Three Bags Full (13 page)

“He’s woolly,” said Cloud appreciatively. “A bit shaggy, maybe, but woolly.”

“He has a nice voice,” said Cordelia.

“He smells…interesting,” said Maude.

“He’s going to leave us the nose-tickler flowers,” said Mopple optimistically.

Of course the question of who was really the lead ram soon came up.

“We can’t have two lead rams,” said Lane. “Even,” she added thoughtfully, “if they’re both the same.”

They would have liked to keep Sir Ritchfield as their lead ram, but a lead ram who couldn’t be told from another ram at first sight struck them as an impractical proposition. Ritchfield had changed, too. He was more cheerful, more playful, almost as daring as a young ram. He didn’t seem interested in being lead ram anymore, and most of the time he stuck close to Melmoth. They had never seen him so happy. Ritchfield had made a new rule. “No sheep may leave the flock,” he said to anyone who would listen, “unless that sheep comes back again.”

Very early, earlier than George had ever turned up in the meadow, Gabriel was back again. Without his shepherd’s crook and without dogs. Even without his hat but with his pipe in the corner of his mouth. And with a ladder. The sheep were proud to be already at work. Gabriel would soon see there were no idlers among them.

But Gabriel didn’t seem particularly pleased. Was it that he didn’t like Melmoth? Yet Gabriel didn’t even seem to notice the new ram in the flock. He cast a brief glance at his own sheep, who had already grazed half their fenced patch of pasture bare, and then marched off to the crows’ tree with the ladder.

There were no trees at all on the meadow itself. Instead, two sides of the meadow had hedges along them, which were no serious obstacle if a sheep had really decided to get out of the meadow. But they hid the view of the lush green countryside beyond them, and so prevented the sheep from
wanting
to leave. “Psychological deterrents,” George had called them.

Three trees still grew among the gorse in these hedges: the shade tree, where it was cool in summer; a small apple tree, which much to the sheep’s annoyance dropped its apples when they were no bigger than a sheep’s eye and as sour as Willow on her worst days; and the crows’ tree, where birds lived, croaking from dawn to dusk, except at midday.

Gabriel put the ladder up beside the trunk and climbed to the lowest branch. Birds flew up out of it, plump and clumsy pigeons, shiny and mocking crows, black-and-white and furtive magpies.

Gabriel spent some time clambering around in the tree. The sheep watched him.

“He likes magpies,” said Mopple. It was the first time he had said anything about Gabriel. Mopple the Whale was ashamed of the fact that all this business about Gabriel didn’t matter to him very much. If it had been up to him, Gabriel and his strange sheep need never have come here at all. Now the peculiar strangers were grazing part of the meadow bare at alarming speed, and Zora kept looking uneasily at a certain ram among them. Gabriel himself didn’t seem to be very useful either. What had he done for them so far? No mangel-wurzels, no clover, no dry bread, not even hay. He hadn’t cleaned out the water trough, and Mopple thought it badly needed cleaning. Yesterday Gabriel had spent the whole time scurrying uselessly about the meadow. And today it was trees! Naturally the birds scolded and squawked. If
that
was what Gabriel understood by his duties as a shepherd, there were difficult times ahead of them.

The wiry figure hauled itself from branch to branch, higher and higher up the tree. Like a cat, Gabriel was peering into the birds’ nests.

The sheep quickly got bored with it. If Miss Maple hadn’t insisted that they must watch Gabriel closely they would soon have thought of something else to do. But as it was, they stared up through the branches until they felt dizzy from holding their heads at such an unusual angle. Even Melmoth was peering up at Gabriel with a strange birdlike gaze.

It was Sir Ritchfield who saw the important thing. Gabriel seemed to have found what he was looking for in one of the nests. Not only Ritchfield but Zora, Maple, and Othello too could see that Gabriel had a key in his hand. But only Ritchfield saw that it was
not
the key from the packet of oatcakes, the one that Josh had brought yesterday.

“Small and round,” said Sir Ritchfield. “The key from the nest is small and round. And the key yesterday was long and thin.” The sheep were amazed, particularly at Ritchfield. He was so proud of his observation that he didn’t even notice he had been able to remember yesterday’s key. Melmoth’s presence was obviously doing him good.

Gabriel’s memory seemed to be worse than Sir Ritchfield’s. Perhaps he hadn’t really seen the key properly yesterday. He climbed down from the tree again in high good humor. In high good humor he trotted back to the shepherd’s caravan, and still in high good humor he put the key in the lock. He gave an angry little whistle through his teeth. When Gabriel’s sheep heard that whistle, silent panic broke out among them for no apparent reason. They were still in a state of panic long after Gabriel had gone marching along the path through the fields and back to the village. George’s sheep watched them uneasily, until their attention was caught by another sound.

Melmoth was standing beside the dolmen, chuckling.

The sheep noticed that Melmoth was not just one more sheep in their flock. They couldn’t explain to themselves exactly why. Melmoth was a disruptive influence. When Melmoth grazed with them the flock could hardly manage to stay in formation. Instead, they scattered as if a wolf had broken in among them. They scattered at grazing pace, of course, which meant very slowly, almost imperceptibly. It began to feel eerie.

And then there were the birds. Not nice plump songbirds, but hoarse-voiced carrion eaters like crows and magpies. Melmoth let them do gymnastics around him and took them for rides while he was grazing. Of course the sheep weren’t afraid of crows (except perhaps for Mopple), but they smelled too much like death. When they asked Melmoth about it he snorted with derision.

“They’re just a flock like you, a small flock of black wings. They keep watch and graze and scratch your coats. It’s not their fault if they graze on death. They leave memory in peace. They’re cleverer than their own voices. They understand the wind.”

Crazy, thought a lot of the sheep, but no one dared say so out loud. Melmoth’s language might be as strange as a goat’s bleating, but he didn’t give any impression at all of being confused. It was as if Melmoth’s remarks went around what he wanted to say in strange lines; his remarks seemed long-winded but not crazy. Only Cordelia insisted that Melmoth’s language was more
precise
than anything the other sheep said.

“He doesn’t just talk about things the way he sees them, he talks about things the way they
are
,” she would say when a small group of sheep had gathered somewhere to criticize Melmoth. Such little groups were assembling with increasing frequency—and secrecy. They quickly noticed that Melmoth had a positively uncanny way of picking up much of what went on in the meadow.

“The birds tell him,” bleated Heather, and the sheep began keeping a wary eye on the sky. They watched Melmoth more closely than ever.

Melmoth grazed his way across the meadow like a lone wolf. There was even something wolfish about the expression on his face. It seemed to them as if Melmoth wasn’t really a sheep at all. The boldest among them briefly remembered the story of the wolf in sheep’s clothing, and shuddered.

And then there was a single lamb, a lamb who stood on wobbly legs watching Melmoth with wide, timid eyes. A little later a rumor began circulating through the whole flock, the rumor that Melmoth
was
a ghost after all. They knew from the fairy tale that the dead sometimes returned as ghosts to take their revenge. Whispers ran through the flock. “Goblin King,” said the whispers, and “Wolf’s ghost.”

Othello was annoyed. He had been trying to track the old ram down for days. For years, in fact, since that rainy night at the circus when Melmoth had galloped past the rows of tents like the wind, while Othello watched through bars, and the cruel clown lay in the mud shouting for a light, Othello had always known that he must find Melmoth again. And now Melmoth had found
him
. Othello was not happy. Should he race joyfully to meet him, like Sir Ritchfield? Melmoth had taught Othello patience, taught him about fire and water, how to watch the slimy trail of snails, how to chase rage and fear back to the world where they came from. He had shown him how to watch thoughts. He had taught him how to fight. Melmoth’s voice, accompanying Othello, had saved his life more than once.

But Melmoth had left him behind with the cruel clown. “Sometimes being alone is an advantage,” snorted Othello angrily. Of all the things that Melmoth had told him, this was the only one he had never believed.

Othello had hidden from Melmoth as best he could, unable to come to any decision. Yes, Melmoth knew he was here, but for some reason the gray ram had decided to leave him alone. Did he simply not care about Othello—just one of countless sheep he had met in his lonely wanderings, submerged in a faceless flock in which Melmoth took no interest? Of all possible explanations, this one struck Othello as the worst.

But now he heard the anxious whispers of his new flock—his first real flock—and he began to feel real concern. Suppose it were true that George had once tried to hunt Melmoth down in a life-and-death struggle, as the flock was whispering? Then what? If there was one thing he had learned in his time with the circus, it was that Melmoth was capable of anything.

Miss Maple was thinking feverishly too. She didn’t believe for a moment that Melmoth was a ghost. But might he not have something to do with George’s death? What did Ritchfield know? Maple was sure that Ritchfield’s strange behavior these last few days must have something to do with Melmoth.

When Melmoth had dozed off under the crows’ tree, Maple couldn’t stand it any longer. Moving with determined steps, she grazed beside Sir Ritchfield.

“Who’d have expected Melmoth to survive?” she remarked casually.

Ritchfield snorted with amusement. “I would,” he said. “It was a twin feeling. That rainy night I knew he’d come back. After that I waited.”

“But you didn’t say anything to us,” said Maple.

Ritchfield did not reply.

“And you always told us you could smell his death on George’s hands,” Maple insisted.

“I smelled death on George’s hands, yes,” said Ritchfield thoughtfully. “So it must have been someone else’s death.”

“Or a near death,” said Maple. “Perhaps Melmoth got away more dead than alive. He must have been very angry with George…”

Ritchfield did not reply. Miss Maple pulled up a dandelion plant.

“You haven’t told us anything,” said Miss Maple, when she had finished chewing the dandelion leaves. “You intimidated Mopple because you thought he’d found out something about Melmoth. So that he wouldn’t give anything away…Why?”

Ritchfield looked bothered. “It wasn’t right to intimidate Mopple the Whale,” he said. “But I thought…”

Miss Maple could bear it no longer. “You thought Melmoth might have something to do with George’s death! Behaving so strangely, stealing secretly out to the meadow by night, and just after George’s death too. You imagined that something terrible must have happened back then, the night after Melmoth’s flight. Melmoth could have been carrying his anger around with him all this time, couldn’t he? You decided to keep Melmoth’s return secret.”

Maple looked up confidently: a proper deduction, made from clues, just like in the detective story. She was proud of herself. From Ritchfield’s downcast expression, she could see she had scored a bull’s-eye.

“I wanted to help him,” said Ritchfield. “Twin for twin.”

“Twin for twin,” snorted Melmoth, who had suddenly popped up on Miss Maple’s other side. Maple looked from one ram to the other and back. Whichever way she turned her head, she always saw the same ram.

Melmoth looked keenly at Ritchfield. “Angry with George?” he snorted. “Magpie chatter. Howling wind. Lambs’ drivel. Would you like to come with me into the night when you didn’t want to come too? Would you like to hear a story?” He bleated loudly, so that all the sheep in the meadow could hear. “The story of the fifth night.”

The sun had climbed high in the sky, and no wind was blowing off the sea. The only creatures who didn’t seem to mind the heat were the flies, who buzzed tirelessly around the sheep’s nostrils and crawled into their ears. So even the more skeptical sheep had an excuse to come in under the cool branches of the shade tree, quite by chance, to where Melmoth was resting on a soft cushion of old leaves, telling his story. Even the winter lamb peered out from behind the trunk of the shade tree, and as the other sheep were too lethargic to chase him away, he stayed.

All the sheep in George’s flock found they had shivers running through their fleece that perfect summer’s day. Melmoth told a story such as the sheep had never heard before, not just with words but with the wind in his wool and his trembling heart, and soon all the sheep were racing through the darkness with him.