31

Agnes died the day after New Year’s, still screaming for Kivrin to come.

“She is here,” Eliwys said, squeezing her hand. “Lady Katherine is here.”

“She is not” Agnes wailed, her voice hoarse but still strong. “Tell her to come!”

“I will,” Eliwys promised, and then looked up at Kivrin, her expression faintly puzzled. “Go and fetch Father Roche,” she said.

“What is it?” Kivrin asked. He had administered the last rites that first night, Agnes flailing and kicking at him as if she were having a tantrum, and since then she had refused to let him near her. “Are you ill, lady?”

Eliwys shook her head, still looking at Kivrin. “What will I tell my husband when he comes?” she said, and laid Agnes’s hand along her side, and it was only then that Kivrin realized she was dead.

Kivrin washed her little body, which was nearly covered with purplish-blue bruises. Where Eliwys had held her hand, the skin was completely black. She looked like she had been beaten. As she has been, Kivrin thought, beaten and tortured. And murdered. The slaughter of the innocents.

Agnes’s surcote and shift were ruined, a stiffened mass of blood and vomit, and her everyday linen shift had long since been torn into strips. Kivrin wrapped her body in her own white cloak, and Roche and the steward buried her.

Eliwys did not come. “I must stay with Rosemund,” she said when Kivrin told her it was time. There was nothing Eliwys could do for Rosemund—the girl still lay as still as if she were under a spell, and Kivrin thought the fever must have caused some brain damage. “And Gawyn may come,” Eliwys said.

It was very cold. Roche and the steward puffed out great clouds of condensation as they lowered Agnes into the grave, and the sight of their white breath infuriated Kivrin. She doesn’t weigh anything, she thought bitterly, you could carry her in one hand.

The sight of all the graves angered her, too. The churchyard was filled, and nearly all the rest of the green that Roche had consecrated. Lady Imeyne’s grave was almost in the path to the lychgate, and the steward’s baby did not have one—Father Roche had let it be buried at its mother’s feet though it had not been baptized—and the churchyard was still full.

What about the steward’s youngest son, Kivrin thought angrily, and the clerk? Where do you plan to put them? The Black Death was only supposed to have killed one third to one half of Europe. Not all of it.

“Requiescat in pace. Amen,” Roche said, and the steward began shoveling the frozen dirt onto the little bundle.

You were right, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought bitterly. White only gets dirty. You’re right about everything, aren’t you? You told me not to come, that terrible things would happen. Well, they have. And you can’t wait to tell me I told you so. But you won’t have that satisfaction because I don’t know where the drop is, and the only person who does is probably dead.

She didn’t wait for the steward to finish shoveling dirt down on Agnes or for Father Roche to complete his chummy little chat with God. She started across the green, furious with all of them: with the steward for standing there with his spade, eager to dig more graves, with Eliwys for not coming, with Gawyn for not coming. No one’s coming, she thought. No one.

“Katherine,” Roche called.

She turned, and he half ran up to her, his breath like a cloud around him.

“What is it?” she demanded.

He looked at her solemnly. “We must not give up hope,” he said.

“Why not?” she burst out. “We’re up to eighty-five percent, and we haven’t even got started. The clerk is dying, Rosemund’s dying, you’ve all been exposed. Why shouldn’t I give up hope?”

“God has not abandoned us utterly,” he said. “Agnes is safe in His arms.”

Safe, she thought bitterly. In the ground. In the cold. In the dark. She put her hands up to her face.

“She is in heaven, where the plague cannot reach her. And God’s love is ever with us,” he said, “and naught can separate us from it, neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things present—”

“Nor things to come,” Kivrin said.

“Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,” he said. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently, as if he were anointing her. “It was His love that sent you to help us.”

She put her hand up to his where it rested on her shoulder and held it tightly. “We must help each other,” she said.

They stood there like that for a long minute, and then Roche said, “I must go and ring the bell that Agnes’s soul may have safe passage.”

She nodded and took her hand away. “I’ll go check on Rosemund and the others,” she said and went into the courtyard.

Eliwys had said she needed to stay with Rosemund, but when Kivrin got back to the manor house, she was nowhere near her. She lay curled up on Agnes’s pallet, wrapped in her cloak, watching the door. “Perhaps his horse was stolen by those that would flee the pestilence,” she said, “and that is why he is so long in coming.”

“Agnes is buried,” Kivrin said coldly, and went to check on Rosemund.

She was awake. She looked up solemnly at Kivrin when she knelt by her and reached for Kivrin’s hand.

“Oh, Rosemund,” Kivrin said, tears stinging her nose and eyes. “Sweetheart, how do you feel?”

“Hungry,” Rosemund said. “Has my father come?”

“Not yet,” Kivrin said, and it even seemed possible that he might. “I will fetch you some broth. You must rest until I come back. You have been very ill.”

Rosemund obediently closed her eyes. They looked less sunken, though they still had dark bruises under them. “Where is Agnes?” she asked.

Kivrin smoothed her dark, tangled hair back from her face. “She is sleeping.”

“Good,” Rosemund said. “I would not have her shouting and playing. She is too noisy.”

“I will fetch you the broth,” Kivrin said. She went over to Eliwys. “Lady Eliwys, I have good news,” she said eagerly. “Rosemund is awake.”

Eliwys raised herself up on one elbow and looked at Rosemund, but apathetically, as if she were thinking of something else, and presently she lay down again.

Kivrin, alarmed, put her hand to Eliwys’s forehead. It seemed warm, but Kivrin’s hands were still cold from outside, and she couldn’t tell for certain. “Are you ill?” she asked.

“No,” Eliwys said, but still as if her mind were on something else. “What shall I tell him?”

“You can tell him that Rosemund is better,” she said, and this time it seemed to get through to her. Eliwys got up and went over to Rosemund and sat down beside her. But by the time Kivrin came back from the kitchen with the broth, she had gone back to Agnes’s pallet and lay curled up under her fur-trimmed cloak.

Rosemund was asleep, but it was not the frightening deathlike sleep of before. Her color was better, though her skin was still drawn tightly over her cheekbones.

Eliwys was asleep, too, or feigning sleep, and it was just as well. While she had been in the kitchen, the clerk had crawled off his pallet and halfway over the barricade, and when Kivrin tried to haul him back, he struck out at her wildly. She had to go fetch Father Roche to help subdue him.

His right eye had ulcerated, the plague eating its way out from inside, and the clerk clawed at it viciously with his hands. “Domine Jesu Christe, ” he swore, “fidelium defunctorium de poenis infermis. ” Save the souls of the faithful departed from the pains of hell.

Yes, Kivrin prayed, wrestling with his clawed hands, save him now.

She rummaged through Imeyne’s medical kit again, searching for something to kill the pain. There was no opium powder, and was the opium poppy even in England yet in 1348? She found a few papery orange scraps that looked a little like poppy petals and steeped them in hot water, but the clerk couldn’t drink it. His mouth was a horror of open sores, his teeth and tongue caked with dried blood.

He doesn’t deserve this, Kivrin thought. Even if he did bring the plague here. Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked.

Whatever it was, it was not granted. The clerk began to vomit a dark bile, streaked with blood, and it snowed for two days, and Eliwys grew steadily worse. It did not seem to be the plague. She had no buboes and she didn’t cough or vomit, and Kivrin wondered if it were illness or simply grief or guilt. “What shall I tell him?” Eliwys said over and over again. “He sent us here to keep us safe.”

Kivrin felt her forehead. It was warm. They’re all going to get it, she thought. Lord Guillaume sent them here to keep them safe, but they’re all going to get it, one by one. I have to do something. But she couldn’t think of anything. The only protection from the plague was flight, but they had already fled here, and it had not protected them, and they couldn’t flee with Rosemund and Eliwys ill.

But Rosemund’s getting stronger every day, Kivrin thought, and Eliwys doesn’t have the plague. It’s only a fever. Perhaps they have another estate where we could go. In the north.

The plague was not in Yorkshire yet. She could see to it that they kept away from the other people on the roads, that they weren’t exposed.

She asked Rosemund if they had a manor in Yorkshire. “Nay,” Rosemund said, sitting up against one of the benches. “In Dorset,” but that was of no use. The plague was already there. And Rosemund, though she was better, was still too weak to sit up for more than a few minutes. She could never ride a horse. If we had horses, Kivrin thought.

“My father had a living in Surrey, also,” Rosemund said. “We stayed there when Agnes was born.” She looked at Kivrin. “Did Agnes die?”

“Yes,” Kivrin said.

She nodded as if she were not surprised. “I heard her screaming.”

Kivrin couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“My father is dead, isn’t he?”

There was nothing to say to that either. He was almost certainly dead, and Gawyn, too. It had been eight days since he had left for Bath. Eliwys, still feverish, had said this morning, “He will come now that the storm is over,” but even she had not seemed to believe it.

“He may yet come,” Kivrin said. “The snow may have delayed him.”

The steward came in, carrying his spade, and stopped at the barricade in front of them. He had been coming in every day to look at his son, staring at him dumbly over the upturned table, but now he only glanced at him and then turned to stare at Kivrin and Rosemund, leaning on his spade.

His cap and shoulders were covered with snow, and the blade of the spade was wet with it. He has been digging another grave, Kivrin thought. Whose?

“Has someone died?” she asked.

“Nay,” he said, and went on looking almost speculatively at Rosemund.

Kivrin stood up. “Did you want something?”

He looked at her blankly, as if he could not comprehend the question, and then back at Rosemund. “No,” he said, and picked up the spade and went out.

“Goes he to dig Agnes’s grave?” Rosemund asked, looking after him.

“No,” Kivrin said gently. “She is already buried in the churchyard”

“Goes he then to dig mine?”

“No,” Kivrin said, appalled. “No! You’re not going to die. You’re getting better. You were very ill, but the worst is over. Now you must rest and try to sleep so you can get well.”

Rosemund lay down obediently and closed her eyes, but after a minute she opened them again. “My father being dead, the crown will dispose of my dowry,” she said. “Think you Sir Bloet still lives?”

I hope not, Kivrin thought, and then, poor child, has she been worrying about her marriage all this time? Poor little thing. His being dead is the only good to come out of the plague. If he is dead. “You mustn’t worry about him now. You must rest and get your strength back.”

“The king will sometimes honor a previous betrothal,” Rosemund said, her thin hands plucking at the blanket, “if both parties be agreed.”

You don’t have to agree to anything, Kivrin thought. He’s dead. The bishop killed them.

“If they are not agreed, the king will bid me marry who he will,” Rosemund said, “and Sir Bloet at least is known to me.”

No, Kivrin thought, and knew it was probably the best thing. Rosemund had been conjuring worse horrors than Sir Bloet, monsters and cutthroats, and Kivrin knew they existed.

Rosemund would be sold off to some nobleman the king owed a debt to or whose allegiance he was trying to buy, one of the troublesome supporters of the Black Prince, perhaps, and taken God knew where to God knew what situation.

There were worse things than a leering old man and a shrewish sister-in-law. Baron Gamier had kept his wife in chains for twenty years. The Count of Anjou had burned his alive. And Rosemund would have no family, no friends, to protect her, to tend her when she was ill.

I’ll take her away, Kivrin thought suddenly, to somewhere where Bloet can’t find her and we’ll be safe from the plague.

There was no, such place. It was already in Bath and Oxford, and moving south and east to London, and then Kent, north through the Midlands to Yorkshire and back across the Channel to Germany and the Low Countries. It had even gone to Norway, floating in on a ship of dead men. There was nowhere that was safe.

“Is Gawyn here?” Rosemund asked, and she sounded like her mother, her grandmother. “I would have him ride to Courcy and tell Sir Bloet that I would come to him.”

“Gawyn?” Eliwys said from her pallet. “Is he coming?”

No, Kivrin thought. No one’s coming. Not even Mr. Dunworthy.

It didn’t matter that she had missed the rendezvous. There would have been no one there. Because they didn’t know she was in 1348. If they knew, they would never have left her here.

Something must have gone wrong with the net. Mr. Dunworthy had been worried about sending her so far back without parameter checks. “There could be unforeseen complications at that distance,” he’d said. Perhaps an unforeseen complication had garbled the fix or made them lose it, and they were looking for her in 1320. I’ve missed the rendezvous by nearly thirty years, she thought.

“Gawyn?” Eliwys said again and tried to rise from her pallet.

She could not. She was growing steadily worse, though she still had none of the marks of the plague. When it began to snow, she had said, relieved, “He will not come now until the storm is over,” and gotten up and gone to sit with Rosemund, but by the afternoon she had to lie down again, and her fever went steadily higher.

Roche heard her confession, looking worn out. They were all worn out. If they sat down to rest, they were asleep in seconds. The steward, coming in to look at his son Lefric, had stood at the barricade, snoring, and Kivrin had dozed off while tending the fire and burned her hand badly.

We can’t go on like this, she thought, watching Father Roche making the sign of the cross over Eliwys. He’ll die of exhaustion. He’ll come down with the plague.

I have to get them away, she thought again. The plague didn’t reach everywhere. There were villages that were completely untouched. It had skipped over Poland and Bohemia, and there were parts of northern Scotland it had never reached.

“Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis,” Father Roche said, his voice as comforting as it had been when she was dying, and she knew it was hopeless.

He would never leave his parishioners. The history of the Black Death was full of stories of priests who had abandoned their people, who had refused to perform burials, who had locked themselves in their churches and monasteries or run away. She wondered now if those statistics were inaccurate, too.

And even if she found some way to take them all, Eliwys, turning even now as she made her confession to look at the door, would insist on waiting for Gawyn, for her husband, to come, as she was convinced they would now that the snow had stopped.

“Has Father Roche gone to meet him?” she asked Kivrin when Roche left to take the sacraments back to the church. “He will be here soon. He has no doubt gone first to Courcy to warn them of the plague, and it is only half a day’s journey from there.” She insisted that Kivrin move her pallet in front of the door.

While Kivrin was rearranging the barricade to keep the draft from the door off her, the clerk cried out suddenly and went into convulsions. His whole body spasmed, as if he were being shocked, and his face become a terrible rictus, his ulcerated eye staring upward.

“Don’t do this to him,” Kivrin shouted, trying to wedge the spoon from Rosemund’s broth between his teeth. “Hasn’t he been through enough?”

His body jerked. “Stop it!” Kivrin sobbed. “Stop it!”

His body abruptly slackened. She jammed the spoon between his teeth, and a little trickle of black slime came out of the side of his mouth.

He’s dead, she thought, and could not believe it. She looked at him, his ulcerated eye half-open, his face swollen and blackened under the stubble of his beard. His fists were clenched at his sides. He did not look human, lying there, and Kivrin covered his face with a rough blanket, afraid that Rosemund might see him.

“Is he dead?” Rosemund asked, sitting up curiously.

“Yes,” Kivrin said. “Thank God.” She stood up. “I must go tell Father Roche.”

“I would not have you leave me here alone,” Rosemund said.

“Your mother is here,” Kivrin said, “and the steward’s son, and I will only be a few minutes.”

“I am afraid,” Rosemund said.

So am I, Kivrin thought, looking down at the coarse blanket. He was dead, but even that had not relieved his suffering. He looked still in anguish, still in terror, though his face no longer looked even human. The pains of hell.

“Please do not leave me,” Rosemund said.

“I must tell Father Roche,” Kivrin said, but she sat down between the clerk and Rosemund and waited until she was asleep before she went to find him.

He wasn’t in the courtyard or the kitchen. The steward’s cow was in the passage, eating the hay from the bottom of the pigsty, and it ambled after her out onto the green.

The steward was in the churchyard, digging a grave, his chest level with the snowy ground. He already knows, she thought, but that was impossible. Her heart began to pound.

“Where is Father Roche?” she called, but the steward didn’t answer or look up. The cow came up beside her and lowed at her.

“Go away,” she said, and ran across to the steward.

The grave was not in the churchyard. It lay on the green, past the lychgate, and there were two other graves in a line next to it, the iron-hard dirt piled on the snow beside each one.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. “Whose graves are these?”

The steward flung a spadeful of dirt onto the mound. The frozen clods made a clattering sound like stones.

“Why do you dig three graves?” she said. “Who has died?” The cow nudged her shoulder with its horn. She twisted away from it. “Who has died?”

The steward jabbed the spade into the iron-hard ground. “It is the last days, boy,” he said, stepping down hard on the blade, and Kivrin felt a jerk of fear, and then realized he hadn’t recognized her in her boy’s clothes.

“It’s me, Katherine,” she said.

He looked up and nodded. “It is the end of time,” he said. “Those who have not died, will.” He leaned forward, putting his whole weight on the spade.

The cow tried to dig its head in under her arm.

“Go away!” she said, and hit it on the nose. It backed away gingerly, skirting the graves, and Kivrin noticed they were not all the same size.

The first was large, but the one next to it was no bigger than Agnes’s had been, and the one he stood in did not look much longer. I told Rosemund he wasn’t digging her grave, she thought, but he was.

“You have no right to do this!” she said. “Your son and Rosemund are getting better. And Lady Eliwys is only tired and ill with grief. They aren’t going to die.”

The steward looked up at her, his face as expressionless as when he had stood at the barricade, measuring Rosemund for her grave. “Father Roche says you were sent to help us, but how can you avail against the end of the world?” He stood down on the spade again. “You will have need of these graves. All, all will die.”

The cow trotted over to the opposite side of the grave, its face on a level with the steward’s, and lowed in his face, but he did not seem to notice it.

“You must not dig any more graves,” she said. “I forbid it.”

He went on digging, as if he had not noticed her either.

“They’re not going to die,” she said. “The Black Death only killed one third to one half of the contemps. We’ve already had our quota.”

He went on digging.

Eliwys died in the night. The steward had to lengthen Rosemund’s grave for Eliwys, and when they buried her, Kivrin saw he had started another for Rosemund.

I must get them away from here, she thought, looking at the steward. He stood with the spade cradled against his shoulder, and as soon as he had filled in Eliwys’s grave, he started in on Rosemund’s grave again. I must get them away before they catch it.

Because they were going to catch it. It lay in wait for them, in the bacilli on their clothes, on the bedding, in the very air they breathed. And if by some miracle they didn’t catch it from that, the plague would sweep through all of Oxfordshire in the spring, messengers and villagers and bishop’s envoys. They could not stay here.

Scotland, she thought, and started for the manor. I could take them to northern Scotland. The plague didn’t reach that far. The steward’s son could ride the donkey, and they could make a litter for Rosemund.

Rosemund was sitting up on her pallet. “The steward’s son has been crying out for you,” she said as soon as Kivrin came in.

He had vomited a bloody mucus. His pallet was filthy with it, and when Kivrin cleaned him up, he was too weak to raise his head. Even if Rosemund can ride, he can’t, she thought despairingly. We’re not going anywhere.

In the night, she thought of the wagon that had been at the rendezvous. Perhaps the steward could help her repair it, and Rosemund could ride in that. She lit a rushlight from the coals of the fire and crept out to the stable to look at it. Roche’s donkey brayed at her when she opened the door, and there was a rustling sound of sudden scattering as she held the smoky light up.

The smashed boxes lay piled against the wagon like a barricade, and she knew as soon as she pulled them away that it wouldn’t work. It was too big. The donkey could not pull it, and the wooden axle was missing, carried off by some enterprising contemp to mend a hedge with or burn for firewood. Or to stave off the plague with, Kivrin thought.

It was pitch-black in the courtyard when she came out, and the stars were sharp and bright, as they had been Christmas Eve. She thought of Agnes asleep against her shoulder, the bell on her little wrist, and the sound of the bells, tolling the Devil’s knell. Prematurely, Kivrin thought. The Devil isn’t dead yet. He’s loose on the world.

She lay awake a long time, trying to think of another plan. Perhaps they could make some sort of litter the donkey could drag if the snow wasn’t too deep. Or perhaps they could put both children on the donkey and carry the baggage in packs on their backs.

She fell asleep finally and was awakened again almost immediately, or so it seemed to her. It was still dark, and Roche was bending over her. The dying fire lit his face from below so that he looked as he had in the clearing when she had thought he was a cutthroat, and still partly asleep, she reached out and put her hand gently to his cheek.

“Lady Katherine,” he said, and she came awake.

It’s Rosemund, she thought, and twisted round to look at her, but she was sleeping easily, her thin hand under her cheek.

“What is it?” she said. “Are you ill?”

He shook his head. He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

“Has someone come?” she said, scrambling to her feet.

He shook his head again.

It can’t be someone ill, she thought. There’s no one left. She looked at the pile of blankets by the door where the steward slept, but he wasn’t there. “Is the steward ill?”

“The steward’s son is dead,” he said in an odd, stunned voice, and she saw that Lefric was gone, too. “I went to the church to say matins—” Roche said, and his voice faltered. “You must come with me,” he said and strode out.

Kivrin snatched up her ragged blanket and hurried out into the courtyard after him.

It could not be later than six. The sun was only just above the horizon, staining the overcast sky and the snow with pink. Roche was already disappearing through the narrow passage to the green. Kivrin flung the blanket over her shoulders and ran after him.

The steward’s cow was standing in the passage, its head through a break in the fence of the pigsty, pulling at the straw. It raised its head and mooed at Kivrin.

“Shoo!” she said, flapping her hands at it, but it only pulled its head out of the wattle fence and started toward her, lowing.

“I don’t have time to milk you,” she said, and shoved its hindquarters out of the way and squeezed past.

Father Roche was halfway across the green before she caught up with him. “What is it? Can’t you tell me?” she asked, but he didn’t stop or even look at her. He turned toward the line of graves on the green, and she thought, feeling suddenly relieved, The steward’s tried to bury his son himself, without a priest.

The small grave was filled in, the snowy dirt mounded over it, and he had finished Rosemund’s grave and dug another, larger one. The spade was sticking out of it, its handle leaning against the end.

Roche didn’t go to Lefric’s grave. He stopped at the newest one, and said, in that same stunned voice, “I went to the church to say matins—” and Kivrin looked into the grave.

The steward had apparently tried to bury himself with the shovel, but it had proved unwieldy in the narrow space, and he had propped it against the end of the grave and begun pulling the dirt down with his hands. He held a large clod in his frozen hand.

His legs were nearly covered, and it gave him an indecent look, as if he were lying in his bath. “We must bury him properly,” she said, and reached for the shovel.

Roche shook his head. “It is holy ground,” he said numbly, and she realized that he thought the steward had killed himself.

It doesn’t matter, she thought, and realized in spite of everything, horror after horror, Roche still believed in God. He had been going to the church to say matins when he found the steward, and if they all died, he would go on saying them and not find anything incongruous in his prayers.

“It’s the disease,” Kivrin said, though she had no idea whether it was or not. “The septicemic plague. It infects the blood.”

Roche looked at her uncomprehendingly.

“He must have fallen ill while he was digging,” she said. “Septicemic plague poisons the brain. He was not in his right mind.”

“Like Lady Imeyne,” he said, sounding almost glad.

He didn’t want to have to bury him outside the pale, Kivrin thought, in spite of what he believes.

She helped Roche straighten the steward’s body a little, though he was already stiff. They did not attempt to move him or wrap him in a shroud. Roche laid a black cloth over his face, and they took turns shoveling the dirt in on him. The frozen earth clattered like stones.

Roche did not go to the church for his vestments or the missal. He stood first beside Lefric’s grave and then the steward’s and said the prayers for the dead. Kivrin, standing beside him, her hands folded, thought, He wasn’t in his right mind. He had buried his wife and six children, he had buried almost everyone he knew, and even if he hadn’t been feverish, if he had crawled into the grave and waited to freeze to death, the plague had still killed him.

He did not deserve a suicide’s grave. He doesn’t deserve any grave, Kivrin thought. He was supposed to go to Scotland with us, and was horrified at the sudden shock of delight she felt.

We can go to Scotland now, she thought, looking at the grave he had dug for Rosemund. Rosemund can ride the donkey, and Roche and I can carry the food and blankets. She opened her eyes and looked at the sky, but now that the sun was up, the clouds looked lighter, as if they might break up by midmorning. If they left this morning, they could be out of the forest by noon and onto the Oxford-Bath road. By night they could be on the highway to York.

“Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,” Roche said, “dona eis requiem.”

We must take oats for the donkey, she thought, and the ax for cutting firewood. And blankets.

Roche finished the prayers. “Dominus vobiscum et cum spiritu tuo,” he said. “Requiescat in pace. Amen.” He started off to ring the bell.

There isn’t time for that, Kivrin thought, and then took off toward the manor. She could be half packed by the time Roche had tolled the death knell, and she could tell him her plan, and he could load the donkey, and they could go. She ran across the courtyard and into the manor. They would have to take coals to start the fire with. They could use Imeyne’s medicine casket.

She went into the hall. Rosemund was still asleep. That was good. There was no point in waking her until they were ready to leave. She tiptoed past her and got the casket and emptied it out. She laid it next to the fire and started out to the kitchen.

“I woke and you were not here,” Rosemund said. She sat up on her pallet. “I was afraid you had gone.”

“We’re all going,” Kivrin said. “We’re going to go to Scotland.” She went over to her. “You must rest for the journey. I will be back in a bit.”

“Where are you going?” Rosemund said.

“Only to the kitchen. Are you hungry? I will bring you some porridge. Now lie down and rest.”

“I do not like to be alone,” Rosemund said. “Can you not stay with me a little?”

I don’t have time for this, Kivrin thought. “I’m only going to the kitchen. And Father Roche is here. Can’t you hear him? He’s ringing the bell. I’ll only be a few minutes. All right?” She smiled cheerfully at Rosemund, and she nodded reluctantly. “I’ll be back soon.”

She nearly ran outside. Roche was still ringing the death knell, slowly, steadily. Hurry, she thought, we don’t have much time. She searched the kitchen, setting the food on the table. There was a round of cheese and plenty of manchets left—she stacked them like plates in a wadmal sack, put in the cheese, and carried it out to the well.

Rosemund was standing in the door of the manor, holding on to the jamb. “Can I not sit in the kitchen with you?” she asked. She had put on her kirtle and her shoes, but she was already shivering in the cold air.

“It is too cold,” Kivrin said, hurrying over to her. “And you must rest.”

“When you are gone, I fear you will not come back,” she said.

“I’m right here,” Kivrin said, but she went inside and fetched Rosemund’s cloak and an armload of furs.

“You can sit here on the doorstep,” she said, “and watch me pack.” She put the cloak over Rosemund’s shoulders and sat her down, piling the furs about her like a nest. “All right?”

The brooch that Sir Bloet had given Rosemund was still at the neck of the cloak. She fumbled with the fastening, her thin hands trembling a little. “Do we go to Courcy?” she asked.

“No,” Kivrin said, and pinned the brooch for her. Io suiicien lui dami amo. You are here in place of the friend I love. “We’re going to Scotland. We will be safe from the plague there.”

“Think you my father died from the plague?”

Kivrin hesitated.

“My mother said he was only delayed or unable to come. She said perhaps my brothers were ill, and he would come when they were recovered.”

“And so he may,” Kivrin said, tucking a fur around Rosemund’s feet. “We’ll leave a letter for him so he’ll know where we went.”

Rosemund shook her head. “If he lived, he would have come for me.”

Kivrin wrapped a coverlid around Rosemund’s thin shoulders. “I must fetch food for us to take,” Kivrin said gently.

Rosemund nodded, and Kivrin went across to the kitchen. There was a sack of onions against the wall and another of apples. They were wizened, and most of them had brown spots, but Kivrin lugged the sack outside. They would not need to be cooked and they would all be in need of vitamins before spring.

“Would you like an apple?” she asked Rosemund.

“Yes,” Rosemund said, and Kivrin searched through the sack, trying to find one that was still firm and unwrinkled. She unearthed a reddish-green one, polished it on her leather hose, and took it to her, smiling at the memory of how good an apple would have tasted when she was ill.

But after the first bite, Rosemund seemed to lose interest. She leaned back against the doorjamb and looked quietly up at the sky, listening to the steady toll of Roche’s bell.

Kivrin went back to sorting the apples, picking out the ones worth taking, and wondering how much the donkey could carry. They would need to take oats for the donkey. There would be no grass, though when they reached Scotland there might be heather that it could eat. They shouldn’t have to take water. There were plenty of streams. But they would need to take a pot to boil it in.

“Your people never came for you,” Rosemund said.

Kivrin looked up. She was still sitting against the door with the apple.

They did come, Kivrin thought, but I wasn’t there. “No,” Kivrin said.

“Think you the plague has killed them?”

“No,” Kivrin said, and thought, At least I don’t have to think of them dead or helpless somewhere. At least I know they’re all right.

“When I go to Sir Bloet, I will tell him how you helped us,” Rosemund said. “I will ask that I might keep you and Father Roche by me.” Her head went up proudly. “I am allowed my own attendants and chaplain.”

“Thank you,” Kivrin said solemnly.

She set the sack of good apples next to the one of cheese and bread. The bell stopped, its overtones still echoing in the cold air. She picked up the bucket and lowered it into the well. She would cook some porridge and chop the bruised apples into it. It would make a filling meal for the trip.

Rosemund’s apple rolled past her feet to the base of the well and stopped. Kivrin stooped to pick it up. It had only a little bite out of it, white against the shriveled red. Kivrin wiped it against her jerkin. “You dropped your apple,” she said, and turned to give it back to her.

Her hand was still open, as if she had leaned forward to catch it when it fell. “Oh, Rosemund,” Kivrin said.

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

(079110–079239)

Father Roche and I are going to Scotland. There really isn’t any point in telling you that, I suppose, since you’ll never hear what’s on this corder, but perhaps someone will stumble across it on a moor someday or Ms. Montoya will do a dig in northern Scotland when she’s finished with Skendgate, and if that happens, I wanted you to know what happened to us.

I know flight is probably the worst thing to do, but I have to get Father Roche away from here. The whole manor is contaminated with the plague—bedding, clothes, the air—and the rats are everywhere. I saw one in the church when I went to get Roche’s alb and stole for Rosemund’s funeral. And even if he doesn’t catch it from them, the plague is all around us, and I will never be able to convince him to stay here. He will want to go and help.

We’ll keep off the roads and away from the villages. We’ve got food enough for a week, and then we’ll be far enough north that I should be able to buy food in a town. The clerk had a sack of silver with him. And don’t worry. We’ll be all right. As Mr. Gilchrist would say, “I’ve taken every possible precaution.”

The Doomsday Book
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