Jesus, he thought, he’d believed them when they called this a road. It was no more than a track winding up the side of the valley to the rock edge above, barely wide enough for a cart, the ruts frozen and slippery as man’s sin. His boots, thin enough already after the walk from Liverpool, could feel every hard, awkward step, and his breath plumed abruptly around his mouth. With a short sigh he drew the coat around himself, even though it wouldn’t keep him any warmer in this raw winter cold, and hitched the pack high on his back.
In every manner it was a long way from the Indies. There the heat had prickled his skin every day and his sleeves had been sodden from wiping the sweat out of his eyes. For a moment he almost longed for that again. But then the ache from the scars on his back stopped his mind from playing him false. That was the true memory of those years, along with the screams of men in the wild delirium of yellow fever before they died. Freeborn, convict, soldier or slave, few came back from the Indies.
He paused, looking back down at Hathersage, watching the smoke from a few chimneys rising dark and skimming across the air. A mile or two further, he’d been told, and he’d find the marker for the Sheffield road. Less than a week and he’d be back in Leeds, if he didn’t freeze his bollocks off on this God-forsaken moor first.
But he knew that wouldn’t happen. It couldn’t happen, he wouldn’t allow it. He had business in the city, and he’d come too far and staked too much not to manage the last few miles. His feet trudged on, calves burning as he kept climbing the hill, sliding sometimes on the ice. Frigid slurries of wind, a few carrying flecks of snow that were as cold as a whore’s heart, battered against his face. Six months before, his skin had been burned dark by the sun. Now some of that colour was gone, washed away first by the long sea journey, then another two weeks of Shanks’s mare that had brought him here as winter still held the land tight into February, and drifts rose high against the dry stone walls. He’d caught a glimpse of himself in a puddle as he left the village, hair grey and lank under a cap, face pinched thin, his body hunched and spindle legs in patched breeches and torn hose. An ugly sight, he conceded wryly, but none would recognize him and his situation would improve.
At least he had a small purse in his pocket now, courtesy of a traveller over Winnats Pass who’d not be found until spring, and by then the animals would have picked him clean. No one would know who he was or that a slash across the throat had killed him. But it served the bugger right for befriending a stranger on the road.
So he’d afforded an inn in Hathersage last night, dozing on a bench at the George and letting the warm embers of the fire dry his boots and ease through to his bones. For the first time since setting out he’d felt some peace in his rest. At daybreak, with a heel of bread and a mug of small beer in his belly, he’d set out. The journey would take him close to the village where he’d been a boy, but he was damned if he’d ever go back there.
Another few days and his life could begin again. After eight years, life would begin again.