The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “He thought I was St. Catherine,” she said. “He saw me come through, like you were afraid would happen. He thought I had been sent from God to help them in their hour of need.”

  “Well, and you did, didn’t you?” Colin said. He jerked the reins awkwardly, and the stallion started down the hill, Kivrin walking beside it. “You should have seen the mess in the other place we were. Bodies everywhere, and I don’t think anybody helped them.”

  He handed the reins to Kivrin. “I’ll go see if the net’s open,” he said and ran ahead. “Badri was going to open it every two hours.” He crashed into the thicket and disappeared.

  Kivrin brought the stallion to a stop at the bottom of the hill and helped Dunworthy down.

  “We’d best take his saddle and bridle off,” Dunworthy said. “When we found him, he was tangled in a bush.”

  Together they got the girth uncinched and the saddle off. Kivrin unhooked the bridle and reached up to stroke the stallion’s head.

  “He’ll be all right,” Dunworthy said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Colin burst through the willows, scattering snow everywhere. “It’s not open.”

  “It’ll open soon,” Dunworthy said.

  “Are we taking the horse with us?” Colin asked. “I thought historians weren’t allowed to take anything into the future. But it’d be great if we could take him. I could ride him when I go to the Crusades.”

  He exploded back through the thicket, spraying snow. “Come on, you guys, it could open anytime.”

  Kivrin nodded. She smacked the stallion on its flank. It walked a few paces and then stopped and looked back at them questioningly.

  “Come on” Colin said from somewhere inside the thicket, but Kivrin didn’t move.

  She put her hand against her side.

  “Kivrin,” he said, moving to help her.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said and turned away from him to push aside the tangled branches of the thicket.

  It was already twilight under the trees. The sky between the black branches of the oak was lavender-blue. Colin was dragging a fallen log into the middle of the clearing. “In case we just missed it and have to wait a whole two hours,” he said. Dunworthy sat down gratefully.

  “How do we know where to stand when the net opens?” Colin asked Kivrin.

  “We’ll be able to see the condensation,” she said. She went over to the oak tree and bent down to brush the snow away from its base.

  “What if it gets dark?” Colin asked.

  She sat down against the tree, biting her lips as she eased herself onto the roots.

  Colin squatted down between them. “I didn’t bring any matches or I’d start a fire,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” Dunworthy said.

  Colin switched on his pocket torch and then switched it off again. “I think I’d better save this in case something goes wrong.”

  There was a movement in the willows. Colin leaped up. “I think it’s starting,” he said.

  “It’s the stallion,” Dunworthy said. “He’s eating.”

  “Oh.” Colin sat back down. “You don’t think the net already opened and we didn’t see it because it was dark?”

  “No,” Dunworthy said.

  “Perhaps Badri had another relapse and couldn’t keep the net open,” he said, sounding more excited than scared.

  They waited. The sky darkened to purple-blue, and stars began to come out in the branches of the oak. Colin sat on the log beside Dunworthy and talked about the Crusades.

  “You know all about the Middle Ages,” he said to Kivrin, “so I thought perhaps you’d help me get ready, you know, teach me things.”

  “You’re not old enough,” she said. “It’s very dangerous.”

  “I know,” Colin said. “But I really want to go. You have to help me. Please?”

  “It won’t be anything like you expect,” she said.

  “Is the food necrotic? I read in this book Mr. Dunworthy gave me how they ate spoiled meat and swans and things.”

  Kivrin looked down at her hands for a long minute. “Most of it was terrible,” she said softly, “but there were some wonderful things.”

  Wonderful things. He thought of Mary, leaning against Balliol’s gate, talking about the Valley of the Kings, saying, “I’ll never forget it.” Wonderful things.

  “What about Brussels sprouts?” Colin asked. “Did they eat Brussels sprouts in the Middle Ages?”

  Kivrin almost smiled. “I don’t think they were invented yet.”

  “Good!” He jumped up. “Did you hear that? I think it’s starting. It sounds like a bell.”

  Kivrin raised her head, listening. “A bell was ringing when I came through,” she said.

  “Come on,” Colin said, and yanked Dunworthy to his feet. “Can’t you hear it?”

  It was a bell, faint and far away.

  “It’s coming from over here,” Colin said. He darted to the edge of the clearing. “Come on!”

  Kivrin put her hand on the ground for support and got to her knees. Her free hand went involuntarily to her side.

  Dunworthy reached his hand out to her, but she didn’t take it. “I’ll be all right,” she said quietly.

  “I know,” he said, and let his hand drop.

  She stood up carefully, holding on to the rough trunk of the oak, and then straightened and stood free of it.

  “I got it all on the corder,” she said. “Everything that happened.”

  Like John Clyn, he thought, looking at her ragged hair, her dirty face. A true historian, writing in the empty church, surrounded by graves. I, seeing so many evils, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. Lest things which should be remembered perish with time.

  Kivrin turned her palms up and looked at her wrists in the twilight. “Father Roche and Agnes and Rosemund and all of them,” she said. “I got it all down.”

  She traced a line down the side of her wrist with her finger. “Io suuicien lui damo amo, ” she said softly. “You are here in place of the friends I love.”

  “Kivrin,” Dunworthy said.

  “Come on!” Colin said. “It’s starting. Can’t you hear the bell?”

  “Yes,” Dunworthy said. It was Ms. Piantini on the tenor, ringing the lead-in to “When at Last My Savior Cometh.”

  Kivrin came and stood next to Dunworthy. She placed her hands together, as if she were praying.

  “I can see Badri!” Colin said. He cupped his hands around his mouth. “She’s all right!” he shouted. “We saved her!”

  Ms. Piantini’s tenor clanged, and the other bells chimed in joyously. The air began to glitter, like snowflakes.

  “Apocalyptic!” Colin said, his face alight.

  Kivrin reached out for Dunworthy’s hand and clasped it tightly in her own.

  “I knew you’d come,” she said, and the net opened.

  CONNIE WILLIS has won six Nebula Awards (more than any other science fiction writer), six Hugo Awards, and for her first novel, Lincoln’s Dreams, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. Her novel Doomsday Book won both the Nebula and Hugo Awards, and her first short-story collection, Fire Watch, was a New York Times Notable Book. Her other works include To Say Nothing of the Dog Bellwether, Impossible Things, Remake, Uncharted Territory, Miracle and Other Christmas Stories and Passage. Ms. Willis lives in Greeley, Colorado, with her family.