All Fall Down

by Sally Nicholls

  “Tell Ned it doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m not angry. Tell him.”

  Life is beginning to come back to York. There are children in the house opposite, two little girls in fur-tipped mantles who gaze at Robin and me with interest. At the end of the street, there’s a man with a tray of pastries over his shoulder, calling, “Meat pies! Meat pies! Get them while they’re hot!” Robin and I buy one each and one for Thomas.

  “Did you used to live here before the pestilence?” I ask him, and he nods, turning over our coins with his grubby fingers.

  “Took the family to my brother John’s when the pestilence came. The Good Lord took John, and his son too, and now my brother Roger says the farm belongs to him, and we’re to be off back here where we came from.”

  “Is it really over, do you think?” says Robin, and the pie-man shrugs.

  “Nothing ever ends,” he says, and he hefts his pie-tray back on to his shoulder, calling, “Meat pies! Meat pies! Lovely meat pies!”

  I wrap Thomas’s pie in my bundle and we’re off down through the streets to the castle. York Castle stands a little apart from the city, its four round towers visible as we come out of the streets. It belongs to King Edward, Father said, but he hasn’t been to York for as long as Watt can remember. Now it’s a gaol, and a mint, and a garrison-house for his soldiers, and a bed for the night if he ever travels north again.

  The pestilence was very bad in the castle, particularly in the gaol, Watt said.

  “The Lord’s wrath was strong against those sinners.” But I’ve been in that gaol, where the ordinary prisoners are kept, and the stench is strong enough there even without the pestilence, so it’s no wonder so many people died. Plenty of people die there of ordinary sicknesses too, the flux and the styche and who knows what else.

  This time last year, there was a garrison of soldiers guarding the prisoners and the mint, which is somewhere in one of the towers. Most of the soldiers are dead now, but there’s one on the door who nods at us and opens up the little person-door inside the big cart-door to let us in.

  Inside the castle walls there’s the courtyard, with a well in the middle, and the stocks, and some chickens, and a pig nosing at the gutters. The courtyard is almost deserted. The whole world is half-empty, like a flood plain after the waters have receded, back to wherever it is floods come from. We pick our way around the bottom of the walls until we come to another door in another tower. The guard here is new and takes a little longer over us, asking us who we are and who we’ve come to visit. We show him our bundle and he nods and lets us inside.

  The ordinary prisoners are kept at the bottom of the tower, waiting for the assizes when their cases will be tried. The judges are travelling north on that long road from London, stopping in all the cities to try all the poor wretches in the gaols, to set them free or condemn them to death. They were due two months ago, but with the pestilence everything is knocked out of shape, and who knows when they’ll get here now. There aren’t many prisoners left. Those that didn’t die of the pestilence have escaped through the great holes in the wall where the spring river flooded into the gaol and nobody thought to mend it. All that’s left now are a couple of cripples and a mad woman who tells furious tales to the stones in the wall. And Thomas.

  Thomas has a room of his own in the tower, with a bed and a wooden table and a chair and a little window. He’s sitting at the table reading one of his books when the guard lets us in. He smiles when he sees Robin, or perhaps me as well, I’m not sure.

  “There you are! I wasn’t sure if you were coming today.”

  We leave money with the guards, so Thomas is always fed even if we can’t come. But Robin comes nearly every day, and usually I do too.

  “We brought you a new book,” says Robin. “I couldn’t read what it was, though.”

  Thomas takes the book from Robin and smiles.

  “Come,” he says, holding out his hand to Robin, “how much can you remember from last time?” And Robin pulls out his wax tablets, and the two of them are off again into their world of wax and wood and paper and black ink-spiders.

  I go to the window and look out. From here you can see the bright snake of the river, winding through the city and out of the city walls. You can see the thatched roofs of the houses, and though it’s too far away to see the people in the streets, there’s an ox-cart full of straw coming into the castle and a man exercising a horse in the courtyard below.

  Beyond the city walls, the patchwork of farmland starts, green fields for the animals, brown fields for the ploughing and here and there a yellowish field where the crop has been abandoned. There’s a team of oxen pulling a plough over a bare field, and the sight of it tugs at my heart. I wonder what’s happening in Ingleforn. They’ll have started the ploughing there now. I wonder what’s happened to our land, if anyone’s ploughing it, or if the crops have been left to rot and sink back into the land. There’s value in that too. Next year, the soil will be richer, the yield higher.

  The birds are gathering on the battlements of the castle, circling in great flocks over my head. They’re itching to leave, to take off to wherever it is birds come from and go back to. I’m itching to leave too. Somewhere along that road, Father’s land – my land – is waiting to be ploughed. But we can’t go before the assizes, before Thomas’s case is tried. We all know that.

  I turn back to look at Robin and Thomas. A bed, a chair, a table, a candlestick and a window. It’s not much. But Thomas doesn’t look unhappy. His head is bent over the book, his long finger marking the words for Robin to follow. Robin’s face is earnest, but if his wits are like mine, I can see why the letters don’t take. I can’t hold a thought in my head for longer than it takes to walk down the stairs to the kitchen. I forget important things – the name of the baker in Ingleforn, how many brothers and sisters Alice had, and how many of them are still alive. I used to worry about it, when we first came here, but now I don’t. I don’t worry about anything, very much. I do the things I need to do – make the pottage, brew the ale, wash the clothes, bring the food and water to Thomas here – the rest I let float on by. The pestilence seems to be almost gone, and soon the assizes will be over too. And then we’ll be moving on.

  Robin has given up on the reading lesson and is trying to persuade Thomas to escape again.

  “The ordinary prison has great holes in the wall where the floods came through last year,” he says. “All you’d need to do is stop paying for this room and you could just climb out – nobody would care. There’s only one guard left now in the prison anyway – all the rest died in the pestilence. We could get everything ready for you – couldn’t we, Isabel? It wouldn’t be hard.” His face is pained. I can see how much he hates this. And so do I, sort of – that so many, many people died and we couldn’t stop it happening, and that this man just sits and waits for the hangman to come. Because he will be hanged. What else will they do to a man who insists on confessing?

  “Enough,” says Thomas. He puts his hand on Robin’s arm and smiles at him, that oddly distant smile that seems to have no connection to the rest of the world. “I don’t want to make trouble for you and your family,” he says. “And that’s an end to it.”

  Robin’s face is pulled out of shape with his unhappiness. I can see why. They might send some men after Thomas, but it won’t be many. There are too few soldiers left and too many important things that need doing now – graves to dig, disputes to be settled, offices and titles to fill. One looter won’t cause too much unquiet, with all the thievery that’s been going unpunished these last months.

  I don’t think Thomas wants to run, is the truth. I think he wants to go back to his family, his wife and his children. He likes Robin – you can see how much he likes him – but I don’t think he’s enough to keep him here. It’s worth fighting to stay alive if you’ve got brothers and sisters who need you, or a wife and a family. But I can see how dying like this might be sweet, if you’re Thomas and you don’t have anything left to li
ve for.

  Thomas is putting his books away, which means it’s time for us to go.

  “Isabel—” he says, and there’s something in his voice that tugs at my attention.

  “What are you going to do with your family?” he says. “After the assizes?”

  Robin glances at me. It takes me a moment to catch my wits. I’ve got used to taking charge of my family since Thomas went, and I don’t like the reminder that Thomas is still supposed to be our father. I say, with more force than I’d intended, “We’re going back home. We’ve got land – good land. Someone will want us, if only for our land.”

  Thomas nods his head a couple of times.

  “Do you need money – for the journey?”

  I haven’t liked to tell him that Ralph has fled with most of his precious things.

  “We’ll be all right,” I say, instead, and he nods his head.

  “God be with you,” he says, and I feel like a door has been shut, leaving us out in the cold, leaving me alone with the family to care for again.

  But this time I’m not frightened. This time, I know we’re going to be all right.

  37. Robin by Moonlight

  The crowd in the square are strangely quiet. They wait at the edges and the walls, whispering and watching the wooden scaffold, which has been built against the window of the tavern. People are coming back. Across the square are two ladies in silks, whispering on the church steps while their maids scratch their noses and tug their fingers through their hair. The bodies are going from the streets, and the shutters on the houses are beginning to open. But it’s a strange, sad, quiet ghost of a city.

  I thought I’d hate the people staring, but this is worse. Like Thomas’s death isn’t exciting enough even to draw a crowd.

  The world isn’t helping. It’s a miserable day, a pale, washed-out grey sky, the sun sitting low and sullen above the rooftops. The people look small and worn. We’re a ruined world, the wasteland Noah saw when the flood waters melted away and left him with a muddy, empty wilderness to forge into a new nation.

  When it happens, it happens without ceremony. The executioner leads Thomas up to the scaffold. His hands are tied. Thomas is standing very straight. The four of us are huddled against the wall, away from the others. Robin stirs and stands forward. I follow. I want him to know that we’re here, even if those other children aren’t, William and Lucie and Edith. I don’t want him to be alone when he dies.

  Thomas’s eyes are moving around the square. They catch ours and settle. He nods, but doesn’t smile.

  They put the hood over his head. They put the noose around his neck. Maggie cries out, catching her breath in distress, and buries her head in my mantle. I put my arm around her shoulders and look across at Ned. His face is pale, his eyes vivid in the whiteness. His spiky red hair needs cutting. His eyes are watching Thomas. He’s not going to look away. Neither is Robin. Neither am I.

  Thomas drops. Ned flinches. Somehow I’d expected it to be dignified – Thomas is so dignified, and he’s a martyr, like the holy saints. But there’s no dignity in this death. He jerks and dances on the rope like a man in a fit, like a butchered pig. Ned is trembling, his hand up to his mouth. Magsy whimpers into my stomach. The crowd is quiet.

  At last he’s still.

  They cut him down. That seems to be all. No one wants to linger. The people are moving off already. A woman passing us shakes her head.

  “Haven’t we had enough death already?” she says. “You’d think they’d be tired of it.”

  Ned is crying. His lips are shaking.

  “I’m sorry . . .” he says. “Sorry . . . I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  I put my around his shoulders.

  “I know, Nedkin,” I say. “I’m sorry too.”

  Robin’s face is soft with sleeplessness and sadness.

  “He wanted to die,” he says, and I wonder if he’s right.

  Thomas’s house is empty. None of the fires are lit, or the candles. Outside, the rain is falling, rat-a-tap-tapping against the wooden shutters. I light the beeswax candles and we all climb into my bed together, the way we used to in our solar at home. This bed is softer than our old bed, and the mattress is stuffed with feathers, but the feeling is the same, of being together in a warm, cosy heap, like a litter of piglets or a nest of baby chicks.

  “What do you think those girls would say if they found me and Robin in here?” says Ned, and he giggles.

  “They’d say, ‘Get that smelly villein out of my bed!’” I say.

  “We’re not smelly!” says Mags.

  “We might not even be villeins any more,” I realize.

  “Doesn’t mean they’d marry you,” Robin says, and Maggie squeals.

  “Poor girls,” I say. “We shouldn’t laugh.”

  “Poor Father and Alice and Richard,” says Ned.

  “And baby Edward!” says Mags.

  “And Mother and Thomas,” says Robin quietly.

  And Geoffrey, I think, but I don’t say it out loud.

  I used to be afraid of going home, of knowing, but I’m not any more. Not knowing is worse.

  In the dark chamber, we’re silent, remembering the ghosts of our dead. I wonder how long they’ll travel so close to us. Maybe for ever. That’s a sad thought and a happy one, both.

  “No one else is going to die, are they?” says Mags, burrowing her forehead into my stomach.

  “No,” says Robin. “No one else is going to die.”

  *

  In the middle of the night, I get out of bed and go into the hall. We’ve left the shutters open in the corridor, and the moonlight shines on to the wall, silvery-white and eerie and beautiful. I stand at the window and look out at the town. So many people have died. Why were we left alive? What am I supposed to do with all of this life, this bounty I’ve been given? What can I do that’s better than what Alice or Edward would have done?

  There’s a noise behind me. It’s Robin, his face silvery-quiet in the moonlight.

  “Hey, Robin,” I say, and he comes and puts his arms around me.

  “I’m your family now,” he says, and he kisses me, the way he did on the night of the hue and cry.

  The moon is high in the sky. The stars are out. Robin is in my arms, and we’re kissing, mouth against mouth, heart against heart. We’re kissing with all the life that we have and the dead do not. Because we’re alive. Because so many people are dead. Because it’s so good to feel something after so long feeling nothing at all.

  In the moonlight, here in the hallway, it’s hard to tell where my body ends and his begins.

  I pull my mouth apart from his, and look at him, there so close to me that I can feel his breath on my cheek. I trace the shape of his face with my finger, the line of his nose, his cheek, his mouth.

  “Let’s have lots of children,” Robin whispers. “Lots and lots.”

  “Let’s have a cherry tree and a beehive.”

  “Let’s get our animals back from Joan.”

  “Let’s be free.”

  “I love you,” I whisper, and I wonder if I mean it.

  We’re woken the next morning by the sound of fists. Hard, urgent fists banging at the door downstairs, hands and feet and fists and fear. A constable’s bang, or a sheriff’s, authority knocking. We try to ignore it, but whoever is banging won’t go away.

  “I didn’t do anything!” says Ned.

  “Don’t answer it,” says Robin. But it doesn’t work. Whoever it is knows we’re here. Maybe it’s Thomas’s family – maybe he has brothers and sisters, or cousins somewhere, who are coming back to claim what’s rightfully theirs.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell Ned. “I’m not going to let them take anyone else away.”

  I take out my knife. Robin takes Thomas’s sword. Ned – desperate not to be left out – picks up the broom and Mag follows with the candlestick, bobbing a little on the soles of her feet with excitement. I wonder about telling her to stay upstairs, then change my mind. Whatever we’re doing
now, we’re doing together.

  We creep down the stairs. The fists are still banging on the door outside, loud and urgent.

  “We’re coming!” I call through the door. The banging stops.

  I tug at the bolts, cold in the morning air.

  “Ready?” I whisper. The others nod.

  I open the door.

  Richard is standing on the doorsill.

  38. Alive

  We sit round the table in the kitchen for hours, drinking stale ale from Thomas’s wine goblets and eating meat pies from the pie man’s stall.

  “You’re alive,” says Richard. “All of you. Even Robin!”

  “You can’t kill me,” says Robin, but his smile is quiet. He’s not the same laughing boy who trod on my toes at Midsummer Eve. But then, am I the same Isabel?

  “They said you were sick,” I say.

  “I was,” says Richard. “And then I got better. And I came to find you.”

  “I didn’t know that could happen,” I say. “I thought you were dead.”

  “I didn’t know what had happened to you,” says Richard. And we’re quiet, thinking of all the things that might have happened to us and didn’t, and of all the things that did.

  “Do you know what happened to Geoffrey?” I ask, but Richard shakes his head.

  “There were a lot of deaths up at the abbey,” he says. “Some people say all the monks died . . . some say there were a few left who went to a monastery in Felton. I know the abbot died. They shut the place up. I didn’t like to go up there, Isabel, I’m sorry. And Geoffrey wouldn’t have wanted me, even if he was still alive.” But that isn’t true. Geoffrey wouldn’t have wanted to come home, but he would have wanted to see us, to know if we were alive. But if he was alive, wouldn’t he have come to the village himself?