The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “Rosemund!” Agnes said, her face red with frustration. “Did you not hear me? They have come!”

  The donkey nudged the oats out of the way and clamped its yellow teeth around a large head of the grass. Rosemund continued to offer it the oats.

  “Rosemund,” Kivrin said, “I will feed the donkey. You must go to greet your guests.”

  “Sir Bloet said he would bring me a trinket,” Agnes said.

  Rosemund opened her hands and let the oats fall. “If you like him so well, why do you not ask Father to let you marry him?” she said, and started for the manor.

  “I am too little,” Agnes said.

  So is Rosemund, Kivrin thought, grabbing Agnes’s hand and starting after her. Rosemund walked rapidly ahead, her chin in the air, not bothering to lift her dragging skirts, ignoring Agnes’s repeated pleas to “Wait, Rosemund.”

  The party had already passed into the courtyard, and Rosemund was already to the sty. Kivrin picked up the pace, pulling Agnes along at a run, and they all arrived in the courtyard at the same time. Kivrin stopped, surprised.

  She had expected a formal meeting, the family at the door with stiff speeches and polite smiles, but this was like the first day of term—everyone carrying in boxes and bags, greeting each other with exclamations and embraces, talking at the same time, laughing. Rosemund hadn’t even been missed. A large woman wearing an enormous starched coif grabbed Agnes up and kissed her, and three young girls clustered around Rosemund, squealing.

  Servants, obviously in their holiday best, too, carried covered baskets and an enormous goose into the kitchen, and led the horses into the stable. Gawyn, still on Gringolet, was leaning down to speak to Imeyne. Kivrin heard him say, “Nay, the bishop is at Wiveliscombe,” but Imeyne didn’t look unhappy, so he must have got the message to the archdeacon.

  She turned to help a young woman in a vivid blue cloak even brighter than Kivrin’s kirtle down from her horse, and led her over to Eliwys, smiling. Eliwys was smiling, too.

  Kivrin tried to make out which was Sir Bloet, but there were at least a half-dozen mounted men, all with silver-chased bridles and fur-trimmed cloaks. None of them looked decrepit, thank goodness, and one or two were quite presentable-looking. She turned to ask Agnes which one he was, but she was still in the grip of the starched coif, who kept patting her head and saying, “You have grown so I scarce knew you.” Kivrin stifled a smile. Some things truly never changed.

  Several of the newcomers had red hair, including a woman nearly as old as Imeyne, who nevertheless wore her faded pink hair down her back like a young girl. She had a pinched, unhappy-looking mouth and was obviously dissatisfied with the way the servants were unloading things. She snatched one overloaded basket out of the hands of a servant who was struggling with it and thrust it at a fat man in a green velvet kirtle.

  He had red hair, too, and so did the nicest looking of the younger men. He was in his late twenties, but he had a round, open, freckled face and a pleasant expression at least.

  “Sir Bloet!” Agnes cried, and flung herself past Kivrin and against the knees of the fat man.

  Oh, no, Kivrin thought. She had assumed the fat man was married to the pink-tressed shrew or the woman in the starched coif. He was at least fifty, and nearly twenty stone, and when he smiled at Agnes his large teeth were brown with decay.

  “Have you no trinket for me?” Agnes was demanding, tugging on the hem of his kirtle.

  “Ay,” he said, looking toward where Rosemund still stood talking to the other girls, “for you and for your sister.”

  “I will fetch her,” Agnes said, and darted across to Rosemund before Kivrin could stop her. Bloet lumbered after her. The girls giggled and parted as he approached, and Rosemund shot a murderous look at Agnes and then smiled and extended her hand to him. “Good day and welcome, sir,” she said.

  Her chin was up about as far as it would go, and there were two spots of feverish red in her pale cheeks, but Bloet apparently took these for shyness and excitement. He took her little fingers in his own fat ones and said, “Surely you will not greet your husband with such formality come spring.”

  The spots got redder. “It is still winter, sir.”

  “It will be spring soon enough,” he said and laughed, showing his brown teeth.

  “Where is my trinket?” Agnes demanded.

  “Agnes, be not so greedy,” Eliwys said, coming to stand between her daughters. “It is a poor welcome to demand gifts of a guest.” She smiled at him, and if she dreaded this marriage, she showed no sign of it. She looked more relaxed than Kivrin had yet seen her.

  “I promised my sister-in-law a trinket,” he said, reaching into his too-tight belt and bringing out a little cloth bag, “and my betrothed a bride-gift.” He fumbled in the little bag and brought out a brooch set with stones. “A loveknot for my bride,” he said, unfastening the clasp. “You must think of me when you wear it.”

  He moved forward, puffing, to pin it to her cloak. I hope he has a stroke, Kivrin thought. Rosemund stood stock-still, her cheeks sharply red, while his fat hands fumbled at her neck.

  “Rubies,” Eliwys said delightedly. “Do you not thank your betrothed for his goodly gift, Rosemund?”

  “I thank thee for the brooch,” Rosemund said tonelessly.

  “Where is my trinket?” Agnes said, dancing on one foot, then the other while he reached in the little bag again and brought out something clenched in his fist. He stooped down to Agnes’s level, breathing hard, and opened his hand.

  “It is a bell!” Agnes said delightedly, holding it up and shaking it. It was brass and round, like a horse’s sleigh bell, and had a metal loop at the top.

  Agnes insisted on Kivrin taking her up to the bower to fetch a ribbon to thread through it so she could wear it around her wrist for a bracelet. “My father brought me this ribbon from the fair,” Agnes said, pulling it out of the chest Kivrin’s clothes had been kept in. It was patchily dyed and so stiff Kivrin had trouble threading it through the hole. Even the cheapest ribbons at Woolworth’s or the paper ribbons used for wrapping Christmas presents were better than this obviously treasured one.

  Kivrin tied it to Agnes’s wrist, and they went back downstairs. The bustle and unloading had moved inside, servants carrying chests and bedding and what looked like early versions of the carpet bag into the hall. She needn’t have worried about Sir Bloet et al carrying her off. It looked like they were here for the winter at the least.

  She needn’t have worried about them discussing her fate either. None of them had so much as cast a glance at her, even when Agnes insisted on going over to her mother and showing off her bracelet. Eliwys was deep in conversation with Bloet, Gawyn, and the nice-looking man, who must be a son or a nephew, and Eliwys was twisting her hands again. The news from Bath must be bad.

  Lady Imeyne was at the end of the hall, talking to the stout woman and a pale-looking man in a cleric’s robe, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she was complaining about Father Roche.

  Kivrin took advantage of the noisy confusion to pull Rosemund away from the other girls and ask her who everyone was. The pale man was Sir Bloet’s chaplain, which she had more or less figured out. The lady in the bright blue cloak was his foster daughter. The stout woman with the starched coif was Sir Bloet’s brother’s wife, come up from Dorset to stay with him. The two redheaded young men and the giggling girls were all hers. Sir Bloet didn’t have any children.

  Which of course was why he was marrying one, with, apparently, everyone’s approval. The carrying on of the line was the all-important concern in 1320. The younger the woman, the better her chance of producing enough heirs that one at least would survive to adulthood, even if its mother didn’t.

  The shrew with the faded red hair was, horror of horrors, Lady Yvolde, his unmarried sister. She lived at Courcy with him and, Kivrin saw, watching her shouting at poor Maisry for dropping a basket, had a bunch of keys at her belt. That meant she ran the household, or would u
ntil Easter. Poor Rosemund wouldn’t stand a chance.

  “Who are all the others?” Kivrin asked, hoping there might be at least one ally for Rosemund among them.

  “Servants,” Rosemund said, as if it were obvious, and ran back to the girls.

  There were at least twenty of them, not counting the grooms who were putting the horses up, and nobody, not even the nervous Eliwys, seemed surprised by their number. She had read that noble households had dozens of servants, but had thought those figures must be off. Eliwys and Imeyne had scarcely any servants at all, had had to put practically the whole village to work to get ready for Yule, and although she had put part of it down to their being in trouble, she had also thought the numbers of attendants for the rural manors must have been exaggerated. They obviously weren’t.

  The servants swarmed over the hall, serving supper. Kivrin had not known whether they would eat an evening meal at all, since Christmas Eve was a fast day, but as soon as the pale chaplain finished reading vespers, obviously on Lady Imeyne’s orders, the herd of servants trooped in with a meal of bread, watered wine, and dried cod that had been soaked in lyewater and then roasted.

  Agnes was so excited she didn’t eat a bite, and after supper had been cleared away, she refused to come and sit quietly by the hearth, but ran round the hall, ringing her bell and pestering the dogs.

  Sir Bloet’s servants and the steward brought in the Yule log and dumped it on the hearth, scattering sparks everywhere. The women stepped back, laughing, and the children screamed with delight. Rosemund, as eldest child of the house, lit the log with a faggot saved from the Yule log the year before, touching it gingerly to the tip of one of the crooked roots. There was laughter and applause when it caught, and Agnes waved her arm wildly to make her bell ring.

  Rosemund had said earlier that the children were allowed to stay up for the mass at midnight, but Kivrin had hoped she could at least coax Agnes to lie down on the bench beside her and take a nap. Instead, as the evening progressed, Agnes got wilder and wilder, shrieking and ringing her bell till Kivrin had to take it away from her.

  The women sat down by the hearth, talking quietly. The men stood in little groups, their arms folded across their chests, and several times they all went outside, except for the chaplain, and came back in stamping the snow off their feet and laughing. It was obvious from their red faces and Imeyne’s look of disapproval that they had been out in the brewhouse with a keg of ale, breaking their fast.

  When they came in the third time, Bloet sat down across the hearth and stretched out his legs to the fire, watching the girls. The three gigglers and Rosemund were playing blind-man’s buff. When Rosemund, blindfolded, came close to the benches, Bloet reached out and pulled her onto his lap. Everyone laughed.

  Imeyne spent the long evening sitting by the chaplain, reciting her grievances against Father Roche to him. He was ignorant, he was clumsy, he had said the Confíteor before the Adjutorum during the mass last Sunday. And he was out there in that ice-cold church on his knees, Kivrin thought, while the chaplain warmed his hands at the fire and shook his head disapprovingly.

  The fire died down to glowing embers. Rosemund slid off Bloet’s lap and ran back to the game. Gawyn told the story of how he had killed six wolves, watching Eliwys the whole time. The chaplain told a story about a dying woman who had made false confession. When the chaplain had touched her forehead with the holy oil, her skin had smoked and turned black before his eyes.

  Halfway through the chaplain’s story, Gawyn stood up, rubbed his hands over the fire, and went over to the beggar’s bench. He sat down and pulled off his boot.

  After a minute Eliwys stood up and went over to him. Kivrin couldn’t hear what she said to him, but he stood up, the boot still in his hand.

  “The trial is once more delayed,” Kivrin heard Gawyn say. “The judge who was to hear it is taken ill.”

  She couldn’t hear Eliwys’s answer, but Gawyn nodded and said, “It is good news. The new judge is from Swindone and less kindly disposed to King Edward,” but neither of them looked like it was good news. Eliwys was nearly as white as she had been when Imeyne told her she’d sent Gawyn to Courcy.

  She twisted her heavy ring. Gawyn sat down again, brushed the rushes from the bottom of his hose, and pulled the boot on, and then looked up again and said something. Eliwys turned her head aside and Kivrin couldn’t see her expression for the shadows, but she could see Gawyn’s.

  And so could anyone else in the hall, Kivrin thought, and looked hastily around to see if the couple had been observed. Imeyne was deep in complaint with the chaplain, but Sir Bloet’s sister was watching, her mouth tight with disapproval, and so, on the opposite side of the fire, were Bloet and the other men.

  Kivrin had hoped she might have a chance to speak with Gawyn tonight, but she obviously could not among all these watchful people. A bell rang, and Eliwys started and looked toward the door.

  “It is the Devil’s knell,” the chaplain said quietly, and even the children stopped their games to listen.

  In some villages the contemps had rung the bell once for each year since the birth of Christ. In most it had only been tolled for the hour before midnight, and Kivrin doubted whether Roche, or even the chaplain, could count high enough to toll the years, but she began keeping count anyway.

  Three servants came in, bearing logs and kindling, and replenished the fire. It flared up brightly, throwing huge, distorted shadows on the walls. Agnes jumped up and pointed, and one of Sir Bloet’s nephews made a rabbit with his hands.

  Mr. Latimer had told her that the contemps had read the future in the Yule log’s shadows. She wondered what the future held for them, Lord Guillaume in trouble and all of them in danger.

  The king had forfeited the lands and property of convicted criminals. They might be forced to live in France or to accept charity from Sir Bloet and endure snubs from the steward’s wife.

  Or Lord Guillaume might come home tonight with good news and a falcon for Agnes, and they would all live happily ever after. Except Eliwys. And Rosemund. What would happen to her?

  It’s already happened, Kivrin thought wonderingly. The verdict is already in and Lord Guillaume’s come home and found out about Gawyn and Eliwys. Rosemund’s already been handed over to Sir Bloet. And Agnes has grown up and married and died in childbirth, or of blood poisoning, or cholera, or pneumonia.

  They’ve all died, she thought, and couldn’t make herself believe it. They’ve all been dead over seven hundred years.

  “Look!” Agnes shrieked. “Rosemund has no head!” She pointed to the distorted shadows the fire cast on the walls as it flared up. Rosemund’s, oddly elongated, ended at the shoulders.

  One of the redheaded boys ran over to Agnes. “I have no head either!” he said, jumping on tiptoe to change the shadow’s shape.

  “You have no head, Rosemund,” Agnes shouted happily. “You will die ere the year is out.”

  “Say not such things,” Eliwys said, starting toward her. Everyone looked up.

  “Kivrin has a head,” Agnes said. “I have a head, but poor Rosemund has none.”

  Eliwys caught hold of Agnes by both arms. “Those are but foolish games,” she said. “Say not such things.”

  “The shadow—” Agnes said, looking like she was going to cry.

  “Sit you down by Lady Katherine and be still,” Eliwys said. She brought her over to Kivrin and almost pushed her onto the bench. “You are grown too wild.”

  Agnes huddled next to Kivrin, trying to decide whether to cry or not. Kivrin had lost count, but she picked up where she had left off. Forty-six, forty-seven.

  “I want my bell,” Agnes said, climbing off the bench.

  “Nay, we must sit quietly,” Kivrin said. She took Agnes onto her lap.

  “Tell me of Christmas.”

  “I can’t, Agnes. I can’t remember.”

  “Do you remember naught that you can tell me?”

  I remember it all, Kivrin thought. The shops a
re full of ribbons, satin and mylar and velvet, red and gold and blue, brighter even than my woad-dyed cloak, and there’s light everywhere and music. Great Tom and Magdalen’s bells and Christmas carols.

  She thought of the Carfax carillon, trying to play “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear,” and the tired old piped-in carols in the shops along the High. Those carols haven’t even been written yet, Kivrin thought, and felt a sudden wash of homesickness.

  “I would ring my bell,” Agnes said, struggling to get off Kivrin’s lap. “Give it to me.” She held out her wrist.

  “I will tie it on if you will lie down a little on the bench beside me,” Kivrin said.

  She started to pucker up into a pout again. “Must I sleep?”

  “No. I will tell you a story,” Kivrin said, untying the bell from her own wrist, where she had put it for safekeeping. “Once—” she said and then stopped, wondering if “once upon a time” dated as far back as 1320 and what sort of stories the contemps told their children. Stories about wolves and about witches whose skin turned black when they were given extreme unction.

  “There once was a maiden,” she said, tying the bell on Agnes’s chubby wrist. The red ribbon had already begun to fray at the edges. It wouldn’t tolerate many more knottings and unknottings. She bent over it. “A maiden who lived—”

  “Is this the maiden?” a woman’s voice said.

  Kivrin looked up. It was Bloet’s sister Yvolde, with Imeyne behind her. She stared at Kivrin, her mouth pinched with disapproval, and then shook her head.

  “Nay, this is not Uluric’s daughter,” she said. “That maid was short and dark.”

  “Nor de Ferrers’s ward?” Imeyne said.

  “She is dead,” Yvolde said. “Do you remember naught of who you are?” she asked Kivrin.

  “Nay, good lady,” Kivrin said, remembering too late that she was supposed to keep her eyes modestly on the floor.

  “She was struck upon the head,” Agnes volunteered.

  “Yet you remember your name and how to speak. Are you of good family?”

  “I do not remember my family, good lady,” Kivrin said, trying to keep her voice meek.