windy Top had a right to be called pentref y dwr, due to the myriad waterways and forces, as we called them, that wend through the uplands and that all but constituted the region, rendering our human dwellings so many Neptunian follies … though, I said, I might better call them Coventinian follies, after the water goddess folk hereabouts used to believe in, in the long-ago. Windy Top, for example, was a wet mine – which was good, as you’ll die the sooner in a dry one, on account of the dust and that.
At this time I noticed a few of the other fellows scowling over at us, and when I asked the Iron Devil why, he said,
‘They do not like that a Saxon has Welsh words in his mouth.’
‘Then I consider them to be cenfigenus fellows, to a man.’
‘Ah, you mustn’t hold it against them too far, Caleb. They were told, as I was, that a Saxon can never speak Welsh, his tongue being too short.’
‘Aye, but I reckon you were too wise to believe all you were told.’
‘Various are the people who believe the old tales,’ he replied, and then he turned the conversation round to the rumoured wolf, for he and the other blacklegs had heard tell of it, and of Mr Playfair’s body having been found all chewed up.
I sketched for him the positions on the matter.
‘And the folk here believe there’s a wolf on the loose, do they?’ he asked, with that air of regretful kindliness he so often had.
‘Folk round here, like folk elsewhere, believe and disbelieve all manner of things, as you have said. Like the Laidly Wyrm of Seven Springs, or the Hinkley Brag, which is a goblin shape-shifter that likes to appear as a horse …’
‘And what about yourself? Do you think there’s a Whindale Wolf?’
‘For myself … well, as I see it, it’s like this. There’s been talk of a wolf going as far back as anyone can remember. My nana told me that her nana had told her that she’d seen it. And so forth. Now, that sort of thing makes some folk the more inclined to believe, but it makes me the less inclined, because it would mean that there’s been a wolf pack big enough to breed and sustain itself living out here for a number of generations, but it’s somehow evaded capture all this long while. And that defies belief. If it was a case of a single wolf, or big dog of some sort, living out there for a year or two, well, that would be one thing. But I cannot believe in a wolf pack. Not out here anyway, when there’s Eshwood Forest to the north-east, which would afford it more in the way of food and shelter. And it seems that our wolf has only recently developed a taste for human flesh – now why should this be?’
