Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [367]
At the end of the morning, he decided to return to Avonsford. The place had changed completely. In the main street, a group of villagers, no longer scoffing, were anxiously looking at the sky for signs of the dark clouds they expected to bring the plague. They glanced at him cautiously, but he passed on.
Was it possible, he wondered, that Agnes might be right after all in choosing the isolated sheep house? The threat of the plague seemed to be all around him here.
He went to the family’s cottage, collected an extra jerkin and two blankets and began to make his way out of the village again.
It was just before he left that he saw the first real sign of the panic that was about to grip the area.
The priest’s house was little more than a cottage, for his stipend was modest, and it was only more dignified than the other village houses because it stood apart from the line of the main street and had a small paddock beside it.
To his surprise, as he went past, the priest ran out from it into the lane and seized him by the arm.
“My sheep, Nicholas,” the gap-toothed vicar cried. “Come quickly and look at my sheep.”
And when he followed him, Nicholas saw three sheep lying in the paddock. They were all dead. At the vicar’s urging he looked at them.
“Well, what killed them?” the priest asked him anxiously. He kept running his hands through his thin hair.
Nicholas shrugged. “A murrain I suppose.”
“You don’t know?” the vicar demanded plaintively. Nicholas gazed at the dead sheep again but did not answer. “It’s the plague,” the priest suddenly cried out in despair. “The plague. We’re all lost.” And to Nicholas’s amazement, he burst into sobs.
He had not heard that sheep could catch the plague. He wondered if it were true. The vicar was still weeping as he turned up the lane.
It was mid-afternoon when he reached the sheep house. He smiled to himself as he saw the curious circle of stones around it. For all her faults, he thought, Agnes was a remarkable woman. And as he considered the place in its isolated setting he could not help admitting that it was undeniably safer than the city or the village. She is right after all, he admitted to himself. She’ll bring us through if anyone can.
He smiled, too, when he saw his youngest half brother, a dark-haired boy of four, solemnly standing guard by the door with his little bow and arrow. He heard the boy cry out happily as he advanced towards him.
The morning had seemed to pass slowly for Agnes. John had not given her any trouble, but it had been difficult to contain the children within the circle of stones, though somehow she had done so.
The place was astonishingly quiet. Far from the trees, even the birds scarcely seemed to visit it, and most of the time they had only the drifting clouds for company. No animals had come near except once, soon after dawn, when a fox, scenting their occupation, had cautiously approached. As soon as it saw her, it began to lope away, but not before she had skilfully loosed a stone from a sling that struck it hard in the hindquarters and caused it to scamper off, to the delighted cries of the children.
Noon passed. The children dozed while she sat quietly by the entrance. There was no wind; the only sound was the gentle scraping of John’s knife as he fashioned a new arrow for one of the children’s bows. An hour later she let the little boy take her place while she slept.
Now his cry had awoken her.
For a second the sun hurt her eyes as she ran out, shook off her sleep and stared anxiously into the hard yellow light of the afternoon.
He was only a hundred yards away; her little boy was about to run towards him.
And now she was fully awake: for this was the test.
“Back into the house and stay there,” she ordered. And then, seizing the child’s bow, she went out to the line of stones.
He was surprised when Agnes called him to stop.
She