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 seyvous” 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 knew 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.

It’s not the plague, she told herself firmly. People who have the plague don’t wonder if they have it. They’re too busy dying.

It wasn’t the plague. The fleas that had spread it lived on rats and humans, not out in the middle of a forest, and the Black Death hadn’t reached England till 1348. It must be some mediaeval disease Dr. Ahrens hadn’t known about. There had been all sorts of strange diseases in the Middle Ages—the king’s evil and St. Vitus’s dance and unnamed fevers. It must be one of them, and it had taken her enhanced immune system a while to figure out what it was and begin fighting it. But now it had, and her temperature was down and the interpreter would begin working. All she had to do was rest and wait and get better. Comforted by that thought, she closed her eyes again and slept.

Someone was touching her. She opened her eyes. It was the mother-in-law. She was examining Kivrin’s hands, turning them over and over again in hers, rubbing her chapped forefinger along the backs, scrutinizing the nails. When she saw Kivrin’s eyes were open, she dropped her hands, as if in disgust, and said, “Sheavost ahvheigh parage attelest, bant hoore der wikkonasshae haswfolletwe?”

Nothing. Kivrin had hoped that somehow, while she slept, the interpreter’s enhancers would have sorted and deciphered everything she’d heard, and she would wake to find the interpreter working. But their words were still unintelligible. It sounded a little like French, with its dropped endings and delicate rising inflections, but Kivrin knew Norman French—Mr. Dunworthy had made her learn it—and she couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Hastow naydepesse?” the old woman said.

It sounded like a question, but all French sounded like a question.

The old woman took hold of Kivrin’s arm with one rough hand and put her other arm around her, as if to help her up. I’m too ill to get up, Kivrin thought. Why would she make me get up? To be questioned? To be burned?

The younger woman came into the room, carrying a footed cup. She set it down on the window seat and came to take Kivrin’s other arm. “Hastontee natour yowrese?” she asked, smiling her gap-toothed smile at Kivrin, and Kivrin thought, Maybe they’re taking me to the bathroom, and made an effort to sit up and put her legs over the side of the bed.

She was immediately dizzy. She sat, her bare legs dangling over the side of the high bed, waiting for it to pass. She was wearing her linen shift and nothing else. She wondered where her clothes were. At least they had let her keep her shift. People in the Middle Ages didn’t usually wear anything to bed.

People in the Middle Ages didn’t have indoor plumbing either, she thought, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go outside to a privy. Castles sometimes had enclosed garderobes, or corners over a shaft that had to be cleaned out at the bottom, but this wasn’t a castle.

The young woman put a thin, folded blanket around Kivrin’s shoulders like a shawl, and they both helped her off the bed. The planked wooden floor was icy. She took a few steps and was dizzy all over again. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought.

“Wotan shay wootes nawdaor youse der jordane?” the old woman said sharply, and Kivrin thought she recognized jardin, the French for garden, but why would they be discussing gardens?

“Thanway maunhollp anhour,” the young woman said, putting her arm around Kivrin and draping Kivrin’s arm over her shoulders. The old woman gripped her other arm with both hands. She scarcely came to Kivrin’s shoulder, and the young woman didn’t look like she weighed more than ninety pounds, but between them they walked her to the end of the bed.

Kivrin got dizzier with every step. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought, but they had stopped at the end of the bed. There was a chest there, a low wooden box with a bird or possibly an angel carved roughly into the top. On it lay a wooden basin full of water, the bloody bandage that had been around Kivrin’s forehead, and a smaller, empty bowl. Kivrin, concentrating on not falling over, didn’t realize what it was until the old woman said, “Swoune nawmaydar oupondre yorresette” and pantomimed lifting her heavy skirts and sitting on it.

A chamber pot, Kivrin thought gratefully. Mr. Dunworthy, chamber pots were extant in country village manor houses in 1320. She nodded to show she understood and let them ease her down onto it, though she was so dizzy she had to grab at the heavy bed hangings to keep from falling, and her chest hurt so badly when she tried to stand up again that she doubled over.

“Maisry!” the old woman shouted toward the door. “Maisry, com undtvae holpoon!” and the inflection indicated clearly that she was calling someone—Marjorie? Mary?—to come and help, but no one appeared, so perhaps she was wrong about that, too.

She straightened a little, testing the pain, and then tried to stand up, and the pain had lessened a little, but they still had to nearly carry her back to the bed, and she was exhausted by the time she was back under the bed coverings. She closed her eyes.

“Slaeponpon donu paw daton,” the young woman said, and she had to be saying “Rest,” or “Go to sleep,” but she still couldn’t decipher it. The interpreter’s broken, she thought, and the little knot of panic started to form again, worse than the pain in her chest.

It can’t be broken, she told herself. It’s not a machine. It’s a chemical syntax and memory enhancer. It can’t be broken. It could only work with words in its memory, though, and obviously Mr. Latimer’s Middle English was useless. Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote. Mr. Latimer’s pronunciations were so far off the interpreter couldn’t recognize what it was hearing as the same words, but that didn’t mean it was broken. It only meant it had to collect new data, and the few sentences it had heard so far weren’t enough.

It recognized the Latin, she thought, and the panic stabbed at her again, but she resisted it. It had been able to recognize the Latin because the rite of extreme unction was a set piece. She had already known what words should be there. The words the women spoke weren’t a set piece, but they were still decipherable. Proper names, forms of address, nouns and verbs and prepositional phrases would appear in set positions that repeated again and again. They would separate themselves out rapidly, and the interpreter would be able to use them as the key to the rest of the code. And what she needed to do now was collect data, listen to what was said without even trying to understand it, and let the interpreter work.

“Thin keowre hoorwoun desmoortale?” the young woman asked.

“Got talion wottes,” the old woman said.

A bell began to ring, far away. Kivrin opened her eyes. Both women had turned to look at the window, even though they couldn’t see through the linen.

“Bere wichebay gansanon, ” the young woman said.

The old woman didn’t answer. She was staring at the window, as if she could see past the stiffened linen, her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer.

“Aydreddit ister fayve riblaun, ” the young woman said, and in spite of her resolution, Kivrin tried to make it into “It is time for vespers,” or “There is the vespers bell,” but it wasn’t vespers. The bell went on tolling, and no other bells joined in. She wondered if it was the bell she had heard before, ringing all alone in the late afternoon.

The old woman turned abruptly away from the window. “Nay, Elwiss, itbahn diwolffin. ” She picked up the chamber pot from the wooden chest. “Gawynha thesspyd—”

There was a sudden scuffling outside the door, a sound of footsteps running up stairs, and a child’s voice crying, “Modder! Eysmertemay!”

A little girl burst into the room, blond braids and cap strings flying, nearly colliding with the old woman and the chamber pot. The child’s round face was red and smeared with tears.

“Wol yadothoos for shame ahnyous!” the old woman growled at her, lifting the treacherous bowl out of reach. “Yowe maun naroonso inhus.”

The little girl paid no attention to her. She ran straight at the young woman, sobbing, “Rawzamun hattmay smerte, Modder!”

Kivrin gasped. Modder. That had to be “mother.”

The little girl held up her arms, and her mother, oh, yes, definitely mother, picked her up. She fastened her arms around her mother’s neck and began to howl.

“Shh, ahnyous, shh, ” the mother said. That guttural’s a G, Kivrin thought. A hacking German G. Shh, Agnes.

Still holding her, the mother sat down on the window seat. She wiped at the tears with the tail of her coif. “Spekenaw dothass bifel, Agnes.”

Yes, definitely Agnes. And speken was “tell.” Tell me what happened.

“Shayoss mayswerte!” Agnes said, pointing at another child who had just come into the room. The second girl was considerably older, nine or ten at least. She had long brown hair that hung down her back and was held in place by a dark blue kerchief.

“Itgan naso, ahnyous,” she said. “Tha pighte rennin gown derstayres,” and there was no mistaking that combination of affection and contempt. She didn’t look like the blond little girl, but Kivrin was willing to bet this dark-haired girl was the little one’s older sister. “Shay pighte renninge ahndist eyres, Modder.”

“Mother” again, and shay was “she” and pighte must be “fell.” It sounded French, but the key to this was German. The pronunciations, the constructions, were German. Kivrin could almost feel it click into place.

“Na comfitte horr thusselwys,” the older woman said. “She hathnau woundes. Hoor teres been fornaught mais gain thy pitye.”

“Hoor nay ganful bloody, ” the woman said, but Kivrin couldn’t hear her. She was hearing instead the interpreter’s translation, still clumsy and obviously more than a beat behind, but a translation:

“Don’t pamper her, Eliwys. She is not injured. Her tears are but to get your attention.”

And the mother, whose name was Eliwys, “Her knee is bleeding.”

“Rossmunt, brangund oorwarsted frommecofre, ” she said, pointing at the foot of the bed, and the interpreter was right behind her. “Rosemund, fetch me the cloth on the chest.” The ten-year-old moved immediately toward the trunk at the foot of the bed.

The older girl was Rosemund, and the little one was Agnes, and the impossibly young mother in her wimple and coif was Eliwys.

Rosemund held out a frayed cloth that must surely be the one Eliwys had taken off Kivrin’s forehead.

“Touch it not! Touch it not!” Agnes screamed, and Kivrin wouldn’t have even needed the interpreter for that one. It was still far more than a beat behind.

“I would but tie a cloth to stop the bleeding,” Eliwys said, taking the rag from Rosemund. Agnes tried to push it away. “The cloth will not—” There was a blank space as if the interpreter didn’t know a word, and then, “—you, Agnes.” The word was obviously “hurt” or “harm,” and Kivrin wondered if the interpreter had not had the word in its memory and why it couldn’t have come up with an approximation from context.

“—will penaunce,” Agnes shouted, and the interpreter echoed, “It will—” and then the blank again. The space must be so that she could hear the actual word and make her own guess at its meaning. It wasn’t a bad idea, but the interpreter was so far behind the space that Kivrin couldn’t hear the word she was intended to. If the interpreter did this every time it didn’t recognize a word, she was in serious trouble.

“It will penaunce,” Agnes wailed, pushing her mother’s hand away from her knee. “It will pain,” the interpreter whispered, and Kivrin felt relieved that it had managed to come up with something, even though “to pain” was scarcely a verb.

“How came you to fall?” Eliwys asked to distract Agnes.

“She was running up the stairs,” Rosemund said. “She was running to give you the news that … had come.”

The interpreter left a space again, but Kivrin caught the word this time. Gawyn, which was probably a proper name, and the interpreter had apparently reached the same conclusion because by the time Agnes had shrieked, “I would have told Mother Gawyn had come,” the interpreter included it in the translation.

“I would have told,” Agnes said, really crying now, and buried her face against her mother, who promptly took advantage of the opportunity to tie the bandage around Agnes’s knee.

“You can tell me now,” she said.

Agnes shook her buried head.

“You tie the bandage too loosely, daughter-in-law,” the older woman said. “It will but fall away.”

The bandage looked tight enough to Kivrin, and obviously any attempt to bind the wound tighter would result in renewed screams. The old woman was still holding the chamber pot in both hands. Kivrin wondered why she didn’t go empty it.

“Shh, shh,” Eliwys said, rocking the little girl gently and patting her back. “I would fain have you tell me.”

“Pride goes before a fall,” the old woman said, seemingly determined to make Agnes cry again. “You were to blame that you fell. You should not have run on the stairs.”

“Was Gawyn riding a white mare?” Eliwys asked.

A white mare. Kivrin wondered if Gawyn could be the man who had helped her onto his horse and brought her to the manor.

“Nay,” Agnes said in a tone that indicated her mother had made some sort of joke. “He was riding his own black stallion Gringolet. And he rode up to me and said, ‘Good Lady Agnes, I would speak with your mother.’ ”

“Rosemund, your sister was hurt because of your carelessness,” the old woman said. She hadn’t succeeded in upsetting Agnes, so she’d decided to go after some other victim. “Why were you not tending her?”

“I was at my broidery,” Rosemund said, looking to her mother for support. “Maisry was to keep watch over her.”

“Maisry went out to see Gawyn,” Agnes said, sitting up on her mother’s lap.

“And dally with the stableboy,” the old woman said. She went to the door and shouted, “Maisry!”

Maisry. That was the name the old woman had called out before, and now the interpreter wasn’t even leaving spaces when it came to proper names. Kivrin didn’t know who Maisry was, probably a servant, but if the way things were going was any indication, Maisry was going to be in a lot of trouble. The old woman was determined to find a victim, and the missing Maisry seemed perfect.

“Maisry!” she shouted again, and the name echoed.

Rosemund took the opportunity to go and stand beside her mother. “Gawyn bade us tell you he begged leave to come and speak with you.”

“Waits he below?” Eliwys asked.

“Nay. He went first to the church to speak of the lady with Father Rock.”

Pride goes before a fall. The interpreter was obviously getting overconfident. Father Rolfe, perhaps, or Father Peter. Obviously not Father Rock.

“Why went he to speak to Father Rock?” the old woman demanded, coming back into the room.

Kivrin tried to hear the real word under the maddening whisper of the translation. Roche. The French word for “rock.” Father Roche.

“Mayhap he has found somewhat of the lady,” Eliwys said, glancing at Kivrin. It was the first indication she, or anyone, had given that they remembered Kivrin was in the room. Kivrin quickly closed her eyes to make them think she was asleep so they would go on discussing her.

“Gawyn rode out this morning to seek the ruffians,” Eliwys said. Kivrin opened her eyes to slits, but she was no longer looking at her. “Mayhap he has found them.” She bent and tied the dangling strings of Agnes’s linen cap. “Agnes, go to the church with Rosemund and tell Gawyn we would speak with him in the hall. The lady sleeps. We must not disturb her.”

Agnes darted for the door, shouting, “I would be the one to tell him, Rosemund.”

“Rosemund, let your sister tell,” Eliwys called after them. “Agnes, do not run.”

The girls disappeared out the door and down the invisible stairs, obviously running.

“Rosemund is near grown,” the old woman said. “It is not seemly for her to run after your husband’s men. Ill will come of your daughters being untended. You would do wisely to send to Oxenford for a nurse.”

“No,” Eliwys said with a firmness Kivrin wouldn’t have guessed at. “Maisry can keep watch over them.”

“Maisry is not fit to watch sheep. We should not have come from Bath in such haste. Certes we could have waited till …” something.

The interpreter left a gap again, and Kivrin didn’t recognize the phrase, but she had caught the important facts. They had come from Bath. They were near Oxford.

“Let Gawyn fetch a nurse. And a leech-woman to see to the lady.”

“We will send for no one,” Eliwys said.

“To …” another place name the interpreter couldn’t manage. “Lady Yvolde has repute with injuries. And she would gladly lend us one of her waiting women for a nurse.”

“No,” Eliwys said. “We will tend her ourselves. Father Roche—”

“Father Roche,” she said contemptuously. “He knows naught of medicine.”

But I understood everything he said, Kivrin thought. She remembered his quiet voice chanting the last rites, his gentle touch on her temples, her palms, the soles of her feet. He had told her not to be afraid and asked her her name. And held her hand.

“If the lady is of noble birth,” the older woman said, “would you have it told you let an ignorant village priest tend her? Lady Yvolde—”

“We will send for no one,” Eliwys said, and for the first time Kivrin realized she was afraid. “My husband bade us keep here till he come.”

“He had sooner have come with us.”

“You know he could not,” Eliwys said. “He will come when he can. I must go to speak with Gawyn,” she said, walking past the old woman to the door. “Gawyn told me he would search the place where first he found the lady to seek for signs of her attackers. Mayhap he has found somewhat that will tell us what she is.”

The place where first he found the lady. Gawyn was the man who had found her, the man with the red hair and the kind face who had helped her onto his horse and brought her here. That much at least she hadn’t dreamed, though she must have dreamed the white horse. He had brought her here, and he knew where the drop was.

“Wait,” Kivrin said. She pushed herself up against the pillows. “Wait. Please. I would speak with Gawyn.”

The women stopped. Eliwys came around beside the bed, looking alarmed.

“I would speak with the man called Gawyn,” Kivrin said carefully, waiting before each word until she had the translation. Eventually the process would be automatic, but for now she thought the word and then waited till the interpreter translated it and repeated it out loud. “I must discover this place where he found me.”

Eliwys laid her hand on Kivrin’s forehead, and Kivrin brushed it impatiently away.

“I would speak with Gawyn,” she said.

“She has no fever, Imeyne,” Eliwys said to the old woman, “and yet she tries to speak, though she knows we cannot understand her.”

“She speaks in a foreign tongue,” Imeyne said, making it sound criminal. “Mayhap she is a French spy.”

“I’m not speaking French,” Kivrin said. “I’m speaking Middle English.”

“Mayhap it is Latin,” Eliwys said. “Father Roche said she spoke in Latin when he shrove her.”

“Father Roche can scarce say his Paternoster,” Lady Imeyne said. “We should send to …”the unrecognizable name again. Kersey? Courcy?

“I would speak with Gawyn,” Kivrin said in Latin.

“Nay,” Eliwys said. “We will await my husband.”

The old woman wheeled angrily, slopping the contents of the chamber pot onto her hand. She wiped it off onto her skirt and went out the door, slamming it shut behind her. Eliwys started after her.

Kivrin grabbed at her hands. “Why don’t you understand me?” she said. “I understand you. I have to talk to Gawyn. He has to tell me where the drop is.”

Eliwys disengaged Kivrin’s hand. “There, you mustn’t cry,” she said kindly. “Try to sleep. You must rest, so you can go home.”

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

(000915–001284)

I’m in a lot of trouble, Mr. Dunworthy. I don’t know where I am, and I can’t speak the language. Something’s gone wrong with the interpreter. I can understand some of what the contemps say, but they can’t understand me at all. And that’s not the worst of it.

I’ve caught some sort of disease. I don’t know what it is. It’s not the plague because I don’t have any of the right symptoms and because I’m getting better. And I had a plague inoculation. I had all my inoculations and T-cell enhancement and everything, but one of them must not have worked or else this is some Middle Ages disease there aren’t any inoculations for.

The symptoms are headache and fever and dizziness, and I get a pain in my chest when I try to move. I was delirious for a while, which is why I don’t know where I am. A man named Gawyn brought me here on his horse, but I don’t remember very much about the trip except that it was dark and it seemed to take hours. I’m hoping I was wrong and the fever made it seem longer, and I’m in Ms. Montoya’s village after all.

It could be Skendgate. I remember a church, and I think this is a manor house. I’m in a bedroom or a solar, and it’s not just a loft because there are stairs, so that means the house of a minor baron at least. There’s a window, and as soon as the dizziness subsides I’ll climb up on the window seat and see if I can see the church. It has a bell—it rang for vespers just now. The one at Ms. Montoya’s village didn’t have a bell tower, and that makes me afraid I’m not in the right place. I know we’re fairly close to Oxford, because one of the contemps talked about fetching a doctor from there. It’s also close to a village called Kersey—or Courcy—which is not one of the villages on the map of Ms. Montoya’s I memorized, but that could be the name of the landowner.

Because of being out of my head, I’m not sure of my temporal location either. I’ve been trying to remember, and I think I’ve only been ill two days, but it might be more. And I can’t ask them what day it is because they don’t understand me, and I can’t get out of bed without falling over, and they’ve cut my hair off, and I don’t know what to do. What happened? Why won’t the interpreter work? Why didn’t the T-cell enhancement?

(Break)

There’s a rat under my bed. I can hear it scrabbling in the dark.