The Dance of Death Read online

  For Pete Richards

  Contents

  1All Hallows Eve, 1348

  2Soul-Cakes

  3Little Brother

  4Beyond the Edge of the World

  5A Pig’s Bladder

  6A Warm Fire

  7The Great Mortality

  8Heaven

  9Hue and Cry

  10Hell

  11Unploughed Fields

  12Raven’s Wood

  13Home at Last

  14Too Young to Die

  15All Those Who Live Beneath the Sky

  Author’s Note

  I began writing this book in 2014, just as the first reports appeared in the news about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. Suddenly some of the poorest countries in the world were faced with a terrifying and deadly disease. Hundreds of people died in just a few weeks. The world began to panic. For a moment it looked as though the Ebola virus might spread everywhere.

  Thanks to the extraordinary bravery of the local doctors and nurses and the medical teams who went out to West Africa to work with them, the spread of the disease was halted. By the time West Africa was declared free of the Ebola virus in 2015, over 11,000 people had died, mostly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. Without modern medicine the number of deaths would have been very much higher.

  The Dance of Death is set during a similar epidemic, seven hundred years ago. The only difference between the two events is that in the fourteenth-century medical science was still in its infancy. Between 1346 and 1353 over 200 million people died of Bubonic Plague (now known as the Black Death). This was half the population of Europe. In Italy, Spain and the south of France more than three-quarters of the population died. In England, over two million people died of the plague in just two years, between 1348 and 1350. That is one in every three people.

  Although the Black Death seemed to disappear by the end of 1350, it never really went away. In 1471 it killed 15% of the population of England; in 1479 it killed another 20%. The last great outbreak in England was the Great Plague of London in 1665, when 100,000 people died, roughly 15% of the city’s population. In the seventeenth-century, the plague killed a million people in France and two million people in Italy. During the nineteenth-century, ten million people died of the Black Death in India.

  Although medical science has since developed drugs to resist Bubonic Plague, a drug-resistant form of the disease was found in Madagascar in 1995. And a new outbreak was reported there in November 2014…

  Andy Croft

  Chapter 1

  All Hallows Eve, 1348

  The tall, hooded figure moved slowly between the gravestones. It was looking for something. Or someone. Adam pressed himself into the shadow of the old church. He wanted to run away, but his legs were frozen with fear. The smoky light of his torch threw long shadows across the churchyard. The graves looked like broken teeth in a skull. A rat ran across his feet and vanished into the dark. Adam shivered in the cold night air. His mouth was dry with fear. The figure moved closer, closer, closer. Still Adam did not run.

  Half way across the churchyard, the hooded figure suddenly stopped and listened. It was so quiet that Adam could hear his heart beating in his chest. His hands were shaking. Despite the cold, he was sweating. He tried to hold his breath. Somewhere an owl screamed in the darkness. Adam wanted to scream but he could not.

  Why had he agreed to come here tonight? Only a few hours ago he had been sitting at home by the fire. His older brother Will had been teasing him, as usual. He had dared Adam to do this, accusing him of being afraid. Well, Adam had accepted the dare and here he was. It was too late to back out now.

  The October moon slipped out from behind the clouds. The tall, hooded figure sniffed the air and slowly turned in Adam’s direction. Adam shook his head and shut his eyes. He tried to press himself back into the shadows. But it was no use. Still he could not run. It was like a bad dream. A nightmare. The sort where you know what is going to happen and can’t do anything to stop it. But this wasn’t a dream. Adam knew that he wasn’t going to wake up. This was really happening. Death had come to take him. It was his turn.

  Adam knew exactly what was going to happen next. The hooded figure stopped in front of him. It raised a long bony finger and pointed to an open grave by the churchyard gate. The hollow eyes beneath the hood were yellow and cold. ‘No, no!’ cried Adam, ‘no, no!’ He was shouting now, ‘No! No! No! I don’t want to die!’ The thing in the hood began to speak in a slow hissing voice:

  ‘All those who live beneath the sky,

  Beneath the earth must one day lie.’

  Adam felt a cold hand on his wrist. ‘No, no!’ he yelled. He tried to pull away but the grip on his arm was too tight. ‘Stop it! I don’t want to! I don’t want to die!’ The figure spoke again:

  ‘The strong, the coward and the brave

  Must come with me into the grave.’

  ‘No! Not me!’ shouted Adam. ‘Please! Choose someone else. Someone older. Please! I’m too young! Too young to die!’ The figure shook its head and hissed again:

  ‘The old and young, all girls and boys

  Must know the end of earthly joys.’

  Adam tried to stop himself being pulled across the churchyard. He clung onto the branches of an old yew tree growing by the stone path. The branches snapped in his hands. It was no good. Adam was strong, but Death was stronger. He was being pulled towards the pit. ‘I’m not even ill!’ shouted Adam. ‘I’m still healthy and strong. I don’t want to die!’ This time Death laughed in reply:

  ‘Though strong and healthy you may be

  You’ll never be as strong as me!’

  With that, Death grabbed Adam by the throat and dragged him choking and screaming across the churchyard. And as it did so, Death swung Adam’s body round in a terrible dance, repeating over and over and over:

  ‘Tonight you draw your final breath

  And join the dance, the Dance of Death…’

  Chapter 2

  Soul-Cakes

  ‘Help! Help! I’m too young to die!’ laughed Will, grabbing Adam by the arms. ‘Oh mother, mother! Save me, save me!’ The tears were rolling down Will’s cheeks as he tried to lead his brother in a dance around the bonfire. Will’s friends Ned and Tom laughed with approval.

  ‘Leave me alone!’ said Adam, pulling himself free. ‘I wasn’t really scared, you know. I was only pretending.’

  ‘Scared? Not my little brother,’ grinned Will. ‘He’s not afraid of anything, are you? Not even goblins…’

  ‘You sounded like you meant it,’ said Tom.

  ‘You were squealing like a pig,’ said Ned, ‘a pig who knows his throat is about to be cut!’

  ‘I knew it wasn’t real,’ said Adam.

  ‘Oink, oink.’

  ‘I mean, I knew it was just a stupid play.’

  ‘Oink, oink.’

  ‘At least I was brave enough to be in it!’

  Tom and Ned started crawling around on the grass squealing, ‘oink, oink, oink, oink…’ Will ran after them.

  Every year, at Hallowmas, people acted out the Dance of Death in villages and towns all over England. They had done this for as long as anyone could remember. Everyone enjoyed dressing up and wearing masks, and there was always plenty of food and drink and dancing afterwards. But the villagers in Adam’s village, Brampton, also took it very seriously. The priest told them that the play was a reminder that everyone had to die one day. Death came for us all, he said, rich and poor, young and old.

  This year, Will’s friend Sam had been chosen to be the shepherd in the play, but Sam had twisted his ankle a few days before. That was why Adam had agreed to take the part at the last minute. He had seen the play many times, so he knew what to say when Death came for him.<
br />
  Death was played by the same person each year. In Adam’s village it was always John the Smith. Before John, it had been his father. The first victim was dressed up to look like the Pope or a king. Death would invite the king to join him in the grave by saying:

  ‘King and beggar, fool and wise,

  Everybody one day dies!’

  The king would try to protest, then Death would grab him by the wrist and take him away. This happened two dozen times during the play. Among Death’s victims were a queen, a prince, a bishop, a knight, a doctor and a priest. The last to die was always a mother and her baby:

  ‘This hour you draw your final breath

  And join the dance – the Dance of Death…’

  Adam watched as the great orange flames of the bonfire threw sparks up into the cold night sky. His face was hot from the fire, but the evening wind was cold on his back. He shivered. The autumn wind made strange shapes in the flames and smoke. Will and his friends were throwing branches onto the fire, showing off in front of the village girls, especially the dyer’s daughter, Agnes. Later, some of them would try jumping over the flames.

  The whole of Brampton was making the most of the three-day Hallowmas holiday. It seemed a long time now since their last holiday at Midsummer. After weeks of bad weather and cold rain it had been a poor harvest and some families would be going hungry this winter. Hallowmas was their last chance to feast before the cold really set in.

  It was actually three festivals. The Dance of Death always took place on All Hallows Eve. Tomorrow would be All Saints Day and the day after would be the feast of All Souls. Of course there was a lot of praying and hymn-singing as well as feasting and celebrating. Hallowmas was a time to remember the dead and everyone had to go to church every day during the holiday. But there was also the big bonfire on the village green, dancing, and roast apples and hot chestnuts to eat.

  Some people said that the Christmas roast boar was best, some preferred the bread and cakes of Candlemas or the Michaelmas goose, but Adam loved the spicy taste of Hallowmas soul-cakes. He loved going round the village with his friends, asking for the shortbread biscuits with their spices and currants. In return for a soul-cake, the children would say prayers for the dead.

  Adam shivered again. Of course everyone had to die one day, he knew that. The village churchyard was full of people he had known. His Mother had buried the twins before they had reached their first birthday. His little sister Tilda had died of a sickness called the Devil’s Fire when she was six. Most people in Adam’s village died before they were forty. Old Widow Hodge was the oldest person he knew, and she was not yet fifty.

  Adam took some hot chestnuts from the bowl and juggled them in his hands. He grinned. He had not yet seen fourteen summers and there would be plenty of time to worry about death when he was older. There were lots of things he wanted to do before then. He wanted to see London. He wanted to see the sea. And he wanted to have an adventure, like the ones in the stories his mother told him. His favourite stories involved killing goblins or fighting fire-breathing dragons.

  Chapter 3

  Little Brother

  ‘Don’t argue, Adam,’ said his mother, handing him a bowl of cabbage soup.

  ‘But…’

  ‘You’re not old enough, for one thing,’ said his father. ‘For another, I need you here while Will is away. The journey to London and back will take him ten days.’

  The family were eating their evening meal at the rough wooden table. Adam’s father was cutting a loaf of barley-bread with his knife. Will was looking very pleased with himself. Bo, their dog, was sleeping in front of the fire.

  Every year, the village of Brampton had to send a list of all the rents, animals and crops on the estate to Philip de Mandeville in London. This showed him how well the estate was doing and how much money it had earned him. It was usually taken down to London by Adam’s father, who worked as a steward for the Mandeville estate. But a few months ago he had fallen off the ladder in the high barn and he was still limping. So Will was going to make the journey instead.

  ‘Remember,’ said Father to Will, placing a leather satchel in the middle of the table, ‘this is very valuable. You must take great care of it.’

  Will opened the satchel and pulled out a letter written in Latin and French. The letter gave him permission to travel outside the village. Without it, he could be arrested as a vagrant or a runaway. There was also a roll of papers tied with ribbon and wax stamped with the Mandeville seal.

  The Mandeville family owned the village and most of the people and animals that lived in it. Everyone in Brampton rented their fields from them. They had to work without pay for several days every month on the Mandeville’s own land. They also had to pay them to use the village mill and to let pigs feed in the woods. The funny thing was that no-one in Brampton had ever seen any of the Mandevilles. Although they owned villages all over England, they had always lived in London. And in fact, for the last ten years, Philip de Mandeville and two of his sons had been away fighting in France.

  ‘But why can’t I go with Will?’ asked Adam.

  ‘Because someone has to look after the sheep,’ answered his father. ‘I can’t do everything, not with my bad knee. Anyway, it’s time for Will to make the journey on his own.’ His father dipped his spoon into the cabbage soup. ‘Your brother has been to London before. He went with me last year. He knows the way. I trust him. Will is almost a man now. He is old enough to go on his own.’

  Will flushed with pride, took a big swig of ale and grinned at Adam. ‘Never mind, little brother,’ he said, ‘one day perhaps I will let you go with me. When you are old enough…’

  ‘But Will’s only two years older than me,’ argued Adam. ‘And I can read better than he can.’

  This was true. Not many people in the village could read at all. Their father had tried teaching both his sons the alphabet, but Will had never understood the point of staring at marks scratched on paper.

  ‘The journey to London is too far,’ said his father. ‘There may be outlaws and robbers in the forests.’

  ‘But I’m not a child!’ protested Adam.

  ‘I need you to stay here and help with the work. Anyway, London is the devil’s own city, full of cutpurses and cutthroats.’

  ‘And harlots and witches,’ said his mother, shaking her head.

  ‘And goblins!’ added Will, pulling a scary face.

  It wasn’t fair. Adam was always left out. Since he was seven it had been his job to watch over the sheep in the long field by Raven’s Wood. It was lonely work, especially on long moonless nights, when the stars were hidden behind the clouds and the trees seemed to sing in the wind. Some people said that there were still wolves living in the woods but Adam had never seen them. Will said that there were goblins in the wood. Adam didn’t believe in goblins but he wouldn’t want to spend a night alone in Raven’s Wood.

  One day, Adam was going to travel to London. His father had often told him about the city, the bells ringing in its tall church spires, the crowds of people on the streets and the wide river Thames. Perhaps he could learn to read and write properly. Then he could offer his services as a clerk to Philip de Mandeville. He would ask his father to recommend him.

  ‘I’m not scared of goblins,’ he protested, ‘and I’m not scared of London. I don’t want to spend all my life looking after sheep in Brampton!’

  ‘It’s God’s will,’ said his mother, gently.

  ‘My father was born here, and so was his father. Nothing ever changes,’ said his father, ‘this is how the world has always been. God gave England to King Edward and he gave the village to Lord Mandeville. The birds have their airy kingdom, the fish must live in the sea and we must live in Brampton.’

  ‘Amen!’ added his mother.

  ‘And little brothers must do what they are told,’ laughed Will.

  Chapter 4

  Beyond the Edge of the World

  Will was up early the next day. He was taking s
ome wool to Master Watkyn in Oxham first, so he was driving the wagon. After Oxham he would have to walk.

  The sun was only just up, but Will’s neighbours were already busy. The smith was in his forge. Mistress Margery was out collecting eggs. Tom and Ned were mending the thatch on Widow Hodge’s house. Old Hugh and his wife were arguing, as usual. Agnes, the dyer’s daughter, was milking a goat.

  ‘And where are you going on this cold morning, Master William?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m off to London,’ said Will, as impressively as he could.

  ‘Off to see the King, are you?’ she teased.

  ‘I’m taking important documents for Lord Mandeville.’

  Agnes didn’t seem as impressed as he hoped she might be. ‘Bring me back some ribbons for my hair, won’t you?’ she said, shaking her long black locks.

  Will blushed. He liked Agnes. Just then, Bo came running after him, barking and trying to jump onto the wagon.

  ‘Go back, boy!’ said Will, ‘Good lad. Go home!’

  The dog turned tail and ran back towards Will’s mother and father, who Will could just see outside the whitewashed walls of their thatched cottage. There was no sign of Adam this morning. Will guessed he was probably sulking somewhere. Well, let him sulk. Will smiled to himself. He was looking forward to telling Adam all about London when he returned home.

  He crossed the bridge by the mill. Alan, the miller’s son, was stacking sacks against the wall. He waved at Will. There was a heron fishing in the middle of the stream. The wagon left the village through the long field, towards Netherford. Watt and his brothers were ploughing their thin strip of land at the far edge of the field. A fox ran along the dripping hedgerow. A fistful of crows flew noisily out of the trees, circled the wood and settled again.

  Will looked back at the village as he reached the top of the hill. This was the edge of his world. Brampton lay quiet and still in the thin sunshine, smoke curling into the mist. At one end stood the old church with its line of churchyard yew trees. He could just see Bo, still standing in the middle of the bridge.