After retrieving my belongings, I trudged up the wildflower hill, turning at the top to look down on Westfaire as I had done a hundred times in my childhood. There was no Westfaire. There were no towers. No high banners whipping in the wind. Nothing there but an escarpment of green, a great whale-back of verdure, a monstrous and overgrown mound, a spined and impenetrable barrow of roses. If one did not know what was under it, one would think it merely a hill covered with thorns, not worth the scratches it would take to explore.
Something shoved me. I turned to find the old horse nosing at my sack. He whickered at me. I stroked his soft muzzle and he pushed his nose into my shoulder.
“I have no grain. Will you be ridden? Saddle or no?” I grasped a handful of mane and drew him toward a rock, climbing upon it and leaning across his back. He made a sound, almost of pleasure. I slid a leg across. He waited. I lowered my weight upon him, fully expecting to be tossed onto the rocky ground. Instead, he turned to look at me, as though asking, “Where do we go now?”
“Down the River Welling is a little hamlet called Sawley Minor,” I said aloud to see how the words sounded, trying for the remembered words and accents of this time. “Where the miller lives. Let us go there.” When I had played at being Havoc, the miller’s son, Sawley Minor had been the place I imagined as home. If I received no welcome at the mill beside the Sedgebrook, the abbey lay only a little farther down the River Welling, and beyond it the village of East Sawley. East Sawley was a village of some size, occupied by woodsmen and sawyers, and I could undoubtedly find lodging there. I nudged the horse with a leg, showing the way, and he moved slowly down the hill in the direction I had indicated.
When the horse moved, I felt the pain in my groin, like a knife. Jaybee had torn me there. There were raw places, and I could feel warm stickiness on my legs. Getting on the horse had started the bleeding again. I shook with fear and rage and loneliness, and the horse turned his head to fix me with his round, incurious eyes. “My enemy isn’t here,” I said, convincing myself. “He doesn’t have boots, so he can’t get here without the machine, and he’d have to go back to the twenty-first to use the machine, and he probably wouldn’t dare do that even if he could. Besides, he could not imagine I have returned here. No one knows I had the means to do that.”
Grumpkin stirred against my thigh, like a hand, stroking me. That reminded me of Bill, and I felt the blood leave my face. Bill knew. No. Bill didn’t know I could come back, that is, he didn’t believe I could come back, but he didn’t know I thought so. Pray God he didn’t mention it to Jaybee.
Then I remembered Bill was dead. Jaybee had killed him. Bill wouldn’t mention anything to anyone.
“My enemy isn’t here,” I whispered again, blinking rapidly to make the tears drain away, keeping my voice flat and level. “Not in this time. Not in this place. Take me somewhere, good horse, where we may rest.”
We ambled down the road while the sun moved toward noon. The blood caked on my legs, and my trousers stuck to my skin. When the sun was at its height, we reached the place where the Sedgebrook fell into the Welling beside a tumble of stone and the shattered remnant of a great wheel, moss-hung where it stood beneath the sluice. Scattered among the trees were the stalks of old chimneys and a soggy rubbish of thatch. Sawley Minor was no more. There was no one in the place and nothing to show why they had gone.
Grumpkin crouched beside the water, a paw extended to catch whatever might be swimming there. The horse nibbled at the tall grass beside a broken chimney. I took off my clothes and washed myself and my trousers and changed my underwear and put a folded twentieth-century sock between my legs to keep the blood from coming through my clothes. In this time there were no napkins, ready-made in a box. There were no tampons. At my next “flowering” (Aunt Lovage’s word), I would have to go back to rags, worn and washed in cold water, then dried and worn again, as Doll had taught me.
The horse and I drank long at the sluice while I wondered what to do next. Though there was no one at the mill, the road that led beside the ruins was still traveled. There were hoofmarks in the muddy verge, and the grasses at the edges had been bitten back by hungry beasts. It led to the abbey and on to East Sawley, and there would be someone, many someones, at either place. We turned down it, the horse, the cat, and I, moving slowly in the shadow of the leaves.
As we rounded each corner, I found myself looking for the abbey. I had been there a few times, with Papa and Aunt Terror. It had not seemed a lengthy journey, even to a child. When I saw it at last, however, I did not recognize it for what it was.
Empty walls by the lakeside. A few carved pillars, with branching tops, like trees turned to stone. Steps leading upward to a floor littered with blackened, shattered beams and a sooty altar stone. The chapel had been there. The burned beams told of fire and the roof falling in. Around this wreck stood vacant halls where men had once worked and prayed, weedy fields they had once planted. Beyond the chapel floor, in the cemetery of the abbey, lay row on row of crosses, a hundred new ones where once there had been a few dozen old ones.
I slid off Horse’s back and walked between the stones of the tumbled wall. Beyond the fallen rock, roses were blooming. Here the abbot’s garden had stood. Papa and Aunt Terror and I had had wine and cakes on the pillared porch where briars now tangled themselves beside the steps. In the center of the garden was a fishpond where lilies had bloomed, the roots brought home from distant lands by a crusader, so the abbot had told us. The pond was muddy now, sodden from recent rain and rank with vines.
I heard a sound and turned to see a skulking figure dart away behind a pile of stone. “Hey,” I cried. “What happened here?”
There was no answer. I waited where I was, and after a time, an old face peered around a corner. I started toward it and was waved away.
“Stay away,” he cried. “Stay away from me. Bring me no death. Stay away.”
I stopped. “What happened here,” I called again. “Did the place burn down?”
“Dead,” he cackled at me, his eyes squinched almost shut. “Dead, all of them. All but half a dozen. Then the fire. Then the ruin. Then those that were left went away to Wellingford, all but me. I’ll stay, I told them. Stay and guard the abbey.”
“Dead?”
“Where’ve you come from, boy, that you don’t know dead? With the Black Death dancing among us like the vintners upon the grapes until we are squoze, trampling us like the threshers on the straw until we are winnowed. Dead they all were, the abbot among them. Swollen and screaming and dead.” He came out from behind the corner, a thin old monk in a ragged habit, capering like a goat and making a thin, screeching sound of lonely agony.
I knew of the Black Death. Of course. I had read of it, heard of it, repressed the information, somehow never dreamed that it had touched anyone I knew. And it had come here! And where else?
“Are there many dead in the nearby towns as well?” I asked. “In the hamlets and villages?”
“Everywhere,” he cried, jigging up and down in his fear or fury. “Everywhere. And half of all the world is dead of it, too. Stay away from places, boy. Hide you in the forest. Hide you deep where nothing comes on you. Else you’ll join them all….” Something sounded deep within the trees, and he leapt like a startled deer and darted away. When I turned back from the sound, he had gone, leaving me with my dilemma still.
I had no time to nurse it. What had sounded in the trees was a horn, and what emerged from the trees was a hunting party, two lords, a few huntsmen, and a pack of spotted hounds. The men carried boar spears, so I knew they had been after wild pig, up Trottenham way most likely. I stood aside, humble as salt, and let them come.
He who came up with me was a stone-built man, thick through as a tree. “Ho, boy,” he said to me with a bit of threat in his voice. “How came you by that horse?”
I bowed, as common people did. “I came not by it, master,” I said. “It came by me. I was on the road, and it came up and nuzzled the sack I carry. When
I told him I had no grain, he cared not but bid me ride anyways.”
“That’s Miller Sedgebrook’s horse,” said one of the huntsmen. “Miller’s been dead over a year.”
“Him and all his house,” said another. “But one son who’d gone away.”
I marked down that the miller had a son who’d gone away. Named Havoc, most likely. “Me,” I said. “I’ve come back.”
“Likely the beast was wandering,” said the first huntsman. “Lonely for humankind.”
“He seemed lonesome indeed,” I said, looking at my feet.
“Did no one teach you to take off your cap before your betters?” the lord asked. “And what happened to your face?”
“Aye, s-s-sir,” I stuttered, “but I’ve got my supper in it, and a man beat me, sir, and robbed me.” Which was true enough. He had stolen my virginity and my best friend and all my peace. He had robbed me well enough.
Though I had spoken without thinking, what I had said made me cry and them laugh. They felt amused and sorry for me, both at once.
“Get up on old Sedgebrook’s horse and come with us, then,” the lord said. “You can have a bite of supper that’s better than you’ll find under your cap, at least, and a place to sleep while you heal.”
I gestured at the ruined abbey. “The old one there told me to stay far from people, sir, lest I die.”
The lord nodded. “Ah, and well enough he’d have told you last year, boy, or the year before. But there’ve been few deaths this last twelvemonth, and we’ve hopes the thing is done with.”
“The Black Death, he said?” I wanted confirmation.
They gave me curious looks, and I thought I’d better say less and listen better. Evidently the matter was so well-known it occasioned no comment.
“It seems to have been everywhere,” I added, hastily.
They agreed it had indeed and bid me again to ride off with them, which I did, though well behind as was respectful. If I was to keep up my boy’s disguise, I’d need to cut my hair shorter or braid it up tightly. The men wore theirs almost to their shoulders, but if I’d taken off my hat, mine was down my back so I could sit on it, which was what had betrayed me first to Jay-bee. If they’d seen that, they’d not have long accepted me as a boy.
The place they took me was Wellingford House, a goodly manse set some distance from Wellingford village and with no walls about it. Papa had always called the lords of Wellingford plain fools to have no defenses, but from what was said on the ride, they had survived the Death better than most other places. When I saw the place, I thought I knew why. Whether I’d heard of the Death or not, everyone in the twentieth knew that rats and mice and fleas carried disease, a thing unknown in my own time. Wellingford House was as clean a place as I have seen in that time. Since there were no close walls to hold it in, the stables, kennels and barns were well away from the house with much clean garden between. The house had no rushes on the floor, and maids were kept busy sweeping morning and night. In most lordly places, even some parts of Westfaire, the floors were a midden of old rushes, bones, dog offal and droppings, and other, even more disgusting, dirt. Janet, the chatelaine of Wellingford House, would have none of that, and I saw only one rat the whole time I was there, and that was near the granary.
Janet was a termagant against fleas, as well, with much beating and sunning of clothing and much flea-bane strewn in the presses. As a result of all this cleanliness, few of them at Wellingford had died. I was not introduced to those who were left, but I was sent to the kitchens, which is as good as an introduction. Never was a cook yet didn’t like to talk, so I’d been told by our cook at Westfaire, and in the Wellingford kitchens I found out a good deal about the people, especially after the woman there had seen my battered face and come to feel sorry for me.
The lord was Robert of Wellingford, eldest son of the old earl who’d died some time before. His lady was Janet, and they had four children living, the youngest only three. Robert’s two younger brothers lived on the place as well, the youngest, Richard, in the manor itself and the middle one, Edward, in the Dower House, which was some distance away across the park. There was some shaking of the head and pursing of the lips when they talked of Edward, “Naughty Ned,” they called him, “One For The Ladies,” who was always “Setting A Bad Example For The People.” Janet had told him he must go out of the manor house to the Dower House, where he could have his doxies out of sight and mind.
I nodded and slurped my soup and dipped my bread and begged a bit of meat for Grumpkin and a swatch of hay for the old horse, which was really my horse if I was the miller’s son, and asked questions about the countryside. Wellingford village and East Sawley, it seemed, were still there, though the latter was much depleted by the plague. All around the countryside places were in ruin, and there was nobody left to build them up again.
“Sir Robert’s been looking for masons and builders for over a year now, to put the abbey back together, but there’s no men to be had. In the cities, it’s worse! There’s no one left to do anything at all. We’ve only enough here to work the fields and the flocks, as is, and there’s places hadn’t enough men to put seed in the ground! Come harvest time, people’ll go hungry, mark me!” She, plump as a pigeon, bustled around the fire in a way that made one doubt hunger existed. Still, if she was right, if there weren’t enough people left on the farms to plant grain, hunger would come. I shivered and took another mouthful.
“Sir Robert planted extra this year, so’s he can give doles come winter,” she fretted. “But it won’t be enough. Nothing will be. When the people died, the oxen wandered off, and the horses, like the one you found. Some are probably out there, wandering, but many have been killed and eaten by the poor and the homeless. So, even if we had more men to plant more fields, we’d have no more plowbeasts. And the people, wandering about, taking refuge in old places, they make fires and burn the places down, not meaning to, just out of carelessness. The mill, that’s how the mill went. And the abbey. And nothing tastes like anything at all, either.” She put her hands on her ample hips and glared at me as though I might have occasioned the plague without knowing it. “There’s been no spices all this year. The traders died, too, just like everyone else. We’re lucky to have a priest about to keep us in the grace of God; most places have none at all.”
I thought of Father Raymond, asleep at Westfaire. It was no time to think of Westfaire.
“What’s the year?” I asked, ignorant country boy that I was. “I forget.”
“It’s the year of Our Lord thirteen fifty,” she said. “So says our learned priest. And no Death this year, which makes it a good year, boy, whatever else happens.” She gave me more soup and a pat on the head.
I had spent a year and a half in the twentieth, but three years had passed here since I had left. So much destruction and death in three little years.
“If everyone’s looking for workers, then maybe there’s room for me here?” I asked. “I’m thin, but I’m strong. I’m good with horses. I’ve done stable work since I was eight.”
“I’ll tell Sir Robert you want to speak to him,” she said.
She was good as her word, and the lord spoke to me the next morning, giving me my keep and space in the stables and a tiny wage for my work, as well. Considering everything, it seemed a good place to stay. Grumpkin agreed. The smells of the horses and the hay spoke to him of home. He made himself a nest in the loft and lay there much of the day, like a lion glorying in his past and future conquests, while I groomed horses and mucked out the stalls and rubbed oil into leather, just as I had used to do long ago, with Martin. He had schooled me well, for no one found fault with my work.
It was a strange time, that next time. Despite all the death around, I felt safe. Despite that the country was in ruins, I felt at home. Despite that I had to hide my hair and my body—easier then, in those loose smocks and unfitted trousers than it would have been in the twentieth—I felt myself. Anger left me, slowly, until I was able to acknowledge w
hat had happened. It had happened, I said to myself. I had been defiled and terrorized, but I was still alive, unmutilated, sound in body and mind. My body had healed. Vengeance, I promised myself, but there was no hurry. I could take a time to simply be Havoc, the miller’s son. I had been away, I said when they asked. I had not known my family was gone until I came to the mill itself.
“I didn’t know the miller had another son than the three who died,” the Lady Janet said.
“Oh, yes,” someone said. “He had another son, but I’ve forgotten what it was about the boy.”
“He sent me to his sister when I was only a baby,” I told them. “I’ve been there since.” Who was to say I lied? Let them think what they would think anyhow, that Havoc had not been born in wedlock, that he had been the miller’s son but not of the miller’s wife.
Each day started with a bite of bread and a draft of beer in the kitchen, this through the kindness of the cook who said I was still a growing boy, for others of the servants and serfs got nothing until later. Then exercising the horses out on the meadows, staying away from the sheep and the cows so they would not be scattered by the dogs who came running after the horses, their tongues lalloping out of their mouths as they ran. Then grooming, and feeding, and taking care of the saddles and bridles. Some of the leather was worked in gilt, and the oil would strip it away, so it was mincy work with a little brush and a rag. The other stable hands hated it for their big hands were clumsy with the tools, so I did most of it myself. It was quiet. There was no one about.