Three Bags Full (5 page)

In the silence that followed, the butcher saw that Mopple was finished. One of his hands clenched into an enormous fist and slammed into the other, half-open hand. Then the outer hand closed around the inner hand. It was as if the butcher’s arms were growing together into a ball of raw meat. The knuckles turned white, and Mopple heard a faint, nasty noise, a distant cracking, as if a bone were being slowly broken. The ram stared helplessly at the butcher, automatically chewing the last tuft of grass that he had pulled up in distant, happier times. It tasted of nothing. Mopple couldn’t remember why he had been grazing, he no longer knew why any sheep in the world would want to graze as long as there were butchers around. The butcher took a small step backward. Then, all of a sudden, it was as if the ground had swallowed him up.

Mopple stood there chewing. He chewed until there wasn’t a single fiber of grass left in his mouth. As long as he chewed nothing would happen. He felt silly, chewing with his mouth empty, but he dared not pull up another tuft of grass.

A few wisps of mist drifted past, and then—suddenly—there was a patch of clear air. A window, and Mopple could look through it. But he saw nothing. Mopple was standing on the edge of the abyss. He didn’t wonder where the butcher had gone anymore. He took a careful step backward. Then another. Then Mopple the Whale turned and let the mist swallow him up again.

Up till now Mopple had always liked mist. When he was still a lamb the shepherd had stopped him suckling from his mother one day. He’s getting fat too quickly, said the shepherd. From then on the shepherd himself suckled from Mopple’s mother, using some kind of implement. The shepherd was fat too, but no sheep could stop him doing anything. Mopple was given mixed milk and water to drink. He enjoyed watching the milk and water mingle. The white milk spun threads in the water until a dense and delicate web had formed. That web was like the mist getting thicker and thicker, and it was a promise that Mopple would have a full stomach and everything was all right. But today Mopple had found out that mist wasn’t the fleece of a gigantic sheep after all, or if it was, then that sheep was infested by vermin, butchers with hands made of raw meat that turned everything they touched into raw meat too.

Slowly, he began to wonder about the dreadful yells rising from the depths. They were yells that Mopple could feel right to the tips of his spiral horns. They hurt him in his teeth and his hooves, but he didn’t try to run away from them. He knew now that you couldn’t simply run away like that, not even to the other sheep, who were only a kind of mist themselves and could just as quickly dissolve into nothing. He’d seen sheep disappear before, all his foster brothers, his suckling companions, his friends when they were milk-fed lambs, and only the shepherd had ever come back, fat and cold.

Mopple looked at the ground and saw the grass, which was still as green as before. Perhaps he should hang on to the grass. Without taking his eyes off the ground, Mopple began to move. Carefully he put one hoof in front of another, following the grass wherever it might take him.

Othello was annoyed with himself. The hole had not been a problem, easy once you entrusted yourself to it. That was just like him.
Your problems aren’t in your feet or your eyes or your mouth. Your problems are always in your head
, whispered the voice. Now Othello was sifting through his head as carefully as only a sheep chewing the cud can. He had already trotted some way along the beach without picking up any tracks at all. The sand moved beneath his feet, pleasantly soft, but sly and sluggish too. And now there was that yelling into the bargain.

It wasn’t close enough to threaten Othello, but it was loud and nerve-racking. Who or what in the world could be yelling like that? The question interested him. In any other circumstances he would probably have turned round to take a look at the source of the yells, but what might lie ahead of him interested him more. He must be quite close to the village now. Othello knew it was time to get off the beach.

The ram looked up at the cliffs. They were less steep here, and soft and sandy in many places. Coarse sea grass grew where the wind had heaped the sand up into small dunes. It wasn’t worth much as grazing, but it offered a good foothold. Othello climbed the slope. Once at the top, he saw more of the bristly sea grass and a narrow human footpath winding its pointless way through the dust. The sea grass stretched monotonously in all directions and told him nothing.
If you don’t know what to do, you must either give up or let it alone
, mocked the voice.
It comes to the same thing
. Othello stood where he was. There were a number of paths a sheep could have taken here, but there was only one path that you could be sure no sheep would ever have chosen. Well, almost no sheep. Othello went on along the human footpath toward the village.

The path wound undecidedly this way and that a few times, and then he found a drystone wall and walked straight as a sheep’s leg along beside it. The wall was so high that even if Othello got up on his hind legs he couldn’t see over it.

That was a pity, because peculiar things were happening on the other side of the wall. Many voices were murmuring in a low, quiet tone, and it wasn’t just the mist muting them. Othello felt that they were excited but had been made to hush. It was seldom that humans took the trouble to be quiet. It always meant something. Othello came to a small, wrought-iron gate; he pushed the latch down with one of his front hooves and the gate gave way with a squeal. The black ram slipped through it as silently as his own shadow and pushed the gate shut again with his head. Not for the first time, he was glad of those terrible times with the circus.

Othello thought he had arrived in a huge vegetable garden. It was so tidy that it looked like a garden: straight paths and square beds, and the smell of freshly turned earth and unnatural vegetation. Something must have been planted here, only it didn’t really smell appetizing. Human forms were moving along the paths, taking small steps. They seemed to be coming from all over the place, but they were magically attracted to one point. Othello hid behind a stone that was standing on end. He felt uneasy, and not just because of the human beings: it was the smell. Othello now knew for certain that he wasn’t in a vegetable garden. It might even be the opposite of a vegetable garden. A very old smell drifted with the mist along the gravel paths. Othello thought of Sam. Sam was a man who had worked at the zoo, and he was so stupid that even the goats made fun of him. But the zoo management had put Sam in charge of the pit which lay in the no-man’s-land behind the elephant house. Even as a lamb Othello could understand why the elephants’ eyelids always drooped and looked so red and heavy. Every animal in the zoo knew about the pit. When Sam came back from it the goats left him alone, and the eyes of the carrion eaters narrowed. When Sam came back from the pit, he smelled of ancient death.

It was the first time Othello had been to a funeral, but the ram behaved beautifully. Black and serious, he stood among the gravestones, munching a pansy now and then and listening attentively to the music. He saw the brown box roll up, and immediately knew by the scent who was inside.

Even before he emerged from the mist, he scented God swaying solemnly. God talked about himself, and fat Kate cried. Nobody seemed to be thinking of George inside the box. Except Othello.

Othello remembered when he had first seen George, through a great deal of cigarette smoke. Blood was trickling into his eyes. He was so exhausted that his legs were trembling. The dog beside him was dead, but that didn’t mean much. There would always be another dog. Othello concentrated on staying on his feet and keeping his eyes open. It was difficult—too difficult. He just wanted to blink the blood out of his eyes, but once he had closed them they stayed closed. A few moments of heavenly blackness, and then the voice spoke up, rather late in the day.
Closed eyes mean death
, it said. Othello had no objection to being dead; all the same, he obediently forced his eyelids open and looked straight into George’s green eyes. George stared at him with so much interest that Othello managed to hold on to his gaze until his legs weren’t trembling so much. Then he turned to the door that the dogs came through and lowered his horns.

A little later he was lying in George’s old car, bleeding all over the backseat. George was sitting in the driver’s seat, but the car was stationary, and night pressed against the windows. The old shepherd had turned to him with triumph in his eyes. “We’re going to Europe,” he announced.

George had been wrong, though. They never had gone to Europe. Justice, thought Othello. Justice.

5

Cloud Kicks Out

The sheep had spent a horrible day. Never in their lives before had they felt so unloved. First the mist, then the feeling that something strange was moving through that mist, and in addition squelching sounds and a suspicion of hostile scents.

The winter lamb had enticed the two other lambs into a dark corner of the hay barn on some pretext or other, and then terrified them so much that they ran into the wall in their fright and hurt themselves, one on the head and the other on a front leg. Ritchfield saw nothing, heard nothing, and just stayed put. Then the yelling began, and finally even the old lead ram had to admit that there was something wrong. He looked relieved, because at last he had picked up some of what was going on.

The yelling was too much for the sheep. They raced out into the meadow and trotted through the mist, twitching their ears, too nervous to graze. They crowded together on the hill. Maude kicked out nervously and hit Rameses on the nose. In a sullen mood, they waited for the wind to drive away the mist and with it the silence. They even missed the crying of the gulls.

The wind rose around midday, the gulls began screaming again, and Zora trotted over to the cliffs. She bleated, and soon all the sheep were standing as close to the abyss as they dared and gazing in amazement at the depths below. The butcher was lying there on a small patch of sand in the middle of a great many rocks. He was on his back, and he looked surprisingly flat and broad. Ritchfield claimed to see a red trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, but they weren’t feeling kindly disposed to Ritchfield today and didn’t believe a word he said. The butcher had his eyes closed and wasn’t moving. The sheep relished the sight. Then the butcher’s left eye opened, and their good mood instantly vanished. It looked at every single sheep, and even high up there on the cliffs they felt weak at the knees. The eye was searching for something, didn’t find it, and closed again. Cautiously, the sheep retreated from the cliff tops.

“He’ll be washed away,” said Maude optimistically.

The others weren’t so sure.

“A young man always comes along the beach with his dog,” sighed Cordelia. Several sheep nodded. They knew that from the Pamela novels. “The dog finds the person. The young man is enchanted and takes the person away,” Cloud went on. She had always listened attentively. “At least he’ll be gone then,” she added. George had always told them, “The sea gives nothing back,” as he threw boxes from the caravan over the cliffs at high tide. The young men, on the other hand, soon grew tired of the people they had found, even the fragrant Pamelas, so you could easily work out how soon they’d lose interest in the butcher with his sausage fingers.

“Let’s get Mopple the Whale to tell the story of Pamela and the fisherman,” said Lane. The others bleated in agreement: they loved the story about the fisherman because a gigantic haystack played the main part in it. Mopple told that story well, and when he’d finished they would stand in awed silence, imagining what
they
would do in the haystack.

But Mopple wasn’t with them. They looked in the vegetable garden and in George’s Place. George’s Place was intact, and they felt ashamed of thinking Mopple capable of such a thing. The sheep fell silent, at a loss. Then Zora trotted back to the cliffs, tail wagging restlessly, to see if there wasn’t a round blob of white wool on the beach as well. Luckily Mopple wasn’t there, but the sheep’s assumptions had been correct. No less than three young men were putting the motionless butcher on a stretcher. Zora shook her head at such foolishness. She bleated at the others, but no one dared watch the young men taking their heavy burden away. They remembered the butcher’s eye.

Gradually it became clear that Mopple wasn’t in the meadow at all.

“Perhaps Mopple’s dead,” said Lane quietly.

Zora shook her head energetically. “You don’t disappear immediately just because you’re dead. George was dead, but he was still there.”

“He’s turned into a cloud sheep,” bleated Rameses excitedly. The sheep swiveled their heads to look up, but the sky was a uniform gray like a dirty puddle.

“He can’t have disappeared,” said Cordelia. “It’s as if the world had a hole in it. It’s like magic.”

Heather scratched her ear with one hind leg.

“Perhaps he’s simply gone away,” said Maude.

“You can’t go away just like that,” objected Rameses. “No sheep can.”

They said nothing for a long time. They were all thinking the same thing.

“Melmoth went away,” said Cloud at last. Heather lost her balance and fell over sideways. The other sheep looked away.

They all knew the story of Melmoth, although no sheep liked to tell it and no sheep liked to hear it. It was a story that mother ewes whispered into their lambs’ ears as a warning. It was a story without any kind of haystack in it, an impossible story, and it scared them all.

“Melmoth is dead!” snorted Sir Ritchfield. The sheep jumped. They had been speaking very quietly, and no one had expected Ritchfield of all sheep to catch what they were saying.

“Melmoth is dead,” he repeated. “George went looking for him, with the butcher’s dogs. George came back smelling of death. I was the only one waiting by the shepherd’s caravan when the fifth night came. I waited for him and I smelled death. No sheep may leave the flock.”

No one dared say anything in reply. Their heads sank one by one, and they automatically began grazing.

They would have liked to ask Miss Maple about Mopple, but Miss Maple wasn’t there. They would have liked to ask Othello if there was anywhere to go beyond the meadow, because Othello knew the world and the zoo. But Othello wasn’t there. Now they were confused. They wondered whether a robber was prowling around the flock and stealing the fattest, the strongest, and the cleverest of them. A robber without any scent. The wolf’s ghost, for instance, or the Goblin King, or the lord, whoever he might be.

Sir Ritchfield decided to count the sheep. It was a tedious process. Sir Ritchfield could count only up to ten, and not always that, so the sheep had to stand in small groups. There were arguments, because some sheep would claim they hadn’t been counted yet, while Ritchfield said yes, he had counted them already. All the sheep were afraid of being missed out of the count, because then they might disappear. Some of them tried to steal into other groups on the sly so as to be counted twice. Ritchfield bleated and snorted and finally came to the conclusion that there were thirty-four sheep in the meadow in all.

They looked at one another, at a loss. Only now did they realize that they had no idea how many sheep there really ought to be in the meadow. The figure so laboriously worked out was completely useless to them.

It was a great disappointment. They’d hoped they would feel safer after the count. George had always been so pleased when he had finished counting them. “Excellent,” he used to say, although sometimes he just said, “Aha.” In that case he would march off, either to the cliff tops to throw dried droppings at Zora, or to the vegetable garden to find a bold lamb pushing its neck through the coarse-meshed wire netting and putting its tongue out.

After he had counted the sheep George always knew what to do. The sheep did not.

Feeling frustrated now, Rameses head-butted Maude, who bleated indignantly. So did Heather. Zora nipped her hindquarters. Strangely enough, Heather didn’t react, but instead Lane, Cordelia, and the two young mother ewes all began bleating at once. Ritchfield’s hooves were scraping up grass and earth. Lane nudged Maisie, the most naïve sheep in the flock. Maisie almost fell over with surprise, and then nipped Cloud lightly in the ear. Cloud kicked out and hit Maude’s foreleg. All the sheep were offended, and all were bleating. Then they fell silent as if at a secret signal, all except for Sir Ritchfield, who was butting everyone and calling for order.

At that moment Othello came along the footpath. He looked at them with mild surprise, and trotted past them to the cliffs. The sheep exchanged glances. Cloud licked Maude’s ears apologetically. Rameses nibbled Cordelia’s rump. The black ram looked down at the beach and the butcher-shaped imprint on the sand that the sea hadn’t yet washed away. He tilted his head to one side. A moment ago the sheep had been full of questions, but suddenly none of them wanted to trouble Othello. It was enough to know that sheep who have disappeared can come back. They began grazing again with some enjoyment, for the first time that day.

Three men met under the lime tree. One was sweating, the second smelled of soap, the third was breathing stertorously. Their fear prowled around them with gleaming eyes.

“If Ham really snuffs it,” said the sweating man, “we’re done for and no mistake.”

“Effin’ madness!” gasped the one with the noisy breath. “What a crazy risk! George—well, who knows? But Ham lodged it all with the lawyer. It’s all in his will. He’s not making empty threats.”

Their fear nodded agreement.

“What stupid fool went and did a thing like that?” groaned the sweating man.

“To Ham?” A waft of soapy air showed that the second man had made a sudden violent movement. “You think it wasn’t no accident?”

“Sure and that’s what I think,” whispered the sweating man, perspiring harder than ever.

“Accident?” The rasping voice laughed. “Why would Ham fall off the cliffs? Sure-footed like he was! Why would he be up there anyway? I’ll tell you what, someone lured him there, a whiff of violet perfume on a note and that stupid bastard Ham comes running.”

“But he won’t be snuffing it,” said the sweating man. “Tough as old boots is Ham, always was, thanks be to God. His chances aren’t so bad, the doctors say. They reckon he won’t be walking no more, but what matters is he’s alive.”

“Maybe he’ll have forgot it all. After an accident like that…” The soapy man’s voice sounded optimistic.

“Ham’ll remember,” said the man with the rasping voice. “There mayn’t be much gets into his head, but once it’s in it don’t come out so quickly. When Josh got him all boozed up the evening of George’s wedding…remember?” Perhaps the men were nodding. Perhaps they were trying to grin. Of course they remembered. Josh had put glass after glass in front of Ham, and Ham, who usually hardly touched a drop, tipped ’em down his throat one by one. How they’d laughed! “Couldn’t remember his own name. Didn’t even blink when a fly settled on his eye.”

“And Josh got his money for every single glass, and then more’n he’d bargained for…I wouldn’t care for a walloping like that meself.” The sweating man chuckled. He was getting on his companions’ nerves.

“When Ham wakes up, sure and he’ll remember,” said the man with the rasping breath. “And so it all goes on again.”

They said no more. Perhaps they nodded. Then they went away in different directions. Their fear smiled, it turned with an elegant movement, its mane billowed around the trunk of the old lime tree, and it followed all three of them home.

The lime tree was very old. It had once been in the middle of the village, and the villagers had danced round it. They had made blood sacrifices to it, and the tree had thrived and grown. Perhaps it had seen wolves; it had certainly seen the wolfhounds used by the new masters to hunt down game and cattle and human beings. Today it stood alone, still thriving. Its trunk was taller than two sheep’s lengths.

Mopple the Whale was standing behind that trunk. He had come there because he felt safe under the tree, it was like being in a barn. He hadn’t run away when the men came. Mopple knew now that running away didn’t work. He simply went on chewing, and memorized every word.

Mopple wasn’t thinking of the three men or the butcher—certainly not the butcher! Mopple was thinking of their fear. The men hadn’t noticed it, but he had seen every one of its few movements, as clearly as if the trunk of the old tree were transparent like water. It was bigger than a sheep and it ran on four legs. A huge, strong beast of prey with a silky coat and clever eyes. Mopple hadn’t been afraid of that fear. It wasn’t his own fear, after all.

A night bird sang. Evening was falling. Mopple thought of the other sheep and stopped chewing. Suddenly he wanted to be back with his flock so badly that the thick wool behind his ears began to itch. It was high time for another sheep to nibble the back of his neck—that was more important than strange beasts of prey and yelling butchers. Of course Mopple remembered the way he had come through the mist that morning, and his ears wagged happily up and down as he trotted home.

Mopple didn’t arrive until dusk. He seemed more thoughtful than usual, and he seemed thinner. It was the different way he moved. Some of the sheep ran to meet him with welcoming bleats: his absence had made them realize how fond they really were of Mopple the Whale. He smelled particularly nice, the way only a totally healthy sheep with an excellent digestion can smell, and he knew the best stories. They bombarded him with questions, but Mopple was more silent than they had ever known him. A terrible suspicion hovered in the air that Mopple couldn’t remember properly anymore. But no one dared to voice it. Mopple went to stand beside Zora, who nibbled the back of his neck in an absentminded way.

Darkness fell now, but the sheep stayed out in the open. They were waiting for Miss Maple. However, Miss Maple didn’t turn up. Only when the round moon was high in the sky did the figure of a small sheep approach from the moors. A long, thin moonlight shadow trotted ahead of it. It was Maple, looking exhausted. Cloud gave her face a lick.

“Into the hay barn, all of you,” said Maple.

The sheep crowded around her as they made their way into the barn. Moonlight fell through the narrow ventilation skylight on their expectant faces. Miss Maple leaned against Cloud and made herself comfortable.

“Where’ve you been?” asked Heather impatiently.

“Investigating,” said Miss Maple. The sheep knew what investigating meant; they had heard the word in the detective story. During investigations the detective delves into other people’s business and gets into difficulties.