Towin muttered, “You can’t be that old. It isn’t all that time since things fell apart and no more kids were born. Is it?”
“You don’t know what time is. Aren’t you a bit confused in your mind? Mind you, I’m saying nothing. All I’m saying is I just come from there. There’s too many vagabonds wandering round like you lot, moving about the country. It’ll be better next time I go there, in another hundred years. There won’t be any vagabonds then. They’ll all be underground, growing toadstools. I shall have the whole world to myself, just me and Lita and those things that twitter and fry in the hedges. How I wish they’d stop that bloody old twittering and frying all the time. It’s going to be hell with all them in a few thousand years or so.” Suddenly he put his paws over his eyes; big senile tears came spurting through his fingers, his shoulders shook. “It’s a lonely life, friends,” he said.
Greybeard laid a hand on his shoulder and offered to get him to bed. Norsgrey jumped up and cried that he could look after himself. Still snivelling, he turned into the gloom, scattering hens, and crawled behind the blue curtain. The others sat looking at each other.
“Daft old fool!” Becky said uncomfortably.
“He seems to know a lot of things,” Towin said to her.”In the morning, we’d better ask him about your baby.”
She rounded angrily on him.
“Towin, you useless clot you, letting our secrets out! Didn’t I tell you over and over you wasn’t to mention it till people saw the state I’m in? Your stupid old clacking tongue! You’re like an old woman -”
“Becky, is this true?” Greybeard asked. “Are you pregnant?”
“Ah, she’s gravid as a rabbit,” Towin admitted, hanging his head. “Twins, I’d say it is, by the feel.”
Martha looked at the plump little woman; phantom pregnancies were frequent in Sparcot, and she did not doubt this was another such. But people believed what they wanted to believe; Charley clasped his hands together and said earnestly, “If this be true, God’s name be praised! It’s a miracle, a sign from Heaven!”
“Don’t give us any of that old rubbish,” Towin said angrily. “This was my doing and no one else’s.”
“The Almighty works through the lowest among us, Towin Thomas,” Charley said. “If Becky is pregnant, then it is a token to us that He will after all come down in the eleventh hour and replenish the Earth with his people. Let us all join in prayer – Martha, Algy, Becky -”
“I don’t want any of that stuff,” Towin said. “Nobody’s praying for my offspring. We don’t owe your God a brass farthing, Charley boy. If he’s so blessed powerful, then he was the one that did all this damage in the first place. I reckon old Norsgrey was right – we don’t know how long ago it all happened. Don’t tell me it was only eleven years we was at Sparcot! It seemed like centuries to me. Perhaps we’re all a thousand years old, and -”
“Becky, may I put my hand on your stomach?” Martha asked.
“Let’s all have a feel, Beck,” Pitt said, grinning, his interest momentarily roused.
“You keep your hands to yourself,” Becky told him. But she allowed Martha to feel beneath her voluminous clothes, looking into space as the other woman gently kneaded the flesh of her stomach.
“Your stomach is certainly swollen,” Martha said.
“Ah ha! Told you!” Towin cried. “Four years gone, she is – mean, four months. That’s why we didn’t want to leave that house where the sheep were. It would have made us a nice little home, only Clever Dick here would shove off down his beloved river!”
He bared his stubbly wolf visage in a grin towards Greybeard.
“We will go to Swifford fair tomorrow, and see what we can fix up for you both,” Greybeard said. “There should be a doctor there who will examine Becky and give her advice. Meanwhile, let’s follow the ginger chap’s example and settle down for some sleep.”
“You mind that old reindeer don’t eat Isaac during the night,” Becky told Charley. “I could tell you a thing or two about them animals, I could. They’re crafty beasts, reindeer.”