by Alis Hawkins
He glances at me, head bowed against the rain. ‘Not wandering. Just keeping out of the way.’
‘Did many leave your manor?’
‘Not with me.’
I wait as he stretches his long legs over a rain-filled hole. ‘Where were you going — before the woods?’
‘Nowhere. Staying away from where people were, waiting till the plague was done with us.’
He seems so firm of purpose: has the saint sent him to me? Since I left the forest, I have prayed for guidance, for protection.
Is Hob the answer?
The rain thins to a drenching drizzle, the air so thick and grey that it is hard to see where land ends and sky begins. It is strange country, this, without stream or cattle-pond. Is all the water hidden in folds of the land where it cannot be seen from the road?
Then, around noon as far as I can make out, the low cloud begins to lift and I catch a glimpse of something in the distance.
Half a mile or so shows it to be a huge stone building. As we draw level, I reckon it at three, maybe four times as long as our house in Lysington. Its roof is a towering pitch of reed-thatch and its gable-ends are broken by shutters the size of doors. From inside comes the sound of bleating, loud and strong.
I have heard of these sheepcotes. The wool-merchants build them so that the flocks can be brought in during bitter winter nights to stop their wool growing coarse.
I pull the mare up at the side of one of the stone-walled pens in front of the building and tie her reins to a hurdle.
‘You’re going in?’
I turn back. ‘Why not?’
Hob shakes his head as if he can scarcely credit my question. I would feel the same in his position but I am not going to tell him why I have no fear of the pestilence. Not yet. It is too soon to speak of the saint until I know him better.
I walk up to the door and give a shout. ‘Anyone here?’
The sheep answer with an even greater outcry but I hear no human voice.
I try again, banging on the door’s planks. ‘Anyone here?’
No one, it seems, but the clamouring flock.
I slip a finger through the latch-hole and the door swings open. Inside, it is dark and warm and the air is bitter with the piss and shit of scores of sheep; a sharp, high smell, unlike the sweet, rich smell of cattle. Every ewe turns her bony face toward me and bleats her tuneless plea. I have never heard such a noise — it makes the inside of my head hum.
Opposite the doorway, a stout ladder leans against the loft-timbers. I glance behind me. Hob is standing outside the door, watching. I climb the ladder. As my head rises above the loft floor, I see hay lying in winter’s-end drifts, a rake and fork stand ready to pitch the fodder into the long cradles beneath, but nobody to do the work.
Feeling for the rungs, I back down and gaze at the scene beneath me. The sheep are divided into hurdle-pens, five down one side of the long building, five down the other. I count the bumping, jostling animals in the pen beneath me: forty sheep in a space not more than twenty feet on a side. No wonder they are eager to be out, their hay is all gone and they have no water. Once, I would have wondered where the shepherd was; now, I only wonder how long he has been dead.
I start opening the pens and the sheep swarm out in a bumping, woolly mass, heading towards their watering-place.
Hob stares after them as the last one chases the rest, hobbling on old feet.
‘I’m going to see if I can find anybody,’ I tell him.
‘I thought we were keeping away from people?’
No, that was you. ‘I need to know I’m on the right road.’ I am not going to tell him that I lost my way when I had barely begun. That, now, I need to find Cricklade and a good road east.
‘You’re making for somewhere? A town?’
I hesitate.
‘Don’t tell me then.’
He says it lightly but something makes me think twice about my reluctance. ‘East. I’m going east. To Salster.’
He stares at me as if he thinks I am making it up. ‘That’s the other side of the country. Beyond London, even.’
‘I know.’
He is waiting for an explanation but I have said all I want to for now. I take the mare’s reins and turn her towards the path which leads away from the sheepcote and towards the village which is just visible in the grey, wet distance.
There is not a soul to be seen as we head down a slope towards the houses and tofts. Not a boy keeps birds off the winter wheat, not a ploughman stamps the cold ground and sucks his teeth over when he will be able to break the sod. Has everybody fled?
I look back at Hob, following at a wary distance, then turn to the village once more. Perhaps they are all gone north. The Death is travelling up from the south coast, from the ports. If the folk here heard that it was nearby, they might have decided to flee with their goods rather than die on their land. In Lysington, I know, it would have taken only one respected family to up sticks and half the village would have been stacking their handcarts and packing their panniers.
As we pass alongside the churchyard, the mare snuffs the air, her ears back. Does she know that smell for the sweet rottenness of death? I breathe through my mouth to avoid the stench but it is so thick I can taste it on my tongue. The graves have been too shallow, the dead too many. There is scarcely a square foot of grass unturned. Scores must have been buried here since the Death came.
I glance over towards the church’s south door, wondering whether corpses lie untended and unburied on their biers in the nave. Or perhaps the parson has suspended nave-vigils to guard against contagion. Master William did in Lysington.
Hob quickens his pace until he is back at the mare’s other shoulder. ‘If everybody’s gone, there might be rich pickings for us.’
‘You think people will’ve left anything useful?’
‘Depends how quickly they left.’
Past the church and on into the village, I feel a shiver creep over my skin that has nothing to do with the sly breeze sneaking up on us between the garden-plots. I know this feeling of cold abandonment, of life having moved elsewhere. It is like a deserted charcoal hearth.
When you walk on to an empty hearth there’s a lonely chill to the place. Without the collyer and his smoking, earth-banked pit, it lacks life and purpose. This place is the same: silent fields where no man calls to his neighbour or offers news. Houses without toddling children. Gardens tofts empty of busy women.
As we round a corner past a sizeable house, the mare shies at a flapping scramble of wings. A magpie beats at the air, rising over our heads with a baleful look, a scrap of something dangling from its scaly claws.
One for sorrow.
As another shiver chills me, I look around at Hob.
‘It’s like that story, isn’t it?’ he says. ‘The one where every soul in the village is bewitched and goes through a tree-hole into the fairies’ kingdom and sleeps a thousand years.’
‘Except, these people haven’t been gone long.’ I nod towards two cattle that have wandered into a garden plot and are browsing happily on spread-leaved cabbages. I catch myself thinking that it will taint their milk before I remember that there is nobody here to taste it. Besides, they are dry, their udders hanging slack and empty, spring calves swelling their bellies.
We walk on.
There is a scrabble and a loud, clamorous squawking. Chickens cooped up with a cock. I stop the mare and open a gate, glancing back at Hob who looks on in silence. Well-tended rows of leeks and a swept, part-cobbled path speak of a house-proud wife. She must be dead or dying to leave her chickens roosting.
As I lift the latch that holds door to jamb and peer in to the coop, the clucking stops as if a hand has grabbed each feathery neck. Ten pairs of eyes look beadily at me, ten heads turn this way and that.
The cock stalks up to me — all green and gold and scarlet — much as to say, ‘about time,’ and struts past, to be followed at the scamper by all his mottled-brown hens.
�
�Martin —’ Hob’s voice sounds a warning.
I turn to go back down the garden but my way is barred by an old woman. Hastily, I shove my hood back off my head. ‘God keep you, mistress.’
She stands in my path. ‘Have you come for them?’
Her voice reaches me but not her gaze. Is she blind? Her eyes look clear enough, bright even. And they are stretched wide, their rims red, as if she cannot leave off a horrified staring. I take a step back.
‘Come for who, mistress?’
‘My William, my Tom. Annie and little Will. Have you come to take them to church?’
The cart. Though it looks nothing like any funeral cart I have ever seen, these are dreadful times; why should a stranger not come to take her dead to burial in a canvas-covered charcoal cart?
‘Mistress —’ I approach her but, as I come within touching distance, her hand fastens on my arm.
‘You must!’
She almost looks at me. Her hand is hot, as if she has been warming herself at the fire though the roof is bare of smoke. I throw a glance at Hob, hiding behind the mare, and let the old woman draw me into the house.
Four corpses are lined up on the floor, each shrouded in worn, patched sheeting, each wrapped crosswise with bands cut from the same cloth. It looks odd to me — this binding of shrouds about the dead — but I know it is only because I am used to stitching.
William, Tom, Annie and little Will: two men of middle height, a woman, a small child. A charcoal cross marks each shroud, its upright running down the body, the arms extending wide across the shoulders. There will be no doubting, on the Last Day, that these are Christian souls. I think of the cross I put on my father — a handspan of red forest earth over his heart.
Breathing through my mouth, I ask the old woman how long her family has been lying here. She has no answer for me. Long enough, I suppose from their head-filling stink, for her to lose her wits in worrying that their souls will be snatched away before they can be laid safely to rest.
I do not want to bury them. Truth be told, I have no wish even to touch them. But I know that, if I want the saint to bless my journey and keep me safe, if I want to prove myself worthy of this second life she has granted me, I have to do it.
Once, I would have asked whether they had been shriven, whether they have the right to lie in hallowed ground. The pestilence has changed all that.
Hob meets me at the gate. ‘Well?’
‘Four bodies. We’re burying them.’
‘What?’
‘You heard.’
‘What have these people got to do with you? You don’t owe them anything!’
‘We’re burying them, Hob.’
‘No. You’re burying them. You can shake hands with Death if you like but you’re not dragging me into it!’
His face is set, resolute with fear. So be it. I have the saint’s protection, he does not.
‘At least help me empty the cart so I can put them in.’
‘What about Edgar?’
I look over my shoulder. ‘She’s not going to care. I don’t think she’ll even see him. She barely sees me.’
So we make the cart ready for the bodies, laying Edgar and all my goods in the old woman’s garden.
Hob stares as I take the blanket-wrapped saint from the cart and place her carefully on top of the press.
‘What’s that?’
‘My business.’
He raises an eyebrow but holds his peace.
‘You don’t need to touch the bodies but I want you to come and help me dig the graves.’ I want him as far away from the saint as I can keep him. ‘I’ve got a spade, I’ll see if she’s got a pick to break the earth with.’
With the old woman lending a hand and Hob standing well away, I get the two men into the cart, one beside the other. The heft of them — no longer stiff, but not slack like a body in sleep either — makes my skin crawl as I lift them in their damp shrouds. The woman and child I manage for myself, before taking a pick from the old woman and turning the mare in the lane.
I look around for Hob. ‘Come on then.’
‘You go on. I’ll be behind.’
When I look back, he is matching me, pace for pace, ten yards or so behind the cart. What is a safe distance from the plague-dead? Nobody knows. I sniff at the sleeve of my tunic to see whether the stench of death has transferred itself to me but I cannot tell — it has soaked into my snot, now.
As I coax the unwilling mare back along the path, I think how gratified Master William would be at my turning gravedigger to strangers. How often did he preach the works of mercy to us? I can hear him now, catechising us on our duties at Easter.
What must we do, in charity, for our neighbours’ sake, as Christian folk have been taught since the time of our Lord and the apostles?
We must feed the hungry, would come the mumbled, toneless response, give water to the thirsty, clothe the naked, tend the sick — a collective, indrawn breath — offer hospitality to the wanderer, visit those in prison and bury the dead.
Yes, we are required to bury the dead. Words that the pestilence has turned from rote-mutter to curse.
I cannot take the mare and cart between the close-set mounds in the churchyard, so I find a strip hard up against the boundary wall where there will just be space for three graves, as long as they are dug end to end. They will not face east but at least they will be in holy ground; if it can be called holy with such a stink of death and decay.
Hefting the old woman’s pick, I look down at the ground. Why dig separate graves? Why not dig one deep grave and put them all in? When the Angel of Resurrection comes on the Last Day and calls the dead out, will he really bother himself with tallying bodies and graves?
But I cannot do it — it is too much like the Bristolians’ common pits.
‘Come on,’ I call over the wall to Hob. ‘We’ll dig three graves — the child can share his mother’s.’
And thus, I hope, Annie and Little Will shall go hand-in-hand to Purgatory.
Hours later, we traipse back through the village to the old woman. Her life has been spared but, with her whole family taken, it seems no great cause for celebration. Now that her dead are safely in the ground, how will she live, what will sustain her?
The question is answered as soon as I walk in to the house. She is lying on the bed, her hands folded on her breast.
I do not mistake death for sleep. Not anymore.
She held Death off, stared him down and defied him, until she had seen her loved ones safe. Then, once I turned the mare’s head to the churchyard, she had simply lain down on the bed, closed her eyes and let him take her.
‘She’s dead,’ I call out to Hob.
He comes halfway up the path. I can see him from where I stand.
‘No surprise there.’ He cranes his neck to see. ‘She was nine-tenths dead before.’
I cannot bring myself to bury her while she is still warm, so, while her soul goes about the business of taking its leave, we go in search of water.
The village is no great size and we soon find the well. I draw a bucket to slake the mare’s thirst, then fill my small barrel.
The silence at the well is unnerving. Is this what is waiting for me from here to Salster — village after abandoned village? Empty houses? Wells with nobody pushing in front because they live here and strangers must wait?
No, I must not take one village so much to heart. Lysington was not abandoned. Half our people died but those who survived stayed. There will be peopled villages. England cannot be dead from coast to coast.
I turn to Hob. ‘How many died on your manor?’
He shrugs. ‘I left while they were still dying.’
‘And you didn’t hear any more of it?’
‘Didn’t look back, didn’t go back.’ He watches as I tie down the lid of the barrel and begin to lead the mare around. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Back to the house. To bury her.’
‘She’s in no hurry. And there’s foo
d and goods waiting for us here.’ When I don’t reply, he makes an impatient gesture. ‘Come on, Martin, it’s not stealing! There’s nobody here to steal it from. It’s like finding a penny on the road.’
I follow him but my ears are pricked for shouts of outrage as we pull cabbages and leeks from winter gardens, take away half a dozen strings of onions from a store in the corner of a barn and fill bags with beans and peas and the contents of dead housewives’ crocks. In one house Hob noses out a half-full jar of honey and a ripe cheese. At the bottom of a cracked pot in another, I find six of last summer’s apples, wizened in a mess of straw.
As we reach the old woman’s toft, Hob watches me go up the path. ‘Do what you have to,’ he says, ‘I’m going to see what’s in the church.’
He is already walking off before I understand.
‘You’re going to steal the church’s goods?’
He stops and looks over his shoulder. ‘Who is there to care? D’you see a parson, here, keeping vigil with the old dame? No, he’s fled with the rest.’
‘Or dead.’
Hob shrugs as if it makes no odds. ‘Either way, the village is deserted and the church belongs to no-one anymore.’
‘The church belongs to the church!’
He makes an impatient noise. ‘What’s the church done to keep the Death away? Nothing. It doesn’t deserve its riches.’
‘But it’s a sin!’
He begins walking again. ‘I’d rather be sinner than beggar. I’ll see you at the church.’
Staring after him, I offer a desperate prayer that the parson took all his silver with him. I cannot travel with Hob if he is carrying stolen church goods.
Even without the shrouded corpses, the house still stinks of death. I gaze down at the old woman. Her body is knotted and dry and faded like her old brown kirtle, her headcloth slightly askew, showing one shrunken ear. She did not care enough to straighten it before giving up her soul.
I do not want to put her beneath the earth — she spoke to me, asked my help, carried her man and her son with me to the cart; she seems not yet fully gone. But I cannot sit in vigil for her and, if I do not bury her now, nobody will.
