Crow Boy Read Free Page B

flowers, which he thought would act as some kind of filter. He wore goggles to protect his eyes and, of course, his helmet and cloak were made of thick leather.’ She studied the class for a moment. ‘I wonder if any of you can tell me how the plague was actually spread,’ she said.
    Before he could stop himself, Tom’s hand went up. ‘Fleas,’ he said.
    There was raucous laughter at this, but Agnes soon silenced them with a stern look.
    â€˜I don’t know why you’re laughing,’ she told them. ‘He’s quite right.’ She smiled at Tom. ‘What else can you tell me?’
    â€˜Well . . .’ Tom was aware of Gillies and his mates looking daggers at him, as though The Manky wasn’t allowed to know anything about their history, but he ignored them and went on. ‘The fleas fed on infected rats and then, when the rats died, the fleas moved on to people.’
    â€˜Have you been here before?’ Agnes asked him, suspiciously.
    He shook his head. ‘I went to this other place,’ he muttered. ‘Eyam, in Derbyshire?’ He’d been there on a school trip earlier that year. His class had done a project on it and, unlike most projects he’d been involved with, it had been really interesting. They’d got the plague there in the 1660’s (he couldn’t remember the actual date). The fleas came in on rolls of cloth that a tailor had ordered and near enough the whole village had ended up infected. The villagers were incredibly brave about it and opted to shut themselves off from the rest of the world, forbidding anyone to leave, so they wouldn’t spread the sickness. ‘I think over two hundred people died there,’ he added, ‘which was like two-thirds of the village.’
    The moment he’d finished talking, Tom regretted it. Gillies was looking at him now with a ‘just you wait’ expression on his ugly face.
    But Agnes smiled. ‘That’s brilliant,’ she said. ‘Thanks for sharing that with us.’ She looked around at the children. ‘You see, it wasn’t just Edinburgh that suffered from the plague; there were outbreaks all over the world. Perhaps the most famous was the Great Plague of London in 1666. I’m sure some of you must have heard of that?’ Nobody so much as grunted, so she continued. ‘But, going back to our ‘Crow Man’ here . . .’ She flashed a mischievous look at Jenny. ‘Although the herbs and flowers in that beak didn’t help him one iota, something else about his costume almost certainly saved him from infection. I wonder, would anybody like to hazard a guess about what that might be?’
    There was a long, baffled silence, before Tom felt compelled to speak again. ‘The leather cloak,’ he said. ‘The fleas wouldn’t have been able to bite through it.’
    â€˜Correct!’ said Agnes. ‘You’re certainly on the ball, today.’ She looked around at the others. ‘Now, if there are no more questions, we’ll move on.’ She headed for the door and the children shuffled after her. Tom hung back, as ever, but noticed that Gillies was doing the same. The heavyset boy ambled closer until he was standing right beside Tom. He smelled of a mixture of stale sweat and cheese and onion crisps.
    â€˜Think you’re smart, don’t you, Manky?’ he murmured.
    â€˜Smarter than you, at any rate,’ said Tom. His success with the questions must have made him reckless.
    â€˜Yeah, you enjoy it while you can. You and me are gonna have a little talk straight after this. We’ll see how clever you are, then.’
    â€˜Come on, boys, stop hanging around,’ said Mr McKenzie, who was probably already regretting offering to shepherd this outing.
    The two boys moved obediently towards the door and Mr McKenzie followed them out. They caught up with the rest of the group just as they came to a halt in