A Parcel of Patterns by Jill Paton Walsh

Author:Jill Paton Walsh [Walsh, Jill Paton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2021-04-01T00:00:00+00:00

‘That’s not it, Mall,’ he said, smiling still. ‘Tease me not. That air thou sangest a moment since, so sweet and sorrowful it would charm all the birds to hearken to it. I heard it all along the street as I came home to you. And now I would have it sung again, that I may listen close. Come, Mouse, come …’

‘And it’s all, all, all to plough,’ I tried,

‘Where the fat oxen graze, love;

‘And the lads and the lasses to the sheepshearing go!’

‘That’s not it, yet, contrary wife!’ he cried, protesting. ‘Mock me not. Give me that air again, thou sangest just now!’

‘Oh, Thomas, I don’t know what it was!’ I cried, and now he saw at last that something was amiss.

‘Thou sangest …?’

‘Nothing.’

‘I heard thee, Mall, sweet as a nightingale, drawing me home …’

Then in my mortal fear I ran to him, and clasped him in my arms; and as I held him he winced, for a soreness that had come under his arm.

Do not the parsons also say that flesh is grass? That this is a Vale of Tears in which we dwell, and no joy, no delight, on earth endures? And in that saying they are right, are right! Thomas had caught the Plague, and, six days after, died of it. I have written elsewhere how the Plague goes. Thomas had all of it to suffer, which he did patiently for the most part. And when the fever broke he had a few hours lying calm and quiet, and I implored him to keep still, and not move a muscle for his life, and as he loved me.

‘As I love thee is not still and quiet, Mouse, but lustily, come hither!’ he answered, jesting, and reached out to me, and would have drawn me down to him … and as he stretched his arm, and grasped at my hand, his eyes emptied, and he was gone, like a candle going out in a gust.

Someone came in to take and bury him, I scarcely know. I know not who, or when. I took the sheet from off the empty bed, and brought it down the stairs. My guilt was dreadful to me, for it was my lying message that had entrapped Thomas, and brought him to his death. I had encompassed the last thing in the world I would have done. So I wrapped myself in the fouled bedsheet, and sat down in a chair in the middle of the room, and waited for the vengeance of the Lord.

The Lord our God is a harsh and a cruel God. How terrible the punishments he visited on the small sins of Eyam! Where was his mercy, when my neighbours died in torments for the theft of a thimble, or a wayward thought, or a careless unkind word! And I, who had sinned indeed, had lied, and lied to trustful, candid Thomas, and so brought about his death – would the providence of an affronted God not then bring death to me? The Lord God sees into our innermost hearts.

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