All Fall Down

  Robin bites his lip. He doesn’t know I’m going to run away. He doesn’t want to be a farmer. He wants to stay here with Thomas. Travel to Castille and France and the Indes on one of his ships, bring back wine and silk and spices and other wonderful things. I drop my hand.

  “We’re supposed to be married,” he says, and there’s a tightness to his face and his voice. “Don’t you remember? You made a vow to me like Matilda did to the bishop. You can’t run away now!”

  I look at Robin in his clothes that still don’t fit him properly, and I see a gaol cell. I see a life in Lucie’s too-big gowns, adding my clumsy stitches to her fine embroidery while the Isabel I want to be is dying inside, like a plant shut away without sunlight or air. I see a husband on the other side of the world, sailing to Africa without me.

  “Will you hold me to a promise I don’t want to keep?” I say.

  Robin’s eyes falter.

  “No,” he says. “Of course not.”

  I think of Geoffrey and his books. He to whom God has given knowledge . . . Your hands and your heart are gifts from God. Turning aside from that . . . it’s like throwing yourself away.

  And yet Robin is supposed to be my family. He’s more like home than anything else I have.

  And I’m going to leave him anyway.

  “I’m sorry, Robin,” I say, and I follow after Maggie and Ned, leaving him there in the hall, alone.

  35. Hue and Cry

  So it’s decided. We’re going home, Mag, Ned and I. I don’t know how, because we don’t have horses, and I wouldn’t know how to ride one even if we did, and we don’t know how to get there, and even if we did we’d have to walk the whole way alone, because there aren’t any caravans going north any more.

  At least Ned has plenty of money.

  We ought to go soon. It’s got to be dangerous staying in this city, where even the bells have stopped ringing. Father wouldn’t let me go to the abbey, and he wouldn’t let me come to the house to say goodbye, so he certainly wouldn’t be happy if he knew I’d brought Ned and Mags to this city of death.

  Though I’m starting to wonder if the sickness might be ending. There are fewer dead-carts rattling through the streets, and fewer bodies in the gutters. The smithy opposite our house has opened again, for the first time since I’ve been here. The smith was working at his anvil as I passed.

  And if it’s ending here, surely it must have ended in Ingleforn?

  I’d go tomorrow if it wasn’t for Robin.

  If I wasn’t so frightened of what I might find at Ingleforn.

  If it wasn’t for Thomas.

  He’s starting to notice us more, me and Ned and Mag – started to remember that we’re real people and not just Robin’s entourage. I wonder how much of the calm, polite, distant Thomas that we see is the real Thomas, and what he’s really thinking about – below that mask. He’s starting to listen to us when we tell him things. He talked to Mag for most of dinner yesterday. She was telling him about Alice and Father and Geoffrey and Richard and Edward – and he listened and nodded and asked questions in the right places.

  “I didn’t know you had so many brothers,” he said to me when she’d finished. “You were a big family.”

  “Geoffrey might still be alive,” I told him. “We don’t know.”

  “I could send Ralph to the abbey to find out if you like,” Thomas said, and something jumped inside me before I could stop it.

  “Yes!” I said, and when he smiled, “I mean, please. Yes, please.”

  “It may be a while before I can spare him,” said Thomas. “And there may not be anyone there to send an answer. Any survivors have very probably moved on by now.”

  “I know,” I said, and I realized that I probably wouldn’t be there when the answer came anyway.

  I tell Ned and Maggie before we go to bed.

  “We’re going to go home soon. I’m planning it.”

  “How?” says Ned.

  “We’re going to walk. On the road to Felton. And when we get lost, we’ll ask directions to Felton. And then when we get to Felton, we’ll ask for Great Riding, and once we get to Great Riding, I can find our way from there. That’s how you do it. Alice told me. They got all the way to Duresme like that. Mag, listen to me. Stop playing with that.” I take her doll out of her arms, and for once she doesn’t scream at me.

  “Are we going to Richard?” she says.

  “Richard’s dead,” I tell her. I told her before, but she can’t seem to remember it.

  “Then who are we going to?” says Ned. He pulls a horrified face, tongue stuck out, eyeballs bulging. “Not Agnes?”

  “I don’t know who we’ll go to,” I say. “But not Agnes.”

  “I’d rather be dead,” says Ned.

  It’s a cold night. Michaelmas will be here soon. Thomas’s man lights the fire in the hall for the first time since we’ve got here. The smoke pours upwards and settles in a curtain of grey mist below the roof, the same way that the smoke from our little hearth-fire does at home.

  Watt and his boy Stephen bring in the food. It’s a whole salmon on a bed of green stuff, with rice and saffron and almonds. I’ll miss the food when I’m gone.

  As Watt puts the salmon down on the table, he says, “My cousin Muriel’s come back to York. She’s looking for work, if there is any.”

  Thomas holds out his goblet for wine.

  “Are people coming back to York now?” he says.

  Watt nods. “There are more people in the streets every day.”

  Could the sickness really be ending? For the first time in many days, I can almost believe it.

  After supper, Thomas goes down into the warehouse to write up the day’s accounts. Ned and Mag slip out of the hall and off outside. I know that I ought to stop them, but I let them go. I need to talk to Robin, and that’s going to be easier without their noise and games and demanding voices.

  Robin’s in the parlour, practising writing on one of Thomas’s wax tablets. He’s had a lot of lessons with Thomas, but he hasn’t got much further than learning the letters, as far as I can tell. Today, he’s writing X Y Z X Y Z X Y Z with a polished stick of wood in the wax.

  I point to the X. I know that one.

  “That’s ten,” I say.

  “And ecks.”

  I frown. “Geoffrey said ten. What’s ecks? Ecks doesn’t mean anything.”

  “It’s not supposed to mean anything,” says Robin. “It’s just . . . itself. It’s—”

  “We’re leaving,” I say. “Tomorrow.”

  He stares. “Where? Why?”

  “Home. Because. We can’t stay here.”

  He fiddles with the bit of wood.

  “I can’t go with you,” he says. “You know that, don’t you?”

  I hadn’t. Not until that moment.

  “We need you,” I say.

  He smiles at me, a little sadly.

  “Not you,” he says. “You don’t need anyone.”

  “I need you,” I say, and I feel the tears rising as I say it. I come and sit beside him on the bench and put my arms around him, breathing in his new, leathery scent, of ink and ale and William’s clothes. My Robin.

  I’m so tired of saying goodbye.

  His pale face is bent, his thick hair falling in his eyes. I take his cheeks in my hands and I kiss him on the mouth, the way I did to Will that day under the trees. I want him to know that I love him. I want him to come with us. I’m your family now. What good is family if they always leave you?

  He kisses me back with an intensity that surprises me. All these months we’ve been living together, we’ve never kissed once, and now he kisses me like this. I close my eyes and lose myself in his lips and mouth, tongue against my tongue, lips against lips, warm and wet and fierce and urgent. I don’t know if I’m saying goodbye or remaking our marriage contract, but at this moment I don’t care about anything except this.

  Somewhere outside, a bell is ringing. Another funeral. Except we don’t have those any mo
re, do we? And this isn’t a passing-bell – it’s frantic, urgent, wild.

  I lean into Robin, sending the bell’s urgency into my kisses, but Robin pulls away.

  “It’s the hue and cry!”

  Below, Watt is shouting.

  “The hue and cry! The hue and cry!”

  The windows in Robin’s chamber are made of cloth, waxed stiff with oil. We can’t see out. I grab his hand and we clatter down the stairs together. My heart is beating like a bird in a cage. What’s just happened? Is Robin coming, or have we just said goodbye forever?

  Watt is by the door looking out.

  “It’s that young gang from the street,” he shouts, and my belly clenches and the hairs rise all down my arms. The gang in the street. That’s Ned and Mag. I’ll die if anything happens to them, I think, and the thought surprises me, it’s so clear and certain, like water, or the noise of a bell. I’ll die.

  “Hey!”

  The gang are running down the street, pelting past us. Little lads smaller than Ned, boys as tall as Richard. A child falls down in the mud in front of us and starts to cry, but Watt ignores her. He runs off after a long-legged girl with her hair flying behind her. Robin starts after him, but I grab his arm.

  “Don’t! Don’t go!”

  He struggles out of my grip.

  “It’s the hue and cry, Isabel.”

  “Don’t,” I say. “It’s Ned’s gang,” and he looks at me in astonishment.

  There are other men in the street now. There’s the baker from down the road, and Thomas’s man, Ralph, and the constable. Watt has the long-legged girl in his arms. She’s kicking and struggling, but he won’t let her go. The baker is chasing after two of the bigger boys, but they’re running faster than he is, and he won’t catch them. The bells are still ringing, and more folk are coming out into the street, more people than I knew even still lived in York. Everything is happening so fast. My head is dizzy with terror and the confusion.

  And now I see Ned. He’s running so fast that he’s catching the bigger boys up, but his cote is bulging with things that shouldn’t be there, and as the bailiff – a man who knows Thomas to nod at and to exchange the time of day – comes haring round the corner, Ned loses his hold on the cote and the things all tumble out – plate and jewellery and a beaver-skin hat like Thomas’s. He stumbles over the plates and the constable grabs his arm. Ned is fighting like a cat, or a wolf – not that I’ve ever seen a wolf, but Father has, in Scotland – kicking and struggling, all teeth and elbows and knees, but the constable is stronger, and he pulls Ned’s arms behind his back. Ned sees us on the step and he starts to shriek.

  “Isabel! Isabel!”

  I run across the street. Robin follows, Thomas’s set of wax tablets with their X Y Zs still clacking together in his hand.

  “Let him go!” I shout. “He’s just a little boy! Leave him alone!”

  “Not so little as all that,” says the bailiff. He kicks at the plate on the floor with his boot. “You’ll hang for this, my lad.”

  I remember the sheep thief, a leper back home, that Father said would hang for theft, and the panic swells up and threatens to overwhelm me.

  “Please!” I shout. “Please! Our father’s a merchant – he lives just there. Stop it! Please! He’ll give you anything you want if you just stop it!”

  Ned is still kicking, but there’s a hopeless quality to it now, as though he knows it’s no good.

  The hubbub and the confusion are dying down. The men are coming back to the bailiff with their captives. The long-legged girl stands with her hair falling over her face. The two older boys are swearing and cursing. The little girl who was crying in the street is watching with her finger in her mouth. The men ignore her. I wonder where Maggie is.

  Watt makes his way across the street to where we’re standing. He sucks his teeth when he sees Ned.

  “Eh,” he says. “That’s Master Thomas’s lad, that is.”

  “He could be King Edward’s lad for all I care,” says the bailiff. “He’s a thief.”

  “He won’t hang,” I say, “will he? Not a little lad like Ned?”

  “That’s for the assizes to decide,” says the bailiff. He gives Ned a shake, not ungently. “Caught you red-handed now, lad, haven’t we?” he says.

  I want to go with Ned to the castle, but Robin pulls me away.

  “Don’t, Isabel,” he says. “You can’t help him now. We need to find Thomas, he’ll know what to do. And what will Mag do if she comes back home and finds us gone?”

  But Mag has already appeared, a long, dirty mark down the front of her gown and a dazed expression on her face.

  “They were chasing us!” she says, indignant.

  “We saw,” says Robin. He tugs on my arm. “Isabel. Come on. Let’s go and find Thomas. Thomas will know what to do.” And despite myself, I allow myself to believe him.

  Thomas is sitting at his table in the little scriptorium in the warehouse. There’s parchment and ink on the table, but the page is blank, and the inkhorn is shut. He’s staring off into the distance at something I can’t see.

  “Thomas,” I say. “Thomas—” And he turns as though from a great distance to look at me.

  I wonder how real I am to Thomas. Am I more or less real than those ghostly girls in their silks, for instance? Does he care about me at all?

  He listens to what Robin tells him, and rubs his hands across his face.

  “Why does every decision I make turn out so badly?” he asks, and I know he’s thinking about his children, who he didn’t send out to the country like all the other rich children in York. He did that to save the villages like ours, I know. But how much difference did it really make? The miasma kept on coming, blown north on the winds.

  “This didn’t turn out badly!” says Robin. “Thomas, please. It didn’t. Coming here was the best thing that’s ever happened to me!”

  “Was it?” says Thomas, with that sad smile. “Is that what Isabel thinks?”

  He looks at me, and I shake my head from side to side so that the tears fall out of my eyes and spill down my cheeks.

  “No,” says Thomas. “I didn’t think so. I’m sorry, Isabel. This is all my fault.”

  “It’s not!” says Robin. “It isn’t – is it, Isabel? Tell him!”

  The tears are still rolling down my cheeks.

  “You shouldn’t have brought us here,” I say fiercely. “I’m not your daughter! Robin isn’t your son!”

  “Isabel—” says Robin.

  “It’s all right,” says Thomas. He puts his hand on Robin’s shoulder. “I thought . . .” he says. “I wanted . . . I don’t know what I wanted. To make right some of my wrongs. To make something good out of all this mess. To . . .”

  To bring back my children, I think. Because surely that’s what this is all about, isn’t it?

  “You have to do something!” I say. “Ned’s going to die – and it’s all your fault – you have to make them stop!”

  “Isabel!” says Robin, again. “This isn’t Thomas’s fault! It’s ours – for not looking after Ned and Mag properly – for—”

  Our fault, he says, but he means mine. Ned and Mag were never his responsibility.

  I can’t seem to breathe properly, or to make the world come into focus. Everything is very bright and slightly unreal.

  “It’s all right, Robin,” says Thomas. “Don’t be angry.” He stands up. “I will make this right,” he says to me. “I promise.”

  And for the first time since we came here, I believe him.

  We light all the candles in the house and sit together in the cold little parlour. Summer is nearly over. Autumn’s coming.

  “It’s a crying shame,” says Watt, but nobody answers, so he shakes his head again and goes upstairs with Stephen.

  It’s nearly midnight when Ned comes home. There’s a cut across his forehead and dirt in his hair and the streaky marks of tears across his cheeks.

  Thomas isn’t there.

  “He wen
t right into the castle,” says Ned wonderingly. “He told that man that he’d made me steal those things. That he’d made me join that gang. They took him away and locked him up in the bottom of the deepest, darkest dungeon, and they let me go.”

  Flee from the throng and dwell with truth,

  Let your own things suffice, though

  they be small. . .

  Savour no more than what behoves you.

  Rule yourself well, that others may

  learn from you,

  And do not doubt it, the truth shall set you free.

  Geoffrey Chaucer

  Fourteenth Century

  36. Thomas Again

  Ned sold the ivory chess set to the tinker with the stall by the church. Robin took the coins to the baker and the cheesemaker and the alewife to buy the bread and the hard, yellow cheese and the flagon of ale. Watt used to make all of our cheeses and brew all our ale, but he’s gone now, working with his brother in a manor in the south. He offered to take us with him – “Half the manor died, Isabel, they’re desperate for hands” – but we wouldn’t go. Not until the assizes were over.

  I don’t know where Ralph went. We woke up one morning and he was gone. So were the best cooking pots and the silver plate and the horses and the gowns from Juliana’s wardrobe.

  “He just stole Thomas’s things!” says Robin, but I find myself unable to care. What does it matter if Ralph has Thomas’s cooking pots? We have more important things to worry about now.

  Thomas must have real money – coin – somewhere in the house, but I’ve never found it and I don’t like to ask him where. That’s his business. There’s enough wine and stuff from Ned and Maggie’s shining horde to feed us until the assizes come round, and if anyone deserves Ned’s wealth, it’s Thomas.

  Maggie and I wrap the food up into a bundle with some clean linen and one of the leather books from Thomas’s library. Ned I leave to mind Mag and the fire, and to make sure the animals are fed and the pig doesn’t get in the herbs. Ned only came to see Thomas once at the castle. He shrunk himself small into my skirts, and looked at the floor, and wouldn’t say anything bigger than “Yeh”. If something more than “Yeh” was needed, he shrugged, and turned his face away. Thomas didn’t seem to mind.