Love and Money (2 page)

William de Lockwood, the eldest of the three, seems to me a very different kind of person. Tall and dark and handsome, with crisp curling hair and fine dark eyes, his good looks (for which he cared nothing) were somewhat spoiled by the deep frown down the centre of his forehead and by his air of irritable impatience. He was a man of strong passions and somewhat sombre tone of mind; intelligent and quick of speech; highly honourable and rather touchy; a man in fact with a chip on his shoulder. If Lockwood had not urged them to it, the others would never have left Lancashire in the first place to avenge their fathers. We know nothing of the manner of the murder of Lockwood senior. Was it peculiarly insulting, peculiarly brutal? Did Wilkin—his friends called him Wilkin, but let nobody else dare to do so or they would rue it—did Wilkin particularly love his father? Or particularly hate him? Did he resent his father's being a minor character, as it were, in the Elland-Beaumont drama, murdered only to prevent him from giving aid to a more important person? We shall never know; but Lock-wood certainly viewed the duty of revenge with extreme seriousness. He took no part in the tying up of the miller's wife, I feel sure, save to protest against its foolishness impatiently and then try the knots the others had tied— Beaumont's were as solid as himself, but the strip of cloth Quarmby had stuffed in her mouth was already slipping.

Quarmby was the darling of the three; a golden stripling. Fair-haired and blue-eyed, high-spirited and merry, he could sing a song, or play a joke, or coax a girl, to admiration. (Indeed women of all ages began to smile tenderly as soon as they set eyes on him.) He was very light of foot, whether in a dance, a fight or a hill-scramble; lacking both Beaumont's solid strength and Lockwood's fervid accuracy, he sometimes made a stroke or shot an arrow with a beautiful easy grace which brought an outburst of applause from the
spectators. He put this applause aside with a most pleasant and agreeable modesty, for there was no conceit or arrogance or indeed anything wrong in him, save that perhaps he was a little careless with money and a little too apt to be led by Lockwood. It was Quarmby who tickled the miller's wife just enough to calm her fears of being murdered and not enough to rouse her fears of anything else; also he folded up a sack he found lying in a corner and put it beneath her head to make her comfortable.

You are wondering perhaps what the miller was doing all this time, waiting in the mill-house for his wife and his corn. The answer is that he was fuming. He stamped about and swore by many great oaths that his wife should repent her long tarrying, and at last took up a cudgel in his hand and went into the mill to chastise her. The three young men of course seized him and tied him up also. This time there was more difficulty; the miller though a portly man of middle age fought stubbornly and hit out with his cudgel. Lock-wood and Beaumont, however, together brought him down and Quarmby sat on his feet and tied them. He had kicked Quarmby on the cheekbone and bitten Beaumont's finger before they settled him, so they put a sack over his head and slung him down beside his wife rather roughly.

Morning came at length. It was a fine, warm, sunny spring day. Indeed there had been many fine spring days that year; so many that—unfortunately for young Sir John Elland—drought had set in, and there was so little water in the river that it was easy to walk across the mill dam instead of troubling to go by the ford.

Sir John had passed an uneasy night, dreaming that he was beset by enemies who attacked him viciously, so that he threw himself about in his bed. When he awoke he confided his dream to his wife, who however made light of it, and pooh-poohed any suggestion of staying away from church that day. Whether she had a new robe, of thin green cloth perhaps with cream-lined sleeves, which she wished to display to the congregation, we do not know, but she certainly persuaded her husband to go to church, a decision
which she must have regretted bitterly later. Sir John, in that uneasy state when one disclaims all thoughts of danger loudly because one's mind is so full of them, assembled his servants and told them to arm themselves and not be afraid of Lockwood—he evidently knew that Lockwood was the prime mover in the affair. He took the precaution of putting on a new steel breastplate beneath his parti-coloured cote-hardi—a handsome tight-fitting garment rather like a long cardigan worn with a hip belt—and then with his wife and young son set off across the dam to church.

If the elder Sir John was domineering, violent and ruthless, the younger knight seems to me—as indeed is often the case with the sons of such men—weak, conceited and something of a fool. It is clear that some vague rumour had reached him that his three enemies were in the neighbourhood, else why the dream? The wiser course then would have been either to stay at home, or to arm himself, take a band of men and search the township thoroughly. To allow himself to be overruled by a young woman was feeble; to take the boy, his son and heir, with him into possible danger was decidedly ill-judged. The chance of the drought, however, he could not help; and it was this which brought him within close reach of his enemies.

The three within the mill could hardly believe their luck when they saw the little procession advancing across the dam stones, not more than twenty or thirty yards from the mill. We can imagine that there was some giggling and holding up of skirts among the Elland women, some offer of supporting hands and laughing encouragement, among the men. When Sir John was in the very middle of the dam, he turned to give his hand to his little boy, and thus exposed himself broadside, as it were, to the watchers in the mill. Adam de Beaumont stepped outside, put an arrow into his bow and shot at him sharply.

The arrow struck Sir John on the breastplate and glanced off.

“Cousin, you shoot wide,” said Lockwood grimly.

His own arrow struck the knight precisely above the heart, but again glanced off harmlessly because of the breastplate.

It is at this point that Sir John reveals himself as so singularly silly. To hurry either forward or back across the river, send his wife and child to safety and lead an armed attack on the mill from the rear, seems the right plan in the circumstances; to get out of bowshot as soon as might be was certainly the only sensible action. Instead of that, so the old ballad tells us, he stood still on the dam stones and laughed at his enemies and smote himself on his chest (which gave forth a hollow boom because of the breastplate) and cried triumphantly:

“If my father had been clad in such armour as this you would never have slain him!”

At this moment Lockwood's second arrow took him clean through the head, and he fell on his back dead in the trickling water. Quarmby's shaft, flying rather less accurately than his companions', hit Sir John's little son between shoulder and neck as the child stood gaping up at the mill in stupefied horror, and he too staggered and fell.

Then came uproar. The men shouted, the women screamed; Sir John's servants came out of their daze and shot at the murderers; the noise reached the townsfolk going into church, who came running to help their lord. The three young men slipped away out of the mill while the Elland folk were busy carrying the dead father and the dying son into Elland Hall, but soon the whole town was roused, and came after them, some bearing bows and arrows and some whatever weapons—old staffs and rusty billhooks—they could find. They came within bowshot of the murderers, who had perforce taken back ways through the town, at the foot of the Ainleys hill; the young men turned and stood their ground, and the arrows flew through the air. Having driven their pursuers back some way by their good shooting, the murderers, when their arrows were all spent, got away into the Ainleys wood and hurried up the hill, scrambling breathlessly over the rough steep rocky ground. Unlike his usual graceful self, Quarmby seemed slow, and twice he stumbled.

“Hasten, cousin, hasten!” said Lockwood impatiently.

He seized Quarmby's arm to pull him up and found it soaked in blood. He looked down in alarm; his cousin's face was drawn and pale. One of the townsfolk's arrows had caught him in the side; he had pulled it out but the wound was deep and wide.

“I can go no more, Wilkin,” he murmured.

For answer Lockwood threw off his bow, and with Beaumont's help contrived to lift the wounded man up on his back, clasping Quarmby's hands about his neck. The shouts and calls of their pursuers had drawn much nearer even in this brief pause, and Lockwood and Beaumont tried to quicken their pace. But it was not easy. The wounded man's grip slackened and parted, his head lolled limply on Lock-wood's shoulder; it was all Beaumont could do to hold him in place. At last with a heavy sigh Quarmby slipped sideways and fell to the ground. He lay on his back where he had fallen between two lichened stones and gazed up at his cousins despairingly; his left side was soaked in blood, his mouth drooped open, his golden hair seemed to have lost its lustre. Both Lockwood and Beaumont knew, as they looked down at him, that he was dying.

“Leave me,” panted Quarmby in a whisper. “Leave me with speed.” His fingers groped, he pulled out of the pouch at his belt a purse and held it weakly up to them. “Take this gold—it would grieve me if my enemies had it. Remember me in your times of mirth,” he added, trying to force his pale lips into a smile.

Lockwood looked around; a couple of Elland townsfolk came into sight downhill through the trees, fortunately proceeding in the wrong direction. He turned to Beaumont, mutely consulting him. Beaumont nodded.

They took Quarmby up between them and laid him carefully beneath a low-growing oak where the grass was thick. His eyes were closed, he murmured faintly: “Fare you well.”

“Farewell, Hugh,” said Beaumont gruffly.

“We will come for you at nightfall,” said Lockwood.

Quarmby made no reply. They made the sign of the cross over him and left him.

Without his weight it seemed that they could double their pace; they rushed up the steep hill, topped the Ainleys, and ran in easy strides down the long slopes towards Huddersfield. Here they were on their own lord's ground and felt safe and among friends. They swung off to the right to avoid the town, then pulled up sharply and swerved again, not wishing to go near the home of the Quarmbys. Was it fancy, or did Lockwood really hear at this moment a long high scream of agony from beyond the hill? Certainly the Elland townsfolk, having failed to catch Lockwood and Beaumont on their own side of the Ainleys, turned back through the wood and, guided by the chattering of crows and magpies about the tree where he lay hid, found Quarmby in his green bower and slew him out of hand.

It is a commentary on the lawlessness of the age that Lockwood and Beaumont were never brought to trial, though some half-dozen unlucky wretches were thrown into prison in the following years for having sheltered them after they had feloniously murdered Sir John Elland. All these persons—amongst whom, by the way, we find one called Thomas Litster, a name which shows that he was a dyer of cloth—were acquitted and released. This, I suppose, reveals what the Yorkshire justices thought of the Elland feud; I gather that, though in their opinion murderers must be found and dealt with, they did not care very much for the older Sir John Elland. Certainly somebody must have given shelter to Lockwood and Beaumont while the Sheriff's men sought for them, for a period of time seems to have elapsed before the next scene of the story, which took place on the last day of Lockwood's life. In the interim the poor Elland child died, and the name of Elland died with him. In default of male heir all the Elland estates fell to his sister (or perhaps she was a female cousin) who presently married and took the estates with her into another family. This family, by the way, holds the Elland estates to this day, six hundred years after they thus acquired them.

A month or two after the murder by the mill, then, Lock-wood steps out of a thicket on to a bridge, some five miles away from his home, at the foot of a steep hill on the far side of Huddersfield. He walks right into a couple of young ladies, relatives of his on the distaff side, who at once seize upon him in a flutter. Where is he going? Why has he not visited them lately? Why doesn't he join Adam Beaumont who has found a good hiding-place in the upper reaches of the Holme valley, and is enjoying himself hunting the red deer in a safe and carefree fashion? Why won't Lockwood accompany them now to Adam Beaumont instead of hanging around in places which are well known as his haunts to the Sheriff's men?

Lockwood puts all these questions aside with his usual sombre politeness. There is a reason why he does not wish to leave this neighbourhood, but it is not one of which he wishes to speak to the young lady cousins. They, however, know it, for it is common gossip, and the prettier of the two, pouting and tossing her head—for Wilkin is a handsome young man and she always has a slightly wistful feeling about him—cries daringly:

“ Proceed no further to your women, but come back with us now to Adam Beaumont!”

She says
women
so as not to be too particular, for she is a little afraid of her haughty cousin, but she knows very well it is only one woman whose society Lockwood frequents. Lockwood sees that she knows, and an angry frown darkens still further his sombre face. His politeness becomes icy; he assures them, in a cold tone, that he will join Adam Beaumont almost at once, indeed before he next eats and drinks. Meanwhile, however, he is engaged on pressing business and must beg leave to be excused. He bows and goes; the prettier cousin falls silent, and walks along with tears in her eyes. If only Wilkin could have settled down and forgotten all this Elland affair! Such nonsense, really! Now he is sure to be caught and thrown into prison, in danger of his life.

“That woman will betray him,” she remarks viciously at length, biting her underlip.

The plainer cousin, the rather short girl with nutbrown hair, says nothing, but she disagrees. If William Lockwood had condescended to love her, she would not betray him for anything in life.