Damn His Blood by Peter Moore

cottage, when they were disturbed by a noise from outside. The Lloyds’ cottage stood by the crossroads, surrounded by clover fields and an area of open grassy pastures known locally as the Hulls. In the hours since the sun had set at nine o’clock the village had quietened as work had finished for the day and labourers had returned to their homes and beds. The noise was loud and peculiar enough to wrest Sarah’s attention from her conversation and draw her outside. She opened the cottage door and stepped out into the night. In the garden she heard the noise again – it was drunken voices, all of them raised and jeering. The sounds came from the direction of the Pigeon House, a squat brick outhouse which was owned by the Barnett family, who used it as a summer-house and a store for their finest cider. Sarah crept through the spring air towards the building. Once within earshot, she hid herself ‘under a tree which was nearly down’.
    From here Sarah could distinguish the voices of a number of local farmers. ‘I heard several toasts drank and several persons named,’ she recalled, among whom were Captain Evans, John Barnett, Thomas Clewes, George Banks and Mr Davis of Dunhampstead. She recognised each man distinctly and recalled Thomas Clewes’ voice particularly. She heard the master of Netherwood Farm propose a toast: ‘Let us drink damnation to him, he will not be here long to trouble us – and let us drink it left-handed!’ Sarah listened as each of the men repeated Clewes’ charge. She had ‘no doubt’ that Reverend Parker was the subject of the toasts, as there was, as she put it, a ‘misunderstanding’ between the parties.
    The toasts continued for some time as Sarah remained concealed 20 yards away behind the collapsed tree, shielded from view in the darkness. But she was not alone in the Pigeon House Meadow that night. A farm dog that belonged to one of the Barnett brothers had been tethered outside the building and, hearing her cough, began to bark. In panic, Sarah scrambled up and started for her cottage, but the moment she moved, the wooden door of the Pigeon House burst open behind her and two men flew out into the night in pursuit. They made after Sarah, who charged desperately through the grass. She reached her cottage before them and pushed the door closed.
    ‘I wish we had catched her!’ she heard Davis say to George Banks. ‘Damn her blood! We would have mopped her up.’
    ‘Damn her eyes!’ Banks replied. ‘I wish we had and catched her.’
    By now Sarah’s father had been roused by the commotion. George Lloyd was well known in Oddingley as a friend of Parker’s and a respected labourer. Holding his gun, he called through the door to Banks and Davis, ordering them to leave and threatening that if they did not he would be forced to shoot. At this, the men retreated into the night.
    Sarah was terrified by the incident. For several days she refused to leave the cottage, and when she did, on Tuesday 27 May, she hastened directly to Parker’s rectory, telling the clergyman exactly what she had heard. Parker listened carefully to Sarah’s account and weighed it. ‘Girl, I don’t care a fig for them altogether,’ he replied.
    For all Parker’s indifference, feigned or not, there were signs throughout May that the farmers’ anger was stirring in new ways. Earlier that month a surveyor named George Gilbert Jones had been sent to Oddingley. Jones had no prior connection to the parish, where he spent almost a month researching the land for a new rate form. On his arrival he was instantly forced into an extraordinary situation, finding all the farmers except Perkins ‘at enmity’ with Parker – a fact which forced him to flit like a diplomat between one faction and the other as he worked his way through the village.
    Jones had been forewarned about the tithe dispute by his employer, who had told him that it was better to lodge outside the parish. But although he followed this advice,