All Fall Down (8 page)

 

 

I
know what a good death looks like. I know from when Mother died. A good death is the priest in his vestments coming to the house, and the village behind him with candles and bells and prayers. A good death is the Seven Interrogations, holy water sprinkled into the corners of the chamber, the anointing with oil, the communion wafer and the wine to keep away the demons who hover around the heads of the dying, waiting to drag them into hell.

Margaret didn't have the last rites. Robin and my father went for Simon the priest, but nobody answered when they knocked at his door. Father went to St Mary's, but by then it was too late. I don't know if Robin heard her confession, like the priest said he could. I didn't dare ask. I asked Father and he said, “She wasn't really in any state to take confession,” which could mean anything.

Mother's body was pulled through the village on the funeral cart, with mourners walking behind her carrying candles and crosses and singing prayers, while the church bells rang out all around us. She lay in the church for a full
day and night with candles at her hands and feet. In the evening, Sir John gave the service of the Office of the Dead, and in the morning a requiem mass was said for her soul. Most of the village came to her mass, and afterwards there was a tea with ale and salt pork and roast chicken, and we gave pennies to the beggars who followed the cart and her name was remembered in the prayers at church for months afterwards. I used to watch out for it at mass. I can still remember the day when they stopped praying for her soul, and how much I minded.

This isn't the funeral cart. This is Robin's mother's cart, with our ox Stumpy. Margaret is wrapped in a sheet and lying on the hay. We've got candles, but no crosses – only our little pewter St Bede, which Robin is carrying. And there are so few of us in the funeral procession. There isn't even a priest – he has another burial to watch. There's just Robin and Father and Alice and me, one of the church chaplains, Robin's blind grandmother and a few beggars who I think are foreigners because I don't recognize their faces, but who demand two pence each for following the coffin. I expect Alice to be angry, but she pays without a word.

The bells in the church are ringing, but I can't be sure if they're for Margaret or for someone else. They were ringing last night as well. When Mother died, the bells were solemn and sacred and full of holy sadness, but now Alice twitches her head and says,
“Lord, those bells! Will they never stop?”

We follow behind the cart. Robin's face is pale and stiff, and somehow softer-looking. When Father is unhappy, all his muscles tense and he stiffens – it's almost frightening – but when Robin is sad, his whole face relaxes and all his features
seem to sink into each other. All of the animation, the energy, goes out of them. He cries sometimes too, though he's not crying now. He's gripping the pewter St Bede and looking down at the ground.

I wonder what's going to happen to him. No one's said. I remember how Alice wouldn't take that baby for fear it would bring the pestilence into our house. Robin's as sopped in pestilential miasma as that baby ever was. I think about Maggie and Ned and baby Edward, who Alice wouldn't let come to the church today. Part of me wishes she hadn't let me come either. That thing in the cart is thick with the smell of death. I press my posset of herbs to my nose. They seem such a small thing between me and the sickness.

But I don't know how Robin will live if we don't help him. He can't weave like his mother could. He can brew ale, but I wouldn't pay to drink it. He gets some money from his land, but John Phillip's son who rents most of it is sick himself, and what will happen when he dies?

There's a small, scared part of me that almost hopes Alice
won't
let him come to us. I try and push it down so God won't hear it and send the pestilence to punish me, but it won't go away. There's only one bed in our house, and our straw mattress in the solar. Would we have to share a bed with him if he caught the sickness?

The dead ox on the green is still there, stinking and mauled by the pigs. It's disgusting. There's a dead sheep there too, now. Right in the middle of the village!

When Mother died, people came out of their cottages to join the procession as we passed them. Today, no one comes. Smoke blows out of the thatches of a few of the houses as we
pass by them, but no one comes out. I don't blame them. I wouldn't go to their funeral either.

 

When we reach the churchyard, Adam Goodenough the sexton and another man I don't recognize are climbing out of a grave pit. There's a small gathering around the grave – Simon the priest with Lucy Hogg and her son Nicholas, who's a year or two younger than Mag. There's a husband as well, and an older son, Jankin, who's Ned's age.

The gravediggers come over to us.

“One more, is it?” says the one I don't recognize. “It can go in with this one then, if you'll wait a moment. That'll save you some time?”

Robin stirs beside me, but he won't speak, I know. I can feel his unhappiness, but I don't know if there's anything we can do about it. The churchyard is lumpy with fresh graves, like a field after a family of moles have been through it, digging up all the smooth grass into messy hills of earth.

“Whose grave is it?” Alice says. She's friendly with Lucy. Alice is friendly with everyone.

“It's Jankin,” Adam says. He lowers his voice. “And I wouldn't get too close to Lucy either – I hear the husband's sick too.”

Alice sighs, but I realize with a dull shock how little I mind. One more death. I'm just grateful it's not someone I know better.

I touch Robin's arm. He's shaking.

“She doesn't even get her own grave! They're just going to throw her in on top of him!”

“I know,” I say. “I'm sorry.” I can't see what we can do about it, short of digging our own hole.

Robin turns away.

“One day,” he says, and his voice quavers. I don't ask him one day what.

As the family moves away and Adam Goodenough starts filling in the grave, Simon comes over to us. He's wearing Sir John's robes, which are too big for him and keep slopping off his shoulders. His cheeks are still pocked with spots, like a boy, and there's a smudge of something – ash maybe – down one cheek.

“God keep you, Isabel,” he says to me, and he smiles at Robin.

“And God keep you, Robin.”

Robin jerks his head.

“This is a sorry sort of parish for a boy like you,” Father says to Simon, and Simon blinks and nods and looks at the earth.

“I – well, I'm still learning, sir, but I'll do the best I can,” he says. “Really I will.”

“I would expect nothing less,” says Father gravely.

Simon says the placebo clearer than he reads the mass. Perhaps he's had more practice over the last few days. Father and Adam Goodenough lower Margaret into the grave, all wrapped up in her winding sheets. Simon drops a speck of holy water on her head and feet and blesses her.

“God rest their souls,” he says, and turns away Adam shovels quicklime over the open grave.

 

Afterwards, we stand outside the church, rubbing our arms and looking at the grass and the sky. It's a mild day, a light breeze blowing the flower scent from Sir John's garden over the churchyard wall. If the end of the world really is coming, no one seems to have told the wind or the sky.

Robin shifts his feet.

“I'll be getting home then,” he says.

“No, you won't,” says Alice. “You're coming back with us.”

And that's that.

 

 

F
ather takes Robin back to his house to pick up his things, and to bring back the chickens, and Margaret's cow. There are all sorts of useful things in Margaret's house – bags of grain, pots and pans, a fine woven blanket that came from France. But Alice won't let Robin bring anything except what's absolutely necessary, for fear that the miasma might cling to it.

When Father brings him back home, Robin has his arms clenched tight around a bundle of things wrapped in a blanket. All of his things. He looks very small, though he's taller than me. He doesn't greet us, and he ignores Maggie, who's watching him round-eyed with her head tipped sideways against her shoulder. He just stands by Father with his eyes big and dark in his white face. I want to go and say something to him, but I'm frightened and weirdly shy. Alice would know what to do – she's better at loving than anyone I know. But I'm not Alice. I'm just clumsy Isabel and I don't know anything.

Alice's sister Agnes is here with her spindle. She's sitting by the hearth with Alice, who is stirring the pottage with one
hand and rocking Edward's cradle with the other. Agnes's eyes widen when she sees Robin, though she must have known Father was bringing him here.

“You're letting him keep that child in your house, sister, are you?” she says, her voice all high-pitched and disapproving.

“Of course I am,” says Alice, and her voice tightens. “Robin is welcome here as long as he needs to stay.”

“Well!” says Agnes. “I think you're making a mistake, sister, I do. Bringing a brat with the pestilence on him into your house! Why, he might kill you all, if you're not careful.”

Margaret stirs uneasily by the fire. Her blue eyes move from Alice to Robin to me. I shrug. Ned says, “Robin's coming to live with us, isn't he, Father?”

“Of course he is,” Father says, just like Alice. He puts his hand on Robin's shoulder. Robin wriggles and grips his bundle tighter. “Robin was my wife's godson and his mother was our oldest friend. I'll not throw Margaret's son out of doors when I have a home of my own. And if you want to share our hearth, sister, I'll ask you to remember that.”

Agnes draws herself up.

“Well!” she says. “I won't stay here to be spoken to like this. I hope the good Lord doesn't bring His displeasure down on you and on these poor children. But I won't be coming here until I'm sure He's spared you.”

My father's face is set stiff.

But, “You'll be welcome, sister, when you do come back,” is all he says.

Agnes is gathering up her things, pulling her hood over her head. She kisses Mag's head and says, “I hope you survive this, little cousin.” Mag just blinks at her. You can tell she doesn't really understand what's going on. Agnes draws herself up to
go. But she's got a problem. To get out of the door, she has to get past my father and Robin. She glares at Father, who stares back without speaking. In the end, she draws herself up, stuffs her hood over her nose and marches past them, stretching as far away from Robin as she can get. We all wait tense in the candlelight until the door bangs shut behind her.

It's like the air goes out of all of us. Alice says, “Well!” and bursts out laughing. “Come here,” she says, and she goes up to Robin and takes his hands in hers. “You're welcome here as long as you need a home,” she says. And she leads Robin over to the fire and sits him down between herself and me, and I rub my hand against his leg to show that I want him here too.

“She's an old toad, Agnes, don't listen to her,” I whisper, and he gives me a tight smile and shakes his head slightly.

I think of all the people I know, Alice is the closest to being a saint, even with her big feet and her red hands, even if she did leave that baby in Radulf's house. She's looked after five stepchildren who don't belong to her, and one baby of her own, and now she's taken Robin in too, without even blinking.

“Why didn't Auntie Agnes want Robin to live with us?” says Margaret.

“Oh!” Alice rubs her hand backwards through Margaret's hair. “Because she's a sour old besom, who never did lift a hand to help her neighbour. Don't listen to her, bunting.”

“Robin's staying with us for always, isn't he?” says Mags.

“That's right, bunting. And he's going to sleep in your solar with you, isn't he?”

Mags nods. “Because his mammy and daddy are dead.”

“Listen, Mags,” says Father hastily. “Why don't you and
Ned and Isabel go and fetch some water? Poor Robin needs a bath before we do anything else with him.”

Ned groans, but I cosh him over the head.

“Come on, Maggie.” I haul her up by the back of her gown. She shrieks and slaps at me, but when Ned and I head out the door, she runs after us, her leather shoes slapping on the earth floor.

It's a clear evening, with a slender thumbnail moon hanging in the pale sky over the trees. Sound travels on an evening like this: a dog barking, the creak of the waterwheel from the mill, someone hammering nails, a pig snorting in one of the gardens, men's voices at the forge.

“Do you think Father's stupid for letting Robin stay here?” says Ned.

“Maybe. But we couldn't have left him on his own, could we?”

“No-o,” says Ned, but he doesn't look sure. “Do you think we'll catch the pestilence off him, though?”

“Oh, Ned, how should I know?” I run a little way forward, to get away from his questions. “I'd rather die than turn Robin out!” I call over my shoulder, but I'm not sure if I'm telling the truth.

Back in the house, Alice has Robin sitting on a stool by the fire, with a bowl of bean pottage and a hunk of bread. He still hasn't said anything. His face is very white in the dimness.

“Come in and get something to eat!” she says, when we appear. She stands up and takes my buckets of water from me. As she tips the first bucket over the cauldron, the cauldron swings, casting high shadows over Edward, who starts to wail in his crib. Alice drops the bucket down on the earth.

“Whist, child, can't you, for once in your blessed life? Here –
Isabel, take him for me. It's just wind,” she says, thrusting him into my arms as his screams grow louder. So maybe she's more fussed about Robin coming to us than she pretends.

 

We give Robin the warm place in the middle of our mattress, next to Mag. Mag wants to whisper and show him all her things – “This is my dolly – look, Robin! – and those are the bags where Father keeps the barley, so the rats don't eat it. And that's—”

“Hush
up
, Mag.” I reach over Robin and shove her. “Robin doesn't care about Father's barley.”

Mag's face crumbles.

“Don't be so cruel, Isabel! I'll tell Alice!”

“Oh, be quiet.” Ned is in bed already, curled up in a ball with far more than his share of the blankets. “It's time to
sleep
.” Ned would sleep all day if you let him.

He and Mag fall asleep almost immediately – you can tell from the slow in-and-out of their breath. I'm not used to sleeping by Robin, so I'm not sure if he's sleeping or not. I've been this close to him before, but I've never been so aware of the warm, dark shape of him, lying on his side beside me. It makes me feel bigger and clumsier than usual, and I'm very aware every time I turn over or tug on the blankets. I lie awake for what seems like hours. Father and Alice are awake too – I can hear them mumbling to each other through the solar floor, the old, quiet, comforting sound of their voices. It reminds me of being small, listening to Mother clattering around the house, putting the cover over the hearth, washing out the pans, tidying things away or working at her loom, me up here between Geoffrey and Ned, too awake to sleep, watching by the orange candlelight from the chink between the blanket-curtains.

At last, Father and Alice's voices stop. The house is silent except for the occasional sigh from the oxen, and the others' snuffly breathing in the dark. I lie on my side with my eyes open and this bedfellow fear, the fear that kept Father and Alice awake beneath me, which made Agnes tell us to leave a fourteen-year-old alone in an empty house. What will happen when this thing comes to us? I think, and I don't have an answer.

I roll over on to my stomach, and see Robin's eyes, open and white and watching in the darkness.

“You're awake.”

“Yeh.”

“Robin . . .”

“What?” I reach out my hand and touch his arm, but I don't answer. “What, Isabel?”

“I thought you were going to die,” I say.

“So did I.”

I lie there on my stomach beside him in the dark, very still, and after the longest time I hear his voice catch in the darkness, so I know he's crying, and I shuffle closer to him on the mattress and bump my forehead against his, but he doesn't respond, and he hardly feels like my Robin any more, and I don't know what I'm supposed to do.

“Shh,” I say, as though he's as small as Edward. “Shh. I'm here.”

Robin doesn't answer, but he rubs his head against mine, to show me that he loves me. I put my arms around him and he lies against me, with his head against my shoulder and his arms around my neck. I hold him close, like Noah and Mrs Noah, sitting on the roof of the ark and watching the waters rise around them. In the mystery play, God promises never
to send another flood again. He doesn't promise anything about a pestilence. I hold him tight, like I used to when we were smaller than Mag and played weddings with Geoffrey wrapped in a blanket as the priest. I think how often Robin looks after me, how often he tells me not to worry, or listens to me rage about Richard or Alice or the little ones. Now it's my turn to look after him, and I don't know how.

I'm almost asleep when Robin lifts his head.

“Isabel,” he whispers. “Let's run away.”

“What?”

“Just you and me. And Geoffrey, if he'll come. We could go and live in the woods like the hermits. We could have chickens and bees and a garden, and stay there until I'm old enough to inherit, and then we could come back as a freeman and a freewoman, and by then the pestilence would be gone and nobody could tell us what to do.”

It sounds so lovely . . . like something in a minstrel's tale. For a moment I am dizzy with the possibility of it.

“Would Geoffrey come, though?” I whisper. “What would he do?”

“Well . . .” Robin obviously hadn't thought of this. “He could go back to being a priest if he wanted, after the pestilence was gone. Or he could live with us. Think of it, Isabel. Nothing could hurt us.”

His voice is fierce in the darkness. On the mattress beside me, Maggie turns, mumbling to herself. Of course I couldn't go. How could I leave these people? Father and Alice and my brothers and sister? And my land? How could I do such a thing?

Robin must have heard my answer in my silence, because he sighs and rolls on to his back. I reach over and twine my
fingers through his, and we fall asleep together like that, his fingers locked tight between mine.

 

Later, much later, I'm woken by the sound of Edward crying. Robin shifts beside me, but doesn't wake. Below, I hear Alice fumbling to light a candle, talking softly to Edward so as not to wake Father.

I prop myself up on my elbows and lift the blanket-curtain aside, so as to see into the room below. Alice comes through from her chamber. She's holding the candle in one hand and Edward in the crook of her other arm. Her hair is wild and dishevelled under her nightcap and her woollen slip is open at the breast. She settles herself at her stool, and lets Edward find her breast and start suckling. I watch from the solar, expecting Edward to finish and Alice to go back into bed with Father, but she stays there in the dark chamber, murmuring to Edward or perhaps to herself. In the yellow candlelight, there's something beautiful about the two of them – a little like the painting of the Virgin Mary in the church, but more earthy, more solid.

From the safety of my hiding place, I watch the two of them. After Edward has finished suckling he falls back quickly into sleep, but Alice stays awake for a long time, sitting at the stool by her loom, her rough head bent over her sleeping son. I wonder what she thinks, really, about having Robin living with us. I wonder what Father thinks about him sleeping in the same bed as me and Ned and Mags. I wonder, watching Alice holding her child, if somewhere inside her she regrets bringing him here. And I know that I will never, ever know.