A soft spring breeze was blowing, the smell of the surrounding peaty moorland filled the air and the skylarks that were busy nesting flew up above his head, flitting and singing, as Adam made his way down the path and onto the main road, stopping finally outside The Fleece’s main doors. When he had passed it on the night of his arrival home, the inn had looked foreboding and dark, but now, in the light of the setting evening sun, the old drinking hole looked welcoming as Adam walked up the three steps into the entrance of the centuries-old inn.
‘Good evening, sir. What would you like to drink on this fine spring evening?’ The jovial barman, with his red cheeks and a balding head, but sporting a fine pair of greying sideburns, leaned on the bar and looked at the gent who was new to his inn.
‘A gill of your best dark ale, please.’ Adam stood at the bar and looked down the low-beamed room, with tankards hanging from the beams and whitewashed walls covered with paintings of local scenes. It had been a while since he had last drunk in the old place, and it had obviously changed hands in his absence. He looked around for a place to sit, once he had found the correct payment for the tankard of frothy ale that the landlord put in front of him. On the other side of the bar, in the main room of the inn, a group of young men stood together. All were drinking fairly heavily, and were laughing and making enough noise to wake the dead.
‘I’d stop in the snug end, if you don’t mind me saying so, sir. Alex Braithwaite and his cronies are in, and they’ve been drinking since they arrived just after dinner. His father will have something to say to him in the morning.’ The barman winked and nodded to the tall blond-haired lad who was entertaining all the well-dressed men that stood around him, with his tales of derring-do. ‘They get a bit ripe with their language and then, if some of the lads from the flay-pits come in and all, they usually get to arguing.’ The barman nodded to the small oak table in the corner of the room next to the fire, which had just been lit. It was the best seat in the small snug, and Adam could still hear and see all that was going on in the main bar, but without getting involved.
‘I think you are right, although I don’t mind the freshness of youth and I’ve not been that sheltered. I doubt they will say anything that I’ve not already heard.’ Adam smiled. ‘I’ve spent many an hour doing the same myself in my younger days, doing the exact same thing in the same spot, so who am I to judge?’ He took a sip from his gill and winked at the barman.
‘So you are from around here? I don’t think I’ve had the pleasure of serving you before?’ The barman looked at him and shook his head as a roar went up from the other side of the bar. ‘Bugger it, now we are in for fun – some of the lads from the flay-pits have come in through the back door. I’ll have all on to keep the peace, as they hate one another. I’m Ernest Shepherd, but these are not my flock. If I weren’t making money out of them, I’d kick their arses home, the whole lot of them.’ He threw his not-too-clean towel over his shoulder and turned to serve his new customers.
‘I’m Adam Brooksbank, and I live up at Black Moss. I’ve been there a few weeks now,’ Adam shouted across the bar, but his voice was lost in the noise and hullabaloo from the other room. He glanced at all the faces of the men who had just come in from the flay-pits, remembering especially the dark, foreboding face of Thomas Farrington, who stood at the back, next to another fireplace that was the main feature of the room. The large sandstone open fireplace had a fire burning brightly in it, and a gleaming copper kettle stood on the side of the hearth, with a pair wrought-iron firedogs, with a poker and shovel balanced upon them. The room was divided: on one side were the flay-pit lads, and on the other stood the lads from the quarry, and neither gave one another the time of day.
Adam went and sat in his corner with his gill. What he had thought was going to be a quiet drink was promising to be anything but, as the banter between the groups started.
‘God, there’s a stink in here! Have you noticed it? For God’s sake, Ernest, why do you serve rabble like that?’ one of the lads from the quarry shouted, loud and clear, for everyone to hear.
‘Now then, hold your tongue. You lot are not much better yourselves, and I can throw the lot of you out, if I have a mind,’ Ernest said drily, watching both sets of men as they settled down.
Adam observed both groups and noticed that Thomas Farrington sat on his own, drinking tots of gin, unlike his colleagues who sat and discussed the day’s affairs and played a round of dominoes while enjoying their gills of bitter. He was a surly one, a loner – a man that it would seem no one trusted, Adam thought, as he went to the bar and got himself another
