The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  A track, no wider than the road near the drop, led past the churchyard and the tower and up the hill into the woods.

  That’s the way we came, Kivrin thought, and started across the green, but as soon as she stepped out of the shelter of the barn, the wind hit her. It went through her cloak as if it were nothing, and seemed to stab into her chest. She pulled the cloak tight around her neck, held it with her flattened hand against her chest, and went on.

  The bell in the southwest began again. She wondered what it meant. Eliwys and Imeyne had talked about it, but that was before she could understand what they were saying, and when it began again yesterday, Eliwys hadn’t even acted like she heard it. Perhaps it was something to do with Advent. The bells were supposed to ring at twilight on Christmas Eve and then for an hour before midnight, Kivrin knew. Perhaps they rang at other times during Advent as well.

  The track was muddy and rutted. Kivrin’s chest was beginning to hurt. She pressed her hand tighter against it and went on, trying to hurry. She could see movement out beyond the fields. They would be the peasants coming back with the Yule log, or getting in the animals. She couldn’t make them out. It looked as if it were already snowing out there. She must hurry.

  The wind whipped her cloak around her and swirled dead leaves past her. The cow moved off the green, its head down, into the shelter of the huts. Which were no shelter at all. They seemed hardly taller than Kivrin and as if they had been bundled together out of sticks and propped in place, and they didn’t stop the wind at all.

  The bell continued to ring, a slow, steady tolling, and Kivrin realized she had slowed her tread to match it. She mustn’t do that. She must hurry. It might start snowing any minute. But hurrying made the pain stab so sharply she began to cough. She stopped, bent double with the coughing.

  She was not going to make it. Don’t be foolish, she told herself, you have to find the drop. You’re ill. You have to get back home. Go as far as the church and you can rest inside for a minute.

  She started on again, willing herself not to cough, but it was no use. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t make it to the church, let alone the drop. You have to make it, she shouted to herself over the pain. You have to will yourself to make it.

  She stopped again, bending over against the pain. She had been worried that a peasant would come out of one of the huts, but now she wished someone would so they could help her back to the manor. They wouldn’t. They were all out in this freezing wind, bringing in the Yule log and gathering up the animals. She looked out toward the fields. The distant figures who had been out there were gone.

  She was opposite the last hut. Beyond it was a scattering of ramshackle sheds she hoped no one lived in, and surely nobody did. They must be outbuildings—cowbyres and granaries—and beyond them, surely not that far away, the church. Perhaps if I take it slowly, she thought, and started toward the church again. Her whole chest jarred at every step. She stopped, swaying a little, thinking, I mustn’t faint. No one knows where I am.

  She turned and looked back at the manor house. She couldn’t even get back to the hall. I have to sit down, she thought, but there was nowhere to sit in the muddy track. Lady Eliwys was tending the cottar, Lady Imeyne and the girls and the entire village were out cutting the Yule log. No one knows where I am.

  The wind was picking up, coming now not in gusts but in a straight, determined push across the fields. I must try to get back to the house, Kivrin thought, but she couldn’t do that either. Even standing was too much of an effort. If there were anywhere to sit she would sit down, but the space between the huts, right up to their fences, was all mud. She would have to go into the hut.

  It had a rickety wattle fence around it, made by weaving green branches between stakes. The fence was scarcely knee-high and wouldn’t have kept a cat out, let alone the sheep and cows it was intended against. Only the gate had supports even waist-high, and Kivrin leaned gratefully against one of them. “Hello,” she shouted into the wind, “is anyone there?”

  The front door of the hut was only a few steps from the gate, and the hut couldn’t be soundproof. It wasn’t even windproof. She could see a hole in the wall where the daubed clay and chopped straw had cracked and fallen away from the matted branches underneath. They could surely hear her. She lifted the loop of leather that held the gate shut, went in, and knocked on the low, planked door.

  There was no answer, and Kivrin hadn’t expected any. She shouted again, “Is anyone home?” not even bothering to listen to how the interpreter translated it, and tried to lift the wooden bar that lay across it. It was too heavy. She tried to slide it out of the notches cut in the protruding lintels, but she couldn’t. The hut looked like it could blow away at any minute, and she couldn’t get the door open. She would have to tell Mr. Dunworthy mediaeval huts weren’t as flimsy as they looked. She leaned against the door, holding her chest.

  Something made a sound behind her, and she turned, already saying, “I’m sorry I intruded into your garden.” It was the cow, leaning casually over the fence and browsing among the brown leaves, hardly reaching at all.

  She would have to go back to the manor. She used the gate for support, making sure she shut it behind her and looped the leather back over the stake, and then the cow’s bony back. The cow followed with her a few steps, as if it thought Kivrin was leading it in to be milked, and then went back to the garden.

  The door of one of the sheds that nobody could possibly live in opened, and a barefoot boy came out. He stopped, looking frightened.

  Kivrin tried to straighten up. “Please,” she said, breathing hard between the words, “may I rest awhile in your house?”

  The boy stared dumbly at her, his mouth hanging open. He was hideously thin, his arms and legs no thicker than the twigs in the hut fences.

  “Please, run and tell someone to come. Tell them I’m ill.”

  He can no more run than I can, she thought as soon as she said it. The boy’s feet were blue with cold. His mouth looked sore, and his cheeks and upper lip were smeared with dried blood from a nosebleed. He’s got scurvy, Kivrin thought, he’s worse off than I am, but she said again, “Run to the manor and bid them come.”

  The boy crossed himself with a chapped, bony hand. “Bighaull emeurdroud ooghattund enblastbardey,” he said, backing into the hut.

  Oh, no, Kivrin thought despairingly. He can’t understand me, and I don’t have the strength to try to make him. “Please help me,” she said, and the boy looked almost like he understood that. He took a step toward her and then darted suddenly away in the direction of the church.

  “Wait!” Kivrin called.

  He darted past the cow and around the fence and disappeared behind the hut. Kivrin looked at the shed. It could scarcely even be called that. It looked more like a haystack—grass and pieces of thatch wadded into the spaces between the poles, but its door was a mat of sticks tied together with blackish rope, the kind of door you could blow down with one good breath, and the boy had left it open. She stepped over the raised doorstep and went into the hut.

  It was dark inside and so smoky Kivrin couldn’t see anything. It smelled terrible. Like a stable. Worse than a stable. Mingled with the barnyard smells were smoke and mildew and the nasty odor of rats. Kivrin had had to bend over almost double to get through the door. She straightened, and hit her head on the sticks that served as crossbeams.

  There was nowhere to sit in the hut, if that was really what it was. The floor was as covered with sacks and tools as if it was a shed after all, and there was no furniture except an uneven table whose rough legs splayed unevenly from the center. But the table had a wooden bowl and a heel of bread on it, and in the center of the hut, in the only cleared space, a little fire was burning in a shallow, dug-out hole.

  It was apparently the source of all the smoke even though there was a hole in the ceiling above it for a draft. It was a little fire, only a few sticks, but the other holes in the unevenly stuffed walls and roof drew the smoke, too,
and the wind, coming in from everywhere, gusted it around the cramped hut. Kivrin started to cough, which was a terrible mistake. Her chest felt as if it would break apart with every spasm.

  Gritting her teeth to keep from coughing, she eased herself down on a sack of onions, holding on to the spade propped against it and then the fragile-looking wall. She felt immediately better as soon as she was sitting down, even though it was so cold she could see her breath. I wonder how this place smells in the summer, she thought. She wrapped her cloak around her, folding the tails like a blanket across her knees.

  There was a cold draft along the floor. She tucked the cloak around her feet and then picked up a bill hook lying next to the sack and poked at the meager fire with it. The fire blazed up halfheartedly, illuminating the hut and making it look more than ever like a shed. A low lean- to had been built on at one side, probably for a stable because it was partitioned off from the rest of the hut by an even lower fence than the cottage had had. The fire wasn’t bright enough for Kivrin to see into the lean- to corner, but a scuffling sound came from it.

  A pig, maybe, although the peasants’ pigs were supposed to have been slaughtered by now, or maybe a milchgoat. She poked at the fire again, trying to get a little more light on the corner.

  The scuffling sound came from in front of the pathetic fence, from a large dome-shaped cage. It was elaborately out of place in the filthy corner with its smooth curved metal band, its complicated door, its fancy handle. Inside the cage, its eyes glinting in the firelight Kivrin had stirred up, was a rat.

  It sat on its haunches, its handlike paws holding the chunk of cheese that had tempted it into imprisonment, watching Kivrin. There were several other crumbled and probably moldy bits of cheese on the floor of the cage. More food than in this entire hut, Kivrin thought, sitting very still on the lumpy sack of onions. One wouldn’t think they had anything worth protecting from a rat.

  She had seen a rat before, of course, in History of Psych and when they tested her for phobias during her first year, but not this kind. Nobody had seen this kind, in England at least, in fifty years. It was a very pretty rat, actually, with silky black fur, not much bigger than History of Psych’s white laboratory rats, not nearly as big as the brown rat she’d been tested with.

  It looked much cleaner than the brown rat, too. It had looked like it belonged in the sewers and drains and tube tunnels it had no doubt come out of, with its matted dust-brown coat and long, obscenely naked tail. When she had first started studying the Middle Ages, she had been unable to understand how the contemps had tolerated the disgusting things in their barns, let alone their houses. The thought of the one in the wall by her bed had filled her with revulsion. But this rat was actually quite clean-looking, with its black eyes and shiny coat. Certainly cleaner than Maisry, and probably more intelligent. Harmless-looking.

  As if to prove her point, the rat took another dainty nibble on the cheese.

  “You’re not harmless, though,” Kivrin said. “You’re the scourge of the Middle Ages.”

  The rat dropped the chunk of cheese and took a step forward, its whiskers twitching. It took hold of two of the metal bars with its pinkish hands and looked appealingly through them.

  “I can’t let you out, you know,” Kivrin said, and its ears pricked up as if it understood her. “You eat precious grain and contaminate food and carry fleas and in another twenty-eight years you and your chums will wipe out half of Europe. You’re what Lady Imeyne should be worrying about instead of French spies and illiterate priests.” The rat looked at her. “I’d like to let you out, but I can’t. The Black Death was bad enough as it was. It killed half of Europe. If I let you out, your descendants might make it even worse.”

  The rat let go of the bars and began running around the cage, crashing against the bars, circling in frantic, random movements.

  “I’d let you out if I could,” Kivrin said. The fire had nearly gone out. Kivrin stirred it again, but it was all ashes. The door she had left open in the hope that the boy would bring someone back looking for her banged shut, plunging the hut in darkness.

  They won’t have any idea where to look for me, Kivrin thought, and knew they weren’t even looking yet. They all thought she was in the upstairs room asleep. Lady Imeyne wouldn’t even check on her until she brought her her supper. They wouldn’t even start to look for her until after vespers, and by then it would be dark.

  It was very quiet in the hut. The wind must have died down. She couldn’t hear the rat. A twig on the fire snapped once, and sparks flew onto the dirt floor.

  Nobody knows where I am, she thought, and put her hand up to her chest as if she had been stabbed. Nobody knows where I am. Not even Mr. Dunworthy.

  But surely that wasn’t true. Lady Eliwys might have come back and gone up to put more ointment on, or Maisry might have been sent home by Imeyne, or the boy might have darted off to fetch the men from the fields, and they would be here any minute, even though the door was shut. And even if they didn’t realize she was gone until after vespers, they had torches and lanterns, and the parents of the boy with scurvy would come back to cook supper and find her and would go and fetch someone from the manor. No matter what happens, she told herself, you’re not completely alone, and that comforted her.

  Because she was completely alone. She had tried to convince herself she wasn’t, that some reading on the net’s screens had told Gilchrist and Montoya something had gone wrong, that Mr. Dunworthy had made Badri check and recheck everything, that they knew what had happened somehow and were holding the drop open. But they weren’t. They no more knew where she was than Agnes and Lady Eliwys did. They thought she was safely in Skendgate, studying the Middle Ages, with the drop clearly located and the corder already half full of observations about quaint customs and rotation of crops. They wouldn’t even realize she was gone until they opened the drop in two weeks.

  “And by then it will be dark,” Kivrin said.

  She sat still, watching the fire. It was nearly out, and there weren’t any more sticks anywhere that she could see. She wondered if the boy had been left at home to gather faggots and what they would do for a fire tonight.

  She was all alone, and the fire was going out, and nobody knew where she was except the rat that was going to kill half of Europe. She stood up, cracking her head again, pushed the door of the hut open, and went outside.

  There was still no one in sight in the fields. The wind had died down, and she could hear the bell from the southwest tolling clearly. A few flakes of snow drifted out of the gray sky. The little rise the church was on was completely obscurred with snow. Kivrin started toward the church.

  Another bell began. It was more to the south and closer, but with the higher, more metallic sound that meant it was a smaller bell. It tolled steadily, too, but a little behind the first bell so that it sounded like an echo.

  “Kivrin! Lady Kivrin!” Agnes called. “Where have you been?” She ran up beside Kivrin, her round little face red with exertion or cold. Or excitement. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” She darted back in the direction she had come from, shouting, “I found her! I found her!”

  “Nay, you did not!” Rosemund said. “We all saw her.” She hurried forward ahead of Lady Imeyne and Maisry, who had her ragged poncho thrown over her shoulders. Her ears were bright red. She looked sullen, which probably meant she had been blamed for Kivrin’s disappearance or thought she was going to be, or maybe she was just cold. Lady Imeyne looked furious.

  “You did not know it was Kivrin,” Agnes shouted, running back to Kivrin’s side. “You said you were not certain it was Kivrin. I was the one who found her.”

  Rosemund ignored her. She took hold of Kivrin’s arm. “What has happened? Why did you leave your bed?” she asked anxiously. “Gawyn came to speak with you and found that you had gone.”

  Gawyn came, Kivrin thought weakly. Gawyn, who could have told me exactly where the drop is, and I wasn’t there.

  “Aye, he c
ame to tell you that he had found no trace of your attackers, and that—”

  Lady Imeyne came up. “Whither were you bound?” she said, and it sounded like an accusation.

  “I could not find my way back,” Kivrin said, trying to think what to say to explain her wandering about the village.

  “Went you to meet someone?” Lady Imeyne demanded, and it was definitely an accusation.

  “How could she go to meet someone?” Rosemund asked. “She knows no one here and remembers naught of before.”

  “I went to look for the place where I was found,” Kivrin said, trying not to lean on Rosemund. “I thought maybe the sight of my belongings might …”

  “Help you to remember,” Rosemund said. “But—”

  “You need not have risked your health to do so,” Lady Imeyne said. “Gawyn has fetched them here this day.”

  “Everything?” Kivrin asked.

  “Aye,” Rosemund said, “the wagon and all your boxes.”

  The second bell stopped, and the first bell kept on alone, steadily, slowly, and surely it was a funeral. It sounded like the death of hope itself. Gawyn had brought everything to the manor.

  “It is not meet to hold Lady Katherine talking in this cold,” Rosemund said, sounding like her mother. “She has been ill. We must needs get her inside ere she catches a chill.”

  I have already caught a chill, Kivrin thought. Gawyn had brought everything to the manor, all traces of where the drop had been. Even the wagon.

  “You are to blame for this, Maisry,” Lady Imeyne said, pushing Maisry forward to take Kivrin’s arm. “You should not have left her alone.”

  Kivrin flinched away from the filthy Maisry.

  “Can you walk?” Rosemund asked, already buckling under Kivrin’s weight. “Should we bring the mare?”

  “No,” Kivrin said. She somehow couldn’t bear the thought of that, brought back like a captured prisoner on the back of a jangling horse. “No,” she repeated. “I can walk.”