Tregarthur's Revenge: Book 2 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  The barn had a low partition wall, behind it there was a huge cooking pot and a pile of wood, but nothing to help us escape. Van tried climbing onto Kan’s shoulders but couldn’t reach the roof. I tried and we still couldn’t get anywhere. Eventually we gave up and sat on the muddy straw that lay around on the floor. No way out of here.

  While we failed to find an escape route, Mary and Jenna talked to the woman, staying well away from her.

  ‘Stay as far away as you can from them.’ Mary turned to us. ‘They’ve got the plague. You see those marks on their arms and legs. That’s the sign of this disease.’

  Now that Mary had pointed it out I could see the black swellings on their arms and legs. I’d thought it was all dirt. One of the children appeared much worse, he hardly moved. Some of his swellings oozed a thick scum.

  ‘How did they get it?’ I asked.

  Mary explained: ‘Her husband went to the market in the next town. A lot of the families there had been wiped out with this pestilence, as they call it. After he returned, he started to get sick.’

  ‘What happened to him?’ asked Van.

  ‘He’s dead and they put him on the fire. That’s what’s burning in the pit,’ Jenna said. ‘The other three here are waiting to die and they’ll be burnt as well. Rosie – she’s the mum – thought the villagers were fed up with waiting and sent us to kill them. There have been changes since the new bailiff turned up two days ago.’

  ‘Isn’t there anything they can do?’ I felt hopeless in this stinking barn.

  Jenna went on: ‘Rosie says they’ve tried everything they know. And that’s nothing useful. They had the priest making incantations, sprinkling holy water on the victims, but he’s gone – probably died himself. They’ve tried all sorts of crazy things – beating people – all sorts.’

  ‘Beating people?’ I frowned, but Jenna didn’t have any explanation. ‘What do they need to do?’ I asked.

  ‘They need a ton of antibiotics, but there aren’t any for several hundred years.’

  ‘What year this?’ Kan had picked up a stone and hurled it through the roof.

  ‘She’s no idea,’ said Jenna. ‘She’s terrified, believes she’s caught this because she’s bad. Says they all have to die because they’re evil.’

  ‘That’s rubbish, isn’t it?’ I was out of my depth with this disease.

  ‘Of course it’s rubbish,’ Mary said. ‘Don’t you remember anything? We did the Black Death for ages at school.’

  ‘Might have been one of the days you missed.’ Jenna tried to laugh.

  ‘You went to school?’ Van did better with the humour.

  ‘Mary, what do we do?’ Jenna seemed to think that Mary should have some idea.

  ‘Give us a moment.’ Mary led Jack over to a corner and they started talking.

  I sat with Jenna by the barn door. I held her hand, I wanted to ask her so many questions, but somehow the words didn’t come. The Petas sat and threw stones at the walls – some sort of game. It wasn’t light enough to see what they were actually doing. Watching them was better than thinking about the plague.

  Mary and Jack eventually came back to us, slowly. I didn’t think they had anything useful to say.

  ‘We remember a bit about the Black Death,’ Jack started.

  ‘It’s to do with rats,’ said Mary.

  ‘We know rats,’ said Kan.

  I thought Kan meant human rats, people they knew at home. But I was wrong.

  ‘That’s what we were throwing stones at,’ Van explained.

  Now I saw what they meant. I heard them scuttling around the barn.

  ‘Are there rats in here?’ Mary’s voice cracked with a frantic squeak. ‘We must get rid of them.’

  ‘What’s it about the rats?’ Jenna asked.

  ‘I don’t think it’s the rats themselves,’ said Mary. ‘The rats have fleas and it’s the fleas that carry the plague.’

  ‘I think the fleas jump off the rats and bite you,’ Jack added. ‘That’s how you get the disease.’

  A sudden thumping on the barn door stopped us talking. Rosie left the two children and hobbled towards the entrance.

  ‘Keep back,’ shouted Mary at us and we did.

  The barn door opened a fraction and someone threw in a sack. Rosie grabbed it and pulled out a loaf of bread. Then she dropped the bag on to the floor.

  With a scared glance at us she took a huge bite and went back to the children. We watched as she tried to feed them. The girl managed a few mouthfuls but the boy, I guessed he might be three or four, just gagged on the food. Rosie went to the cauldron and filled a small cup. She couldn’t get him to drink. The three went into their huddle again.

  ‘Do we look in the bag?’ I asked Mary. I didn’t understand this disease. I had to rely on Mary and Jack. Maybe I should have known more.

  Mary sounded bigger and older, as she replied. ‘If it’s fleas, they don’t fly. They jump from one animal to another, or from one of them …’ she pointed to Rosie, ‘to us.’ Mary spoke to Rosie again, but from our end of the barn. ‘Who brings the food?’

  ‘Hazel,’ Rosie answered with her mouth still full. ‘She brings what she can. I’ve known her all my life. She has children too.’ Rosie sobbed, ‘She doesn’t think it’s right, locking us in here, so she argues with them to let her feed us.’ She waved her hand at the sack. ‘You can have the rest.’

  ‘You mean they were just going to let us starve to death?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ replied Rosie. ‘They threw something in most days, until this new bailiff turned up. Hazel said he’s going to stop the food.’

  ‘How did you find that out?’ Jack asked.

  ‘When she can, Hazel comes up to the window. She has to do it in secret.’ Rosie pointed to the barred opening. ‘That looks out on the opposite side to the rest of the village.’

  ‘So we eat food?’ Kan looked as though he was going to, whatever Mary said.

  ‘Might as well,’ Mary sounded unsure. ‘Just have to hope the fleas from Rosie didn’t jump in when she took the bread.’

  ‘They’d have to be fast,’ I said, walking over to the sack. There were two more loaves inside and a piece of cheese.

  Kan and Van grabbed the bag from me and shared the food out, not entirely fairly. But we’d need them fit because I couldn’t see us getting out of here without a fight. We ate. I tried not to think anymore; no point.

  ‘We rush them when they bring food,’ Kan said, seeing if there was anything left in the bag.

  ‘Hazel is only allowed to come with the others. They stand outside. It happened before …’ Rosie stopped.

  ‘Before what?’ I asked, but I thought I knew the answer.

  ‘The others.’ Rosie hesitated. ‘There was another family in here. They had the pestilence. They rushed the door.’

  ‘What happened?’

  Rosie pointed to the window. ‘You saw the fire.’

  ‘But they weren’t dead?’ Jack didn’t appear to grasp what had happened.

  Rosie just lowered her head.

  ‘So if we rush the door it just gives them an excuse to slaughter us.’ I kicked the floor, but there was no point in getting angry.

  What I’d said stopped all the conversation. I felt it was getting late. Would we all catch the plague in the night?

  ‘Mary, Jack, haven’t you any ideas?’ Jenna said, and I could see she wanted to start organising if she could. Jack and Mary seemed to be defeated and were slumped on the barn floor. ‘Come on,’ Jenna shouted, walking over and standing over them. ‘It’s not time to give up. How do we get rid of these fleas? Come on!’

  ‘Ok, we have to clean.’ Mary jumped up at Jenna’s words. ‘We have to clean everything. We just have to get rid of the rats
. Then we clean up Rosie.’

  ‘How do we do that?’ Van muttered.

  Jenna was on to it. ‘Kan and Van,’ she said, standing next to them. ‘There’s some sort of broom thing at the end of the barn. Use it to sweep up all the dirty straw. Put it all in the middle and we’ll burn it. Jack has the lighter, so that should be easy.’ Jenna paused. ‘But how are we going to clean up Rosie?’

  Rosie startled, I’m not sure she had ever come across the idea of being cleaned up.

  ‘The cauldron is full of water.’ Jack pointed. ‘It must have been used for boiling up something. There’s plenty of wood to light a fire under it. We just need some soap …’

  I could see Jack stop and smile at something he remembered. While Jack was remembering, Mary scrabbled in her backpack.

  ‘Here.’ Mary held up a used bar of soap. ‘I knew we’d need it.’

  I laughed. I hadn’t been using a lot of soap recently.

  ‘And there’s this.’ Mary held up a bottle of shampoo. ‘We didn’t have much time but I raided the bathroom before we left.’

  ‘Does shampoo kill fleas?’ Jenna wanted to know.

  ‘Doesn’t kill head lice,’ Van said with feeling. No one asked him how he knew that.

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t kill them,’ Mary said. ‘But I think this is all to do with dirt. I could be wrong but I’m sure if we keep everything clean we stand a better chance.’

  Jenna told me and the Petas to clean out the barn. Jack lit the fire. I wasn’t sure Rosie needed hot water to wash, or had ever tried it. She certainly hadn’t seen shampoo. Jenna did her best to explain. That didn’t work so she washed her own hair and Rosie accepted it after that. Jenna’s hair looked better too.

  There wasn’t any privacy even behind the partition. When they’d taken off their clothes I saw how bad the children were. Foul black oozing lumps were all over their legs. The boy couldn’t stand.

  Mary said that we had to keep away while they washed. Jenna could see it wasn’t going to work. She moved in and helped wash them all down. Rosie said she liked the smell of the shampoo. It didn’t hide all the stench.

  As the day drew to evening, the temperature dropped. We gathered round the fire of burning straw, Jack added more wood. The smoke rose up through the hole in the roof. The roof we couldn’t reach.

  Jack got the cauldron to boil and we persuaded Rosie to let us wash all their clothes, poking them into the water with the end of the broom. I hoped that was enough to protect us from jumping fleas.

  ‘The boy’s going to die, and soon,’ Jenna said to me quietly but I think everyone heard.

  I stared at the three of them. They looked strange and uncomfortable. Washing hadn’t made the boy better, he barely moved.

  We tried to find somewhere to sleep, keeping away from the three sick people. In the deep night, Rosie let out a cry. We all knew what had happened. There was nothing we could do, or at least nothing I wanted to do. The fire gave almost no light. It would be dangerous helping in the dark. I think we should have done more, but none of us moved. We listened to Rosie’s cries, until light just broke through the window. She was still curled up with both children.

  Mary and Jenna slowly took the dead boy from her grasp. I wondered if that meant they would be infected. I hoped all the cleaning had helped. I could see that Jenna wanted to bury the body. We couldn’t dig a grave in the barn – the ground might be muddy but we had nothing to dig with.

  ‘It’s not going to be nice,’ Mary said, rummaging in her pack and pulling out a black plastic bag. She and Jenna covered the lifeless form with the bag. I’d thought they were going to put him in it, but that would have been too awful – using a bin bag for a coffin. Rosie seemed completely dazed. We found out later that she’d had three other children who had all died young, before the plague. They almost expected children to die, but that didn’t make it easier. Life was harsh and death came often.

  It wasn’t long before we heard Hazel whispering to Rosie through the small hole in the wall. Hazel whispering and Rosie mostly moaning. Hazel tried to comfort her, but it didn’t work.

  Hazel had something else to say. I didn’t go closer but I heard some words about the bailiff and someone called Smith and an argument in the village. Were we something to do with that?

  Hazel left. None of us slept again. We sat through the early hours of dawn. I wondered what would happen. Were they just going to let us die, either from starvation or this plague?

  ‘We talk to this bailiff?’ Kan suggested.

  ‘I’m not sure that would help,’ I replied, and glanced at Jenna. It was an odd coincidence that we should arrive here just after a new bailiff appeared. I had a bad feeling about it.

  Farming

  -6-

  I don’t know why I expected something to happen when the day broke and a little light spilled into the barn. Because nothing did. I was glad Mary had grabbed her backpack when we came through the tunnel. She did a lot of rummaging in it and this morning she came up with a packet of dried stew.

  ‘I saved it. Thought you’d want something different from Chuckern,’ she said, reminding me of our main source of food before we left the caveman world. We never changed the name for the birds – something between a chicken and a duck. I couldn’t remember who had named them Chuckerns but I do remember the night of food poisoning when the small girl Sara died. That brought me back to our problems here. We still had the body of the boy who had died in the night.

  Jen must have been thinking about that too, because while Mary made up the stew in the cauldron, Jenna was talking to Rosie. She came over to me afterwards.

  ‘Rosie says that she’s going to get Hazel to help,’ Jenna said quietly. ‘If she doesn’t, then they’ll just chuck the body on that fire outside. That’s what they’re doing with any dead bodies.’

  ‘Does she know how many have died in the village?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t think many here have died.’ Jenna looked around. ‘They don’t expect to escape, but someone in the village decided that they should put any plague victims in here. Like a quarantine. But Mary says they have no idea what causes it.’

  ‘So who thought of the quarantine? Not the new bailiff?’ I suppose I snapped out those words and Jenna frowned.

  ‘What’s it about the bailiff?’ she said.

  ‘Nothing.’ I didn’t want to share my thoughts. And I still felt that Jenna had something on her mind. Probably it didn’t matter if we were all going to die, but I had a load of questions.

  ‘It wasn’t the bailiff. Apparently it was someone called Smith. Rosie thinks he wanted to get them out of their houses. Then Smith went in and took anything valuable.’

  ‘Is this Smith in charge here?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Jenna stopped as Mary handed round a mug of stew.

  She only had one plastic cup so we had to share. Rosie had her own bowl which was lucky because none of us wanted to share our mug with them. I’m not sure what Rosie made of the stew. I don’t think ready prepared meals featured in the time of the Black Death. Personally I wasn’t convinced it tasted any better than Chuckern.

  We only had one small piece of bread left from yesterday. I hoped Hazel would bring more. It didn’t sound as though the bailiff would feed us at all.

  After the stew Jenna had us all playing ‘hunt the rat’. We had to search for any signs of rat poo. The Petas had done pretty well yesterday. Mind you, if we’d found any rats, would we have to eat them? After all the strange stuff I’d eaten I didn’t think I’d turn down rat if that was all we had.

  With nothing else to do it was time to find out what Jenna wasn’t telling me. I was sure it had something to do with my mother. I didn’t know how Mum had turned up with an army to rescue me. I choked, thinking that she’d died trying to save me. But was it her fault in the beginnin
g that had trapped me in Tregarthur’s plot?

  Jenna and Mary were talking quietly in the corner. I walked over to them.

  ‘… no idea … I don’t think.’ Mary looked up at me with a questioning face.

  ‘No idea about what?’ I asked.

  ‘No idea about anything,’ Jenna broke in. ‘Rosie and her daughter in particular.’

  I wanted to ask Jenna if we could talk, to move away and get some answers from her, but how could I rate my questions as more important than the sick people in the barn?

  ‘Are they worse?’ I said.

  ‘Both of them have more of these awful black lumps,’ Mary gagged as she spoke. ‘They break down and ooze. It stinks. Soap doesn’t do anything.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to them?’ I said as I watched Rosie with her daughter, cuddling her as the only answer to this terrible disease.

  ‘They’re going to die,’ Mary half sobbed. ‘I don’t know if anyone survives this disease once it has taken hold.’

  Jack joined us. ‘Isn’t there anything we can do?’ he said. ‘Haven’t you anything in your pack Mary? You seem to have everything in there.’

  ‘No, it didn’t occur to me to nip down the chemist and ask for a plague cure,’ Mary said with tears running down her cheeks. ‘Not a lot of plague around where I live.’

  Jack bent down and put his arm around her. That would have been the time for me to get Jenna on her own but then we heard shouts and noise outside the barn door. I ran over to listen.

  Several women had gathered outside our barn. I could hear they were having an argument.

  ‘There’s no one else,’ one of the women shouted.

  ‘That’s right Elsa,’ another woman called. ‘We’ll starve. We need more help. We need that lot of foreigners in there. Just ’cos they’re foreign doesn’t mean they can’t work.’