All Fall Down

  I never see Geoffrey again.

  23. Today

  Today, Robert the smith’s brown cow caught the sickness and died. They found it dead in the yard, and Robert Smith’s widow couldn’t move it without help, so it lay there, stinking out the walk all night and all day, until Beatrice Smith gave one of their geese to two of the foreign gravediggers, in return for dragging it away and burying it in a ditch.

  Today, they found the body of Old Alis, who was old, old, old, bent like a scythe and wrinkled like an old apple left at the bottom of the barrel. She lived in a little house over by the river, and she’d died maybe a week ago, but nobody had found her.

  Our Alice, when she heard about Old Alis, was shaking – actually shaking – with the anger and the shock of it.

  “To think that nobody helped her! In a village like ours, nobody knew!”

  But we didn’t help her either. We didn’t know.

  Today, when we come home weary and aching from the fields, hands cut and sore from the binding, ready for food and ale and for sleeping until dawn, Alice is in the garden, holding Edward. She brought him home early because he was hot and fretful, and he’s still crying now, his mouth open in a red wail, his face wet and furious with tears.

  “What is it?” Father asks, and I can hear the fear spurring at his words. Alice’s blue eyes are cloudy and distracted.

  “I don’t know – maybe we should put some rosemary on the fire? Rosemary and lavender. Something sweet. I don’t – we need—”

  I’ve only seen her like this once before. The first time she was pregnant and her pains came too soon and the baby only lived a day, a small, shrivelled little sister who was never baptized and so was buried outside the churchyard walls and never went to heaven. Alice wept at the mass we held for her soul, and then afterwards she seemed to shake herself and lock it all up somewhere. I never saw her cry for that little girl again.

  “Alice—” says Robin, and Alice’s blue eyes fill up with tears. Robin goes up to her and takes Edward from her arms into his. His baby face is hot – his face is red – and his eyes are screwed up with crying.

  “He won’t stop screaming,” says Alice, and the tears spill out of her eyes. Behind us in the village, the bell starts up ringing again.

  “Who—?” says Alice, turning to meet it, and Robin says, “It’s vespers,” and suddenly I want to cry too.

  In the night, I’m woken by Edward screaming, a thin, high wail that won’t be comforted. In this hot weather the blankets are up to let out the heat and from my bed I can see Alice walking him up and down, her face red, tears wet on her cheeks. Father comes and tries to take Edward from her, but she pushes him away, her movements nervous and restless, sharp with fear.

  When I wake the next morning he’s still crying, high and urgent, like a pig being killed. Father’s at the door, jiggling him up and down. Father never comforts Edward. He never changes his napkin, or cleans him, or washes or dresses him, or does any of the things Alice does. He might hold him for a moment, if Alice is busy, and he’ll rock the cradle in an absent sort of way as he goes past, but that’s it. Yet here he is now, in the doorway, jiggling him and saying, “Shh . . . shh . . .” as Edward howls.

  “Father?” I say, from my bed, and he looks up and says, “Isabel, can you come down here, please, and take the baby?”

  Edward’s face is open in a huge, wide-mouthed baby squall. His cheeks are a furious harvest-poppy red, the drops of tears clearly visible against the skin. I hug my arms around his fat body.

  “He’s hot,” I say, but Father’s disappeared. “Robin? Feel – he’s got a fever.”

  Mag – in bare feet, shift and green nightcap – pushes against my arm, saying, “Let me take him. He’s my brother. I want to feel!” Edward is still squalling. Ned is lying in bed with his hands over his ears.

  “Isabel! Make Edward stop screaming!”

  Babies get fevers, I think, don’t they, all the time? Mag tugs on the sleeve of my shift. I pull my arm away and she yelps. What I want is space, quiet, an empty moment to take a breath and work out how I’m supposed to feel.

  “He’s wet,” I say. “That’s why he’s crying. Mag, let me alone! I need to change him.”

  I start unwrapping Edward’s swaddling. He’s still howling. Father has disappeared into his and Alice’s sleeping space. The cow is making restless noises behind the wattle wall. She needs milking. Everyone needs feeding. Someone needs to fetch water and light the fire and set the day in motion. The world doesn’t stop turning just because Edward is ill.

  Edward’s arms and pink baby stomach are covered with blotches under the skin, like bruising but a reddish purple, blood-coloured. He’s still howling, and now I can see why. There, in his groin, is the ugly swollen buboe. It’s about the size of a pigeon’s egg, and already it’s beginning to turn black.

  “Robin . . .” I say. “Robin . . .” Then, “Father!”

  The end of the world.

  24. My Brother Edward

  These are the things I know about the pestilence.

  It swarms around those who catch it, like a cloud of flies. If you find yourself caught in the cloud – or look in the eyes of somebody who is sick – or offend God – or are loved by someone who offends God – or walk in a particular place when the wind is in the wrong direction – you die too.

  You can travel far from the city where your family died, thinking yourself safe, only to reach a place of sanctuary and fall down dead, bringing the sickness down around you.

  There’s no cure.

  Once you have it, you die.

  These are the things I know about Edward.

  He’s small and fat and solemn.

  He can almost crawl.

  When you take him out of his swaddling, he never stops moving. He’s always waving his arms and nodding his head and arching his back and making happy baby noises.

  Alice wanted him and wanted him and wanted him, and almost the whole of his life, he’s been living under the threat of this terrible thing, blowing towards us on the winds from the south.

  And now he’s going to die.

  It’s a terrible thing, watching a loved child die. Edward screams and screams and Alice cries, holding him and rocking him as though she doesn’t care about the pestilence. She buys a magic powder from a travelling magician, which he says is made of myrrh and bole armoniac, tragacanth, spikenard and red sandlewood. He still screams.

  The buboe grows until it’s hard and black, too hard to burst. If you touch it, Edward screams, but how can you avoid it? Red marks grow under his skin, purpling and mottling until his skin is almost black.

  Father sends us out to bring in the harvest. The field is half empty. The other villagers avoid us.

  On the third day, when I come home from the field, Alice is sitting by the hearth, watching Edward cry. I go over to his crib and pick him up and he wriggles in his swaddling bands, arching his back and screaming. I rock him and murmur to him, trying to soothe him.

  “Can’t you take him?” I say to Alice, but for once she’s quiet and just shakes her head.

  “Are you all right?” I say, and she nods.

  I rock my brother until his cries stop, and then we sit by the hearth and watch him sleeping. His skin is more red-and-black than clear, but his hands are quiet.

  He dies that night.

  25. By Candlelight

  Alice falls ill next. My Alice.

  Father sends us out to work in the fields.

  “Can’t I stay?” I say, frightened. “Can’t I stay and help look after Alice?”

  “No!” says Father, too quickly. Then, “Isabel, please. Just go. Let me work out what we’re going to do.”

  We’re quiet as we walk down the track towards Three Oaks. I look around at the other people walking to work with us. So many people missing! It shocks me, whenever I look around. But surely all these people can’t be dead? Some of them are hiding – or running away – or staying at home to look after the si
ck? Please God, that’s why there are so few people coming to work today, surely?

  In the fields, people look at us and whisper, but no one comes near or asks where Father and Alice are. When we come home, the sheet and the blankets from our bed are in the barn. There are pots and cups in a pile, and the leg of smoked ham from the house, and two round cheeses. A bag of flour. A bucket. The ale-barrel. An axe. The old iron hearth that the hired labourers use when they sleep here has been pulled out into the middle of the barn, and there’s a pile of new wood stacked up behind the door.

  “What’s going on?” I say.

  “This is where you’re going to sleep from now on,” says Father. “Just while Alice is ill.”

  “What about you?” I say, frightened.

  “I’ll be all right,” says Father, but he doesn’t meet my eyes.

  “I don’t want to sleep here,” says Ned. He sounds much younger than he usually does, little red-haired Ned who tries so hard to show that he’s bigger than Maggie. He pushes out his lower lip and glares at Father. “I want to see Alice! Why can’t we see Alice?”

  “You saw Alice this morning,” says Father. “But now she’s ill and you need to let her rest.” He rubs at his forehead. He looks tired, and blurred around the edges somehow.

  “Are you sick too, Father?” I say, before I can stop myself.

  Maggie cries, “Father!”

  Father draws in his breath and steps back.

  “Please!” he says. “Please! Just – just do as I say, can’t you? Just for a few nights.”

  “No—” says Ned, and he kicks at the floor, so the straw and dust flies up into our faces. Father sighs, and I cuff him over the back of his head, which makes him shriek.

  “Isabel,” says Father. “Ned, behave! Isabel, please.” He takes my hands and looks at me, as though he’s trying to say something bigger than his words, but my heart is cloudy with fear, and I can’t work out what the shapes behind his words are – or perhaps I don’t want to look too closely for fear of what I’ll see. “Isabel, you’re in charge, all right? You and Robin. You’ll have to have the animals in here with you for a couple of days. You can manage that, can’t you?”

  I shake my head, dumb and fearful. I can’t do anything. I can’t look after anyone. I want Father to stay and look after us. I want Robin to be the leader – he’s older than me, after all. I want Richard to come and take charge.

  “Can’t we go to Richard?”

  “No.” Father drops my hands. We haven’t seen Richard since we buried Edward. He and Father stood apart by the grave, speaking together for a long time in low, urgent voices. I don’t know what about. I didn’t say anything. I was too angry. Richard never liked Edward. He always thought Alice would give him all of our land. He never wanted Edward around, and now Edward was dead, he didn’t deserve to come to his funeral and bring his pretend grief to stand by our real sorrow.

  “Don’t bring this on Richard,” says Father. “He’s got enough to worry about, with the baby coming. Just . . . look, you’ll just have to manage on your own for a couple of days. You can do that, can’t you, Isabel?”

  “We can do it,” says Robin. He comes behind me and puts his hand on my arm. I feel myself shaking against him. “Isabel. Don’t. We’ll manage, sir.”

  Father nods a couple of times. Then he embraces me, tight. I breathe in his musty, earthy, leathery smell, trying to keep this essence of Father safe inside me. “You’re a good girl,” he says. “I wish you had a better world to live in.”

  I’m shaking inside my skin. I’m rigid with anger and fear – no, terror, I’m terrified – and shock, I’m shocked. I don’t know what to do.

  Father lifts Maggie up. She wraps her arms tight around his neck. “You’ll be good for Isabel, yes?” he says. Maggie nods.

  She doesn’t really understand what’s going on, but you can see that she knows Father is upset and that whatever is happening is serious.

  “I want Alice,” she says, but when Father lowers her to the floor, she doesn’t argue.

  Ned jerks back when Father tries to touch him.

  “No!” he shouts. “I want Alice!” and he runs out into the yard.

  Father sighs and tugs his fingers through his hair again.

  “It’s all right, sir,” says Robin. He’s still got his arm across my shoulders. “He’s all right.”

  “No, he isn’t,” says Father. He sighs again. “Well then,” he says. He nods a few times, and then he goes into the house, shutting the door behind him.

  With the harvest only half gathered-in and no labourers this year, there’s room in the barn for all the animals. Father has corralled them behind the wattle wall from the house, but we have to spend some time making sure the wall is fast, and moving the sheaves of grain into a pile in the corner, so that there’s room for us to sleep. The oxen are restless, stamping and snorting, and the chickens keep trying to run back into the house where they know they ought to be.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell them. “I don’t want to be here either.”

  The barn is cold, even with the warmth of the cow and the oxen and Gilbert Pig. We wedge the candles into hot wax on the beams and push aside the straw to make space for a fire. There’s plenty of wood piled up against the wall but it’s damp, and it takes a lot of puffing and blowing before it catches. Ned wants to go back inside for more, but I won’t let him and there’s nearly a fight.

  “Make up the beds instead,” I tell him.

  There’s plenty of straw and there are plenty of blankets, but Maggie’s too little to do it properly and Ned won’t. He just kicks at the straw until it’s piled into a heap, then wanders off.

  “I’ll do it!” says Mags. “I can do it!”

  She pats and pulls at the straw, trying to make a mattress, but her bed wouldn’t support a cat, let alone any of us.

  “Ned,” I yell. “Ned!”

  He doesn’t come.

  I go and stand in the barn door. He hasn’t gone far. He’s stamping about the yard, throwing stones against the side of the house. I go and grab his arm.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing.” He pulls his arm away. “Let me alone.”

  “You were trying to get Alice, weren’t you?” I say. And, when he doesn’t answer: “You can’t. We promised. Remember?”

  Ned doesn’t answer. He pulls his sulky face and kicks at the dirt.

  “You have to do what I tell you,” I say. “Me and Robin.”

  “I do not!” says Ned. “You can’t make me!” I want to kick him.

  “Fine.”

  I stamp back inside and slam the barn door shut. It’s dark, like the inside of a cave, with only the dull firelight from the hearth and the long, narrow beams of sunlight from the high windows.

  “Where’s Ned?” says Robin.

  “He’s in the yard.” The fire is sending off great clouds of smoke, but it’s burning properly at last. Robin has cut the cheese into pieces and torn yesterday’s bread into chunks.

  “I thought we could toast the cheese on the fire,” he says, and I give him a grateful smile, because I don’t have the wits to think about making anything more complicated right now.

  Ned comes in halfway through the meal, his face tight and sulky. He doesn’t look at us, but I hand him a lump of bread and he takes it silently and holds it in his lap. After a while, he takes up a stick and a slice of cheese.

  Nobody says much, except for Mags, who won’t stop talking.

  “We’re staying here all night, aren’t we?”

  “Yes, Mags,” says Ned, in this fake-weary voice. “We’re staying here all night. And the next night. And forever until Isabel says we can go inside again.”

  “Until it’s safe to go inside.”

  “Until everyone’s dead.”

  Maggie looks up, startled. “Are Father and Alice going to die?”

  “No, of course not,” I say. Alice might, but not Father, please not Father. I feel Ned’s eyes watching me.
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”

  Maggie settles back, reluctantly. I pass round the ale jug and we all drink. Will everyone really die of this thing? Will it kill us all, then all the dogs and cats and oxen and sheep? When all that’s human is gone, will it be happy? Or will it move on to the scurrying things of the moorland, the rats and foxes and little prickly hedgehogs that Maggie likes so much? Can flies get it? Can fleas? When it’s finished, will there be anything left?

  Maybe somewhere there’s a virtuous man or woman, like Noah and his wife, who will look out one day on to a clear, empty morning, and find a world with nothing left alive. Will they be sorry? Or will they smile and step out of their hiding place and walk into the empty farmland and build the world anew? What will the new world be like? Will it be better, with all our squabbling and bickering and wickedness gone?

  Outside the barn, it’s growing dark. Ned dumps some more wood on the fire, and it hisses and steams. I look across it at Robin. He’s hunched up next to the fire, his arms wrapped around his legs, head resting sideways on his knees. Is he thinking about his mother?

  If Robin and I both survive this, we’re betrothed to be married. I wonder what he thinks about that. Does he want to marry me? Do I want to marry him? I’ve been starting to think that I might, since he came to live here, but tonight my heart is too full and weary to be able to work out what I think about anything. All I know is that I’m glad he’s here.

  Ned is poking at the fire with a bit of stick. His face in the firelight is sulky.

  “I don’t see why we have to do what Isabel says. She’s not our mother.”

  “I will be if Alice dies.”

  “And Robin will be our daddy!” says Maggie. She grabs Robin’s leg and squeezes it. Robin makes a half-hearted attempt at a smile.

  “Don’t treat your father like that!” I say. Maggie giggles. Ned scowls.