Three Bags Full (6 page)

Miss Maple told them how she had trotted along the road to George’s house all by herself. Right through the village, where a car almost ran over her and a big red dog chased her. Then she had hidden herself under the gorse bush outside George’s house and eavesdropped on a conversation through the open window. Maple’s courage was quite astonishing.

“Weren’t you at all frightened?” asked Heather.

“Yes,” Miss Maple admitted. “It took me so long because I didn’t dare come out of the gorse bush. But I heard a lot.”

“I wouldn’t have been frightened!” announced Heather, with a sideways glance at Othello.

Miss Maple told them how a great many people had come to see Kate from midday onward—not all at once but in small groups. They all said the same thing. How terrible it was. What a dreadful thing to happen. Now Kate must be strong. Kate hardly said anything, just “Yes” and “No” as she cried into a large piece of cloth. But then—very late in the evening—there was another knock, and it was Lilly outside the door. Kate stopped crying. “How dare you!” she said to Lilly. “I only wanted to say I’m sorry,” Lilly whispered. “Well, at least
you
didn’t have him,” hissed Kate, and she slammed the door in Lilly’s face. “Like an angry cat,” said Miss Maple. “Just like an angry cat.”

It didn’t surprise the sheep. The Pamelas in those novels had often behaved in a bewildering and bad-tempered way too. They quickly lost interest in the story that seemed to have fascinated Miss Maple so much. After all, they had other worries.

“Did you have a nice day?” asked Maple, sighing, when she realized that no one was interested in her adventure anymore. The sheep looked embarrassed and told her what had happened during the day.

“He had one eye open,” said Lane.

“The butcher was lying on the beach,” added Maude.

“Mopple didn’t tell us a story,” said Heather, looking crossly at Mopple.

“He looked all flat,” said Sara.

“We argued,” said Cordelia.

“Sir Ritchfield counted us,” said Rameses.

“Then the young men took him away with them,” said Zora.

Miss Maple sighed. “Let Mopple tell me about it,” she said.

“Mopple wasn’t here,” said Cordelia. Maple looked surprised.

“And Othello wasn’t here!” sighed Heather. Miss Maple looked inquiringly at Othello.

Othello told them about the strange garden and how George had been buried in a box. A murmur ran through the flock.

“They don’t have a pit there, but the dead don’t just decay either. It looks more like a garden, not a vegetable garden, but a garden anyway, and all very tidy. And do you know what they said about that garden?” Othello looked round at them, his eyes sparkling. “They said it belonged to God.”

The sheep stared at one another in horror. Fancy planting dead people in your garden! They liked God less and less.

“It was him,” murmured Ritchfield. Maple glanced at the ram. He looked old, much older than usual, and the great curves of his horns seemed too heavy for him.

“They weren’t sad, those people,” Othello went on. “Excited, yes, very excited, but not sad. Nervous. Black and talkative as ravens, and we all know what ravens eat.” The sheep nodded, grave-faced. “The butcher wasn’t there, and they were wondering about that. They won’t be wondering about it anymore now.” Othello thought some more. “Otherwise they were all there, Kate and Lilly and Gabriel, Tom, Beth, and God and lots of people we don’t know. The thin man who came and found George, with the other three, is called Josh Baxter. He’s the pub landlord.”

They all looked at Miss Maple, but the clever ewe just rubbed her nose thoughtfully with one front leg. The sheep were disappointed. They had expected the hunt for the murderer to be more exciting, easier, and above all quicker. Like in the Pamela novels, where soon after every mysterious death an equally mysterious stranger would turn up, a man with a thin, scarred face or cold and restless eyes. Generally he wanted Pamela for himself, but with a little practice it was easy to tell that he was the murderer, and two or three pages further on at the latest a handsome young man would kill him in a duel. But today’s events seemed more like a real detective story, and George had thrown that book away without finishing it. They had been disappointed at the time, but now they wondered whether that hadn’t been a better idea than racking your brains over it every day in vain.

“We must find out what sort of story this is,” said Cordelia.

The others looked at her curiously.

“I mean, every story is about different things,” Cordelia explained patiently. “The Pamela novels are about passion and Pamelas. The fairy tale is about magic. The book about the diseases of sheep is about the diseases of sheep. The detective story was about clues. Once we know what sort of a story this is we’ll know what to look out for.”

They looked at one another, embarrassed.

“Let’s hope it’s not a story about the diseases of sheep,” bleated Maude.

“It’s a detective story,” said Miss Maple with conviction.

“It’s a love story,” Heather bleated suddenly. “Don’t you all see? Lilly and Kate and George. It’s
just
like with Pamela. George doesn’t like Kate, he likes Lilly. But Kate likes George. And there’s jealousy and death. It’s perfectly simple!” In her enthusiasm Heather allowed herself to frolic like a lamb.

“Well, yes,” said Miss Maple cautiously. “Only then Lilly ought to be dead. Not George. There’d have been a duel, and the rivals would have tried to kill each other. You don’t fight the person you love—you fight whoever wants to take that person away from you. But,” she added, seeing Heather’s disappointed face, “I did think of that too. The story smells like it, in a way. Only of course that doesn’t make sense.”

“It
is
a love story,” Heather repeated obstinately.

“Suppose George was one of the rivals?” asked Othello. “Fighting for Lilly? Or perhaps he was defending Kate.”

Miss Maple put her head thoughtfully on one side, but she didn’t seem to want to say any more about it.

Much later, when most of the sheep were asleep, Mopple, who for the first time in his life couldn’t drop off easily, looked through the open door of the hay barn and saw the shape of a sheep standing motionless on the cliffs and looking out to sea: Maple. Mopple went to join her. They stood side by side in friendly silence for a while. Then Mopple told her about the horrors of the day, and Maple said nothing.

“It stretches on and on for a very long way,” she said at last.

Mopple sighed. “Sometimes it scares me a bit. Looking out to sea for a long time—as long as Zora, I mean—I couldn’t do that.”

“I didn’t mean the sea, Mopple,” said Maple gently, “I mean all this. So many things happening. Hardly any humans ever used to come up here. Except for George, of course, but he wasn’t really a human, he was our shepherd.”

Miss Maple thought for a while.

“And suddenly there are whole flocks of them coming. Even slinking around in the morning mist. The butcher and someone else. Of course it all links up. Did they really lure the butcher here? If so, who lured him? And why? Why were the men under the lime tree afraid he’d die although they don’t like him? We must keep our eyes open for everything, Mopple. You must remember everything.”

Mopple raised his head. He was proud of being the flock’s memory sheep. Then he remembered just why he had squeezed secretly out of the gap in the hay barn that morning.

“I’ve remembered something already,” said Mopple. And he told her how he had been standing on the hill with Ritchfield, memorizing everything that Ritchfield saw. Almost everything. Ritchfield had seen the four of them going away again—Gabriel, Josh, Lilly, and the butcher. And he saw one of them lag a little way behind the others and bend over. Picking something up? Putting something down? Tearing up a tuft of grass? Then Ritchfield had to sneeze. Five times running. And when he’d finished sneezing he’d forgotten which of them had bent over and what that person was holding.

“He just forgot!” snorted Mopple pityingly. “After three breaths! Incredible! But he still knows he
did
forget something, and he’s trying to intimidate me so I won’t give it away.” He put his head on one side. “I wouldn’t have given it away either. I like Ritchfield. He’s the lead ram. But I think it’s a clue.” He looked inquiringly at Maple. She was still looking out at the dark sea.

“A clue,” she said thoughtfully. “But a clue to what? It’s not like Ritchfield to go intimidating other sheep when they’re telling the truth…Strange,” she added after a while.

Then she seemed to come to a decision.

“Can you keep your mouth shut, Mopple?” she asked.

Mopple shut his mouth.

Maple told him about the hoofprint on George’s stomach. “A sheep stood on George very hard,” she said. “Or kicked him. Difficult to say which. The question is, when? Before his death? Perhaps. But not long before—the print was too clear for that. Which means…”

Mopple looked at her expectantly.

“Which means there was a sheep with George just before or after he died. Or
while
he died. A strong sheep, or a heavy one.” She looked briefly at Mopple. “But why would a sheep kick George? Was there a struggle with him, like with the calcium tablets?”

Mopple thought of the calcium tablets and shook his ears.

“But the strangest thing,” said Maple, “the strangest thing of all is that this sheep hasn’t told us about it. Either the sheep has forgotten—”

“Ritchfield!” bleated Mopple. Then he looked embarrassed. After all, he had promised to keep his mouth shut. But Miss Maple was concentrating much too hard to notice.

“—or he doesn’t want to tell us.

“Mopple,” said Maple. She looked gravely at Mopple. “We have to think whether a sheep could have something to do with George’s death. It’s not only human beings who are behaving strangely, some of us sheep are too. Sir Ritchfield. Othello. He told us about the garden with dead people in it, yes, but we don’t know what he was doing there. We know so little about Othello. We don’t know what George used to do with him in the evenings behind the shepherd’s caravan. We have to think hard about it all, Mopple.”

Mopple swallowed. He kept his mouth shut.

When the two of them went back to the hay barn a little later, all the sheep were wide awake. There was excitement in the air.

“What is it?” asked Miss Maple.

The sheep said nothing for a long time. Then Maude stepped forward. The moonlight made her sheep’s nose look alarmingly long.

“Heather has found a Thing!” she said.

6

Maude Scents Danger

And so began the eventful night that would have the sheep still bleating over it months later. It began with Heather standing in a corner, mute with shame, as the eyes of the whole flock were turned incredulously on her.

“A Thing?” exclaimed Mopple.

“A Thing?” breathed Cordelia.

“What’s a Thing?” asked a lamb. “Can I have a Thing to eat too? Does it hurt?” The mother ewe looked embarrassed. How could you explain what a Thing is to such a young lamb?

“It…it’s not really a Thing,” murmured Heather. She had bent her head and was looking a little mulish. “It’s beautiful.”

“
Can
you eat it?” asked Mopple. When it came to Things, Mopple the Whale could be as stern as any other sheep.

“I don’t think so.” Heather’s ears drooped.

“Is it alive?” asked Zora.

“I don’t…Perhaps!” You could tell from looking at Heather that this possibility had only just occurred to her. “I was going to find out if it’s alive. When the light falls on it something moves. It’s as beautiful as water. I just wanted to have it so I could always look at it…”

“Heather!” Sir Ritchfield stepped forward. He held his head very high, and his horns, which had begun to grow their third curve, cast a reproachful shadow at Heather’s feet in the moonlight. Othello gave him a strange look. Suddenly you could understand why Ritchfield was still the lead ram. “You can always look at everything really beautiful. The sky. The grass. The cloud sheep. You can catch the scent of lambs. See sunlight falling on fleece. Those are the important things. You can’t
have
them.” Ritchfield was speaking as he would have spoken to a very small lamb. He said what they all knew anyway, but the sheep were impressed.

“You can only have what’s alive. A lamb, a flock. If you have something, it has you. If it’s alive and it’s a sheep, that’s good. Sheep are meant to have each other. The flock is meant to keep together, ewes and lambs and rams. No sheep may leave the herd…so stupid, oh, such a stupid thing…I ought to have kept my mouth shut, oh, if only I’d kept my mouth shut…” Now Ritchfield was rambling. He looked right through Heather, muttering to himself. Heather made a defiant face again and was about to slip quietly away among the other sheep when a rusty voice spoke up from the darkest corner of the hay barn. A voice as brittle as a branch washed ashore.

“Having is bad,” said the voice. “Having Things is bad.” They all turned their noses to Willow, who was standing in the shadows behind the empty hayrack. Her old eyes glittered like two dewdrops. Heather’s head sank to phenomenal depths.

“Mummy!” she murmured.

Normally mother ewes and their lambs stick together like sandy ground and sea grass. A mother ewe scolding her own offspring in public is unheard-of. But the only reason Willow had said nothing against Heather so far was that she didn’t talk anyway—or so the smarter sheep said. Willow was the second most silent sheep in the flock. The last time she had said anything was just after Heather’s birth, when she made a casual and disproportionately pessimistic remark about the weather. None of the other sheep was sorry that Willow wasn’t the talkative sort. She was said to have grazed a whole bed of bitter-tasting sorrel in her youth: there was no other way to explain her notoriously bad temper. But this time she hadn’t been exaggerating.

“It’s shameful,” said Cloud.

“It’s scandalous,” said Zora, calmly pulling a single blade of hay out of the empty rack.

“It’s undignified,” said Lane.

“It’s stupid,” said Maude.

“It’s human,” said Ritchfield, who was wearing his stern lead-ram expression again. That said it all. Heather looked as if she might turn into some small scentless animal at any moment now.

Miss Maple pricked up her ears.

“What kind of a Thing is it, actually?” she asked.

“It’s—” Heather stopped. She had been going to say “beautiful,” but it was beginning to dawn on her that talking about Things in such terms wasn’t right. She thought what else there was to say about the Thing that was good. “It has no end.”

“Everything has an end!” sighed Sara.

“If something didn’t have an end there’d be nothing else, not a sheep in the whole world,” said Zora, who often occupied herself thinking over such problems on her rock.

The sheep exchanged melancholy glances.

But Heather was still defiant. “There are two signs on it, signs like in the books. Perhaps it isn’t a Thing, perhaps it’s a story. And it’s a bit like a chain, like Tessy’s chain, only shorter and it doesn’t have an end; you can look at it for hours and never see any end.”

“And you
have
been looking at it for hours,” bleated Maude. “Your nose smells of that human Thing. I picked the scent up at once.”

Heather confessed everything. She had found the Thing in the meadow soon after George’s death and let it enchant her. She had rolled a stone over it to keep it safe. Only today had she picked it up in her mouth and hidden it under the dolmen while Ritchfield was counting the sheep. She was sorry. She never wanted to see the Thing again.

The sheep decided to send an expedition to the dolmen immediately, to dispose of the Thing once and for all. They’d teach it where it belonged: in the world of Things, on the ground, far away from sheep. The expedition was an honorable affair, and they wondered who should be chosen to go. Cloud suddenly had her old trouble in her joints, Sara had to suckle her lamb, Lane had a sneezing fit. Surprisingly, Mopple turned out to be night-blind.

All the sheep were afraid of going to the dolmen by night, so soon after the dancing wolf’s ghost had been spotted there. The expedition ultimately consisted of Sir Ritchfield; Othello; Miss Maple (who was very obviously curious about the Thing); Maude, who could never think up any excuses in time; and Zora, who was too proud to think up excuses. And Mopple had to go too. Colliding with a post inside the barn to convince the others of his night-blindness did him no good: Mopple was the memory sheep, Mopple had to be one of the party.

A mild, warm, moonlit night awaited them outside. You could see all the way to the cliffs from the shepherd’s caravan, but the tangy nocturnal aromas dulled the sheep’s powers of smell. Led by Ritchfield, they trotted to the dolmen. Maude stayed out in the open, so that her keen nose could instantly scent any wolf ghosts that might turn up. The rest of the sheep put their heads in to look under the capstone of the dolmen, Mopple and Zora from one side, the others from the opposite. Othello scraped up the earth with his hooves and uncovered the Thing. They couldn’t see it at first because of the shadows they cast on the prehistoric tomb. A human smell rose to them, almost disguised by the scents of the night. The smell of a sweaty hand; metal; and an unidentifiable sharp, nostril-tickling scent. Maple persuaded Mopple to step back a little way, and as the fat ram retreated, offended, a broad shaft of moonlight fell brightly on the Thing.

Secretly, they had all been expecting something rather beautiful (or as beautiful as a Thing can be), but what they saw lying in the dust in front of them was just a kind of thin chain with a piece of metal on it. Sure enough, it didn’t come to an end, because it formed a circle. But that was all there was to its endlessness. They stared scornfully at the human Thing.

“There really are signs on it,” said Sir Ritchfield, who was embarrassed by the way he had lost his train of thought a little while ago. Now his good eyesight could regain him respect. “The first sign is sharp like a bird’s beak pointing upwards,” he added, “with a line through the middle of it. And the other one is like a stomach on two legs. That means it stands for one of the Two Legs. I think it’s a bad sign!” Ritchfield looked resolutely at the rest of them.

Mopple wanted to throw the Thing off the cliffs.

Zora wouldn’t hear of throwing it off the cliffs. She thought the cliffs were too good for a Thing like that.

Maude bleated in surprise, but no one took any notice of her.

Sir Ritchfield thought they should bury the Thing, although he didn’t want to touch it personally.

Maude bleated again.

Mopple wouldn’t have minded touching the Thing, but he didn’t want to bury it and then maybe find himself grazing on top of it later.

Miss Maple surprised them all.

“We’ll keep the Thing,” she said. “It’s a clue. It turned up after George’s death. It may be something the murderer dropped. Well, like our own droppings, I mean,” she added, when Sir Ritchfield looked at her blankly.

“It doesn’t smell like droppings,” objected Mopple.

Maude bleated in alarm.

Maple shook her head impatiently. “It occurred to me back in the barn just now. Human beings are attached to Things. Things attach themselves to human beings. If we keep a close eye on Things we’ll find the murderer.”

At this moment Maude squeezed her way in under the dolmen with the others, and seconds later a beam of light swept past them. Three people followed it closely. The beam of light came to rest on George’s caravan and swept up the walls. It was looking for somewhere to hide.

“Switch that damnfool torch off,” said a voice. “Bright enough to count grains of wheat out here, and Tom O’Malley has to bring a torch along!” The beam of light had found a gap to slip through, and suddenly disappeared.

“That’s right, keep on shouting our names out! I’m wondering did we put these stupid stocking masks on for nothing?” complained another voice. The sheep knew that voice from the day before: Harry the Sinner.

Tom O’Malley chuckled. The sheep noticed that he didn’t smell of drink. They’d almost failed to recognize him. “Hey,” he said, “hey, why so jumpy? We’re not doing nothing wrong. We’re doing what’s got to be done—for Glennkill!”

“For Glennkill!” murmured Harry.

“For my arse,” said the voice they had heard first. The thin man called Josh. “Either we stop right here to sing ‘Where Glennkill’s Bonny Hills So Bright,’ or we finally get that damn van open and look for the stuff.”

No one opted for singing. The sheep were relieved. Three shadowy figures marched toward the door of the shepherd’s caravan, two stout forms and a tall thin one. Metal glinted in the moonlight, and keys rattled. They rattled for a long time.

“It don’t fit,” said Harry the Sinner.

The thin man kicked the door three times. “Fuck George! That’s it, then.” He pressed his nose flat against the two little glass windows of the caravan. He was so tall that he didn’t even have to stand on tiptoe to do it.

“Now what?” asked Tom.

“We need that grass,” said Harry. “So we break the door down.”

“Are you crazy?” said Josh. “I’m not doing that. That’s a crime, that is.”

“So disposing of evidence is legal, is it?” said Harry scornfully. “If they find the dope here it’s all over. No Faerie Dolmen. No pony rides. No Celtic Cultural Center. No whiskey specialities. And you can stuff your seaside hotel!”

“Maybe there isn’t any dope,” said Josh.

“What else would it be in there? How did old George keep his head above water all this time? With his few pathetic sheep? You must be jokin’! Did he ever want to sell up? Laughed in your face when you come along with your money, so he did. Here was this grand view just wasted on his sheep, and now he’s dead at last, do we want Glennkill getting itself in the papers as a mecca for the drugs trade?”

The sheep’s knees were shaking with indignation.

“Harry’s in the right of it, Josh.” Tom swayed back and forth a little, out of habit. “Old George was in the way of throwing sheep droppings at tourists, wouldn’t let no one come up here, even fired a pistol off to scare us. And for why? He could’ve made a mint of money out of this land, so he could. But he was making a mint of money out of it already, that’s what. Boats on the beach by night, the stuff gets took up to the caravan, he’s off with it in his old banger next day.”

Josh shook his head again.

But Tom had talked himself into a state of high excitement, and shouted across the nocturnal meadow, “And don’t you go thinking George was no innocent angel. There’s kids as saw him of an evening with a black ram. Now there’s perverted for you! I hate to think what we might find in there, so I do!”

White faces appeared at the door of the hay barn. Every sheep in the meadow was now listening intently. And not just the sheep. Maude had been sniffing the air uneasily for quite a time. She couldn’t smell the men with stocking masks on from here; the night-time scents, thankfully, had overlaid the nervous sweating of the intruders. But with every breath she took the suggestion of a human scent wafted past her: a smell of the digestion of cooked food, barely perceived. At first she had blamed the Thing. But the Thing was lying on the ground, and the human smell was seeping down from above.

She craned her neck up. She was certain of it—someone was lying on the capstone of the dolmen.

A master hunter. Maude knew that at once. The back of her neck tingled, and a memory that was not her own—of narrow, rocky ravines and lurking robbers—arose in her.
Wolf,
she thought,
wolf!

When a sheep thinks
Wolf!
its proper course of action is to bleat and run away, but Maude stayed put. The enemy was too close, and now that she had identified him, his scent surrounded her on all sides. He wasn’t coming closer, he was here already. She stood there as if hypnotized, helplessly breathing the air in.

It is surprising how easily fear can jump from sheep to sheep. Maude hadn’t moved or made a sound. All the same, the other five sheep knew about the wolf at once. Maude’s fast breathing told them how close the enemy was, and Maude’s own scent had turned salty, with bitter undertones speaking of flight and ambush. Their hearts galloped to all four points of the compass. But since Maude didn’t move, the other sheep stood motionless too. Maude was their warning sheep; she knew most about the danger. All the sheep would do as she did.

Maude was aware of her responsibility. Unable to run for it, she tried at least to scent the hunter on the roof above her as extensively as possible. The smell of smoke. A human being, that much was clear. He’d been eating onions not long before. Maude heard the man’s stomach contracting around those giveaway onions.