Three Bags Full (2 page)

The butcher still held her chin in a firm grip. “Got along fine. So you did. That’ll be enough for them. And who else got along fine with George? Wait for his last will and testament, then we’ll see just how fine you two got along. I don’t suppose that cosmetics stuff earns you a fortune, and you won’t get rich sleeping around in this dump either. So you be nice to old Ham and you won’t need to worry about this mess anymore.”

Gabriel said something. Ham turned abruptly and marched back to the others, leaving Lilly where she was. She drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders, trembling. For a moment she looked as if she was going to burst into tears. Maple knew how she felt. Being touched by the butcher—it must be like having death grab you by the ear.

The four humans were exchanging words again, but the sheep were too far away to catch anything. There was a pointed, awkward silence. Gabriel turned and strolled back in the direction of the village, with the thin man close on his heels. Lilly seemed to think for a moment and then hurried off after the two men.

Ham took no notice of the others. He went right up to George. Slowly, he raised one of his great butcher’s paws until it was hovering directly above the body like a fat bluebottle. With his fingers he traced two lines above George in the air. A long one from George’s head to his stomach and a shorter one from shoulder to shoulder. When Gabriel called him again he went off in the direction of the village.

Later, three policemen came to take photos. They brought a highly perfumed woman journalist with them. She took photos too, far more photos than the policemen. She even went to the edge of the cliffs and photographed Zora on her rocky ledge, and later she took pictures of Ritchfield and Mopple grazing in front of the dolmen. The sheep were used to the occasional attention of tourists with backpacks, but all this press interest soon made them uncomfortable. Mopple was the first to lose his nerve; he ran uphill, bleating loudly. His panic infected the others, even Miss Maple and Othello. Within a few minutes they were all huddled together on the hill, feeling slightly ashamed of themselves.

The policemen took no notice of the sheep. They pulled the spade out of George, wrapped both him and it in large plastic bags, crawled about on the ground a little more, and then disappeared into a white car. Not long after that it began to rain, and soon the meadow looked as if nothing had happened.

The sheep decided to go into the hay barn. They all went together, because just now, so soon after George’s death, the barn seemed to them a bit gloomy and sinister. Only Miss Maple stayed outside in the rain a little longer, letting it wash the mud off her, and in the end it washed off the last small bloodstain too.

When she went into the barn, the sheep had gathered around Othello and were bombarding him with questions, but the ram was biding his time. Heather bleated in alarm, “How could you stand it, being so close to the butcher? I’d have died of fright. I almost did die of fright just watching him come down the path!”

Miss Maple rolled her eyes. But you had to give the black ram credit: he seemed unimpressed by the admiration of his flock. Sounding very matter-of-fact, he turned to Miss Maple.

“The butcher spoke first. ‘Swine,’ that’s what he said.”

The sheep looked at each other in amazement. No pig had ever set trotter on their pasture! The butcher’s remarks made no sense. But Othello was very sure of himself.

“He smelled very angry. And frightened. But mostly angry. The thin man was afraid of him. Gabriel wasn’t.” Othello seemed to be reflecting on Gabriel’s fearlessness for a moment. Then he continued.

“Lilly didn’t say anything sensible. Just ‘Oh, George.’ And ‘Why now?’ and ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ Perhaps she didn’t realize he was dead. Then the butcher pulled her away by her arm. ‘No one’s to touch him,’ he said. So then she said quite quietly, ‘Please, I only want a moment alone with him.’ None of the others said a word, only the butcher. ‘If anyone had that right it’d be Kate.’ He sounded nasty, and then he hauled her away.”

The sheep nodded. They themselves had had a good view of it all. Suspicion instantly turned against the butcher. But Miss Maple shook her head impatiently, and Othello went on.

“The moment the butcher was far enough off, the thin man began talking to Gabriel. He smelled funny, of whiskey and Guinness, but not as if he’d been drinking. More on his body and his clothes. Specially his hands.”

“He dunnit!” bleated Rameses, a very young ram with a lively imagination. “He poured whiskey over his hands because he couldn’t stand the smell of the blood anymore.”

“Maybe,” said Miss Maple hesitantly.

Maude, who had the best sense of smell in the whole flock, shook her head. “Human beings don’t scent blood the way we do. They can’t really scent anything at all.”

“We don’t know whether the murderer had bloodstained hands or not,” said Miss Maple. “We don’t know anything much.” She looked enquiringly at Othello.

“Then the thin man told Gabriel very quietly, ‘He still had so much he was going to do, his head was full of crazy plans. I don’t suppose anything will come of them now, do you?’ He spoke very fast, so fast that I couldn’t remember it all in one go. He kept on talking about George’s plans. I think he wanted to worm something out of Gabriel. But Gabriel didn’t reply.”

Othello put his head thoughtfully on one side. “I’d say the thin man annoyed him. That’s why Gabriel called the butcher back. When the butcher came closer, the thin man immediately stopped talking. Then they all started up again at the same time. Lilly said, ‘Someone ought to tell his wife.’ Gabriel said, ‘Someone ought to fetch the police.’ And the butcher said, ‘I’ll stay with him till they come.’ Then the thin man said quickly, ‘No one’s staying here alone.’ The other men stared at the butcher the way you stare another ram down before a duel. The butcher went very red in the face. But then he nodded.”

Miss Maple started to collect questions. She told all the sheep to say what they didn’t understand and what they’d like to know. She stood in the middle of the flock with Mopple the Whale beside her; when she thought a question was worth remembering, she looked at Mopple and nodded, and the stout ram memorized the question. Once Mopple had memorized something he never forgot it.

“Why did they take photographs of us?” asked Maude.

“Why did it rain?” asked Cloud.

“Why did George come to the meadow in the night?” asked Heather. Maple nodded at Mopple. Heather glanced proudly at Othello.

“Why did the butcher come here?” asked Maude.

“What does the butcher want from Lilly?” asked Othello. Miss Maple nodded.

“What’s a Last Will and Testament?” asked Lane, and Miss Maple nodded again.

“When will we be able to graze where George was lying again?” asked Cloud.

“Are they going to drive pigs into our pasture?” asked Maude.

“Why use a spade? The murderer could have pushed him off the cliffs,” said Zora. Miss Maple nodded.

“What about the wolf?” asked Sara. “Will he be a danger to the lambs—or us?” Miss Maple hesitated for a moment, but she gave Mopple no sign.

“Why doesn’t someone murder the butcher?” asked Cloud. Several sheep bleated approvingly, but Miss Maple didn’t nod.

“How long had he been lying in the meadow?” asked Mopple the Whale. Miss Maple nodded at him, and Mopple beamed.

A lamb trotted forward. He had no name yet: the sheep were given names only when they had lived through their first winter. “Will George’s ghost come back?” asked the lamb shyly. Cloud leaned soothingly down to him and let him snuggle up to her thick fleece. “No, little one, George’s ghost won’t come back. Human beings don’t have souls. No soul, no ghost. Simple.”

“How can you say that?” protested Mopple. “We don’t know whether humans have souls or not.”

“Every lamb knows that your soul is in your sense of smell. And human beings don’t have very good noses.” Maude herself had an excellent sense of smell, and often thought about the problem of souls and noses.

“So you’d only see a very small ghost. Nothing to be afraid of.” Othello leaned down to the lamb too, amused.

“But I’ve seen it already!” bleated the lamb. “It was very big, much bigger than me, and I have a very good sense of smell. It was shaggy and it danced. At first I thought it was a wolf’s ghost, but now George is dead I know it must have been his. I was so scared, I thought this morning I must have been dreaming.”

Miss Maple looked keenly at the lamb. “How do you know George was dead by then?”

“I saw him.”

“You saw George dead and didn’t tell us?”

“No, it wasn’t like that.” The lamb sniffed. “I saw the spade. But George must have been lying underneath it, mustn’t he?” The lamb looked thoughtful. “Or do you think he fell on top of the spade later?”

There was no more to be got out of the lamb, who had slipped out of the barn in the night and couldn’t say why. In the moonlight, he had seen the spade and the shaggy wolf’s ghost, but he couldn’t describe it in any more detail. He was so frightened that he fell asleep at once.

Now silence reigned. The sheep huddled closer together. The lamb buried his head deep in Cloud’s fleece, while the others stared at the ground. Miss Maple sighed.

“Two questions for Mopple. Who is the wolf’s ghost? And where’s Tess?”

The sheep looked at each other. Where indeed was Tessy, George’s old sheepdog, his most faithful companion, the one real love of his life, the gentlest sheepdog who had ever herded them?

When the others had gone to sleep Miss Maple quietly added another question to the list. She had told Rameses that she didn’t know whether the murderer had bloodstained hands. The fact was, she didn’t even know whether the murderer had hands at all. She thought George’s face had looked peaceful, smelling slightly of Guinness and tea; his clothes were smoky; he was holding a couple of flowers in his fingers. That had struck her as a little strange, because George wasn’t normally much interested in flowers. He had more time for vegetables.

But she had found something else, and it had made her push the bloodstained Norwegian sweater up a little way with her nose. There, on George’s pale stomach, slightly above the place where the spade had gone in, was the print of a sheep’s hoof—a single hoofprint, just the one.

2

Heather Suspects Something

Next day the sheep woke up to a new world, a world without any shepherd or any sheepdog. They hesitated for a long time before deciding to leave the barn. At last they ventured out into the open air, led by Mopple the Whale, who was hungry. It was a beautiful morning. Fairies had danced on the grass overnight and left thousands of dewdrops behind. The sea looked as if it had been licked clean, blue and clear and smooth, and there were a few woolly little clouds in the sky. Legend said that these clouds were sheep who had simply wandered over the cliff tops one day, special sheep who now went on grazing in the sky and were never shorn. In any case, they were a good sign.

A mood of tremendous high spirits came over the sheep. They had spent a long time standing around yesterday, their sinews aching with tension; today they gamboled over the meadow like March lambs, galloping toward the steep cliffs, stopping just before the land dropped away and then racing back to the hay barn. Soon they were all out of breath.

That was when Mopple the Whale had the idea of the vegetable garden. Behind the hay barn stood the shepherd’s caravan, a rickety vehicle in which George Glenn once used to go around the countryside with another flock of sheep. Recently he’d just kept a few odds and ends in it. Behind the caravan George had laid out a little vegetable garden, growing lettuces, peas, radishes, cress, tomatoes, endives, buttercups, and a few chives.

He had fenced it in. The vegetable garden was in the meadow, but the sheep weren’t allowed into it. This ban was hard on them, especially as the fence in itself presented no real problem. But George’s watchfulness had kept them from harvesting the produce of this vegetable paradise in their own sheepy way. Now George was gone. Lane pushed back the bolt with her muzzle, Maude started grazing the buttercups, Cloud set to work on the peas and Heather on the tomatoes. After a few minutes there was nothing left of the neatly planted beds.

Gradually all fell silent. The sheep looked at one another, feeling ashamed. One by one they trotted back to the meadow. Othello, the only one who hadn’t taken part in their raid, was standing by the gate. He signaled to Miss Maple, who followed him to the back of the caravan, where the spade that George used for working in the vegetable garden usually leaned. Today, however, there was nothing to be seen but the whitewashed side of the caravan and a few flies basking in the sun. Othello looked inquiringly at Miss Maple.

Miss Maple looked thoughtfully back.

The sheep spent the rest of the morning feeling remorseful. Mopple had eaten so many slugs along with the lettuce that he didn’t feel well. One of the lambs had a sharp piece of wood stuck in one hoof and was limping. They thought about George.

“He’d have been very cross,” said Ritchfield.

“He could have made that hoof better,” said Cloud.

“He used to read us stories,” said Cordelia.

That was true. George had spent a lot of time in the meadow. He would turn up early in the morning when they were still deep in their sheepy slumber, huddled close together. Tess, herself still drowsy at that hour, had to drive them apart. George would laugh. “You lazy creatures!” he would say. “Come on, get down to work!” They felt slightly injured every morning. They grazed while George worked in the vegetable garden or did a few repairs.

Their sense of injury would wear off by the afternoon. Then they gathered in front of the steps of the caravan, and George read to them. Sometimes from a fairy tale which told them how dew falls on the meadows; sometimes from a book about the diseases of sheep, which scared them; once from a detective story, which they didn’t understand. George probably didn’t understand it either, because he threw the book away when he was halfway through it, and they never did find out who the murderer was.

But mostly old George Glenn read love stories, slim volumes printed on grayish paper in which the heroines were all called Pamela and had red hair “like a sunset in the South Seas.” George didn’t read these stories because he was the romantic sort or because he had poor literary taste (which he certainly did; the book about the diseases of sheep had tried their patience sorely), he read to them to let off steam. He read how the redheaded Pamelas lured innocent pirates, doctors, or barons into their clutches, and he got very worked up, saying bad things about all the redheaded women in the world, particularly his own wife.

When George revealed details of his home life, the sheep listened in astonishment. She had been the most beautiful woman in the village, his own personal Pamela, and at first he could hardly believe his luck. But as soon as they were married Pamela (whose real name was Kate) started baking juicy apple pies and got fat. George stayed thin and his manner became increasingly dry. He had dreamed of traveling all over Europe with a flock of sheep, and apple pie was no substitute. At this point the sheep usually bowed their heads. They would have loved to travel to Europe, which they pictured as a huge meadow full of apple trees.

“Now we’ll never go to Europe,” said Zora.

“We’ll never even go to the other pasture again,” said Heather.

“Today would have been the day for our tablets.” Only Lane was sorry George wasn’t here to force their weekly calcium tablets into their mouths. She loved the taste. The other sheep shuddered.

Mopple felt emotional. “We shouldn’t forget him,” he said. “And we shouldn’t have eaten those vegetables.”

“Why not?” Zora said casually, staring in the direction of the sea. Mopple chewed his last lettuce leaf vigorously. When Zora said something that sounded casual, he was always struck as if by lightning.

“How are you going to put it right?” asked Cloud.

They decided to devote a small section of their meadow to George’s memory. Not in the vegetable garden, which was past praying for anyway. At the foot of the hill, however, they found a patch where many of their favorite herbs grew, and they decided that no sheep was to graze there anymore. They called it “George’s Place.” Suddenly they felt relieved.

Miss Maple watched from a distance as her flock founded George’s Place. She thought of George reading them stories; it also occurred to her that he had turned up less and less frequently over the last few weeks. Often he hadn’t come to the meadow to see them at all, but just drove quickly past in his stinking car. Tess would jump off the passenger seat and shoo them into action in the morning, and she and George came back in the evening to count them. But they were away all day long. At first George had tried to teach Tessy to herd them when he wasn’t there, but the sheepdog was convinced that her main job was to herd George. She herded the sheep only as a favor to him.

Miss Maple thought about Tess. Had she run away? If so, then it must have been something very terrible that had killed George. The dog was as faithful as a mother ewe. She would have done anything for George. But George was dead, and now Tess had disappeared.

Moving with unusual rapidity, Mopple broke away from the group admiring George’s Place and began to feel hungry for the very herbs that grew there. He trotted toward Miss Maple, but Sir Ritchfield suddenly barred his way. Miss Maple couldn’t tell where he had come from all of a sudden. Ritchfield looked menacingly at the younger ram, and Mopple trotted away again, not back to George’s Place but over to the cliffs, where he could gaze thoughtfully down at the beach.

“Sometimes you have to make the young ’uns respect you,” Ritchfield said, “or they’ll end up like Melmoth.”

Miss Maple did not reply to this. No sheep could have been less like Melmoth than Mopple.

Gradually the enthusiasm for George’s Place died down. The sheep set about their usual occupation of grazing, while Miss Maple looked on. It was a good thing they had calmed down. When they were full of grass and less excited, they’d regain their curiosity about the murderer. They would take comfort breaks for eating, but they wouldn’t let up on the job. Maple knew them all; she had seen the younger sheep grow up; she herself had grown up with the older sheep. When she was still a lamb the escapades of Ritchfield and his twin, Melmoth, had kept the flock all agog. It was so long since Ritchfield last mentioned him that Maple had thought he’d forgotten him. Now she felt uneasy. The air was perfect: a cool wind blew off the sea, the meadow was fragrant. All the same, the whole place suddenly smelled of death, new death and old, almost forgotten death. Maple began to graze.

The flock had human visitors again that afternoon. A plump woman and a black-clad man with a stiff collar round his neck and a strikingly long nose came up from the village. The woman wore black too, but with her fiery red hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks she looked colorful to the sheep. She smelled of apples, such a nice smell that this time there were five observers listening in on the two of them at the same time: Miss Maple, Othello, Heather, a young sheep called Maisie, and Mopple the Whale.

When the humans came to the dolmen they stopped.

“Was it here?” asked the woman. The man nodded. The brightly colored woman stared at the ground. The rain had washed away the mark where the spade went in, so she was staring at the wrong spot.

“It’s so terrible,” she said in a thread of a voice. “Who’d do a thing like that? I mean, who’d do it?” The sheep pricked up their ears. Perhaps the tall man in black was going to provide the answer. But he said nothing.

“I didn’t always have an easy time with him,” added the woman.

“No one had an easy time with George,” said the long-nosed man. “He was a lost soul, a lamb gone astray, but the Lord in his infinite mercy has taken him home again.”

The sheep looked at one another in surprise. Cloud bleated.

“I wish I’d known him better,” the woman went on. “He was so strange recently. I thought it was old age coming on. He went out in the car so much, he had letters that I wasn’t allowed to open, and,” she said, stretching up a little way to whisper in the tall man’s ear, but the sheep heard her all the same, “and I found out that he was reading novels in secret—love stories, they were.” She went red. It suited her. The man looked at her with interest.

“Really?” he asked.

They moved slowly toward the shepherd’s caravan. The sheep felt nervous. Any moment now the damage they’d done to George’s vegetable garden would be revealed.

The woman’s eyes wandered over the caravan, the vegetable beds stripped bare, the tomato plants pulled up.

“It’s so beautiful here,” she sighed.

The sheep couldn’t believe their ears.

“Perhaps I ought to have come up to see him here sometimes. But he didn’t want me to. He never let me. I could have brought him apple pie. Too late for that now.” She had tears in her eyes. “I never took any interest in the animals. George brought the wool home, and then I took over. Lovely, soft wool…” She sobbed.

“What will happen to the flock now, Kate?” asked the long-nosed man. “This is a fine piece of grazing land, so it is, and someone must care for the sheep.”

Kate glanced round. “They don’t seem to need anyone to care for them. They look perfectly happy to me.”

The man’s voice was tart. “A flock needs a shepherd. I daresay Ham would buy them if you don’t want to be troubled with them.”

The sheep froze with horror, but the woman shrugged her shoulders.

“Ham’s no shepherd,” she said. “He wouldn’t
care for them
.”

“There are different ways of caring for someone. With love and with rigor, with the word and with the sword. So the Lord has told us. Order, that’s what matters.” The black-clad man’s big nose was pointing at the woman’s face in a reproachful way. “If you feel awkward about approaching Ham yourself, I can do it for you,” he added.

The woman shook her head, and the sheep sighed with relief. “No, all that business with Ham was over and done with long ago. But I don’t even know if everything belongs to me anyway. There’s a will. George left it with a lawyer in town. It must be a very unusual will, because he looked around for ages before he found the right lawyer. The will is sure to say who gets everything. I don’t want it. I just hope he hasn’t left anything to
her
.” Suddenly she didn’t seem to think the meadow was so beautiful anymore. “Let’s go.”

The man nodded. “Be brave, my child. ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.’” And they marched off, right across George’s Place, crushing several fresh shoots underfoot.

Othello ground his teeth. “I wouldn’t want that lord of his to be
my
shepherd.” The others nodded.

“I shall run away before they sell us to the butcher,” bleated Mopple.

“I shall jump off the cliff,” said Zora. The others knew that secretly Zora hoped to end up as one of those very special cloud sheep.

“You’ll all stay here,” said Miss Maple gently. “At least we’ve found out what a Last Will and Testament is. It says who George’s things and his sheep belong to now.”

“Yes, and it’s been left in a laurel in town!” added Heather. “And it will tell that long-nosed man that George would never have sold us to the butcher!”

They were feeling very relieved.

“I hope they find it soon,” said Lane.

“George was not a lamb,” said Heather.

“That woman was too old to be his child,” said Mopple.

“The tall man was lying,” said Othello. “He didn’t like George, not one little bit. And I don’t like
him
. I don’t like the sound of that other man either, the lord he was talking about.”

“It was that lord who did it!” cried Heather suddenly. “He took George home with him. And then it happened. They quarreled, first with words and then with the sword. Only there wasn’t any sword handy so he used the spade.”

Mopple agreed with her. “They were probably quarreling about order. George never kept things in very good order. Except in his vegetable garden.” He looked in the direction of George’s Place, rather ashamed of himself. “The next thing we must do is find out who that lord is.”