All Fall Down (4 page)

 

 

S
o what is it, exactly, the pestilence? Some say it's a plague, sent by God to destroy the wicked or perhaps the whole world, and that that's why there's no cure. A preacher who came to the village last year said that in the Bible it's written that a third of humanity will be destroyed by plague before the end of the world comes. Which means that God is taking more than His share of death this time around, if the stories we've heard are true.

Some say the pestilence is a disease like any other, caused by bad air, poisoned air, blown on the winds across Europe. That's why it creeps north and north and north, why you can't outrun it, why it never stops. But where did that bad air come from? And what happens to it? If the earth is a ball, like Geoffrey says, will the pestilence roll over the top of the world and come back round to greet us again? Or will it kill us all and go roving over the empty world, forever?

 

All this last year, travellers from the south have told stories about the sickness. Some call it the
morte bleu
, the blue death,
but most say
the pestilence
or just
the sickness
. Some talk of spitting blood, of hard, black buboes the size of pigeon eggs growing under the armpit or in the groin, of God's tokens – red marks, like blood, below the skin. It stinks – everyone who talks about the pestilence talks about the stink.

“Like the devil himself,” says one soldier, crossing himself.

“You'd know,” says his companion, but nobody laughs.

More sinister are those who talk of a sickness that strikes like an adder, without warning.

“My cousin's child – he took ill in the evening and was dead an hour later.”

“My father's pig took a rag that had been used to wipe the blood from a man with the sickness. The pig ate the rag, and fell down dead in the road.”

Other folk say that the pestilence brings madness. That folk will leap from their windows, run naked through the streets, babble and cry and fight as though all the king's men are after them.

“Maybe if won't be so bad then,” the men say, grinning sideways one to another. “If the young women start taking their clothes off.”

 

How do you keep yourself safe? That's the next question, the one everyone wants an answer to. Surely there are medicaments and spells; surely someone, somewhere has found a way? The preachers hiss.

“By loving God and begging His forgiveness. By turning from the devil and all his works.”

“This bone,” a wandering preacher told us. “It belonged to St William. Wear it next to your skin and it will save you from harm.”

“Chicken bones and glue,” Alice muttered. “Either that or he's a grave robber, or a cathedral robber – or worse!”

“Don't look them in the eyes,” said the pardoner who came after Christmas selling forgivenesses for any sin you might ever want to commit and a few you never would. “That's how it's passed – through the eyes!”

“I walked through the city of London,” said the young man at the Easter Fair, the young man with the weeping sore in the corner of his mouth and the restless eyes that wouldn't settle on any of us. “I walked through the houses of the dying, stepping over the corpses of the dead in the street. I passed through the stinking air of the sickness, and I walked out the other side unharmed. And all I had was this!” And he shook a silken pouch stuffed with rosemary and lavender. “Worn by the skin,” he said. “Closer than a lover, and surer on a winter's night.”

The silence that followed this was so thick you could lift it with a spoon.

“And you survived?” said Emma Baker.

“And I survived.”

The most important question is the one we ask every traveller.

“Once you have it – once you've caught it – can it be cured?”

And the answer is always the same.

“Nothing cures it. Once you have it, you die.”

And now it's here, in the house where my brother lives.

And the monks are coming from that house to walk barefoot through Ingleforn, leading us all to pray for the sickness to pass us by. They look so calm and holy, but the sickness clings to their hands and to their eyes and to the underside of their robes. Every time they come, they bring death closer.

And I've promised Geoffrey not to tell.

 

 

O
n St John's Eve, we have the bone fire on the green and the Midsummer revels as usual. All the village gathers around the bone fire and we walk around it in solemn procession, holding hands and chanting the Midsummer rhyme.

“Green is gold.

Fire is wet.

Fortune's told.

Dragon's met.”

The rhyme is a riddle that can only be answered at St John's Eve, when the first green leaves are still curled in golden buds, when the water is alight with little wishing-candle-boats, when fortunes are told and St George does battle with the dragon. The answer is Midsummer Eve, of course!

After the chant, the revels begin. At Great Riding, they have a different mummer's play each year, but in Ingleforn we always do St George and the Dragon. Will Thatcher is St George, on Gilbert Reeve's black horse, and Edward Miller stands behind the stocks and is the voice of the Red Dragon.

“I am the Dragon. Here are my claws! I am the Dragon. Here are my jaws!” he calls, and all the children shiver and stare. The Red Dragon itself is the same glorious red and gold kite as it always is, flown by Robin and another boy from the village. Last year my brother Richard's wife, Joan, was the Princess, but this year she's too heavy with the baby that's coming, so Alice's little sister Maude plays her instead.

Will Thatcher is shy as St George – he stutters his lines and blushes when he has to rescue Maude from the Dragon. But when he draws his sword to fight the Dragon, he looks like a real knight from a stained-glass picture window. The Dragon-kite swoops from side to side in the sky, until St George subdues it by waving his sword around and ties a bit of silk around the kite string, to show that the Dragon is now defeated. He and Maude lead the kite by its leash, like a dog, while the audience cheers. But then the silk slips, and the Dragon escapes, and Robin and the other boy roar and bellow and swoop the Dragon-kite up and down to show the Dragon's anger. Two little girls run across the stage trailing a length of red silk to show the Dragon's flames. Will Thatcher collapses in a heap with something like relief, but Maude rolls about and moans most convincingly.

When everyone is dead, Gilbert Reeve saunters in as the Doctor.

“I am the Doctor, and I cure all ills.

Just gulp my potions and swallow my pills.

I can cure the itch, the stitch,

The pox, the palsy, and the gout.

All pains within, all pains without.”

He gives a pill to St George and the Princess, who jump back up on to their feet. He gives another pill to the Dragon-kite, which swoops and wails about the sky before plunging down to the earth, dead.

Everyone cheers and claps, and John and Emma Baker come round with St John's dragon-wing biscuits, coloured red with rose petals. Then Gilbert Reeve nods at the musicians and the music starts and the dancing begins.

I love Midsummer Eve. It's the day when you thank God for the old year and look forward to the next. Later, we'll be lighting the candles and setting them afloat on the mill pond with our wishes in them. Now, though, it's time for fortune-telling.

Father gives us some farthings to buy a St John's bread pod each. St John's bread isn't bread at all, but flat, soft brown seed pods coloured like dates and curved like a bow. For St John's bread, you do the how-many, or the
humney
, as in, “Humney children will I have?” or, “Humney years will it be until I'm married?”

Then you bite into the St John's bread and eat it, counting the seeds as you do. The number of seeds is the answer to your question.

I wonder how many people's
humney
s this year are about the pestilence? I think of asking how many days it would be until it reached the village, but decide that since it's coming no matter what I do, it doesn't make much difference
when
.

How many people that I love will die?
I ask, instead, but when I open the seed pod and see the seeds, I decide I don't want to count. Any more than none is too many.

I don't believe in fortune-telling, anyway.

Destiny cakes are the other sort of fortune-telling for Midsummer's Eve. John Baker moves amongst the crowd with a tray of cakes covered with a cloth.

“Destiny cakes! Destiny cakes!” he calls. We buy a cake each and put our hands under the cloth to choose our destiny.

Most of the pleasure of destiny cakes comes in trying to work out what they might mean. Robin gets a long, twisted cake like a snake. I tell him it's a hangman's rope and he's going to hang for laziness. He says it's a wave and means he's going to travel over the seas.

“It's a ploughed field, more like,” Father says, making a waving motion with his hand. “All that good land you've got to plough!” Robin pulls a face. He's not much interested in ploughing.

Maggie gets a round cake, which Ned says is an egg – “You're going to lay an egg, Mag!” – but Alice says is a nugget of gold, and means she's going to be rich. Alice's is twisted into a shape nobody can work out. Ned says it's a heap of something: “Gold, maybe?”

“Washing, more like,” says Alice. “Isn't it, baby Edward? All your washing?”

Mine is square.

“It's a house,” says Ned. “A new house.”

“Or a book, maybe?” says Alice. “Maybe you're going to be a learned woman, like your brother.”

“Maybe,” I say, but all I can think is how much that square destiny cake looks like a coffin.

After the destiny cakes, there's dancing. I dance one dance with Father – as usual – where he treads on my toes – as usual – and one with Alice, who really can dance for a woman who's over thirty. Then I dance one with Robin, whose hands are sweaty and who keeps apologizing when he bumps into me.

“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.