Doomsday Book Page 15

  “I don’t know. Nothing. Except that she’s alone in the Middle Ages.”

  Mary set her cup of tea down on the trolley. “She may be safer there than here. We’re going to have a good many ill patients. Influenza spreads like wildfire, and the quarantine will only make it worse. The medical staff are always the first exposed. If they come down with it, or the supply of antimicrobials gives out, this century could be the one that’s a ten.”

  She pushed her hand tiredly over her untidy hair. “Sorry, it’s the fatigue speaking. This isn’t the Middle Ages, after all. It’s not even the twentieth century. We have metabolizers and adjuvants, and if it’s the South Carolina virus, we’ve an analogue and a vaccine. But I’m still glad Colin and Kivrin are safely out of this.”

  “Safely in the Middle Ages,” Dunworthy said.

  Mary smiled at him. “With the cutthroats.”

  The door banged open. A tallish blond boy with large feet and a rugby duffel came in, dripping water on the floor.

  “Colin!” Mary said.

  “So this is where you’ve got to,” Colin said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

  (000893–000898)

  Mr. Dunworthy, ad adjuvandum me festina.*

  * Translation: Make haste to help me.

  BOOK

  TWO

  In the bleak midwinter

  Frosty wind made moan,

  Earth stood hard as iron,

  Water like a stone;

  Snow had fallen, snow on snow,

  Snow on snow,

  In the bleak midwinter

  Long ago.

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

  10

  The fire was out. Kivrin could still smell smoke in the room, but she knew it was from a fire burning in a hearth somewhere. It’s no wonder, she thought, chimneys didn’t become extant in England until the late fourteenth century, and this is only 1320. And as soon as she had formed the thought, awareness of the rest of it came: I am in 1320, and I’ve been ill. I’ve had a fever.

  For a while she didn’t think any further than that. It was peaceful to just lie there and rest. She felt worn out, as if she had come through some terrible ordeal that took all her strength. I thought they were trying to burn me at the stake, she thought. She remembered struggling against them and the flames leaping up, licking at her hands, burning her hair.

  They had to cut off my hair, she thought, and wondered if that were a memory or something she had dreamed. She was too tired to raise her hand to her hair, too tired to even try to remember. I have been very ill, she thought. They gave me the last rites. “There is naught to fear,” he had said. “You do but go home again.” Requiscat in pace. And slept.

  When she woke again, it was dark in the room, and a bell was ringing a long way off. She had the idea that it had been ringing for a long time, the way the lone bell had rung when she came through, but after a minute another one chimed in, and then one so close it seemed to be just outside the window, drowning out the others as they rang. Matins, Kivrin thought, and seemed to remember them ringing like that before, a ragged, out-of-tune chiming that matched the beating of her heart, but that was impossible.

  She must have dreamed it. She had dreamed they were burning her at the stake. She had dreamed they cut off her hair. She had dreamed the contemps spoke a language she didn’t understand.

  The nearest bell stopped, and the others went on for a while, as if glad of the opportunity to make themselves heard, and Kivrin remembered that, too. How long had she been here? It had been night, and now it was morning. It seemed like one night, but now she remembered the faces leaning over her. When the woman had brought her the cup and again when the priest had come in, and the cutthroat with him, she had been able to see them clearly, without the flicker of unsteady candlelight. And in between she remembered darkness and the smoky light of tallow lamps and the bells, ringing and stopping and ringing again.

  She felt a sudden stab of panic. How long had she been lying here? What if she had been ill for weeks and had already missed the rendezvous? But that was impossible. People weren’t delirious for weeks, even if they had typhoid fever, and she couldn’t have typhoid fever. She had had her inoculations.

  It was cold in the room, as if the fire had gone out in the night. She felt for the bed coverings, and hands came up out of the dark immediately and pulled something soft over her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” Kivrin said, and slept.

  The cold woke her again, and she had the feeling she had only slept a few moments, though there was a little light in the room now. It came from a narrow window recessed in the stone wall. The window’s shutters had been opened, and that was where the cold was coming from, too.

  A woman was standing on tiptoe on the stone seat under the window, fastening a cloth over the opening. She was wearing a black robe and a white wimple and coif, and for a moment Kivrin thought, I’m in a nunnery, and then remembered that women in the 1300s covered their hair when they were married. Only unmarried girls wore their hair loose and uncovered.

  The woman didn’t look old enough to be married, or to be a nun either. There had been a woman in the room while she was ill, but that woman had been much older. When Kivrin had clutched at her hands in her delirium, they had been rough and wrinkled, and the woman’s voice had been harsh with age, though perhaps that had been part of the delirium, too.

  The woman leaned into the light from the window. The white coif was yellowed and it was not a robe, but a kirtle like Kivrin’s, with a dark green surcote over it. It was badly dyed and looked like it had been made from a burlap sack, the weave so large Kivrin could see it easily even in the dim light. She must be a servant, then, but servants didn’t wear linen wimples or carry bunches of keys like the one that hung from the woman’s belt. She had to be a person of some importance, the housekeeper, perhaps.

  And this was a place of importance. Probably not a castle, because the wall the bed lay up against wasn’t stone—it was unfinished wood—but very likely a manor house of at least the first order of nobility, a minor baron, and possibly higher than that. The bed she was lying in was a real bed with a raised wooden frame and hangings and stiff linen sheets, not just a pallet, and the coverings were fur. The stone seat under the window had embroidered cushions on it.

  The woman tied the cloth to little projections of stone on either side of the narrow window, stepped down from the window seat, and leaned over to get something. Kivrin couldn’t see what it was because the bed hangings obstructed her view. They were heavy, almost like rugs, and had been pulled back and tied with what looked like rope.

  The woman straightened up again, holding a wooden bowl, and then, catching her skirts up with her free hand, stepped onto the window seat and began brushing something thick onto the cloth. Oil, Kivrin thought. No, wax. Waxed linen used in place of glass in windows. Glass was supposed to have been common in fourteenth-century manor houses. The nobility were supposed to have carried glass windows along with the luggage and the furniture when they traveled from house to house.

  I must get this on the corder, Kivrin thought, that some manor houses didn’t have glass windows, and she raised her hands and pressed them together, but the effort of holding them up was too great, and she let them fall back onto the coverings.

  The woman glanced over toward the bed and then turned back to the window and went on painting the cloth with long, unconcerned strokes. I must be getting better, Kivrin thought. She was right by the bed the whole time I was ill. She wondered again how long that time had been. I will have to find out, she thought, and then I must find the drop.

  It couldn’t be very far. If this was the village she had intended to go to, the drop wasn’t more than a mile away. She tried to remember how long the trip to the village had taken. It had seemed to take a long time. The cutthroat had put her on a white horse, and it had had bells on its harness. But he wasn’t a cutthroat. He was a kind-looking
young man with red hair.

  She would have to ask the name of the village she had been brought to, and hopefully it would be Skendgate. But even if it wasn’t, she would know from the name where she was in relation to the drop. And, of course, as soon as she was a little stronger, they could show her where it was.

  What is the name of this village you have brought me to? She had not been able to think of the words last night, but that was because of the fever, of course. She had no trouble now. Mr. Latimer had spent months on her pronunciation. They would certainly be able to understand, “In whatte londe am I?” or even, “Whatte be thisse holding?” and even if there were some variation in local dialect, the interpreter would automatically correct it.

  “Whatte place hast thou brotte me?” Kivrin said.

  The woman turned, looking startled. She stepped down from the window seat, still holding the bowl in one hand and the brush in the other, only it wasn’t a brush, Kivrin could see as she approached the bed. It was a squarish wooden spoon with a nearly flat bowl.

  “Gottebae plaise tthar tleve, ” the woman said, holding spoon and bowl together in front of her. “Beth naught agast.”

  The interpreter was supposed to translate what was said immediately. Maybe Kivrin’s pronunciation was all off, so far off that the woman thought she was speaking a foreign language and was trying to answer her in clumsy French or German.

  “Whatte place hast thou brotte me?” she said slowly so the interpreter would have time to translate what she said.

  “Wick londebay yae comen lawdayke awtreen godelae deynorm andoar sic straunguwlondes. Spekefaw eek waenoot awfthy taloorbrede.”

  “Lawyes sharess toostee?” a voice said.

  The woman turned around to look at a door Kivrin couldn’t see, and another woman came in, much older, her face under the coif wrinkled and her hands the hands Kivrin remembered from her delirium, rough and old. She was wearing a silver chain and carrying a small leather chest. It looked like the casket Kivrin had brought through with her, but it was smaller and bound with iron instead of brass. She set the casket down on the window seat.

  “Auf specheryit darmayt?”

  She remembered the voice, too, harsh and almost angry-sounding, speaking to the woman by Kivrin’s bed as if she were a servant. Well, perhaps she was, and this was the lady of the house, though her coif was no whiter, her dress no finer. But there weren’t any keys at her belt, and now Kivrin remembered that it wasn’t the housekeeper who carried the keys but the lady of the house.

  The lady of the manor in yellowed linen and badly dyed burlap, which meant that Kivrin’s dress was all wrong, as wrong as Latimer’s pronunciations, as wrong as Dr. Ahrens’s assurances that she would not get any mediaeval diseases.

  “I had my inoculations,” she murmured, and both women turned to look at her.

  “Ellavih swot wardesdoor feenden iss?” the older woman asked sharply. Was she the younger woman’s mother, or her mother-in-law, or her nurse? Kivrin had no idea. None of the words she’d said, not even a proper name or a form of address, separated itself out.

  “Maetinkerr woun dahest wexe hoordoumbe,” the younger woman said, and the older one answered, “Nor nayte bawcows derouthe.”

  Nothing. Shorter sentences were supposed to be easier to translate, but Kivrin couldn’t even tell whether she had said one word or several.

  The younger woman’s chin in the tight coif lifted angrily. “Certessan, shreevadwomn wolde nadae seyvousy” she said sharply.

  Kivrin wondered if they were arguing over what to do with her. She pushed on the coverlet with her weak hands, as if she could push herself away from them, and the young woman set down her bowl and spoon and came immediately up beside the bed.

  “Spaegun yovor tongawn glais?” she said, and it might be “Good morning,” or “Are you feeling better?” or “We’re burning you at dawn,” for all Kivrin knew. Perhaps her illness was keeping the interpreter from working. Perhaps when the fever went down, she would understand everything they said.

  The old woman knelt beside the bed, holding a small silver box at the end of the chain between her folded hands, and began to pray. The young woman leaned forward to look at Kivrin’s forehead and then reached around behind her head, doing something that pulled at Kivrin’s hair, and she realized they must have bandaged the wound on her forehead. She touched her hand to the cloth and then put it on her neck, feeling for her tangled locks, but there was nothing there. Her hair ended in a ragged fringe just below her ears.

  “Vae motten tiyez thynt,” the young woman said worriedly. “Far thotyiwort wount sorr.” She was giving Kivrin some kind of explanation, though Kivrin couldn’t understand it, and actually she did understand it: she had been very ill, so ill she had thought her hair was on fire. She remembered someone—the old woman?—trying to grab at her hands and her flailing wildly at the flames. They had had no alternative.

  And Kivrin had hated the unwieldy mass of hair and the endless time it took to brush it, had worried about how mediaeval women wore their hair, whether they braided it or not, and wondered how on earth she was going to get through two weeks without washing it. She should be glad they had cut it off, but all she could think of was Joan of Arc, who had had short hair, whom they had burned at the stake.

  The young woman had drawn her hands back from the bandage and was watching Kivrin, looking frightened. Kivrin smiled at her, a little quaveringly, and she smiled back. She had a gap where two teeth were missing on the right side of her mouth, and the tooth next to the gap was brown, but when she smiled she looked no older than a first-year student.

  She finished untying the bandage and laid it on the coverlet. It was the same yellowed linen as her coif, but torn into fraying strips, and stained with brownish blood. There was more blood than Kivrin would have thought there would be. Mr. Gilchrist’s wound must have started bleeding again.

  The woman touched Kivrin’s temple nervously, as if she wasn’t sure what to do. “Vexeyaw hongroot?” she said, and put one hand behind Kivrin’s neck and helped her raise her head.

  Her head felt terribly light. That must be because of my hair, Kivrin thought.

  The older woman handed the young one a wooden bowl, and she put it to Kivrin’s lips. Kivrin sipped carefully at it, thinking confusedly that it was the same bowl that had held the wax. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t the drink they’d given her before. It was a thin, grainy gruel, less bitter than the drink last night, but with a greasy aftertaste.

  “Thasholde nayive gros vitaille towayte,” the older woman said, her voice harsh with impatient criticism.

  Definitely her mother-in-law, Kivrin thought.

  “Shimote lese hoor fource,” the young woman answered back mildly.

  The gruel tasted good. Kivrin tried to drink it all, but after only a few sips she felt worn out.

  The young woman handed the bowl to the older one, who had come around to the side of the bed, too, and eased Kivrin’s head back down onto the pillow. She picked up the bloody bandage, touched Kivrin’s temple again as if she were debating whether to put the bandage back on again, and then handed it to the other woman, who set it and the bowl down on the chest that must be at the foot of the bed.

  “Lo, liggethsteallouw,” the young woman said, smiling her gap-toothed smile, and there was no mistaking her tone even though she couldn’t make out the words at all. The woman had told her to go to sleep. She closed her eyes.

  “Durmidde shoalausbrekkeynow, ” the older woman said, and they left the room, shutting the heavy door behind them.

  Kivrin repeated the words slowly to herself, trying to catch some familiar word. The interpreter was supposed to enhance her ability to separate out phonemes and recognize syntactical patterns, not just store Middle English vocabulary, but she might as well be listening to Serbo-Croatian.

  And maybe I am, she thought. Who knows where they’ve brought me? I was delirious. Maybe the cutthroat put me on a boat and took me across the Channel. She k
new that wasn’t possible. She remembered most of the night’s journey, even though it had a disjointed, dreamlike quality to it. I fell off the horse, she thought, and a redheaded man picked me up. And we came past a church.

  She frowned, trying to remember more about the direction they had traveled. They had headed into the woods, away from the thicket, and then come to a road, and the road forked, and that was where she had fallen off. If she could find the fork in the road, perhaps she could find the drop from there. The fork was only a little way from the tower.

  But if the drop was that close, she was in Skendgate and the women were speaking Middle English, but if they were speaking Middle English, why couldn’t she understand them?

  Maybe I hit my head when I fell off the horse, and it’s done something to the interpreter, she thought, but she had not hit her head. She had let go and slid down until she was sitting on the road. It’s the fever, she thought. It’s somehow keeping the interpreter from recognizing the words.

  It recognized the Latin, she thought, and a little knot of fear began to form in her chest. It recognized the Latin, and I can’t be ill. I had my inoculations. She remembered suddenly that her antiviral inoculation had itched and made a lump under her arm, but Dr. Ahrens had checked it just before she came through. Dr. Ahrens had said it was all right. And none of her other inoculations had itched except the plague inoculation. I can’t have the plague, she thought. I don’t have any of the symptoms.

  Plague victims had huge lumps under their arms and on the insides of their thighs. They vomited blood, and the blood vessels under their skin ruptured and turned black. It wasn’t the plague, but what was it, and how had she contracted it? She had been inoculated against every major disease extant in 1320, and anyway, she hadn’t been exposed to any disease. She had begun to have symptoms as soon as she came through, before she had even met anyone. Germs didn’t just hover near a drop, waiting for someone to come through. They had to be spread by contact or sneezing or fleas. The plague had been spread by fleas.