Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  They've come here in a great hurry and without servants. Fourteenth-century noblewomen had at least one lady-in-waiting apiece, but neither Eliwys nor Imeyne has any, and they left the children's -- Guillaume's two little girls are here -- nurse behind. Lady Imeyne wanted to send for a new one, and a chaplain, but Lady Eliwys won't let her.

  I think Lord Guillaume must be expecting trouble and has spirited his womenfolk away here to keep them safe. Or possibly the trouble's already happened -- Agnes, the littler of the two girls, told me about the chaplain's death and someone named Gilbert whose "head was all red," so perhaps there's already been bloodshed, and the women have come here to escape it. One of Lord Guillaume's privйs has come with them, and he's fully armed.

  There weren't any major uprisings against Edward II in Oxfordshire in 1320, although no one was very happy with the king and his favorite, Hugh Despenser, and there were plots and minor skirmishes everywhere else. Two of the barons, Lancaster and Mortimer, took sixty-three manors away from the Despensers that year -- this year. Lord Guillaume -- or his friend -- may have got involved in one of those plots.

  It could be something else entirely, of course, a land dispute or something. People in the 1300's spent almost as much time in court as the contemps in the last part of the twentieth century. But I don't think so. Lady Eliwys jumps at every sound, and she's forbidden Lady Imeyne to tell the neighbors they're here.

  I suppose in one way this is a good thing. If they aren't telling anyone they're here, they won't tell anyone about me or send messengers to try to find out who I am. On the other hand, there is the chance of armed men kicking in the door at any moment. Or of Gawyn, the only person who knows where the drop is, getting killed defending the manor.

  (Break)

  15 December, 1320 (Old Style.) The interpreter is working now, more or less, and the contemps seem to understand what I'm saying. I can understand them, though their Middle English bears no resemblance to what Mr. Latimer taught me. It's full of inflections and has a much softer French sound. Mr. Latimer wouldn't even recognize his "Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote."

  The interpreter translates what the contemps say with the syntax and some of the words intact, and at first I tried to phrase what I said the same way, saying "Aye" and "Nay" and, "I remember naught of whence I came," but thinking about it's deadly -- the interpreter takes forever to come up with a translation, and I stammer and struggle with the pronunciations. So I just speak modern English and hope what comes out of my mouth is close to being right, and that the interpreter isn't slaughtering the idioms and the inflections. Heaven only knows how I sound. Like a French spy probably.

  The language isn't the only thing off. My dress is all wrong, of far too fine a weave, and the blue is too bright, dyed with woad or not. I haven't seen any bright colors at all. I'm too tall, my teeth are too good, and my hands are wrong, in spite of my muddy labors at the dig. They should not only have been dirtier, but I should have chilblains. Everyone's hands, even the children's, are chapped and bleeding. It is, after all, December.

  December the fifteenth. I overheard part of an argument between Lady Imeyne and Lady Eliwys about getting a replacement chaplain, and Imeyne said, "There is more than time enough to send. It is full ten days till Christ's mass." So tell Mr. Gilchrist I've ascertained my temporal location at least. But I don't know how far from the drop I am. I've tried to remember Gawyn bringing me here, but that whole night is hopelessly muddled, and part of what I remember didn't happen. I remember a white horse that had bells on its harness, and the bells were playing Christmas carols, like the carillon in Carfax Tower.

  The fifteenth of December means it's Christmas Eve there, and you'll be giving your sherry party and then walking over to St. Mary the Virgin's for the ecumenical service. It is hard to comprehend that you are over seven hundred years away. I keep thinking that if I got out of bed (which I can't because I'm too dizzy -- I think my temp is back up) and opened the door I would find not a mediaeval hall but Brasenose's lab, and all of you waiting for me, Badri and Dr. Ahrens and you, Mr. Dunworthy, polishing your spectacles and saying I told you so. I wish you were.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Lady Imeyne did not believe Kivrin's story about having amnesia. When Agnes brought her hound, which turned out to be a tiny black puppy with huge feet, in to Kivrin, she said, "This is my hound, Lady Kivrin." She held it out to Kivrin, clutching its fat middle. "You can pet him. Do you remember how?"

  "Aye," Kivrin said, taking the puppy out of Agnes's too- tight grasp and stroking its baby-soft fur. "Aren't you supposed to be at your sewing?"

  Agnes took the puppy back from her. "Grandmother went to chide with the steward, and Maisry went out to the stable." She twisted the puppy around to give it a kiss. "So I came to speak to you. Grandmother is very angry. The steward and all his family were living in the hall when we came hence." She gave the puppy another kiss. "Grandmother says it is his wife who tempts him to sin."

  Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like "grandmother." The word hadn't even existed until the eighteenth century, but the interpreter was taking huge, disconcerting leaps now, though it left Agnes's mispronunciation of Katherine intact and sometimes left blanks in places where the meaning should have been obvious from context. She hoped her subconscious knew what it was doing.

  "Are you a daltriss, Lady Kivrin?" Agnes said.

  Her subconscious obviously didn't know what it was doing. "What?" she asked.

  "A daltriss," Agnes said. The puppy was trying desperately to squirm out of Agnes's grip. "Grandmother says you are one. She says a wife fleeing to her lover would have good cause to remember naught."

  An adultress. Well, at least it was better than a French spy. Or perhaps Lady Imeyne thought she was both.

  Agnes kissed the puppy again. "Grandmother said a lady had no good cause to travel through the woods in winter."

  They were both right, Kivrin thought, Lady Imeyne and Mr. Dunworthy. She still had not found out where the drop was, although she had asked to speak with Gawyn when Lady Eliwys came in the morning to bathe her temple.

  "He has ridden out to search for the wicked men who robbed you," Eliwys had said, putting an ointment on Kivrin's temple that smelled like garlic and stung horribly. "Do you remember aught of them?"

  Kivrin had shaken her head, hoping her faked amnesia wouldn't end in some poor peasant's being hanged. She could scarcely say, "No, that isn't the man," when she supposedly couldn't remember anything.

  Perhaps she shouldn't have told them she couldn't remember anything. The probability that they would have known the de Beauvriers was very small, and her lack of an explanation had obviously made Imeyne even more suspicious of her.

  Agnes was trying to put her cap on the puppy. "There are wolves in the woods," she said. "Gawyn slew one with his ax."

  "Agnes, did Gawyn tell you of his finding me?" Kivrin asked.

  "Aye. Blackie likes to wear my cap," she said, tying the strings in a choking knot.

  "He doesn't act like it," Kivrin said. "Where did Gawyn find me?"

  "In the woods," Agnes said. The puppy twisted out of the cap and nearly fell off the bed. She set it in the middle of the bed and lifted it by its front paws. "Blackie can dance."

  "Here. Let me hold it," Kivrin said, to rescue the poor thing. She cradled it in her arms. "Where in the woods did Gawyn find me?"

  Agnes stood on tiptoe, trying to see the puppy. "Blackie sleeps," she whispered.

  The puppy was asleep, exhausted from Agnes's attentions. Kivrin laid it beside her on the fur bedcovering. "Was the place he found me far from here?"

  "Aye," Agnes said, and Kivrin could tell she had no idea.

  This was no use. Agnes obviously didn't know anything. She would have to talk to Gawyn. "Has Gawyn returned?"

  "Aye," Agnes said, stroking the sleeping puppy. "Would you speak with him?"

  "Yes," Kivrin said.

  "Are you a daltriss?"

  It was dif
ficult to follow Agnes's conversational jumps. "No," she said, and then remembered she was not supposed to be able to remember anything. "I don't remember anything about who I am."

  Agnes petted Blackie. "Grandmother says only a daltriss would ask so boldly to speak with Gawyn."

  The door opened, and Rosemund came in. "They're looking for you everywhere, simplehead," she said, her hands on her hips.

  "I was speaking with Lady Kivrin," Agnes said, with an anxious glance at the coverlet where Blackie lay, nearly invisible against the sable fur. Apparently hounds were not allowed inside. Kivrin pulled the rough sheet up over it so Rosemund wouldn't see.

  "Mother said the lady must rest so that her wounds will heal," Rosemund said sternly. "Come. I must tell Grandmother I found you." She led the little girl out of the room.

  Kivrin watched them leave, hoping fervently that Agnes wouldn't tell Lady Imeyne Kivrin had asked again to speak to Gawyn. She had thought she had a good excuse to talk to Gawyn, that they would understand that she was anxious to find out about her belongings and her attackers. But it was "unseemly" for unmarried noblewomen in the 1300's to "boldly ask" to speak to young men.

  Eliwys could talk to him because she was the head of the house with her husband gone, and his employer, and Lady Imeyne was his lord's mother, but Kivrin should have waited until Gawyn spoke to her and then answered him "with all modesty as fits a maid." But I must talk to him, she thought. He's the only one who knows where the drop is.

  Agnes came dashing back in and snatched up the sleeping puppy. "Grandmother was very angry. She thought I had fallen in the well," she said, and ran back out again.

  And no doubt "Grandmother" had boxed Maisry's ears because of it, Kivrin thought. Maisry had already been in trouble once today for losing Agnes, who had come to show Kivrin Lady Imeyne's silver chain, which she said was "a rillieclary," a word that defeated the interpreter. Inside the little box, she told Kivrin, was a piece of the shroud of St. Stephen. Maisry had had her pocked cheek slapped by Imeyne for letting Agnes take the reliquary and for not watching her, though not for letting the little girl in the sickroom.

  None of them seemed concerned at all about the little girls getting close to Kivrin or to be aware that they might catch what she had. Neither Eliwys nor Imeyne took any precautions in caring for her.

  The contemps hadn't understood the mechanics of disease transmission, or course -- they believed it was a consequence of sin and epidemics were a punishment from God -- but they had known about contagion. The motto of the Black Death had been, "Depart quickly, go far, tarry long," and there had been quarantines before that.

  Not here, Kivrin thought, and what if the little girls come down with this? Or Father Roche?

  He had been near her all through her fever, touching her, asking her name. She frowned, trying to remember that night. She had fallen off the horse, and then there was a fire. No, she had imagined that in her delirium. And the white horse. Gawyn's horse was black.

  They had ridden through a wood and down a hill past a church, and the cutthroat had -- . It was no use. The night was a shapeless dream of frightening faces and bells and flames. Even the drop was hazy, unclear. There had been an oak tree and willows, and she had sat down against the wagon wheel because she felt so dizzy, and the cutthroat had -- No, she had imagined the cutthroat. And the white horse. Perhaps she had imagined the church as well.

  She would have to ask Gawyn where the drop was, but not in front of Lady Imeyne, who thought she was a daltriss. She had to get well, to get enough strength to get out of bed and go down to the hall, out to the stable, to find Gawyn to speak to him alone. She had to get better.

  She was a little stronger, though she was still too weak to walk to the chamberpot unaided. The dizziness was gone, and the fever, but her shortness of breath persisted. They apparently thought she was improving, too. They had left her alone most of the morning, and Eliwys had only stayed long enough to smear on the foul-smelling ointment. And have me make improper advances toward Gawyn, Kivrin thought.

  Kivrin tried not to worry about what Agnes had told her or why the antivirals hadn't worked or how far the drop was, and to concentrate on getting her strength back. No one came in all afternoon, and she practiced sitting up and putting her feet over the side of the bed. When Maisry came with a rushlight to help her to the chamberpot, she was able to walk back to the bed by herself.

  It grew colder in the night, and when Agnes came to see her in the morning, she was wearing a red cloak and hood of very thick wool and white fur mittens. "Would you like to see my silver buckle? Sir Bloet gave it me. I will bring it on the morrow. I cannot come today, for we go to cut the Yule log."

  "The Yule log?" Kivrin said, alarmed. The ceremonial log had traditionally been cut on the twenty-fourth, and this was only the seventeenth. Had she misunderstood Lady Imeyne?

  "Aye," Agnes said. "At home we do not go till Christmas Eve, but it is like to storm, and Grandmother would have us ride out to fetch it while it is yet fine weather."

  Like to storm, Kivrin thought. How would she recognize the drop if it snowed? The wagon and her boxes were still there, but if it snowed more than a few inches she would never recognize the road.

  "Does everyone go to fetch the Yule log?" Kivrin asked.

  "Nay. Father Roche called Mother to tend a sick cottar."

  That explained why Imeyne was playing the tyrant, bullying Maisry and the steward and accusing Kivrin of adultery. "Does your grandmother go with you?"

  "Aye," she said. "I will ride my pony."

  "Does Rosemund go?"

  "Aye."

  "And the steward?"

  "Aye," she said impatiently. "All the village goes."

  "Does Gawyn?"

  "Nay," she said, as if that were self-evident. "I must go out to the stable and bid Blackie farewell." She ran off.

  Lady Imeyne was going, and the steward, and Lady Eliwys was somewhere nursing a peasant who was ill. And Gawyn, for some reason that was obvious to Agnes but not to her, wasn't. Perhaps he had gone with Eliwys. But if he hadn't, if he were staying here to guard the manor, she could talk to him alone.

  Maisry was obviously going. When she brought Kivrin's breakfast she was wearing a rough brown poncho and had ragged strips of cloth wrapped around her legs. She helped Kivrin to the chamberpot, carried it out and brought up a brazier full of hot coals, moving with more speed and initiative than Kivrin had seen before.

  Kivrin waited an hour after Maisry left, until she was sure they were all gone, and then got out of bed and walked to the windowseat and pulled the linen back. She could not see anything except branches and dark gray sky, but the air was even colder than that in the room. She climbed up on the windowseat.

  She was above the courtyard. It was empty, and the large wooden gate stood open. The stones of the courtyard and of the low thatched roofs around it looked wet. She stuck her hand out, afraid it had already begun to snow, but she couldn't feel any moisture. She climbed down, holding onto the ice-cold stones, and huddled by the brazier.

  It gave off almost no heat. Kivrin hugged her arms to her chest, shivering in her thin shift. She wondered what they had done with her clothes. Clothes were hung on poles beside the bed in the Middle Ages, but this room had no poles, and no hooks either.

  Her clothes were in the chest at the foot of the bed, neatly folded. She took them out, grateful that her boots were still there, and then sat on the closed lid of the chest for a long time, trying to catch her breath.

  I have to speak to Gawyn this morning, she thought, willing her body to be strong enough. It's the only time everyone will be gone. And it's going to snow.

  She dressed, sitting down as much as possible and leaning against the bedposts to pull her hose and boots on, and then went back over to the bed. I'll rest a little, she thought, just till I'm warmed through, and was immediately asleep.

  The bell woke her, the one from the southwest she had heard when she came through. It had rung all yest
erday and then stopped, and Eliwys had gone over to the window and stood there for awhile, as if trying to see what had happened. The light from the window was dimmer, but it was only that the clouds were thicker, lower. Kivrin put on her cloak and opened the door. The stairs were steep, set into the stone side of the hall, and had no railing. Agnes was lucky she had only skinned her knee. She might have pitched headlong onto the floor below. Kivrin kept her hand on the wall and rested halfway, looking at the hall.

  I'm really here, she thought. It really is 1320. The hearth in the middle of the room glowed a dull red with the banked coals, and there was a little light from the smoke-hole above it and the high, narrow windows, but most of the hall was in shadow.

  She stopped where she was, peering into the smoky gloom, trying to see if anyone was there. The high-seat, with its carved back and arms, sat against the end wall with Lady Eliwys's slightly lower, slightly less ornate one next to it. There were tapestries on the wall behind them and a ladder at the far end of the wall up to what must be a loft. Heavy wooden tables hung along the other walls above the wide benches, and a narrower bench sat next to the wall just below the stairs. The beggar's bench. And the wall it sat against was the screens.

  Kivrin came down the rest of the stairs and tiptoed across to the screens, her feet crunching loudly on the dried rushes scattered on the floor. The screens were really a partition, an inside wall that shut off the draft from the door.

  Sometimes the screens formed a separate room, with box beds in either end, but behind these there was only a narrow passage, with the missing hooks for hanging up cloaks. There were none there now. Good, Kivrin thought, they're all gone.

  The door was open. On the floor next to it was a pair of shaggy boots, a wooden bucket, and Agnes's cart. Kivrin stopped in the little anteroom to catch her already ragged breath, wishing she could sit down a moment, and then looked carefully out the door and went outside.