The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  15

  Kivrin’s recovery from pneumonia came so suddenly she was convinced that something had happened to finally activate her immune system. The pain in her chest abruptly went away, and the cut on her forehead disappeared as if by magic.

  Imeyne examined it suspiciously, as if she suspected Kivrin of faking her injury, and Kivrin was infinitely glad the wound hadn’t been duped. “You must thank God that He has healed you on this Sabbath day,” Imeyne said disapprovingly, and knelt beside the bed.

  She had been to mass and was wearing her silver reliquary. She folded it between her palms—“like the corder,” Kivrin thought—and recited the Paternoster, then pulled herself to her feet.

  “I wish I could have gone with you to the mass,” Kivrin said.

  Imeyne sniffed. “I deemed you were too ill,” she said with an insinuating emphasis on the word “ill,” “and it was but a poor mass.”

  She launched into a recital of Father Roche’s sins: he had read the gospel before the Kyrie, his alb was stained with candlewax, he had forgotten part of the Confíteor Deo. Listing his sins seemed to put her in a better mood, and when she finished she patted Kivrin’s hand and said, “You are not yet fully healed. Stay you in bed yet another day.”

  Kivrin did, using the time to record her observations onto the corder, describing the manor and the village and everyone she’d met so far. The steward came with another bowl of his wife’s bitter tea, a dark, burly man who looked uncomfortable in his Sunday-best jerkin and a too-elaborate silver belt, and a boy about Rosemund’s age came in to tell Eliwys that her mare’s forefoot was “amiss.” But the priest didn’t come again. “He has gone to shrive the cottar,” Agnes told her.

  Agnes was continuing to be an excellent informant, answering all of Kivrin’s questions readily, whether she knew the answers or not, and volunteering all sorts of information about the village and its occupants. Rosemund was quieter and very much concerned with appearing grown-up. “Agnes, it is childish to speak so. You must learn to keep a watch on your tongue,” she said repeatedly, a comment that happily had no effect whatsoever on Agnes. Rosemund did talk about her brothers and her father who “has promised he will come to us for Christmas without fail.” She obviously worshiped him and missed him. “I wish I had been a boy,” she said when Agnes was showing Kivrin the silver penny Sir Bloet had given her. “Then I had stayed with Father in Bath.”

  Between the two girls, and snatches of Eliwys’s and Imeyne’s conversations, plus her own observations, she was able to piece together a good deal about the village. It was smaller than Probability had predicted Skendgate would be, small even for a mediaeval village. Kivrin guessed it contained no more than forty people, including Lord Guillaume’s family and the steward’s. He had five children in addition to the baby.

  There were two shepherds and several farmers, but it was “the poorest of all Guillaume’s holdings,” Imeyne said, complaining again about them having to spend Christmas there. The steward’s wife was the resident social climber, and Maisry’s family the local ne’er-do-wells. Kivrin recorded everything, statistics and gossip, folding her hands in prayer whenever she had the chance.

  The snow that had started when they brought her back to the manor continued all that night and into the next afternoon, snowing nearly a foot. The first day Kivrin was up, it rained, and Kivrin hoped the rain would melt the snow, but it merely hardened the crust to ice.

  She was afraid she’d have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her, but that was easier said than done. He only came into the hall to eat or to ask Eliwys something, and Imeyne was always there, watching, when he was, so she didn’t dare approach him.

  Kivrin began taking the girls on little excursions—around the courtyard, out into the village—in the hope that she might run into him, but he was not in the barn or the stable. Gringolet was not there either. Kivrin wondered if he had gone after her attackers in spite of Eliwys’s orders, but Rosemund said he was out hunting. “He slays deer for the Christmas feast,” Agnes said.

  No one seemed to care where she took the little girls or how long they were gone. Lady Eliwys nodded disstractedly when Kivrin asked if she might take the little girls to the stable, and Lady Imeyne didn’t even tell Agnes to fasten her cloak or wear her mittens. It was as if they had given the children over into Kivrin’s care and then forgotten them.

  They were very busy with preparations for Christmas. Eliwys had recruited every girl and old woman in the village and set them to baking and cooking. The two pigs were slaughtered, and over half the doves killed and plucked. The courtyard was full of feathers and the smell of baking bread.

  In the 1300s Christmas had been a two-week celebration with feasting and games and dancing, but Kivrin was surprised that Eliwys was doing all this under the circumstances. She must be convinced Lord Guillaume would really come for Christmas, as he’d promised.

  Imeyne supervised the cleaning of the hall, complaining constantly about the poor conditions and the lack of decent help. This morning she had brought in the steward and another man to take down the heavy tables from the walls and set them on two trestles. She was supervising Maisry and a woman with the patchy white scars of scrofula on her neck while they scrubbed the table with sand and heavy brushes.

  “There is no lavender,” she said to Eliwys. “And not enough new rushes for the floor.”

  “We shall have to make do with what we have, then,” Eliwys said.

  “We have no sugar for the subtlety, either, and no cinnamon. At Courcy they are amply provided. He would welcome us.”

  Kivrin was putting on Agnes’s boots, getting ready to take her out to see her pony in the stable again. She looked up, alarmed.

  “It is but a half day’s journey,” Imeyne said. “Lady Yvolde’s chaplain will likely say the mass, and—”

  Kivrin didn’t hear the rest of it because Agnes said, “My pony is called Saracen.”

  “Um,” Kivrin murmured, trying to hear the conversation. Christmas was a time when the nobility often went visiting. She should have thought of that before. They took their entire households and stayed for weeks, at least until Epiphany. If they went to Courcy, they might stay until long after the rendezvous.

  “Father named him Saracen for that he has a heathen heart,” Agnes said.

  “Sir Bloet will take it ill when he finds we have sat so near through Yule without a visit,” Lady Imeyne said. “He will think the betrothal has gone amiss.”

  “We cannot go to Courcy for Yule,” Rosemund said. She had been sitting on the bench across from Kivrin and Agnes, sewing, but now she stood up. “My father promised without fail that he would come by Christmas. He will be ill-pleased to come and find us gone.”

  Imeyne turned and glared at Rosemund. “He will be ill-pleased to find his daughters grown so wild they speak when they will and meddle in matters that do not concern them.” She turned back to Eliwys, who was looking worried. “My son would surely have the wit to seek us at Courcy.”

  “My husband bade us stay here and wait till he comes,” Eliwys said. “He will be pleased that we have done his bidding.” She went over to the hearth and picked up Rosemund’s sewing, clearly putting an end to the conversation.

  But not for long, Kivrin thought, watching Imeyne. The old woman pursed her lips angrily and pointed at a spot on the table. The woman with the scrofula scars immediately moved to scrub it.

  Imeyne wouldn’t let it rest. She would bring it up again, putting forth argument after argument why they should go to Sir Bloet, who had sugar and rushes and cinnamon. And an educated chaplain to say the Christmas masses. Lady Imeyne was determined not to hear mass from Father Roche. And Eliwys was more and more worried all the time. She might suddenly decide to go to Courcy for help, or even back to Bath. Kivrin had to find the drop.

  She tied the dangling strings of Agnes’s cap and pulled the hood of her cloak up over her head.


  “I rode Saracen every day in Bath,” Agnes said. “I would we could go riding here. I would take my hound.”

  “Dogs do not ride horses,” Rosemund said. “They run alongside.”

  Agnes pooched her lip out stubbornly. “Blackie is too little to run.”

  “Why can you not go riding here?” Kivrin said to head off a fight.

  “There is none to accompany us,” Rosemund said. “In Bath our nurse and one of Father’s privés rode with us.”

  One of Father’s privés. Gawyn could accompany them, and she could not only ask him where the drop was but have him show it to her. Gawyn was here. She had seen him in the courtyard this morning, which was why she had suggested the trip to the stable, but having him ride with them was better.

  Imeyne came over to where Eliwys was sitting. “If we are to stay here, we must have game for the Christmas pie.”

  Lady Eliwys set aside her sewing and stood up. “I will bid the steward and his eldest son go hunting,” she said quietly.

  “Then will there be no one to fetch the ivy and the holly.”

  “Father Roche goes out to gather it this day,” Lady Eliwys said.

  “He gathers it for the church,” Lady Imeyne said. “Will you have none in the hall, then?”

  “We’ll fetch it,” Kivrin said.

  Eliwys and Imeyne both turned to look at her. Mistake, Kivrin thought. She had been so intent on finding a way to speak to Gawyn she had forgotten everything else, and now she had spoken without being spoken to and “meddled in matters” that obviously didn’t concern her. Lady Imeyne would be more convinced than ever that they should go to Courcy and get a proper nurse for the girls.

  “I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn, good lady,” she said, ducking her head. “I know there is much to do and there are few to do it. Agnes and Rosemund and I might easily ride into the woods to fetch the holly.”

  “Aye,” Agnes said eagerly. “I could ride Saracen.”

  Eliwys started to speak, but Imeyne interrupted her. “Have you no fear of the woods then, though you are only lately healed of your injuries?”

  Mistake upon mistake. She was supposed to have been attacked and left for dead, and here she was volunteering to take two little girls into the same woods.

  “I didn’t mean that we should go alone,” Kivrin said, hoping she wasn’t making it worse. “Agnes told me that she rode out with one of your husband’s men to guard her.”

  “Aye,” Agnes piped up. “Gawyn can ride with us, and my hound Blackie.”

  “Gawyn is not here,” Imeyne said, and then turned quickly back to the women scrubbing the table in the silence that followed.

  “Where has he gone?” Eliwys said, quietly enough, but her cheeks had flushed bright red.

  Imeyne took Maisry’s rag away from her and began scrubbing at a spot on the table. “He has undertaken an errand for me.”

  “You have sent him to Courcy,” Eliwys said, and it was a statement, not a question.

  Imeyne turned back to face her. “It is not meet for us to be so close to Courcy, and yet send no greeting. He will say we have cast him off, and we can ill afford in these times to anger such a man as powerful as—”

  “My husband bade us tell no one we were here,” Eliwys cut in.

  “My son did not bid us to slight Sir Bloet, and lose him his goodwill, now when it may be sorely needed.”

  “What did you bid him say to Sir Bloet?”

  “I bade him deliver kind greetings,” Imeyne said, twisting the rag in her hands. “I bade him say we would be glad to receive them for Christmas.” She lifted her chin defiantly. “We could do aught else, with our two families to be joined so soon in marriage. They will bring provisions for the Christmas feast, and servants—”

  “And Lady Yvolde’s chaplain to say the mass?” Eliwys asked coldly.

  “Do they come here?” Rosemund asked. She had stood up again, and her sewing had slid off her knees and onto the floor.

  Eliwys and Imeyne looked at her blankly, as if they had forgotten there was anyone else in the hall, and then Eliwys turned on Kivrin. “Lady Katherine,” she snapped, “were you not taking the children to gather greens for the hall?”

  “We cannot go without Gawyn,” Agnes said.

  “Father Roche can ride with you,” Eliwys said.

  “Yes, good lady,” Kivrin said. She took Agnes’s hand to lead her from the room.

  “Do they come here?” Rosemund asked again, and her cheeks were nearly as red as her mother’s.

  “I know not,” Eliwys said. “Go with your sister and Lady Katherine.”

  “I am to ride Saracen,” Agnes said, and tore free of Kivrin’s hand and ran out of the hall.

  Rosemund looked as if she were going to say something and then went to get her cloak from the passage behind the screens.

  “Maisry,” Eliwys said. “The table looks well enough. Go and fetch the saltcellar and the silver platter from the chest in the loft.”

  The woman with the scrofula scars scurried out of the room and even Maisry didn’t dawdle going up the ladder. Kivrin pulled her cloak on and tied it hastily, afraid Lady Imeyne would say something else about her being attacked, but neither of the women said anything. They stood, Imeyne still twisting the rag between her hands, obviously waiting for Kivrin and Rosemund to be gone.

  “Does—” Rosemund said, and then ran off after Agnes.

  Kivrin hurried after them. Gawyn was gone, but she had permission to go into the woods and transportation. And the priest to go with them. Rosemund had said Gawyn had met him on the road when he was bringing her to the manor. Perhaps Gawyn had taken him to the clearing.

  She practically ran across the courtyard to the stable, afraid that at the last minute Eliwys would call across the courtyard to her that she had changed her mind, Kivrin was not well enough, and the woods were too dangerous.

  The girls had apparently had the same idea. Agnes was already on her pony, and Rosemund was cinching the girth on her mare’s saddle. The pony wasn’t a pony at all; it was a sturdy sorrel scarcely smaller than Rosemund’s mare and Agnes looked impossibly high up on the high-backed saddle. The boy who had told Eliwys about the mare’s foot was holding the reins.

  “Do not stand gawking, Cob!” Rosemund snapped at him. “Saddle the roan for Lady Katherine!”

  He obediently let go of the reins. Agnes leaned far forward to grab them.

  “Not Mother’s mare!” Rosemund said. “The roncin!”

  “We will ride to the church, Saracen,” Agnes said, “and tell Father Roche we would go with him, and then we will go riding. Saracen loves to go riding.” She leaned much too far forward to pat the pony’s cropped mane, and Kivrin had to keep herself from grabbing for her.

  She was obviously perfectly able to ride—neither Rosemund nor the boy saddling Kivrin’s horse gave her a glance—but she looked so tiny perched up there in the saddle with her soft-soled boot in the jerked-up stirrup, and she was no more capable of riding carefully than she was of walking slowly.

  Cob saddled the roan, led it out, and then stood there, waiting.

  “Cob!” Rosemund said rudely. He bent down and made a step out of his linked hands. Rosemund stepped up on it and swung into the saddle. “Do not stand there like a witless fool. Help Lady Katherine.”

  He hurried awkwardly over to give Kivrin a hand up. She hesitated, wondering what was wrong with Rosemund. She had obviously been upset by the news that Gawyn had gone to Sir Bloet’s. Rosemund hadn’t seemed to know anything about her father’s trial, but perhaps she was aware of more than Kivrin, or her mother and grandmother, thought.

  “A man as powerful as Sir Bloet,” Imeyne had said, and “his goodwill may be sorely needed.” Perhaps Imeyne’s invitation was not as self-serving as it seemed. Perhaps it meant Lord Guillaume was in even more trouble than Eliwys imagined, and Rosemund, sitting quietly at her sewing, had figured that out.

  “Cob!” Rosemund snapped, though he was clearl
y waiting for Kivrin to mount. “Your dawdling will make us miss Father Roche!”

  Kivrin smiled reassuringly at Cob, and put her hands on the boy’s shoulder. One of the first things Mr. Dunworthy had insisted on was riding lessons, and she had managed fairly well. The sidesaddle hadn’t been introduced until the 1390s, which was a blessing, and mediaeval saddles had a high saddlebow and cantle. This saddle was even higher in the back than the one she’d learned on.

  But I’ll probably be the one to fall off, not Agnes, she thought, looking at Agnes perched confidently on her pony. She wasn’t even holding on but was twisted around messing with something in the saddlebag behind her.

  “Let us be gone!” Rosemund said impatiently.

  “Sir Bloet says he will bring me a silver bridle-chain for Saracen,” she said, still fussing with the saddlebag.

  “Agnes! Stop dawdling and come,” Rosemund said.

  “Sir Bloet says he will bring it when he comes at Easter.”

  “Agnes!” Rosemund said. “Come! It is like to rain.”

  “Nay, it will not,” Agnes said unconcernedly. “Sir Bloet—”

  Rosemund turned furiously on her sister. “Oh, and can you now sooth the weather? You are naught but a babe! A mewling babe!”

  “Rosemund!” Kivrin said. “Don’t speak that way to your sister.” She stepped up to Rosemund’s mare and took hold of the loosely looped reins. “What’s the matter, Rosemund? Is something troubling you?”

  Rosemund pulled the reins sharply taut. “Only that we dawdle here while the babe prattles!”

  Kivrin let go of the reins, frowning, and let Cob make a step of his laced fingers for her foot so she could mount. She had never seen Rosemund act like this.

  They rode out of the courtyard past the now-empty pigpens and out onto the green. It was a leaden day, with a low blanketing layer of heavy clouds and no wind at all. Rosemund was right about it being “like to rain.” There was a damp, misty feeling to the cold air. She kicked her horse into a faster walk.