23

Kivrin grabbed Agnes’s hand and started back to the safety of the barn. She must hide until they were gone. “Where are we going?” Agnes asked.

Kivrin darted around two of Sir Bloet’s servants carrying a chest. “To the loft.”

Agnes stopped cold. “I do not wish to lie down!” she wailed. “I am not tired!”

“Lady Katherine!” someone called from across the courtyard.

Kivrin scooped Agnes up and started rapidly for the barn. “I am not tired!” Agnes shrieked. “I am nor!”

Rosemund ran up beside her. “Lady Katherine! Did you not hear me? Mother wants you. The bishop’s envoy is leaving.” She took hold of Kivrin’s arm and turned her back toward the house.

Eliwys was still standing in the door, watching them now, and the bishop’s envoy had come out and was standing beside her in his red cloak. Kivrin couldn’t see Imeyne anywhere. She was probably inside, packing Kivrin’s clothes.

“The bishop’s envoy has urgent business at the priory at Bernecestre,” Rosemund said, leading Kivrin to the house, “and Sir Bloet goes with them.” She smiled happily at Kivrin. “Sir Bloet says he will accompany them to Courcy that they may lie there tonight and arrive in Bernescestre tomorrow.”

Bernecestre. Bicester. At least it wasn’t Godstow. But Godstow was along the way. “What business?”

“I know not,” Rosemund said, as if it were unimportant, and Kivrin supposed for her it was. Sir Bloet was leaving, and that was all that mattered. Rosemund plunged happily through the melée of servants and baggage and horses toward her mother.

The bishop’s envoy was speaking to one of his servants, and Eliwys was watching him, frowning. Neither of them would see her if she turned and walked rapidly back behind the open doors of the stable, but Rosemund still had hold of her sleeve and was pulling her forward.

“Rosemund, I must go back to the barn. I have left my cloak—” she began.

“Mother!” Agnes cried and ran toward Eliwys and nearly into one of the horses. It whinnied and tossed its head, and a servant dived for its bridle.

“Agnes!” Rosemund shouted and let go of Kivrin’s sleeve, but it was too late. Eliwys and the bishop’s envoy had already seen them and started over to them.

“You must not run among the horses,” Eliwys said, catching Agnes against her.

“My hound is dead,” Agnes said.

“That is no reason to run,” Eliwys said, and Kivrin knew she hadn’t even heard her. Eliwys turned back to the bishop’s envoy.

“Tell your husband we are grateful for the loan of your horses, that ours may be rested for the journey to Bernecestre,” he said, and he sounded distracted, too. “I will send them from Courcy with a servant.”

“Would you see my hound?” Agnes said, tugging on her mother’s skirt.

“Hush,” Eliwys said.

“My clerk does not ride with us this afternoon,” he said. “I fear he made too merry yestereve and feels now the pains of too much drink. I beg you indulgence, good lady, that he may stay and follow when he is recovered.”

“Of course he may stay,” Eliwys said. “Is there aught we can do to help him? My husband’s mother—”

“Nay. Leave him be. There is naught can help an aching head save sleep. He will be well by evening,” he said, looking like he had made too merry himself. He seemed nervous, inattentive, as if he had a splitting headache, and his aristocratic face was gray in the bright morning light. He shivered and pulled his cloak around him.

He hadn’t so much as glanced at Kivrin, and she wondered if he had forgotten his promise to Lady Imeyne in his haste. She looked anxiously toward the gate, hoping Imeyne was still chastising Roche and wouldn’t suddenly appear to remind him of it.

“I regret that my husband is not here,” Eliwys said, “and that we could not give you better welcome. My husband—”

“I must see to my servants,” he interrupted. He held out his hand and Eliwys dropped to one knee and kissed his ring. Before she could rise, he had stridden off toward the stable. Eliwys looked after him worriedly.

“Do you wish to see him?” Agnes said.

“Not now,” Eliwys said. “Rosemund, you must make your farewells to Sir Bloet and Lady Yvolde.”

“He is cold,” Agnes said.

Eliwys turned to Kivrin. “Lady Katherine, know you where Lady Imeyne is?”

“She stayed behind in the church,” Rosemund said.

“Perhaps she is still at her prayers,” Eliwys said. She stood on tiptoe and scanned the crowded courtyard. “Where is Maisry?”

Hiding, Kivrin thought, which is what I should be doing.

“Would you have me seek for her?” Rosemund asked.

“Nay,” Eliwys said. “You must bid Sir Bloet farewell. Lady Katherine, go and fetch Lady Imeyne from the church that she may bid the bishop’s envoy good-bye. Rosemund, why do you still stand there? You must bid your betrothed farewell.”

“I will find Lady Imeyne,” Kivrin said, thinking, I’ll go out through the passage, and if she’s still in the church, I’ll duck behind the huts and go into the woods.

She turned to go. Two of Sir Bloet’s servants were struggling with a heavy chest. They set it down with a thunk in front of her, and it tipped over onto its side. She backed up and started around them, trying to keep from walking behind the horses.

“Wait!” Rosemund said, catching up with her. She caught hold of her sleeve. “You must come with me to bid Sir Bloet farewell.”

“Rosemund—” Kivrin said, looking toward the passage. Any second Lady Imeyne would come through there, clutching her Book of Hours.

“Please,” Rosemund said. She looked pale and frightened.

“Rosemund—”

“It will but take a moment and then you can fetch Grandmother.” She pulled Kivrin over to the stable. “Come. Now, while his sister-in-law is with him.”

Sir Bloet was standing watching his horse being saddled and talking to the lady with the amazing coif. It was no less enormous this morning, but had obviously been put on hastily. It listed sharply to one side.

“What is this urgent business of the bishop’s envoy?” she was saying.

He shook his head, frowning, and then smiled at Rosemund and stepped forward. She stepped back, holding tightly to Kivrin’s arm.

His sister-in-law bobbed her wimple at Rosemund and went on, “Has he had news from Bath?”

“There has been no messenger last night or this morning,” he said.

“If there has been no message, why spoke he not of this urgent business when first he came?” the sister-in-law said.

“I know not,” he said impatiently. “Hold. I must bid my betrothed farewell.” He reached for Rosemund’s hand, and Kivrin could see the effort it took her not to pull it back.

“Farewell, Sir Bloet,” she said stiffly.

“Is that how you would part from your husband?” he asked. “Will you not give him a farewell kiss?”

Rosemund stepped forward and kissed him rapidly on the cheek, then stepped immediately back and out of his reach. “I thank you for your gift of the brooch,” she said.

Bloet dropped his gaze from her white face to the neck of her cloak. “ ‘You are here in place of the friend I love,’ ” he said, fingering it.

Agnes ran up, shouting, “Sir Bloet! Sir Bloet!” and he caught her and swung her up into his arms.

“I have come to bid you good-bye,” she said. “My hound died.”

“I will bring you a hound for a wedding gift,” he said, “if you will give me a kiss.”

Agnes flung her arms around his neck and planted a noisy kiss on each red cheek.

“You are not so chary of your kisses as your sister,” he said, looking at Rosemund. He set Agnes down. “Or will you give your husband two kisses as well?”

Rosemund didn’t say anything.

He stepped forward and fingered the brooch. “ ‘Io suiicien lui dami amo,’ ” he said. He put his hands on her shoulders. “You must think of me whenever you wear my brooch.” He leaned forward and kissed her throat.

Rosemund didn’t flinch away from him, but the color drained out of her face.

He released her. “I will come for you at Eastertide,” he said, and it sounded like a threat.

“Will you bring me a black hound?” Agnes said.

Lady Yvolde came up to them, demanding “What have your servants done with my traveling cloak?”

“I will fetch it,” Rosemund said and darted off toward the house with Kivrin still in tow.

As soon as they were safely away from Sir Bloet, Kivrin said, “I must find Lady Imeyne. Look, they are nearly ready to leave.”

It was true. The jumble of servants and boxes and horses had resolved itself into a procession, and Cob had opened the gate. The horses the three kings had ridden in on the night before were loaded with their chests and bags, their reins tied together. Sir Bloet’s sister-in-law and her daughters were already mounted, and the bishop’s envoy was standing beside Eliwys’s mare, tightening the cinch on the saddle.

Only a few more minutes, Kivrin thought, let her stay in the church a few more minutes, and they’ll be gone.

“Your mother bade me find Lady Imeyne,” Kivrin said.

“You must come with me into the hall first,” Rosemund said. Her hand on Kivrin’s arm was still trembling.

“Rosemund, there isn’t any time—”

“Please,” she said. “What if he comes into the hall and finds me?”

Kivrin thought of Sir Bloet kissing her on the throat. “I will come with you,” she said, “but we must hurry.”

They ran across the courtyard, through the door, and nearly into the fat monk. He was coming down the steps from the bower, and looked angry or hungover. He went out through the screens without a glance at either of them.

There was no one else in the hall. The table was still covered with cups and platters of meat, and the fire was burning smokily, untended.

“Lady Yvolde’s cloak is in the loft,” Rosemund said. “Wait for me.” She scrambled up the ladder as though Sir Bloet were after her.

Kivrin went back to the screens and looked out. She couldn’t see the passageway. The bishop’s envoy was standing over by Eliwys’s mare with one hand on the pommel of its saddle, listening to the monk, who was leaning close as he spoke. Kivrin glanced up the stairs at the shut door of the bower, wondering if the clerk was truly hungover or had had some sort of falling out with his superior. The monk’s gestures were obviously upset.

“Here it is,” Rosemund said, climbing down, clutching the cloak in one hand and the ladder in the other. “I would have you take it to Lady Yvolde. It will take but a minute.”

It was the chance she’d been waiting for. “I will,” she said, took the heavy cloak from Rosemund, and started out. As soon as she was outside, she would give the cloak to the nearest servant to deliver to Bloet’s sister and head straight for the passageway. Let her stay in the church a few more minutes, she prayed. Let me make it to the green. She stepped out of the door, into Lady Imeyne.

“Why are you not ready to leave?” Imeyne said, looking at the cloak in her arms. “Where is your cloak?”

Kivrin shot a glance at the bishop’s envoy. He had both hands on the pommel and was stepping onto Cob’s linked hands. The friar was already mounted.

“My cloak is in the church,” Kivrin said. “I will fetch it.”

“There is no time. They are departing.”

Kivrin looked desperately around the courtyard, but they were all out of reach: Eliwys standing with Gawyn by the stable, Agnes talking animatedly to one of Sir Bloet’s nieces, Rosemund nowhere to be seen, presumably still in the house hiding.

“Lady Yvolde bade asked me to bring her her cloak,” Kivrin said.

“Maisry can take it to her,” Imeyne said. “Maisry!”

Let her still be hiding, Kivrin prayed.

“Maisry!” Imeyne shouted, and Maisry came slinking out from the brewhouse door, holding her ear. Lady Imeyne snatched the cloak out of Kivrin’s arms and dumped it on Maisry’s. “Stop sniveling and take this to Lady Yvolde,” she snapped.

She grabbed Kivrin by the wrist. “Come,” she said, and started toward the bishop’s envoy. “Holy Father, you have forgotten Lady Katherine, whom you promised to take with you to Godstow.”

“We do not go to Godstow,” he said and swung himself into the saddle with an effort. “We journey to Bernescestre.”

Gawyn had mounted Gringolet and was walking him toward the gate. He’s going with them, she thought. Perhaps on the way to Courcy I can persuade him to take me to the drop. Perhaps I can persuade him to tell me where it is, and I can get away from them and find it myself.

“Can she not ride with you to Bernecestre then, and a monk escort her to Godstow? I would have her returned to her nunnery.”

“There is no time,” he said, picking up the reins.

Imeyne grabbed hold of his scarlet cope. “Why do you leave so suddenly? Has aught offended you?”

He glanced at the friar, who was holding the reins of Kivrin’s mare. “Nay.” He made a vague sign of the cross over Imeyne. “Dominus vobiscum, et cum spiritu tuo,” he murmured, looking pointedly at her hand on his cope.

“What of a new chaplain?” Imeyne insisted.

“I am leaving my clerk behind to serve you as chaplain,” he said.

He’s lying, Kivrin thought, and glanced up sharply at him. He exchanged another, secretive glance with the monk, and Kivrin wondered if their urgent business was simply getting away from this complaining old woman.

“Your clerk?” Lady Imeyne said, pleased, and let go of the cope.

The bishop’s envoy spurred his horse and galloped across the courtyard, nearly running down Agnes, who scurried out of the way and then ran to Kivrin and buried her head in her skirt. The monk mounted Kivrin’s mare and rode after him.

“God go with you, Holy Father,” Lady Imeyne called after him, but he was already out the gate.

And then they were all gone, Gawyn riding out last at a flashy gallop to make Eliwys notice him, and they hadn’t taken her off to Godstow and out of reach of the drop. Kivrin was so relieved she didn’t even worry over Gawyn’s having gone with them. It was less than half day’s ride to Courcy. He might even be back by nightfall.

Everyone seemed relieved, or perhaps it was only the letdown of Christmas afternoon and the fact that they had all been up since yesterday morning. No one made any movement to clear the tables, which were still covered with dirty trenchers and half-full serving bowls. Eliwys sank into the high seat, her arms dangling over the side, and looked at the table disinterestedly. After a few minutes she called for Maisry, but when she didn’t answer, Eliwys didn’t shout for her again. She leaned her head against the carved back and closed her eyes.

Rosemund went up to the loft to lie down, and Agnes sat down next to Kivrin by the hearth and put her head on her lap, playing absently with her bell.

Only Lady Imeyne refused to give in to the letdown and languor of the afternoon. “I would have my new chaplain say prayers,” she said, and went up to knock on the bower door.

Eliwys protested lazily, her eyes still closed, that the bishop’s envoy had said the clerk should not be disturbed, but Imeyne knocked several times, loudly and without result. She waited a few minutes, knocked again, and then came down the steps and knelt at the foot of them to read her Book of Hours and keep an eye on the door so she could waylay the clerk as soon as he emerged.

Agnes batted at her bell with one finger, yawning broadly.

“Why don’t you go up into the loft and lie down with your sister?” Kivrin suggested.

“I’m not tired,” Agnes said, sitting up. “Tell me what happened to the maiden whose father told her not to go in the forest.”

“Only if you lie down,” Kivrin said, and began the story. Agnes didn’t last two sentences.

In the late afternoon, Kivrin remembered Agnes’s puppy. Everyone was asleep by then, even Lady Imeyne, who had given up on the clerk and gone up to the loft to lie down. Maisry had come in at some point and crawled under one of the tables. She was snoring loudly.

Kivrin eased her knees carefully out from under Agnes’s head and went out to bury the puppy. There was no one in the courtyard. The remains of a bonfire still smoldered in the center of the green, but there was no one around it. The villagers must be taking a Christmas afternoon nap, too.

Kivrin brought down Blackie’s body and went into the stable for a wooden spade. Only Agnes’s pony was there, and Kivrin frowned at it, wondering how the clerk was supposed to follow the envoy to Courcy. Perhaps he hadn’t been lying, after all, and the clerk was to be the new chaplain whether he liked it or not.

Kivrin carried the spade and Blackie’s already stiffening body across to the church and around to the north side. She laid the puppy down and began chipping through the crusted snow.

The ground was literally as hard as stone. The wooden spade didn’t even make a dent, even when she stood on it with both feet. She climbed the hill to the beginnings of the wood, dug through the snow at the base of an ash tree, and buried the puppy in the loose leaf mold.

“Requeiscat in pace, ” she said so she could tell Agnes the puppy had had a Christian burial and went back down the hill.

She wished Gawyn would ride up now. She could ask him to take her to the drop while everyone was still asleep. She walked slowly across the green, listening for the horse. He would probably come by the main road. She propped the spade against the wattle fence of the pigsty and went around the outside of the manor wall to the gate, but she couldn’t hear anything.

The afternoon light began to fade. If Gawyn didn’t come soon, it would be too dark to ride out to the drop. Father Roche would be ringing vespers in another half hour, and that would wake everyone up. Gawyn would have to tend his horse, though, no matter what time he got back, and she could sneak out to the stable and ask him to take her to the drop in the morning.

Or perhaps he could simply tell her where it was, draw her a map so she could find it herself. That way she wouldn’t have to go into the woods alone with him, and if Lady Imeyne had him out on another errand the day of the rendezvous, she could take one of the horses and find it herself.

She stood in by the gate till she got cold and then went back along the wall to the pigsty and into the courtyard. There was still no one in the courtyard, but Rosemund was in the anteroom, with her cloak on.

“Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. The clerk—”

Kivrin’s heart jerked. “What is it? Is he leaving?” He’d woken from his hangover and was ready to leave. And Lady Imeyne had persuaded him to take her to Godstow.

“Nay,” Rosemund said, going into the hall. It was empty. Eliwys and Imeyne must both be in the bower with him. She unfastened Sir Bloet’s brooch and took her cloak off. “He is ailing. Father Roche sent me to find you.” She started up the stairs.

“Ailing?” Kivrin said.

“Aye. Grandmother sent Maisry to the bower to take him somewhat to eat.”

And to put him to work, Kivrin thought, following her up the steps. “And Maisry found him ill?”

“Aye. He has a fever.”

He has a hangover, Kivrin thought, frowning. But Roche would surely recognize the effects of drink, even if Lady Imeyne couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

A terrible thought occurred to her. He’s been sleeping in my bed, Kivrin thought, and he’s caught my virus.

“What symptoms does he have?” she asked.

Rosemund opened the door.

There was scarcely room for them all in the little room. Father Roche was by the bed, and Eliwys stood a little behind him, her hand on Agnes’s head. Maisry cowered by the window. Lady Imeyne knelt at the foot of the bed next to her medicine casket, busy with one of her foul-smelling poultices, and there was another smell in the room, sickish and so strong it overpowered the mustard and leek smell of the poultice.

They all, except Agnes, looked frightened. Agnes looked interested, the way she had with Blackie, and Kivrin thought, He’s dead, he’s caught what I had, and he’s died. But that was ridiculous. She had been here since the middle of December. That would mean an incubation period of nearly two weeks, and no one else had caught it, not even Father Roche, or Eliwys, and they had been with her constantly while she was ill.

She looked at the clerk. He lay uncovered in the bed, wearing a shift and no breeches. The rest of his clothes were draped over the foot of the bed, his purple cloak dragging on the floor. His shift was yellow silk, and the ties had come unfastened so that it was open halfway down his chest, but she wasn’t noticing either his hairless skin or the ermine bands on the sleeves of his shift. He was ill. I was never that ill, Kivrin thought, not even when I was dying.

She went up to the bed. Her foot hit a half-empty earthenware wine bottle and sent it rolling under the bed. The clerk flinched. Another bottle, with the seal still on it, stood at the head of the bed.

“He has eaten too much rich food,” Lady Imeyne said, mashing something in her stone bowl, but it was clearly not food poisoning. Nor too much alcohol, in spite of the wine bottles. He’s ill, Kivrin thought. Terribly ill.

He breathed rapidly in and out through his open mouth, panting like poor Blackie, his tongue sticking out. It was bright red and looked swollen. His face was an even darker red, and his expression was distorted, as if he were terrified.

She wondered if he might have been poisoned. The bishop’s envoy had been so anxious to leave he had nearly run Agnes down, and he had told Eliwys not to disturb him. The church had done things like that in the 1300s, hadn’t they? Mysterious deaths in the monastery and the cathedral. Convenient deaths.

But that made no sense. The bishop’s envoy and the monk would not have hurried off and given orders not to disturb the victim when the whole point of poison was to make it look like botulism or peritonitis or the dozen other unaccountable things people died of in the Middle Ages. And why would the bishop’s envoy poison one of his own underlings when he could demote him, the way Lady Imeyne wanted to demote Father Roche.

“Is it the cholera?” Lady Eliwys said.

No, Kivrin thought, trying to remember its symptoms. Acute diarrhea and vomiting with massive loss of body fluids. Pinched expression, dehydration, cyanosis, raging thirst.

“Are you thirsty?” she asked.

The clerk gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes were half-closed, and they looked swollen, too.

Kivrin laid her hand on his forehead. He flinched a little, his reddened eyes flickering open and then closed.

“He’s burning with fever,” Kivrin said, thinking, Cholera doesn’t produce this high a fever. “Fetch me a cloth dipped in water.”

“Maisry!” Eliwys snapped, but Rosemund was already at her elbow with the same filthy rag they must have used on her.

At least it was cool. Kivrin folded it into a rectangle, watching the clerk’s face. He was still panting, and his face contorted when she laid the rag across his forehead, as if he were in pain. He clutched his hand to his belly. Appendicitis? Kivrin thought. No, that usually was accompanied by a low-grade fever. Typhoid fever could produce temps as high as 40 degrees, though usually not at the onset. It produced enlargement of the spleen, as well, which frequently resulted in abdominal pain.

“Are you in pain?” she asked. “Where does it hurt?”

His eyes flickered half-open again, and his hands moved restlessly on the coverlid. That was a symptom of typhoid fever, that restless plucking, but only in the last stages, eight or nine days into the progress of the disease. She wondered if the priest had already been ill when he came.

He had stumbled getting off his horse when they arrived, and the monk had had to catch him. But he had eaten and drunk more than a little at the feast, and grabbed at Maisry. He couldn’t have been very ill, and typhoid came on gradually, beginning with a headache and an only slightly elevated temperature. It didn’t reach 39 degrees until the third week.

Kivrin leaned closer, pulling his untied shift aside to look for typhoid’s rose-colored rash. There wasn’t any. The side of his neck seemed slightly swollen, but swollen lymph glands went with almost every infection. She pulled his sleeve up. There weren’t any rose spots on his arm either, but his fingernails were a bluish-brown color, which meant not enough oxygen. And cyanosis was a symptom of cholera.

“Has he vomited or had loosening of his bowels?” she asked.

“Nay,” Lady Imeyne said, smearing a greenish paste on a piece of stiff linen. “He has but eaten too much of sugars and spices, and it has fevered his blood.”

It couldn’t be cholera without vomiting, and at any rate the fever was too high. Perhaps it was her virus after all, but she hadn’t felt any stomach pain, and her tongue hadn’t swollen like that.

The clerk raised his hand and pushed the rag off his forehead and onto the pillow, and then let his arm fall back to his side. Kivrin picked the rag up. It was completely dry. And what besides a virus could cause that high a fever? She couldn’t think of anything but typhoid.

“Has he bled from the nose?” she asked Roche.

“Nay,” Rosemund said, stepping forward and taking the rag from Kivrin. “I have seen no sign of bleeding.”

“Wet it with cold water but don’t wring it out,” Kivrin said. “Father Roche, help me to lift him.”

Roche put his hands to the priest’s shoulders and raised him up. There was no blood on the linen under his head.

Roche laid him gently back down. “Think you it is the typhoid fever?” he said, and there was something curious, almost hopeful in his tone.

“I know not,” Kivrin said.

Rosemund handed Kivrin the rag. She had took Kivrin at her word. It was dripping with icy water.

Kivrin leaned forward and laid it across the clerk’s forehead.

His arms came up suddenly, wildly, knocking the cloth backward out of Kivrin’s hand, and then he was sitting up, flailing at her with both his hands, kicking out with his feet. His fist caught her on the side of her leg, buckling her knees so that she almost toppled onto the bed.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Kivrin said, trying to get her balance, trying to clutch at his hands. “I’m sorry.”

His bloodshot eyes were wide open now, staring straight ahead. “Gloriarti tuam, ” he bellowed in a strange high voice that was almost a scream.

“I’m sorry,” Kivrin said. She grabbed at his wrist, and his other arm shot out, striking her full in the chest.

“Requiem aeternum dona eis,” he roared, rising up on his knees and then his feet to stand in the middle of the bed. “Et lux perpetua luceat eis.”

Kivrin realized suddenly that he was trying to chant the mass for the dead.

Father Roche clutched at his shift, and the clerk lashed out, kicking himself free, and then went on kicking, spinning around as if he were dancing.

“Miserere nobis.”

He was too near the wall for them to reach him, hitting the timbers with his feet and flailing arms at every turn without even seeming to notice. “When he comes within reach, we must grab his ankles and knock him down,” Kivrin said.

Father Roche nodded, out of breath. The others stood transfixed, not even trying to stop him, Imeyne still on her knees. Maisry pushed herself completely into the window, her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut. Rosemund had retrieved the sopping rag and held it in her outstretched hand as if she thought Kivrin might try to lay it on his head again. Agnes was staring openmouthed at the clerk’s half-exposed body.

The clerk spun back toward them, his hands pawing at the ties on the front of his shift, trying to rip them free. “Now,” Kivrin said.

Father Roche and she reached for his ankles. The clerk went down on one knee, and then, flinging his arms out wide, burst free and launched himself off the high bed straight at Rosemund. She put her hands up, still holding the rag, and he hit her full in the chest.

“Miserere nobis, ” he said, and they went down together.

“Grab his arms before he hurts her,” Kivrin said, but the clerk had stopped flailing. He lay atop Rosemund, motionless, his mouth almost touching hers, his arms limply out at his sides.

Father Roche took hold of the clerk’s unresisting arm and rolled him off Rosemund. He flopped onto his side, breathing shallowly but no longer panting.

“Is he dead?” Agnes asked, and, as if her voice had released the rest of them from a spell, they all moved forward, Lady Imeyne struggling to her feet, gripping the bedpost.

“Blackie died,” Agnes said, clutching at her mother’s skirts.

“He is not dead,” Imeyne said, kneeling beside him, “but the fever in his blood has gone to the brain. It is often thus.”

It’s never thus, Kivrin thought. This isn’t a symptom of any disease I’ve ever heard of. What could it be? Spinal meningitis? Epilepsy?

She bent down next to Rosemund. The girl lay rigidly on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clenched into whitening fists. “Did he hurt you?” Kivrin asked.

Rosemund opened her eyes. “He pushed me down,” she said, her voice quivering a little.

“Can you stand?” Kivrin asked.

Rosemund nodded, and Eliwys stepped forward, Agnes still clinging to her skirt. They helped Rosemund to her feet.

“My foot hurts,” she said, leaning on her mother, but in a minute she was able to stand on it. “He … of a sudden …”

Eliwys supported her to the end of the bed and sat her down on the carved chest. Agnes clambered up next to her. “The bishop’s clerk jumped on top of you,” she said.

The clerk murmured something, and Rosemund looked fearfully at him. “Will he rise up again?” she asked Eliwys.

“Nay,” Eliwys said, but she helped Rosemund up and led her to the door. “Take your sister down to the fire and sit with her,” she told Agnes.

Agnes took hold of Rosemund’s arm and led her out. “When the clerk dies, we will bury him in the churchyard,” Kivrin could hear her say going down the stairs. “Like Blackie.”

The clerk looked already dead, his eyes half-open and unseeing. Father Roche knelt next to him and hoisted him easily over his shoulder, the clerk’s head and arms hanging limply down, the way Kivrin had carried Agnes home from the midnight mass. Kivrin hastily pulled the coverlid off the featherbed, and Roche eased him down onto the bed.

“We must draw the fever from his head,” Lady Imeyne said, returning to her poultice. “It is the spices that have fevered his brain.”

“No,” Kivrin whispered, looking at the priest. He lay on his back with his arms out at his sides, the palms up. The thin shift was ripped halfway down the front and had fallen completely off his left shoulder so his outstretched arm was exposed. Under the arm was a red swelling. “No,” she breathed.

The swelling was bright red and nearly as large as an egg. High fever, swollen tongue, intoxication of the nervous system, buboes under the arms and in the groin.

Kivrin took a step back from the bed. “It can’t be,” she said. “It’s something else.” It had to be something else. A boil. Or an ulcer of some kind. She reached forward to pull the sleeve away from it.

The clerk’s hands twitched. Roche stretched to grasp his wrists, pushing them down into the featherbed. The swelling was hard to the touch, and around it the skin was a mottled purplish-black.

“It can’t be,” she said. “It’s only 1320.”

“This will draw the fever out,” Imeyne said. She stood up stiffly, holding the poultice out in front of her. “Pull his shift away from his body that I may lay on the poultice.” She started toward the bed.

“No!” Kivrin said. She put her hands up to stop her. “Stay away! You mustn’t touch him!”

“You speak wildly,” Imeyne said. She looked at Roche. “It is naught but a stomach fever.”

“It isn’t a fever!” Kivrin said. She turned to Roche. “Let go of his hands and get away from him. It isn’t a fever. It’s the plague.”

All of them, Roche and Imeyne and Eliwys looked at her as stupidly as Maisry.

They don’t even know what it is, she thought desperately, because it doesn’t exist yet, there was no such thing as the Black Death yet. It didn’t even begin in China until 1333. And it didn’t reach England till 1348. “But it is,” Kivrin said. “He’s got all the symptoms. The bubo and the swollen tongue and the hemorrhaging under the skin.”

“It is naught but a stomach fever,” Imeyne said and pushed past Kivrin to the bed.

“No—” Kivrin said, but Imeyne had already stopped, the poultice poised above his naked chest.

“Lord have mercy on us,” she said, and backed away, still holding the poultice.

“Is it the blue sickness?” Eliwys said frightenedly.

And suddenly Kivrin saw it all. They had not come here because of the trial, because Lord Guillaume was in trouble with the king. He had sent them here because the plague was in Bath.

“Our nurse died,” Agnes had said. And Lady Imeyne’s chaplain, Brother Hubard. “Rosemund said he died of the blue sickness,” Agnes had told her. And Sir Bloet had said that the trial had been delayed because the judge was ill. That was why Eliwys hadn’t wanted to send word to Courcy and why she had been so angry when Imeyne sent Gawyn to the bishop. Because the plague was in Bath. But it couldn’t be. The Black Death hadn’t reached Bath until the autumn of 1348.

“What year is it?” Kivrin said.

The women looked at her dumbly, Imeyne still holding the forgotten poultice. Kivrin turned to Roche. “What is the year?”

“Are you ill, Lady Katherine?” he said anxiously, reaching for her wrists as if he were afraid she was going to have one of the clerk’s seizures.

She jerked her hands away. “Tell me the year.”

“It is the twenty-first year of Edward the Third’s reign,” Eliwys said.

Edward the Third, not the Second. In her panic she could not remember when he had reigned. “Tell me the year” she said.

“Anno domine,” the clerk said from the bed. He tried to lick his lips with his swollen tongue. “One thousand three hundred and forty-eight.”