“Isn’t it awful?” he whispers to me.
“What? What’s awful?”
“All this fortune-telling,” he says. “Midsummer Eve is supposed to be about life – not death.”
But maybe it’s both. And all this worrying about death is really about wanting to live, isn’t it?
Next is a round partner-swapping dance, where I start off with Amabel Dyer and end up with Will Thatcher, who dances much better than Robin does.
The musicians stop to wipe their brows, and then they start up playing a pavane, graceful and slow.
“Do you want to dance another?” I ask Will and he goes red.
“All right.”
I love the pavane. I love the slow, stately tread of it. And Will is a good dancer. He holds my hand lightly in his rough palm and I feel something rise in me, something that might be fear or might be joy, or might be neither.
Will’s hand rests against the small of my back. My wits are torn between enjoying the dance – all tied up with the music and solemnity and the clear, cold, shivering firelit magic that is St John’s Eve – and longing for it to be over. When the music stops, Will holds his hand against my back for a moment longer than he needs to, and I look up at him without speaking for a moment longer than I ought. Then he drops his hand and I bob my head awkwardly and go back to Amabel and Robin, who are waiting by the ale barrel.
“I told you he liked you!” Amabel says, and I turn my head away from Robin’s brown eyes full of questions.
The dancing will last until late into the night, but my family won’t stay for all of it. Ned is already cross and tired and giddy. Father has had to break up at least one fight with the youngest Smith boy. And Maggie lolls half-asleep against Alice on one of the benches. But St John’s Eve isn’t over until we’ve set the candles on the mill pond.
The candles are set in little parchment boats, one each for every person in the village. I light mine from Father’s and drip wax into the bottom of the boat to fix it upright. Now I have to think of a wish. Around me, everyone is talking and laughing, helping the little ones light their candles, launching them into the water. I bet all their wishes are the same. I wish I may not die this year. I wish my family will come through safe.
How horrible, I think suddenly. This pestilence is spoiling everything, even Midsummer Eve, my favourite of all the festivals after Christmas.
I wish Will Thatcher would kiss me on the mouth, I wish, and I set my wish-boat on the water before I can change my mind.
If your wish makes it across the mill pond with the candle still alight, it will come true. If the candle blows out or the boat sinks, it won’t.
This year, there’s a wind rippling across the mill pond, and very few boats make it. Mine does, and so does Father’s, but Alice’s and Ned’s and Maggie’s are all blown out.
All of a sudden, I’m ashamed. I bet Alice wished we’d all survive this year. If I’d put my family’s safety on the water, would that mean we’d all have come through alive?
Everything is a little flat after St John’s Eve. The happy feeling of goodwill doesn’t last longer than the next morning, when Ned is sick in the bed and Alice shouts at me for letting him eat too many biscuits.
And the Thursday after Midsummer, I discover something I’d rather not have known.
Radulf the beadle lives at the edge of the village, way over the other side of Hilltop. He has three apple trees, a pear tree, five white geese and three beehives. It’s just the sort of house I want to live in when I’m grown.
On Thursday morning, Alice sends me over with a cooking pot that she’s promised to Radulf’s wife. I’m in a good mood because today is washing-day and I’ve managed to escape the pounding and scrubbing and rubbing down by the river. I give a little skip as I walk, and think how glad I am to be alive and not in London or York or anywhere else the sickness is.
Radulf’s geese make a tremendous honking noise as I come up to the house. They’re better than any guard dog. They stick their long white necks out at me, flapping their wings.
“Hey!” I say to them. “Calm down. It’s only Isabel.”
“Go on!” says someone – not Radulf or his wife. “Go on!”
A little girl is standing on the doorsill making shooing motions at the geese. She looks about eight or nine, with straight fair hair tucked behind her ears and a long green gown. She’s leaning on a broomstick that’s nearly as tall as she is – she’s been sweeping the floor. She smiles at me with her head on one side.
“They make a lot of noise,” she says. “But they’re friendly really. You don’t need to be afraid.”
“I’m not afraid,” I tell her. “I like geese.”
“I didn’t mean you were,” the little girl says hastily. “Only – if—”
“That’s all right.” She reminds me a little bit of Edward Miller’s little girl, Alison. “What are you doing here? You’re not Radulf’s new wife, are you?”
“No!” She shakes her head from side to side, taking my question seriously. “He’s my uncle,” she says. “I’m Edith. We’re just staying with him while the sickness is in York. Mother’s here too, but she’s gone to sleep because my brother kept her up all night. It’s not his fault – he doesn’t know any better – he’s just a baby. But he does scream! So Mother is sleeping, and I’m minding William and doing the sweeping.”
“So I see,” I smile at her, but my heart is hammering. This is what Gilbert Reeve was talking about at the meeting. Harbouring fugitives! I ought to report him to – well, to the bailiff, I suppose. But what would happen then? Edith and her mother and the baby would be thrown out of the village, and probably Gilbert and his wife too. And what good would that do? If they’ve brought the sickness to Ingleforn, it’s here already.
I remember all the fugitives coming down the long road from York, the children stumbling behind the carts, the men turning them away from the village. I wonder what happened to them all. Some of them – the wealthy ones – perhaps had manors and relatives to go to. But those that didn’t? We didn’t let them into Ingleforn, and I can’t see that any other village would let them stay either. Perhaps they died of starvation, further down the long road. Perhaps the sickness caught up with them, and they died in a ditch somewhere. I look at this fair-haired child, and I know I’m not going to tell anyone that she’s here.
“Where’s Radulf?” I say to Edith.
“They went to the village. Oh!” And she claps her hand over her mouth, her blue eyes round and horrified. “I wasn’t supposed to talk to anyone!” she says. “No one’s supposed to know we’re here! It’s supposed to be a secret!”
“It’s all right,” I say. Partly I just want to reassure her, but partly . . . I’m not really going to let them turn her mother away. Not with a baby. “I won’t tell anyone,” I say.
“You mustn’t,” says Edith, her fingers gripping the broomstick so tightly that the knuckles turn white.
“I won’t,” I say, and I wonder what I’ve done.
9. Free Men and Bond Men
There are two sorts of people in our village – free men and villeins. If you’re free, you can go where you want and do what you want and marry who you want, and so long as you don’t break the law no one can stop you.
If you’re villeins like we are, you can’t.
Being a villein means you belong to Sir Edmund and Lady Juliana. Mostly what it’s about is money. We have to pay fines to Sir Edmund if we want to leave the village, fines if we want to marry someone outside the manor, fines if we don’t go and work on his land when he asks us. Everything we grow on his manor belongs to him, so if he got really hungry he could take that too. He never has, though.
There are some lords who don’t ask much of their villeins. Some ask for no work at all, others maybe for a few days at harvest. Sir Edmund is harder than most. We have to work two days a week on his land, and five at harvest time, which is when we have the most work on our own land. Father usually hires labourers t
o work for us, but it’s still a long, weary, aching business, working until five on Sir Edmund’s land, then coming back to our own to start the harvesting again.
Robin’s mother is a villein too, but she never does her days in the fields.
“I’ve got enough work of my own,” she says, “without doing some old windbag’s weeding for him. Let him come after me if he wants!” Sir Edmund’s steward doesn’t fight, though. He fines her a couple of pence every manor court, which she never pays, and leaves it at that.
There are three ways to stop being a villein. You can be given your freedom, you can buy it, or you can run away and live in a town for a year and a day. Most people don’t. My father actually had enough money to buy his freedom last year, but he used it to buy John Adamson’s plough land in Three Oaks instead.
“But you could have been free,” I wailed.
“But you could have been fed,” he wailed back, and that was that.
I care about land as much as Father does, but I hate belonging to another person. I’ve always hated it, as far back as I can remember; it’s like an itch that won’t go away, no matter how hard you scratch it. Robin hates it too. When we’re grown and married, we’re going to work and work until we’ve saved enough money to buy our freedom. And then our children will be free, and they’ll be able to go where they want and live how they want, without caring about Sir Edmund or the law or any of those things we have to worry about.
And that’s a promise.
10. Little Edith
“ Do you think I should have told someone?” I say to Robin. It’s a few days later, and we’re bringing the animals home from the pasture, me with our cow and the two oxen, Robin with their old milk cow with the crumpled horn. The sun is setting warm and hazy behind us.
“No . . .” says Robin, but his voice is puzzled. “But why do you care so much?”
Why do I care? I don’t know. Yes, I do. It’s because if I can keep little Edith – flaxen-haired Edith, small-boned and frail as a baby chick – if I can keep her alive, then there’s hope for the rest of us: Ned and Maggie and Edward and all the muddle of people that I love. Except that by keeping her alive, I may be bringing this sickness closer to my family. It makes my head ache, trying to make sense of it. Am I being a good Christian by helping Radulf take in the homeless? Or am I stupid and careless and dangerous? If the sickness comes here – Isabel, it’s coming here too – will it be my fault?
“Wouldn’t you care?” I say, instead. “A little girl Ned’s age?”
“Of course . . .” says Robin. “But plenty of little girls Ned’s age have died of this thing already.
“Well . . .” I say. “If she’s brought the miasma, it’s already here.”
In the last few days the number of refugees coming down our road has shrunk to almost none. Very few people have come north at all, in fact. No carters, no traders, no pardoners or pilgrims or any of the ordinary people travelling through the village on their way to Duresme or York. It’s eerie.
At the forge, Robert the smith is shoeing a horse. His son holds the horse’s head, while Robert hammers the nails into the foot. There are a few women talking by the well and a little gaggle of children playing with a kitten at the side of the road. Tolly Hogg the swineherd is bringing the pigs back to the village and a few chickens are pecking in the dirt. Everything is ordinary, and happy, and safe.
Back at the house, Alice is scolding Ned.
“I told you to mind the fire, not go and play dice on the green! Now look what’s happened!” There’s a burnt, smoky smell in the house, and a black hole in the bottom of the cooking pot. “How are we supposed to eat now?”
Maggie is sitting on the floor playing with baby Edward. She’s fluttering her chubby fingers over Edward’s face, while Edward stretches for them. Edward likes to grab at anything – flames, patterns on cloth, marbles, dice. Then he tries to eat them. Maggie runs up to us as we come in the door, calling, “Robin! Robin!”
Robin swoops her up in his arms and spins her round until she screams. Then he tips her upside down. She squeals and grabs at his legs, but when he puts her down she says, “Again! Again!”
All little children love Robin.
Alice is in a fine fury.
“Don’t just stand there!” she says to Ned. “You’ll have to go fetch back that pot I lent to Muriel, if you want any supper tonight.”
“No,” I say quickly, thinking of that little girl and Ned’s busy tongue. “Don’t send Ned. I’ll go.”
The light is fading as I walk through the village to Radulf’s house. The birds are singing in the trees over my head and the gnats are out over the pools under the trees.
The house sits quiet in its hollow. Smoke curls out of the thatch and the chickens are pecking at the grass, but otherwise it could be deserted.
I knock on the door, and after the longest time, Radulf answers.
“Isabel!” he says. “Oh – Isabel. Now’s not—”
“I came for Alice’s cooking pot,” I say quickly. I don’t want to get Edith into trouble. “I don’t want to stay.”
“Oh,” says Radulf. “Well—” He dithers a little on the doorsill, but at that moment I hear a child’s cry from inside the house, a high, fretful wail.
“If—” says Radulf. “Just – wait there.”
He shuts the door in my face and goes back into the house. I hear banging about inside, and Radulf swearing, and then the child crying again, louder.
The door swings inward.
Edith is sitting upright in a low bed by the hearth. Even from the doorway I can see her little face is red. Even from here, I can smell a sweet, slightly rotten scent, like old apples. Even from here, I can see the black, swollen lump on her neck, so large that it pushes her whole face sideways.
I don’t know much, but I know what that means.
The sickness has come to us.
11. Rites and Wrongs
It’s growing dark by the time I come back to the green. Alice’s cooking pot bangs against my leg. They’ll be getting hungry at home, waiting for me.
The pestilence is here. Here in Ingleforn.
Sir John’s house is next to the church. I bang on his door. From inside I hear murmuring voices, getting louder as he comes closer. The door opens, and there he is, clutching his ale mug, his big belly straining against his cote. Gilbert Reeve is there too, sitting on a stool by the hearth. They’ve been eating supper – I can see the half-eaten pottage in their bowls.
“Isabel.” Sir John frowns. I must look a sight. My face is red and my hood has half-fallen down around my shoulders and I’m still clutching the big cooking pot. “Is anything wrong?”
I take a deep breath of air, trying to breathe, trying to breathe, trying to breathe.
“It’s here, sir. It’s here. They have it at Radulf’s house.”
Sir John draws back so quickly it’s almost funny. The ale slops out of his mug.
“The sickness?”
I nod. “His sister brought it from York. Her little girl has it.” I see her again in my mind, little Edith, her face red, her mouth open and crying, the horrible swelling on her neck. “Please, sir,” I say to Sir John. “Muriel says can you go and see her? I don’t—” I trail off. Radulf didn’t want me to tell anyone, but this is a bigger secret than just strangers in the village, isn’t it? And what will happen to that little girl if – when – she dies? You can’t keep a priest from a dying child, can you?
Sir John is backing away from me.
“Ah,” he says. “Well. I don’t know. I can’t – I mean, I don’t know if there’s anything—”
Gilbert Reeve is staring at him.
“You can’t refuse to visit the sick,” he says, which is just what I’m thinking. Is he going to send us all to hell unshriven? That miserable old coward!
“Ah,” says Sir John. He looks about him as though expecting to find an escape somewhere. There isn’t one. “Ah. Of course. I’ll just – if you just—” But h
e doesn’t move. Gilbert Reeve is looking at me.
“Are Radulf and Muriel sick?” he asks. I shake my head.
“No. Not yet,” I say. And then, catching his expression, “You aren’t going to do anything to them, are you?”
“If he’s brought the pestilence here,” says Gilbert grimly, “he’ll have the safety of the village to answer for. What happens to him isn’t up to me.”
The safety of the village. The hair prickles on the back of my arms. The safety of a little yellow-haired girl against the safety of us all. The love of a brother for his sister and her children against the safety of Alice and Ned and Father and Robin and Amabel and Mag.
The importance of caring for the sick against Geoffrey’s life. The safety of the village against the promise of eternal life. Life against death. Virtue against despair.
News spreads fast here. The next morning, at mass, everyone knows. You can hear the fear passing between them, the rustles and glances and murmurs.
There’s no sign of Radulf or his wife, Muriel.
“Have you heard?” says Emma Baker.
“We’ve heard,” says Alice. “That poor child.”
“But did you hear about Sir John?” Emma’s eyes are bright with excitement. Alice looks away and draws in the air through her nostrils. She hates gossiping about holy men. She walloped Ned hard across the back of his legs once for calling Sir John an old windbag.
“It’s not our place to speak ill of a priest,” she says, but she doesn’t know what’s coming next.
“Wait until you hear,” says Emma, and she lowers her voice. “He’s gone!”
“Gone?”
“Run away and left us. He was supposed to be visiting that child, but he never came. So Muriel went up to his house, and he’d gone. Taken all his clothes, and the good plate and—” Her voice drops. “The candlesticks from the church too, they say.”