The Doomsday Book Page 10

  It had been made by a soft-soled shoe with no heel, and the foot that had made it was large, larger even than hers. A man’s foot, but men in the 1300s had been smaller, shorter, with feet not even as big as hers. And this was a giant’s foot.

  Maybe it’s an old footprint, she thought wildly. Maybe it’s the footprint of a woodcutter, or a peasant looking for a lost sheep. Maybe this is one of the king’s woodlands, and they’ve been through here hunting. But it wasn’t the footprint of someone chasing a deer. It was the print of someone who had stood there for a long time, watching her. I heard him, she thought, and a little flutter of panic forced itself up into her throat. I heard him standing there.

  She was still kneeling, holding on to the wheel for balance. If the man, whoever it was, and it had to be a man, a giant, were still here in this glade, watching, he must know that she had found the footprint. She stood up. “Hello!” she called, and frightened the birds to death again. They flapped and squawked themselves into hushed silence. “Is someone there?”

  She waited, listening, and it seemed to her that in the silence she could hear the breathing again. “Speke, ” she said. “I am in distresse an my servauntes fled.”

  Lovely, she thought even as she said it. Tell him you’re helpless and all alone.

  “Halloo!” she called again and began a cautious circuit of the glade, peering out into the trees. If he was still standing there, it was so dark she wouldn’t be able to see him. She couldn’t make out anything past the edges of the glade. She couldn’t even tell for sure which way the thicket and the road lay. If she waited any longer, it would be completely dark, and she would never be able to get the wagon to the road.

  But she couldn’t move the wagon. Whoever had stood there between the two trees, watching her, knew that the wagon was here. Maybe he had even seen it come through, bursting on the sparkling air like something conjured by an alchemist. If that were the case, he had probably run off to get the stake Dunworthy was so sure the populace kept in readiness. But surely if that were the case, he would have said something, even if it was only “Yoicks!” or “Heavenly Father!” and she would have heard him crashing through the underbrush as he ran away.

  He hadn’t run away, though, which meant he hadn’t seen her come through. He had come upon her afterward, lying inexplicably in the middle of the woods beside a smashed wagon, and thought what? That she had been attacked on the road and then dragged here to hide the evidence?

  Then why hadn’t he tried to help her? Why had he stood there, silent as an oak, long enough to leave a deep footprint, and then gone away again? Maybe he had thought she was dead. He would have beep frightened of her unshriven body. People as late as the fifteenth century had believed that evil spirits took immediate possession of any body not properly buried.

  Or maybe he had gone for help, to one of those villages that Kivrin had heard, maybe even Skendgate, and was even now on his way back with half the town, all of them carrying lanterns.

  In that case, she should stay where she was and wait for him to come back. She should even lie down again. When the townspeople arrived, they could speculate about her and then bear her to the village, giving her examples of the language, the way her plan had been intended to work in the first place. But what if he came back alone, or with friends who had no intention of helping her?

  She couldn’t think. Her headache had spread out from her temple to behind her eyes. As she rubbed her forehead, it began to throb. And she was so cold! This cloak, in spite of its rabbit-fur lining, wasn’t warm at all. How had people survived the Little Ice Age dressed only in cloaks like this? How had the rabbits survived?

  At least she could do something about the cold. She could gather some wood and start a fire, and then if the footprint person came back with evil intentions, she could hold him off with a flaming brand. And if he had gone off for help and not been able to find his way back in the dark, the fire would lead him to her.

  She made the circuit of the glade again, looking for wood. Dunworthy had insisted she learn to build a fire without tinder or flint. “Gilchrist expects you to wander around the Middle Ages in the dead of winter without knowing how to build a fire?” he had said, outraged, and she had defended him, told him Mediaeval didn’t expect her to spend that much time out-of-doors. But they should have realized how cold it could get.

  The sticks made her hands cold, and every time she bent over to pick up a stick, her head hurt. Eventually she stopped bending over altogether and simply stooped and grabbed for the broken-off twigs, keeping her head straight. That helped a little, but not much. Maybe she was feeling this way because she was so cold. Maybe the headache, the breathlessness, were coming from being so cold. She had to get the fire started.

  The wood felt icy cold and wet. It would never burn. And the leaves would be damp, too, far too damp to use for tinder. She had to have dry kindling and a sharp stick to start a fire. She laid the wood down in a little bundle by the roots of a tree, careful to keep her head straight, and went back to the wagon.

  The bashed-in side of the wagon had several broken pieces of wood she could use for kindling. She got two splinters in her hand before she managed to pull the pieces free, but the wood at least felt dry, though it was cold, too. There was a large, sharp spur of wood just above the wheel. She bent over to grab it and nearly fell, gasping with the sudden nauseating dizziness.

  “You’d better lie down,” she said out loud.

  She eased herself to sitting, holding on to the ribs of the wagon for support. “Dr. Ahrens,” she said a little breathlessly, “you ought to come up with something to prevent time lag. This is awful.”

  If she could just lie down for a bit, perhaps the dizziness would go away and she could build the fire. She couldn’t do it without bending over, though, and just the thought of doing that brought the nausea back.

  She pulled her hood up over her head and closed her eyes, and even that hurt, the action seeming to focus the pain in her head. Something was wrong. This could not possibly be a reaction to time lag. She was supposed to have a few minor symptoms that would fade within an hour or two of her arrival, not get worse. A little headache, Dr. Ahrens had said, some fatigue. She hadn’t said anything about nausea, about being racked with cold.

  She was so cold. She pulled the skirts of her cloak around her like a blanket, but the action seemed to make her even colder. Her teeth began to chatter, the way they had up on the hill, and great, convulsive shudders shook her shoulders.

  I’m going to freeze to death, she thought. But it can’t be helped. I can’t get up and start the fire. I can’t. I’m too cold. It’s too bad you were wrong about the contemps, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, and even the thought was dizzy. Being burned at the stake sounds lovely.

  She would not have believed that she could have fallen asleep, huddled there on the cold ground. She had not noticed any spreading warmth, and if she had she would have been afraid it was the creeping numbness of hypothermia and tried to fight it. But she must have slept because when she opened her eyes again it was night in the glade, full night with frosty stars in the net of branches overhead, and she was on the ground looking up at them.

  She had slid down as she slept, so that the top of her head was against the wheel. She was still shivering with cold, though her teeth had stopped chattering. Her head had begun to throb, tolling like a bell, and her whole body ached, especially her chest, where she had held the wood against her while she gathered sticks for the fire.

  Something’s wrong, she thought, and this time there was real panic in the thought. Maybe she was having some kind of allergic reaction to time travel. Was there even such a thing? Dunworthy had never said anything about an allergic reaction, and he had warned her about everything: rape and cholera and typhoid and the plague.

  She twisted her hand around inside the cloak and felt under her arm for the place where she had had the welt from the antiviral inoculation. The welt was still there, though it didn’t hurt
to touch it, and it had stopped itching. Maybe that was a bad sign, she thought. Maybe the fact that it had stopped itching meant that it had stopped working.

  She tried to lift her head. The dizziness came back instantly. She lay her head back down and disentangled her hands from the cloak, carefully and slowly, the nausea cutting across every movement. She folded her hands and pressed them against her face. “Mr. Dunworthy,” she said. “I think you’d better come and get me.”

  She slept again, and when she woke up she could hear the faint, jangling sound of the piped-in Christmas music. Oh, good, she thought, they’ve got the net open, and tried to pull herself to sitting against the wheel.

  “Oh, Mr. Dunworthy, I’m so glad you came back,” she said, fighting the nausea. “I was afraid you wouldn’t get my message.”

  The jangling sound became louder, and she could see a wavering light. She pulled herself up a little farther. “You got the fire started,” she said. “You were right about it getting cold.” The wagon’s wheel felt icy through her cloak. Her teeth started to chatter again. “Dr. Ahrens was right. I should have waited till the swelling went down. I didn’t know the reaction would be this bad.”

  It wasn’t a fire, after all. It was a lantern. Dunworthy was carrying it as he walked toward her.

  “This doesn’t mean I’m getting a virus, does it? Or the plague?” She was having trouble getting the words out, her teeth were chattering so hard. “Wouldn’t that be awful? Having the plague in the Middle Ages? At least I’d fit right in.”

  She laughed, a high-pitched, almost-hysterical laugh that would probably frighten Mr. Dunworthy to death. “It’s all right,” she said, and she could hardly understand her own words. “I know you were worried, but I’ll be perfectly all right. I just—”

  He stopped in front of her, the lantern lighting a wobbling circle on the ground in front of her. She could see Dunworthy’s feet. He was wearing shapeless leather shoes, the kind that had made the footprint. She tried to say something about the shoes, to ask him whether Mr. Gilchrist had made him put on authentic mediaeval dress just to come and fetch her, but the light’s movement was making her dizzy again.

  She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, he was kneeling in front of her. He had set the lantern down, and the light lit the hood of his cloak and folded hands.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I know you were worried, but I’m all right. Truly. I just felt a little ill.”

  He raised his head. “Certes, it been derlostuh dayes forgott foreto getest hissahntes im aller,” he said.

  He had a hard, lined face, a cruel face, a cutthroat’s face. He had watched her lying there and then he had gone away and waited for it to get dark, and now he had come back.

  Kivrin tried to put up a hand to fend him off, but her hands had got tangled somehow in the cloak. “Go away,” she said, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn’t get the words out. “Go away.”

  He said something else, with a rising inflection this time, a question. She couldn’t understand what he was saying. It’s Middle English, she thought. I studied it for three years, and Mr. Latimer taught me everything there is to know about adjectival inflection. I should be able to understand it. It’s the fever, she thought. That’s why I can’t make out what he’s saying.

  He repeated the question or asked some other question, she couldn’t even tell that much.

  It’s because I’m ill, she thought. I can’t understand him because I’m ill. “Kind sir,” she began, but she could not remember the rest of the speech. “Help me,” she said, and tried to think how to say that in Middle English, but she couldn’t remember anything but the Church Latin. “Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina, ” she said.

  He bowed his head over his hands and began to murmur so low she could not hear, and then she must have lost consciousness again because he had picked her up and was carrying her. She could still hear the jangling sound of the bells from the open net, and she tried to tell what direction they were coming from, but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn’t hear.

  “I’m ill,” she said as he set her on the white horse. She fell forward, clutching at the horse’s mane to keep from falling off. He put his hand up to her side and held her there. “I don’t know how this happened. I had all my inoculations.”

  He led the donkey off slowly. The bells on its bridle jingled tinnily.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

  (000740–000751)

  Mr. Dunworthy, I think you’d better come and get me.

  7

  I knew it,” Mrs. Gaddson said, steaming down the corridor toward them. “He’s contracted some horrible disease, hasn’t he? It’s all that rowing.”

  Mary stepped forward. “You can’t come in here,” she said. “This is an isolation area.”

  Mrs. Gaddson kept coming. The transparent poncho she was wearing over her coat threw off large, spattering drops as she walked toward them, swinging the valise like a weapon. “You can’t put me off like that. I’m his mother. I demand to see him.”

  Mary put up her hand like a policeman. “Stop,” she said in her best ward sister voice.

  Amazingly, Mrs. Gaddson stopped. “A mother has a right to see her son,” she said. Her expression softened. “Is he very ill?”

  “If you mean your son William, he’s not ill at all,” Mary said, “at least so far as I know.” She put her hand up again. “Please don’t come any closer. Why do you think William’s ill?”

  “I knew it the minute I heard about the quarantine. A sharp pain went through me when the Stationmaster said ‘temp quarantine.’ ” She set down the valise so she could indicate the location of the sharp pain. “It’s because he didn’t take his vitamins. I asked the college to be sure to give them to him,” she said, shooting a glance at Dunworthy that was the rival of any of Gilchrist’s, “and they said he was able to take care of himself. Well, obviously, they were wrong.”

  “William is not the reason the temp quarantine was called. One of the University techs has come down with a viral infection,” Mary said.

  Dunworthy noticed gratefully that she didn’t say “Balliol’s tech.”

  “The tech is the only case, and there is no indication that there will be any others,” Mary said. “The quarantine is a purely precautionary measure, I assure you.”

  Mrs. Gaddson didn’t look convinced. “My Willy’s always been sickly, and he simply will not take care of himself. He studies far too hard in that drafty room of his,” she said with another dark look at Dunworthy. “I’m surprised he hasn’t come down with a viral infection before this.”

  Mary took her hand down and put it in the pocket she carried her bleeper in. I do hope she’s calling for help, Dunworthy thought.

  “By the end of one term at Balliol, Willy’s health was completely broken down, and then his tutor forced him to stay up over Christmas and read Petrarch,” Mrs. Gaddson said. “That’s why I came up. The thought of him all alone in this horrid place for Christmas, eating heaven knows what and doing all sorts of things to endanger his health, was something this mother’s heart could simply not bear.”

  She pointed to the place where the pain had gone through her at the words “temp quarantine.” “And it is positively providential that I came when I did. Positively providential. I nearly missed the train, my valise was so cumbersome, and I almost thought, Ah, well, there’ll be another along, but I wanted to get to my Willy, so I shouted at them to hold the doors, and I hadn’t so much as stepped off at Cornmarket when the Stationmaster said, ‘Temp quarantine. Train service is temporarily suspended.’ Only just think, if I’d missed that train and taken the next one, I would have been stopped by the quarantine.”

  Only just think. “I’m sure William will be surprised to see you,” Dunworthy said, hoping she would go find him.

  “Yes,” she said grimly. “He’s probably sitting there without even his muffler on. He’ll get this viral infection, I know it. He gets everythin
g. He used to break out in horrible rashes when he was little. He’s bound to come down with it. At least his mother is here to nurse him through it.”

  The door was flung open and two people wearing masks, gowns, gloves, and some sort of paper covering over their shoes came racing through it. They slowed to a walk when they saw there was no one collapsed on the floor.

  “I need this area cordoned off and an isolation ward sign posted,” Mary said. She turned to Mrs. Gaddson. “I’m afraid there’s a possibility you’ve been exposed to the virus. We do not have a positive mode of transmission yet, and we can’t rule out the possibility of its being airborne,” she said, and for one horrible moment Dunworthy thought she meant to put Mrs. Gaddson in the waiting room with them.

  “Would you escort Mrs. Gaddson to an isolation cubicle?” she asked one of the masked-and-gowneds. “We’ll need to run blood tests and get a list of your contacts. Mr. Dunworthy, if you’ll just come with me,” she said and led him into the waiting room and shut the door before Mrs. Gaddson could protest. “They can keep her awhile and give poor Willy a few last hours of freedom.”

  “That woman would make anyone break out in a rash,” he said.

  Everyone except the medic had looked up at their entrance. Latimer was sitting patiently by the tray, his sleeve rolled up. Montoya was still using the phone.

  “Colin’s train was turned back,” Mary said. “He’s safely at home by now.”

  “Oh, good,” Montoya said and put the phone down. Gilchrist leaped for it.

  “Mr. Latimer, I’m sorry to keep you waiting,” Mary said. She broke open a pair of imperm gloves, put them on, and began assembling a punch.

  “Gilchrist here. I wish to speak with the Senior Tutor,” Gilchrist said into the telephone. “Yes. I’m trying to reach Mr. Basingame. Yes, I’ll wait.”

  The Senior Tutor has no idea where he is, Dunworthy thought, and neither has the secretary. He’d already spoken to them when he was trying to stop the drop. The secretary hadn’t even known he was in Scotland.