All Fall Down (3 page)

 

 

W
ill Thatcher is standing with his back to me, watching Gilbert Reeve and Radulf the beadle rustling their bits of parchment. His back is straight, but his helmet is on crooked and there's mud all down the back of his legs. One of Edward Miller's dogs is sniffing at his boots. He looks straight ahead, pretending he can't see.

“He likes you,” Amabel Dyer whispers to me.

“Shh! He can hear you,” I whisper back, slightly too loudly, and we both giggle.

Will Thatcher is sixteen and one of Sir Edmund's soldiers. He was part of the baggage train in King Edward's army at the battle of Crécy, in France. Now he just guards Sir Edmund's manor, but some of the glamour of Crécy still clings to him. He's one of the best archers in the village and he
is
nice-looking, but whenever he sees me he goes bright red and I just want to giggle. If only he talked more. Or at all.

The whole village is gathered together on the green, under the manor oak. Sir Edmund isn't here, of course – he lives in London. I met him once when I was very small, but I can't
remember much about him. He was riding an enormous chestnut palfrey, and he had a fur coat, and he and his steward talked together in a strange language, which Father told me was French.

Someone's taken the table out from the tithing barn and set it up under the manor oak. Gilbert and Radulf are sitting behind it, murmuring to our priest, Sir John. Sir John has the pen and ink from the scriptorium in the tithing barn, and he's playing with the quill, running it between his fingers. Radulf and Gilbert are arguing – Gilbert's hands are waving in the air. I can't see what they're saying, but Radulf is shaking his head and muttering. Alice glares at them.

“Who died and made them King of England?” she mutters, shifting Edward on her hip. Edward holds out his hands, trying to tug at her veil, and she pulls them down irritably.

“Half of Europe,” says Father drily.

Ned clutches at his throat and makes choking noises.

“And Gilbert the reeve – is going – to be next—”

We're a smaller gathering than we ought to be. Four or five families have left already, selling their land and heading off north, like the exiles we saw from York.

Can the pestilence really be in York?

Sir John the priest is getting to his feet.

“They say the pestilence is in Felton,” he says, and a ripple of fear runs through the crowd. Felton is only a day's walk away. I turn to Alice, and her face is white. She's muttering the Pater Noster under her breath.

“Our only hope is that the Lord spares us,” says Sir John, raising his voice above the hubbub. “We must repent of our sins and humbly ask the Lord's forgiveness.”

He starts talking about extra masses and prayers and barefoot processions. I try desperately to think of something to repent for. I'm sorry for being rude to Alice. I'm sorry for snapping at Ned and Mag. I'm sorry for being jealous of Alice's yellow hair and for caring so much that mine is limp and orangey-reddish and my nose is covered in freckles and for wondering what it would be like to be kissed by Will Thatcher.

It doesn't sound like very much.

Now Gilbert Reeve is standing up. Gilbert is Sir Edmund's voice and hands in the village – he makes sure we all get to the fields on time and pay our rents and heriot taxes when someone dies, and he buys all the things Sir Edmund needs for the manor – ploughs and yokes and grease and nails, hinges, harnesses, hammers and herrings. Radulf the beadle is his assistant, a tall, waxy-skinned, mournful-looking man, with a long, heavy face and a sticks-and-stones sort of wife, all elbows and nose and pinching fingers. I like Radulf, though. He doesn't say much, but he always has a kind word for Mag and Edward.

Gilbert is stroking his beard as though he doesn't quite know how to begin.

“Ah,” he says. “Well. You all know why we're here. Something needs to be done – yes – they say Great Riding is shutting itself off, turning all travellers away. We think – ah – we think we should do the same here.”

Radulf's head is down and his mouth is screwed up at the corners. I edge over to Robin.

“Look at Radulf the beadle! What's worrying him?”

“Don't you know?” Amabel isn't listening to Gilbert either. “Radulf's sister lives in York,” she says importantly. “He was
telling Mother yesterday that we ought to let the exiles stay here. He'd bring the pestilence here and kill us all.”

“He couldn't turn his sister away,” says Robin, and Amabel bristles.

“He can't let her come to Ingleforn!” she says. “What sort of selfish person would bring the sickness here? She should just stay in York and leave us alone!”

Robin shifts uncomfortably, but it sounds like the other villagers agree with Amabel. The men are talking about organizing work parties to guard the roads into the village.

“They steal animals too, these people,” one of the church chaplains says, which is pretty impressive knowledge, given as how we only saw them for the first time yesterday.

“Whatever happened to Christian hospitality?” says Robin. He glances at Alice, but her back is stiff and she doesn't answer. “Those people will die if nobody takes them in.”

Alice's arms tighten around baby Edward, who tugs at her veil again with a fat fist. Alice is the most religious person in my family, apart from Geoffrey, but this time she won't meet Robin's eyes.

“Most of those people will die anyway,” she says, and I realize that she's afraid.

 

 

T
he abbot leads the procession. He carries a flask of smoking incense which he sways before him as he walks, sending the Latin of the psalms ahead to frighten away the demons and call up the good spirits of the earth. Or the angels. Probably the angels.

The other monks walk behind him in closed ranks, heads bent. I can count thirty-one warty bald heads, which is right because eight of the monks are too old to walk, and the infirmarer and his assistant will stay at the abbey. My brother Geoffrey walks right at the back, neither part of the monks' ranks nor part of the villagers. Poor Geoffrey, not-one-nor-t'other. He's shot up this last year, like a beanstalk, and he has something of the quality of a weed that grows in a dark place, searching for the sun. His thatch of yellow hair spills awkwardly over his ears, the round tonsure in the centre red with sunburn from the hot days last week. Geoffrey isn't a monk. He's too young, for one thing – he's only a year and a half older than I am. He just lives at St Mary's so he can learn Latin and French and Bible stories and all the other things he needs to know to be a priest.

It's a cold day, one of those bleak, windy days which come unexpectedly in the middle of summer, and halfway through the abbot's fourteenth Bible reading, it starts to rain. Mag starts to whine.

“I'm
cold
. Can't I put my
shoes
on?”

I shiver and wrap my mantle tighter around myself.

 

We're praying to God to take the pestilence away. To spare us. We're asking His forgiveness for whatever crimes we might have committed against Him, we're abasing ourselves before Him, barefooted and repentant, and asking Him, please, to keep His sickness away from our doors. And from the doors of those we love. Just leave us all alone, really, please. Send Your wrath to the really wicked people, in York, and London, and over the seas.

This worked in foreign lands, in Cornwall and Devon. Some villages the pestilence passed right by, like the Plagues of Egypt passed over the houses of the Israelites. But Geoffrey says that the Pope himself led the processions in Avignon, and it didn't save any of his people.

Afterwards, my feet wear heavy boots of black mud, which is probably the only thing which stops them dropping off, they're so cold. Geoffrey and Robin and I go down to the river to wash them clean. Robin doesn't have many friends amongst the village boys – mostly he just has me, and Amabel, and Alison Spinner. But he and Geoffrey were always friendly, right from when we were small.

I'm a little shy of Geoffrey, the way I always am when I see him again after a time apart. I notice all the things I'd forgotten about him. How tall he is! The Norman accent he picked up from five years living with monks. The way his yellow hair falls into his face, and how he keeps shaking his forehead to keep his eyes free.

“Are you well?” I ask, a little nervously. “Are you coming to the Midsummer celebrations? Did you really give a bed to all those people from York?”

Geoffrey's face twists as I ask the last question. “As many as we could. The rest we let sleep in the barn. Don't worry about them, Isabel. Tell me how you are – and Father – and Ned and Maggie—”

“We're well,” I say. “Edward has three teeth now! And he can roll over – and clap
,
and—”

“Clever boy,” says Geoffrey, but he doesn't really know Edward, or care much about him. How strange to have a brother that you neither know nor love! I can't really imagine it, any more than I can imagine Alice coming into our family and not loving us, or we not loving her.

“I don't think they'll let me come to the Midsummer Fire,” he says. “It's so busy at the abbey, with all those people! I've been working with Galen. Trying to find out if he's ever come across anything like this pestilence.”

“Galen?” I say. “Is he the infirmarer?”

Geoffrey laughs. “He's one of the fathers of medicine!” he says. He must see the confusion still in my face. “He lived hundreds of years ago, Isabel.”

“Oh.” Geoffrey always knows more than I do, about everything. “Are you going to be an infirmarer, then?”

Geoffrey's head is bent over his boot buckle. He says, not looking up, “Can you keep a secret?”

“Of course,” I say. Robin nods.

“It's not decided yet – don't tell Father – but there's a chance I might be ordained early.”

“Early? But why?”

“Why do you
think
?” says Geoffrey, whose mind always leaps ahead to the answer while mine is still trying to understand the question. Because so many priests have died is why, down south in those places where the pestilence has already reached. Because priests are the ones they send into the houses where pestilence is, to breathe in the foul air and give absolution to the dying. Because now they want to send Geoffrey to some strange parish where the priest is dead and everyone in the village is sick, to do the same.

“Will you do it?” says Robin. “If they ask you?”

“I want to,” says Geoffrey, but he still doesn't look up. I don't believe he does want to. Geoffrey went to the monastery for the books and for the words and to learn the names of rocks and stars and saints and bones. He didn't go to sit with the dying. I want to tell him not to do it, not to go. But if you die without a priest to give you absolution and hear your confession, you go to hell. So many people – good people: monks, nuns, Christian folk – so many good people are burning in hell now because their priest died and no new parson came in time. If they ask Geoffrey to serve as a priest, I can't tell him not to go. And I know my brother. If they ask him, he'll say yes.

“And anyway,” he says, answering the question I didn't dare ask him, “it's no more dangerous than staying at St Mary's.”

There's something in his voice that makes me think he wants us to ask him what he means. I don't want to know what's hidden behind his words, but Robin says, “Why? You don't have the pestilence there, do you?”

Geoffrey's fingers play around the brass buckle on his boot. He doesn't answer.

“You don't, do you?” says Robin. “Geoffrey! You don't!”

Geoffrey's face is white. “You're not to tell anyone!” he says. “The abbot doesn't want anyone in the village to panic. And if Father knew . . .”

I don't care about Father. I don't really care about the abbot. My heart starts racing, and my head is dull and heavy and full of fear.
The pestilence is at St Mary's. The pestilence is three miles away. The pestilence is in the infirmary where my brother Geoffrey works.

“Isabel?” says Geoffrey, and I turn to see his pinched, funny, worried-looking face blinking at me. “Isabel—”

I crawl over to him, smearing mud all over my skirts, and put my arms around his neck. He holds me, and I breathe in his ink-and-incense scent, all muddled up with mud and straw and the wet air of the river.

“Don't go back,” I say. “Please, don't. Come back home with us and be safe.”

Geoffrey's long, bony arms are tight about me. I think of all the things the Bible says, about steadfastness, and faith, and duty, and how I don't care about any of them if they mean my brother has to go back to a place where the sickness is. But all Geoffrey says is, “Isabel, it's coming here too,” and I know that even the small protection I can offer him is worth nothing at all.