Halliwell Sutcliffe

“ New horizons widened over widening hill-spaces. What if death were no wormy end of life, but a beginning of new days?
No breeze ruffled these upland wastes. Little frets of night-time life stirred among the gnarled heather and the bents. The land’s soul was in a mood as deep and still as Hardcastle’s, and a fine communion held between the Master who was a lover to his acres, the acres that loved him.
He roused himself at last, with another laugh at Garsykes and himself, and was turning to swing down the sheep-track when a cry broke sharp as a pistol-shot across the moor. ”

“ He was no longer his own master but thrall to terrors bred in the womb of generations.
Fancy began to play strange tricks. Hardened to life and weather he might be; but he was no match for the unseen hordes of fear that came about him. The sweat broke out on Hardcastle, fighting longer odds than three men against one. It was only shame of his fear that got some sort of manhood into him, and a rough courage that was friendless and utterly alone. He learned then what Brant had meant when he spoke of dread, cold as east wind with snow behind it. ”

“ Before ever she reached the gate, a scud of thin, harsh smoke came down the rising breeze. She glanced in question across the valley that hid Wharfe River, flaring under Logie Brigg—glanced up at old Pengables, swarthy against the molten sky, and down again to the hollow where Garsykes lay.
Rebecca caught her breath. Things hoped for, till the heart grows sick, are not to be believed at first. Yet soon she had to credit what was doing yonder. She leaned a shoulder down for Jonah, and the cat leaped nimbly up, spitting and growling at the wisps of smoke. ”

“ Hardcastle laughed quietly. “There are lambs that were never born because he slew the ewes. But he’s ours, Rebecca.”
They stood together in the silence. Peril brooded like thunder-weather over the house of Logie. The wind, chattering and plucking at the casements, spoke of stealth, of nameless treacheries closing round about its walls. The pedlar was crying in his sleep for another glimpse of Ben Crummock before he died.
Do as they would, gloom spun its webs about them—little, clinging webs that hindered courage—till Jonah, the brindled cat, stalked down the passage. ”

“ The moon ran free again, and in the sharp, cold light he saw Hardcastle standing in the angle of two limestone walls, with half Garsykes yammering to be at him.
Will o’ Wisp had no liking for the village he had blundered into weeks ago. There were degrees of rascaldom, and his own feet went merrily on the margin of such deeps as Garsykes knew. Something in Hardcastle’s dour silence as he faced the rabble with uplifted cudgel—some liking, inborn in him, for a man meeting heavy odds, brought music into Will’s heart. Moreover, he was in mood to take sides with any man that Nita hated. ”

“ To Hardcastle, as he listened, a wider country opened, too. The pedlar’s body had forsaken him so utterly that heart and mind were free to roam at large. The very throb of Scottish battle-strength seemed gathered into this room at Logie—the skirl of pipes, the sobbing of women as their dead were brought home on their shields—the harsh challenge of men facing treachery in many hidden glens.
It seemed to Hardcastle that the pedlar was sharing five centuries of battle. So he was, maybe, for a man’s dead come close when he nears the borderland, to welcome him across the little gap between them. ”

“ Nita looked down on the steamy haze of Garsykes. Up here, where her cottage nestled in a dingle of the highlands, the breeze blew clear and free. Death might ride as he would through a village she despised and loathed—but how could he touch little Nita, who wove baskets for the Dale? She glanced far out to Logie, its grey chimneys pushing up above the lush, green woodlands. Hardcastle and his bride were there, and already she was weaving snares for them, supple as the willows that were her stock-in-trade, when a heavy tread sounded close at hand. ”

“ Hardcastle, not knowing why, halted in his stride, and stood looking out across the waste. If the hills were brown and steadfast washed by rain and sun, below him lurked the mines, the bogs that sucked a man down, dragging at him till limb by limb the chill ooze chained him. And there were the Wilderness Men, whose enmity was a dread thing to earn.
A stab of fear took him unawares as if one of the Stealthy People had crept on him from behind. He shook it off, telling himself that the dread was part of his heritage of Logie. A grown man must learn to shake off nursery tales. ”

“ They were thirty paces away as yet, irresolute for a moment that seemed endless, and Hardcastle’s thoughts ran swiftly, like those of a drowning man. This end was better, after all, than the long-drawn-out stealthy warfare he had been prepared to meet. And Logie’s honour would be safe. Yet he felt an odd, wistful regret for Brant the shepherd. The pity of it that Brant was old, with a heart reared on upland solitude. The fights he was trained to share were clean battles between a man and such weather as the skies chose to ding about his ears. ”

“ So there came a day when Rebecca watched them ride out from Logie. The Master had not said what their errand was, but she knew; and she scolded Jonah till he spat at her. And then she gathered him into her arms, and cried, and cried.
“Love of a man sees far, when you’ve mothered his cantrips since he was a babby,” she said by and by, with a smile utterly forlorn. “And jealousy sees far. But it’s hell’s own spite when the two keep company.”
Causleen and Hardcastle guessed nothing of all this, as they rode, in wonder and in silence, over the hill to Skipton. ”

“ Has she no wit to understand that ghosts of the dead will creep up to her cottage-door? She was their evil spirit.”
“Let her be,” broke in Hardcastle. “She goes abroad with her face hidden when she sells her baskets these days. They say her wits are gone.”
“Pray God they are,” said Causleen, bitter with remembrance of the day when Nita had named her light-of-love and wanton. “She needs forgetfulness.”
They rode down the fells together, man and wife; but cold was on them, as if Garsykes still had power to spin webs of dread about their feet. ”

“ The magic that had kept Garsykes Men in thrall was drawing her into its webs. She followed Nita’s finger as it pointed to the road below, where the track from Logie split in two—one grey lane going flat to Garsykes, the other winding steep and rocky to a cavern gaping open-mouthed across the green face of the pastures.
“Do you see where the tracks divide?” purred Nita. “A man will come to the two-ways by and by, and take the upper road. And you will follow.”
Causleen remembered Hardcastle asleep at Logie; and he was the one man in the world she would ever follow willingly. ”

“ His glance roamed down to another village—not reared high like Weathersett, but skulking in a lowland hollow on the far side of the benty waste. He forgot trolls and all their phantom kindred. They were unsubstantial, but the people who lived there in Garsykes village were flesh and blood and a standing menace to the country-side.
A strange look stole across Hardcastle’s face. Contempt, antagonism, the shadow of some restless fear, followed each other as he stood watching Garsykes; for distrust of its folk had been in his mother’s milk, and in the tales passed down for generations. ”

“ As though havoc were not doing enough with them, the Lost Folk let in another adversary—cringing and abject fear—fear that slackened the muscles and slew their will to live. Every other house was tenanted by dead or dying, and those free of the plague as yet were journeying up the fells with bundles slung over-shoulder. It was better to go anywhere than stay in Garsykes, where plague stalked silent through the buzzing flies.
The last fugitive to seek the hills was Widow Mathison, and Nita was at her cottage-door as she came past with her boy. ”

“ Her rancour was less for herself than for the slight put on Donald, sick and old, who in his prime had known the glow of candlelight on a well-ordered table, the ruby in the wine of life. And now her father lay there, a pensioner on the bounty of this dour host—lay dying, with the Flodden pike sneering at him overhead, and all the room packed with ghosts of men who had boasted through the generations of what they had done aforetime to the Scots.
“Your Highland men have never known fear?” asked Hardcastle. ”