Down With All Kings
By Stephanie Bain
Historical Fiction
January, 1812
The moor concealed travellers who walked at night, sheltering them against the black land until they appeared at once at the line between the dark earth and the half-light, as if conjured out of air.
Out of the ash and elm that hemmed the open moor, they came. Dark pin prick bodies on the horizon, moving quickly across the scarp, then joining together; a gathering swarm. They came from Chapel Street, Croppers Brow, Beech Hill. And some folk from further off, beyond Barton Town—from Burscough, White Coppice, Hoscar Moss—to where the valley dipped at Platts End and the rain soaked into spongey moss until it could bear no more of the drench and fell away underfoot. Those who weren’t local stumbled, not knowing how the muddy runnels of moorland could pitch a man on his arse.
The girl came behind them, a little way off from the main crowd. Skirts mud-trudged and catching on dwarf gorse, pulling her down into the moor. She came wary, watching for signs of a dupe. She had held the date in her head; Tuesday, two weeks after the Feast of Epiphany and the midpoint of the coldest month of the year. And the place; the kestrel’s nesting oak, north of the five milestone to Manchester. She had carried these with her for days now, repeating them in time with the rhythmic clatter of the looms, the whispered date, time, and place chasing the shuttles down their tracks.
It had come to her accidentally; what the men were planning out on the moor. The details of the gathering had been carried by men passing each other round Chapel Street way with a nod and a glance toward the other’s feet. Right heel at the centre of the left foot and toe turned square—the sign marking a brother or sister. She’d caught their whispers after closing bell in The Gifford Arms, when she’d come to root out her red-nosed wayward da and hurry him home to bed. Talk of orders drying up. Of Roger Mayson, the last glove buyer, going over to Duncoughs. Of men like her da, champion fustian weavers, forced to set their
craft against the cheap spiderwork that the mill was flogging. Talk of taking a stand, making their voices louder and their body stronger, of perhaps asking the mill lads to join them. And of something happening in the dark up at Duncough & Sons Cotton Mill—the master bringing metal monsters in to take the place of those over three-score with cotton lungs and short a finger or two. A canny eavesdropper, she’d kept her head down but her wits lively, clocking the time and place to meet.
The night was dry and bone cold. It had been hard to leave the warmth of the grate and her mam snoring soft into her shawl, dreaming of the beast and the false prophet and the Lake of Fire, to traipse across the moor with naught to follow but the odd lantern carried by those that had disobeyed instructions. They had been told to come invisible and in silence, but as the crowd under the oak grew, shouts were thrown up of ‘With hatchet, pike and gun!’ A flask or two of liquor was passed around, but their contents were drained before those at the back caught a nip, causing a deal of grumbling to go up among those that wondered whether conspiracy and sedition was really a better way to spend the eve than sucking on beef marrow by the grate. Someone ought to start, the grumbles went, they hadn’t got all night.
Eyes fell on a man the girl knew. Clem Bolton, King of Chapel Street, one of the last few hand-weavers clinging stubbornly to the trade. It was no surprise that Clem had appointed himself leader and was marshalling a rough circle. He struck a leg upon the milestone and waved the rabble to hush.