Three Bags Full (16 page)

Melmoth could remember the day when George had tied that key round his neck. “Because you’re the wildest of the bunch,” George had said. Not Ritchfield, who carried his horns so high, but Melmoth. It had been a great day for him.

George walked away without once turning back.

“Are you crazy, George?” cried Ham. “First we spend all day looking for the creature, now you just leave it there. What’s the idea? It’ll run off to join the first flock it can find. A sheep without a flock? No one ever heard of such a thing! It’ll never make it!”

“Oh yes, he’ll make it!” Melmoth heard George say as two pale cones of light disappeared into the darkness.

14

Lane Goes for Help

All was quiet now on the meadow in the evening. Pigeons wandered through the grass looking for insects, the sky was pale and rosy, the sea lay smooth as milk at the foot of the cliffs. Even the monotonous sound of Gabriel’s sheep pulling up grass had stopped. Dull-eyed, they pushed with silent effort against the wire fence, where one of the posts had come loose from its fixings.

George’s sheep took no notice of any of that. They were still sitting under the shade tree, marveling.

“You made it,” said Cordelia admiringly. The other sheep were silent. Their hearts were still beating fast at the tale of Melmoth’s adventures, the glittering knife, the carrion eater’s scent, the howling of the butcher’s dogs.

Melmoth was silent too. He looked a little as if he were still wandering through the stone quarry. In a strange way, he looked young again.

“Go on!” bleated a shaky voice. The winter lamb. Melmoth quickly turned his head.

“Go on with what, young grazer?”

The winter lamb, alarmed, hid behind the trunk of the shade tree.

“I mean, how does the story go on?” he bleated from that safe place.

“The story doesn’t go on,” said Melmoth. “A story always ends just when it comes to the end. Like a breath. Now. But life went on, over hills and dales, away from the roads, along salty beaches and shimmering rivers, in the misty mountains where the wild goats of Wicklow graze, passing through many flocks, like passing through snowflakes, all the way to the North Sea where the world ends, and on and on—and I just followed life winding endlessly away, like a mouse running through the grass.”

“Then tell us about the North Sea!” bleated the voice behind the tree trunk.

But Melmoth wasn’t listening.

“I always wanted the story to go on too,” he whispered to a gleaming black beetle that had gone for a walk on a long blade of grass in front of his nose. “Into my own skin, back again, not with strangers out in the world. But I needed a shepherd for that, and the shepherd is dead.” Teeth snapped, and the stout beetle, together with its blade of grass, disappeared into Melmoth’s jaws. The gray ram chewed thoughtfully. Mopple wrinkled his nose.

“How do you know that George is dead?” Maple asked abruptly.

Melmoth stared at her in surprise. “How could I help knowing? My birds know, the air knows. The blue-eyed man brings his pale-eyed flock here. You’ve plundered the vegetable garden. The human flock goes trampling over the grass just as it likes. And besides,” he added in amusement, “anyone who saw him like that in the night, with his quiet heart and loud blood and the spade through the middle of his life, anyone who saw him then could be fairly sure he was dead.”

“You were there in the night?” bleated Cloud, all excited. “You saw who stuck the spade in George?”

Melmoth snorted crossly. “I didn’t see that,” he said. “Oh, if only I had…”

“But afterward?” asked Maple. “Just afterward?”

“The night birds hadn’t started singing again yet. I found him before the carrion beetles did. I found him before all the warmth of life had quite escaped into the darkness.”

“And then?” asked Maple intently. “What did you do then?”

“Walked around him in a circle three times to the left, walked around him in a circle three times to the right, three leaps in the air, like the wild goats of Wicklow when a wise goat among their numbers falls silent. Put my hoof on his heart. Difficult to say where the heart is in human beings. But you could tell with him. I’d have liked him to see me once again, just for a moment, so that he’d know I’d made it. One sunset too late, only one. Since the swallows last flew I’ve been hearing time pass by, trickling away like sand in the wind. Thought it was my time running out. Couldn’t have known it was his.” Melmoth looked sad.

Maple pictured his shaggy shape in the darkness, his glowing eyes, his fluid movements, several black-winged crows on his back. That solved the mystery of the hoofprint. She nodded. “The wolf’s ghost.” She saw it clearly before her.

The other sheep looked at her, troubled. They didn’t like to think of the wolf’s ghost—not even in broad daylight, when the sun was shining down on their fleeces and the gulls were screaming. Maude suspiciously scented the air on all sides.

The brighter sheep looked at Melmoth. Slowly it dawned on them: no wolf’s ghost in the meadow, only Melmoth. Although “only” didn’t seem quite right for Melmoth. They were all wondering privately whether they ought to be as badly frightened of Melmoth as they were of the wolf’s ghost, or alternatively as little frightened of the wolf’s ghost as they were of Melmoth. Or then again, the other way around?

Uneasiness came over the flock. Lane and Mopple, who had been resting comfortably on the ground up to this point, rose nervously to their feet. No one else moved. Ritchfield, who as lead ram was supposed to set an example in such situations, wasn’t being much help to them this time.

All he said was, “Huh!”

Huh? Did that mean there wasn’t a word of truth in the story of Melmoth and the wolf’s ghost? Did it mean that more than one wolf’s ghost was needed to upset Ritchfield? Did it simply mean that he just hadn’t understood something properly?

They looked at each other, baffled. Finally their hunger came to the rescue.

While Melmoth was telling the story of that night in the quarry, not a single sheep had been grazing. They had been running away with him, hearts beating wildly, they had trembled, they had hoped. Now their main feeling was hunger. It was lucky that the Pamela stories hadn’t been like Melmoth’s, or they would probably have ended up a very skinny flock. Wolf’s ghost or no wolf’s ghost, the sheep began grazing with a hearty appetite. As they worked away, jaws munching, lips tearing up plants, nostrils and thoughts buried deep in the grass, their tension melted away like mist.

But then something moved in Cloud’s fleece. The lamb slipped out. His legs were trembling, but he had a determined expression on his face. He looked around the meadow. Melmoth was standing only a few steps away, as if he were expecting him.

The two of them looked at each other.

“They say you’re the wolf’s ghost,” said the lamb, still rather hesitantly.

“I’m Melmoth,” said Melmoth.

“Then isn’t there any wolf’s ghost?” asked the lamb, wide-eyed. Melmoth lowered his shaggy gray face to the lamb. The corners of his mouth crinkled. The crows on his back cawed mockingly.

“But you saw him with your own round eyes, didn’t you, little grazer?”

“I did see him,” said the lamb gravely. “He wasn’t like you. He was scary.”

Melmoth snorted in amusement, but before the lamb could begin to feel silly, he turned serious again.

“Listen, little grazer, listen carefully with those nicely shaped ears, listen with your eyes, with your horns that haven’t grown yet, with your nose and head and heart.”

The lamb even opened his mouth too, so as to listen better.

“If you saw a wolf’s ghost,” said Melmoth, “then that’s what you saw. I was with George that night, but who’s to say I was the
only
one? He was a special shepherd lying there under the fleece of darkness. He walked through many worlds, he was a guest in many worlds. Now the pale ones dance in the village and the red woman has come. The silent black ones knock on the door of the shepherd’s caravan in vain, and carrion eaters drop from the sky. Who knows who else danced around his dead body? Not you! Not I!”

“Cordelia thinks it’s all a trick,” said the lamb. “Cordelia thinks there are no such things as ghosts. But she doesn’t believe that herself—she’s afraid of them too.”

“It’s not a trick,” said Melmoth. “You may believe Melmoth, who has grazed in many worlds. Yes, there are ghosts in the world. Water-hole crawlers and hedge creepers, sea fingers and hay specters, they’re only the most harmless. But when the Weeping Lamb cries out in the mist, the mother ewes can’t help themselves. They have to go to him, you see; he pulls them in on threads, like a spider. And none of them ever comes back.”

The lamb shuddered. “None of them?”

“None of them. And mind you never set eyes on the Red Goat. If a sheep sees the Red Goat, then a ram of that sheep’s flock will soon die in a duel, and not even the wind can do anything to stop it. It’s better for a sheep not to see the Red Goat. As for the Lone Mist, seducer of noses, it’s better for a sheep never to smell that either, little grazer. A heavenly scent, like all good things at once—herbs and milk and safety, the scent of a ewe in autumn, the smell of victory after a duel—it tempts you and lures you and whispers in its velvety voice. But only
one
sheep in the flock can smell it. And the sheep follows that smell, over stick and stone, away from the flock without a backward glance, out into the moors, to a black lake in the bogs. A wicked little eye of a lake, staring at you…”

“And then?” whispered the lamb.

“Then?” Melmoth rolled his eyes. “Then nothing. No one has ever got beyond that wicked eye—at least, no one who trotted away again safe and sound. Only one sheep has ever escaped the Lone Mist.”

The crows on Melmoth’s back turned their heads, and their bright little eyes stared expressionlessly at the lamb.

“You?” whispered the lamb.

“Me?” Melmoth winked. “It’s the story that matters, not the storyteller. Hear the stories, listen to them, pay attention to them, gather them up from the meadow like buttercups. There are the Howling Hounds, Thule the Scentless, the Vampire Sheep, the Headless Shepherd…”

“And the wolf’s ghost,” said the lamb.

“And the wolf’s ghost,” agreed Melmoth. “Yes, you persistent little ghost watcher, there’s the wolf’s ghost too.”

As if in confirmation, the crows on his back spread their black wings in the evening sunlight.

But Melmoth turned and trotted past Maude, who scented the air after him. He trotted past Cordelia and Maple, Zora and Sir Ritchfield, who had a conspiratorial expression on his face. Then Melmoth disappeared into the gorse hedge, and a moment later it seemed to the sheep as if they had only dreamed the strange gray ram.

But Ritchfield looked happy. “He’s just gone for a stroll,” he said. “He always liked the night. ‘A shame to waste it sleeping,’ he used to say. He’ll be back. No sheep may leave the flock. Unless that sheep comes back again,” he added, to be on the safe side.

After Melmoth had gone away the meadow seemed oddly empty to the sheep, mysterious like a calm, deep sea. They all crowded together on the hill and listened first to the silence and then to Miss Maple, who was busy investigating.

“Now we know why George left the flock,” she said. “On the night Melmoth was telling us about, he discovered that his was the
wrong
flock. It had killed McCarthy. Imagine you’re living in a flock, and one day you find out that the others aren’t sheep at all—they’re wolves.”

The sheep stared at Maple in horror. Only the winter lamb bleated mockingly.

“But it was a secret,” Miss Maple went on. “Wolves that couldn’t be identified just by their scent—wolves in sheep’s clothing. And it wasn’t to get out. I think it’s what humans call justice when something gets out.”

“Gets out of what?” asked Othello, who was beginning to take an interest in the case.

Miss Maple thought hard. “I don’t know what it gets out of,” she finally admitted. “If we knew what it got out of, of course we could just try to let it out.”

“Justice!” bleated Mopple, who liked the idea of letting something out of somewhere. At least, it didn’t sound dangerous: a little kick against the right gate, or a push from Lane’s clever nose, and the whole murder business would finally be over. But then he wondered why justice had been shut up in the first place. Was it dangerous? And dangerous only to humans, or to sheep too? Mopple kept his mouth shut and made a very sheepish face. He decided to opt for saying nothing and chewing the cud at such meetings in future.

“It’s interesting to stop and think who was afraid in Melmoth’s story—and why,” said Miss Maple after a short pause. “George and the butcher were afraid of the body at first. We know that. A body tells you that death is somewhere nearby—and everyone’s afraid of death.”

Hesitant bleats of agreement. This subject of conversation was definitely too morbid for the sheep. However, Miss Maple went relentlessly on.

“But then,” she said, “George and the butcher were even more afraid once they knew that the murderers knew that they knew.”

The sheep looked at one another. Who knew what? Miss Maple made use of the general bewilderment to pull up a fat golden buttercup and chew it conscientiously. Then she went on.

“And why? Because the murderers are afraid too—afraid it will get out. That makes them dangerous—like dogs. Dogs who are afraid are twice as dangerous. Dogs who are afraid bite.”

Suddenly a new idea seemed to occur to her. She looked at Mopple, who was still concentrating on chewing the cud.

“Mopple, what are you supposed to remember?”

“Everything,” said Mopple proudly.

Maple sighed. “And what else?”

Mopple thought for a split second. Then he said, “Goblin King.”

Miss Maple nodded. “Now we know why the children were afraid of George—even though he never hurt anyone. They’d learned fear from the older humans, like lambs. George was a danger to the older humans because he knew the secret.”

The sheep, impressed, stayed silent. Miss Maple really was the smartest sheep in all Glennkill.

“But perhaps none of that has anything at all to do with George’s death,” said Zora. “After all, they left him alone for years—almost as long as a whole sheep’s lifetime. Why now, all of a sudden?”

Miss Maple shook her head vigorously. “It must have something to do with it. The spade here, the spade there—it’s too obvious. Spades aren’t dangerous in the usual way. Ours spent years in the toolshed. So how come two people suddenly die of spades? Because that’s what it was supposed to look like with George, even though he was really poisoned. Whoever murdered George wanted to remind someone of McCarthy.”