“He’s not my father. You aren’t even married.”
“That’s right,” says Robin. He lifts his head from his knees and watches me across the flames with an odd expression on his face. “Isabel, will you marry me?” he says.
I look back at him. He’s got straw in his hair and dirt on his fingers. There’s an ale stain on his cote. His face is all shadow and candlelight and secrets.
I know him deeper than I know anyone else in the world.
“All right,” I say.
“Good.” Robin turns to Mag. “There,” he says. “Now we’re married.”
“You are not!” Mag tugs at his cote. “You need a priest to be married.”
“No, you don’t!” says Ned. “John Felton and Amabel Farmer got married just by telling each other they were going to. And then Amabel changed her mind and got married to John Tanner instead and she was going to have his baby and John Felton took them to the manor court and said she was married to him already and the lord said she was and her baby was a bastard, only John Felton said she could marry the other John because he didn’t want to have to raise some other man’s baby and then they had a fight and—”
“Who are these people?” says Robin, which is what I’ve been wondering, and Ned says, “They live in Will Thatcher’s uncle’s village – Will told me about them.”
“Ned’s right, though,” I say, quickly. “We are married now. That’s the law.”
“Let’s have a marriage!” Mags sits up. “Ned can be the priest and I’ll be Isabel’s mother and cry because I’m giving my daughter awa-a-a-ay!” She pretends to sob into her skirt like Joan’s mother did when Joan married Richard. I glance at Robin and he shrugs.
“All right,” I say.
Mags takes charge.
“You stand here,” she says to Robin, pulling him up. “And you here, Isabel. And Ned, you stand there and hold the candle—”
“I’ll hold the candle,” says Robin. He takes it from Ned and holds it wrapped in his long fingers, so that the yellow light shines up onto his face. I reach out a hand to touch his cheek, and he stands there watching me all big-eyed and smiling. But when he raises his head again, his eyes are dark and all the laughter is gone and something like a shiver goes down my back, and I’m almost afraid.
“You first,” says Maggie, tugging on my arm. “Isabel. Say the words.”
I’ve been to lots of marriages – Richard and Joan’s, and Father and Alice’s, and Matilda-at-the-Wood’s last year and others I’ve forgotten. I look at Robin and I say the words.
“I take you, Robin, to my wedded husband, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, in bed and at board, till death us depart, if holy church it will ordain. And thereto I plight you my troth.”
The words start out in silliness, but somehow, halfway through, they become real. Robin is holding the candle cupped in his two hands like it’s a flower. I can see by his eyes, and his voice when he starts speaking, that he means this too.
“I take you, Isabel, to my wedded wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart, if holy church it will ordain. And thereto I plight you my troth.”
We stand there in the barn, staring at each other. Neither of us speaks. I want to kiss him, but I’m not sure I dare, not with Ned and Maggie watching us. Ned will squeal and laugh and what if Robin doesn’t let me? Though I think he will. We’re man and wife now – aren’t we? Can you be married – properly married – at fourteen? Kings and queens and lords and ladies get married as little children, don’t they? The old queen, Queen Isabella – King Edward’s mother – Geoffrey told me she was married at seven. I duck my head and look at Robin through my falling hair, shyer now that he’s my husband than I’ve ever been shy of him before.
All evening, I sit by Robin with my hand in his hand, safe in his lap. When we come to bed, I won’t be parted from him, even for a moment. I feel like the child at the fair who won’t leave her mother for any temptation, not to play on the sideshows, not to join in the dance. When Robin blows out the candle, I worry myself up against him and lay my head on his breast. He puts his arms around me, and I feel like a little bird who’s found her nest, a little bird who’s never going to leave it, who’s going to stay here for ever.
Now that the candles are out, the only light is the red glow of the fire embers. One by one, they’ll dim and wink out, until there’ll just be warm ash, then cold ash and then nothing. On the other side of the fire, the animals snuffle and sigh.
“There’s rats in this barn,” Maggie whispers.
“You’re not scared, are you?” I say, and she shakes her head.
“Only if they bite,” she says, and nods to herself.
She falls into sleep almost immediately. Ned takes longer, but soon I feel his body relax against mine and his breathing slow. I lift my head to look at Robin and see that his eyes are open, black and shiny in the darkness.
“You’re my family now,” I say.
“Yeh,” he says. He sighs and closes his eyes, his hand still draped across my chest. He’s falling asleep. I rub my head against his shoulder bone.
“Do you think Geoffrey’s still alive?”
“Yeh,” he mumbles, though how should he know?
“What’s going to happen to us, Robin?” I whisper. He doesn’t answer, but he grips my shoulder tighter against the darkness. And so the first night of my married life we sleep like that, huddled together in the straw, with the barn door bolted against the night.
26. Isabel Alone
The next morning, I wake early. The sun is coming up through the crack in the barn door, and the cow is making restless noises in the gloom, waiting to be milked. I feel almost happy. I know that’s a dreadful thing to say, but I do. I roll over and I see Ned, awake much earlier than usual, sitting up in his blankets with bits of straw all stuck into his red hair.
“What?” I say at him, still waking up.
“We don’t have to work today, do we?” says Ned. “Not if we don’t want to.”
“Of course we do.” I hate being idle. “The cow still needs milking, doesn’t she? And the chickens need feeding. And—”
“I don’t think we ought to work!” says Ned, in his high little voice. “I don’t want to bring the harvest in if Father’s not!”
“Who says we’re bringing in the harvest?” says Robin, sitting up with his thick hair falling like a tumbledown haystack over his ears. “Isabel? Don’t listen to Isabel – I’m father here.”
“What would we do instead?” I say. I don’t have the heart for the harvest, it’s true, not with Alice sick and Edward . . . I feel all tangled up and out of sorts. But I can’t bear the thought of sitting here all day doing nothing.
“Let’s go fishing,” says Robin. “We’ll catch Walt and Alice a fish for supper.”
Fishing turns out to be a good idea. The best spot is upriver from Ingleforn, but it’s empty, of course – everyone is dead or out in the fields. Maggie and Ned splash about in the shallows, then settle down trying to build a dam across the river – which doesn’t work, because the river is much too wide here. You want the beck by the abbey for dams.
Robin’s a good fisherman. He’s patient, and he doesn’t mind standing in the shallows for hours. I watch him, his clever face dappled and danced by the light which plays through the leaves. Shouldn’t we tell Geoffrey about Alice? Wouldn’t he want to know? Or am I just being cowardly, wanting him here?
The door is still shut when we get back home, but there’s smoke coming through the thatch, so Father must be there. I leave Ned and Robin to gut the fish, and search amongst the pile of things by the door for some flour. Maggie crouches in the straw twisting her skirt around her fingers, watching me.
“Can’t we go and see Alice?”
“Alice is sick,” I say, for about the hundredth time.
“I want to see Alice!”
“Well, you can’t!” I tell her. I should know better, with all my years of big-sistering. She starts to cry, not usual Mag sobs, but dirty, hiccuppy, almost silent tears.
“I want Alice!” she says, and I lift her on to my knee and put my arms around her. The hem of her dress is choked with mud from the river, and her long, yellow hair has a scraggly look to it already. I hold her like a good sister and say, “Shh, Mag. It’s all right – I’m here,” but she spoils it by elbowing me in the stomach and shouting, “I don’t want you! I want Alice!”
“Here—” says Robin, coming to my rescue. “Here, Mag, leave Isabel now, she needs to go to the baker and bake us some bread. How about you play cat’s cradle with me? Eh?” Mag scowls at him, but he picks her up by her armpits and carries her over to the bed, so at least I can find the flour and take it to Emma Baker’s.
What will I do if Father and Alice die? How can I bring these children up on my own?
The houses in the village are quiet. The stocks are empty. There’s a man – Will Thatcher! – firing arrows into the archery butts, but he doesn’t see me and I don’t call out. A few children are playing on the green, and they stop and stare as I pass. I wonder, could I leave Mag with them sometime, or would their parents be too frightened?
Emma Baker is working in the oven with the one apprentice left, a red-faced boy called Philip, who’s pumping on the bellows with his sleeves rolled up and the sweat glistening on his cheeks. She looks up as I come with the bread and says, “Isabel! How’s Alice?”
“She’s ill,” I say, and I wait for her to tell me that I’m not welcome here. I wouldn’t blame her – she’s got three children of her own to think about.
But all she does is suck her teeth and say, “That’s bad, Isabel, tell your father I’m sorry,” and she takes the flour. “Come with me,” she says, nodding to the red-faced Philip, who gasps and wipes the sweat from his forehead. I follow her into the house, where she takes a plate from the table and gives me three smoked trout, still warm from the oven.
“There,” she says.
I want to cry, suddenly. I can take people being horrible to me – but people being nice always unmans me. I blink at her and mumble something, and she pats me on the shoulder and starts shouting at her daughter Maude for letting the cauldron boil over.
I don’t see Father, but I leave the bread and fish on the doorsill and call, “Father! There’s food!”
Then I pull the others away round to the yard, and we eat our loaves and fishes sitting on the cow’s drinking trough all in a row. When I go back round to the front of the house, the food is gone.
On the second day, I’m milking the cow when Gilbert Reeve comes swaggering up to our gate with his fat belly hanging out of his cote and asks me why we weren’t in Hilltop an hour ago, and what happened to us yesterday, and don’t I know they need our oxen for the haycarts? I tell him Alice is sick and Father is looking after her, and he says that’s all very well, but we’re not sick, are we? And how is Robert Thatcher’s team supposed to pull a cart with only three oxen?
I can see we aren’t going to win this argument, so Robin and I gather up the little ones and we spend the day bringing in the barley, Robin and I as binders and Ned and Mags as gleaners. The others are distant but polite – my brother Richard is there and he nods at us, but Father must have told him not to come near, because he doesn’t say anything to me. Some of the other women stay clear of us too, which puzzles Maggie, but I don’t care. If they don’t want to talk to me, I don’t want to talk to them either. Not after Alice has been so good to the village, taking in Robin and letting me visit Margaret, and inviting Robert Smith’s daughters over for food. Agnes Harelip sniffs and turns away when we come into the field after Gilbert, but Robert Smith’s widow, Beatrice, comes and sits by us when we’re eating and asks after Alice, and gives Maggie a bit of bread with raisins and honey in it.
“Alice is a good woman,” she says. “Tell your father, if there’s anything we can do.”
Should I go to the monks and ask for help? Should I tell Geoffrey?
Robin hates being here, I can tell. His body is stiff as a plank of wood, and his jaw is clenched. The last few weeks, he’s been working with a man called Hugh – binding the sheaves as Hugh scythes them. Today, though, Hugh is working with Alison Spinner, and he moves ever so slightly aside when Robin makes as though to go up to him. It’s a small thing, but Robin flushes, and goes to bind for Beatrice instead.
I touch his arm when we’re eating.
“Robin—”
“Why are we even here?” he says. “They don’t want us here. I don’t want us here. How would you feel if Alison gets sick – or Beatrice – or one of the little ones—” He nods at Maggie and Ned and the other children who are chasing each other through the stubble. “If they died?” he says, his voice high like Ned’s. “And it was your fault? How would you feel?”
I touch his arm. Was Edward’s sickness Robin’s fault? Did he bring the miasma into our house? I thought the miasma was supposed to smell bad, and Robin doesn’t. But could it have been Robin’s fault anyway?
27. Breathing Through Smoke
The next day, when I go for our bread, Emma Baker’s flustered and distracted, wiping her floury hands on the front of her gown.
“Isabel,” she says, “oh, Isabel, have you heard?”
From the tone of her voice, I wonder if King Edward has died, or the Scots invaded, or something equally dreadful.
“Our poor little village,” she says. “There won’t be anything left of us when this is done.”
“What is it?” I say. Beside me, Maggie tugs on my gown with sticky fingers. I didn’t want to bring her, but she wouldn’t be left. I’ve got so much to do this evening – I’m off to the well for water after this, and then there’s the cow to bring back from the pasture, and the pig to fetch from the swineherd, and the chickens to put to bed, and the garden needs watering, and I haven’t even started thinking about the evening meal.
“The poor priest,” she says. “That poor boy. Two priests in less than a month!”
Except that Sir John didn’t die, and Simon . . .
“Is he dead?” I say, and my voice goes up a notch. I don’t want him to be dead, I realize, this gawky fair-haired boy-priest, who reminds me so much of my brother Geoffrey, who I hope – please, God, I hope – will grow up one day to be a priest like Simon is.
“Taken with the sickness, I heard,” says Emma Baker. “Last night. He was coughing blood, Agnes Harelip said. He won’t have long.”
“Isn’t anyone nursing him?” I say. “Is he there on his own?”
Emma Baker sniffs.
“Who’d go into a house with the sickness?” And I’m angry – with her, and with the villagers, for leaving this boy alone to die, until I remember the baby no one ever talked about, and the old couple from Great Riding Amabel told me about, who were six days dead and half-eaten by pigs by the time someone found them, and my brother Geoffrey, and how I don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.
All evening I’m angry. I snap at Mags and shout at Ned and send him running off to the green to play with the Tanner boys. Robin raises his eyebrows at me and I want to slap him. Everyone’s been grumpy all day today, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate everything about this. I slop Father’s dinner on our doorstep with undeserved force. I’m angry with him and Alice too – for getting sick, for leaving me, for leaving Geoffrey, for forcing me to make decisions I’d rather not make.
“Do you know that boy-priest is sick?” I tell Robin, angrily. “And no one’s going to help him? Not one person? After all he’s done for everyone in this village – he’s lying there in his own shit and no one has even gone to give him a mug of ale!”
“Isabel,” says Robin, and his voice is frightened. “You promised your father. Don’t you even think about going into a pestilence house! How would you feel if you brought that sickness back to Mag and Ned?”<
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“I know!” I say, irritated. “I wasn’t going to! I just think . . .”
“Don’t!” says Robin fiercely. “Don’t you even think it! Don’t die on me, Isabel. I won’t let you!”
“Robin . . .” I say. It’s not your fault, is what I want to say. But who knows? It might be.
But when we go to bed, I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about Geoffrey. The Geoffrey I keep thinking about is alone in that big abbey. He’s sick, and all the monks are dead, and nobody is coming to help him. He calls out for me, and for Mother, but no one answers. I lie on my back and stare into the darkness, and tell myself that Geoffrey has all the monks, and surely we’d have heard if they were all dead?
But now my mind is wandering, to that baby that nobody took out of that house, to Father, staying by Alice when he could have run away, to Alice letting Robin come to us. And I think about how young Simon the priest is, how he probably has a mother and a father and maybe a sister like me somewhere, and how he went into Margaret’s house even though he knew she had the sickness, even though he didn’t even know who she was.
At last I get up, slowly and carefully, so as not to wake Robin. I put on my gown and my shoes, and kneel down by the embers of the fire to light the lantern. Maggie stirs as I blow on the ashes, and calls out, but I hush her.
“I’m just going to the privy, Mags. Go back to sleep.” She murmurs and rolls over, back into Ned, half asleep already.
The moon is full, and the sky clear. It’s a shiny, silvery, moonlit night and the sky is glorious with stars. I didn’t need a candle. The village is very quiet as I walk through it. There’s a light in the window of the Tanners’ cottage by the millpond, and I wonder what’s happening inside. Someone dying, probably.
Simon’s little house is dark, and my single, flickering lantern doesn’t drive away the shadows that cluster at the edges of the walls. The shutters are closed and the fire has burnt out long ago. There’s that smell again, the pestilence miasma, that choked our house when Edward was sick – a foul, sickly scent somewhere between rotting apples and blood.
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