“Simon?” I say, as I push open the door, and something stirs at the back of the house.
Sir John’s box is open on the table, but the oil and the candles and the little rosewood cross are gone. Someone came in while he was lying there and stole them. Someone who thought having oil at a funeral was more important than the Ten Commandments.
“Simon?” I say again, and my voice hardly shakes at all. “It’s me. Isabel. Isabel from the green.”
Simon is lying cross-ways on his bed. The smell is stronger here – even with my hood pressed against my nose I can still smell it. The bed sheets are filthy with blood and vomit and probably worse. Simon’s narrow face is yellowish-white in the candlelight, and his hair is matted with sweat. There’s dried blood on his chin and neck, black and horrible. The candle flame flickers as my hand shakes. I think of Geoffrey, my brother Geoffrey, and the way his chin stuck out as he said, “I want to stay,” and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I think of all the strangers in the abbey infirmary, and Geoffrey cleaning up the blood and piss and carrying the corpses out to the plague pits. Compared to what Geoffrey is doing, I think, this is nothing. If I were a monk, I’d have to do much worse.
Simon’s eyes open. They’re dark, darker than Geoffrey’s, and they move restlessly in the bones of his face until they see me there. They focus and his lips move, his tongue running against his cracked lips.
“Drink—”
Sir John’s ale barrel stands by the table in the corner. I don’t know how fresh the ale is, but I don’t suppose Simon will mind. I fill a goblet and lift him so he’s sitting high enough to drink. He’s not much heavier than Ned, and so thin that I can feel the bones of his shoulders digging into my arm. His Adam’s apple bobs convulsively as he swallows.
I feed him about half the goblet; then he starts to cough. I pull my arm back, but not quickly enough to stop the blood spattering on to my sleeve and into the ale. His whole body shudders in my arm and I hold him as best I can, terrified that I’m going to drop him. How many years in hell do you get for dropping a priest? The coughing is almost more frightening than the blood, which isn’t much, and stops eventually. His eyes close again, and I lay him back on the bed.
I go and fill a bucket from the water butt and bring it back to the bed. With a bit of cloth, I clean Simon’s face and hands, rubbing at the dried blood and vomit until it comes away. I ought to change the sheets too, but my mind baulks at the thought. He lies back on his pillow, watching me, not moving. Is he still inside there somewhere? Does he know who I am?
“Simon,” I say, and my voice hardly wobbles. “You need to make your confession before God.” Simon watches me, but he doesn’t say anything. Sir John only ever heard my confession once, at Easter, and I’ve forgotten the words he used. “Do you have anything you want to confess?”
The candlelight shines in Simon’s eyes. He jerks his hand on the bed sheet and I grip his fingers. There’s blood and dirt under his fingernails, where the cloth didn’t reach.
I wrap my hand around his long, white fingers and squeeze them. They’re very cold. The skin is dry and papery.
“I’m afraid—” he says.
“Of what?”
I wait, but his eyes are wandering again, over the bedclothes, over the rough surface of the walls. I swallow again.
“I forgive you,” I say. “God forgives you.” I dip my finger in the goblet of ale and draw the cross on his forehead. His eyes close.
I lay his hand back down on the blanket and sit there quietly on the edge of the bed. I don’t want to leave him. I fill the goblet up with ale and put it back beside his bed. I make up a fire in the cold hearth, grateful for the flame from the candle because my hands are shaking too much to use the tinder. I can’t leave the candle burning, but I kick the straw away from the fire and it’ll probably be all right. I scatter some feed for the chickens, who’ll be hungry in the morning, and then I go back and look at Simon.
He’s lying with his head lolling on the pillow. His breath is low and rattling in his throat, like he’s trying to breathe through smoke. The stench is strongest over his body. He’s going to die soon.
“In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” I murmur over his head, the way Geoffrey taught me. I hold his hand and I pray silently inside my head, for Alice, and Father, and Edward, and Geoffrey, and the baby in the empty house, and the couple in Great Riding who were eaten by pigs, and the nun in France who drowned herself, and all the good men and women who died with no one to wait beside them. Then I sit there on the bed and watch him breathing in and breathing in, and breathing in and breathing in, until he dies.
28. Inside the House
It’s late when I wake. Usually, I’m the first one up, but today the light is streaming through the cracks in the doors and the cow at the other side of the barn is making urgent noises, wanting to be milked.
Magsy and Ned are already up and playing campball in the yard. I can hear them calling.
“To me! To me!”
I pull on my clothes and go outside. Something’s going to change today. It has to.
Robin’s sitting on the edge of the animals’ drinking trough, eating a bit of cheese. He holds out his hand to me and I go up and sit beside him.
“The food’s still there,” he says, in a low voice. “From last night.”
Every evening, I leave ale and food outside the door of the house. Every morning the food is gone and the flagon is there, empty.
Today, it hasn’t been moved.
The house is quiet. There’s no smoke coming through the thatch. The shutters are closed.
I feel very tired. I lean my head against Robin’s shoulder, and he puts his arm around me. Maggie and Ned are playing with their ball against the wall of the house, but I can’t seem to pull my thoughts together enough to worry about them, to tell them to keep away. I ought to go in. I know I ought. But I’m frightened. Not of dying. I’m frightened of what the bodies might look like. I’m frightened of the blood and the pus and the stench, and I’m frightened because these things have no place in our neat little house, in my warm and orderly home.
“What are you going to do?” says Robin.
I bite my lip. Father made me promise not to go into the house, but all today I’ve been wondering if that was a fair thing to ask me to promise, and if I can live with myself if – when – they die alone and unsanctified.
Watching me, Robin says, as though reading my mind, “Walt never said you couldn’t go to the monks.”
That isn’t true. Father said again and again – since the pestilence came here – that I wasn’t to go to the abbey, that I wasn’t to go and see Geoffrey, that he didn’t care if I’d suddenly decided I wanted to run away and be a nun, I had to wait until the sickness had passed. It’s just that now – since Alice fell sick – all his prohibitions have been about the house. But he wouldn’t have wanted Alice to die without a priest. I’m sure he wouldn’t. And when – if – Alice dies, he wouldn’t want her body left to rot in the house, would he?
I don’t take the others, because I know the abbey is dangerous. I go through the village alone, with nothing but a handful of lavender from the garden pressed against my nose. It’s a heavy, wet day, with a faint mist curling around the edges of the trees. The village is eerily empty. A few chickens scratch about in the road, and a pig is nosing at the fence by Richard’s garden, but that’s it. It’s like everyone has run away or died and we’re the only people left alive, though I know of course that that can’t be true.
But there must be monks left. Mustn’t there?
The stench of the pestilence is stronger at the abbey as well. I take deep breaths of lavender as I bang on the door with my fist, until I think no one will come, that everyone is already dead. At last, a brother I don’t recognize answers the door. His hair is wild and his eyes weary.
“Well?” he says. “What?” He speaks real English, as though he’s spoken it every day of his life, rather than learnt it from a bo
ok like most of the monks.
“Please,” I say. “My parents—”
The monk sighs. “Half of the brothers are sick,” he says. “And the other half are dead. And now every bastard in the village wants a miracle. All right. Wait there. I’ll get my things.” He tugs his hand through his hair.
“Do you have a miracle?” I say. The words tumble out of me like grain from a barrel. “We have St Bede, and rosemary—”
“Rosemary and St Bede!” The monk gives a bark of a laugh. Then he sees my face and seems to collapse. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’ve not slept all last night, and I’m not going to sleep tonight either. You can’t cure this. You do know that, don’t you? Once you’ve caught it . . .”
He sighs. “Come on,” he says. “I’ll give them the rites, at least. I can do that much.”
We don’t talk much on the long ride back. The monk has a scrawny brown horse, which looks as ragged as he does – it’s got some sort of mould around its eyes, and there are patches of discolouration across its back and head which give it a worried, half-finished look. The monk rides with a concentration which suggests that he hasn’t had much practice. Maybe he’s a villein’s son, like Geoffrey.
I’m glad he doesn’t say anything to me. I don’t feel much like talking.
Robin is milking the cow when we come back to the yard. He nods to me, but doesn’t come over. I can’t see the little ones. I don’t know where they are.
“Hello! Open up! Open up!”
The monk raps proprietorially on our door with the back of his hand. I stand a few paces back. He isn’t like any monk I’ve ever met before. His thin face is unshaven and his eyes raw with sleeplessness. The shaved pate of his head has a raw, scabby look to it.
“I don’t know if—” I say. The monk looks at me.
“Well?” he says.
“We’ve been sleeping in the barn,” I whisper. “I leave them food, but—”
He gives me a hard look then.
“God almighty,” he says. Then, “How many of you are there?”
“Three,” I say. “Four with Robin. Six with my brothers who aren’t home. There were seven, but . . .”
He runs his fingers through his hair so it sticks up again. Then he says gently, “Do you want to come in with me?”
I shake my head, blind, tears starting in my eyes for the first time all day at his kindness. Kindness always makes me cry.
“All right,” he says, and he goes into the house.
I wait outside. He’s gone for what seems like hours. I hear scraping on the floor, as though he’s moving the bed. Perhaps they’re all right after all.
He comes back to me at the door.
“Don’t be frightened,” he says. “Come and see.”
Coming in from outside, the house is dark and stuffy. It smells of lavender drying, and rosemary and juniper, and straw and smoke and pig and cow, but also the sickly, rotten scent of death. The fire is dead, and the candles are out.
The smell is worse in Father and Alice’s little bed-space. The monk has arranged them flat on their backs together in the bed, but he couldn’t hide the mess – the blood and pus and worse on the blankets. Their skin is marked with bruises, blossoming under the skin, bruises and blood.
They are both quite dead.
I feel like I’m falling. I feel like I’m standing on the top of Riding Edge, just about to tip over the face of the cliff, and there’s nothing I can do about it. My mind is dull. All I can think about is Ned and Maggie and Robin, and how it’s my job to look after them now, and how am I supposed to do it on my own?
“Their confession,” I whisper. “I never heard it. They died unshriven.”
“Here,” says the monk. He makes the sign of the cross over the bed.
“But if no one heard their confession – aren’t they going to hell?”
“Perhaps they heard each other’s confessions,” says the monk. He puts his arm around my shoulders and leads me gently away from the bed. “Yes. I’m sure that’s what must have happened. They knew what the bishop said, didn’t they?”
Outside, the sudden brightness makes me blink. Robin has taken the cow to pasture, and Mag and Ned are nowhere in sight. My head is stuffy, as though I haven’t properly woken up. I can’t think what to do next. Should I tell the others? Find Geoffrey? Run away? What can I do with these ruined people? I’m supposed to bury them, I know, but the thought fills me with terror. I want to run back to the barn and lock the door and never leave it again.
“Your brothers.” The monk is talking to me. “Little girl. Listen to me. Where are your brothers?”
“Geoffrey’s at the abbey,” I say. “Richard’s in his house – it’s not far. He’s got a wife who’s going to have a baby. Do you know Geoffrey? Is he all right? Can we go back and tell him?”
The abbey rushes into my head, the abbey infirmary where Geoffrey was working, that cool, safe place rich with the smell of dust and sunlight, green leaves and apple blossom, paper and old stone. Maybe we could go there, and the monks could look after us. They wouldn’t ask Mag and Ned to work in the infirmary, surely? Maybe there’s somewhere safe they could hide us. But even as I’m thinking it, I know I’m dreaming. Nowhere’s safe any more.
“Geoffrey,” says the monk, as though he’s tasting the name. Then, “No, don’t go to him. Better not bring your family to the abbey now. Take the others to Richard – he’ll look after them.”
“But I can’t!” I cry. “Father told us we weren’t to. Why can’t I see Geoffrey? What’s wrong with him?”
“Little girl,” says the monk. He says it calmly, but very firm. “Listen to what I’m telling you. The abbey can’t help you now. You need to go and find your other brother.”
Does that mean Geoffrey is dead, and he doesn’t want to tell me? I bite my lip, hoping to make the blood come, but I don’t ask any more.
“All right,” the monk says. “Good girl. Come on.” He leads me away from the house and towards the gate. He hauls himself back on to his horse, rubbing at his bloodshot eyes, yawning hugely. Then he leans over and touches my forehead. “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,” he murmurs, like I did to Simon, and I stand there at the gate to our house, watching as he rides away and the empty land that is the rest of my life rises up to meet me.
Richard.
Richard will help. I know I promised Father not to go to him, but I can’t do this on my own. How can Robin and I dig the graves? How can Robin and I bring in the harvest alone? How can I keep Mags and Ned fed? How can I go back to that house, once so warm and safe, with the stench and the blood and the dead people already starting to rot inside it?
When I rap at the door, Joan answers, her belly heavy and swollen, and my hope sinks a little. I’d forgotten quite how pregnant she was. At the same time, it’s so wonderful to see someone grown-up and related to me – someone whose problem Ned and Mag and those dead bodies are now – that I grasp at her sleeve.
“Joan! Oh, Joan. It’s so good to see you.”
“Isabel! Isabel, whist.” Joan steps awkwardly off the doorsill, shutting the door behind her. “You’ll wake Richard.”
Wake Richard? The sun is already halfway through its journey into the heavens. Why would Richard be sleeping?
“Can I talk to him?” Tears are pricking at the back of my eyes again.
Joan hesitates. There’s something wrong with her face – it’s stretched taut with sleeplessness and her eyes won’t meet mine. Who of her people have died – her father? Her sister? I don’t want to see whatever sadness is there and I look away, to the church and the faded cloth of the archery butts and the three beehives round and content and all unknowing in a row in Sir John’s herb garden.
“Isabel . . .” she says, and something in her voice makes me turn back to her. “It . . .”
“What? It’s what? I need to speak to Richard, Joan.”
“I think it’s the pestilence . . .” says Joan, and her face crumples sudde
nly into tears, and she’s crying, this grown woman who I’d hoped would solve all my problems is crying in the doorway.
I hate Joan. I hate her and I hate her stupid tears.
I back away. Joan’s shoulders are shaking, but I can’t help. All I can give her is more grief, and I can’t bear to bring my unhappiness here, to another human’s shoulders. I’m a coward, I know, and a fool, but I can’t help it. She’ll hear soon enough. I stumble back up the track, as Joan closes the door behind me, back to my two dead bodies and what is left of my family.
Last week, I had four brothers, two parents, one sister and Robin.
Now I have one brother, one sister and a husband.
And it isn’t over yet.
29. Judgement Day
The future stretches before me, bare and terrible. First I have to talk to the others. Then I have to do something about the dead things in the house. Probably then I have to clean up the house and make it into somewhere we can live again, but my mind revolts at the horror of it. Maybe we could just live in the barn for ever, where it’s clean and quiet.
Once we’ve done those things, then I’ll worry about what we’re going to do next.
Robin is feeding the chickens – so late in the day! – when I come back to the yard. He sees my face and he comes over and puts his arms around me. I don’t have to tell him anything. I just rest my head against his shoulder and breathe in his warm leathery earthy scent.
“Richard wouldn’t help us?” he says at last, and I rub at my face with my hands.
“He’s sick. And Joan has the baby coming. It’s just us now.”
I sit Maggie and Ned on the water trough and tell them what’s happened. They’re quiet, and they look as bewildered as I feel. Maggie seemed to understand about Edward, but Father and Alice together is too big for her to hold.