Three Bags Full (11 page)

“It was peaceful once,” said Beth.

“Not peaceful enough, obviously.”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t mean just before George’s death. I mean much earlier. Years ago.” Beth thought briefly. “Seven years ago. I spent six months in Africa, and when I came back it was all different. More superstition. Less of the fear of the Lord. And George was more affected than anyone, and after that he became more and more of a recluse. After that …oh, I don’t know.”

“So what had happened?”

“Nothing, of course,” said Beth bitterly. “They were very keen to say that nothing had happened. But since then,” and Beth leaned forward again, “since then they’ve been waiting for something to save them.”

Mopple’s knees began to tremble. He slid off the window box and stared glassily at the garage wall. His scent was suddenly as sour as fermenting rowanberries. Mopple rolled his eyes. Colic! Mopple the Whale, who could eat any amount of fresh clover on an empty stomach, had colic! Those geraniums must be vicious as a wolf!

Othello and Maple flanked Mopple, one on each side, to prevent him from lying down. Walking up and down was the only cure for that sort of colic. They had learned that from George.

“Keep going,” whispered Maple. “Take another step, another step.”

“And don’t bleat, Mopple,” muttered Othello.

Mopple stumbled forward, eyes glazed, but he didn’t bleat. Maple and Othello helped him to walk up and down the backyard of the takeaway.

Then the door suddenly opened and a great drift of Beth’s sour smell wafted out. It was as if she kept the essence of her scent indoors and took only a little of it with her when she left home. Rebecca’s full, warm scent wove its way sleek as a ferret through this sour aromatic wasteland. Then she was standing in the yard. Mopple, Maple, and Othello just made it into shelter behind the broom bush.

“Thank you very much,” said Rebecca to the desolate scent standing in the door frame. “That was a great help to me, especially what you told me last.” She smiled mischievously. “And now I’m hungry. Do you think the takeaway will still be open?”

“Not in a place like this,” said the voice in the doorway. “But I can give you a bite to eat. Bread and some salad?”

“Thank you very much, but no.” Rebecca smiled again and took a couple of steps toward the street before turning.

“There’s one thing I don’t understand,” she said. “You obviously don’t think much of Glennkill. Why did you stay here?”

Silence from the doorway. Then, “Let’s say for very personal reasons,” breathed a voice that none of the sheep would have recognized as Beth’s.

“George?” asked Rebecca, but the door was already closed. Rebecca strolled across the yard and disappeared round the corner.

And just in time, too, as Mopple was writhing in agony. They forced him to walk back across the yard, Maple whispering comforting words into his ear, Othello muttering threats.

After a while Mopple stopped.

“Come on, keep going!” bleated Maple. Othello nuzzled Mopple none too gently in the side.

“No!” said Mopple weakly.

“You must,” growled Othello.

“No, I mustn’t,” said Mopple. “Don’t you understand? It’s over. I’m hungry!”

When the three sheep left the yard of the takeaway again, it was quiet in the streets. Mopple was still rather shaky on his legs, but he ate a few flowers planted by some unthinking human around the marble column.

Miss Maple set off back to the meadow, but after only a few steps she noticed that Othello wasn’t following. The black ram had stopped and was standing beside the marble column like a small dark cloud. Maple bleated encouragingly to him, but Othello shook his head.

“I’ll stick around here,” said Othello. Maple flapped her ears forward, wondering why, but Othello just looked mysterious, and next moment he had disappeared into the shadow of the hedge. Miss Maple would have liked to follow him, but Mopple the Whale smelled confused, he smelled of streaming eyes and trembling knees, and she didn’t want to leave him alone now. Together they trotted back toward the meadow.

Mopple’s eyes were still a little glazed. Maple trotted along beside him more briskly than she had trotted for some time.

“That was interesting,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like to know what happened seven years ago too?” What an enormous length of time. Maple was the cleverest sheep in all Glennkill, but even she couldn’t imagine seven years. She tried seven summers. No reaction. Seven winters? She could only really remember last winter, when George had nailed an old carpet over the door of the hay barn to protect them from the cold wind. There was a winter before that, and another before that one. Then the trail of winters was lost in the dark.

Mopple had been following his own train of thought.

“It was the butcher,” he groaned.

“Why?” Maple looked at Mopple in concern. “Just because he has a CCTV camera? We don’t even know what a CCTV camera is.”

Mopple looked stubborn.

“No one likes the butcher,” Maple went on thoughtfully. “All the same, those men under the lime tree were afraid he might die.” She shook her head. “There’s so much fear around here. Everyone’s afraid. It’s a wonder that George felt so little fear.”

“But they tried to frighten him,” said Mopple. “With straw.” He shook his head at the thought of such human folly. There were plenty of terrible, horrible things in the world, but straw was surely not among them.

Maple nodded. “A warning.” She had an idea, and stopped. Mopple looked questioningly at her.

“Mopple,” said Maple, “if a small figure like that with a stick stuck through it was meant to be a little warning to George, could it be that George with a spade stuck into him was meant to be a huge big warning to someone else?”

Mopple looked blank, but Maple wasn’t really expecting an answer. She was busy with her thoughts.

“The children were afraid of George. But why? What was so scary about George that so many people could be afraid of him? Mopple,” she said, “please remember this. Goblin King.”

“Goblin King,” puffed Mopple.

11

Othello and a Case of Mistaken Identity

Othello had no difficulty in finding the house of God. It was the biggest in the village, tall and pointed, just as Cloud had said. Stealing up to God’s house unseen looked to be more difficult. Unlike all the other houses, its façade was brightly floodlit. Only under the arched doorway was there a yawning shadow. Othello listened: somewhere in the distance a dog was whining and music was playing. He trotted briskly across the lighted yard. Two long sheep shadows trotted beside him, and a third, longer still and very pale, followed him. The four of them made hardly a sound.

In the shadow of the doorway Othello was alone again. He scented the air. Outside, it smelled of the street, cars, and a mild summer night; from inside cool, moldy, nostril-tickling scents came creeping out through the cracks and into the open.

No human being, no living creature at all.

Or was there?

When you start trusting yourself is the moment to stop it
, whispered the voice in his head. Othello scented the air again.

One or two mice, maybe, certainly nothing larger. Only the door itself worried him. Taller and broader than any other door he’d ever seen. The handles were so high up that even if he stood on his back legs his front hooves wouldn’t reach them. It looked as if giants lived on the other side of that door. God was tall, but not as tall as that.

Perhaps he could get a purchase on the handle with his teeth? He braced his forelegs against the door and stretched his neck. The door gave. Not much, but enough to tell Othello that it was open anyway and there was no need for him to use the handle.

He got down on all four legs again and lowered his head. The tall door was easily opened by his horns.

Listen.

Silence.

Othello put one front hoof on cold, shiny stone inside the house, and then the other. He was about to follow them up with a back hoof when the voice inside his head spoke up again.

Every way is really two ways
, said the voice. There and back, thought Othello.
The way back is always the most important
, added the voice rather mockingly.

The black ram snorted impatiently. He was cross with himself. If the door would open to let him in, that certainly didn’t mean it would be just as easy to get out again the other way.

Othello took a couple of steps back until his hindquarters were out in the light again, casting three long shadows. He lowered his horns, and raced forward. Attack—make impact—parry with raised horns. An elegant sequence of movements that would have earned him respect in any rams’ duel.

The heavy wooden door swung wide open. For a moment Othello saw benches in the moonlight, tall pillars, a high dome. A circus ring?

The door swung back, wafting musty air before it. It swung out past the doorpost and back again. And out again. Back and forth. Now he was sure of himself: he’d be able to open the door from inside just as easily as from outside.

He waited in the shadow of the porch until all was silent once more. Then he went on waiting. His rage had given way to cold patience. Soon he would challenge God to a duel, for the pain, the suffering, and all the greedy and indifferent eyes in this world.

But when he was standing on the smooth stone floor, and the door behind him cut off the light, the place gave Othello the creeps. Too much here reminded him of the circus. The organ that could play cheerful music to accompany the most dreadful things; the empty benches for the audience; the platform. It had the props for the performance on it: a microphone, a rostrum, and a small bench. A fence of iron spikes, with burning candles. Othello could just imagine unfortunate creatures being driven over that fence day after day, for the amusement of the audience. No doubt what Cloud had witnessed was one of those performances. Othello was glad to have tracked God down. The show must not go on.

He trotted past the rows of benches. A thick red carpet muted the sound of his hooves. The red carpet was only for the human artistes. Woe to any animal who accidentally trod on it. But Othello couldn’t care less just now.

Then he heard a sound, a small tormented sound, like a door that needed oiling. Or could it have been an animal? Or a human? Othello peered cautiously along the rows of benches. Thick dust danced in the moonlight before him. There was a framework behind the dust, and on it hung a human form, more dead than alive. Was that what had made the sound?

Othello shuddered: the helpless victim of a knife-throwing act! Yet it didn’t look like an accident; whoever had thrown the knives had known just what he was doing.

When Othello came even closer, he realized that the sound couldn’t have come from the human figure. Cloud was right—you couldn’t smell any blood—and Othello suddenly understood why: the figure was made of wood.

Oddly enough, this didn’t make him feel any better. He knew that humans could make things out of wood. But why they would
want
to make a thing like this was beyond sheepy understanding.

Somewhere in God’s house a door creaked. Footsteps.

God?

The long-nosed man had appeared through a side door on the other side of the room, carrying a small, dancing light.

Soundless as a shadow, Othello glided past the benches and crossed a strip of moonlight to the wall. There was a wooden shed against the wall, with a heavy velvet curtain in front of it. Behind the curtain was a musty smell and a trace of fear. Othello hesitated.

The dancing light came closer.

Othello mounted a wooden step and disappeared into the shed. The folds of the curtain swung. Back and forth.

But the man walked past.

So he doesn’t know everything, thought Othello triumphantly.

The four-horned ram didn’t move a muscle. When the curtain had stopped swinging he looked cautiously around the wooden shed. A bench. A barred opening in one side, perhaps to air the boxlike shed. A transport crate for humans? That would fit the smell. People had been frightened in here.

From outside came a metallic sound. Not too close.

Othello decided to venture a glance. If you peered past the folds of velvet there was a fine view of the space outside.

The long-nosed man was standing on the rostrum, doing something in a desultory way to the fence with the candles on it. Now and then he looked at his watch. He was waiting for something.

For a while nothing happened.

Then there was the sound of creaking outside, and something dragging its way over the gravel, coming closer and closer.

God turned expectantly.

The big door swung open, sweeping over stone, caught on an uneven place in the ground, quivered with the impact. Light fell through the tall opening, not cold moonlight but the yellow glow of the floodlights outside.

Othello waited in suspense. A figure appeared in the light, as short as a child, but so wide that it could hardly get through the doorway. It was wheeling along like a strange hybrid of man and machine. A thickset black outline with a wreath of tangled hair, golden in the floodlights. Wheeling along soundlessly now, over the smooth stone floor, motionless but moving. For a moment Othello felt it was about to take off. He caught a bewildering scent of metal and bitter medicine, of oil and wounds healing over, and under that a smell he recognized.

“Ham.” The long-nosed man smiled gently. “How good to see you recovering. How good to see you coming to me in your trouble.” His hands dug into warm, fragrant wax. But not even the fragrance could drown out the stink of bitter sweat that he was suddenly giving off.

Suddenly Othello realized that God hated the butcher more than anyone else, more than he must have hated George. The butcher seemed to know it too. Child-sized, he wheeled past the long-nosed man without so much as looking up, making straight for the wooden figure.

“I haven’t come to you,” he said. “I’ve come to him.”

The other man hunched his shoulders as if a sudden frost had fallen. He said nothing. So Othello discovered that God was afraid of the butcher too.

While Ham stared at the wooden figure in silence, the long-nosed man moved nervously around in a niche. He was waiting for the butcher to go. Othello peered cautiously out through the heavy curtains and waited too. Time went by, and Othello could smell the long-nosed man getting more and more nervous.

Finally the butcher’s moving chair turned. It wheeled soundlessly to the doorway, out of the door, creaked and dragged its way over the yard, and was gone. Relief hung in the air like quivering mist. God went cautiously up to the door and looked out. He braced his whole weight against the door to free it where it had caught on the stone. When it had closed and the golden light was banished outside, the long-nosed man felt noticeably better. He was even humming.

His peculiar dress moved like water in the moonlight as he passed the rows of seats, on his way toward Othello’s shed. Othello quickly withdrew his head, but God must have noticed something. He stopped right in front of the boxlike shed. The soft fabric rustled as his hand pushed the curtain back. Othello lowered his horns. The box shook, but no light fell in. God had gone into the other side of the shed, and Othello decided it was time to go. But as he turned, the boards creaked under his hooves.

“Ah,” said the long-nosed man, “so there you are. Sorry you had to wait. I only have to leave the church unlocked for an evening and in he comes.” He laughed.

Othello didn’t move a muscle.

“Do you want to make confession?” The voice sounded as glutinous and sticky as the resin oozing from pine trees.

Othello kept quiet.

“Only joking,” the voice whispered through the grating. “I’m really glad you came. I was beginning to be afraid you wouldn’t. But this is important, you see. I kept my mouth shut over George. I won’t do it again. I have my conscience too.”

Involuntarily, Othello snorted.

“Don’t laugh!” wailed the voice outside. “Just leave Ham alone. I don’t know if it was you lot up on the cliffs. If so it was an idiotic thing to do. But that must be the end of it, do you hear? If Ham dies it’ll all come out—you ought to know that yourself. Anyway, Ham’s no danger. Why would he suddenly do something now? He wasn’t all that fond of George. He has his cameras and his butcher’s shop and the TV; he’s happy with that. No, there’s no need for you to worry about Ham.”

It was easy to tell from God’s voice that he was very worried about Ham himself. That seemed strange to Othello, who had scented the depth of the long-nosed man’s hatred for the butcher. He began thoughtfully chewing a piece of leather hanging loose from the upholstery of the seat inside the shed. He wasn’t afraid of the man anymore. He was even looking forward to attracting his attention.

“With Kate around,” said God, “it’s safe enough. As long as Kate’s here, Ham won’t do anything to frighten the horses. Especially now she’s a free woman again. He may even be glad that George is dead. So leave Ham alone, do you hear?”

Othello made a rasping sound, and the long-nosed man took it as agreement.

“Good to know you see it the same way,” he said. Suddenly his face was very close to the wooden grating. “And as for that business with the grass…” he whispered.

Othello’s head moved close to the wooden grating too, until it was only a few inches from God’s nose. God’s nose was twitching restlessly. Othello was surprised to hear him suddenly broaching such a sensible subject as grass.

But now the long-nosed man had stopped talking, and was staring through the grating with glittering eyes.

“Is that you?” he asked.

Othello kept quiet. Suddenly God shot out of his side of the box and pulled back the curtain in front of Othello. Moonlight streamed in. For a moment neither of them moved. Then Othello bleated, a terrible, aggressive bleat that echoed right through the room.

The long-nosed man gave a high, shrill scream. He ran past the rows of benches, stumbled and fell, got to his feet again, leaped over the iron fence and the candles with a single great, clumsy movement, and disappeared through the small door through which he had come. Pleased, Othello watched him go.

When Othello left God’s house, two sheep shadows were trotting beside him again and one long, very pale shadow was trotting ahead of him. But the night birds in the trees saw something strange that disturbed the symmetry of the shadows in the light. For there was a fourth shadow, a shadow trotting along some way
behind
Othello. A very shaggy shadow with long, curved horns.

Like the clouds, calm and well fed as the clouds, smelling sweetly of their youthful multitude, they grazed the pasture in the first light of dawn. Guessing nothing of the night that had crept away over the grass. It still crouched under the dolmen, its stars like dead eyes among bones. No wonder they didn’t twinkle. He knew that the dolmen had been built as a caravan for Death, with no wheels, of course, because Death can wait. You didn’t need a spade to prove that Death was patient.

On the other side of the dolmen youth grazed, his own youth, with strong limbs and a sense of joy in its belly, but stupid, so stupid that you could almost feel sorry for it in its happiness. On the other side of the dolmen was the meadow that couldn’t exist: the Way Back. He had looked for it all over the world, under smooth stones, on the far side of the wind, in the eyes of night birds, in pools of quiet water. All he had seen there was himself, and that would soon have been too much company for him—if he hadn’t found the Way Back. It sat behind his ears laughing, so no wonder he hadn’t been able to find it anywhere in the world. He had been carrying the Way Back with him all the time, but only in the tips of his fleece where the rain cooled it, where it tickled him but he didn’t notice it. Too many parasites in his wool, and you couldn’t be sure that the Way Back wasn’t one of them.