Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  “It is not safe,” Kivrin said, feeling sorry for him. “We will give you and your horse food to take with you.”

  Roche turned to go into the kitchen, and Kivrin suddenly remembered Agnes. “Did you see a little girl on the road?” she asked. “A five-year-old child, with a red cloak and hood?”

  “Nay,” the boy said, “but there are many on the roads. They flee the pestilence.”

  Roche was bringing out a wadmal sack. Kivrin turned to fetch some oats for the stallion, and Eliwys shot past them both, her skirts tangling between her legs, her loose hair flying out behind her.

  “Don’t—” Kivrin shouted, but Eliwys had already caught hold of the stallion’s bridle.

  “Where do you come from?” she asked, grabbing at the boy’s sleeve. “Have you seen aught of Gawyn Fitzroy?”

  The boy looked frightened. “I come from Bath, with a message from the bishop,” he said, pulling back on the reins. The horse whinnied, and tossed its head.

  “What message?” Eliwys said hysterically. “Is it from Gawyn?”

  “I do not know the man of whom you speak,” the boy said.

  “Lady Eliwys—” Kivrin said, stepping forward.

  “He rides a black steed with a saddle chased in silver,” she persisted, pulling on the stallion’s bridle. “He has gone to Bath to fetch my husband, who witnesses at the Assizes.”

  “None go to Bath,” the boy said. “All who can flee it.”

  Eliwys stumbled, as though the stallion had reared, and seemed to fall against its side.

  “There is no court, nor any law,” the boy said. “The dead lie in the streets, and all who but look on them die, too. Some say it is the end of the world.”

  Eliwys let go of the bridle and took a step back. She turned and looked hopefully at Kivrin and Roche. “They will surely be home soon, then. Is it certain you did not see them on the road? He rides a black steed.”

  “There were many steeds.” He kicked the horse forward toward Roche, but Eliwys didn’t move.

  Roche stepped forward with the sack of food. The boy leaned down, grabbed it, and wheeled the stallion around, nearly running Eliwys down. She didn’t try to get out of the way.

  Kivrin stepped forward and caught hold of one of the reins. “Don’t go back to the bishop,” she said.

  He jerked up on the reins, looking more frightened of her than of Eliwys.

  She didn’t let go. “Go north,” she said. “The plague isn’t there yet.”

  He wrenched the reins free, kicked the stallion forward, and galloped out of the courtyard.

  “Stay off the main roads,” Kivrin called after him. “Speak to no one.”

  Eliwys still stood where she was.

  “Come,” Kivrin said. “We must find Agnes.”

  “My husband and Gawyn will have ridden first to Courcy to warn Sir Bloet,” she said, and let Kivrin lead her back to the house.

  Kivrin looked in the barn. Agnes wasn’t there, but she found her own cloak, left there Christmas Eve. She flung it around her and went up into the loft. She looked in the brewhouse and Roche searched the other buildings, but they didn’t find her. A cold wind had sprung up while they stood talking to the messenger, and it smelled like snow.

  “Perhaps she is in the house,” Roche said. “Looked you behind the high seat?”

  She searched the house again, looking behind the high seat and under the bed in the solar. Maisry still lay whimpering where Kivrin had left her, and she had to resist the temptation to kick her. She asked Lady Imeyne, kneeling to the wall, if she had seen Agnes or not.

  The old woman ignored her, moving her beads and her lips silently.

  Kivrin shook her shoulder. “Did you see her go out?”

  Lady Imeyne turned and looked at her, her eyes glittering. “She is to blame,” she said.

  “Agnes?” Kivrin said, outraged. “How could it be her fault?”

  Imeyne shook her head and looked past Kivrin at Maisry. “God punishes us for Maisry’s wickedness.”

  “Agnes is missing and it grows dark,” Kivrin said. “We must find her. Did you not see where she went?”

  “To blame,” she whispered and turned back to the wall.

  It was getting late now, and the wind was whistling around the screens. Kivrin ran out to the passage and onto the green.

  It was like the day she had tried to find the drop on her own. There was no one on the snow-covered green, and the wind whipped and tore at her clothes as she ran. A bell was ringing somewhere far off to the northeast, slowly, a funeral toll.

  Agnes had loved the belltower. Kivrin went in, shouted up the stairs to the rope even though she could see up to the bellrope. She went out and stood looking at the huts, trying to think where Agnes would have gone.

  Not the huts, unless she had got cold. Her puppy. She had wanted to go see her puppy’s grave. Kivrin hadn’t told her she’d buried it in the woods. Agnes had told her it had to be buried in the churchyard. Kivrin could see she wasn’t there, but she went through the lychgate.

  Agnes had been there. The prints of her little boots led from grave to grave and then off to the north side of the church. Kivrin looked up the hill at the beginning of the woods, thinking What if she went into the woods? We’ll never find her.

  She ran around the side of the church. The prints stopped and circled back to the door of the church. Kivrin opened the door. It was nearly dark inside and colder than the wind-whipped churchyard. “Agnes!” she called.

  There was no answer, but there was a faint sound up by the altar, like a rat scurrying out of sight. “Agnes?” Kivrin said, peering into the gloom behind the tomb, in the side aisles. “Are you here?” she said.

  “Kivrin?” a quavering little voice said.

  “Agnes?” she said, and ran in its direction. “Where are you?”

  She was by the statue of St. Catherine, huddled among the candles at its base in her red cape and hood. She had pressed herself against the rough stone skirts of the statue, eyes wide and frightened. Her face was red and damp with tears. “Kivrin?” she cried, and flung herself into her arms.

  “What are you doing here, Agnes?” Kivrin said, angry with relief. She hugged her tightly. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

  She buried her wet face against Kivrin’s neck. “Hiding,” she said. “I took Cart to see my hound, and I fell down.” She wiped at her nose with her hand. “I called and called for you, but you didn’t come.”

  “I didn’t know where you were, honey,” Kivrin said, stroking her hair. “Why did you come in the church?”

  “I was hiding from the wicked man.”

  “What wicked man?” Kivrin said, frowning.

  The heavy church door opened, and Agnes clasped her little arms in a stranglehold around Kivrin’s neck. “It is the wicked man,” she whispered hysterically.

  “Father Roche!” Kivrin called. “I’ve found her. She’s here.” The door shut, and she could hear his footsteps. “It’s Father Roche,” she said to Agnes. “He’s been looking for you, too. We didn’t know where you’d gone.”

  She loosened her grip a little. “Maisry said the wicked man would come and get me.”

  Roche came up panting, and Agnes buried her head against Kivrin again. “Is she ill?” he asked anxiously.

  “I don’t think so,” Kivrin said. “She’s half-frozen. Put my cloak over her.”

  Roche clumsily unfastened Kivrin’s cloak and wrapped it around Agnes.

  “I hid from the wicked man,” Agnes said to him, turning in Kivrin’s arms.

  “What wicked man?” Roche said.

  “The wicked man who chased you in the church,” she said. “Maisry said he comes and gets you and gives you the blue sickness.”

  “There isn’t any wicked man,” Kivrin said, thinking, I’ll shake Maisry till her teeth rattle when I get home. She stood up. Agnes’s grip tightened.

  Roche groped along the wall to the priest’s door, and opened it. Bluish light fl
ooded in.

  “Maisry said he got my hound,” Agnes said, shivering. “But he didn’t get me. I hid.”

  Kivrin thought of the black puppy, limp in her hands, blood around its mouth. No, she thought, and started rapidly across the snow. She was shivering because she’d been in the icy church so long. Her face felt hot against Kivrin’s neck. It’s only from crying, Kivrin told herself, and asked her if her head ached.

  Agnes shook or nodded her head against Kivrin and wouldn’t answer. No, Kivrin thought, and walked faster, Roche close behind her, past the steward’s house and into the courtyard.

  “I did not go in the woods,” Agnes said when they got to the house. “The naughty girl did, didn’t she?”

  “Yes,” Kivrin said, carrying her over to the fire. “But it was all right. The father found her and took her home. And they lived happily ever after.” She sat Agnes down on the bench and untied her cape.

  “And she never went in the woods again,” she said.

  “She never did.” Kivrin pulled her wet shoes and hose off. “You must lie down,” she said, spreading her cloak next to the fire. “I will bring you some hot soup.” Agnes lay down obediently, and Kivrin pulled the sides of the cloak up over her.

  She brought her soup, but Agnes didn’t want any, and she fell asleep almost immediately.

  “She’s caught a chill,” she told Eliwys and Roche almost fiercely. “She was outside all afternoon. She’s caught cold,” but after Roche left to say vespers, she uncovered Agnes and felt under her arms, in her groin. She even turned her over, looking for a lump between the shoulderblades like the boy’s.

  Roche didn’t ring the bell. He came back with a ragged quilt that was obviously from his own bed, made it into a pallet, and moved Agnes onto it.

  The other vespers bells were ringing. Oxford and Godstow and the bell from the southwest. Kivrin couldn’t hear Courcy’s double bell. She looked at Eliwys anxiously, but she didn’t seem to be listening. She was looking across Rosemund at the screens.

  The bells stopped, and Courcy’s started up. They sounded odd, muffled and slow. Kivrin looked at Roche. “Is it a funeral bell?”

  “Nay,” he said, looking at Agnes. “It is a holy day.”

  She had lost track of the days. The bishop’s envoy had left Christmas morning and in the afternoon she had found out it was the plague, and after that it seemed like one endless day. Four days, she thought, it’s been four days.

  She had wanted to come at Christmas because there were so many holy days even the peasants would know what day it was, and she couldn’t possibly miss the rendezvous. Gawyn went to Bath for help, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, and the bishop took all the horses, and I didn’t know where it was.

  Eliwys had stood up and was listening to the bells. “Are those Courcy’s bells?” she asked Roche.

  “Yes,” he said. “Fear not. It is the Slaughter of the Innocents.”

  The slaughter of the innocents, Kivrin thought, looking at Agnes. She was still asleep, and she had stopped shivering, though she still felt hot.

  The cook cried out something, and Kivrin went around the barricade to her. She was crouched on her pallet, struggling to get up. “Must go home,” she said.

  Kivrin coaxed her down again and fetched her a drink of water. The bucket was nearly empty, and she picked it up and started out with it.

  “Tell Kivrin I would have her come to me,” Agnes said. She was sitting up.

  Kivrin put the bucket down. “I’m here,” Kivrin said, kneeling down beside her. “I’m right here.”

  Agnes looked at her, her face red and distorted with rage. “The wicked man will get me if Kivrin does not come,” she said. “Bid her come now.”

  Transcript from the Doomsday Book

  (073453-074912)

  I’ve missed the rendezvous. I lost count of the days, taking care of Rosemund, and I couldn’t find Agnes, and I didn’t know where the drop was.

  You must be worried sick, Mr. Dunworthy. You probably think I’ve fallen among cutthroats and murderers. Well, I have. And now they’ve got Agnes.

  She has a fever, but no buboes, and she isn’t coughing or vomiting. Just the fever. It’s very high—she doesn’t know me and keeps calling to me to come. Roche and I tried to bring it down by sponging her with cold compresses, but it keeps going back up.

  (Break)

  Lady Imeyne has it. Father Roche found her this morning on the floor in the corner. She may have been there all night. The last two nights she has refused to go to bed and has stayed on her knees, praying to God to protect her and the rest of the godly from the plague.

  He hasn’t. She has the pneumonic. She’s coughing and vomiting mucus streaked with blood.

  She won’t let Roche or me tend her. “She is to blame for this,” she told Roche, pointing at me. “Look at her hair. She is no maid. Look at her clothes.”

  My clothes are a boy’s jerkin and leather hose I found in one of the chests in the loft. My dress got ruined when Lady Imeyne vomited on me, and I had to tear my shift up for cloths and bandages.

  Roche tried to give her some of the willow bark tea, but she spat it out. She said, “She lied when she said she was waylaid in the woods. She was sent here.”

  Bloody spittle dribbled down her chin as she spoke and Roche wiped it off. “It is the disease that makes you believe these things,” he said gently.

  “She was sent here to poison us,” Imyene said. “See how she has poisoned my son’s children. And how she would poison me, but I will not let her give me aught to eat or drink.”

  “Hush,” Roche said sternly. “You must not speak ill of one who seeks to help you.”

  She shook her head, turning it wildly from side to side. “She seeks to kill us all. You must burn her. She is the devil’s servant.”

  I’ve never seen him angry before. He looked almost like a cutthroat again. “You know not whereof you speak,” he said. “It is God who has sent her to help us.”

  I wish it were true, that I were of any help at all, but I’m not. Agnes screams for me to come and Rosemund lies there as if she were under a spell and the clerk is turning black, and there’s nothing I can do to help any of them. Nothing.

  (Break)

  All the steward’s family have it. The youngest boy, Lefric, was the only one with a bubo, and I’ve brought him in here and lanced it. There’s nothing I can do for the others. They all have pneumonic.

  (Break)

  The steward’s baby is dead.

  (Break)

  The Courcy bells are tolling. Nine strokes. Which one of them is it? The bishop’s envoy? The fat monk, who helped steal our horses? Or Sir Bloet? I hope so.

  (Break)

  Terrible day. The steward’s wife and the boy who ran from me when I went to find the drop both died this afternoon. The steward is digging both their graves, though the ground is so frozen I don’t see how he can even make a dent in it. Rosemund and Lefric are both worse. Rosemund can scarcely swallow and her pulse is thready and irregular. Agnes is not as bad, but I can’t get her fever down. Roche said vespers in here tonight.

  After the set prayers, he said, “Good Jesus, I know you have sent what help you can, but I fear it cannot prevail against this dark plague. Thy holy servant Katherine says this terror is a disease, but how can it be? For it does not move from man to man, but is everywhere at once.”

  It is.

  (Break)

  Ulf the Reeve

  Sibbe, daughter of the steward.

  Joan, daughter of the steward.

  The cook (I don’t know her name)

  Walthef, oldest son of the steward.

  (Break)

  Over fifty per cent of the village has it. Please don’t let Eliwys get it. Or Roche.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  He called for help, but no one came, and he thought that everyone else had died and he was the only one left, like the monk, John Clyn, in the monastery of the Friars Minor. “I, waiting for death till it come�
��”

  He tried to press the button to call the nurse, but he couldn’t find it. There was a hand bell on the bedstand next to the bed, and he reached for it, but there was no strength in his fingers, and it clattered to the floor. It made a horrible, endless sound, like some nightmarish Great Tom, but nobody came.

  The next time he woke, though, the bell was on the bedstand again, so they must have come while he was asleep. He squinted blurrily at the bell and wondered how long he had been asleep. A long time.

  There was no way to tell from the room. It was light, but there was no angle to the light, no shadows. It might be afternoon or mid-morning. There was no digital on the bedstand or the wall, and he didn’t have the strength to turn and look at the screens on the wall behind him. There was a window, though he could not raise himself up enough to see properly out of it, but he could see enough to tell that it was raining. It had been raining when he went to Brasenose—it could be the same afternoon. Perhaps he had only fainted, and they had brought him here for observation.

  “‘I also will do this unto you,’” someone said.

  Dunworthy opened his eyes and reached for his spectacles, but they weren’t there. “‘I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and burning ague.’”

  It was Mrs. Gaddson. She was sitting in the chair beside his bed, reading from the Bible. She was not wearing her mask and gown, though the Bible still seemed to be swathed in plastene. Dunworthy squinted at it.

  “‘And when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you.’”

  “What day is it?” Dunworthy asked.

  She paused, looked curiously at him, and then went on placidly. “‘And ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.’”

  He could not have been here very long. Mrs. Gaddson had been reading to the patients when he went to find Gilchrist. Perhaps it was still the same afternoon, and Mary had not come in to throw Mrs. Gaddson out yet.

  “Can you swallow?” the nurse said. It was the ancient sister from Supplies.

  “I need to give you a temp,” she croaked. “Can you swallow?”