The Killing Man Read online

  BOOK ONE

  The Killing Man

  ANDREW WAREHAM

  Digital edition published in 2018 by

  The Electronic Book Company

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  The Killing Man

  Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Wareham

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents:

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  By the Same Author

  Introduction

  The Killing Man: Jacobite rebels engage in a murderous looting spree while fleeing back to Scotland. Young Sam, the son of a poor farmer, is forced to take drastic measures when their actions leave the family facing starvation. Later, Sam joins the local yeomanry who ride out in search of retreating rebels. His experiences make Sam hardened to killing and determined not to face poverty again. After the yeomanry is disbanded, Sam strikes up an unlikely friendship with Josie, a landowner’s daughter, as he sets out to make money. He finds the illegal distilling of gin highly profitable and his ability to ruthlessly deal with rivals hands him control of the local trade.

  Chapter One

  Author’s Note: I have written and punctuated The Killing Man in a style reflecting English usage in novels of the Georgian period, when typically, sentences were much longer than they are in modern English. Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings, punctuation and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English.

  The Killing Man

  Rabbiting was a messy, smelly sort of business, but the conies were still fat even in December and fresh meat was a luxury at any time of the year. Added to the winter diet of porridge and bread and turnips and dried pease, with a sliver of cheese or bacon to liven one of the day’s meals, a rabbit was cheered by the whole household. The nasty business of gutting and cleaning the carcasses was the price to be paid for eating fresh meat once in a week.

  Sam worked quickly and tidily, removing the skin with no extra tears or holes so that his mother could cure it and put it to use, probably trimming the neck of one of the girl’s dresses, warm for the winter. He whistled quietly as he worked, head bent over the task, long black hair falling forward over his face. He was a handsome boy, his mother said, but he suspected that she would believe that of any son of hers, irrespective of the reality – he was content that he was not ugly or covered in spots, or open-mouthed and dripping-nosed like some he had seen. From the little he had seen of his own face in a cottage without mirrors he did not think the girls would run away from his blue eyes in horror – in fact, he knew very well that his friend Simon’s sister was inclined to do the exact opposite. He grinned and wondered if he might not get her behind the haystack again before the really cold weather put an end to such activities; they said that love warmed the heart, but frostbite was not recommended for other parts.

  With both parents living, and two elder brothers and one younger, and a pair of sisters as well, Sam’s weekly forays onto the moorside were welcome indeed. It was poaching, strictly speaking, as his father had no game rights, but Squire turned the blind eye while the deer remained untouched. Sam had been tempted by a tender doe more than once but had kept his head and had not lifted the old crossbow to such a dangerous titbit.

  The whole of the Hucklow estate knew that the family had inherited the ancient poaching bow that had been used by at least four generations of the Thwaites – Heythornethwaite, the proper name, but that was too grand for yeomen farmers. Neither of Sam’s elder brothers could hit a barn wall with the bow, and his father’s arms and shoulders were too stiff now, but Sam was good with the little bow – if he could see anything within fifty yards, he could hit it. But it did mean that a crossbow bolt found in the wrong place would bring immediate retribution – there were only two working bows in the parish, so Sam was forced to be sensible, which came hard to a young man.

  Once every week after harvest, if it was dry, he would go out with Jim and Simon and Bob, lads of his own age, sixteen years or so, more or less – they were all uncertain of their birthdays, or years for what they were worth. Clocks and calendars did not matter in their lives; their families possessed neither. Jim had a bow of his own, was almost as good a shot as Sam and better at actually whittling crossbow bolts to replace the occasional loss. Simon and Bob could both throw stones hard and straight. Almost always they would come back to the farm cottages with a rabbit apiece at their belts. It would have been greedy to take more, and the high moorland did not support a great population of the animals, so it might have been short-sighted to deplete their numbers too far.

  Hunting on the moors required more patience than skill. The thin turf was open, apart from outcroppings of the hard, grey rock, sometimes in isolated boulders, often in long spurs running downhill and anything from one to six feet high. To take a rabbit demanded long waiting in the cover of the rocks, overlooking a spot where the droppings showed rabbits congregated, and then accurate shooting, or stone throwing, by all four boys. They had learned the trade over many years, had made themselves valuable providers to their homes, always on the edge of hunger and valuing their contribution. Families without a boy or man to pick up a cony ran short of meat and their children grew up less robust, more likely to fall to the diseases of the poor, fewer of them reaching adulthood.

  They had killed their four, were sat in their normal place in the sun, sheltered by a clump of berry bushes, Bob, who had not hit anything that day, using his belt knife to lift a section of the thin turf to bury the guts, as they did unfailingly, believing that to be the reason the bushes grew strongly just in that spot. The girls had taken the year’s berries already and they had been dried for a bit of sweetness on the porridge later in the winter season.

  “Sam! Sam! Don’t ‘ee come down the hill, Sam! Soldiers, Sam, what ‘ave stole the beasts, Sam. All of they!”

  The elder of Sam’s sisters came running up the moorside, dragging the little one behind her.

  “The bloody lot?”

  They had three cows and two pigs at the farm, relied on them. The piglets paid for all they bought at market and the cows produced cheese to live on and the calves to sell to pay the rent on their land. Without the animals, they could not survive.

  “All of they, Sam. Mam sent us girls runnin’ when she saw they comin’ up the road from Hucklow, from the village. They ain’t redcoats, but they got they muskets and swords an’ all.”

  Sam had listened at the market earlier in the month, had heard talk of an army marching south out of Scotland – wherever that was – to put a new king on the throne in London, which was miles away, days of travel, and noth
ing to do with them.

  “It’s them other buggers what they talked of, Mary. Did they do anything else?”

  Mary shook her head. She had heard no shots, seen no fires.

  “Did they break into the cottage?”

  She did not think so.

  There was a chance that the soldiers had not stolen all of their food.

  “Was there many of the thievin’ sods?”

  “Scores of they, and with carts as well. They was goin’ up to Squire’s.”

  That meant that they would empty the barns at the Manor – the sacks of flour and oats stolen away – no hope for help there, they would have nothing left.

  “Stay ‘ere while I goes and ‘as a looksee.”

  Sam watched as their beasts were driven down the track towards the lowlands, off of the High Peak and towards the road to Derby, which he had never visited, twenty miles being far foreign. The soldiers were dressed in lengths of drab brown cloth wrapped round them – outlandish, bare-legged creatures, but carrying guns and swords, as Mary had said, and far too many to be fought, or argued with. Sam watched the killers of his family walk away and could do nothing; they would starve by the end of winter, all because somebody in Scotland wanted a new king in London, and neither place had anything to do with him.

  He led the little group downhill a couple of hours later, the three boys angling away to their own family farms, hoping for better luck, knowing they would discover nothing good.

  The cottage remained unharmed, his parents and brothers sat silent inside.

  “Did they get the stuff from in here, Da?”

  “Never touched it, Sam. Said they was takin’ meat, nothing else. Said they’d pay. Give us a scrap o’ paper, look.”

  Sam had his letters, the only one of the family who had. The vicar, Squire’s brother, who had the church next to the Manor, had offered lessons to all of the children of the estate, but his brothers had not wanted to sit down to them, and the girls had no need for such, their parents had said, so Sam had been the only one to go the classes, when he could be spared from the fields. He took the paper from his father.

  “From the farmer Thwaites, three cows in milk and two swine. To be paid at His Majesty’s Treasury, on demand. God Bless King James, Third of that name.”

  There was a scribbled signature that Sam could not read.

  “Said we ‘ad to show it in London and they’d pay us, after they’d chased King George out, Sam.”

  It was worthless, Sam knew. They could never go to London, whatever happened to any king.

  “Perhaps Squire could go for us all, Da.”

  “Look.”

  His father pointed over the shoulder of the moorland, to the next sheltered dale where Squire’s manor house stood next to the road going northwest. There was smoke rising.

  “I did ‘ear muskets shootin’, Sam. I reckons as ‘ow Squire fought they, bloody old fool!”

  “I’ll go and look, Da.”

  “Not on your own, boy. I’m comin’, and you do as I bloody tells thee!”

  They walked slowly across the moorland and over the crest, unarmed, hands empty in case the soldiers saw them. There was thicker woodland rather than scrub bushes on the side of the dale, south-facing and sheltered, and they hid up there. The big house was in flames, roof already fallen in. The last of the soldiers’ wagons were pulling away from the barns, some of which were showing smoke behind them.

  “Canst see anybody, Da?”

  They were a quarter of a mile distant, too far to pick out any great detail.

  “Over by the stables, look, Sam. Laid out on the cobbles. Dead, I reckons.”

  Perhaps a dozen bodies, half in shadow as the afternoon sun fell low.

  “Some of they ain’t got no clothes on, Da!”

  “The maids and Mrs Squire and the daughters, I reckon, Sam. They soldiers ‘ad their way with them. Nothing for us to do, Sam. If they’s any left livin’ on Home Farm, or up at the Rectory, they can see to it.”

  Redcoats marched up the dale next morning, a company commanded by a captain. The vicar had sent his groom to the south, had found the loyal army, so they said.

  The four tenant farmers came together to listen to the soldiers.

  “The Scottish men are running north. They took what they could in the way of provender. They are scattered across the moors, so it seems, in small parties, some of them having stolen cattle to take back to their damned mountains. Brigands, no more, using this so-called king of theirs as an excuse to raid the richer lands of England.”

  The red coated officer seemed quite bitter, and utterly contemptuous of the Scottish.

  “Thieves and vagabonds, to a man, using the excuse of the Old King to steal from their betters to the south. And not just to steal, from all one hears!”

  “Begging your pardon, sir, but they did a lot more than steal at Squire’s, sir. Over the Hill, the Manor used to be. They burned it, sir, as well as what they did to the womenfolk afore they killed ‘em all.”

  Sam’s father was equally bitter that the Scottish men had behaved so wickedly.

  “They took all our beasts, sir. What we needs to live on!”

  “I am sorry, farmer. There is little I can do. My men are foot soldiers and cannot go chasing off after them. All I can say is that you might want to walk your hills and look for strays – they might have lost some, or left some lamed even, which you could bring back and put to your pens.”

  The redcoats marched off, onto the highroad leading to the north, leaving the men looking at each other for some sort of hope or idea. Sam spoke up.

  “You go up to Squire’s, Da, and see if anything what was in the barns didn’t catch fire. I’ll go with Jim and Simon and Bob and do what the soldier said, and walk up the tops of the moor and see if there’s owt in the dales. Might be. Better than sitting and doin’ nowt, Da.”

  “Take that old bow with thee, our Sam. Might be there’s a one of they bloody thieves left behind lame. Kill ‘em, if there is, but don’t you go risking your own bloody neck, boy!”

  Jim and Simon were willing to come along with Sam, but Bob’s dad thought it was too dangerous and told him to stay home. They took a blanket apiece, tied up across their backs, and the heel of a loaf between them, to have something to nibble on before sleep. The lads set out with strict orders not to go too far or stay out if it settled in to rain or even snow, which was well possible in early December.

  The three fathers were of the same mind, that the chances of anything happening were almost non-existent, but their boys had to do something, had to be able to tell themselves that they had tried when their younger brothers and sisters died of cold and hunger.

  “What do ‘ee reckon, Sam?”

  Sam was leader of the four – three on this occasion – always had been, why, they did not know. They listened to Sam.

  “Go up on ‘igh, Jim, and look out over on the Derby side. They Scottish blokes don’t know the moors, not like us. Might be they gets lost. Goin’ to be slow, whatever. If so be we sees just a few of they, drivin’ the beasts northwards, then we might see what we could do, like. Can’t go fighting no armies, but we might just knock down one or two.”

  They nodded, confident in their ability to deal with any number of mere Scottish men, especially with Sam telling them what to do.

  The moors rose a good thousand feet behind the Thwaites’ farm, steeply in places, walkable mostly. The boys had climbed there all their lives, hardly noticed the rise under their feet. They walked further to the east than they normally went for rabbits; the land here was rockier, covered in scree in places and with less in the way of edible grass and broad leaf vegetation everywhere. There was another dale just a couple of miles distant, out of their home area, belonging to a different manor which they would not, normally, trespass upon. The rabbits here belonged to another set of farmers, they expected, and they should not steal from them.

  They sat in the thin sun at the edge of the moor, where it fell away
in a sudden swoop, hundreds of feet down to the dale. They could just see movement, miles away, a mass of men and animals, presumably the invading army, and all heading more or less northward.

  “Sam! Do ‘ee see? Down close, look!”

  Jim pointed.

  They could pick out cattle, less than a mile distant, being turned up into another dale, a side valley seemingly leading off to the north.

  “Daft sods! That don’t go nowhere, do it, Sam?”

  “Goes up to the tops, Jim, after about five mile. It ain’t too steep, but it don’t lead nowhere, ain’t no road or track or nothing at the top. Looks like it goes north, but it don’t, just joins up to another one what comes back down to Squire’s road. Take them more nor ten miles in a circle to get two miles north on the other side of the top. They buggers don’t know where they are, do they? Got a bit of a beck in it, running down, so they thinks maybe it’s a proper pass through the moors, like.”

  “Can’t see ‘ow many they are, can you, Sam?”

  Simon thought he could see three men on ponies, and another pair sat on a cart. He counted more than a score of cattle.

  “Suppose we got close to they, Sam? You reckon you and Jim could knock two of they off them ‘osses? I could throw a rock or two at the other bloke while you cocked the old bow again. Them buggers on the cart ain’t goin’ to chase us – be slow, that will. Come back for them, so we can.”

  “Risky, Simon. They likely got muskets.” Sam thought he must act responsibly, point out the dangers.

  “No use if they can’t see us, Sam.”

  “I’ll give it a go, Sam.”

  Jim was keen, thought it would be a good game, getting their own back on them Scottish men. Sam was of the same mind, having made his demurrer for form’s sake.

  “Up towards the top, it gets narrow and the sides is a bit ‘igher, and they’s rocks and it don’t go straight. Goes round bends and corners, so it do.”