Free All Fall Down by Sally Nicholls

nothing to be done. I remember that baby – what did happen to him? I remember Robin, my kind, anxious Robin. Locked in with the miasma and no one coming.
    â€œI don’t care what Will Thatcher says!” I shout, so suddenly that Maggie looks up, startled. “I don’t care what anyone says! You can’t stop me!”
    I push past Ned blindly and run outside. Alice calls after me, “Isabel! You come back here!” but I don’t answer.
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    Robin lives across the green from us, the middle house of a row of three with John Baker and the oven at one end and the forge at the other. The two little Smith girls are playing in the garden as I come up to the house – they stop to stare at me over the fence. I ignore them. I’m trying not to listen to the voice – Alice’s voice – in my head telling me to walk away and not bring the sickness on our family. The voice that tells me
that these people are in God’s hands now, and there’s nothing I can do for them.
    â€œRobin,” I call, and I rap on the closed door with the back of my hand. Then, when no one answers, “Robin!”
    No one comes. The chickens carry on pecking at the earth around my feet.
    There are noises inside the house, scuffles, then the door opens, and Robin appears. He looks smaller than I remember, and paler. He’s got a posset of something – herbs, probably – in a little sack pressed up against his nose to protect him from the pestilence scent.
    â€œIsabel!” he says, alarmed. “What are you doing here?” I come closer, and he retreats into the house. “No, get back! Don’t come any nearer!”
    â€œI wanted to see you,” I say. “Don’t go away! Otherwise I’ll come right inside the house and kiss you. And you won’t be able to stop me, so don’t try. How could I not come and see you?”
    â€œYou oughtn’t to have come,” says Robin, but he’s smiling a little, and I know he’s pleased to see me. Robin doesn’t have any family left in the village except us, and his mother, and an old, blind, addled grandmother who is no use to anyone.
    â€œListen, Robin,” I say. “You’re going to need food. And water. I don’t think you want to go to the well, do you?”
    â€œOh . . .” Robin clearly hasn’t thought about food. But I’ve seen how the villagers gathered their skirts up away from Sarah Fisher when she tried to go for her water, and wouldn’t speak to her, and I couldn’t bear it if they turned away from Robin too.
    â€œPerhaps . . .” he says.
    â€œI can get you whatever you need,” I say. “If you need
anything, just ask me.” Then, all in a rush: “Robin, be careful, won’t you, please. Don’t—”
    Don’t die , is what I want to say. But how can he avoid it, living in that miasma?
    â€œDon’t look in her eyes,” I say, instead, and he gives a hiccuppy laugh.
    â€œI’ll be fine, Isabel,” he says. “Don’t worry about me. Please.” And I want to weep. What right has Robin got to be worrying about me, when he’s stuck in a pestilence house with a mother who is almost certainly going to die? “I’ll stick my head in the pig dung,” he says. “I won’t wash!”
    I try to smile. “They should send you up to the infirmary at the abbey,” I say, trying to play along. “You’ll give them all Robin Fever instead of the pestilence.”
    Robin smiles, but half-heartedly.
    â€œIs it—” I say. Is it terrible? is what I want to ask. Your mother, has she gone mad? Does she piss herself? Does she stink? Is her flesh rotting on her bones? Are you all right, cleaning up the blood and the vomit and worse? But how can I say these things? And what would Robin answer if I did?
    He doesn’t let me finish.
    â€œListen,” he says. “You