Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  “Shhh,” he said, turning back to caution Colin, who had stopped in the quad to take out his gobstopper and examine its color, which was now a purplish-black. “We don’t want to wake everyone,” he said, his finger to his lips, turned around, and collided with a couple in the doorway.

  They were wearing rain slicks and embracing energetically, and the young man seemed oblivious to the collision, but the young woman pulled free and looked frightened. She had short red hair and was wearing a student nurse’s uniform under her slick. The young man was William Gaddson.

  “Your behavior is inappropriate to both the time and the place,” Dunworthy said sternly. “Public displays of affection are strictly forbidden in college. It is also ill-advised, since your mother may arrive at any moment.”

  “My mother?” he said, looking as dismayed as Dunworthy had when he saw her coming down the corridor with her valise. “Here? In Oxford? What’s she doing here? I thought there was a quarantine on.”

  “There is, but a mother’s love knows no bounds. She is concerned about your health, as am I, considering the circumstances.” He frowned at William and the young woman, who giggled. “I would suggest you escort your fellow perpetrator home and then make preparations for your mother’s arrival.”

  “Preparations?” he said, looking truly stricken. “You mean she’s staying?”

  “She has no alternative, I’m afraid. There is a quarantine on.”

  Lights came on suddenly inside the staircase, and Finch emerged. “Thank goodness you’re here, Mr. Dunworthy,” he said.

  He had a sheaf of colored papers, too, which he waved at Dunworthy. “National Health has just sent over another thirty detainees. I told them we hadn’t any room, but they wouldn’t listen, and I don’t know what to do. We simply do not have the necessary supplies for all these people.”

  “Lavatory paper,” Dunworthy said.

  “Yes!” Finch said, brandishing the papers. “And food stores. We went through half the eggs and bacon this morning alone.”

  “Eggs and bacon?” Colin said. “Are there any left?”

  Finch looked enquiringly at Colin and then at Dunworthy.

  “He’s Dr. Ahrens’ nephew,” he said, and before Finch could start off again, “he’ll stay in my rooms.”

  “Well, good, because I simply cannot find space for another person.”

  “We have both been up all night, Mr. Finch, so—”

  “Here’s the list of supplies as of this morning.” He handed Dunworthy a dampish blue paper. “As you can see—”

  “Mr. Finch, I appreciate your concern about the supplies, but surely this can wait until after—”

  “This is a list of your telephone calls with the ones you need to return marked with asterisks. This is a list of your appointments. The vicar wishes you to be at St. Mary’s at a quarter past six to rehearse the Christmas Eve service.”

  “I will return all these calls, but after I—”

  “Dr. Ahrens telephoned twice. She wanted to know what you’ve found out about the bellringers.”

  Dunworthy gave up. “Assign the new detainees to Warren and Basevi, three to a room. There are extra cots in the cellar of the hall.”

  Finch opened his mouth to protest.

  “They’ll simply have to put up with the paint smell.”

  He handed Colin Mary’s shopping bag and the umbrella. “That building over there with the lights on is the hall,” he said, pointing at the door. “Go tell the scouts you want some breakfast and then get one of them to let you into my rooms.”

  He turned to William, who was doing something with his hands under the student nurse’s rain slick. “Mr. Gaddson, find your accomplice a taxi and then find the students who’ve been here during vac and ask them whether they’ve been to the States in the past week or had contact with anyone who has. Make a list. You haven’t been to the States recently, have you?”

  “No, sir,” he said, removing his hands from the nurse. “I’ve been up the whole vac, reading Petrarch.”

  “Ah, yes, Petrarch,” Dunworthy said. “Ask the students what they know about Badri Chaudhuri’s activities from Monday on and question the staff. I need to know where he was and who he was with. I want the same sort of report on Kivrin Engle. Do a thorough job, and refrain from further public displays of affection, and I’ll arrange for your mother to be assigned a room as far from you as possible.”

  “Thank you, sir,” William said. “That would mean a great deal to me, sir.”

  “Now, Mr. Finch, if you’ll tell me where I might find Ms. Taylor?”

  Finch handed him more sheets, with the room assignments on them, but Ms. Taylor wasn’t there. She was in the junior common room with her bellringers and, apparently, the still unassigned detainees.

  One of them, an imposing woman in a fur coat, grabbed his arm as soon as he came in. “Are you in charge of this place?” she demanded.

  Clearly not, Dunworthy thought. “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, what are you going to do about getting us someplace to sleep. We’ve been up all night.”

  “So have I, madam,” Dunworthy said, afraid this was Ms. Taylor. She had looked thinner and less dangerous on the telephone, but visuals could be deceiving and the accent and the attitude were unmistakable. “You wouldn’t be Ms. Taylor?”

  “I’m Ms. Taylor,” a woman in one of the wing chairs said. She stood up. She looked even thinner than she had on the telephone and apparently less angry. “I spoke with you on the phone earlier,” she said, and the way she said it they might have had a pleasant chat about the intricacies of change ringing. “This is Ms. Piantini, our tenor,” she said, indicating the woman in the fur coat.

  Ms. Piantini looked like she could yank Great Tom straight off its moorings. She had obviously not had any viruses lately.

  “If I could speak with you privately for a moment, Ms. Taylor?” He led her out into the corridor. “Were you able to cancel your concert in Ely?”

  “Yes,” she said. “And Norwich. They were very understanding.” She leaned forward anxiously. “Is it true it’s cholera?”

  “Cholera?” Dunworthy said blankly.

  “One of the women who was down at the station said it was cholera, that someone had brought it from India and people were dropping like flies.”

  It had apparently not been a good night’s sleep, but fear that had worked the change in her manner. If he told her there were only four cases she would very likely demand they be taken to Ely.

  “The disease is apparently a myxovirus,” he said carefully. “When did your group come to England?”

  Her eyes widened. “You think we’re the ones who brought it? We haven’t been to India.”

  “There is a possibility it is the same myxovirus as one reported in South Carolina. Are any of your members from South Carolina?”

  “No,” she said. “We’re all from Colorado except Ms. Piantini. She’s from Wyoming. And none of us has been sick.”

  “How long have you been in England?”

  “Three weeks. We’ve been visiting all the Traditional Council chapters and doing handbell concerts. We rang a Boston Treble Bob at St. Katherine’s and Post Office Caters with three of the Bury St. Edmund’s chapter ringers, but of course neither of those was a new peal. A Chicago Surprise Minor—”

  “And you all arrived in Oxford yesterday morning?”

  “Yes.”

  “None of your group came early, to see the sights or visit friends?”

  “No,” she said, sounding shocked. “We’re on tour, Mr. Dunworthy, not on vacation.”

  “And you said that none of you had been ill?”

  She shook her head. “We can’t afford to get sick. There are only six of us.”

  “Thank you for your help,” Dunworthy said and sent her back down to the common room.

  He rang up Mary, who couldn’t be found, left a message, and started down Finch’s asterisks. He rang up Andrews, Jesus College, Mr. Basingame’s secretary
, and St. Mary’s without getting through. He rang off, waited a five minute interval and tried again. During one of the intervals, Mary phoned.

  “Why aren’t you in bed yet?” she demanded. “You look exhausted.”

  “I’ve been interrogating the bellringers,” he said. “They’ve been here in England for three weeks. None of them came to Oxford before yesterday afternoon and none of them are ill. Do you want me to come back and question Badri?”

  “It won’t do any good, I’m afraid. He’s not coherent.”

  “I’m trying to get through to Jesus to see what they know of his comings and goings.”

  “Good,” she said. “Ask his landlady, too. And get some sleep. I don’t want you getting this.” She paused. “We’ve got six more cases.”

  “Any from South Carolina?”

  “No,” she said, “and none who couldn’t have had contact with Badri. So he’s still the index case. Is Colin all right?”

  “He’s having breakfast,” he said. “He’s all right. Don’t worry about him.”

  He didn’t get to bed until after one-thirty in the afternoon. It took him two hours to get through to all the starred names on Finch’s list, and another hour to discover where Badri lived. His landlady wasn’t at home, and when Dunworthy got back, Finch insisted on going over the complete inventory of supplies.

  Dunworthy finally got away from him by promising to telephone the NHS and demand additional lavatory paper. He let himself into his rooms.

  Colin had curled up on the window seat, his head on his pack and a crocheted laprobe over him. It didn’t reach as far as his feet. Dunworthy took a blanket from the foot of the bed and covered him up, and sat down in the Chesterfield opposite to take off his shoes.

  He was almost too tired to do that, though he knew he would regret it if he went to bed in his clothes. That was the province of the young and non-arthritic. Colin would wake refreshed in spite of digging buttons and constricting sleeves. Kivrin could wrap up in her too-thin white cloak and rest her head on a tree stump none the worse for wear, but if he so much as omitted a pillow or left his shirt on, he would wake stiff and cramped. And if he sat here with his shoes in his hand, he would not get to bed at all.

  He heaved himself out of the chair, still holding the shoes, switched the light off, and went into the bedroom. He put on his pajamas and turned back the bed. It looked impossibly inviting.

  I shall be asleep before my head hits the pillow, he thought, taking off his spectacles. He got into bed and pulled the covers up. Before I’ve even switched off the light, he thought, and switched off the light.

  There was scarcely any light from the window, only a dull gray showing through the tangle of darker gray vines. The rain beat faintly against the dry leaves. I should have drawn the curtains, he thought, but he was too tired to get up again.

  At least Kivrin wouldn’t have to contend with rain. It was the Little Ice Age. It would be snow if anything. The contemps had slept huddled together by the hearth until it had finally occurred to someone to invent the chimney and the fireplace, and that hadn’t been extant in Oxfordshire villages till the mid– fifteenth century. But Kivrin wouldn’t care. She would curl up like Colin and sleep the easy, the unappreciated sleep of the young.

  He wondered if it had stopped raining. He couldn’t hear the patter of it on the window. Perhaps it had slowed to a drizzle or was getting ready to rain again. It was so dark, and too early for the afternoon to be drawing in. He drew his hand out from under the covers and looked at the illuminated numbers on his digital. Only two. It would be six in the evening where Kivrin was. He needed to phone Andrews again when he woke up and have him read the fix so they would know exactly where and when she was.

  Badri had said there was only four hours’ slippage, that he’d doublechecked the first-year apprentice’s coordinates and they were correct, but he wanted to make certain. Gilchrist had taken no precautions and even with precautions, things could go wrong. Today had proved that.

  Badri had had the full course of antivirals. Colin’s mother had seen him safely onto the tube and given him extra money. The first time Dunworthy had gone to London he had almost not made it back, and they had taken endless precautions.

  It had been a simple there-and-back-again to test the on– site net. Only thirty years. Dunworthy was to go through to Trafalgar Square, take the tube from Charing Cross to Paddington and the 10:48 train to Oxford where the main net would be open. They had allowed plenty of time, checked and rechecked the net, researched the ABC and the tube schedules, double-checked the dates on the money. And when he had got to Charing Cross the tube station was closed. The lights in the ticket kiosks were off, and an iron gate was pulled across the entrance, in front of the wooden turnstiles.

  He pulled the blankets up over his shoulder. Any number of things could have gone wrong, things no one had even thought of. It had probably never occurred to Colin’s mother that Colin’s train would be stopped at Barton. It had not occurred to any of them that Badri would suddenly fall forward into the console.

  Mary’s right, he thought, you’ve a dreadful streak of Mrs. Gaddsonitis. Kivrin overcame any number of obstacles to get to the Middle Ages. Even if something goes wrong, she can handle it. Colin hadn’t let a little thing like a quarantine stop him. And Dunworthy had made it safely back from London.

  He had banged on the shut gate and then run back up the stairs to read the signs again, thinking that perhaps he had come in the wrong way. He hadn’t. He had looked for a clock. Perhaps there had been more slippage than the checks indicated, he’d thought, and the underground was shut down for the night. But the clock above the entrance said nine-fifteen.

  “Accident,” a disreputable-looking man in a filthy cap had said. “They’ve shut down till they can get it cleaned up.”

  “B… But I must take the Bakerloo line,” he’d stammered, but the man had shuffled off.

  He’d stood there staring into the darkened station, unable to think what to do. He hadn’t brought enough money for a taxi, and Paddington was all the way across London. He’d never make the 10:48.

  “Whah ya gan, mite?” a young man with a black leather jacket and green hair like a cockscomb had said. Dunworthy could scarcely understand him. Punker, he’d thought. The young man had moved menacingly closer.

  “Paddington,” he’d said, and it had come out as little more than a squeak.

  The punker had reached in his jacket pocket for what Dunworthy had been sure was his switchblade, but he’d pulled out a laminated tube pass and begun reading the map on the back. “Yuh cuhn get District or Sahcle from Embankment. Gaw dahn Craven Street and tike a left.”

  He had run the whole way, certain the punker’s gang would leap out at him and steal his historically accurate money at any moment, and when he got to Embankment, he had had no idea how to work the ticket machine.

  A woman with two toddlers had helped him, punching in the destination and amount for him and showing him how to insert his ticket in the slot. He had made it to Paddington with time to spare.

  “Aren’t there any nice people in the Middle Ages?” Kivrin had asked him, and of course there were. Young men with switchblades and tube maps had existed in all ages. So had mothers and toddlers and Mrs. Gaddsons and Latimers. And Gilchrists.

  He rolled over onto his other side. “She will be perfectly all right,” he said aloud, but softly, so as not to wake Colin. “The Middle Ages are no match for my best pupil.” He pulled the blanket up over his shoulder and closed his eyes, thinking of the young man with the green cockscomb poring over the map. But the image that floated before him was of the iron gate, stretched between him and the turnstiles, and the darkened station beyond.

  Transcript from the Doomsday Book

  (015104-016615)

  19 December 1320 (Old Style.) I’m feeling better. I can go three or four careful breaths at a time without coughing, and I was actually hungry this morning, though not for the greasy porridge Maisry
brought me. I would kill for a glass of orange juice.

  And a bath. I am absolutely filthy. Nothing’s been washed since I got here except my forehead, and the last two days Lady Imeyne has glued poultices made of strips of linen covered with a disgusting-smelling paste to my chest. Between that, the intermittent sweats that I’m still having, and the bed (which hasn’t been changed since the 1200’s), I positively reek, and my hair, short as it is, is crawling. I’m the cleanest person here.

  Dr. Ahrens was right in wanting to cauterize my nose. Everyone, even the little girls, smells terrible, and it’s the dead of winter and freezing cold in here. I can’t imagine what it must be like in August. They all have fleas. Lady Imeyne stops even in mid-prayer to scratch, and when Agnes pulled down her hose to show me her knee, there were red bites all up and down her leg.

  Eliwys, Imeyne, and Rosemund have comparatively clean faces, but they don’t wash their hands, even after emptying the chamberpot, and the idea of washing the dishes or changing the flock in the mattresses has yet to be invented. By rights, they should all have long since died of infection, but, except for scurvy and a lot of bad teeth, everyone seems to be in good health. Even Agnes’s knee is healing nicely. She comes to show me the scab every day. And her silver buckle, and her wooden knight, and poor, over-loved Blackie.

  She is a treasure trove of information, most of it volunteered without my even asking. Rosemund is “in her thirteenth year,” which means she’s twelve, and the room they’ve been tending me in is her bower. It’s hard to imagine she’s of marriagable age, and thus has a private “maiden’s bower,” but girls were frequently married at thirteen and fourteen in the 1300’s. Eliwys can scarcely have been older than that when she married. Agnes also told me she has three older brothers, all of whom stayed in Bath with their father.