All Fall Down

by Sally Nicholls

I don’t want to do any of these things. I want to go home. But I don’t have a home any more, and we ought to be grateful.

  Probably what I should be doing is looking after Maggie and Ned. But they seem all right. They’re out all day anyway, playing with the other children in the streets around Thomas’s house. There are lots of children in York without fathers and mothers now. You see them begging on the streets, or driving the dead-carts, the older ones. Thomas doesn’t like that Maggie and Ned play with these children, but he can’t stop them.

  “Maybe we should get a woman to look after them,” he says.

  “Why?” says Robin. “They’re not infants.”

  “I suppose so.” Thomas doesn’t seem to know much about children. I wonder who looked after his own. “I should find a tutor for you and Ned,” he says, vaguely. “It’s so hard, with everyone gone. When this is over, perhaps . . .”

  I know I ought to care about where Mag and Ned go, but I can’t. I’m glad when they go. It means I don’t have to watch them. Sometimes they come and stand at the end of my bed, watching me.

  “There’s a lady in the street who says she can cure the pestilence,” says Ned.

  “She can’t,” I say, without moving.

  “She’s selling dried toads,” says Ned. “For two farthings. You rub them on the sores, and then they go away. And there’s a man selling holy water and bits of saints. Fingerbones, and blood in a bottle. I told him about our St Bede, and he said he had some of St Bede’s blood! If you wear it round your neck, it protects you!”

  “No, it doesn’t,” I say, remembering Alice. “He’s telling lies, Ned. It’s just chicken bones.”

  Ned looks disappointed. They stand there at the end of my bed like the wooden husband and wife in the abbey clock. Then Ned says, “There’s a magician who can tell you if you’re going to die in the next year or not. Three farthings, he costs. You can ask him any question and he’ll give you the answer. Mag and I asked him if Geoffrey was alive, and he said he was, but he was in grave danger. Which proves it!”

  “Oh, go away!” I shout. “Leave me alone! Where did you get the farthings to pay magicians, anyway?”

  Mag and Ned flinch back, as though they expect me to hit them.

  “We’re not going to tell you!” says Ned. “We would have done, but we’re not going to now!” And he grabs Mag’s arm and pulls her out of the chamber behind him.

  I don’t care where they get their stupid money from. Probably they stole it. I don’t care.

  Look after Ned and Margaret, Father said. Well, he didn’t look after us, did he? He died, and left us here, all alone in a strange city. So why should I look after them?

  I don’t see what point there is in worrying about what’s going to happen next. We’re all going to die soon anyway. It’s going to be plague, then earthquakes and rains of fire like they have every Saturday in Castille and Aragon, then lizards and elephants and rains of frogs and whatever else God wants to torment us with. Sometimes, lying in Lucie and Edith’s chamber, I almost want it to happen. Anything would be better than this . . . this nothing. This waiting.

  Thomas doesn’t believe in God. I never met anyone before who didn’t, but he doesn’t. There’s a dark little chapel in the corner of his house, with high, pointed windows and paintings of the saints on the walls and a little altar at the front. When I asked him why we never heard mass there, he said, “I can’t ask a priest to come here, while the pestilence is in the city.” But if he really wanted to pray, he’d go to church. He doesn’t come to mass on Sundays. We go with Ralph and Watt and his son Stephen. Sundays are the only time when there’s anything like a crowd on the streets. No one – except Thomas – wants to risk offending God now.

  Robin comes into my chamber with his brown hair all tangled by the wind and stands at the foot of my bed.

  “Thomas says he’ll take us to France, if we want!” he says.

  The world is ending, and he’s like the boy who won the wrestling match.

  “I thought everyone was dead in France,” I say.

  Robin frowns. “Some people must be left.” He pulls at the bobbles on the blanket with his long, fretful fingers.

  “Why don’t you like Thomas?” he says. “What’s wrong with here?”

  He must know.

  “Everything’s wrong with here,” I say. It comes out in a wail. “This whole city is dying . . . it’s horrible . . . How can you be happy here? There isn’t . . . there isn’t anything for me to do. I don’t want to be a merchant’s wife. I want . . .” I stop, trying to line up in my head exactly what I do want, to say it so that he’ll understand. “I want my own land,” I say. “Our land. We left it for Joan, all that land that Father worked so hard over, and now the barley is just dying in the fields. And I want my own people back. I don’t know how to be Thomas’s daughter. I don’t want to be. I want to grow things. Grow things and be married to you.”

  Robin is still frowning over the blanket.

  “All I ever wanted,” he says slowly, “is to leave our village. To see ships and the sea – and London – and Avignon, where the Pope lives, and Spain where the grapes come from—”

  “Everyone’s dead in London,” I say.

  “You don’t know that! They said everyone was dead in York, too!”

  “Well, and aren’t they? Everyone’s dying, anyway—” Another bell starts tolling outside the window. “See?” I say. “Who wants to go to Avignon and look at dead people?”

  “I do!” says Robin. “I don’t believe everyone is dead. I want to go and see all those places. There’ll still be sun shining, won’t there, and elephants and dragons, and—”

  “There’s no such thing as dragons,” I say. “And what will you do in France? You don’t even speak French! And what about the people in our village? Geoffrey and Will Thatcher and Joan and the monks and Amabel Dyer and—”

  “Amabel Dyer’s dead,” says Robin. “And so are the monks.”

  I’d forgotten Amabel Dyer was dead.

  “What about me?” I say. “What about what I want?”

  “Why should I care?” says Robin. “If you don’t care about me?”

  Because we’re family. But we’re not family. We probably aren’t even really married. And he’s right – he doesn’t have to do anything I want.

  I slide off the bed and out of the chamber, ignoring the hurt look on his face. I stumble down the stairs, clenching my lip to stop the tears falling. Maybe I’ll just go and keep going. Back home – but the terror rises in my throat at the thought of home, our empty house, the horrible bed where Father and Alice died. Maybe I don’t have any home any more. When I die, nobody will know my name. I’ll be buried in a pestilence pit without a headstone and there’ll be nobody to say the masses for my soul. I might not even be buried with Ned and Mag, if we die on different days. I wonder if we’ll be able to find each other, on the Day of Judgement. And how will I ever find Father and Alice again, when I’m buried so far away from home?

  At the foot of the stairs, I nearly fall over Maggie and Ned. They’re bent over a king’s hoard – two bracelets with what look like real gems, some silver plate, a chess set with carved ivory pieces. In amongst the shining things are bits of junk – a wooden doll in a blue woollen gown and a knife like Robin’s in a leather scabbard worked with brass. Ned starts when he sees me, and makes as though to hide the things, but it’s too late.

  “What are those?”

  “Nothing.” Then, when he sees my face: “They’re Thomas’s. He gave them to us.”

  The idea of Thomas giving them bracelets of gold is absurd. They must be Juliana’s.

  “You stole them, didn’t you?”

  Ned looks taken aback. Mag says, “It’s not stealing! Not if everyone’s dead!”

  It takes me a moment to realize what she’s saying.

  “You got these things from dead people’s houses? You’re stealing from the dead?”

  Ned shrinks back against the wall.
/>   “It’s not stealing!” he says. “They don’t belong to anyone!”

  “I don’t care about who they belong to!” I shout. “You’re going into pestilence houses! They’re full of bad air! Is that how you want to thank Thomas – by bringing the pestilence back here?”

  Ned turns away from me, digging his chin down into his shoulder, twisting himself around and away as though he’s trying to bury himself into the wall.

  “Thomas can’t get the pestilence,” he mutters. “All his family died and he didn’t catch it.”

  “Well, I can!” I shout. “And you can too, and so can Mag and Robin! And we can all get hanged – for a stupid bit of plate!”

  I kick the heap across the floor. Mag squeals and runs for the doll. It’s just a bit of carved wood with wool hair, but she clutches it to her chest, shielding it from my anger, as though I’m going to make her take it back.

  “Do you want Mag to get hanged for stealing?” I shout. “Do you?”

  Ned is pressed up against the wall. He’s shaking his head mutely from side to side. I look at him, and suddenly I feel ashamed. This is my Ned, poor red-haired lonely little Ned, in his old clothes while we’re all dressed like princes and princesses, his white face wobbling between aggression and tears. I want to comfort him, but I’m not sure how. Alice would shake him and wallop him and then hold him while he cried. I’m not sure if he’d let me even hold him.

  I put my arms around him. He pulls back at first and then he collapses against me. I rock him gently, forward and back.

  “I want to go home,” he says.

  “I know,” I say. “I do too.”

  Maggie comes and stands beside me, watching Ned critically.

  “Ned’s crying,” she says.

  “He can if he wants to.”

  “He’s supposed to be a big boy,” she says.

  “Big boys can cry,” I say, but I’m not sure if she believes me.

  After I find Mag and Ned stealing, something changes. The borders of our croft shift. At first it was me and Mag and Ned and Robin. Then Thomas came along and wanted to join his house on to the edges. But the lines have moved again, and now it’s Mag and Ned and me in one village, and Thomas and Robin in another across the water. Robin and I are like Tristan and Iseult, loving each other even though he belongs to one village and I belong to another.

  Without saying anything to each other, Mag and Ned and I are starting a campaign to get home. So far it’s just a campaign of glances and mutterings and promises, but soon it will be more. What we’ll do and who we’ll live with when we get there, I haven’t worked out yet, but surely someone will want us? We’ve got nearly a virgate of land between us. Someone must have daughters they want to marry to Ned, or sons who’ll be willing to farm Mags’ portion for her. I can believe that everyone in France is dead, but I can’t believe that everyone in our village is.

  Ned still takes things. There’s a whole gang of them – children from the streets around where Thomas lives – who steal things, and worse. They sit on the steps in the square at the end of our street and play games and drink ale and play and fight and share their loot. Mostly they’re little ones Ned’s age or a little older, but there are some as old as Robin, and one or two that are nearly men. I don’t think those ones go into the houses, though. I think they just buy the better prizes from the little ones, or pick them casually from the cobbles and carry them off. Ned and Maggie have a whole dragon’s treasure trove for the two of them to dress up in and play at kings and queens with. I wallop them if I find them, but they still do it. I’m not sure if Thomas knows. I suspect he wouldn’t approve, but if not then surely it’s his job to stop them? I can hardly blame them for running a bit wild. At home we were always busy – digging, building, making, growing. Here? There’s nothing. No wonder they’re bored.

  “What are they like?” I ask Ned. “The empty houses?”

  He shrugs. “Empty. Cold. Dark.”

  If it wasn’t for Robin, I’d leave tomorrow. Tell Thomas we’ve changed our mind and we want to go home. But Robin won’t go.

  “He’s already lost one family. I’m not taking his second one away from him.”

  “We’re not a real family. He hardly even notices if Mag and Ned are there!”

  “He notices if I’m there.”

  That’s true. He does.

  “He’s going to take me to France,” Robin says. “He promised.”

  “I know.”

  “France, Isabel!”

  And I watch as the spaces grow between our village and his, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them.

  34. Matilda Alone

  Dinner is one of the few things I like about Thomas’s house. We eat in the hall: Thomas and us at the high table on the dais, and his household at two lower tables laid out against the adjoining walls. There’s a flat stone hearth in the centre of the floor, but all the cooking is done in the kitchens, and it’s still too warm to light the fire for warmth.

  Usually, of course, there’d be all the men who work in Thomas’s warehouse as well, and I think there were other servants who died – Juliana and the girls must have had a maidservant, and perhaps a woman to look after Edith. The hall has a mournful feel about it, half-empty, as though we’re guests at a party to which no one has come, and must continue the festive atmosphere as though the others had never been invited.

  The food is wonderful, though. Nearly as good as the food at St Mary’s. Stewed beef with cinnamon and saffron, civey of hare, chicken with almond and rice for the meat days, and for the fast days, pike, and haddock in ale, and salmon, and all sorts of good things.

  When we come in from the parlour today, there’s a woman sitting at the high table beside Thomas. She’s an older woman, about Father’s age perhaps, and her face is hung with wrinkles. The corners of her mouth pull down and the skin is loose and greyish, with the softness that worn skin takes on when it gets old. She’s dressed in a gown made of dark red cloth – it looks like silk – and she’s wearing a widow’s veil, much more elaborate than the veils you see women wearing in our village. She looks at us with interest.

  “And who are these, Thomas?”

  Thomas gives her what I always think of as his secret-amused smile, the one that makes me think he’s laughing at some joke that only he can see.

  “This is Robin,” he says. “And Isabel and Edward and Margaret.”

  “I don’t want to know what their names are!” she says. “I want to know what they’re doing here! Where did you find them – in a haystack?”

  Ned sputters. Thomas very nearly did find us in a haystack, after all.

  “I found them on the road,” says Thomas mildly. “And now I’ve given them a bed. That’s all, Matilda.”

  Matilda looks down her nose at Ned, who is still in his old green hose and stained russet tunic.

  “Yes,” she says. “Well. What you do is your own business, Thomas. Although I’d be wary of the eldest one, if I were you. He looks old enough to make a sow’s ear out of a serious undertaking. And talking of which – have you heard the news from London?”

  “Nothing recent,” says Thomas. He nods at us to sit down, and they go off into a complicated grown-up discussion of trade winds and ships beached in unhelpful places, and various officials Matilda has apparently managed to persuade to let ships sail on when they oughtn’t to have. I expect Thomas to be angry about this – he’s the one who’s so keen on people staying where they are, I can’t see that he’d be happy about a fleet of ships sailing pestilence and death around the world – but he merely nods and steers the conversation on to the price of wine. I still can’t see why he’s having this conversation with a woman. Can women own ships?

  Today is Friday, so it’s a fast day, and no meat. There’s creamed fish in almonds and ginger, followed by thick cherry and cream pottage. Ned and Mags grow bored of the conversation and start kicking each other under the table.

  At last, Matilda announces that she wants to go t
o vespers, and we all have to stand up and take a formal leave-taking. She sticks her nose up in the air like we’re something bad-smelling she’s found on the bottom of her boot.

  “Well,” she says. “I trust you know what you’re doing, Thomas.”

  “I very rarely do,” says Thomas, with that smile again.

  “Who’s she?” says Ned, when she’s gone. He screws up his face to show what he thinks of her. Thomas frowns. He hates rudeness.

  “Her name is Matilda de Kyngesford,” he says. “She’s one of the wealthiest women in York.”

  “You mean her husband is wealthy,” I say, but Thomas shakes his head.

  “Matilda is a holy widow, Isabel. After her husband died, she vowed before the bishop to live in chastity for the rest of her life and serve God.”

  “Like a nun?” says Robin, but Thomas laughs.

  “No, not very like a nun.” His hand plays with his knife. “Robin, I’ll need someone to keep a tally at this meeting tomorrow. Do you think—?”

  I pull the conversation back to Matilda.

  “But—” I say. “Matilda. She’s a woman, but she’s a merchant?”

  “And a very successful one, too.” Thomas turns his attention back to me reluctantly – aren’t-I-his-daughter? The one he’s supposed to be having a conversation with! – “They say,” – he smiles – “that she only took vows to prevent her father making another match for her. If so, it was a shrewd decision. She’s very well-respected here in the town. Now, Robin—” And they’re back to tallies and wine barrels and all the other dull things that Robin pretends like he’s interested in just because Thomas is talking about them.

  When we get up to go into the parlour, I catch hold of his sleeve.

  “That woman.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s a merchant – like Thomas!”

  “So?”

  “So she’s a woman, doing whatever she wants to. Which means I can too. I can farm Father’s land – our land – without having to marry you, or get someone else to farm it for me like your mother did! I can do it myself!”