All Fall Down (7 page)

“Isabel!” he says, alarmed. “What are you doing here?” I come closer, and he retreats into the house. “No, get back! Don't come any nearer!”

“I wanted to see you,” I say. “Don't go away! Otherwise I'll come right inside the house and kiss you. And you won't be able to stop me, so don't try. How could I not come and see you?”

“You oughtn't to have come,” says Robin, but he's smiling a little, and I know he's pleased to see me. Robin doesn't have any family left in the village except us, and his mother, and an old, blind, addled grandmother who is no use to anyone.

“Listen, Robin,” I say. “You're going to need food. And water. I don't think you want to go to the well, do you?”

“Oh . . .” Robin clearly hasn't thought about food. But I've seen how the villagers gathered their skirts up away from Sarah Fisher when she tried to go for her water, and wouldn't speak to her, and I couldn't bear it if they turned away from Robin too.

“Perhaps . . .” he says.

“I can get you whatever you need,” I say. “If you need
anything, just ask me.” Then, all in a rush: “Robin, be careful, won't you, please. Don't—”

Don't die
, is what I want to say. But how can he avoid it, living in that miasma?

“Don't look in her eyes,” I say, instead, and he gives a hiccuppy laugh.

“I'll be fine, Isabel,” he says. “Don't worry about me. Please.” And I want to weep. What right has Robin got to be worrying about me, when he's stuck in a pestilence house with a mother who is almost certainly going to die? “I'll stick my head in the pig dung,” he says. “I won't wash!”

I try to smile. “They should send you up to the infirmary at the abbey,” I say, trying to play along. “You'll give them all Robin Fever instead of the pestilence.”

Robin smiles, but half-heartedly.

“Is it—” I say.
Is it terrible?
is what I want to ask.
Your mother, has she gone mad? Does she piss herself? Does she stink? Is her flesh rotting on her bones? Are you all right, cleaning up the blood and the vomit and worse?
But how can I say these things? And what would Robin answer if I did?

He doesn't let me finish.

“Listen,” he says. “You mustn't come here again. Promise me. Behind the fence is fine, but not like this again – not so close that you can smell the miasma. If anything happened to you – if anything happened because of me – I couldn't bear it. I mean it, Isabel.”

I nod, the tears rising in my eyes.

“Take care,” I say. “Please, please, Robin, take care.”

“You too,” says Robin, and he shuts the door, so suddenly that I don't even get a chance to say goodbye.

 

 

I
t begins to rain as I'm coming back home – a greyish drizzle that soaks into my mantle and reminds me of last year, when it rained without ending and all the harvest was ruined. I wonder gloomily if the world really is ending. Sometimes it absolutely feels like it.

I feel like I'm trapped in a cage, a cage which is closing tighter and tighter around me, until I'll have nowhere left to turn, and then the black thing, the miasma – in my dreams, the miasma is black, like a cloud, and it seeps under the door and coils up over the fireplace and into our solar – then the miasma will come and find me, and I won't have anywhere to hide.

My head is full of . . . what? Rotten corpses, that stench in Radulf's house, the taste of blood and the thought of Robin alone with . . . all that . . . the pus and the blood and the vomit. What can I do with that? I want to scream, to smash something, to get as far away from this place as I can.

I like
fixing
things.
Mending
things. Most of the things in my life get better if you work at them. This doesn't. How can I help Robin if I'm not even allowed to visit him?

It's only as I'm at the gate that I remember the new priest is supposed to have arrived. Priests visit the sick, even those who are sick with the pestilence – this priest can visit Margaret and Robin even if I can't. I'm so pleased with this thought that I turn straight around and head back towards Sir John's house. No priest would leave Robin to look after his mother on his own, would he? Apart from Sir John.

Nobody comes when I knock on the door. I bang on it with both fists. What will I do if he doesn't answer?

I'll go to the abbey and find a monk is what I'll do. I don't care if he's praying, or in church, or writing in his scriptorium, I'll make him come to Margaret. I'll go to one of the chaplain's houses and make him find the new priest.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

The man standing on the doorsill is younger than Richard. For a brief, dizzying moment, I think it's my brother Geoffrey; then as he steps out of the shadow, I see that he's older than Geoffrey, maybe eighteen or nineteen. He's tall and gangly, with long, white fingers twisting anxiously around themselves. It's his hair that made me think it was Geoffrey – a shaggy blond mop – that and the slightly Frenchified English that Geoffrey picked up after a couple of years speaking French with the monks of St Mary's. This man's hair is darker than Geoffrey's, though, and he's thinner. He looks like a string bean with all of the colour bleached out of it.

“Yes?” he says again. He's got a high, rather nervous voice.

“Please,” I say. “My friend's mother – Margaret – she's dying, I think. I mean, she's sick. So could you come and – and—”

“Oh.” The priest jumps. “Wait there.” He disappears into
his house. I wait on the path. There's a clunk from inside, and the sound of something falling.

“Are you all right?” I ask, peering around the open door.

Sir John's house is small, cluttered and dark. It's bigger than ours, but there's no solar. There's only one candle burning beside the little hearth-fire, which is sputtering in the wind from the door. Several bags sit open on the earth floor, clothes and books and other interesting-looking objects spilling out of them. The boy-priest is tumbled on to the floor, under Sir John's ale barrel, which is spilling ale out on to the floor and over his hose.

“
Benedicte!
” he says, then he sees me there in the doorway. “I mean—”

“It's all right,” I tell him. “I don't mind you swearing. Here—” And I go and help him heave the ale barrel up and off him. He's a man nearly grown, but I'm stronger than he is.

“I'm sorry,” he says. “I only arrived last night, and there's so much to do. There are so many people who need visiting. And I don't know where anything is. I'm still studying, really, but so many priests are dying. I mean—” He stops and looks confused.

“It's fine,” I tell him. “I know there aren't many priests left. And I wouldn't bring the oil and candles if I were you; I'd save them for people who are actually dying.” He looks at me so gratefully that I stand up a little straighter. “I'm Isabel,” I tell him. “And don't worry. I'll look after you.”

“Thank you,” he says, very seriously, though I can see a smile puckering at his lips. “I'm Simon de Marcham. And I'd be very grateful if you'd show me where your friend's mother lives.”

 

*

 

Robin's little house sits closed like a treasure chest between the baker's and the forge. Next door, Robert Smith is leading a horse around the forge-yard, trying to calm it down. The horse snorts and tosses its head, perhaps sensing the disquiet around it.

The young priest – Simon – fumbles with the catch of the gate. I lean over and open it for him.

“You can go home now,” he says. “Don't stay.”

“All right,” I say, but I wait at the gate as he goes up to the house. The door opens a crack, but I'm too far away to see anything but darkness inside. Simon the priest goes into the house, and the door shuts behind him.

 

 

F
our more people fell sick yesterday, and eight today. One of John Dyer's oxen fell down dead on the green, and no one would go near it to bury it. One of Agnes's chickens was stolen in the night by one of the exiles from York, or some other village in the south. The bell rang out twice for the dead this morning, and once this evening. I don't even know who the last bell was for.

It's worse at the abbey. Amabel Dyer says she heard ten monks died. Emma Baker says eighteen, and thirteen of the exiles. Agnes says, if God is punishing those monks, they must have done something terribly wicked.

“I heard they were sleeping with
devils
,” she whispers, at the well, and I clench my fists to stop myself from answering. Father says she's talking nonsense.

“All those sick folk in the infirmary, no wonder they're dying.”

I worry that Geoffrey is dead. I want to go up to the abbey and see, but Father won't let me.

“Not while the sickness is there,” he says. “I'm serious,
Isabel! There's time enough to worry about Geoffrey when this is over.”

I don't understand how he can bear not to know, but I know he means it.

We don't hear anything more from Robin. I go and leave food and water on his doorstep every day. The second evening, Alice catches me with the bread under my arm.

“So it's you who's taking it! I didn't think it was Ned. Where's it going, then?”

“Robin's house.” I brace myself for anger, for Alice to tell me how stupid I'm being. But she just stands there, biting her lip.

Then she says, “They'll need ale as well—” And she goes and fills me up her favourite green flagon. “There,” she says, and, seeing my surprised look, “You're a good girl, Isabel. But don't tell your father now.”

I never see Margaret or Robin, but the food always goes from the doorsill, and after the second evening the green flagon is always left just behind the gate, so someone must be alive in there. After the first day, I don't knock again, although I always want to. I look over the fence to see if I can catch sight of Robin – perhaps he'll be bringing in firewood or cleaning out the pig or something – but I never see him. I don't even know if he's ill, though I guess not, as someone is fetching the food each day.

Three people buried today. Two yesterday. There are more bells from St Paul's Church in Great Riding – they have the sickness there too, worse than we do, I think, from the ringing.

Simon gives his first service to a church that is already emptier than usual. I'm not sure who is dead, who has family sick, who's left the village and who is simply frightened of
coming. The service is received in near-silence, which is stranger than almost anything else. Simon trips and stumbles over the Latin, but as far as I can tell he doesn't get anything wrong.

Afterwards, he tells us that bodies will no longer be allowed to lie in state in the church, and that instead of a funeral mass, the dead must be satisfied with a placebo read at the mouth of their grave. There's some muttering at this – if no one prays for your soul, how will God know to send it up to heaven? – but no one argues. Everyone looks too tired and cowed to protest. Afterwards, only Gilbert and Emma Baker stay to talk to Simon. The rest of us hurry back home.

There's another procession through the village. Alice goes, but she leaves Edward behind, and Father won't let any of us go with her. We hear them chanting and ringing hand bells as they walk past our door, but we don't look out.

And every day this sickness lasts the more trapped I feel. I want to kick a hole in the wall of the house, or fight somebody, or run and run and never come back.

“I don't see what difference staying at home makes,” I say to Alice, when she comes home from the procession. “If the miasma is here, it's here, isn't it? It's in this house – in the air – everywhere. The only way to escape is to run away, and we aren't even going to do that!”

“It clings to the sick,” says Alice. “Or those who are about to fall ill.” She's working at her loom, weaving a new bolt of cloth.

“Why are you even bothering with weaving anyway?” I say. “If we're all going to die!”

“We all have to die some day,” says Alice calmly. “And those who survive the summer will need warm clothes for the winter.”

“The Day of Judgement is coming!” I shout at her. “And you're sitting there weaving!”

“If the Day of Judgement really is coming,” Father says, “I'd rather wait for it in the warm. Go and fetch me some firewood and stop making a nuisance of yourself in here.”

He doesn't sound really angry, but there's an edge to his voice that I don't want to cut myself on. I pick up the basket and stamp outside. They
are
idiots. Carrying on as usual, when anyone can see that everything is as far from normal as it's possible to be.

It's nice to be outside. We've been staying indoors as much as possible since the first case came to the village, and coming outside I feel like my soul is breathing out at last, after all day in our dark and smoky and stuffy little house. Outside, the air is cold and fresh, and there's this achingly pale sky high above my head. I swing the basket from my arm and take my bad mood down the muddy track towards the woods, where at least it can't crash into anyone else.

The woods cluster around the back of the church. Tolly Hogg brings the pigs here to root for truffles, and Ned and I pick mushrooms and rosehips and wild garlic here in the summer. It's dark and safe and rich with the scent of pine needles and old wood.

There are people here already. A little cluster of boys and girls about my own age perched on a fallen tree trunk. Amabel Dyer and Will Thatcher and Roger Duresme and Alison Spinner and a few others. They've got a flagon of ale and they're passing it between themselves. Amabel waves when she sees me.

“Isabel! Over here!”

I come willingly enough. “What are you doing?”

“We're drinking to the spirit of cheerfulness.” Roger holds up the ale flagon. “Squashed by dull old priests and miserable crones. I don't know what they're worried about – they'll all die soon enough anyway. Drink?”

“Thank you.” I take the flagon from him. His ale is stronger than Alice's, but not so sweet.

“Is everyone in your house weeping and wailing?” says Amabel. “Mine is terrible. ‘The world is ending! We're all going to die!' If we're all going to die, then why do I have to do the spinning? We might as well have a good time while we can and not worry about it.”

“Mine aren't moaning,” I pass the flagon up to Will. “They're just . . . worrying. And then trying to pretend that nothing is wrong.”

“Fools,” says Will. He smiles at me, shyly, and I smile back. He's got a dimple in his right cheek when he smiles. I've never noticed it before.

“Don't you sometimes want to just run away?” says Amabel. “My sister is a maid to a lady in York. She lives in a big house and eats meat three times a week. That's what I'm going to do, after all this is over.”

“All right if you're free,” I say bitterly, but Amabel shrugs.

“When the pestilence is gone, everything will be different. You'll see.”

We pass the ale around as the sky grows darker. Nobody wants to go home. After a while, Alison Spinner produces a whistle and tries to play some of the songs the jongleurs played at Easter. She muffs the high notes, and the boys cuff her good-naturedly across the head while she shrieks and hides her face in her skirts. Roger and Will dance drunkenly, then Will headbutts Roger and Roger charges back at him,
mock-angry, and suddenly they're wrestling, rolling about on the grass, with Amabel and Alison and me cheering them on. It's like the wrestling matches they have in the churchyard, only neither Roger nor Will really want to hurt the other. They scuffle half-heartedly, until Will manages to climb on top of Roger and pin his arms down. The girls on the tree trunk all cheer.

“A drink for Will!” says Amabel, passing him the flagon. “If you can't have a drink when the world is ending, when can you?”

“Can we have whatever we want now then?” says Will, laughing a little.

“Why?” I kick moss down at him from my place on the tree trunk. “What do you want?”

Will stands with his feet apart, looking up at me. He's more handsome than Robin, and nearly as familiar – I've known him for as long as I can remember, though for most of my childhood he was busy with the older boys, and for some of it he was away in France. His eyes are lighter than Robin's, but Robin's crooked smile is wider. Usually he's so shy – he must be a little drunk to speak to me so boldly.

“I want a kiss,” he says.

The girls whoop and cheer. I force myself not to look away. Will is still standing there watching me with that serious look on his face. He means it. I remember my wish-boat, and I feel myself blushing. I didn't believe a paper boat had the power to grant your wishes, but maybe I should have wished for the lives of the people I love, if my wish-boat could do this.

Perhaps this is God's punishment for my selfishness. To give me everything I asked for, and to take Robin away.

“Don't kiss him if you don't want to!” says Alison. “Why should she kiss you?”

“Because the world is ending,” says Will.

He's right. And even if the world doesn't end, I might be dead tomorrow and so might he. And his eyes are very light, and his hair is wavy and thick, and I've always liked him, just a little bit. And if God is going to take everything from me, the least He can do is let me kiss a young man on the mouth before I die.

“All right,” I say.

I slide off the tree trunk and come and stand before him. The others applaud.

“Go on, Will!”

“Get on with it!”

“Alison's turn next!”

Will smiles at me a little awkwardly. I like his eyes. I like the freckles underneath his mouth. I like the scar that he got in France, who knows how. I lean forward and kiss him, dry lips against dry lips, tongue against tongue.

“Woo!”

“Isabel likes Wi-i-ill.”

I surface, bright red, pleased and embarrassed, proud and ashamed. Will looks equally red-faced and confused.

“Now then,” he says, taking the ale from Roger. I climb back onto the tree, trying not to smile.

 

It's late when I get back, and the hearth-fire is nearly out. Father is about to be angry, but Alice purses her lips at him to stop.

“What have you been doing all this time?” he says.

“Living,” I say. “Which is more than you have.”

I glare at them, but Alice holds out her hand to me and my anger smacks into the wall of her kindness. I stop, confused. Her lap is full of wool, her spindle between her legs.

“Isabel—” she says, and there's something in her voice which stays my angry words in my throat.

“What?”

“Robin came while you were gone. His mother died this afternoon.”