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.
18. Emma Baker
It’s very strange having Robin living with us. At first, I’m awkward and a little shy – not sure how to treat someone who’s watched his mother die of the pestilence. But in the end I just watch what Alice does; brisk, loving, practical Alice, scolding the little ones when they pester him, softening Father when he asks too much, sending him away – “Go and fetch me some wood, Robin, won’t you?” when it’s obvious that our crowded little house is too much for him.
He’s quiet and withdrawn those first few days, brushing aside my attempts to comfort him – “Not now, Isabel” – and going off alone to the archery butts, or the well, or the wood. Mag follows him around like a friendly puppy, curious about this strange, subdued version of her old friend. She brings him things to interest him – “Look, Robin, here’s the cheese that I helped Alice make. Look – these are our hens. Father made this hoe – look.” Robin tolerates her, which is more than Alice or I do.
“Send her to me if she bothers you,” says Alice, but Robin shakes his head.
“I don’t mind. She’s nice, Mag.”
Father manages to sell Margaret’s cow to Edward Miller, whose cow and all his sheep died of the pestilence. We keep their chickens, but we put Margaret’s cockerel in the pot. No one wants a cockfight every day in their yard.
Mostly, Robin’s out all day in the fields with Father and Ned. When he comes back, we don’t talk much. We just sit by the fire; me with my spinning, or my weaving, or my mending, him watching my fingers, watching the fireside, resting his head on my knee or my shoulder, quiet.
“Was it awful?” I ask him, one day when he’s been living with us for nearly a week, and he gives a sort of shudder.
“Tell me,” I say, but he won’t.
All he says is, “They go mad, Isabel. After a while. They don’t know who they are, or who you are. They don’t care that they’re lying there in their own blood and shit. It’s better, probably, that they don’t . . .”
Five hundred and fifty people live in our village, including Sir Edmund’s soldiers, and more – like the pedlars and the carters and the man who brands the sheep – who come through, stay a few days, and then leave.
Today, as we stand at the back of the church, Father’s eyes look down, but Alice’s head is turning, counting the missing and the dead. Twenty-three dead this week. More missing. Edward Miller stands against a pillar with his arms crossed and his eyes closed. He lost his mother and his two children in the last week. The eldest was sitting by the fire, with her spindle. They didn’t even know she was sick. Her mother went out to bring in the chickens, and when she came back, she was dead. Amabel’s grandmother died just the same way. This sort of death is the worst of all. Every morning when I wake up, I lie in our solar and wonder, Who died tonight? I touch Robin and Mag with the back of my hands, to see if their bodies are still warm. If Father and Robin are late home from the fields, I think, Perhaps they’ve fallen down dead. I feel all the time – every day, every moment – like I’m sitting under an axe, waiting for it to fall. I start at unexpected noises, at the sound of crying. I’m frightened, every minute of every day.
I look around the church like Alice, seeking out bad news. Emma Baker is missing too. She’s not sick, but her husband is. The oven’s been out since he fell ill. One of his apprentices ran away when the pestilence began and the other’s mother is sick in Great Riding and he’s needed at home. I can’t think what will happen when John Baker dies. How can you have a village without an oven? What will we do without bread?
The two smallest Smith children from the forge are here, but their parents aren’t. Their father is dead and their mother is home with the oldest boy, who’s sick. Alice turns her head when she sees them, and nudges me.
“Go and tell Alice Smith they can come and eat with us after church. Poor little mites – their mother’s got enough to do without putting on a meal.”
I push my way through the people to the back of the church. Alice Smith is about Ned’s age, with straight, lank black hair. Her little sister is smaller than Mag.
“Alice says you’re to come and eat with us after church,” I tell her. She stares at me.
“We can’t. We have to go home and see our brother.”
I shift Edward on my hip and scowl at her.
“Alice says you’re poor little mites. She says your mother’s got enough to do without feeding you.”
Alice Smith’s little sister sticks her fist in her mouth and turns her face from me to her sister. Alice Smith’s white face goes pink at the cheeks.
“Our mother can cook better than your Alice can!” she says. The people in front of us turn and make shhing faces. “We don’t need food from you!”
Her sister’s hair is wild and uncombed, and there’s a grubby look to their faces, but I bite my tongue. I make my way back to Alice and Father.
“She says their mother can cook better than you can,” I tell Alice, and she sighs.
“Really, Isabel! I don’t know what’s got into you lately. What did you say to them?”
What’s got into me lately? The end of the world is what’s got into me lately! All the empty spaces in the church – all the fresh-dug earth in the churchyard. Alice is a lunatic. If it was the Last Judgement and the dead were rising up from their graves around us, she’d say, “Comb your hair, Isabel, wash your face and don’t pick your nose. What will Jesus and St Michael think of you, looking like that?”
On Tuesday morning, John the baker dies. There are mutterings about sending to Great Riding for another baker – but what baker would come to a pestilence village? – or for John Baker’s brother, who lives in Felton and might remember how to work an oven. By Tuesday evening, though, smoke is rising from the oven again. Alice’s head turns.
“Who’s got that going?”
“One of the apprentices, maybe?” says Father.
But it isn’t. When Mag and I take our flour over that evening, Emma Baker is there, piling the wood into the oven with the apprentice whose mother was sick.
“What are you doing, being a baker?” Mag says, her eyes big and round.
“Someone has to,” says Emma. She looks far too cheerful for someone whose husband has just died. Her round face is red and the sleeves of her gown are rolled up. “Don’t just stand there gawping, Watt! If that fire goes out, I’ll wallop you so hard you won’t be able to stand for a week!”
“Are you going to carry on being a baker when the pestilence stops?” I say.
“Well, I don’t see who else is going to,” says Emma. “Watt! Didn’t you hear me?”
“Emma never did care much for John,” says Alice, when I tell her all this. “It was her father who wanted them to marry ??
? he thought it was a fine living for his daughter, though I wouldn’t want that great oven on my croft, myself. And who’s going to run their house, then, if Emma’s playing at baking?”
“Maude’s big enough,” says Father. Alice sniffs.
“Well!” she says. She turns to me. “Don’t you get any ideas, young miss. Don’t go thinking you’ll run this farm if anything happens to your father!”
“I’d do it better than Robin would, anyway,” I say.
19. Harvest
Time passes. The days grow lighter and longer. Soon it’ll be harvest, and I don’t know how we’re going to manage to bring in all the barley this year. Harvesting takes every pair of hands going – men at the reaping, women and girls at the binding, old folk and little squirts like Mag at the gleaning, stumbling behind the binders picking up the fallen grains.
Every summer, our barn is full of the harvesters, sleeping in the hay and toasting bread and cheese over the old iron hearth. Harvest time is hard, but it’s also wonderful. The harvesters bring pipes and flutes and drums. They light fires on the green and dance and play and tell tales late into the night. Alice always sends me to bed early, while the dancers are still jumping and whirling by the fire, but this year I’d hoped I might be old enough to stay dancing with Robin or Will, into the long evening.
This year is going to be different. Who’s going to look for work in a village with the pestilence? A few people have come – beggars, and poor men and women who have already lost everything they have to lose. But there are richer trades than harvesting now. These are our gravediggers and pall-bearers and nurses of the sick, our walkers behind the coffins and ringers for the dead.
I don’t know exactly how many people have died, but it’s over three score. I think. Maybe more. The church bell rings every day now, sometimes two or three or four times. I often see Simon hurrying past our house, his little bag with his oil and candles dangling from his arm. He’s promised us that as soon as the disaster is over, we’ll have the funeral masses. At the moment, he’s just getting everyone into the ground.