The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “At the dig,” she said, but that was already apparent. She was standing in front of the ruined nave of the church in the half-excavated mediaeval churchyard. He could see why she had been so anxious to get back to her dig. There was as much as a foot of water in places. She had draped a motley assortment of tarps and plastene sheets over the excavation, but rain was dripping in at a dozen places, and where the sagging coverings met, spilling down the edges in veritable waterfalls. Everything, the gravestones, the battery lights she had clipped to the tarps, the shovels stacked against the wall, was covered in mud.

  Montoya was covered in mud, too. She was wearing her terrorist jacket and thigh-high fisherman’s waders like Basingame, wherever he was, might be wearing, and they were wet and filthy. The hand she was holding the telephone with was caked with dried mud.

  “I’ve been ringing you for days,” Dunworthy said.

  “I can’t hear the phone over the pump.” She gestured toward something outside the picture, presumably the pump, though he couldn’t hear anything save for the thump of rain on the tarps. “It’s just broken a belt, and I don’t have another one. I heard the bells. Do they mean the quarantine’s over?”

  “Hardly,” he said. “We’re in the midst of a full-scale epidemic. Seven hundred and eighty cases and sixteen deaths. Haven’t you seen the papers?”

  “I haven’t seen anything or anybody since I got here. I’ve spent the last six days trying to keep this damned dig above water, but I can’t do it all by myself. And without a pump.” She pushed her heavy black hair back from her face with a dirty hand. “What were they ringing the bells for then, if the quarantine’s not over?”

  “A peal of Chicago Surprise Minor.”

  She looked irritated. “If the quarantine’s as bad as all that, why aren’t they doing something useful?”

  They are, he thought. They made you telephone.

  “I could certainly put them to work out here.” She pushed her hair back again. She looked nearly as tired as Mary. “I was really hoping the quarantine had been lifted, so I could get some people out here to help. How long do you think it will be?”

  Too long, he thought, watching the rain cascade in between the tarps. You’ll never get the help you need in time.

  “I need some information about Basingame and Badri Chaudhuri,” he said. “We’re attempting to source the virus and we need to know who Badri had contact with. Badri worked at the dig on the eighteenth and the morning of the nineteenth. Who else was there when he was?”

  “I was.”

  “Who else?”

  “No one. I’ve had a terrible time getting help all December. Every one of my archaeohistory students took off the day vac started. I’ve had to scrounge volunteers wherever I could.”

  “You’re certain you were the only two there?”

  “Yes. I remember because we opened the knight’s tomb on Saturday and we had so much trouble lifting the lid. Gillian Ledbetter was signed up to work Saturday, but she called at the last minute and said she had a date.”

  With William, Dunworthy thought. “Was anyone there with Badri Sunday?”

  “He was only here in the morning, and there was no one here then. He had to leave to go to London. Look, I’ve got to go. If I’m not going to get any help soon, I’ve got to get back to work.” She started to take the receiver away from her ear.

  “Wait!” Dunworthy shouted. “Don’t hang up.”

  She put the receiver back to her ear, looking impatient.

  “I need to ask you some more questions. It’s very important. The sooner we source this virus, the sooner the quarantine will be lifted and you can get assistance at the dig.”

  She looked unconvinced, but she punched up a code, laid the receiver in its cradle, and said, “You don’t mind if I work while we talk?”

  “No,” Dunworthy said, relieved. “Please do.”

  She moved abruptly out-of-picture, returned, and punched up something else. “Sorry. It won’t reach,” she said, and the screen went fuzzy while she, presumably, moved the phone to her new worksite. When the picture reappeared, Montoya was crouched in a mudhole by a stone tomb. Dunworthy supposed it was the one whose lid she and Badri had nearly dropped.

  The lid, which bore the effigy of a knight in full armor, his arms crossed over his mailed chest so that his hands in their heavy cuirasses lay on his shoulders and his sword at his feet, stood propped at a precarious angle against the side, obscuring the elaborate carved letters. “Requiesc—” was all he could see. Requiescat in pace. “Rest in peace,” a blessing the knight had obviously not been granted. His sleeping face under the carved helmet looked disapproving.

  Montoya had draped a thin sheet of plastene over the open top. It was beaded with water. Dunworthy wondered if the other side of the tomb bore a morbid carving of the horror that lay within, like the ones in Colin’s illustration, and if it were as ghastly as the reality. Water spilled steadily into the head of the tomb, dragging the plastic down.

  Montoya straightened, bringing up with her a flat box filled with mud. “Well?” she said, laying it across the corner of the tomb. “You said you had some more questions?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You said there wasn’t anyone else at the dig when Badri was there.”

  “There wasn’t,” she said, wiping sweat off her forehead. “Whew, it’s muggy in here.” She took off her terrorist jacket and draped it over the tomb lid.

  “What about locals? People not connected with the dig?”

  “If there’d been anyone here, I’d have recruited them.” She began sorting through the mud in the box, unearthing several brown stones. “The lid weighed a ton, and we’d no sooner gotten it off than it started raining. I would’ve recruited anybody who happened by, but the dig’s too far out for anyone to happen by.”

  “What about the National Trust staff?”

  She held the stones under the water to clean them. “They’re only here during the summer.”

  He had hoped someone at the dig would turn out to be the source, that Badri had come in contact with a local, a National Trust staffer, or a wandering duck hunter. But myxoviruses didn’t have carriers. The mysterious local would have had to have the disease himself, and Mary had been in touch with every hospital and doctor’s surgery in England. There hadn’t been any cases outside the perimeter.

  Montoya held the stones up one by one to the battery light clipped to one of the supporting posts, turning them in the light, looking at their still-muddy edges.

  “What about birds?”

  “Birds?” she said, and he realized it must sound as though he were suggesting she recruit passing sparrows to help raise the lid of the tomb.

  “The virus may have been spread by birds. Ducks, geese, chickens,” he said, even though he wasn’t certain chickens were reservoirs. “Are there any at the dig?”

  “Chickens?” she said, holding one of the stones half-raised to the light.

  “Viruses are sometimes caused by the intersection of animal and human viruses,” he explained. “Fowl are the most common reservoirs, but fish are sometimes responsible. Or pigs. Are there any pigs there at the dig?”

  She was still looking at him as though she thought he was daft.

  “The dig’s on a National Trust farm, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but the actual farm’s three kilometers away. We’re in the middle of a barley field. There aren’t any pigs around, or birds, or fish.” She went back to examining the stones.

  No birds. No pigs. No locals. The source of the virus wasn’t here at the dig either. Possibly it wasn’t anywhere, and Badri’s influenza had mutated spontaneously, as Mary had said happened occasionally, appearing out of thin air and descending on Oxford the way the plague had descended on the unwitting residents of this churchyard.

  Montoya was holding the stones up to the light again, chipping with her fingernails at an occasional clot of mud and then rubbing at the surface, and he realized suddenly that what she was exam
ining were bones. Vertebrae, perhaps, or the knight’s toes. Recquiescat in pace.

  She found the one she had apparently been looking for, an uneven bone the size of a walnut, with a curved side. She dumped the rest back into the tray, rummaged in the pocket of her shirt for a short-handled toothbrush, and began scrubbing at the concave edges, frowning.

  Gilchrist would never accept spontaneous mutation as a source. He was too in love with the theory that some fourteenth-century virus had come through the net. And too in love with his authority as Acting Head of the History Faculty to give in, even if Dunworthy had found ducks swimming in the churchyard puddles.

  “I need to get in touch with Mr. Basingame,” he said. “Where is he?”

  “Basingame?” she said, still frowning at the bone. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “But—I thought you’d found him. When you phoned Christmas Day you said you had to find him to authorize your NHS dispensation.”

  “I know. I spent two full days calling every trout and salmon guide in Scotland before I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. If you ask me, he’s nowhere near Scotland.” She pulled a pocketknife out of her jeans and began scraping at the rough edge of the bone. “Speaking of the NHS, would you do something for me? I keep calling their number but it’s always busy. Would you run over there and tell them I’ve got to have some more help? Tell them the dig’s of irreplaceable historical value, and it’s going to be irretrievably lost if they don’t send me at least five people. And a pump.” The knife snagged. She frowned and chipped some more.

  “How did you get Basingame’s authorization if you didn’t know where he was? I thought you’d said the form required his signature.”

  “It did,” she said. An edge of bone flew suddenly off and landed on the plastene shroud. She examined the bone and dropped it back in the box, no longer frowning. “I forged it.”

  She crouched by the tomb again, digging for more bones. She looked as absorbed as Colin examining his gobstopper. He wondered if she even remembered that Kivrin was in the past, or if she had forgotten her as she seemed to have forgotten the epidemic.

  He rang off, wondering if Montoya would even notice, and walked back to Infirmary to tell Mary what he had found out and to begin questioning the secondaries again, looking for the source. It was raining very hard, spilling off the downspouts and washing away things of irreplaceable historical value.

  The bell ringers and Finch were still at it, ringing the changes one after another in their determined order, bending their knees and looking like Montoya, sticking to their bells. The sound pealed out loudly, leadenly, through the rain, like an alarum, like a cry for help.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

  (066440–066879)

  Christmas Eve 1320 (Old Style). I don’t have as much time as I thought. When I came in from the kitchen just now, Rosemund told me Lady Imeyne wanted me. Imeyne was deep in earnest conversation with the bishop’s envoy, and I supposed from her expression that she was cataloging Father Roche’s sins, but as Rosemund and I came up, she pointed to me and said, “This is the woman I spake of.”

  Woman, not maid, and her tone was critical, almost accusing. I wondered if she’d told the bishop her theory that I was a French spy.

  “She says she remembers naught,” Lady Imeyne said, “yet she can speak and read.” She turned to Rosemund. “Where is your brooch?”

  “It is on my cloak,” Rosemund said. “I laid it in the loft.”

  “Go and fetch it.”

  Rosemund went, reluctantly. As soon as she was gone Imeyne said, “Sir Bloet brought a loveknot brooch to my granddaughter with words on it in the Roman tongue.” She looked at me triumphantly. “She told their meaning, and at the church this night she spoke the words of the mass ere the priest had said them.”

  “Who taught you your letters?” the bishop’s envoy asked, his voice blurred from the wine.

  I thought of saying Sir Bloet had told me what the words meant, but I was afraid he’d already denied it. “I know not,” I said. “I have no memory of my life since I was waylaid in the woods, for I was struck upon the head.”

  “When first she woke she spoke in a tongue none could understand,” Imeyne said, as if that were further proof, but I had no idea what she was trying to convict me of or how the bishop’s envoy was involved.

  “Holy Father, go you to Oxenford when you leave us?” she asked him.

  “Aye,” he said, sounding wary. “We can stay but a few days here.”

  “I would have you take her with you to the good sisters at Godstow.”

  “We go not to Godstow,” he said, which was clearly an excuse. The nunnery wasn’t even five miles from Oxford. “But I will inquire of the bishop for news of the woman on my return and send word to you.”

  “I wot she is a nun for that she speaks in Latin and knows the passages of the mass,” Imeyne said. “I would have you take her to their convent that they may ask among the nunneries who she may be.”

  The bishop’s envoy looked even more nervous, but he agreed. So I have till whenever they leave. A few days, the bishop’s envoy said, and with luck that means they won’t leave till after the Slaughter of the Innocents. But I plan to put Agnes to bed and talk to Gawyn as soon as possible.

  22

  Kivrin didn’t get Agnes to bed till nearly dawn. The arrival of the “three kings,” as she continued to call them, had woken her completely, and she refused to even consider lying down for fear she might miss something, even though she was obviously exhausted.

  She tagged after Kivrin as she tried to help Eliwys bring in the food for the feast, whining that she was hungry, and then, when the tables were finally set and the feast begun, refused to eat anything.

  Kivrin had no time to argue with her. There was course after course to be brought across the courtyard from the kitchen, trenchers of venison and roast pork and an enormous pie Kivrin half expected blackbirds to fly out of when the crust was cut. According to the priest at Holy Re-Formed, fasting was observed between the midnight mass and the high mass Christmas morning, but everyone, including the bishop’s envoy, ate heartily of the roast pheasant and goose and stewed rabbit in saffron gravy. And drank. The “three kings” called constantly for more wine.

  They had already had more than enough. The monk was leering at Maisry, and the clerk, drunk when he arrived, was nearly under the table. The bishop’s envoy was drinking more than either of them, beckoning constantly to Rosemund to bring him the wassail bowl, his gestures growing broader and less clear with every drink.

  Good, Kivrin thought. Perhaps he’ll get so drunk he’ll forget he promised Lady Imeyne he’d take me to the nunnery at Godstow. She took the bowl around to Gawyn, hoping to have an opportunity to ask him where the drop was, but he was laughing with some of Sir Bloet’s men, and they called to her for ale and more meat. By the time she got back to Agnes, the little girl was sound asleep, her head nearly in her manchet. Kivrin picked her up carefully and carried her upstairs to Rosemund’s bower.

  Above them, the door opened. “Lady Katherine,” Eliwys said, her arms full of bedding. “I am grateful you are here. I have need of your help.”

  Agnes stirred.

  “Bring the linen sheets from the loft,” Eliwys said. “The churchmen will sleep in this bed, and Sir Bloet’s sister and her women in the loft.”

  “Where am I to sleep?” Agnes asked, wriggling out of Kivrin’s arms.

  “We will sleep in the barn,” Eliwys said. “But you must wait till we have made up the beds, Agnes. Go and play.”

  Agnes didn’t have to be encouraged. She hopped off down the stairs, waving her arm to make her bell ring.

  Eliwys handed Kivrin the bedding. “Take these to the loft and bring the miniver coverlid from my husband’s carven chest.”

  “How many days do you think the bishop’s envoy and his men will stay?” Kivrin asked.

  “I know not,” Eliwys said, looking worried. “I pray not more than a fort
night or we shall not have meat enough. See you do not forget the good bolsters.”

  A fortnight was more than enough, well past the rendezvous, and they certainly didn’t look like they were going anywhere. When Kivrin climbed down from the loft with the sheets, the bishop’s envoy was asleep in the high seat, snoring loudly, and the clerk had his feet on the table. The monk had one of Sir Bloet’s waiting women backed into a corner and was playing with her kerchief. Gawyn was nowhere to be seen.

  Kivrin took the sheets and coverlid to Eliwys, then offered to take bedding out to the barn. “Agnes is very tired,” she said. “I would put her to bed soon.”

  Eliwys nodded absently, pounding at one of the heavy bolsters, and Kivrin ran downstairs and out into the courtyard. Gawyn was not in the stable nor the brewhouse. She lingered near the privy until two of the redheaded young men emerged, looking at her curiously, and then went on to the barn. Perhaps Gawyn had gone off with Maisry again, or joined the villagers’ celebration on the green. She could hear the sound of laughter as she spread straw on the bare wooden floor of the loft.

  She laid the furs and quilts on the straw and went down and out through the passageway to see if she could see him. The contemps had built a bonfire in front of the churchyard and were standing around it, warming their hands and drinking out of large horns. She could see the reddened faces of Maisry’s father and the reeve in the firelight, but not Gawyn’s.

  He was not in the courtyard either. Rosemund was standing by the gate, wrapped in her cloak.

  “What are you doing out here in the cold?” Kivrin asked.

  “I am awaiting my father,” Rosemund said. “Gawyn told me he expects him before day.”

  “Have you seen Gawyn?”

  “Aye. He is in the stable.”

  Kivrin looked anxiously toward the stable. “It’s too cold to wait out here. You must go in the house, and I’ll tell Gawyn to tell you when your father comes.”

  “Nay, I will wait here,” Rosemund said. “He promised he would come to us for Christmas.” Her voice quavered a little.