The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “Can we build a fire?” Agnes asked, walking under the branches to the remains of a campfire. A fallen log had been dragged over to it. Agnes sat down on it. “I am cold,” she said, poking at the blackened stones with her foot.

  It hadn’t burned very long. The sticks were barely charred. Someone had kicked dirt on it to put it out. Father Roche had squatted in front of her, the light from the fire flickering on his face.

  “Well?” Rosemund said impatiently. “Do you remember aught?”

  She had been here. She remembered the fire. She had thought they were lighting it for the stake. But that couldn’t be right. Roche had been at the drop. She remembered him leaning over her as she sat against the wagon wheel.

  “Are you sure this is the place where Gawyn found me?”

  “Aye,” he said, frowning.

  “If the wicked man comes, I will fight him with my dirk,” Agnes said, pulling one of the half-charred sticks out of the fire and brandishing it in the air. The blackened end broke off. Agnes squatted next to the fire and pulled out another stick and then sat down on the ground, her back against the log, and struck the two sticks together. Pieces of charred wood flew off them.

  Kivrin looked at Agnes. She had sat against the log while they made the fire, and Gawyn had leaned over her, his hair red in the fire’s light, and said something to her that she couldn’t understand. And then he had put the fire out, kicking it apart with his boots, and the smoke had come up and blinded her.

  “Have you remembered you?” Agnes said, tossing the sticks back among the stones.

  Roche was still frowning at her. “Are you ill, Lady Katherine?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, trying to smile. “It was just … I’d hoped that if I saw the place where I was attacked, I might remember.”

  He looked at her solemnly a moment, the way he had in the church, and then turned and went over to his donkey. “Come,” he said.

  “Have you remembered?” Agnes insisted, clapping her fur mittens together. They were covered with soot.

  “Agnes!” Rosemund said. “Look you how you have dirtied your mittens.” She pulled Agnes roughly to her feet. “And you have ruined your cloak, sitting in the cold snow. You wicked girl!”

  Kivrin pulled the two girls apart. “Rosemund, untie Agnes’s pony,” she said. “It is time to go gather the ivy.” She brushed the snow off Agnes’s cloak and wiped ineffectually at the white fur.

  Father Roche was standing by his donkey, waiting for them, still with that odd, sober expression.

  “We’ll clean your mittens when we get home,” she said hastily. “Come, we must go with Father Roche.”

  Kivrin took the mare’s reins and followed the girls and Father Roche back the way they had come for a few meters and then in another direction that brought them almost immediately out onto a road. She couldn’t see the fork, and she wondered if they were farther along the road or on a different road altogether. It all looked the same—willows and little clearings and oak trees.

  It was clear what had happened. Gawyn had tried to take her to the manor, but she had been too ill. She had fallen off his horse and he had taken her into the woods and built a campfire and left her there, propped against the fallen log, while he went for help.

  Or he had intended to build a fire and stay there with her until morning, and Father Roche had seen the campfire and come to help, and between them they had taken her to the manor. Father Roche had no idea where the drop was. He had assumed Gawyn had found her there, under the oak tree.

  The image of him leaning over her as she sat against the wagon wheel was part of her delirium. She had dreamed it as she lay in the sickroom, the way she had dreamed the bells and the stake and the white horse.

  “Where does he go now?” Rosemund asked peevishly, and Kivrin felt like slapping her. “There is ivy nearer to home. And now it begins to rain.”

  She was right. The mist was turning into a drizzle.

  “We could have been finished and home ere now if the babe Agnes had not brought her puppy!” She galloped off ahead again, and Kivrin didn’t even try to stop her.

  “Rosemund is a churl,” Agnes said.

  “Yes,” Kivrin said. “She is. Do you know what’s the matter with her?”

  “It is because of Sir Bloet,” Agnes said. “She is to wed him.”

  “What?” Kivrin said. Imeyne had said something about a wedding, but she’d assumed one of Sir Bloet’s daughters was to marry one of Lord Guillaume’s sons. “How can Sir Bloet marry Rosemund? Isn’t he already married to Lady Yvolde?”

  “Nay,” Agnes said, looking surprised. “Lady Yvolde is Sir Bloet’s sister.”

  “But Rosemund isn’t old enough,” she said, and knew she was. Girls in the 1300s had frequently been betrothed before they were of age, sometimes even at birth. Marriage in the Middle Ages had been a business arrangement, a way to join lands and enhance social standing, and Rosemund had no doubt been groomed from Agnes’s age to be married to someone like Sir Bloet. But every mediaeval story of virginal girls married to toothless, dissipated old men came to her in a rush.

  “Does Rosemund like Sir Bloet?” Kivrin asked. Of course she didn’t like him. She had been hateful, ill-tempered, nearly hysterical ever since she heard he was coming.

  “I like him,” Agnes said. “He is to give me a silver bridle-chain when they wed.”

  Kivrin looked ahead at Rosemund, waiting far down the road. Sir Bloet might not be old and dissipated at all. She was assuming that the way she had assumed Lady Yvolde was his wife. He might be young, and Rosemund’s bad temper might only be nervousness. Or she might change her mind about him before the wedding. Girls weren’t usually married till they were fourteen or fifteen, certainly not before they started exhibiting signs of maturation.

  “When are they to be married?” Kivrin asked Agnes.

  “At Eastertide,” Agnes said.

  They had come to another fork. This one was much narrower, the two roads running nearly parallel for a hundred meters before the one Rosemund had taken started up a low hill.

  Twelve years old and to be married in three months. No wonder Lady Eliwys hadn’t wanted Sir Bloet to know they were here. Perhaps she didn’t approve of Rosemund marrying so young, and the betrothal had only been arranged to get her father out of the trouble he was in.

  Rosemund rode to the top of the hill and galloped back to Father Roche. “Where do you lead us?” she demanded. “We come soon to open ground.”

  “We are nearly there,” Father Roche said mildly.

  She wheeled her mare around and galloped out of sight over the hill, reappeared, galloped back nearly to Kivrin and Agnes, turned the mare sharply, and rode ahead again. Like the rat in the trap, Kivrin thought, frantically looking for a way out.

  The drizzle was turning into a sleety rain. Father Roche pulled his hood up over his tonsured head and led the donkey up the low hill. It plodded steadily up the incline to the top, and then stopped. Father Roche jerked on the reins, and the donkey pulled back against them.

  Kivrin and Agnes caught up to him. “What’s wrong?” Kivrin asked.

  “Come, Balaam,” Father Roche said, and took hold of the reins with both his huge hands, but the donkey didn’t bulge. It strained against the priest, digging in its rear hooves and leaning back so it was nearly sitting.

  “Mayhap he likes not the rain,” Agnes said.

  “Can we help?” Kivrin asked.

  “Nay,” he said, waving them past him. “Ride ahead. It will go better with him if the horses are not here.”

  He wrapped the reins around his hand and went around behind as if he intended to push. Kivrin rode over the crest with Agnes, looking back to make sure the donkey didn’t suddenly kick him in the head. They started down the other side.

  The forest below them was veiled in rain. It was already melting the snow from the road, and the bottom of the hill was a muddy bog. There were thick bushes on either side, covered with snow. Rosemund sat
at the top of the next hill. It had trees only halfway up its sides, and above them there was an expanse of snow. And beyond that, Kivrin thought, is an open plain and a view of the road, and Oxford.

  “Where are you going, Kivrin? Wait!” Agnes cried, but Kivrin was already down the hill and off her sorrel, shaking the snow-covered bushes, trying to see if they were willows. They were, and beyond them she could see the crown of a big oak. She threw the sorrel’s reins over the reddish willow branches, and pushed into the thicket. The snow had frozen the willow branches together. She struck at them, and snow showered down on her. A flurry of birds launched itself into the air, screeching. She fought her way through the snowy branches and pushed through to the clearing that had to be there. It was.

  And there was the oak, and beyond it, away from the road, the stand of white-trunked birches that had looked like thinner woods. It had to be the drop.

  But it didn’t look right. The clearing had been smaller, hadn’t it? And the oak had had more leaves on it, more nests. There was a blackthorn bush to one side of the clearing, its purple-black buds poking out from the vicious thorns. She didn’t remember its being there. She would surely have remembered that, wouldn’t she?

  It’s the snow, she thought, it’s making the clearing look larger. It was nearly half a meter deep here, and smooth, untouched. It didn’t look as if anyone had ever been here.

  “Is this the place where Father Roche would have us gather ivy?” Rosemund said, pushing through the thicket. She looked around the clearing, her hands on her hips. “There is no ivy here.”

  There had been ivy, hadn’t there, wound around the base of the oak, and mushrooms? It’s the snow, she thought. The snow has covered up all the distinguishing landmarks. And the tracks, where Gawyn had dragged away the wagon and the boxes.

  The casket—Gawyn had not brought the casket back to the manor. He hadn’t seen it because she’d hidden it in the weeds by the road.

  She pushed past Rosemund through the willows, not even trying to avoid the showering snow. The casket would be buried in snow, too, but it wasn’t as deep by the road, and the casket was nearly forty centimeters tall.

  “Lady Katherine!” Rosemund shouted, right behind her. “Where would you now!”

  “Kivrin!” Agnes said, a pathetic echo. She had tried to climb down off her pony in the middle of the road, but she had got her foot caught in the stirrup. “Lady Kivrin, come you here!”

  Kivrin looked at her blindly for a moment, and then glanced up the hill.

  Father Roche was still at the top, struggling with the donkey. She had to find the casket before he came. “Stay on your pony, Agnes,” she said and began scrabbling at the snow under the willows.

  “What do you seek?” Rosemund said. “There is no ivy here!”

  “Lady Kivrin, you come now!” Agnes said.

  Perhaps the snow had bent the willows over, and the casket was farther in underneath them. She bent over, clinging to the thin, brittle branches, and tried to sweep the snow aside. But the trunk wasn’t there. She had seen that as soon as she started. The willows had protected the weeds and the ground underneath them. There were only a few centimeters of snow. But if this is the place, it must be here, Kivrin thought numbly. If this is the place.

  “Lady Kivrin!” Agnes shouted, and Kivrin glanced back at her. She had managed to get down off her pony and was running toward Kivrin.

  “Don’t run,” Kivrin started to say, but she didn’t get it half out before Agnes caught her foot on one of the ruts and went down.

  It knocked the breath out of her, and Kivrin and Rosemund were both to her before she even started to cry. Kivrin scooped her into her arms and pushed her hand against Agnes’s middle to straighten her and make her take a breath.

  Agnes gasped, and then drew in a long breath and began to shriek.

  “Go and fetch Father Roche,” Kivrin said to Rosemund. “He’s at the top of the hill. His donkey balked.”

  “He is already coming,” Rosemund said. Kivrin turned her head. He was running clumsily down the hill, without the donkey, and Kivrin almost called out “Don’t run!” to him, too, but he could not have heard her over Agnes’s screaming.

  “Shh,” Kivrin said. “You’re all right. You just had the wind knocked out of you.”

  Father Roche caught up to them, and Agnes immediately flung herself across into his arms. He hugged her against him. “Hush, Agnus,” he murmured in his wonderful comforting voice. “Hush.” Her screams quieted to sobs.

  “Where did you hurt yourself?” Kivrin asked, brushing the snow from Agnes’s cloak. “Did you scrape your hands?”

  Father Roche turned her around in his arms so Kivrin could take her white fur mittens off her. Her hands were bright red, but they weren’t scraped. “Where did you hurt yourself?”

  “She is not hurt,” Rosemund said. “She cries because she is a babe!”

  “I am not a babe!” Agnes said with such force she nearly flung herself out of Father Roche’s arms. “I struck my knee on the ground.”

  “Which one?” Kivrin asked. “The one you hurt before?”

  “Yes! Do not look!” she said as Kivrin reached for her leg.

  “All right, I won’t,” Kivrin said. The knee had been scabbing over. She had probably knocked the scab loose. Unless it was bleeding badly enough to soak through her leather hose, there was no point in making her colder by undressing her here in the snow. “But you must let me look at it at home.”

  “Can we go thence now?” Agnes asked.

  Kivrin looked helplessly across at the thicket. This had to be the place. The willows, the clearing, the treeless crest. It had to be the place. Perhaps she had put the casket farther back in the thicket than she thought, and the snow—

  “I would go home now!” Agnes said, and began to sob. “I am cold!”

  “All right.” Kivrin nodded. Agnes’s mittens were too wet to put back on her. Kivrin took off her borrowed gloves and gave them to her. They went all the way up Agnes’s arms, which delighted her, and Kivrin began to think she had forgotten about her knee, but when Father Roche tried to put her on her pony, she sobbed, “I would ride with you.”

  Kivrin nodded again and got on her sorrel. Father Roche handed Agnes up to her and led Agnes’s pony up the hill. The donkey was standing at the top, by the side of the road, eating the weeds that poked up through the thin snow.

  Kivrin looked back at the thicket through the rain, trying to see the clearing. It’s surely the drop, she told herself, but she wasn’t sure. Even the hill looked somehow wrong from here.

  Father Roche took hold of the donkey’s reins, and the donkey immediately stiffened and dug in its hooves, but as soon as Father Roche turned its head and started down the far side of the hill with Agnes’s pony, it came willingly.

  The rain was melting the snow, and Rosemund’s mare slipped a little as she galloped it on the straight stretch back to the fork. She slowed it to a trot.

  At the next fork, Roche took the left-hand way. There were willows all along it, and oak trees, and muddy ruts at the bottom of every hill.

  “Do we go home now, Kivrin?” Agnes said, shivering against her.

  “Yes,” Kivrin said. She pulled the tail of her cloak forward over Agnes. “Does your knee still hurt?”

  “Nay. We did not gather any ivy.” She sat up straight and twisted around to look at Kivrin. “Did you remember you when you saw the place?”

  “No,” Kivrin said.

  “Good,” Agnes said, settling back against her. “Now you must stay with us forever.”

  17

  Andrews did not telephone Dunworthy until late afternoon on Christmas Day. Colin had, of course, insisted on getting up at an ungodly hour to open his small pile of gifts.

  “Are you going to stay in bed all day?” he’d demanded while Dunworthy groped for his spectacles. “It’s nearly eight o’clock.”

  It was in fact a quarter past six, pitch-black outside, too dark even to see if
it was still raining. Colin had had a good deal more sleep than he had. After the ecumenical service, Dunworthy had sent Colin back to Balliol and gone to Infirmary to find out about Latimer.

  “He has a fever, but no lung involvement thus far,” Mary had told him. “He came in at five, said he’d started feeling headachy and confused around one. Forty-eight hours on the button. There’s obviously no need to question him to find out who he contracted it from. How are you feeling?”

  She had made him stay for blood tests, and then a new case had come in, and he’d waited to see if he could identify him. It was nearly one before he’d gone to bed.

  Colin handed Dunworthy a cracker and insisted he snap it, put on the yellow tissue paper crown, and read his motto aloud. It said, “When are Santa’s reindeer most likely to come inside? When the door is open.”

  Colin was already wearing his red crown. He sat on the floor and opened his gifts. The soap tablets were a huge success. “See,” Colin said, sticking out his tongue, “they turn it different colors.” They did, also his teeth and the edges of his lips.

  He seemed pleased with the book, though it was obvious he wished there were holos. He flipped through the pages, looking at the illustrations.

  “Look at this,” he said, thrusting the volume at Dunworthy, who was still trying to wake up.

  It was a knight’s tomb, with the standard carved effigy in full armor on top, his face and posture the image of eternal rest, but on the side, in an inset frieze like a window into the tomb, the dead knight’s corpse struggled up in his coffin, his tattered flesh falling away from him like grave wrappings, his skeleton’s hands curved into frantic claws, his face a skull’s empty-socketed horror. Worms crawled in and out between his legs, over and under his sword. “Oxfordshire, c. 1350,” the caption read. “An example of the macabre tomb decoration prevalent following the bubonic plague.”

  “Isn’t it apocalyptic?” Colin said delightedly.

  He was even polite about the muffler. “I suppose it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?” he said, holding it up by one end, and then after a minute, “Perhaps I can wear it when I visit the sick. They won’t care what it looks like.”