Three Bags Full (7 page)

The thin man kicked the caravan door again. It made a small, frightened sound. Perhaps the beam of light was sitting nervously inside. The man on top of the dolmen tensed. At that moment Maude knew he wasn’t hunting her, he was after the three men by the caravan. Maude gave off an aura of relief.

Over by the caravan, the interesting discussion of what exactly George and Othello did together had now come to an end.

“So do they search the caravan, then?” asked Tom. “Not them, they don’t do nothing, devil a bit of it. No police inquiries, no questions. Hushed up, forgot, dead and buried, that’s the way of it. All in league together they are, the police and the drugs boys. Bribed, every man jack of ’em!” Tom’s voice held a trace of disappointment that no one had gone to the trouble of bribing him.

“So?” The thin man sounded annoyed. “So why do we have to break in here if no one’s interested in the stuff anyway?”

No one replied. Harry halfheartedly kicked the door. It was quiet inside. Tom turned away from the others and was about to set off in the direction of the paved road. Then he froze.

“There’s a car!” whispered Tom. The sheep had heard it long before. A big car without any lights on was purring along the road. It came to a halt and stopped purring. The three men scattered like chickens. Harry the Sinner doubled expertly back and forth a couple of times; the thin man bent his long back to run faster. The sheep were amazed. They had never before known how easily scared human beings could be. They themselves kept their nerve, in spite of the car. Then all three men galloped toward the hay barn, racing in past the startled sheep, and climbed the ladder to the hayloft.

The sheep spilled out into the open like milk drops to meet the man coming up from the paved road. But he took no notice of them. Nor did he seem surprised by the chaotic racing back and forth of bleating sheep in the meadow. He strolled toward the caravan at his leisure.

Only six sheep stood motionless under the dolmen. Maude had resisted the general mood of disaster. She was still concentrating on the wolf man above their heads. He had pressed himself flat against the stone. The onions inside him were churning wildly. He was breathing fast. Maude realized that the master hunter himself was frightened.

The man now beside the caravan didn’t kick the door. He knocked. One short knock, two long knocks, another short knock. He waited. Soundlessly, he set to work on the lock. Now the master hunter’s heart was beating like a sheep’s when it has to swallow its calcium tablet. But he did not move. He
dared
not move. A faint, metallic click chirped in the air like a cricket’s cry; but the door stayed shut. Finally the man turned and walked back to the path across the fields.

An engine hummed.

Silence.

7

Sir Ritchfield Behaves Oddly

Other things happened that night too, of course, but they weren’t as spectacular as the events around the shepherd’s caravan. The man on top of the dolmen disappeared silently, leaving nothing behind but a faint smell of onions. A little later the three other men emerged timidly from the hay barn. In trying to be quiet they made a lot of noise. They set off back to the village in silence.

The sheep watched these comings and goings, and stayed watchful for a while. They stood scattered at random over the meadow like perplexed blue clouds. Othello gave off the aura of a blue-black thundercloud. A gentle breeze softly fanned their fears away, but sleeping was out of the question all the same. They bent their necks and began to graze.

Grazing in the dark was surprisingly pleasant. Nocturnal insects in the grass chirped at them appetizingly, and everything smelled of wet herbs. Why had they let these pleasures escape them until now? It was George’s fault. George had insisted that they must spend night after night in that boring hay barn, while the world outside was such an appetizing spectacle. George hadn’t had the faintest idea of the art of grazing.

If anyone knew about grazing it was the sheep. Of course there were countless arguments on the subject, but that just made it more interesting. Miss Maple preferred sweet clover and flowers, Cloud liked grasses with dry but tasty seed clusters. Maude was wild about an insipid herb that the sheep called mouse weed. She was sure that it was good for your sense of smell. It was really the other way around: only a sheep with an outstanding sense of smell could even pick out the modest-looking mouse weed from all the tasty herbs that formed a carpet of scents. Sir Ritchfield liked the tempting look of large-leaved plants best, and if he took a mouthful of sorrel with them now and then by mistake, that didn’t bother him. Sara hated the bitter flavor of sorrel. Lane loved aromatic, low-growing herbs like sheep’s ear and sweet-wort; Cordelia, who didn’t much care for bending, ate the tall oat grasses first. Mopple ate everything indiscriminately. When they returned to the other pasture after being away for some time, a mere glance at the fresh trails they left as they ate told you fairly accurately who had been grazing where.

Zora enjoyed this moonlit midnight grazing. It put her in a good mood: excited but philosophical, meditative and active at the same time. The ideal mood for stories. Zora was the only sheep who didn’t just like listening to stories, but now and then made some up herself. Not complicated stories, little more than a couple of thoughts strung together. It wasn’t so much what happened that mattered, it was how you looked at it. The stories helped Zora to understand how the world galloped around what happened in it. Zora was convinced that her stories were good practice for conquering the abyss beneath the cliff tops. She told herself a Mopple story. Stories about Mopple the Whale were definitely among her favorites. Mopple the Whale wants to eat the herbs of the abyss, but Mopple the Whale doesn’t like heights, thought Zora. It’s not easy to concentrate on a story where the main thing is something that
doesn’t
happen, but Zora had had a good deal of practice. Mopple was standing close to the top of the cliffs, only a little way from Zora’s ledge. Of course he was pretending to be interested in the view. The wind was blowing off the land, so Zora could pick up Mopple’s pleasant scent. She concentrated on the wind blowing through Mopple’s fleece, sending little white ripples over it, pushing him toward the edge of the cliffs with gentle fingers and making him nervous. In Zora’s story the weather was fine, of course. The gulls were crying, of course. Evening was beginning to fall. George was sitting on the steps of the shepherd’s caravan smoking his pipe. Unbeknown to George, two tourists were walking along the beach, shouldering the weight of their huge backpacks. One of them spotted Zora on her ledge and pointed her out to the other. Mopple acted as if he had suddenly become fascinated by people with backpacks, and took another tiny step toward the abyss. The rest of the flock were grazing some way off. Othello stopped grazing. He was watching Mopple, obviously amused. Othello is clever, thought the Zora in Zora’s story, not as clever as Miss Maple, maybe, but clever all the same. Othello notices everything! Those were Zora’s thoughts in her story. She couldn’t decide what Othello was thinking. Lane and Cordelia were grazing in the background. And behind Lane, far in the background, stood…Zora couldn’t believe her eyes. Where the meadow met the paved road, there stood the butcher, smelling of nothing. There was just one eye in his face, in the middle of his forehead, and that eye was bent implacably on Mopple the Whale.

Zora shook her head. This wasn’t the kind of story that helped a sheep to conquer the abyss. What was the butcher doing in her uncomplicated little story?

She looked up, and saw that she had emerged from her thoughts at just the right moment, for she was right on the edge of George’s Place. High time to move away in a different direction. She looked critically at George’s Place. It seemed smaller than before.

Just as she was about to turn, she noticed a sheep standing in the dark on the other side of George’s Place, watching her. Normally Zora would have thought no more of it. She was logical about grazing: you had to concentrate and not let every little thing distract you. But something about this sheep looked strange to her. Maybe even slightly threatening. She raised her head, scenting the air, but the wind had veered round and told her nothing. She looked more closely. Curving horns. Sir Ritchfield. Zora was relieved. For a moment she’d been afraid…oh, she didn’t know what she’d been afraid of. She bleated at Sir Ritchfield in a friendly tone, but he didn’t reply. Ritchfield was hard of hearing these days, so she bleated louder.

Ritchfield turned his head and looked toward the dolmen.

“He’s gone, hasn’t he?” he whispered. Zora was surprised to find how soft Ritchfield’s voice could be when he was whispering. Normally he snorted and bellowed, and the older he grew the worse it was. Zora wondered who he meant. The master hunter? George? She felt sure he must have meant George.

“He won’t be coming back, will he?” Ritchfield persisted.

“No,” said Zora. “He won’t be coming back.” She felt cold in the moonlit night. She wished for nothing more than to be back in the hay barn, crowding close together with a whole lot of other sheep.

“And that idiot Ritchfield stood by and didn’t do anything,” said Ritchfield almost cheerfully. Zora stared at him. She suddenly felt that she was looking down into an abyss deeper and wilder than the drop from the cliff tops. She closed her eyes, briefly, and when she opened them again Ritchfield had gone away. Zora peered round and saw him reappear beside the dolmen. She trotted after him.

“What do you mean, stood by?” she whispered to Ritchfield. He looked at her in surprise.

“What?” he bleated.

“What do you mean, stood by?” said Zora in a rather louder whisper.

“Speak up!” bleated Ritchfield.

Zora shook her head and trotted thoughtfully back to her ledge.

A little later Miss Maple in her own turn passed George’s Place while she was grazing. Ever since they had put it out of bounds, George’s Place had held a mysterious fascination for the sheep. Maple looked up and was about to turn away when she saw something terrible.

“Mopple!” she snorted.

A fresh trail of grazed ground, broad and shameless, led right through the middle of George’s Place. At second glance Maple saw that she had done Mopple an injustice. Not all the plants had been eaten. Several nose-tickler flowers, slender and sweet-smelling, had been left standing amid the devastation. They tickled your nose as you ate them; they were among everyone’s very favorite plants. It was unthinkable that Mopple had spared them.

Maple could not think which sheep in the flock didn’t like nose-tickler flowers. Oh, wait a minute; she once
had
noticed one who didn’t. She tried to remember more clearly, but it was no good. She did not have a memory like Mopple’s. If a sheep had grazed George’s Place on purpose it was a serious matter. It must mean that the sheep who grazed there didn’t want to remember George. It was a kind of insult.

Miss Maple looked around. Nothing striking to be seen. Most of the sheep were rhythmically pulling up grass as they moved over the ground. Miss Maple was no longer hungry, and the grass she had grazed at this unusual time of night felt funny lying in her stomach. She decided to put her mind more closely to solving the murder. But there were some practical things to be done first. She trotted over to the dolmen.

A little later the sheep saw her going toward the hay barn with the Thing in her mouth. She looked pleased and in high spirits.

“What are you doing?” asked Cloud.

“It’s about time to think what to do when we’ve found the murderer,” said Miss Maple. She trotted on to the barn door, and Cloud followed. Maple disappeared into the darkness, and when she came out of the hay barn again without the Thing, her eyes were shining.

“There we are!” she said.

The other sheep didn’t seem particularly happy.

“She’s got my Thing!” bleated Heather.

“Bad!” said Willow, the second most silent sheep in the flock, indulging in an unusual fit of loquacity.

Maple scrutinized her flock. The sheep were looking at her, very few of them in a friendly way. Cloud looked guilty, Heather jealous, Maude worried, and Ritchfield stern. Only Mopple absentmindedly grazed his way past them. Miss Maple sighed. “I don’t want the Thing for myself. It’s for the humans. Have you ever stopped to think what will happen when we’ve found the murderer? Do you think lightning will strike him? We need evidence!”

“That’s not evidence,” bleated Maude. “It’s a Thing.”

“But maybe it could be evidence,” said Maple impatiently. She herself had only a very vague idea of the part that Things could play in convicting the murderer.

“We won’t find the murderer!” sighed Lane.

“We know George died of the spade. That’s quite enough,” said Sir Ritchfield, trying to calm things down.

“Very true!” bleated Maude. The spade was the only part of this murder story she really understood anyway.

“Very true!” bleated the other sheep.

“Let’s stop all this investigating!”

“Let’s stop all this thinking!”

Miss Maple looked at her flock in amazement. “But there are so many questions to ask,” she said. “You collected them yourselves—some of them. Where’s Tess? Who is the wolf’s ghost? What was God looking for in the meadow? What’s going on between Lilly and Kate? Why was Ham here? What does George have to do with drugs? What are drugs anyway? Who is the master hunter? Why was he here? There was a master hunter in our meadow and you don’t even want to know why?”

“Right!” bleated Maude. “Just so long as he doesn’t come back, that’s the main thing.” Some of the sheep bleated in agreement. “And if he does I’m sure to pick up his scent again!” added Maude, not without pride.

Mopple grazed past them again, beaming with contentment, living proof of the fact that earthly happiness existed and could be obtained by very simple means. The other sheep looked at him a little enviously.

“See that?” said Sir Ritchfield. “That’s the way for sheep to spend their time. Grazing! Not asking questions! We can’t find the answers. That was why George threw the detective story away. He realized you can’t find out everything. You ought to see that too, Maple!”

Miss Maple impatiently scraped grass and earth up with her hoof. “But it happened,” she said. “There must be an end to the story. If George had finished the detective story we would know how it ended. And I want to know. You want to know too, I know you’re curious about it. You just don’t want to bother your sheepy heads!”

“It’s too much for us,” said Cordelia, embarrassed. “So many human things that we can’t understand. And there’s no one to explain words to us now.”

The others said nothing. Many of them were looking at the grass in front of their hooves as if they were planning to watch it grow. Others were looking for cloud sheep in the night sky.

“We ought to just forget it,” said Cloud quietly. “It will be simpler when we’ve forgotten everything.” Again there were bleats of agreement. Forgetting was a tried-and-true way for sheep to get over their sorrows. The stranger and more disturbing an incident was, the faster you needed to forget it. Why hadn’t they thought of that before?

Maple looked at them incredulously.

“But if we forget everything there won’t be any more stories,” she said. “This is like a story, don’t you see?”

No one replied.

“You don’t want to!” she said, unable to take it in.

“We want to all right,” said Cloud with dignity, “only not in the same way as you.”

“Yes, you do,” said Maple. “You just don’t know it! There’s a wolf out there. We don’t know who he is, that’s all. How are we to beware of him if we can’t identify him? We don’t even have a shepherd to look after us and you still think all’s well with the world!”

They had never seen Miss Maple in such a temper before. Come to think of it, they had never seen Miss Maple in a temper at all.

“You wouldn’t even notice if the wolf got into the flock. Do you remember the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing?”

It was the most frightening story they had ever heard George tell. Reminding them of it now, in the middle of the night, wasn’t playing fair.

“Either you find the wolf or the wolf will find you. It’s as simple as that! All stories have an end! It’s no use throwing the book away in the middle of it just because you don’t understand something!” Maple snorted. “If you don’t want to find out what it is, I’ll have to find out by myself!”

Cloud, who didn’t like disagreements, looked at her, moist-eyed. “We need a shepherd,” she whispered.

But Maple ignored her. She flicked her tail scornfully. Then she trotted off to stand under the crows’ tree, as far as possible from the other sheep, and stared thoughtfully into the dark.