26

“That’s impossible,” Kivrin said. “It can’t be 1348,” but it all made sense, Imeyne’s chaplain dying, and their not having any servants, Eliwys’s not wanting to send Gawyn to Oxford to find out who Kivrin was. “There is much illness there,” Lady Yvolde had said, and the Black Death had hit Oxford at Christmas in 1348. “What happened?” she said, and her voice rose out of control. “What happened! I was supposed to go to 1320. 1320! Mr. Dunworthy told me I shouldn’t come, he said Mediaeval didn’t know what they were doing, but they couldn’t have sent me to the wrong year!” She stopped. “You must get out of here! It’s the Black Death!”

They all looked at her so uncomprehendingly that she thought the interpreter must have lapsed into English again. “It’s the Black Death,” she said again. “The blue sickness!”

“Nay,” Eliwys said softly, and Kivrin said, “Lady Eliwys, you must take Lady Imeyne and Father Roche down to the hall.”

“It cannot be,” she said, but she took Lady Imeyne’s arm and led her out, Imeyne clutching the poultice as if it were her reliquary. Maisry darted after them, her hands clutched to her ears.

“You must go, too,” Kivrin said to Roche. “I will stay with the clerk.”

“Thruuuu …” the clerk murmured from the bed, and Roche turned to look at him. The clerk struggled to rise, and Roche started toward him.

“No!” Kivrin said, and grabbed his sleeve. “You mustn’t go near him.” She interposed herself between him and the bed. “The clerk’s illness is contagious,” she said, willing the interpreter to translate. “Infectious. It is spread by fleas and by …” she hesitated, trying to think how to describe droplet infection, “by the humours and exhalations of the ill. It is a deadly disease, which kills nearly all who come near it.”

She watched him anxiously, wondering if he had understood anything she’d said, if he could understand it. There had been no knowledge of germs in the 1300s, no knowledge of how diseases spread. The contemps had believed the Black Death was a judgment from God. They had thought it was spread by poisonous mists that floated across the countryside, by a dead person’s glance, by magic.

“Father,” the clerk said, and Roche tried to step past Kivrin, but she barred his way.

“We cannot leave them to die,” he said.

They did, though, she thought. They ran away and left them. People abandoned their own children, and doctors refused to come, and all the priests fled.

She stooped and picked up one of the strips of cloth Lady Imeyne had torn for her poultice. “You must cover your mouth and nose with this,” she said.

She handed it to him and he looked at it, frowning, and then folded it into a flat packet and held it to his face.

“Tie it,” Kivrin said, picking up another one. She folded it diagonally and put it over her nose and mouth like a bandit’s mask and tied it in a knot in the back. “Like this.”

Roche obeyed, fumbling with the knot, and looked at Kivrin. She moved aside, and he bent over the clerk and put his hand on his chest.

“Don’t—” she said, and he looked up at her. “Don’t touch him any more than you have to.”

She held her breath as Roche examined him, afraid that he would start up suddenly again and grab at Roche, but he didn’t move at all. The bubo under his arm had begun to ooze blood and a slow greenish pus.

Kivrin put a restraining hand on Roche’s arm. “Don’t touch it,” she said. “He must have broken it when we were struggling with him.” She wiped the blood and pus away with one of Imeyne’s cloth strips and bound up the wound with another, tying it tightly at the shoulder. The clerk did not wince or cry out, and when she looked at him she saw he was staring straight ahead, unmoving.

“Is he dead?” she asked.

“Nay,” Roche said, his hand on his chest again, and she could see the faint rise and fall. “I must bring the sacraments,” he said through the mask, and his words were almost as blurred as the clerk’s.

No, Kivrin thought, the panic rising again. Don’t go. What if he dies? What if he rises up again?

Roche straightened. “Do not fear,” he said. “I will come again.”

He went out rapidly, without shutting the door, and Kivrin went over to close it. She could hear sounds from below—Eliwys’s and Roche’s voices. She should have told him not to speak to anyone. Agnes said, “I wish to stay with Kivrin,” and began to howl and Rosemund answered her angrily, shouting over the crying.

“I will tell Kivrin,” Agnes said, outraged, and Kivrin shoved the door to and barred it.

Agnes must not come in here, nor Rosemund, nor anyone. They must not be exposed. There was no cure for the Black Death. The only way to protect them was to keep them from catching it. She tried frantically to remember what she knew about the plague. She had studied it in Fourteenth Century, and Dr. Ahrens had talked about it when she’d given Kivrin her inoculations.

There were two distinct types, no, three—one went directly into the bloodstream and killed the victim within hours. Bubonic plague was spread by rat fleas, and that was the kind that produced the buboes. The other kind was pneumonic, and it didn’t have buboes. The victim coughed and vomited up blood, and that was spread by droplet infection and was horribly contagious. But the clerk had the bubonic, and that wasn’t as contagious. Simply being near the patient wouldn’t do it—the flea had to jump from one person to another.

She had a sudden vivid image of the clerk falling on Rosemund, bearing her down to the floor. What if she gets it? she thought. She can’t, she can’t get it. There isn’t any cure.

The clerk stirred in the bed, and Kivrin went over to him.

“Thirsty,” he said, licking his lips with his swollen tongue. She brought him a cup of water, and he drank a few gulps greedily and then choked and spewed it over her.

She backed away, yanking off the drenched mask. It’s the bubonic, she told herself, wiping frantically at her chest. This kind isn’t spread by droplet. And you can’t get the plague, you’ve had your inoculation. But she had had her antivirals and her T-cell enhancement, too. She should not have been able to get the virus either. She should not have landed in 1348.

“What happened?” she whispered.

It couldn’t be the slippage. Mr. Dunworthy had been upset that they hadn’t run slippage checks, but even at its worst, the drop would only have been off by weeks, not years. Something must have gone wrong with the net.

Mr. Dunworthy had said Mr. Gilchrist didn’t know what he was doing, and something had gone wrong, and she had come through in 1348, but why hadn’t they aborted the drop as soon as they knew it was the wrong date? Mr. Gilchrist might not have had the sense to pull her out, but Mr. Dunworthy would have. He hadn’t wanted her to come in the first place. Why hadn’t he opened the net again?

Because I wasn’t there, she thought. It would have taken at least two hours to get the fix. By then she had wandered off into the woods. But he would have held the net open. He wouldn’t have closed it again and waited for the rendezvous. He’d hold it open for her.

She half ran to the door and pushed up on the bar. She must find Gawyn. She must make him tell her where the drop was.

The clerk sat up and flung his bare leg over the bed as if he would go with her. “Help me,” he said, and tried to move his other leg.

“I can’t help you,” she said angrily. “I don’t belong here.” She shoved the bar up out of its sockets. “I must find Gawyn.” But as soon as she said it, she remembered that he wasn’t there, that he had gone with the bishop’s envoy and Sir Bloet to Courcy. With the bishop’s envoy, who had been in such a hurry to leave he had nearly run down Agnes.

She dropped the bar and turned on him. “Did the others have the plague?” she demanded. “Did the bishop’s envoy have it?” She remembered his gray face and the way he had shivered and pulled his cloak around him. He would infect all of them: Bloet and his haughty sister and the chattering girls. And Gawyn. “You knew you had it when you came here, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

The clerk held his arms out stiffly to her, like a child. “Help me,” he said, and fell back, his head and shoulder nearly off the bed.

“You don’t deserve to be helped. You brought the plague here.”

There was a knock.

“Who is it?” she said angrily.

“Roche,” he called through the door, and she felt a wave of relief, of joy that he had come, but she didn’t move. She looked down at the clerk, still lying half off the bed. His mouth was open, and his swollen tongue filled his entire mouth.

“Let me in,” Roche said. “I must hear his confession.”

His confession. “No,” Kivrin said.

He knocked again, louder.

“I can’t let you in,” Kivrin said. “It’s contagious. You might catch it.”

“He is in peril of death,” Roche said. “He must be shriven that he may enter into heaven.”

He’s not going to heaven, Kivrin thought. He brought the plague here.

The clerk opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and swollen, and there was a faint hum to his breathing. He’s dying, she thought.

“Katherine,” Roche said.

Dying, and far from home. Like I was. She had brought a disease with her, too, and if no one had succumbed to it, it was not because of anything she had done. They had all helped her, Eliwys and Imeyne and Roche. She might have infected all of them. Roche had given her the last rites, he had held her hand.

Kivrin lifted the clerk’s head gently and laid him straight in the bed. Then she went to the door.

“I’ll let you give him the last rites,” she said, opening it a crack, “but I must speak to you first.”

Roche had put on his vestments and taken off his mask. He carried the holy oil and the viaticum in a basket He set them on the chest at the foot of the bed, looking at the clerk, whose breathing was becoming more labored. “I must hear his confession,” he said.

“No!” Kivrin said. “Not until I’ve told you what I have to.” She took a deep breath. “The clerk has the bubonic plague,” she said, listening carefully for the translation. “It is a terrible disease. Nearly all who catch it die. It is spread by rats and their fleas and by the breath of those who are ill, and their clothes and belongings.” She looked anxiously at him, willing him to understand. He looked anxious, too, and bewildered.

“It’s a terrible disease,” she said. “It’s not like typhoid or cholera. It’s already killed hundreds of thousands of people in Italy and France, so many in some places there’s no one left to bury the dead.”

His expression was unreadable. “You have remembered who you are and whence you came,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

He thinks I was fleeing the plague when Gawyn found me in the woods, she thought. If I say yes, he’ll think I’m the one who brought it here. But there was nothing accusing in his look, and she had to make him understand.

“Yes,” she said, and waited.

“What must we do?” he said.

“You must keep the others from this room, and you must tell them they must stay in the house and let no one in. You must tell the villagers to stay in their houses, too, and if they see a dead rat not to go near it. There must be no more feasting or dancing on the green. The villagers mustn’t come into the manor house or the courtyard or the church. They mustn’t gather together anywhere.”

“I will bid Lady Eliwys keep Agnes and Rosemund inside,” he said, “and tell the villagers to keep to their houses.”

The clerk made a strangled sound from the bed, and they both turned and looked at him.

“Is there naught we can do to help those who have caught this plague?” he said, pronouncing the word awkwardly.

She had tried to remember what remedies the contemps had tried while he was gone. They had carried nosegays of flowers and drunk powdered emeralds and applied leeches to the buboes, but all of those were worse than useless, and Dr. Ahrens had said it wouldn’t have mattered what they had tried, that nothing except antimicrobials like tetracycline and streptomycin would have worked, and those had not been discovered until the twentieth century.

“We must give him liquids and keep him warm,” she said.

Roche looked at the clerk. “Surely God will help him,” he said.

He won’t, she thought. He didn’t. Half of Europe. “God cannot help us against the Black Death,” she said.

Roche nodded and picked up the holy oil.

“You must put your mask on,” Kivrin said, kneeling to pick up the last cloth strip. She tied it over his mouth and nose. “You must always wear it when you tend him,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t notice she wasn’t wearing hers.

“Is it God who has sent this upon us?” Roche said.

“No,” Kivrin said. “No.”

“Has the Devil sent it then?”

It was tempting to say yes. Most of Europe had believed it was Satan who was responsible for the Black Death. And they had searched for the Devil’s agents, tortured Jews and lepers, stoned old women, burned young girls at the stake.

“No one sent it,” Kivrin said. “It’s a disease. It’s no one’s fault. God would help us if He could, but He …” He what? Can’t hear us? Has gone away? Doesn’t exist?

“He cannot come,” she finished lamely.

“And we must act in His stead?” Roche said.

“Yes.”

Roche knelt beside the bed. He bent his head over his hands, and then raised it again. “I knew that God had sent you among us for some good cause,” he said.

She knelt, too, and folded her hands.

“Mittere digneris sanctum Angelum,” Roche prayed. “Send us Thy holy angel from heaven to guard and protect all those that are assembled together in this house.”

“Don’t let Roche catch it,” Kivrin said into the corder. “Don’t let Rosemund catch it. Let the clerk die before it reaches his lungs.”

Roche’s voice chanting the rites was the same as it had been when she was ill, and she hoped it comforted the clerk as it had comforted her. She couldn’t tell. He was unable to make his confession, and the anointing seemed to hurt him. He winced when the oil touched the palms of his hands, and his breathing seemed to grow louder as Roche prayed. Roche raised his head and looked at him. His arms were breaking out in the tiny purplish-blue bruises that meant the blood vessels under the skin were breaking, one by one.

Roche turned and looked at Kivrin. “Are these the last days,” he asked, “the end of the world that God’s apostles have foretold?”

Yes, Kivrin thought. “No,” she said. “No. It’s only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won’t have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter.” She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. “There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don’t have to ring.”

Her words had calmed the clerk. His breathing eased, and he fell into a doze.

“You must come away from him now,” Kivrin said and led Roche over to the window. She brought the bowl to him. “You must wash your hands after you have touched him,” she said.

There was scarcely any water in the bowl. “We must wash the bowls and spoons we use to feed him,” she said, watching him wash his huge hands, “and we must burn the cloths and bandages. The plague is in them.”

He wiped his hands on the tail of his robe and went down to tell Eliwys what she was to do. He brought back a length of linen and a bowl of fresh water. Kivrin tore the linen into wide strips and tied one over her mouth and nose.

The bowl of water did not last long. The clerk had come out of his doze and asked repeatedly for a drink. Kivrin held the cup for him, trying to keep Roche away from him as much as possible.

Roche went to say vespers and ring the bell. Kivrin closed the door after him, listening for sounds from below, but she couldn’t hear anything. Perhaps they are asleep, she thought, or ill. She thought of Imeyne bending over the clerk with her poultice, of Agnes standing at the end of the bed, of Rosemund underneath him.

It’s too late, she thought, pacing beside the bed, they’ve all been exposed. How long was the incubation period? Two weeks? No, that was how long the vaccine took to take effect. Three days? Two? She could not remember. And how long had the clerk been contagious? She tried to remember who he had sat next to at the Christmas feast, who he had talked to, but she hadn’t been watching him. She’d been watching Gawyn. The only clear memory she had was of the clerk grabbing Maisry’s skirt.

She went to the door again and opened it. “Maisry!” she called.

There was no answer, and that didn’t mean anything, Maisry was probably asleep or hiding, and the clerk had bubonic, not pneumonic, and it was spread by fleas. The chances were that he had not infected anyone, but as soon as Roche came back, she left him with the clerk and took the brazier downstairs to fetch hot coals. And to reassure herself that they were all right.

Rosemund and Eliwys were sitting by the fire, with sewing on their laps, with Lady Imeyne next to them, reading from her Book of Hours. Agnes was playing with her cart, pushing it back and forth over the stone flags and talking to it. Maisry was asleep on one of the benches near the high table, her face sulky even in sleep.

Agnes ran into Imeyne’s foot with the cart, and the old woman looked down at her and said, “I will take your toy from you if you cannot play meetly, Agnes,” and the sharpness of her reprimand, Rosemund’s hastily suppressed smile, the healthy pinkness of their faces in the fire’s light, were all inexpressibly reassuring to Kivrin. It could have been any night in the manor.

Eliwys was not sewing. She was cutting linen into long strips with her scissors, and she looked up constantly at the door. Imeyne’s voice, reading from her Book of Hours, had an edge of worry, and Rosemund, tearing the linen, looked anxiously at her mother. Eliwys stood up and went out through the screens. Kivrin wondered if she had heard someone coming, but after a minute, she came back to her seat and took up the linen again.

Kivrin came on down the stairs quietly, but not quietly enough. Agnes abandoned her cart and scrambled up. “Kivrin!” she shouted, and launched herself at her.

“Careful!” Kivrin said, warding her off with her free hand. “These are hot coals.”

They weren’t hot, of course. If they were, she wouldn’t have come down to replace them, but Agnes backed away a few steps.

“Why do you wear a mask?” she asked. “Will you tell me a story?”

Eliwys had stood up, too, and Imeyne had turned to look at her. “How does the bishop’s clerk?” Eliwys asked.

He is in torment, she wanted to say. She settled for, “His fever is down a little. You must keep well away from me. The infection may be in my clothes.”

They all got up, even Imeyne, closing her Book of Hours on her reliquary, and stepped back from the hearth, watching her.

The stump of the Yule log was still on the fire. Kivrin used her skirt to take the lid from the brazier and dumped the gray coals on the edge of the hearth. Ash roiled up, and one of the coals hit the stump and bounced and skittered along the floor.

Agnes laughed, and they all watched its progress across the floor and under a bench except Eliwys, who had turned back to watch the screens.

“Has Gawyn returned with the horses?” Kivrin asked, and then was sorry. She already knew the answer from Eliwys’s strained face, and it made Imeyne turn and stare coldly at her.

“Nay,” Eliwys said without turning her head. “Think you the others of the bishop’s party were ill, too?”

Kivrin thought of the bishop’s gray face, of the friar’s haggard expression. “I don’t know,” she said.

“The weather grows cold,” Rosemund said. “Mayhap Gawyn thought to stay the night.”

Eliwys didn’t answer. Kivrin knelt by the fire and stirred the coals with the heavy poker, bringing the red coals to the top. She tried to maneuver them into the brazier, using the poker, and then gave up and scooped them up with the brazier lid.

“You have brought this upon us,” Imeyne said.

Kivrin looked up, her heart suddenly thumping, but Imeyne was not looking at her. She was looking at Eliwys. “It is your sins have brought this punishment to bear.”

Eliwys turned to look at Imeyne, and Kivrin expected shock or anger in her face, but there was neither. She looked at her mother-in-law disinterestedly, as if her mind were somewhere else.

“The Lord punishes adulterers and all their house,” Imeyne said, “as now he punishes you.” She brandished the Book of Hours in her face. “It is your sin that has brought the plague here.”

“It was you who sent for the bishop,” Eliwys said coldly. “You were not satisfied with Father Roche. It was you who brought them here, and the plague with them.”

She turned on her heel, and went out through the screens.

Imeyne stood stiffly, as though she had been struck, and went back to the bench where she had been sitting. She eased herself to her knees and took the reliquary from her book and ran the chain absently through her fingers.

“Would you tell me a story now?” Agnes asked Kivrin.

Imeyne propped her elbows on the bench and pressed her hands against her forehead.

“Tell me the tale of the willful maiden,” Agnes said.

“Tomorrow,” Kivrin said, “I will tell you a story tomorrow,” and took the brazier back upstairs.

The clerk’s fever was back up. He raved, shouting the lines from the mass for the dead as if they were obscenities. He asked for water repeatedly, and Roche, and then Kivrin, went out to the courtyard for it.

Kivrin tiptoed down the stairs, carrying the bucket and a candle, hoping Agnes wouldn’t see her, but they were all asleep except Lady Imeyne. She was on her knees praying, her back stiff and unforgiving. You have brought this upon us.

Kivrin went out into the dark courtyard. Two bells were ringing, slightly out of rhythm with each other, and she wondered if they were vespers bells or tolling a funeral. There was a half-filled bucket of water by the well, but she dumped it onto the cobbles and drew a fresh one. She set it by the kitchen door and went in to get something for them to eat. The heavy cloths used to cover the food when it was brought into the manor were lying on the end of the table. She piled bread and a chunk of cold meat onto one and tied it at the corners, and then grabbed up the rest of them and carried all of it upstairs. They ate sitting on the floor in front of the brazier and Kivrin felt better almost with the first bite.

The clerk seemed better, too. He dozed again, and then broke out in a hot sweat. Kivrin sponged him off with one of the coarse kitchen cloths, and he sighed as if it felt good, and slept. When he woke again, his fever was down. They pushed the chest over next to the bed and set a tallow lamp on it, and she and Roche took turns sitting beside him, and resting on the window seat. It was too cold to truly sleep, but Kivrin curled up against the stone sill and napped, and every time she woke he seemed to be improved.

She had read in History of Meds that lancing the buboes sometimes saved a patient. His had stopped draining, and the hum had gone from his chest. Perhaps he wouldn’t die after all.

There were some historians who thought the Black Death had not killed as many people as the records indicated. Mr. Gilchrist thought the statistics were grossly exaggerated by fear and lack of education, and even if the statistics were correct, the plague hadn’t killed one half of every village. Some places had only had one or two cases. In some villages, no one had died at all.

They had isolated the clerk as soon as they’d realized what it was, and she had managed to keep Roche from getting close most of the time. They had taken every possible precaution. And it hadn’t turned into pneumonic. Perhaps that was enough, and they had caught it in time. She must tell Roche they must close the village, keep anyone else from coming in, and perhaps the plague would just pass over them. It had done that. Whole villages had been left untouched, and there were parts of Scotland where the plague had never reached at all.

She must have dozed, off. When she woke, it was growing light and Roche was gone. She looked over at the bed. The clerk lay perfectly still, his eyes wide and staring, and she thought, He’s died and Roche has gone to dig his grave, but even as the thought formed, she could see the coverings over his chest rise and fall. She felt for his pulse. It was fast and so faint she could scarcely feel it.

The bell began to ring, and she realized Roche must have gone to say matins. She pulled her mask up over her nose and leaned over the bed. “Father,” she said softly, but he gave no indication at all that he heard her. She put her hand on his forehead. His fever was down again, but his skin didn’t feel normal. It was dry, papery, and the hemorrhages on his arms and legs had darkened and spread. His engorged tongue stuck out between his teeth, hideously purple.

He smelled terrible, a sickening odor she could smell through her mask. She climbed up on the window seat and untied the waxed linen. The fresh air smelled wonderful, cold and sharp, and she leaned out over the ledge and breathed deeply.

There was no one in the courtyard, but as she drank in the clean, cold air, Roche appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of something that steamed. He started across the cobbles to the door of the manor house, and as he did, Lady Eliwys appeared. She spoke to Roche, and he started toward her and then stopped short and pulled up his mask before he answered her. He’s trying to keep clear of people at any rate, Kivrin thought. He passed on into the manor house, and Eliwys went out to the well.

Kivrin tied the linen to the side of the window and looked around for something to fan the air with. She jumped down, got one of the cloths she had taken from the kitchen, and clambered back up again.

Eliwys was still by the well, drawing up the bucket. She stopped, holding to the rope, and turned to look toward the gate. Gawyn came through it, leading his horse by the bridle.

He stopped when he saw her, and Gringolet stumbled into him and flung his head up, annoyed. The expression on Gawyn’s face was the same as it had always been, full of hope and longing, and Kivrin felt a surge of anger that it hadn’t changed, even now. He doesn’t know, she thought. He’s just returned from Courcy. She felt a pang of pity for him, that he had to find out, that Eliwys would have to tell him.

Eliwys hauled the bucket up even with the edge of the well, and Gawyn took one more step toward her, holding on to Gringolet’s bridle, and then stopped.

He knows, Kivrin thought. He knows after all. The bishop’s envoy has come down with it, she thought, and he’s ridden home to warn them. She realized suddenly he hadn’t brought the horses back with him. The friar has it, she thought, and the rest of them have fled.

He watched Eliwys heave the heavy bucket up on to the stone edge of the well, not moving. He would do anything for her, Kivrin thought, anything at all, he would rescue her from a hundred cutthroats in the woods, but he can’t rescue her from this.

Gringolet, impatient to be in the stable, shook his head. Gawyn put his hand up to his muzzle to steady him, but it was too late. Eliwys had already seen him.

She let go of the bucket. It landed with a splash Kivrin could hear, far above them, and then Eliwys was in his arms. Kivrin put her hand to her mouth.

There was a light knock on the door. Kivrin jumped down to open it. It was Agnes.

“Would you not tell me a story now?” she said. She was very bedraggled. No one had braided her hair since yesterday. It stuck out under her linen cap at all angles, and she had obviously slept by the hearth. One sleeve was filthy with ashes.

Kivrin resisted the urge to brush them off. “You cannot come in,” she said, holding the door nearly shut. “You will catch the sickness.”

“There is none to play with me,” Agnes said. “Mother has gone and Rosemund still sleeps.”

“Your mother has only gone out for water,” she said firmly. “Where is your grandmother?”

“Praying.” She reached for Kivrin’s skirt, and Kivrin jerked back.

“You must not touch me,” she said sharply.

Agnes’s face puckered into a pout. “Why are you wroth with me?”

“I’m not angry with you,” Kivrin said more gently. “But you can’t come in. The clerk is very ill, and all who come close to him may”—there was no hope of explaining contagion to Agnes—“may fall ill, too.”

“Will he die?” Agnes said, trying to see around the door.

“I fear so.”

“Will you?”

“No,” she said, and realized she was no longer frightened. “Rosemund will waken soon. Ask her to tell you a story.”

“Will Father Roche die?”

“No. Go and play with your cart till Rosemund wakes.”

“Will you tell me a story after the clerk is dead?”

“Yes. Go downstairs.”

Agnes went reluctantly down three steps, holding on to the wall. “Will we all die?” she asked.

“No,” Kivrin said. Not if I can help it. She shut the door and leaned against it.

The clerk still lay unseeing and unaware, his whole being turned inward to the battle with an enemy his immune system had never seen before, and had no defenses against.

The knocking came again. “Go downstairs, Agnes,” Kivrin said, but it was Roche, carrying the bowl of broth he had brought from the kitchen and a hod of red coals. He dumped them into the brazier and knelt beside it, blowing on them.

He had handed the bowl to Kivrin. It was lukewarm and smelled terrible. She wondered what it had in it that had brought the fever down.

Roche stood up and took the bowl, and they tried to spoon the broth into the clerk, but it dribbled off his huge tongue and down the sides of his mouth.

Someone knocked.

“Agnes, I told you, you can’t come in here,” Kivrin said impatiently, trying to mop up the bedclothes.

“Grandmother sent me to bid you come.”

“Is Lady Imeyne ill?” Roche said. He started for the door.

“Nay. It is Rosemund.”

Kivrin’s heart began to pound.

Roche opened the door, but Agnes did not come in. She stood on the landing, staring at his mask.

“Is Rosemund ill?” Roche asked anxiously.

“She fell down.”

Kivrin darted past them and down the steps.

Rosemund was sitting on one of the benches by the hearth, and Lady Imeyne was standing over her.

“What’s happened?” Kivrin demanded.

“I fell,” Rosemund said, sounding bewildered. “I hit my arm.” She held it out to Kivrin, the elbow crooked.

Lady Imeyne murmured something.

“What?” Kivrin said, and realized the old lady was praying. She looked around the hall for Eliwys. She wasn’t there. Only Maisry huddled frightenedly by the table, and the thought flickered through Kivrin’s mind that Rosemund must have tripped over her.

“Did you fall over something?” she asked.

“Nay,” Rosemund said, still sounding dazed. “My head hurts.”

“Did you hit your head?”

“Nay.” She pulled her sleeve back. “I hit my elbow on the stones.”

Kivrin pushed the loose sleeve up past her elbow. It was scraped, but there was no blood. Kivrin wondered if she could have broken it. She was holding it at such an odd angle. “Does this hurt?” she asked, moving it gently.

“Nay.”

She twisted the forearm gently. “Does this?”

“Nay.”

“Can you move your fingers?” Kivrin said.

Rosemund waggled them each in turn, her arm still crooked. Kivrin frowned at it, puzzled. It might be sprained, but she didn’t think she’d be able to move it so easily. “Lady Imeyne,” she said, “would you fetch Father Roche?”

“He cannot help us,” Imeyne said contemptuously, but she started for the stairs.

“I don’t think it’s broken,” Kivrin said to Rosemund.

Rosemund lowered her arm, gasped, and jerked it up again. The color drained from her face, and beads of sweat broke out on her upper lip.

It must be broken, Kivrin thought, and reached for the arm again. Rosemund pulled away and, before Kivrin even realized what was happening, toppled off the bench and onto the floor.

She had hit her head this time. Kivrin heard it thunk against the stone. Kivrin scrambled over the bench and knelt beside her. “Rosemund, Rosemund,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

She didn’t move. She had flung her injured arm out when she fell, as if to catch herself, and when Kivrin touched it, she flinched, but she didn’t open her eyes. Kivrin looked round wildly for Imeyne, but the old woman was not on the stairs. She got to her knees.

Rosemund opened her eyes. “Do not leave me,” she said.

“I must fetch help,” she said.

Rosemund shook her head.

“Father Roche!” Kivrin called, though she knew he could not hear her through the heavy door, and Lady Eliwys came through the screens and ran across the flagged floor.

“Has she the blue sickness?” she said.

No. “She fell,” Kivrin said. She laid her hand on Rosemund’s bare, outflung arm. It felt hot. Rosemund had closed her eyes again and was breathing slowly, evenly, as if she had fallen asleep.

Kivrin pushed the heavy sleeve up and over Rosemund’s shoulder. She turned her arm up so she could see the armpit, and Rosemund tried to jerk away, but Kivrin held her tightly.

It was not as large as the clerk’s had been, but it was bright red and already hard to the touch. No, Kivrin thought. No. Rosemund moaned and tried to pull her arm away, and Kivrin laid it gently down, arranging the sleeve under it.

“What’s happened?” Agnes said from halfway down the stairs. “Is Rosemund ill?”

I can’t let this happen, Kivrin thought. I must get help. They’ve all been exposed, even Agnes, and there’s nothing here to help them. Antimicrobials won’t be discovered for six hundred years.

“Your sins have brought this,” Imeyne said.

Kivrin looked up. Eliwys was looking at Imeyne, but absently, as if she hadn’t heard her.

“Your sins and Gawyn’s,” Imeyne said.

“Gawyn,” Kivrin said. He could show her where the drop was, and she could go get help. Dr. Ahrens would know what to do. And Mr. Dunworthy. Dr. Ahrens would give her vaccine and streptomycin to bring back.

“Where is Gawyn?” Kivrin said.

Eliwys was looking at her now, and her face was full of longing, full of hope. He has finally got her attention, Kivrin thought. “Gawyn,” Kivrin said. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Eliwys said.

“Gone where?” she said. “I must speak with him. We must go fetch help.”

“There is no help,” Lady Imeyne said. She knelt beside Rosemund and folded her hands. “It is God’s punishment.”

Kivrin stood up. “Gone where?”

“To Bath,” Eliwys said. “To bring my husband.”

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

(070114–070526)

I decided I’d better try to get this all down. Mr. Gilchrist said he hoped with the opening of Mediaeval we’d be able to obtain a firsthand account of the Black Death, and I guess this is it.

The first case of plague here was the clerk who came with the bishop’s envoy. I don’t know if he was ill when they arrived or not. He could have been and that was why they came here instead of going on to Oxford, to get rid of him before he infected them. He was definitely ill on Christmas morning when they left, which means he was probably contagious the night before, when he had contact with at least half the village.

He has transmitted the disease to Lord Guillaume’s daughter, Rosemund, who fell ill on … the twenty-sixth? I’ve lost all track of time. Both of them have the classic buboes. The clerk’s bubo has broken and is draining. Rosemund’s is hard and growing larger. It’s nearly the size of a walnut. The area around it is inflamed. Both of them have high fevers and are intermittently delirious.

Father Roche and I have isolated them in the bower and have told everyone to stay in their houses and avoid all contact with each other, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Nearly everyone in the village was at the Christmas feast, and the whole family was in here with the clerk.

I wish I knew whether the disease is contagious before the symptoms appear and how long the incubation period is. I know that the plague takes three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic, and I know the pneumonic form is the most contagious since it can be spread by coughing or breathing on people and by touch. The clerk and Rosemund both seem to have the bubonic.

I am so frightened I can’t even think. It washes over me in waves. I’ll be doing all right, and then suddenly the fear swamps me, and I have to take hold of the bed frame to keep from running out of the room, out of the house, out of the village, away from it!

I know I’ve had my plague inoculations, but I’d had my T-cells enhanced and my antivirals, and I still got whatever it was I got, and every time the clerk touches me, I cringe. Father Roche keeps forgetting to wear his mask, and I’m so afraid he’s going to catch it, or Agnes. And I’m afraid the clerk is going to die. And Rosemund. And I’m afraid somebody in the village is going to get pneumonic, and Gawyn won’t come back, and I won’t find the drop before the rendezvous.

(Break)

I feel a bit calmer. It seems to help, talking to you, whether you can hear me or not.

Rosemund’s young and strong. And the plague didn’t kill everyone. In some villages no one at all died.