All Fall Down

  A freeman of the city. And if he adopts us as his children, we’ll be free too.

  This is what I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember. Freedom. Freedom to live my life as I want to, without being pushed hither and thither by Sir Edmund’s whims. But I don’t feel happy. And I don’t feel free. I feel like I’ve exchanged one master for another, and while Sir Edmund’s demands were straightforward and easy to understand, I still don’t understand what this master wants from us. From me.

  I don’t like Thomas. I didn’t want to come here. I only came at all because I’m so terrified of our house and the bloody bed where Father and Alice died and that stale, rotten smell that even the Alice’s rosemary and lavender can’t mask. Which was a stupid reason to come, because York stinks worse than our churchyard, worse than the pit in Sir John’s pasture, worse than anything I’ve smelt before – a sickly mixture of dung and sickness and death.

  “Robin, I don’t think we should have come,” I whisper. “What are we going to do in York?”

  “He’s going to look after us,” Robin whispers back. “He owns ships that sail to France – imagine that, Isabel! Maybe he’ll take us to France!”

  I’m starting to wonder if Robin is maybe going a little bit mad.

  York is unlike any city I’ve ever been in. Felton on market day is always full of people – selling things, making things, buying things, talking, eating, stealing, dancing, playing. York is empty. What people we see move hurriedly, heads down. Animals forage in the ditches – wild pigs, stray dogs, even a starved-looking horse or two rooting around in the mud. Most of the market stalls are empty or dismantled. And above our heads the church bells are ringing, three or four different bells in three or four different churches across the city, tolling the dead.

  Here we go again.

  “Isabel,” says Ned. “Look!”

  A figure half sits, propped against a church wall. It’s a woman in a dark green gown. Her head is slumped against her chest. It’s hard to tell from this distance if she’s asleep, or drunk, or dead, but Thomas doesn’t wait to find out. He pulls the head of his horse around, away from the figure.

  “Is she dead?” I say. “What’s going to happen to her?”

  “The dead-carts will take care of her if she is,” says Thomas. “They’ll be along at sunset. If she’s alive, she’s in God’s hands now.”

  He says it so calmly, I’m shocked. For a moment, I’m angry, but then I remember the baby that nobody helped. I remember Father and Alice, who died alone while I was playing weddings in the barn. I never helped them. I never even sent for a priest to hear their confession. I turn away, furious tears stinging at my eyes.

  The streets are wet with excrement and other foulness – blood from the butchers’ shops, and dye from the dyers’. I clench my nostrils together, but I can’t escape the stench. Mag whimpers and buries her nose in my skirt.

  The city is cramped. The houses bend their heads close together across the alleyways, almost touching in places. They are two- and sometimes three-storeyed buildings, much more imposing than the little one-storey houses in our village. In many of the houses, the shutters are hinged at the lowest edge, so that they can be let down to make a shop window, big enough that you can see the workshop space below, where men hammer iron, or melt gold, or weave, or bake, or make shoes. Many of the windows are shuttered up, but some are still open. One baker catches at my arm as we pass.

  “Buy a penny loaf, mistress!”

  I pull back. “I don’t—”

  “She’s with me,” says Thomas, and the baker bobs his head and drops his hand.

  “Beg your pardon, I’m sure.”

  Like in Felton, the houses in York are all built higgledy-piggledy around each other. Big houses peer down on the little ones that have been built in the cracks between them. Shop-houses are next to merchant halls are next to churches are next to tiny houses even smaller than ours back home. The bells are still ringing, making my head ache, making it hard to think, hard to care.

  In one square, there’s a figure standing halfway up the wall. I think it’s a statue at first, but as we get closer I see it’s a man. He’s hanging by the neck from a gibbet, and he’s obviously been there for some time. Half his face is eaten away by maggots, and as we pass the wind blows the stench in our faces and makes Maggie shriek.

  “Who was he?” says Ned, whose face is very white.

  “Some criminal,” says Thomas. “A murderer, or a thief. A brigand, maybe. Don’t they hang thieves in your village?”

  They do – they used to, Alice can remember it – but I’ve never seen one. If Sir Edmund’s steward wants to punish us he mostly just fines us or puts us in the stocks. I saw a man once at the market in Felton whose hand had been cut off for stealing, but I’ve never seen a man hanging there like that in the square.

  Maggie is terrified, much more so than I’d expected. She cries and hides her face in her hands, refusing to move or look out. In the end I pick her up and carry her, and she buries her face against my neck to make certain she can’t see anything else. She’s heavy, and my arms ache, but it’s easier than fighting.

  “It’s only a dead man,” I say. “He can’t hurt you.” I don’t understand why she’s so upset; she’s used to dead things – dead oxen, dead pigs, baby chicks small and unmoving in the straw. She wasn’t bothered at all by the huddled woman against the wall. “Where did all these tears come from?” I say. But she just whimpers and won’t answer.

  When at last Thomas turns into a courtyard, I’m so tired that I don’t realize we’ve arrived.

  “Halloo!” Thomas is calling.

  His man hurries out of the door to take his horse. He’s a servant, but he’s wearing high leather boots and a fur mantle, like Sir Edmund’s steward back in Ingleforn.

  “We didn’t expect you,” he’s saying. “And so late!” He sees us and glances at Thomas, but he doesn’t say anything.

  “Very good, Ralph,” says Thomas. He swings himself down from the horse in a practised motion and Ralph gives him a lantern and leads the horse away, saying nothing.

  The door opens into a warehouse – or perhaps a shop. Barrels of wine are stacked up against the wall. There’s a table with an inkhorn and parchment and quill pens. There are wineskins in a pile. Thomas’s lantern casts long shadows and in the yellow light everything seems darker and bigger than it ought to be.

  “Stand up straight,” Alice’s voice says in my head. “Hold up your head. Show these folk what sort of girl you are.” But what sort of girl I am is nothing. I feel like a corn husk with the corn inside gone. I feel like an eggshell, cracked open and empty and useless.

  “None of that,” says Alice fiercely. “You’ve got to look after your brother and sister now.” But I can’t.

  “This way,” Thomas is calling.

  We’re through into the hall. The fire is out and it’s cold and dark. The lantern light catches on heavy, embroidered hangings and long wooden tables. And then we’re going up the stairway, into the chambers above.

  “This is the scriptorium,” says Thomas. “You boys can sleep here.”

  There are two low beds against the wall. Ned wraps his arms tighter around his bundle from the saddlebags and looks at me. I want to sleep in Isabel’s bed. That’s what his eyes are saying. Beside Thomas he looks very small and fragile. Tears start behind my eyes again.

  “Please—” I say. “Can’t the boys come in with us?” But Thomas is shaking his head.

  “It wouldn’t be proper,” he says, and the tears threaten to rise.

  “Come and see,” he says. “You can sleep in Edith and Lucie’s chamber.”

  He turns away. I mouth at Robin, Edith and Lucie? Robin shrugs.

  “Edith and Lucie are my daughters,” Thomas says, over his shoulder.

  Were. Edith and Lucie were his daughters.

  Edith and Lucie’s bedchamber is about half the size of our whole house. Thomas lights the candle by the bed from his lante
rn. They’re both real beeswax candles, and they cast a yellow glow across the chamber, a brighter, cleaner light than the tallow candles we have at home. It’s a fine chamber. There’s a wooden floor and windows made of a hard, flat substance, pale yellow, paler than wax. Horn. Horn windows. Thomas really must be rich. There’s a big wooden bed, bigger than Father and Alice’s, with a wooden chest at its foot. There’s a loom with a piece of cloth half-woven, and a desk like the one in the scriptorium in the Ingleforn tithing barn.

  “Is it another scriptorium?” says Robin.

  “No,” says Thomas. “Those are Lucie and Edith’s.”

  Mag hangs back, clinging to my hand, but I follow Robin to the table. There’s a cup with quill pens, an inkhorn half full of ink in a hook on the side of the desk and pages of parchment with black letters scratched on to them. Thomas’s daughters could write! They could read too, because there are books on the table, two big, thick volumes like they have at the abbey. I touch the top one with my fingertips and close my eyes. This isn’t Lucie and Edith’s book; it’s Geoffrey’s and he’s trying to get me to listen to something important, some piece of verse or idea that’s more urgent than the cheese I’m making or the cloth I’m weaving.

  “The Romance of Lancelot,” says Thomas, and then, casually, “I could teach you to read it if you like.”

  I pull my fingers away from the binding as though scalded.

  “I don’t need books to read, thank you.”

  Thomas gives a little shrug.

  “There are clothes in the chest,” he says. “I’d like you to wear them please. You’re going to be living here as my daughters, after all.”

  I’m not his daughter. I’m Father’s daughter, and Mother’s, and Alice’s, but I’ll never be his, no matter how many fancy clothes he makes me wear. When did he decide that he was my father? Was that why he went riding out, alone, to find children to kidnap? Was this planned all along?

  I glare at Thomas, but even as I do so there’s a part of me that knows I’m being unfair. Whatever else he is, this man isn’t evil. He’s trying to be kind to us. Even as I try and hate him, I can see that he’s trying to be kind. I might even have liked him, if I’d met him at the market, or the fair.

  His sallow face looks tired, and sad.

  “Maybe it’s time for bed,” he says, and suddenly I feel as bereft as Ned. I’ve been angry with Robin all the way here, but now I can’t bear the thought of sleeping apart from him. I want to lie in his arms like we did in the barn, and forget that we ever left home.

  “Robin—” I say, but Thomas’s hand is on his back.

  “Isabel—” says Robin. I can’t tell if he cares or not – does he want to stay with me or is having his own bed part of the reason he’s so happy to be living here? “I won’t be far away!” he says, but Thomas is leading him out of the room, leaving Maggie and I alone.

  Maggie is exhausted. She won’t let me take her gown off, and she whines when I try to put her to bed.

  “I don’t want to go to sleep! I want Alice! Go away!”

  “Alice is dead,” I say and I yank her gown over her head and make her cry. “You know that, Maggie!”

  “I want Alice!” Mag whines, and she kicks me hard on the shin.

  “Go to sleep,” I say, lifting her into our bed. She kicks and cries, but she doesn’t get up, she just lies there sobbing in the dark. Eventually, she’s quiet, but it’s a long time before I climb into the bed and fall asleep beside her.

  32. The House That God Built

  When I wake the next morning I lie in the strange bed, under the fine bedlinen, and stare at the bed’s canopy above me. From out of the window, a church bell is ringing. Another funeral? No, because another bell starts up across the city, so they must be ringing in the hour.

  Soon we’ll all be dead, I think. It can’t be long now. How many more people can there be left in the world? Soon God will come down from His heaven, and the dead will wake, and all this will be over.

  I climb out of bed and open the shutters. Below me, a shopkeeper is opening up his shop. A carter rattles by in a laden cart. There’s the sound of water falling as someone tips a chamber pot out of an open window into the drain below. I can smell the drain even through the horn windows. The whole city stinks of death and human foulness.

  Magsy stirs in the bed beside me.

  “Alice . . .” she says sleepily.

  “Alice isn’t here,” I say. “Come and look at our new clothes.”

  Lucie and Edith had a lot of clothes. I sort through them. One girl was a bit taller than me, the other was somewhere between me and Maggie – her clothes would probably fit Ned, but they’re enormous on Mags. They’re beautiful, though. All of the dresses are beautiful. There’s a soft green gown with flowers and birds embroidered round the collar in yellow silks. I pull it on over my head, but I don’t have anyone to lace it up for me, so in the end I have to wear my own clothes from Ingleforn. There are no shoes – perhaps the girls were buried in them? – so I keep my own on. Mag is lost in the smaller gowns, but that’s not my problem. If Thomas wants her to look ridiculous, so be it. Mag adores them anyway. She insists on trying on all the younger girl’s clothes, before settling on a dark red gown. She’s much livelier than she was yesterday – dipping her finger in the inkhorn and smearing ink on her skirts, crawling under our bed to check that there’s nothing else hidden there, taking all the pens out of the pot and twirling them around, pretending to write.

  “Hey—” I say. “Hey, Maggie – leave that. Let’s go and find the boys.”

  Robin and Ned are up and dressed. There are other men in their room – Thomas’s man, whose name is Ralph, and another servant with a thick black beard. Other beds rest against the walls, but these are empty. I wonder if the people who slept in them are dead.

  Robin is sitting on the bed talking to Ralph. He’s explaining about us.

  “We aren’t anyone,” he’s saying. “We just met Thomas and he helped us bury Walt and Alice and—” He stops when he sees us come in.

  “Isabel – look!”

  Robin has new clothes too – a dark green hose and a brown tunic, with a soft leather belt and leather shoes that turn up a little at the toe. Thomas’s son must have been almost the same age as Robin, because Robin’s clothes fit better than Maggie’s do. He looks good – handsome, almost, if a little awkward. Ned – like me – is still dressed in his old tunic and hose. There mustn’t have been a right-sized son for Ned to step into.

  “Look at Mag!” Robin says. “You look like a princess!” Mag smiles at him uncertainly. She’s gone shy again.

  “Aren’t there gowns for you?” Robin asks.

  “They all need tying together,” I say. Like a parcel, I think, but I don’t say it out loud. “Besides, I’d look like a fool in them.”

  “No, you wouldn’t,” says Robin. He takes my hand. “Come and look what Thomas has!” And he leads me to a mirror built into the wall.

  I scowl into it. A white, square-faced girl scowls back. Her hair hangs around her ears, an odd, pale colour somewhere between Ned’s copper and Margaret’s corn. It hasn’t been combed in several days. Robin looks like a merchant’s son, and Maggie looks sweet, but this girl looks like a wooden doll. A whole boat of silks from China wouldn’t make her look like a lady.

  “I look hideous,” I say.

  “Hardly.” I jump. Thomas is standing in the doorway with an odd smile on his lips. Odd and a little bit sad. I wonder which daughter I’m supposed to be – Lucie or Edith.

  “I can’t put any of those gowns on by myself,” I say, defensively. As though I’ve been caught out doing something wrong. Which I suppose I have. Pretending to be Isabel, instead of pretending to be Lucie or Edith. I wonder what Thomas is going to do. There’s no sign of any other women living here, though someone must wash all these men’s clothes, and Lucie and Edith must have had a maid to tie them into their gowns. Perhaps she died too.

  “I’ll think of something
,” says Thomas, but his eyes are already moving away towards Robin. “I’ve got work I need to do this morning,” he says.

  “Do you want me to come?” says Robin, and the blood rises in my cheeks. Thomas can’t have Robin. He’s ours. But Thomas shakes his head.

  “You go and have a look at the city,” he says. “I’ll show you what we do here tomorrow.”

  Thomas’s house is big. There are three or four chambers upstairs, for sleeping and working in, a big kitchen where the bearded man, whose name is Watt, cooks Thomas’s meals with his son Stephen, the warehouse shop we came through yesterday and a hall, with three big tables and a square hearth in the centre of the floor. There’s even a parlour, with high-backed wooden chairs and tapestries on the wall, for the family to sit in. Thomas’s wife’s loom is in here, and some embroidery that I hope belonged to his wife and not his daughters, because I know I’ll never, ever be able to sew anything nearly as fancy as that. There’s also a privy built on to the side of the house, so Thomas doesn’t even have to leave his chamber to go. It stinks.

  “That’s disgusting,” says Ned, screwing up his white little face.

  “It’s very sensible!” says Robin. “And you’ll have to get used to it if we’re going to live here, if you don’t want to piss in your bed!”

  Eugh.

  The garden is at the back of the house. It’s a long, narrow strip of land, fenced in on both sides to stop other families’ animals trampling his herbs. The chickens are here, and a pigsty with two black boars, and stable for his horse and his man’s horse – a sturdy grey palfrey. He’s got more herbs than we have at home, including a few that I don’t recognize, but nobody’s thinned out the carrots and they all look dry and in need of watering. I wonder whose job it is to look after them and if I’ll be allowed to help now I’m a rich man’s daughter.

  None of this feels real. Father and Alice, Edward, Thomas. It feels like a game we’re playing, like some joke the devils are playing on us. I keep expecting to wake up and find that it’s all been a dream.