18

By the time they got back to Balliol, two more of the detainees were down with the virus. Dunworthy sent Colin to bed and helped Finch get the detainees to bed and phone the Infirmary.

“All our ambulances are out,” the registrar told him. “We’ll send one as soon as possible.”

As soon as possible was midnight. He didn’t get back and to bed till past one.

Colin was asleep on the cot Finch had set up for him, The Age of Chivalry next to his head. Dunworthy debated pulling the book away but he didn’t want to risk waking him. He went in to bed.

Kivrin could not be in the plague. Badri had said there was four hours slippage, and the plague had not hit England until 1348. Kivrin had been sent to 1320.

He turned over and closed his eyes determindedly. She could not be in the plague. Badri was delirious. He had said all sorts of things, talked about lids and breaking china as well as rats. None of it made any sense. It was the fever speaking. He had told Dunworthy to back up. He had given him imaginary notes. None of it meant anything.

“It was the rats,” Badri had said. The contemps hadn’t known it was spread by fleas on the rats. They had had no idea what caused it. They had accused everyone—Jews and witches and the insane. They had murdered halfwits and hanged old women. They had burned strangers at the stake.

He got out of bed and padded into the sitting room. He tiptoed around Colin’s cot and slid The Age of Chivalry out from under Colin’s head. Colin stirred but didn’t wake.

Dunworthy sat on the window seat and looked up the Black Death. It had started in China in 1333, and moved west on trading ships to Messina in Sicily and from there to Pisa. It had spread through Italy and France—eighty thousand dead in Siena, a hundred thousand in Florence, three hundred thousand in Rome—before it crossed the Channel. It had reached England in 1348, “a little before the Feast of St. John the Baptist,” the twenty-fourth of June.

That meant a slippage of twenty-eight years. Badri had been worried about too much slippage, but he had been talking of weeks, not years.

He reached over the cot to the bookcase and took down Fitzwiller’s Pandemics.

“What are you doing?” Colin asked sleepily.

“Reading about the Black Death,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep.”

“They didn’t call it that,” Colin mumbled around his gobstopper. He rolled over, wrapping himself in his blankets. “They called it the blue sickness.”

Dunworthy took both books back to bed with him. Fitzwiller gave the date of the plague’s arrival in England as St. Peter’s Day, the twenty-ninth of June, 1348. It had reached Oxford in December, London in October of 1349, and then moved north and back across the Channel to the Low Countries and Norway. It had gone everywhere except Bohemia, and Poland, which had a quarantine, and, oddly, parts of Scotland.

Where it had gone, it had swept through the countryside like the Angel of Death, devastating entire villages, leaving no one alive to administer the last rites or bury the putrefying bodies. In one monastery, all but one of the monks had died.

The single survivor, John Clyn, had left a record: “And lest things which should be remembered perish with time and vanish from the memory of those who are to come after us,” he had written, “I, seeing so many evils and the whole world, as it were, placed within the grasp of the Evil One, being myself as if among the dead, I, waiting for death, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed.”

He had written it all down, a true historian, and then had apparently died himself, all alone. His writing on the manuscript trailed off, and below it, in another hand, someone had written, “Here, it seems, the author died.”

Someone knocked on the door. It was Finch in his bathrobe, looking bleary-eyed and distraught. “Another one of the detainees, sir,” he said.

Dunworthy put his finger to his lips and stepped outside the door with him. “Have you telephoned Infirmary?”

“Yes, sir, and they said it would be several hours before they can dispatch an ambulance. They said to isolate her, and give her dimantadine and orange juice.”

“Which I suppose we’re nearly out of,” Dunworthy said irritably.

“Yes, sir, but that’s not the problem. She won’t cooperate.”

Dunworthy made Finch wait outside the door while he dressed and found his face mask, and they went across to Salvin. A huddle of detainees were standing by the door, dressed in an odd assortment of underthings, coats, and blankets. Only a few of them were wearing their face masks. By day after tomorrow they’ll all be down with it, Dunworthy thought.

“Thank goodness you’re here,” one of the detainees said fervently. “We can’t do a thing with her.”

Finch led him over to the detainee, who was sitting upright in bed. She was an elderly woman with sparse white hair, and she had the same fever-bright eyes, the same frenetic alertness Badri had had that first night.

“Go away!” she said when she saw Finch and made a slapping motion at him. She turned her burning eyes on Dunworthy. “Daddy!” she cried, and then stuck her lower lip out in a pout. “I was very naughty,” she said in a childish voice. “I ate all the birthday cake, and now I have a stomachache.”

“Do you see what I mean, sir?” Finch put in.

“Are the Indians coming, Daddy?” she asked. “I don’t like Indians. They have bows and arrows.”

It took them until morning to get her onto a cot in one of the lecture rooms. Dunworthy eventually had to resort to saying, “Your daddy wants his good girl to lie down now,” and just after they had her quieted down, the ambulance came. “Daddy!” she wailed when they shut the doors. “Don’t leave me here all alone!”

“Oh, dear,” Finch said when the ambulance drove off. “It’s past breakfast time. I do hope they haven’t eaten all the bacon.”

He went off to ration supplies, and Dunworthy went back to his rooms to wait for Andrews’s call. Colin was halfway down the staircase, eating a piece of toast and pulling on his jacket. “The vicar wants me to help collect clothes for the detainees,” he said with his mouth full of toast. “Great-aunt Mary telephoned. You’re to ring her back.”

“But not Andrews?”

“No.”

“Has the visual been restored?”

“No.”

“Wear your regulation face mask,” Dunworthy called after him, “and your muffler!”

He rang up Mary and waited impatiently for nearly five minutes until she came to the telephone.

“James?” Mary’s voice said. “It’s Badri. He’s asking for you.”

“He’s better, then?”

“No. His fever’s still very high, and he’s become quite agitated, keeps calling your name, insists he has something to tell you. He’s working himself into a very bad state. If you could come and speak with him, it might calm him down.”

“Has he said anything about the plague?” he asked.

“The plague?” she said, looking annoyed. “Don’t tell me you’ve been infected by these ridiculous rumors that are flying about, James—that it’s cholera, that it’s breakbone fever, that it’s a recurrence of the Pandemic—”

“No,” Dunworthy said. “It’s Badri. Last night he said, ‘It killed half of Europe,’ and ‘It was the rats.’ ”

“He’s delirious, James. It’s the fever. It doesn’t mean anything.”

She’s right, he told himself. The detainee ranted on about Indians with bows and arrows, and you didn’t begin looking for Sioux warriors. She had conjured up too much birthday cake as an explanation for her being ill, and Badri had conjured up the plague. It didn’t mean anything.

Nevertheless, he said he would be there immediately and went to find Finch. Andrews hadn’t specified what time he would call, but Dunworthy couldn’t risk leaving the phone unattended. He wished he’d made Colin stay while he spoke to Mary.

Finch would very likely be in hall, guarding the bacon with his life. He took the receiver off the hook so the phone would sound engaged and went across the quad to the hall.

Ms. Taylor met him at the door. “I was just coming to look for you,” she said. “I heard some of the detainees came down with the virus last night.”

“Yes,” he said, scanning the hall for Finch.

“Oh, dear. So I suppose we’ve all been exposed.”

He couldn’t see Finch anywhere.

“How long is the incubation period?” Ms. Taylor asked.

“Twelve to forty-eight hours,” he said. He craned his neck, trying to see over the heads of the detainees.

“That’s awful,” Ms. Taylor said. “What if one of us comes down with it in the middle of the peal? We’re Traditional, you know, not Council. The rules are very explicit.”

He wondered why Traditional, whatever that might be, had deemed it necessary to have rules concerning change ringers infected with influenza.

“Rule Three,” Ms. Taylor said. “ ‘Every man must stick to his bell without interruption.’ It isn’t as if we can put somebody else in halfway through if one of us suddenly keels over. And it would ruin the rhythm.”

He had a sudden image of one of the bell ringers in her white gloves collapsing and being kicked out of the way so as not to disrupt the rhythm.

“Aren’t there any warning symptoms?” Ms. Taylor asked.

“No,” he said.

“That paper the NHS sent around said disorientation, fever, and headache, but that isn’t any good. The bells always give us headaches.”

I can imagine, he thought, looking for William Gaddson or one of the other undergraduates he could get to listen for the phone.

“If we were Council, of course, it wouldn’t matter. They let people substitute right and left. During a peal of Tittum Bob Maxims at York, they had nineteen ringers. Nineteen! I don’t see how they can even call it a peal.”

None of his undergraduates appeared to be in hall, Finch had no doubt barricaded himself in the buttery, and Colin was long gone. “Are you still in need of a practice room?” he asked Ms. Taylor.

“Yes, unless one of us comes down with this thing. Of course, we could do Stedmans, but that would hardly be the same thing, would it?”

“I’ll let you use my sitting room if you will answer the telephone and take down any messages for me. I am expecting an important trunk—long-distance call—so it’s essential that someone be in the room at all times.”

He led her back to his rooms.

“Oh, it’s not very big, is it?” she said. “I’m not sure there’s room to work on our raising. Can we move the furniture around?”

“You may do anything you like, so long as you answer the telephone and take down any messages. I’m expecting a call from Mr. Andrews. Tell him he doesn’t need clearance to enter the quarantine area. Tell him to go straight to Brasenose and I’ll meet him there.”

“Well, all right, I guess,” she said as if she were doing him a favor. “At least it’s better than that drafty cafeteria.”

He left her rearranging furniture, not at all convinced that it was a good idea to entrust her with this, and hurried off to see Badri. He had something to tell him. It killed them all. Half of Europe.

The rain had subsided to little more than a fine mist, and the anti-EC picketers were gathered in force in front of the Infirmary. They had been joined by a number of boys Colin’s age wearing black face plasters and shouting, “Let my people go!”

One of them grabbed Dunworthy’s arm. “The government’s got no right to keep you here against your will,” he said, thrusting his striped face up to Dunworthy’s face mask.

“Don’t be a fool,” Dunworthy said. “Do you want to start another pandemic?”

The boy let go of his arm, looking confused, and Dunworthy escaped inside.

Casualties was full of patients on stretcher trolleys, and there was one standing next to the elevator. An imposing-looking nurse in voluminous SPG’s was standing next to it, reading something to the patient from a polythene-wrapped book.

“ ‘Whoever perished, being innocent?’ ” she said, and he realized with dismay that it wasn’t a nurse. It was Mrs. Gaddson.

“ ‘Or where were the righteous cut off?’ ” she recited.

She stopped and thumbed through the thin pages of the Bible, looking for another cheering passage, and he ducked down the side corridor and into a stairwell, eternally grateful to the NHS for issuing face masks.

“ ‘The Lord shall smite thee with a consumption,’ ” she intoned, her voice resounding through the corridor as he fled, “ ‘and with a fever, and with an inflammation.’ ”

And He shall smite thee with Mrs. Gaddson, he thought, and she shall read you Scriptures to keep your morale up.

He went up the stairs to Isolation, which had now apparently taken over most of the first floor.

“Here you are,” the nurse said. It was the pretty blond student nurse again. He wondered if he should warn her about Mrs. Gaddson.

“I’d nearly given you up,” she said. “He’s been calling for you all morning.” She handed him a set of SPG’s, and he put them on and followed her in.

“He was frantic for you half an hour ago,” she whispered, “kept insisting he had something to tell you. He’s a bit better now.”

He looked, in fact, considerably better. He had lost the dark, frightening flush, and though he was still a bit pale under his brown skin, he looked almost like his old self. He was half sitting against several pillows, his knees up, and his hands lying lightly on them, the fingers curved. His eyes were closed.

“Badri,” the nurse said, putting her imperm-gloved hand on his shoulder and bending close to him. “Mr. Dunworthy’s here.”

He opened his eyes. “Mr. Dunworthy?”

“Yes.” She nodded across the bed, indicating him. “I told you he’d come.”

Badri sat up straighter against the pillows, but he didn’t look at Dunworthy. He looked intently ahead.

“I’m here, Badri,” Dunworthy said, moving forward so he was in his line of vision. “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

Badri continued to look straight ahead and his hands began moving restlessly on his knees. Dunworthy glanced at the nurse.

“He’s been doing that,” she said. “I think he’s typing.” She looked at the screens and went out.

He was typing. His wrists rested on his knees, and his fingers tapped the blanket in a complex sequence. His eyes stared at something in front of him—a screen?—and after a moment he frowned. “That can’t be right,” he said and began typing rapidly.

“What is it, Badri?” Dunworthy said. “What’s wrong?”

“There must be an error,” Badri said. He leaned slightly sideways and said, “Give me a line-by-line on the TAA.”

He was speaking into the console’s ear, Dunworthy realized. He’s reading the fix, he thought. “What can’t be right, Badri?”

“The slippage,” Badri said, his eyes fixed on the imaginary screen. “Readout check,” he said into the ear. “That can’t be right.”

“What’s wrong with the slippage?” Dunworthy asked. “Was there more slippage than you expected?”

Badri didn’t answer. He typed for a moment, paused, watching the screen, and began typing frantically.

“How much slippage was there? Badri?” Dunworthy said.

He typed for a full minute and then stopped and looked up at Dunworthy. “So worried,” he said thoughtfully.

“Worried over what, Badri?” Dunworthy said.

Badri suddenly flung the blanket back and grabbed for the bed rails. “I have to find Mr. Dunworthy,” he said. He yanked at his cannula, pulling at the tape.

The screens behind him went wild, spiking crazily and beeping. Somewhere outside an alarm went off.

“You mustn’t do that,” Dunworthy said, reaching across the bed to stop him.

“He’s at the pub,” Badri said, ripping at the tape.

The screens went abruptly flatline. “Disconnect,” a computer voice said. “Disconnect.”

The nurse banged in. “Oh, dear, that’s twice he’s done that,” she said. “Mr. Chaudhuri, you mustn’t do that. You’ll pull your cannula out.”

“Go and get Mr. Dunworthy. Now,” he said. “There’s something wrong,” but he lay back and let her cover him up. “Why doesn’t he come?”

Dunworthy waited while the nurse retaped the cannula and reset the screens, watching Badri. He looked worn out and apathetic, almost bored. A new bruise was already forming above the cannula.

The nurse left with “I think I’d best call down for a sedative.”

As soon as she was gone, Dunworthy said, “Badri, it’s Mr. Dunworthy. You wanted to tell me something. Look at me, Badri. What is it? What’s wrong?”

Badri looked at him, but without interest.

“Was there too much slippage, Badri? Is Kivrin in the plague?”

“I don’t have time,” Badri said. “I was out there Saturday and Sunday.” He began typing again, his fingers moving ceaselessly on the blanket. “That can’t be right.”

The nurse came back with a drip bottle. “Oh, good,” he said, and his expression relaxed and softened, as if a great weight had been lifted. “I don’t know what happened. I had such a terrific headache.”

He closed his eyes before she had even hooked the drip to the cannula and began to snore softly.

The nurse led him out. “If he wakes and calls for you again, where can you be reached?” she asked.

He gave her the number. “What exactly did he say?” he asked, stripping off his gown. “Before I arrived?”

“He kept calling your name and saying he had to find you, that he had to tell you something important.”

“Did he say anything about rats?” he said.

“No. Once he said he had to find Karen—or Katherine—”

“Kivrin.”

She nodded. “Yes. He said, ‘I must find Kivrin. Is the laboratory open?’ And then he said something about a lamb, but nothing about rats, I don’t think. A good deal of the time I can’t make it out.”

He threw the imperm gloves into the bag. “I want you to write down everything he says. Not the unintelligible parts,” he added before she could object. “But everything else. I’ll be back this afternoon.”

“I’ll try,” she said. “It’s mostly nonsense.”

He went downstairs. It was mostly nonsense, feverish ramblings that meant nothing, but he went outside to get a taxi. He wanted to get back to Balliol quickly, to speak to Andrews, to get him up here to read the fix.

“That can’t be right,” Badri had said, and it had to be the slippage. Could he have somehow misread the figure, thought it was only four hours and then discovered, what? That it was four years? Or twenty-eight?

“You’ll get there faster walking,” someone said. It was the boy with the black face plasters. “If you’re waiting for a taxi, you’ll stand there forever. They’ve all been commandeered by the bloody government.”

He gestured toward one just pulling up to the door of Casualties. It had an NHS placard in the side window.

Dunworthy thanked the boy and started back to Balliol. It was raining again, and he walked rapidly, hoping that Andrews had already telephoned, that he was already on his way. “Go and get Mr. Dunworthy immediately,” Badri had said. “Now. There’s something wrong,” and he was obviously reliving his actions after he had got the fix, when he had run through the rain to the Lamb and Cross to fetch him. “That can’t be right,” he had said.

He half ran across the quad and up to his rooms. He was worried Ms. Taylor wouldn’t have been able to hear the telephone’s bell over her bell ringers’ clanging, but when he opened the door, he found them standing in a circle in the middle of his sitting room in their face masks, their arms raised and hands folded as if in supplication, bringing their hands down in front of them and bending their knees one after the other in solemn silence.

“Mr. Basingame’s scout called,” Ms. Taylor said, rising and stooping. “He said he thought Mr. Basingame was somewhere in the Highlands. And Mr. Andrews said you were to call him back. He just called.”

Dunworthy put the trunk call through, feeling immensely relieved. While he waited for Andrews to answer, he watched the curious dance and tried to determine the pattern. Ms. Taylor seemed to bob on a semiregular basis, but the others did their odd curtsies in no order he could detect. The largest one, Ms. Piantini, was counting to herself, frowning in concentration.

“I’ve obtained clearance for you to enter the quarantine area. When are you coming up?” he said as soon as the tech answered.

“That’s the thing, sir,” Andrews said. There was a visual, but it was too fuzzy to read his expression. “I don’t think I’d better. I’ve been watching all about the quarantine on the vids, sir. They say this Indian flu is extremely dangerous.”

“You needn’t come in contact with any of the cases,” Dunworthy said. “I can arrange for you to go straight to Brasenose’s laboratory. You’ll be perfectly safe. This is extremely important.”

“Yes, sir, but the vidders say it might have been caused by the University’s heating system.”

“The heating system?” Dunworthy said. “The University has no heating system, and the individual ones of the colleges are over a hundred years old and incapable of heating, let alone infecting.” The bell ringers turned as one to look at him, but they did not break rhythm. “It has absolutely nothing to do with the heating system. Or India, or the wrath of God. It began in South Carolina. The vaccine is already on the way. It’s perfectly safe.”

Andrews looked stubborn. “Nevertheless, sir, I don’t think it would be wise for me to come.”

The bell ringers abruptly stopped. “Sorry,” Ms. Piantini said, and they started again.

“This fix must be read. We have an historian in 1320, and we don’t know how much slippage there has been. I’ll see to it that you’re paid for hazardous duty,” Dunworthy said, and then realized that was exactly the wrong approach. “I can arrange for you to be isolated or wear SPG’s or—”

“I could read the fix from here,” Andrews said. “I’ve a friend who’ll set up the access connections. She’s a student at Shrewsbury.” He paused. “It’s the best I can do. Sorry.”

“Sorry,” Ms. Piantini said again.

“No, no, you ring in second’s place,” Ms. Taylor said. “You dodge two-three up and down and three-four down and then lead a whole pull. And keep your eyes on the other ringers, not on the floor. One-two-and-off!” They started their minuet again.

“I simply can’t take the risk,” Andrews said.

It was clear he couldn’t be persuaded. “What is the name of your friend at Shrewsbury?” Dunworthy asked.

“Polly Wilson,” Andrews said, sounding relieved. He gave Dunworthy her number. “Tell her you need a remote read, IA inquiry, and bridge transmit. I’ll stay by this number.” He moved to ring off.

“Wait!” Dunworthy said. The bell ringers glanced disapprovingly at him. “What would the maximal slippage be on a drop to 1320?”

“I’ve no idea,” Andrews said promptly. “Slippage is difficult to predict. There are so many factors.”

“An estimate,” Dunworthy said. “Could it be twenty-eight years?”

“Twenty-eight years!” Andrews said, and the amazed tone sent a gust of relief through Dunworthy. “Oh, I wouldn’t think so. There’s a general tendency toward greater slippage the farther back you go, but the increase isn’t exponential. The parameter checks will tell you.”

“Mediaeval didn’t do any.”

“They sent an historian back without parameter checks?” Andrews sounded shocked.

“Without parameter checks, without unmanneds, without recon tests,” Dunworthy said. “Which is why it’s essential I get this fix read. I want you to do something for me.”

Andrews stiffened.

“You don’t have to come here to do it,” he said rapidly. “Jesus has an on-site set up in London. I want you to go over there and run parameter checks on a drop to noon, 13 December 1320.”

“What are the locational coordinates?”

“I don’t know. I’ll get them when I go to Brasenose. I want you to telephone me here as soon as you’ve determined maximal slippage. Can you do that?”

“Yes,” he said, but he was looking doubtful again.

“Good. I’ll telephone Polly Wilson. Remote read, IA inquiry, bridge transmit. I’ll ring you back as soon as she’s got it set up at Brasenose,” Dunworthy said, and rang off before Andrews could renege.

He held on to the receiver, watching the bell ringers. The order changed each time, but Ms. Piantini apparently did not lose count again.

He telephoned Polly Wilson and gave her the specifications Andrews had dictated, wondering if she had been watching the vidders, too, and would be afraid of Brasenose’s heating system, but she said promptly, “I’ll need to find a gateway. I’ll meet you there in three-quarters of an hour.”

He left the bell ringers still bobbing and went over to Brasenose. The rain had slowed again, and there were more people on the streets, though many of the shops were closed. Whoever was in charge of the Carfax carillon had either come down with the flu or forgotten about it because of the quarantine. It was still playing “Bring a Torch, Jeanette Isabella,” or possibly “O Tannenbaum.”

There were three picketers outside an Indian grocer’s and a half dozen more outside Brasenose with a large banner they were holding between them that read “time travel is a health threat.” He recognized the young woman on the end as one of the medics from the ambulance.

Heating systems and the EC and time travel. During the Pandemic it had been the American germ warfare program and air conditioning. Back in the Middle Ages they had blamed Satan and the appearance of comets for their epidemics. Doubtless when the fact that the virus had originated in South Carolina was revealed, the Confederacy, or southern fried chicken, would be blamed.

He went in the gate to the porter’s desk. The Christmas tree was sitting on one end of it, the angel perched atop it. “I have a student from Shrewsbury meeting me to set up some communications equipment,” he told the porter. “We’ll need to be let into the laboratory.”

“The laboratory is restricted, sir,” the porter said.

“Restricted?”

“Yes, sir. It’s been locked and no one’s allowed in.”

“Why? What’s happened?”

“It’s because of the epidemic, sir.”

“The epidemic!?”

“Yes, sir. Perhaps you’d better speak with Mr. Gilchrist, sir.”

“Perhaps I had. Tell him I’m here, and I need to be let into the laboratory.”

“I’m afraid he’s not here just now.”

“Where is he?”

“At the Infirmary, I believe. He—”

Dunworthy didn’t wait to hear the rest. Halfway to the Infirmary it occurred to him that Polly Wilson would be left waiting with no idea where he’d gone, and as he came up to the hospital, it came to him that Gilchrist might be there because he’d come down with the virus.

Good, he thought, it’s what he deserves, but Gilchrist was in the little waiting room, hale and hearty, wearing an NHS face mask, rolling up his sleeve in preparation for the inoculation a nurse was holding.

“Your porter told me the laboratory’s restricted,” he said, stepping between them. “I need to get into it. I’ve found a tech to do a remote fix. We need to set up transmission equipment.”

“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” Gilchrist said. “The laboratory is under quarantine until the source of the virus is determined.”

“The source of the virus?” he said incredulously. “The virus originated in South Carolina.”

“We will not be certain of that until we’ve obtained positive identification. Until then, I felt it was best to minimize all possible risks to the University by restricting access to the laboratory. Now, if you will excuse me, I’m here to receive my immune system enhancement.” He started past Dunworthy toward the nurse.

Dunworthy put out his arm to stop him. “What risks?”

“There has been considerable public concern that the virus was transmitted through the net.”

“Public concern? Do you mean those three halfwits with the banner outside your gate?” he shouted.

“This is a hospital, Mr. Dunworthy,” the nurse said. “Please keep your voice down.”

He ignored her. “There has been ‘considerable public concern,’ as you call it, that the virus was caused by liberal immigration laws,” he said. “Do you intend to secede from the EC as well?”

Gilchrist’s chin went up, and the pinched lines appeared by his nose, visible even through the mask. “As Acting Head of the History Faculty, it is my responsibility to act in the University’s interest. Our position in the community, as I’m certain you’re aware, depends on maintaining the goodwill of the townspeople. I felt it important to calm the public’s fears by closing the laboratory until the sequencing arrives. If it indicates that the virus is from South Carolina, then of course the laboratory will be reopened immediately.”

“And in the meantime, what about Kivrin?”

“If you cannot keep your voice down,” the nurse said, “I shall be forced to report you to Dr. Ahrens.”

“Excellent. Go and fetch her,” Dunworthy told her. “I want her to tell Mr. Gilchrist how ridiculous he’s being. This virus cannot possibly have come through the net.”

The nurse stamped out.

“If your protesters are too ignorant to understand the laws of physics,” Dunworthy said, “surely they can understand the simple fact that this was a drop. The net was only open to 1320, not from it. Nothing came through from the past.”

“If that is the case, then Ms. Engle is not in any danger, and it will do no harm to wait for the sequencing.”

“Not in any danger? You don’t even know where she is!”

“Your tech obtained the fix, and indicated the drop was successful and that there was minimal slippage,” Gilchrist said. He rolled down his sleeve and carefully buttoned the cuff. “I’m satisfied Ms. Engle is where she’s supposed to be.”

“Well, I’m not. And I won’t be until I know Kivrin made it through safely.”

“I see I must remind you again that Ms. Engle is my responsibility, not yours, Mr. Dunworthy.” He donned his coat. “I must do as I think best.”

“And you think it best to set up a quarantine around the laboratory to placate a handful of crackpots,” he said bitterly. “There is also ‘considerable public concern’ that the virus is a judgment from God. What do you intend to do to maintain the goodwill of those townspeople? Resume burning martyrs at the stake?”

“I resent that remark. And I resent your constant interference in matters which do not concern you. You have been determined from the first to undermine Mediaeval, to keep it from gaining access to time travel, and now you are determined to undermine my authority. May I remind you that I am Acting Head of History in Mr. Basingame’s absence, and as such—”

“What you are is an ignorant, self-important fool who should never have been trusted with Mediaeval, let alone Kivrin’s safety!”

“I see no reason to continue this discussion,” Gilchrist said. “The laboratory is under quarantine. It will remain so until we obtain the sequencing.” He walked out.

Dunworthy started after him and nearly collided with Mary. She was wearing SPG’s and reading a chart.

“You will not believe what Gilchrist’s done now,” he said. “A group of picketers convinced him the virus came through the net, and he’s barricaded the laboratory.”

She didn’t say anything or even look up from the chart.

“Badri said this morning that the slippage figures can’t be right. He said over and over, ‘There’s something wrong.’ ”

She looked up at him distractedly and back at the chart.

“I have a tech ready to read Kivrin’s fix remotely, but Gilchrist’s locked the doors,” he said. “You must talk to him, tell him the virus has been firmly established as originating in South Carolina.”

“It hasn’t.”

“What do you mean, it hasn’t? Did the sequencing arrive?”

She shook her head. “The WIC located their tech, but she’s still running it. But her preliminary read indicates it’s not the South Carolina virus.” She looked up at him. “And I know it’s not.” She looked back at the chart. “The South Carolina virus had a zero mortality rate.”

“What do you mean? Has something happened to Badri?”

“No,” she said, shutting the chart and holding it to her chest. “Beverly Breen.”

He must have looked blank. He had thought she was going to say Latimer.

“The woman with the lavender umbrella,” she said, and sounded angry. “She died just now.”

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

(046381–054957)

22 December 1320 (Old Style). Agnes’s knee is worse. It’s red and painful (an understatement—she screams when I try to touch it) and she can scarcely walk. I don’t know what to do—if I tell Lady Imeyne, she’ll put one of her poultices on it and make it worse, and Eliwys is distracted and obviously worried.

Gawyn still isn’t back. He should have been home by noon yesterday, and when he hadn’t shown up by vespers, Eliwys accused Imeyne of sending him to Oxford.

“I have sent him to Courcy, as I told you,” Imeyne said defensively. “No doubt the rain keeps him.”

“Only to Courcy?” Eliwys said angrily. “Or have you sent him otherwhere for a new chaplain?”

Imeyne drew herself up. “Father Roche is not fit to say the Christmas masses if Sir Bloet and his company come,” she said. “Would you be shamed before Rosemund’s fiancé?”

Eliwys went absolutely white. “Where have you sent him?”

“I have sent him with a message to the bishop, saying that we are in sore need of a chaplain,” she said.

“To Bath?!” Eliwys said, and raised her hand as if she would strike her.

“Nay. Only to Cirencestre. The archdeacon was to lie at the abbey for Yule. I bade Gawyn give him the message. One of his churchmen will bear it thence. Though, certes, things go not so ill in Bath that Gawyn could not go thence himself without harm, else my son would have quitted it.”

“Your son will be ill-pleased to find we have disobeyed him. He bade us, and Gawyn, keep to the manor till he come.”

She still sounded furious, and as she lowered her hand, she clenched it into a fist, as if she would have liked to box Imeyne’s ears the way she does Maisry’s. But the color had come back in her cheeks as soon as Imeyne said, “Cirencestre,” and I think she was at least a little relieved.

“Certes, things go not so ill in Bath that Gawyn could not go thence without harm,” Imeyne said, but it’s obvious Eliwys doesn’t think he can. Is she afraid he’d ride into a trap or that he might lead Lord Guillaume’s enemies here? And are things going so “ill” that Guillaume can’t quit Bath?

Perhaps all three. Eliwys has been to the door to look out into the rain at least a dozen times this morning, and she’s in as bad a temper as Rosemund was in the woods. Just now she asked Imeyne if she was certain the archdeacon was at Cirencestre. She’s obviously worried that if he wasn’t, Gawyn will have taken the message into Bath himself.

Her fear has infected everyone. Lady Imeyne has slunk off into a corner with her reliquary to pray, Agnes whines, and Rosemund sits with her embroidery in her lap, staring blindly at it.

(Break)

I took Agnes to Father Roche this afternoon. Her knee was much worse. She couldn’t walk at all, and there was what looked like the beginning of a red streak above it. I couldn’t tell for certain—the entire knee is red and swollen—but I was afraid to wait.

There was no cure for blood poisoning in 1320, and it’s my fault her knee is infected. If I hadn’t insisted on going to look for the drop, she wouldn’t have fallen. I know the paradoxes aren’t supposed to let my presence here have any effect on what happens to the contemps, but I couldn’t take that chance. I wasn’t supposed to be able to catch anything either.

So when Imeyne went up to the loft, I carried Agnes over to the church to ask him to treat her. It was pouring by the time we got there, but Agnes wasn’t whining over getting wet, and that frightened me more than the red streak.

The church was dark and smelled musty. I could hear Father Roche’s voice from the front of the church, and it sounded like he was talking to someone. “Lord Guillaume has still not arrived from Bath. I fear for his safety,” he said.

I thought perhaps Gawyn had come back, and I wanted to hear what they said about the trial, so I didn’t go forward. I stood there with Agnes in my arms and listened.

“It has rained these two days,” Roche said, “and there is a bitter wind from the west. We have had to bring the sheep in from the fields.”

After a minute of peering into the dark nave, straining to see, I finally made him out. He was on his knees in front of the rood screen, his big hands folded together in prayer.

“The steward’s babe has a colic on the stomach and cannot keep his milk down. Tabord the cottar fares ill.”

He wasn’t praying in Latin, and there was none of the priest at Holy Re-Formed’s singsong chanting or the vicar’s oratory in his voice. He sounded businesslike and matter-of-fact, the way I sound now, talking to you.

God was supposed to be very real to the contemps in the 1300s, more vivid than the physical world they inhabited. “You do but go home again,” Father Roche told me when I was dying, and that’s what the contemps are supposed to have believed—that the life of the body is illusory and unimportant, and the real life is that of the eternal soul, as if they were only visiting life the way I am visiting this century, but I haven’t seen much evidence of it. Eliwys dutifully murmurs her aves at vespers and matins and then rises and brushes off her kirtle as if her prayers had nothing to do with her worries over her husband or the girls or Gawyn. And Imeyne, for all her reliquary and her Book of Hours, is concerned only about her social standing. I’d seen no evidence that God was real at all to them till I stood there in the damp church, listening to Father Roche.

I wonder if he sees God and heaven as clearly as I can see you and Oxford, the rain falling in the quad and your spectacles steaming up so you have to take them off and polish them on your muffler. I wonder if they seem as close as you do, and as difficult to get to.

“Preserve our souls from evil and bring us safely into heaven,” Roche said, and as if that were a cue, Agnes sat up in my arms and said, “I want Father Roche.”

Father Roche stood up and started toward us. “What is it? Who is there?”

“It is Lady Katherine,” I said. “I have brought Agnes. Her knee is—” What? Infected? “I would have you look at her knee.”

He tried to look at it, but it was too dark in the church, so he carried her over to his house. It was scarcely lighter there. His house is not much larger than the hut I took shelter in, and no higher. He had to stoop the whole time we were there to keep from bumping his head against the rafters.

He opened the shutter on the only window, which let the rain blow in, and then lit a rushlight and set Agnes on a crude wooden table. He untied the bandage, and she flinched away from him.

“Sit you still, Agnus, ” he told her, “and I will tell you how Christ came to earth from far heaven.”

“On Christmas Day,” Agnes said.

Roche felt around the wound, poking at the swollen parts, talking steadily. “ ‘And the shepherds stood afraid, for they knew not what this glittering light was. And sounds they heard, as of bells rung in heaven. But they beheld it was God’s angel come down to them.’ ”

Agnes had screamed and pushed my hands away when I tried to touch her knee, but she let Roche prod the red area with his huge fingers. There was definitely the beginning of a red streak. Roche touched it gently and brought the rushlight closer.

“ ‘And there came from a far land,’ ” he said, squinting at it, “ ‘three kings bearing gifts.’ ” He touched the red streak again, gingerly, and then folded his hands together, as if he were going to pray, and I thought, Don’t pray. Do something.

He lowered his hands and looked across at me. “I fear the wound is poisoned,” he said. “I will make an infusion of hyssop to draw the venom out.” He went over to the hearth, stirred up a few lukewarm-looking coals, and poured water into an iron pot from a bucket.

The bucket was dirty, the pot was dirty, the hands he’d felt Agnes’s wound with were dirty, and, standing there, watching him set the pot on the fire and dig into a dirty bag, I was sorry I’d come. He wasn’t any better than Imeyne. An infusion of leaves and seeds wouldn’t cure blood poisoning any more than one of Imeyne’s poultices, and his prayers wouldn’t help either, even if he did talk to God as if He were really there.

I almost said, “Is that all you can do?” and then realized I was expecting the impossible. The cure for infection was penicillin, T-cell enchancement, antiseptics, none of which he had in his burlap bag.

I remember Mr. Gilchrist talking about mediaeval doctors in one of his lectures. He talked about what fools they were for bleeding people and treating them with arsenic and goat’s urine during the Black Death. But what did he expect them to do? They didn’t have analogues or antimicrobials. They didn’t even know what caused it. Standing there, crumbling dried petals and leaves between his dirty fingers, Father Roche was doing the best he could.

“Do you have wine?” I asked him. “Old wine?”

There’s scarcely any alcohol in the small ale and not much more in their wine, but the longer it’s stood, the higher the alcoholic content, and alcohol is an antiseptic.

“I have remembered me that old wine poured into a wound may sometimes stop infections,” I said.

He didn’t ask me what “infection” was or how I was able to remember that when I supposedly can’t remember anything else. He went immediately across to the church and got an earthenware bottle full of strong-smelling wine, and I poured it onto the bandage and washed the wound with it.

I brought the bottle home with me. I’ve hidden it under the bed in Rosemund’s bower (in case it’s part of the sacramental wine—that would be all Imeyne would need, she’d have Roche burned for a heretic) so I can keep cleaning it. Before she went to bed, I poured some straight on.