Read Online All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls - Free Book Online Page B

better?”
    â€œNo,” I say. “You always die.”
    Ned hunches his shoulders. I wonder who he’s anxious about – Philip-at-the-brook, who he plays with sometimes on the green, or old John Adamson, or ourselves, when this thing comes to us.
    â€œNed?” I say, but he pulls away.
    â€œI don’t care,” he says. “I don’t care about you or Alice or any stupid pestilence.” And he runs off to the well with his buckets swinging.
    The women by the well are swapping bad news. Stupid old besoms. As we come down towards them, they stop their talking and look at us over their shoulders. Bad news coming to us. I feel something cold settle in my stomach. The pestilence coming to someone I love. Robin. Richard. Geoffrey. Amabel Dyer. There are so many possibilities.
    â€œIsabel, did you hear?” one of them calls. “The new priest has come. Arrived late last night. Just a boy, Beatrice Reeve says.”
    â€œThat’s good,” I say, and some of the tangle of fear in my stomach loosens itself. The woman looks as though she’s about to say something else, and I tug on Ned’s arm before she can work herself up to it.
    â€œCome on , Ned. Alice is waiting.”
    I drag him over to the well. The women watch. I move restlessly as we wait in the line, stretching the muscles in my arms. The women talk, their wimples nodding, their shoulders moving restlessly. No one says anything to us. It’s only as we’re done filling our buckets that a woman calls to me.
    â€œIsabel, wait a moment.”
    It’s Emma Baker.
    â€œDoes your father know?”
    Ned answers before I can stop him. “Know what? About the priest?”
    â€œMargaret is sick,” says Emma.
    Margaret. Robin’s mother. My belly tips, as though I’m standing at the edge of a cliff, about to plunge over the edge into nothingness. Robin. My Robin, with his black hair falling in his eyes and his wide mouth open and laughing. The sickness in Robin’s house.
    â€œBrother Simon from St Mary’s was there this morning. It’s the sickness all right. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay away from there, you hear?”
    â€œWe’ve got to go,” I say. “Alice is waiting!” And I’m almost running, fast as I can with the buckets on my shoulders, Ned running after me.
    â€œWhat did you do that for? Why are we running? Isabel – wait for me!”
    â€œHow dare she?” I say. I’m shaking. “How dare she tell me what to do? What’s it got to do with her?”
    â€œAre you going to see Margaret?” says Ned. “Isabel?”
    â€œI’m not going to do what those old hags tell me,” I say, and I stamp off back home before he can ask me any more questions I don’t have the answers for.
    Â 
    Alice is crushing the malt at the table when we come back. Ned is full of the news.
    â€œMargaret at Brook has the pestilence!”
    Alice lowers the pestle and stares at him. Her face is red, and a strand of hair has escaped her wimple and is stuck to her cheek.
    â€œOh, Ned,” she says.
    â€œCan we have Robin here?” I say. “While his mother’s sick?”
    Maggie, who is rolling Alice’s spindle across the floor, looks up.
    â€œYes!” she says. “Can he? Can he sleep in our bed?”
    â€œI’m sorry, Isabel,” says Alice. She looks tired. She brushes the stray strand of hair off her forehead with the fleshy back of her hand. “I’ve got Edward and you children to think of. What if he brought the sickness here?”
    â€œWill Thatcher says we oughtn’t to speak to anyone who’s sick,” Ned pipes up. “He says we ought to stay at home and just lock our doors and—”
    I remember all the people who have come down the road from York – the preachers, the carters, the beggars and lepers and holy men and refugees. There is