The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  Kivrin would surely have gone back to the drop as soon as she realized it was 1348. She would have been there all this time, waiting for the net to open, frantic that they hadn’t come to get her.

  If she had realized. She would have no way of knowing she was in 1348. Badri had told her the slippage would be several days. She would have checked the date against the Advent holy days and thought she was exactly where she was supposed to be. It would never have occurred to her to ask the year. She would think she was in 1320, and all the time the plague would be sweeping toward her.

  The gate’s lock clicked free, and Dunworthy pushed the gate open far enough to squeeze through. “Bring your keys,” he said. “I need you to unlock the laboratory.”

  “That key’s not on here,” the porter said, and disappeared into the lodge again.

  It was icy in the passage, and the rain came slanting in, colder still. Dunworthy huddled next to the door of the lodge, trying to catch some of the heat from inside, and jammed his hands hard against the bottoms of his jacket pockets to stop the shivering.

  He had been worried about cutthroats and thieves, and all this time she had been in 1348, where they had piled the dead in the streets, where they had burned Jews and strangers at the stake in their panic.

  He had been worried about Gilchrist not doing parameter checks, so worried that he had infected Badri with his anxiety, and Badri, already feverish, had refed the coordinates. So worried.

  He realized suddenly that the porter had been gone too long, that he must be warning Gilchrist.

  He moved toward the door, and as he did, the porter emerged, carrying an umbrella and exclaiming over the cold. He offered half the umbrella to Dunworthy.

  “I’m already wet through,” Dunworthy said and strode off ahead of him through the quad.

  The door of the laboratory had a yellow plastic banner stretched across it. Dunworthy tore it off while the porter searched through his pockets for the key to the alarm, switching the umbrella from hand to hand.

  Dunworthy glanced up behind him at Gilchrist’s rooms. They overlooked the laboratory, and there was a light on in the sitting room, but Dunworthy couldn’t detect any movement.

  The porter found the flat cardkey that switched off the alarm. He switched it off and began looking for the key to the door. “I’m still not certain I should unlock the laboratory without Mr. Gilchrist’s authorization,” he said.

  “Mr. Dunworthy!” Colin shouted from halfway across the quad. They both looked up. Colin came racing up, drenched to the skin with the book under his arm, wrapped in the muffler. “It—didn’t—hit—parts of Oxfordshire—till—March,” he said, stopping between words to catch his breath. “Sorry. I—ran—all the way.”

  “What parts?” Dunworthy asked.

  Colin handed the book to him and bent over, his hands on his knees, taking deep noisy breaths. “It—doesn’t—say.”

  Dunworthy unwound the muffler and opened the book to the page Colin had turned down, but his spectacles were too spattered with rain to read it, and the open pages were promptly soaked.

  “It says it started in Melcombe and moved north to Bath and east,” Colin said. “It says it was in Oxford at Christmas and London the next October, but that parts of Oxfordshire didn’t get it till late spring, and that a few individual villages were missed until July.”

  Dunworthy stared blindly at the unreadable pages. “That doesn’t tell us anything,” he said.

  “I know,” Colin said. He straightened up, still breathing hard, “but at least it doesn’t say the plague was all through Oxfordshire by Christmas. Perhaps she’s in one of those villages it didn’t come to till July.”

  Dunworthy wiped the wet pages with the dangling muffler and shut the book. “It moved east from Bath,” he said softly. “Skendgate’s just south of the Oxford-Bath road.”

  The porter had finally decided on a key. He pushed it into the lock.

  “I rang up Andrews again, but there was still no answer.”

  The porter opened the door.

  “How are you going to run the net without a tech?” Colin said.

  “Run the net?” the porter said, the key still in his hand. “I understood that you wished to obtain data from the computer. Mr. Gilchrist won’t allow you to run the net without authorization.” He took out Basingame’s authorization and looked at it.

  “I’m authorizing it,” Dunworthy said and swept past him into the laboratory.

  The porter started in, caught his open umbrella on the door frame, and fumbled on the handle for the catch.

  Colin ducked under the umbrella and in after Dunworthy.

  Gilchrist must have turned the heat off. The laboratory was scarcely warmer than the outside, but Dunworthy’s spectacles, wet as they were, steamed up. He took them off and tried to wipe them dry on his wet suit jacket.

  “Here,” Colin said and handed him a wadded length of paper tissue. “It’s lavatory paper. I’ve been collecting it for Mr. Finch. The thing is, it’s going to be difficult enough to find her if we land in the proper place, and you said yourself that getting the exact time and place are awfully complicated.”

  “We already have the exact time and place,” Dunworthy said, wiping his spectacles on the lavatory paper. He put them on again. They were still blurred.

  “I’m afraid I shall have to ask you to leave,” the porter said. “I cannot allow you in here without Mr. Gilchrist’s—” He stopped.

  “Oh, blood,” Colin muttered. “It’s Mr. Gilchrist.”

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Gilchrist said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m going to bring Kivrin through,” Dunworthy said.

  “On whose authority?” Gilchrist said. “This is Brasenose’s net, and you are guilty of unlawful entry.” He turned on the porter. “I gave you orders that Mr. Dunworthy was not to be allowed on the premises.”

  “Mr. Basingame authorized it,” the porter said. He held the damp paper out.

  Gilchrist snatched it from him. “Basingame!” He stared down at it. “This isn’t Basingame’s signature,” he said furiously. “Unlawful entry and now forgery. Mr. Dunworthy, I intend to file charges. And when Mr. Basingame returns, I intend to inform him of your—”

  Dunworthy took a step toward him. “And I intend to inform Mr. Basingame how his Acting Head of Faculty refused to abort a drop, how he intentionally endangered an historian, how he refused to allow access to this laboratory, and how as a result the historian’s temporal location could not be determined.” He waved his arm at the console. “Do you know what this fix says? This fix that you wouldn’t let my tech read for ten days because of a lot of imbeciles who don’t understand time travel, including you? Do you know what it says? Kivrin’s not in 1320. She’s in 1348, in the middle of the Black Death.” He turned and gestured toward the screens. “And she’s been there two weeks. Because of your stupidity. Because of—” He stopped.

  “You have no right to speak to me that way,” Gilchrist said. “And no right to be in this laboratory. I demand that you leave immediately.”

  Dunworthy didn’t answer. He took a step toward the console.

  “Call the proctor,” Gilchrist said to the porter. “I want them thrown out.”

  The screen was not only blank but dark, and so were the function lights above it on the console. The power switch was turned to off. “You’ve switched off the power,” Dunworthy said, and his voice sounded as old as Badri’s had. “You’ve shut down the net.”

  “Yes,” Gilchrist said, “and a good thing, too, since you feel you have the right to barge in without authorization.”

  He put a hand out blindly toward the “blank screen, staggering a little. “You’ve shut down the net,” he repeated.

  “Are you all right, Mr. Dunworthy?” Colin said, taking a step forward.

  “I thought you might attempt to break in and open the net,” Gilchrist said, “since you seem to have no respect for Mediaeval’s authority. I cut
off the power to prevent that happening, and it appears I did the right thing.”

  Dunworthy had heard of people being struck down by bad news. When Badri had told him Kivrin was in 1348, he had not been able to absorb what it meant, but this news seemed to strike him with a physical force. He couldn’t catch his breath. “You shut the net down,” he said. “You’ve lost the fix.”

  “Lost the fix?” Gilchrist said. “Nonsense. There are backups and things surely. When the power’s switched on again—”

  “Does that mean we don’t know where Kivrin is?” Colin asked.

  “Yes,” Dunworthy said, and thought as he fell, I am going to hit the console like Badri did, but he didn’t. He fell almost gently, like a man with the wind knocked out of him, and collapsed like a lover into Gilchrist’s outstretched arms.

  “I knew it,” he heard Colin say. “This is because you didn’t get your enhancement. Great-aunt Mary’s going to kill me.”

  26

  “That’s impossible,” Kivrin said. “It can’t be 1348,” but it all made sense, Imeyne’s chaplain dying, and their not having any servants, Eliwys’s not wanting to send Gawyn to Oxford to find out who Kivrin was. “There is much illness there,” Lady Yvolde had said, and the Black Death had hit Oxford at Christmas in 1348. “What happened?” she said, and her voice rose out of control. “What happened! I was supposed to go to 1320. 1320! Mr. Dunworthy told me I shouldn’t come, he said Mediaeval didn’t know what they were doing, but they couldn’t have sent me to the wrong year!” She stopped. “You must get out of here! It’s the Black Death!”

  They all looked at her so uncomprehendingly that she thought the interpreter must have lapsed into English again. “It’s the Black Death,” she said again. “The blue sickness!”

  “Nay,” Eliwys said softly, and Kivrin said, “Lady Eliwys, you must take Lady Imeyne and Father Roche down to the hall.”

  “It cannot be,” she said, but she took Lady Imeyne’s arm and led her out, Imeyne clutching the poultice as if it were her reliquary. Maisry darted after them, her hands clutched to her ears.

  “You must go, too,” Kivrin said to Roche. “I will stay with the clerk.”

  “Thruuuu …” the clerk murmured from the bed, and Roche turned to look at him. The clerk struggled to rise, and Roche started toward him.

  “No!” Kivrin said, and grabbed his sleeve. “You mustn’t go near him.” She interposed herself between him and the bed. “The clerk’s illness is contagious,” she said, willing the interpreter to translate. “Infectious. It is spread by fleas and by …” she hesitated, trying to think how to describe droplet infection, “by the humours and exhalations of the ill. It is a deadly disease, which kills nearly all who come near it.”

  She watched him anxiously, wondering if he had understood anything she’d said, if he could understand it. There had been no knowledge of germs in the 1300s, no knowledge of how diseases spread. The contemps had believed the Black Death was a judgment from God. They had thought it was spread by poisonous mists that floated across the countryside, by a dead person’s glance, by magic.

  “Father,” the clerk said, and Roche tried to step past Kivrin, but she barred his way.

  “We cannot leave them to die,” he said.

  They did, though, she thought. They ran away and left them. People abandoned their own children, and doctors refused to come, and all the priests fled.

  She stooped and picked up one of the strips of cloth Lady Imeyne had torn for her poultice. “You must cover your mouth and nose with this,” she said.

  She handed it to him and he looked at it, frowning, and then folded it into a flat packet and held it to his face.

  “Tie it,” Kivrin said, picking up another one. She folded it diagonally and put it over her nose and mouth like a bandit’s mask and tied it in a knot in the back. “Like this.”

  Roche obeyed, fumbling with the knot, and looked at Kivrin. She moved aside, and he bent over the clerk and put his hand on his chest.

  “Don’t—” she said, and he looked up at her. “Don’t touch him any more than you have to.”

  She held her breath as Roche examined him, afraid that he would start up suddenly again and grab at Roche, but he didn’t move at all. The bubo under his arm had begun to ooze blood and a slow greenish pus.

  Kivrin put a restraining hand on Roche’s arm. “Don’t touch it,” she said. “He must have broken it when we were struggling with him.” She wiped the blood and pus away with one of Imeyne’s cloth strips and bound up the wound with another, tying it tightly at the shoulder. The clerk did not wince or cry out, and when she looked at him she saw he was staring straight ahead, unmoving.

  “Is he dead?” she asked.

  “Nay,” Roche said, his hand on his chest again, and she could see the faint rise and fall. “I must bring the sacraments,” he said through the mask, and his words were almost as blurred as the clerk’s.

  No, Kivrin thought, the panic rising again. Don’t go. What if he dies? What if he rises up again?

  Roche straightened. “Do not fear,” he said. “I will come again.”

  He went out rapidly, without shutting the door, and Kivrin went over to close it. She could hear sounds from below—Eliwys’s and Roche’s voices. She should have told him not to speak to anyone. Agnes said, “I wish to stay with Kivrin,” and began to howl and Rosemund answered her angrily, shouting over the crying.

  “I will tell Kivrin,” Agnes said, outraged, and Kivrin shoved the door to and barred it.

  Agnes must not come in here, nor Rosemund, nor anyone. They must not be exposed. There was no cure for the Black Death. The only way to protect them was to keep them from catching it. She tried frantically to remember what she knew about the plague. She had studied it in Fourteenth Century, and Dr. Ahrens had talked about it when she’d given Kivrin her inoculations.

  There were two distinct types, no, three—one went directly into the bloodstream and killed the victim within hours. Bubonic plague was spread by rat fleas, and that was the kind that produced the buboes. The other kind was pneumonic, and it didn’t have buboes. The victim coughed and vomited up blood, and that was spread by droplet infection and was horribly contagious. But the clerk had the bubonic, and that wasn’t as contagious. Simply being near the patient wouldn’t do it—the flea had to jump from one person to another.

  She had a sudden vivid image of the clerk falling on Rosemund, bearing her down to the floor. What if she gets it? she thought. She can’t, she can’t get it. There isn’t any cure.

  The clerk stirred in the bed, and Kivrin went over to him.

  “Thirsty,” he said, licking his lips with his swollen tongue. She brought him a cup of water, and he drank a few gulps greedily and then choked and spewed it over her.

  She backed away, yanking off the drenched mask. It’s the bubonic, she told herself, wiping frantically at her chest. This kind isn’t spread by droplet. And you can’t get the plague, you’ve had your inoculation. But she had had her antivirals and her T-cell enhancement, too. She should not have been able to get the virus either. She should not have landed in 1348.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  It couldn’t be the slippage. Mr. Dunworthy had been upset that they hadn’t run slippage checks, but even at its worst, the drop would only have been off by weeks, not years. Something must have gone wrong with the net.

  Mr. Dunworthy had said Mr. Gilchrist didn’t know what he was doing, and something had gone wrong, and she had come through in 1348, but why hadn’t they aborted the drop as soon as they knew it was the wrong date? Mr. Gilchrist might not have had the sense to pull her out, but Mr. Dunworthy would have. He hadn’t wanted her to come in the first place. Why hadn’t he opened the net again?

  Because I wasn’t there, she thought. It would have taken at least two hours to get the fix. By then she had wandered off into the woods. But he would have held the net open. He wouldn’t have closed it again and waited for the rendezvous. He’d h
old it open for her.

  She half ran to the door and pushed up on the bar. She must find Gawyn. She must make him tell her where the drop was.

  The clerk sat up and flung his bare leg over the bed as if he would go with her. “Help me,” he said, and tried to move his other leg.

  “I can’t help you,” she said angrily. “I don’t belong here.” She shoved the bar up out of its sockets. “I must find Gawyn.” But as soon as she said it, she remembered that he wasn’t there, that he had gone with the bishop’s envoy and Sir Bloet to Courcy. With the bishop’s envoy, who had been in such a hurry to leave he had nearly run down Agnes.

  She dropped the bar and turned on him. “Did the others have the plague?” she demanded. “Did the bishop’s envoy have it?” She remembered his gray face and the way he had shivered and pulled his cloak around him. He would infect all of them: Bloet and his haughty sister and the chattering girls. And Gawyn. “You knew you had it when you came here, didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  The clerk held his arms out stiffly to her, like a child. “Help me,” he said, and fell back, his head and shoulder nearly off the bed.

  “You don’t deserve to be helped. You brought the plague here.”

  There was a knock.

  “Who is it?” she said angrily.

  “Roche,” he called through the door, and she felt a wave of relief, of joy that he had come, but she didn’t move. She looked down at the clerk, still lying half off the bed. His mouth was open, and his swollen tongue filled his entire mouth.

  “Let me in,” Roche said. “I must hear his confession.”

  His confession. “No,” Kivrin said.

  He knocked again, louder.

  “I can’t let you in,” Kivrin said. “It’s contagious. You might catch it.”

  “He is in peril of death,” Roche said. “He must be shriven that he may enter into heaven.”

  He’s not going to heaven, Kivrin thought. He brought the plague here.

  The clerk opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and swollen, and there was a faint hum to his breathing. He’s dying, she thought.