The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

She pulled at the hose, trying to get them down over his hips, and then yanked at the legs, but they were too tight. She would have to cut them off.

  “I’m going to cut your hose off,” she said, crawling back to where she’d left the knife and the bottle of wine. “I’ll try not to cut you.” She sniffed at the bottle and then took a little swig and choked. Good. It was old and full of alcohol. She poured it over the blade of the knife, wiped the edge on her leg, poured some more, careful to leave enough to pour over the wound when she had it opened.

  “Beata,” Roche murmured. His hand groped for his groin.

  “It’s all right,” Kivrin said. She took hold of one of the legs of his hose and slit the wool. “I know it hurts now, but I’m going to lance the bubo.” She pulled the rough fabric apart in both hands and blessedly it tore, making a loud ripping sound. Roche’s knees contracted. “No, no, leave your legs down,” Kivrin said, trying to push on his knees. “I have to lance the bubo.”

  She couldn’t get them down. She left them for the moment and finished tearing the leg of his hose, reaching under his leg to split the rough cloth the rest of the way up, so she could see the bubo. It was twice as big as Rosemund’s and completely black. It should have been lanced hours ago, days ago.

  “Roche, please put your legs down,” she said, leaning on them with all her weight. “I have to open the plague boil.”

  There was no response. She was not sure he could respond, that his muscles were not somehow contracting on their own, the way the clerk’s had, but she couldn’t wait until the spasm, if that was what it was, had passed. It might rupture at any minute.

  She stepped away a minute and then knelt down by his feet, and reached up under his folded legs, gripping the knife. Roche moaned, and she pulled the knife down a little and then moved it forward slowly, carefully, till it touched the bubo.

  His kick caught her full in the ribs, sending her sprawling. She let go of the knife, and it skittered loudly across the stone floor. The kick had knocked the wind out of Kivrin, and she lay there, gasping for air, taking long, wheezing breaths. She tried to sit up. Pain stabbed at her right side, and she fell back, clutching at her ribs.

  Roche was still screaming, a long, impossible sound like a tortured animal. Kivrin rolled slowly onto her left side, holding her hand tightly against her ribs, so she could see him. He rocked back and forth like a child, screaming all the while, his legs drawn up protectively to his chest. She could not see the bubo.

  Kivrin tried to raise herself, bracing her hand against the stone floor until she was half sitting, and then edging her hand toward her till she could put both hands down and get onto her knees. She cried out, little whimpering screams that were lost in Roche’s. He must have broken some ribs. She spat on her hand, afraid of seeing blood.

  When she was finally on her knees, she sat back on her feet a minute, huddling against the pain. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I didn’t mean to hurt you.” She half crawled toward him on her knees, using her right hand as a crutch. The effort made her breathe more deeply, and every breath stabbed into her side. “It’s all right, Roche,” she whispered. “I’m coming. I’m coming.”

  He pulled his legs up spasmodically at the sound of her voice, and she moved around to his side, between him and the side wall, well out of his reach. When he kicked her, he had knocked over one of St. Catherine’s candles, and it lay in a yellow puddle beside him, still burning. Kivrin set it upright and laid her hand on his shoulder. “Shh, Roche,” she said. “It’s all right. I’m here now.”

  He stopped screaming. “I’m sorry,” she said, leaning over him. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I was only trying to lance the bubo.”

  His knees pulled up even tighter than before. Kivrin picked up the red candle and held it above his naked backside. She could see the bubo, black and hard in the candle’s light. She had not even pierced it. She raised the candle higher, trying to see where the knife had gone. It had clattered away in the direction of the tomb. She held the candle out in that direction, hoping to catch a glint of metal. She couldn’t see anything.

  She started to stand up, moving carefully to guard against the pain, but halfway to her feet it caught at her, and she cried out and bent forward.

  “What is it?” Roche said. His eyes were open, and there was a little blood at the corner of his mouth. She wondered if he had bitten through his tongue when he was screaming. “Have I done hurt to you?”

  “No,” she said, kneeling back down beside him. “No. You have done no hurt.” She blotted at his mouth with the sleeve of her jerkin.

  “You must,” he said, and when he opened his mouth, more blood leaked out. He swallowed. “You must say the prayers for the dying.”

  “No,” she said. “You will not die.” She wiped at his mouth again. “But I must lance your bubo before it ruptures.”

  “Do not,” he said, and she did not know whether he meant don’t lance the bubo or don’t leave. His teeth were gritted, and blood was leaking between them. She sank into a sitting position, careful not to cry out, and took his head onto her lap.

  “Requiem aeternam dona eis,” he said and made a gurgling sound, “et lux perpetua.”

  The blood was seeping from the roof of his mouth. She propped his head up higher, wadding the purple coverlid under it, wiping his mouth and chin with her jerkin. It was sodden with blood. She reached off to the side for his alb. “Do not,” he said.

  “I won’t,” she said. “I’m right here.”

  “Pray for me,” he said and tried to bring his hands together on his chest. “Wreck—” He choked on the word he was trying to say, and it ended in a gurgling sound.

  “Requiem aeternam,” Kivrin said. She folded her own hands. “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, ” she said.

  “Et lux—” he said.

  The red candle beside Kivrin flickered out, and the church was filled with the sharp smell of smoke. She glanced round at the other candles. There was only one left, the last of Lady Imeyne’s wax candles, and it was burnt nearly down to the lip of its holder.

  “Et lux perpetua,” Kivrin said.

  “Luceat eis, ” Roche said. He stopped and tried to lick his bloody lips. His tongue was swollen and stiff. “Dies irae, dies ilia.” He swallowed again and tried to close his eyes.

  “Don’t put him through any more of this,” she whispered in English. “Please. It’s not fair.”

  “Beata,” she thought he said and tried to think of the next line, but it didn’t begin with “blessed.”

  “What?” she said, leaning over him.

  “In the last days,” he said, his voice blurred by his swollen tongue.

  She leaned closer.

  “I feared that God would forsake us utterly,” he said.

  And He has, she thought. She wiped at his mouth and chin with the tail of her jerkin. He has.

  “But in His great mercy He did not,” he swallowed again, “but sent His saint unto us.”

  He raised his head and coughed, and blood rushed out over both of them, saturating his chest and her knees. She wiped at it frantically, trying to stop it, trying to keep his head up, and she couldn’t see through her tears to wipe the blood away.

  “And I’m no use,” she said, wiping at her tears.

  “Why do you weep?” he said.

  “You saved my life,” she said, and her voice caught in a sob, “and I can’t save yours.”

  “All men must die,” Roche said, “and none, nor even Christ, can save them.”

  “I know,” she said. She cupped her hand under her face, trying to catch her tears. They collected on her hand and fell dripping onto Roche’s neck.

  “Yet have you saved me,” he said, and his voice sounded clearer. “From fear.” He took a gurgling breath. “And unbelief.”

  She wiped at her tears with the back of her hand and took hold of Roche’s hand. It felt cold and already stiff.

  “I am most blessed of all men to have you here with me,”
he said and closed his eyes.

  Kivrin shifted a little so her back was against the wall. It was dark outside, no light at all coming in through the narrow windows. Lady Imeyne’s candle sputtered and then flamed again. She moved Roche’s head so it didn’t push against her ribs. He groaned, and his hand jerked as if to free itself of hers, but she held on. The candle flickered into sudden brightness and left them in darkness.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

  (082808–083108)

  I don’t think I’m going to make it back, Mr. Dunworthy. Roche told me where the drop is, but I’ve broken some ribs, I think, and all the horses are gone. I don’t think I can get up on Roche’s donkey without a saddle.

  I’m going to try to see to it that Ms. Montoya finds this. Tell Mr. Latimer adjectival inflection was still prominent in 1348. And tell Mr. Gilchrist he was wrong. The statistics weren’t exaggerated.

  (Break)

  I don’t want you to blame yourself for what happened. I know you would have come to get me if you could, but I couldn’t have gone anyway, not with Agnes ill.

  I wanted to come, and if I hadn’t, they would have been all alone, and nobody would have ever known how frightened and brave and irreplaceable they were.

  (Break)

  It’s strange. When I couldn’t find the drop and the plague came, you seemed so far away I would not ever be able to find you again. But I know now that you were here all along, and that nothing, not the Black Death nor seven hundred years, nor death nor things to come nor any other creature could ever separate me from your caring and concern. It was with me every minute.

  34

  “Colin!” Dunworthy shouted, grabbing Colin’s arm as he dived under the drape and into the net, head down. “What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?”

  Colin twisted free of his grasp. “I don’t think you should go alone!”

  “You can’t just break through the net! This isn’t a quarantine perimeter. What if the net had opened? You could have been killed!” He took hold of Colin’s arm again and started toward the console. “Badri! Hold the drop!”

  Badri was not there. Dunworthy squinted nearsightedly at where the console had been. They were in a forest, surrounded by trees. There was snow on the ground, and the air sparkled with crystals.

  “If you go alone, who’ll take care of you?” Colin said. “What if you have a relapse?” He looked past Dunworthy, and his mouth fell open. “Are we there?”

  Dunworthy let go of Colin’s arm and grabbed in his jerkin for his spectacles.

  “Badri!” he shouted. “Open the drop!” He put on his spectacles. They were covered with frost. He yanked them off again and scraped at the lenses. “Badri!”

  “Where are we?” Colin asked.

  Dunworthy hooked his spectacles over his ears and looked around at the trees. They were ancient, the ivy twining their trunks silver with frost. There was no sign of Kivrin.

  He had expected her to be here, which was ridiculous. They had already opened the drop and not found her, but he had hoped that when she realized where she was, she would come back to the drop and wait. But she wasn’t here, and there was no sign she had ever been.

  The snow they were standing in was smooth and free of footprints. It was deep enough to hide any she might have left before it fell, but it wasn’t deep enough to have hidden the smashed cart and the scattered boxes. And there was no sign of the Oxford-Bath road.

  “I don’t know where we are,” he said.

  “Well, I know it’s not Oxford,” Colin said, stamping through the snow. “Because it’s not raining.”

  Dunworthy looked up through the trees at the pale, clear sky. If there had been the same amount of slippage as in Kivrin’s drop, it would be midmorning.

  Colin darted off through the snow toward a thicket of reddish willows.

  “Where are you going?” Dunworthy said.

  “To find a road. The drop’s supposed to be near a road, isn’t it?” He plunged into the thicket and disappeared.

  “Colin!” he shouted, starting after him. “Come back here.”

  “Here it is!” Colin called from somewhere beyond the willows. “The road’s here!”

  “Come back here!” Dunworthy shouted.

  Colin reappeared, holding the willows apart.

  “Come here,” he said more calmly.

  “It goes up a hill,” he said, squeezing through the willows into the clearing. “We can climb it and see where we are.”

  He was already wet, his brown coat covered with snow from the willows, and he looked wary, braced for bad news.

  “You’re sending me back, aren’t you?”

  “I must,” Dunworthy said, but his heart sank at the prospect. Badri would not have the drop open for at least two hours, and he was not certain how long it would stay open. He didn’t have two hours to spare, waiting here to send Colin through, and he couldn’t leave him behind. “You’re my responsibility.”

  “And you’re mine,” Colin said stubbornly. “Great-aunt Mary told me to take care of you. What if you have a relapse?”

  “You don’t understand. The Black Death—”

  “It’s all right. Really. I’ve had the streptomycin and all that. I made William have his nurse give them to me. You can’t send me back now, the drop isn’t open, and it’s too cold to just stay here and wait for an hour. If we go look for Kivrin now, we might have found her by then.”

  He was right about their not being able to remain here. The cold was already seeping through the outlandish Victorian cape, and Colin’s burlap coat was even less protection than his old jacket and as wet.

  “We’ll go to the top of the hill,” he said, “but first we must mark the clearing so we can find it again. And you can’t go running off like that. I want you in sight at all times. I don’t have time to go looking for you as well.”

  “I won’t get lost,” Colin said, rummaging in his pack. He held up a flat rectangle. “I brought a locator. It’s already set to home in on the clearing.”

  He held the willows apart for Dunworthy, and they went out to the road. It was scarcely a cow path and was covered with snow unmarked except by the tracks of squirrels and a dog or possibly a wolf. Colin walked obediently at Dunworthy’s side till they were halfway up the hill and then couldn’t restrain himself and took off running.

  Dunworthy trudged after him, fighting the tightness already in his chest. The trees stopped halfway up the hill, and the wind began where they left off. It was bitingly cold.

  “I can see the village,” Colin shouted down to him.

  He came up beside Colin. The wind was worse here, cutting straight through the cape, lining or no lining, and pushing long streamers of cloud across the pale sky. Far off to the south a plume of smoke climbed straight into the sky, and then, caught by the wind, veered off sharply to the east.

  “See?” Colin said, pointing.

  A rolling plain lay below them, covered in snow almost too bright to look at. The bare trees and the roads stood out darkly against it, like markings on a map. The Oxford-Bath road was a straight black line, bisecting the snowy plain, and Oxford a pencil drawing. He could see the snowy roofs and the square tower of St. Michael’s above the dark walls.

  “It doesn’t look like the Black Death is here yet, does it?” Colin said.

  Colin was right. It looked serene, untouched, the ancient Oxford of legend. It was impossible to imagine it overrun with the plague, the dead carts full of bodies being pulled through the narrow streets, the colleges boarded up and abandoned, and everywhere the dying and the already dead. Impossible to imagine Kivrin out there somewhere, in one of those villages he could not see.

  “Can’t you see it?” Colin said, pointing south. “Behind those trees.”

  He squinted, trying to make out buildings among the cluster of trees. He could see a darker shape among the gray branches, the tower of a church, perhaps, or the angle of a manor house.

  “There’s the roa
d that leads to it,” Colin said, pointing to a narrow gray line that began somewhere below them.

  Dunworthy examined the map Montoya had given him. There was no way to tell which village it was even with her notes without knowing how far they were from the intended drop site. If they were directly south of it, the village was too far east to be Skendgate, but where he thought it should be there were no trees, nothing, only a flat field of snow.

  “Well?” Colin said. “Are we going to it?”

  It was the only village visible, if it was a village, and it looked to be no more than a kilometer away. If it was not Skendgate, it was at least in the proper direction, and if it had one of Montoya’s “distinguishing characteristics,” they could use it to get their bearings.

  “You must keep with me at all times and speak to no one, do you understand?”

  Colin nodded, clearly not listening. “I think the road is this way,” he said and ran down the far side of the hill.

  Dunworthy followed, trying not to think how many villages there were, how little time there was, how tired he was after only one hill.

  “How did you talk William into the streptomycin inoculations?” he asked when he caught up to Colin.

  “He wanted Great-aunt Mary’s med number so he could forge the authorizations. It was in the kit in her shopping bag.”

  “And you refused to give it to him unless he agreed?”

  “Yes, and I told him I’d tell his mother about all his girls,” he said and ran off ahead again.

  The road he’d seen was a hedge. Dunworthy refused to set off through the field it bordered. “We must keep to the roads,” he said.

  “This is quicker,” Colin protested. “It isn’t as if we can get lost. We’ve got the locator.”

  Dunworthy refused to argue. He continued on, looking for a turning. The narrow fields gave way to woods and the road turned back to the north.

  “What if there isn’t a road to the village?” Colin said after half a kilometer, but at the next turning there was one.

  It was narrower than the one past the drop, and no one had traveled along it since the snow. They waded into it, their feet breaking through the frozen crust at every step. Dunworthy looked anxiously ahead for a glimpse of the village, but the woods were too thick to see through.