Three Bags Full (19 page)

“George. Always making trouble for me. No respect. Not a God-fearing man. And d’you know the worst of it? Once they finally get me down there, I’ll be seeing him again. Don’t think it’s just chance, do you? He’s set them on me. Avenging demons. Why doesn’t he set them on the others? They’re all deeper in than me. I only kept my mouth shut, that’s all. But no: of course he bears me a grudge. Know when I saw the first one? At his funeral! The mourners left sharpish. Anyone could see they had better things to do than watch George put underground, so I’m just …well, it comes to the same thing now, I’m just looking at one of those magazines, only for a moment, and then I hear something. I look up and there it is, a skull grinning at me right over George’s gravestone. Tall as a man, but the head, the head was the head of a…” God’s unsteady voice disappeared into his glass and came out shortly afterward as a hoarse whisper. “The head of a ram! Looked me straight in the eye! A black ram! With four horns!”

Ham nodded vigorously. “A white ram it was,” he said. “Came at me. Pushed me off the cliff top. Huge, it was. Strong as a boar. Wild, too. Is that normal, now? I mean, they’re only sheep. And now that one. Bright white, shone in the mist. I’ll tell you one thing, that was no normal sheep. But why? I’ve been seeing him ever since, wondering why.”

The butcher drank deeply from his own glass. God blew his nose in a handkerchief.

“I could have coped with that,” he muttered. “I burned that magazine and I prayed. But then, very next day, that new tourism woman came to see me—we found one at last—and I was to show her round. Well, I only looked at her—and I suppose even that was too sinful for them. Anyway, up comes a demon at the window. In the shape of a ram again. Not a black one, no, a gray one, with huge great horns and black wings. Tall as a man standing upright. Of course I sent the woman straight off again, I sent her to Beth. I can tell you, I’ll never be able to set eyes on a sheep again without cold shudders running down my back.”

The butcher tipped the rest of the golden liquid into his mouth and looked sympathetically at God.

“Me neither,” he said. “I’ve thought and thought about it. They told me I only spent one night in hospital, but it felt like weeks. I thought the whole time: Kate. Well yes, I never could forget her even though she up and married George. That’s why I bought the CCTV camera, so I could look at her again in the evenings, see her coming to buy her turkey breast. And…” The butcher stared dreamily into space. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife …but I never touched her, never, you have to believe me. So what else was there? I didn’t even join in that bad business with McCarthy, and he did me more harm than anyone. The only reason I can think of is the slaughtering. But someone’s got to do it.” The butcher slammed his empty glass back on the table.

“And now it’s all avenged,” whispered the long-nosed man. “Every sinful thought, every single one. Even in church. Think of that, in the house of God! I was in the confessional…there was something I wanted to discuss with Gabriel. He came along, we spoke. And then…oh, the horror of it, Ham, the horror. All of a sudden the confessional was full of this hellish stink. The voice changes to a terrible bleating, I pull the curtain back and…and instead of Gabriel I see the
black ram
, with his jaws grinding away. Seven-horned, like the Beast of the Apocalypse!” He sobbed.

Ham put his fingertips against each other, a vault of thick, pink ribs, and spoke in a very matter-of-fact tone.

“Either it was wrong to slaughter them,” he said, “and I’m guilty, in which case this here is just.” His hands touched the wheelchair. “Or it was right, and this here is an injustice crying out to heaven. Now it doesn’t say anywhere that it’s wrong, not in the whole Bible, there’s not a word about it; they slaughter animals in the Bible too.”

“Vengeance,” breathed the long-nosed man, shuddering. “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord…
that’s
what I ought to have told ’em back then over the McCarthy business. It was up to me. Too late. Vengeance—and now it’s up to them down there.” God’s hand gestured miserably in the direction of the floor.

“There’s only two ways about it,” said Ham. “Either I turn vegetarian, like Beth, or I show them you don’t play around with me like that. A white ram. Yes, yes, just a dumb animal, instinct and all that. So I tell myself sometimes. But then I’m only a dumb animal too. Everything we see, it’s kind of just like—I mean, in a way like masks, know what I mean? There’ll be something behind them. I don’t know what, but I know it was a white ram. I can get hold of him. I’ll pay him back for it!” Ham leaned his hands on the table as if he were going to get up. But he raised himself only a little way from his peculiar chair, and then collapsed back into it, sighing.

Suddenly something moved beside Maple. Gravel crunched. Mopple the Whale had retreated from the windowpane and was eyeing the garden gate.

Maple looked at him sternly.

“Melmoth said only until we weren’t afraid anymore,” said Mopple, trying to look fearless.

“But it’s important,” said Maple. “Maybe they’ll talk about George. Maybe we’ll find out something about the murder. And you’re the memory sheep.”

At that moment there was a crash inside the butcher’s house, a harsh, cold sound with a frightened echo. Mopple jumped.

“There,” said Maple encouragingly. “Something’s happened. Come on, you’ll have to remember it!”

In the darkness, the slats of the garden fence looked like sharp teeth, and the garden gate creaked with a hostile sound in the wind. Suddenly the lonely way back through the night didn’t seem such a good idea after all. Mopple pushed his way back into the safe place between Maple and Othello and stared bravely through the pane.

Inside, the bottle had fallen over, and liquid was gurgling as it ran out. The long-nosed man was clutching his glass. Ham was staring, fascinated, at the puddle spreading on the tabletop, as dark as blood.

“It’s not about your wretched little soul,” he said in a very quiet voice. It sounded more dangerous than anything they had heard the butcher say before. “Sin or no sin, do penance and the Lord will forgive you—Don’t you believe any of the stuff you spout every Sunday? I’m not interested in your stupid chastity. It’s because you didn’t mind about Alice afterward, that’s the bad part. And I’ll make you sweat for it as long as I can!”

The sheep could see how the butcher’s anger was taking God’s attention away from his glass again. He sat up straight.

“
She
left
me
,” he said soberly and sadly. “Not the other way around, no. What wouldn’t I have done for her? Anything! Even now I see her in every woman I set eyes on. That’s my fate. That…that witch.”

The butcher’s hands clenched into fists. The joints cracked menacingly. Mopple nervously twitched his ears.

“Witch? All my sister asked for was a little honesty!”

In the face of the butcher’s cold fury, the long-nosed man slumped back in his chair again.

“You don’t know all I do for you,” he wailed. “D’you think they’ve never thought of getting
you
out of the way? Who persuaded them not to? With the tongues of men and of angels? Me! And then one of those smart fellows worked out how useful it would be if your chain was found at the scene of the crime. Kate’s gold chain.” He grinned. “Thank the Lord he confessed to it. I went straight off to find the thing.”

“You mean Josh,” said Ham, sounding almost bored.

God raised his eyebrows in surprise. “You know?”

“All I know is I still had it on when Tom called me to the pub. And then, when we came back from George’s body, it was gone. Obviously someone wanted to pin something on me. Who else would it be? Josh, that rat. Doesn’t like me, don’t ask me why.” The butcher shook his head thoughtfully.

“You should never have thrashed him like that after George’s wedding,” said God.

“Well?” the butcher snarled at him. “Did you find my chain?”

“No,” admitted God. “But I tried to.”

“Just because you know that if something happens to me it will all come out,” said the butcher scornfully.

“Then go ahead and do it!” The long-nosed man was trying a bold approach again. “Nail my love letters to the church door. If anyone’s even interested now, after so many years.”

“Believe you me,” said Ham grimly, “they’ll be interested.”

God sipped nervously from his glass.

“I don’t envy you, listening to confessions week after week,” muttered Ham after a while. “The stuff they must have to tell you! A spade! Who’d dream up such a thing…” He shook his head.

God leaned far over the table, so far that it looked as if he was about to topple forward, and stared at Ham. While the butcher had slowly collapsed back in his wheelchair, God seemed quite alert again.

“No one’s said anything.
No one.
Not a word. Not even in the confessional. McCarthy, oh yes, I’ve heard all about that! But George—not a word. They thought about it, yes. But no one says they did it.”

Ham shrugged his shoulders, as if that didn’t particularly surprise him. But the other man was getting more agitated with every word.

“This silence, Ham, it makes my blood run cold! Even before God they won’t…I really wish they
would
confess. This isn’t like them, you know. They were always mad keen to unload their guilty consciences on me. Perhaps …I mean, that with the spade is
sick
.”

A crafty look came into his eyes.

“Wait a minute,” he said, “how come
you
were back at the scene of the crime again? On the day of George’s funeral?”

Ham made a face. Apparently he didn’t like to think back to that misty morning. Eyes glazed, he stared out of the window, straight into Mopple’s brown eyes.

“Because I wanted my chain back,” he growled. “I had the same idea as you—even without confessions. That idiot Josh. And when the police didn’t turn up to see me, I thought it must still be there…” Ham’s eyes fixed on something, and he fell silent.

God laughed. “And Josh must have been looking for it too at just the same time—remorse and so on. He didn’t find anything either. Seems to be a jinx on this whole thing, and in my opinion…”

God fell silent too when he saw the frozen horror on Ham’s face. Following the butcher’s gaze to the window, God too froze. He turned very pale, and his left hand went to his chest.

“There he is!” shouted Ham. “I’ll get him now!”

With a skillful movement, Ham turned his wheelchair and raced it to the door. God was staring in amazement at the black rectangle, where for just a moment three sheep’s heads had been visible, bathed in reddish light.

Mopple, Maple, and Othello trotted back to their meadow in the drizzle. They had good reason to feel pleased with themselves. If they hadn’t entirely banished their own fear, at least they had scared God and the butcher.

Othello trotted proudly ahead. He had impressed God with his four horns; the whole thing was worth it for that alone. Even Mopple trotted through the night with his head held high. Melmoth was right! With a little attention and a fearless sheepy gaze, you could really terrify human beings.

Deep in contemplation of his newly discovered abilities, Mopple had set a brisk pace and was now trotting shoulder to shoulder with Othello. He was about to fall a couple of timid steps back when Othello turned his head and looked at him.

“So
you
pushed the butcher off the cliffs?” he asked.

Mopple raised his head. Ah, to think of the way he’d attacked the butcher in the mist…strong as a boar! With a little attention, a sheep really could do anything…But then his memory switched in. Mopple was the memory sheep. He had remembered everything.

“No,” he sighed. “He was chasing me through the mist. And then he fell.”

Othello snorted in amusement, but his face was friendly.

“Quite an achievement, all the same,” he said.

They looked round for Miss Maple, who had dropped a little way behind. Now and then, lost in thought, she stopped to eat a few leaves from the hedges along the path over the fields. The rams waited patiently.

17

Cordelia Knows Some Useful Words

Long ago, before Miss Maple had ever seen a winter, George used to have a slice of bread and butter with maple syrup for breakfast every morning. He always ate his breakfast out of doors on fine days, publicly and before the envious eyes of his sheep. First he put a little folding table up in front of the steps of the shepherd’s caravan. Then he made coffee. Then he fetched the plate with the slice of bread on it, already spread. Then he had to go in again to speed up the coffee machine. While he did that, the bread lay unsupervised in the sun. All the sheep would have liked to eat it. But only Maple could count up to fifty. As soon as the coffee machine started gurgling because George had hit it with the palm of his hand, she was off. One to fifteen: Maple stole over to the caravan; fifteen to twenty-five: she peered in through the caravan door, to be on the safe side; twenty-five to forty-five: she very carefully licked the syrup off the bread, so carefully that not the faintest mark of a sheep’s tongue was left on the butter (it was also important to leave a very thin layer of brown syrup so that George wouldn’t notice anything); forty-five to fifty: she ran back to the other sheep and hid behind the woolly body of her mother, who found the whole business embarrassing; fifty-one: George came out of the caravan with a steaming mug of coffee and began his breakfast.

One day the coffee machine went wrong, and when Maple reached thirty-five there was George, standing in the doorway with his arms folded. That was the day when George gave her a name even before her first winter. The other sheep were a little envious, and her mother was as proud as if she personally had stolen the syrup from the bread. Maple herself pranced around the meadow until sunset, the youngest lamb ever to have been given its own name.

By now it was clear to all the sheep that Miss Maple really must be the cleverest sheep in all Glennkill—and perhaps in the whole world. So in spite of being so tired they went on paying attention when Maple, Mopple, and Othello told them what they had seen and heard God and the butcher discussing in the village. It was about meat again, and the fear of the knife that they had worked so hard to overcome revived. But Miss Maple wanted to broach another subject.

“God said something important,” she remarked. “He said no one had told him anything. He thinks that’s sinister, and I’d say he’s right. If they’d done it as a flock, they’d feel safe and tell him. Like with McCarthy. God didn’t give them away then, so why would he do it now? He didn’t like George.”

“Perhaps they forgot?” suggested Cloud.

Mopple the Whale shook his head. “Humans don’t forget so easily. George still remembered in spring who’d been gnawing the trees’ bark in autumn. McCarthy has been dead for seven winters, almost the whole of a sheep’s lifetime, and they still remember that.” It was obvious that Mopple felt respect for human powers of memory.

“No, it’s nothing to do with their memory,” agreed Miss Maple. “I think they’re keeping quiet for some other reason. I don’t think it was all of them together, like with McCarthy. They’re not acting like a flock who have all grazed a place bare. They’d stick together then, crowd into one place, and wait. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re running about in confusion. They suspect one another. They all want to find out something about the others. Josh comes to see Gabriel to find something out. Eddie comes along. Gabriel watches when Josh and Tom O’Malley and Harry steal into the meadow by night.”

The sheep bleated in surprise.

Miss Maple snorted impatiently. “We should have found out much earlier. Then we wouldn’t have fallen for him so long. Gabriel is the master hunter!”

Gabriel, the master hunter? By now they thought Gabriel capable of any dreadful deed. But how had Miss Maple found out?

“It ought to have struck me straightaway,” Miss Maple explained. “If only because Maude couldn’t pick up his scent at once. Only Gabriel can disguise his scent, under the smell of damp wool and smoke. And what’s more—” Miss Maple looked all round energetically. “What’s more, he knew those three were in the meadow. He said so to Josh. He even knew that they’d made us nervous. How could he know that if he wasn’t there?”

“But why would Gabriel hunt other humans?” asked Cloud.

“Perhaps he wanted their meat,” said Mopple. “Humans aren’t particularly woolly.”

“No sheep may leave the flock,” bleated Ritchfield.

Maple nodded. “I think Ritchfield is right. Gabriel is their lead ram. He doesn’t want them running all over the place. He wants them to stay in one place and keep still—like his sheep. But they aren’t doing that, and when Gabriel noticed that three of them had gone off, he went after them.”

“He’s not a very good lead ram,” said Heather.

“No,” agreed Miss Maple. “He can’t keep the flock together. That’s why he’s sitting here watching the shepherd’s caravan. There must be something important in there. Something that mustn’t get out, whatever happens.”

“Justice!” exclaimed Mopple.

Miss Maple put her head on one side. “Perhaps. It’s a very important question. What do all those people want from the caravan? Eddie, Gabriel, Josh, Tom, and Harry? What are they looking for?”

“Grass,” said Zora. “Tom said they were looking for grass.”

That seemed to the sheep
too
sensible. Humans didn’t normally have such reasonable aims.

Mopple made a skeptical face. “There’s grass all over the place here. The whole meadow is full of grass—at least where
they
haven’t grazed it bare,” he added, with a dark look in the direction of Gabriel’s sheep. “Why would they go looking for grass in the caravan when they only have to bend down?”

They had to admit that Mopple was right. Even humans could be expected to show a tiny amount of sense. It was an appetizing subject of conversation. Several heads bent to rummage about for tasty grass blades in the straw of the hay barn.

“I don’t think they all want the grass,” said Miss Maple, when her head came up from the straw again with a long seed head in her mouth, “whatever it may be. I think it’s much more important to Gabriel for
nothing
to get out. Not even grass.”

Mopple stared enviously at Maple’s seed head. “But why?”

“Gabriel is the lead ram,” said Miss Maple. “I think he was already the lead ram back when they murdered McCarthy. He knows that George and the butcher made sure they were safe. If anything happens to them it will all get out. And now something
has
happened to George. Naturally they’re all waiting for it to get out. And I believe they think it will get out of the shepherd’s caravan.”

The sheep gathered at the door of the hay barn and looked doubtfully at the shepherd’s caravan, asleep like a stout stone in the darkness. Until now it had always seemed to them harmless, and the only thing ever to get out of it had been George himself.

“I don’t know…” said Cordelia.

“Whatever it is, it won’t get out,” said Lane. “Nobody can open the door. Gabriel tried, and so did Eddie, Josh, Harry, and Tom O’Malley. And the man with the quiet car.”

“But why do they want to open the door when none of them wants what’s inside to get out?” bleated Heather. It was not a bad question.

Miss Maple twitched her ears. “Even if they can’t get into the caravan, they must still be afraid that someone else may be able to, and that person will discover their secret. But if they get into the caravan themselves, they can find the evidence and destroy it forever.”

They stood there for some time, wondering, thinking, or simply chewing the cud. Just as it looked as if all this thinking might end in a comfortable doze, Miss Maple woke them up again with a start.

“Imagine if it was only one person who killed George,” she said suddenly. “Who could that person have been?”

Slightly shocked, the sheep bleated wildly in confusion. Gabriel and the butcher were their favorite candidates.

“Hmm,” said Miss Maple. “Have you noticed something? A little while ago no one would have thought it of Gabriel, because we liked him. And now he’s a suspect, because we don’t like him anymore. Perhaps we’re making a mistake. The murderer could be someone we like.”

“If he’s the murderer, we wouldn’t like him anymore,” said Heather firmly.

“But perhaps we still like him
now
. Or her,” said Miss Maple.

“Rebecca?” bleated Cloud, shocked.

“What do we know about her—except that she smells nice?” said Miss Maple. “She simply turns up after George’s death. She acts as if she’d come just about the tourist trade, but that’s not true. She’s trying to find out things about George.”

“She wants to find the murderer too,” said Othello.

“Or to make sure the murderer isn’t found. She asked if there were any suspects. Perhaps she just wants to know if there’s anyone on her trail.”

It didn’t sound improbable. Beautiful daughters often caused their fathers’ deaths in the Pamela novels. All the same, none of the sheep could get around to liking this theory.

“She gave me the last tomato,” said Othello. A number of the sheep looked defiantly at Maple. Was a woman who could do a thing like that capable of murder?

But Miss Maple was not to be moved. “She doesn’t come from here. She’s not afraid of anything getting out. She doesn’t even know that something could get out. And do you remember what Beth said about the spade, the body, and the Devil’s hounds?”

“‘Can you imagine what horror that lost soul must have felt beside the body, with the spade?’” said Mopple.

“Exactly.” Miss Maple looked at Mopple the Whale approvingly. “But Rebecca doesn’t come from here. She has no idea about the Devil’s hounds. She certainly wouldn’t have felt horrified.”

“Well, she’s brave. So what?” snorted Othello. “That doesn’t prove anything.”

“You’re right.” Miss Maple sighed. The sheep could see how tired she was. “No, it doesn’t prove anything.”

Deep in thought, she began trotting up and down the confined space of the hay barn. Some of the sheep bleated indignantly when she pushed them aside or bumped into them, but Miss Maple didn’t seem to hear them.

“The small puzzles are solving themselves,” murmured Miss Maple. “One by one, like buds opening. Now we know why the butcher and Josh were out on the meadow in the mist—because of the Thing. We know who bent down and what he put there: it was Josh leaving the Thing. We know who the wolf’s ghost is—and who the master hunter is. But what about the big puzzle? What about the murder? Why doesn’t that fit?”

She trotted briskly toward Sara, who managed to get out of her way at the last moment.

“Though perhaps not everything has to fit. Perhaps it’s a mistake to think that everything always has to fit together. In that detective story it was all supposed to fit, and then it got tangled up, and George threw the book away. Perhaps the answer is that many things simply don’t fit. Things that we think are connected, but really they don’t have anything to do with each other.”

Miss Maple had stopped.

“We must concentrate more on the big puzzle,” she explained. “The big puzzle …is…the spade!”

Then Miss Maple said nothing for a long time. At first it looked as if she were thinking very profoundly about something. But soon afterward deep and regular breathing gave away the fact that the cleverest sheep in Glennkill had dropped off to sleep.

Next morning the sea was growling, and yellowish light made the hatches in the roof of the hay barn glow like cat’s eyes in the dark. But the birds were singing their morning song outside, carefree as ever. Finally a dissonant bird, far away at first, then coming closer and closer, joined their chorus.

Peering out of the hay barn, the sheep saw Gabriel sitting down on the steps of the shepherd’s caravan again. He was whistling.

The sheep looked at their new shepherd through the light morning mist.

“We have to get rid of him!” said Heather.

No one contradicted her.

“But how?” asked Lane.

They watched Gabriel sitting on the steps, as firmly rooted as a pine tree on top of the cliffs, surrounding himself with pipe smoke. It was impossible to imagine a sheep—even a whole flock of sheep—doing anything to shift him.

“Fear,” said Zora. “We must make him feel afraid.”

They thought of what made
them
feel afraid: large dogs, noisy cars, the stinging ointment, wolves’ ghosts, the scent of carnivores. None of those things seemed likely to drive Gabriel away.

They looked at each other blankly.

“Pay attention,” snorted Melmoth suddenly. “If you’d all been paying attention, you’d have found out what Gabriel’s afraid of long ago. What do human beings do when they’re afraid?”

Miss Maple widened her eyes. “They put up fences,” she said.

All heads turned to look at Gabriel’s sheep, who were staring through the wire netting hungrily again.

“What can happen to them behind that fence, with all the fodder Gabriel throws to them every day?” bleated Heather bitterly.

“They could be ill,” said Melmoth.

“We don’t want them to be ill,” said Zora. “They have a hard enough time as it is.”

“If they fall ill they could pass it on to us!” bleated Mopple in alarm.

Melmoth winked in a conspiratorial way. “And suppose
we
fall ill?”

All of a sudden Cordelia’s head was full of words. All the mysterious names she had learned from George had broken out and galloped wildly through her thoughts: prophylactics, foot rot, meningitis, Creutzfeld-Jakob…the book about the diseases of sheep had been full of strange words. And they all meant something.

A short time later the sheep had a plan.

They disappeared into the hay barn to rehearse. When they trotted out into the daylight again quite a while later, they themselves were rather bemused by the terror they had conjured up in the dim light of the barn.

Now they’d teach Gabriel to be afraid.

But Gabriel wasn’t sitting on the steps of the shepherd’s caravan anymore, he was grazing again. The cold song of the scythe rose above the meadow, and the grass fell down at Gabriel’s feet. The sheep shuddered. They decided to wait until Gabriel had finished. Then, suddenly, the wind brought them not just the swish of the scythe and the scent of dead grass.