All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls Read Free Book Online

to work two days a week on his land, and five at harvest time, which is when we have the most work on our own land. Father usually hires labourers to work for us, but it’s still a long, weary, aching business, working until five on Sir Edmund’s
land, then coming back to our own to start the harvesting again.
    Robin’s mother is a villein too, but she never does her days in the fields.
    â€œI’ve got enough work of my own,” she says, “without doing some old windbag’s weeding for him. Let him come after me if he wants!” Sir Edmund’s steward doesn’t fight, though. He fines her a couple of pence every manor court, which she never pays, and leaves it at that.
    There are three ways to stop being a villein. You can be given your freedom, you can buy it, or you can run away and live in a town for a year and a day. Most people don’t. My father actually had enough money to buy his freedom last year, but he used it to buy John Adamson’s plough land in Three Oaks instead.
    â€œBut you could have been free ,” I wailed.
    â€œBut you could have been fed ,” he wailed back, and that was that.
    I care about land as much as Father does, but I hate belonging to another person. I’ve always hated it, as far back as I can remember; it’s like an itch that won’t go away, no matter how hard you scratch it. Robin hates it too. When we’re grown and married, we’re going to work and work until we’ve saved enough money to buy our freedom. And then our children will be free, and they’ll be able to go where they want and live how they want, without caring about Sir Edmund or the law or any of those things we have to worry about.
    And that’s a promise.

10. Little Edith
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    â€œ D o you think I should have told someone?” I say to Robin. It’s a few days later, and we’re bringing the animals home from the pasture, me with our cow and the two oxen, Robin with their old milk cow with the crumpled horn. The sun is setting warm and hazy behind us.
    â€œNo . . .” says Robin, but his voice is puzzled. “But why do you care so much?”
    Why do I care? I don’t know. Yes, I do. It’s because if I can keep little Edith – flaxen-haired Edith, small-boned and frail as a baby chick – if I can keep her alive, then there’s hope for the rest of us: Ned and Maggie and Edward and all the muddle of people that I love. Except that by keeping her alive, I may be bringing this sickness closer to my family. It makes my head ache, trying to make sense of it. Am I being a good Christian by helping Radulf take in the homeless? Or am I stupid and careless and dangerous? If the sickness comes here – Isabel, it’s coming here too – will it be my fault?
    â€œWouldn’t you care?” I say, instead. “A little girl Ned’s age?”
    â€œOf course . . .” says Robin. “But plenty of little girls Ned’s age have died of this thing already.
    â€œWell . . .” I say. “If she’s brought the miasma, it’s already here.”
    In the last few days the number of refugees coming down our road has shrunk to almost none. Very few people have come north at all, in fact. No carters, no traders, no pardoners or pilgrims or any of the ordinary people travelling through the village on their way to Duresme or York. It’s eerie.
    At the forge, Robert the smith is shoeing a horse. His son holds the horse’s head, while Robert hammers the nails into the foot. There are a few women talking by the well and a little gaggle of children playing with a kitten at the side of the road. Tolly Hogg the swineherd is bringing the pigs back to the village and a few chickens are pecking in the dirt. Everything is ordinary, and happy, and safe.
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    Back at the house, Alice is scolding Ned.
    â€œI told you to mind the fire, not go and play dice on the green! Now look what’s