Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  Another bell began. It was more to the south and closer, but with the higher, more metallic sound that meant it was a smaller bell. It tolled steadily, too, but a little behind the first bell so that it sounded like an echo.

  "Kivrin! Lady Kivrin!" Agnes called. "Where have you been?" She ran up beside Kivrin, her round little face red with exertion or cold. Or excitement. "We've been looking everywhere for you." She darted back in the direction she had come from, shouting, "I found her! I found her!"

  "Nay, you did not!" Rosemund said. "We all saw her." She hurried forward ahead of Lady Imeyne and Maisry, who had her ragged poncho thrown over her shoulders. Her ears were bright red. She looked sullen, which probably meant she had been blamed for Kivrin's disappearance or thought she was going to be, or maybe she was just cold. Lady Imeyne looked furious.

  "You did not know it was Kivrin," Agnes shouted, running back to Kivrin's side. "You said you were not certain it was Kivrin. I was the one who found her."

  Rosemund ignored her. She took hold of Kivrin's arm. "What has happened? Why did you leave your bed?" she asked anxiously. "Gawyn came to speak with you and found that you had gone."

  Gawyn came, Kivrin thought weakly. Gawyn, who could have told me exactly where the drop is, and I wasn't there.

  "Aye, he came to tell you that he had found no trace of your attackers, and that -- "

  Lady Imeyne came up. "Whither were you bound?" she said, and it sounded like an accusation.

  "I could not find my way back," Kivrin said, trying to think what to say to explain her wandering about the village.

  "Went you to meet someone?" Lady Imeyne demanded, and it was definitely an accusation.

  "How could she go to meet someone?" Rosemund asked. "She knows no one here and remembers naught of before."

  "I went to look for the place where I was found," Kivrin said, trying not to lean on Rosemund. "I thought maybe the sight of my belongings might ... "

  "Help you to remember," Rosemund said. "But -- "

  "You need not have risked your health to do so," Lady Imeyne said. "Gawyn has fetched them here this day."

  "Everything?" Kivrin asked.

  "Aye," Rosemund said, "the wagon and all your boxes."

  The second bell stopped, and the first bell kept on alone, steadily, slowly, and surely it was a funeral. It sounded like the death of hope itself. Gawyn had brought everything to the manor.

  "It is not meet to hold Lady Katherine talking in this cold," Rosemund said, sounding like her mother. "She has been ill. We must needs get her inside ere she catches a chill."

  I have already caught a chill, Kivrin thought. Gawyn has brought everything to the manor, all traces of where the drop had been. Even the wagon.

  "You are to blame for this, Maisry," Lady Imeyne said, pushing Maisry forward to take Kivrin's arm. "You should not have left her alone."

  Kivrin flinched away from the filthy Maisry.

  "Can you walk?" Rosemund asked, already buckling under Kivrin's weight. "Should we bring the mare?"

  "No," Kivrin said. She somehow couldn't bear the thought of that, brought back like a captured prisoner on the back of a jangling horse. "No," she repeated. "I can walk."

  She had to lean heavily on Rosemund's arm and Maisry's filthy one, and it was slow going, but she made it. Past the huts and the steward's house and the interested pigs, and into the courtyard. The stump of a big ash tree lay on the cobbles in front of the barn, its twisted roots catching the flakes of snow.

  "She will have caught her death with her behavior," Lady Imeyne said, gesturing to Maisry to open the heavy wooden door. "She will no doubt have a relapse."

  It began to snow in earnest. Maisry opened the door. It had a latch like the little door on the rat's cage. I should have let him go, Kivrin thought, scourge or not. I should have let him go.

  Lady Imeyne motioned to Maisry, and she came back to take Kivrin's arm again. "No," she said, and shrugged off her hand and Rosemund's and walked alone and without help through the door and into the darkness inside.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOOMSDAY BOOK (005982-013198)

  18 December 1320 (Old Style.) I think I have pneumonia. I tried to go find the drop, but I didn't make it, and I've had some sort of relapse or something. There's a stabbing pain under my ribs every time I take a breath, and when I cough, which is constantly, it feels like everything inside is breaking to pieces. I tried to sit up awhile ago and was instantly bathed in sweat, and I think my temp is back up. Those are all symptoms Dr. Ahrens told me indicate pneumonia.

  Lady Eliwys isn't back yet. Lady Imeyne put a horrible- smelling poultice on my chest and then sent for the steward's wife. I thought she wanted to "chide with" her for usurping the manor, but when the steward's wife came, carrying her six-month old baby, Imeyne told her, "The wound has fevered her lungs," and she looked at my temple and then went out and came back without the baby and with a bowl full of a bitter-tasting tea. It must have had willow bark or something in it because my temp came down, and my ribs don't hurt quite so much.

  The steward's wife is thin and small, with a sharp face and ash-blonde hair. I think Lady Imeyne is probably right about her being the one to tempt the steward "into sin." She came in wearing a fur-trimmed kirtle with sleeves so long they nearly dragged on the floor, and her baby wrapped in a finely-woven wool blanket, and she talks in an odd, slurred accent which I think is an attempt to mimic Lady Imeyne's speech.

  "The embryonic middle class," as Mr. Latimer would say, nouveau riche and waiting for its chance, which it will get in thirty years when the Black Death hits and a third of the nobility is wiped out.

  "Is this the lady was found in the woods?" she asked Lady Imeyne when she came in, and there wasn't any "seeming modesty" in her manner. She smiled at Imeyne as if they were old chums and came over to the bed.

  "Aye," Lady Imeyne said, managing to get impatience, disdain, and distaste all in one syllable.

  The steward's wife was oblivious. She came over to the bed and then stepped back, the first person to show any indication they thought I might be contagious. "Has she the (something) fever?" The interpreter didn't catch the word, and I couldn't get it either because of her peculiar accent. Flouronen? Florentine?

  "She has a wound to the head," Imeyne said sharply. "It has fevered her lungs."

  The steward's wife nodded. "Father Roche told us how he and Gawyn found her in the woods."

  Imeyne stiffened at the familiar use of Gawyn's name, and the steward's wife did catch that and hurried out to brew up the willow bark. She even ducked a bow to Lady Imeyne when she left the second time.

  Rosemund came in to sit with me after Imeyne left -- I think they've assigned her to keep me from trying to escape again -- and I asked her if it was true that Father Roche had been with Gawyn when he found me.

  "Nay," she said. "Gawyn met Father Roche on the road as he brought you here and left you to his care that he might seek your attackers, but he found naught of them, and they brought you here. You need not worry over it. Gawyn has brought your things to the manor."

  I don't remember Father Roche being there, except in the sickroom, but if it's true, and Gawyn didn't meet him too far from the drop, maybe he knows where it is.

  (Break)

  I have been thinking about what Lady Imeyne said. "The wound to her head has fevered her lungs," she said. I don't think anyone here realizes I'm ill. They let the little girls in the sickroom all the time, and none of them seem the least afraid, except the steward's wife, and as soon as Lady Imeyne told her I had "fevered lungs," she came up to the bed without any hesitation.

  But she was obviously worried about the possibility of my illness's being contagious, and when I asked Rosemund why she hadn't gone with her mother to see the cottar, she said, as if it were self-evident, "She forbade me to go. The cottar is ill."

  I don't think they know I have a disease. I didn't have any obvious marker symptoms, like pox or a rash, and I think they put my fever and delirium do
wn to my injuries. Wounds often became infected, and there were frequent cases of blood poisoning. There would be no reason to keep the little girls away from an injured person.

  And none of them have caught it. It's been five days, and if it is a virus, the incubation period should only be twelve to forty-eight hours. Dr. Ahrens told me the most contagious period is before there are any symptoms, so maybe I wasn't contagious by the time the little girls started coming in. Or maybe this is something they've all had already, and they're immune. The steward's wife asked if I had had "the Florentine? Flahntin? fever," and Mr. Gilchrist's convinced there was an influenza epidemic in 1320. Maybe that's what I caught.

  It's afternoon. Rosemund is sitting in the windowseat, sewing a piece of linen with dark red wool, and Blackie's asleep beside me. I've been thinking about how you were right, Mr. Dunworthy. I wasn't prepared at all, and everything's completely different from the way I thought it would be. But you were wrong about it's not being like a fairy tale.

  Everywhere I look I see things from fairy tales: Agnes's red cape and hood and the rat's cage and bowls of porridge, and the village's huts of straw and sticks that a wolf could blow down without half trying.

  The bell tower looks like the one Rapunzel was imprisoned in, and Rosemund, bending over her embroidery, with her dark hair and white cap and red cheeks, looks for all the world like Snow White.

  (Break)

  I think my fever is back up. I can smell smoke in the room. Lady Imeyne is praying, kneeling beside the bed with her Book of Hours. Rosemund told me they have sent for the steward's wife again. Lady Imeyne despises her. I must be truly ill for her to have sent for her. I wonder if they will send for the priest. If they do, I must ask him if he knows where Gawyn found me. It's so hot in here. This part is not like a fairy tale at all. They only send for the priest when someone is dying, but Probability says there was a seventy-two per cent chance of dying of pneumonia in the 1300's. I hope he comes soon, to tell me where the drop is and hold my hand.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Two more cases, both students, came in while Mary was interrogating Colin on how he had got through the perimeter.

  "It was easy," Colin had said indignantly. "They're trying to keep people from getting out, not getting in," and had been about to give the particulars when the registrar came in.

  Mary had made Dunworthy accompany her to the casualties ward to see if he could identify them. "And you stay here," she had told Colin. "You've caused quite enough trouble for one night."

  Dunworthy didn't recognize either of the new cases, but it didn't matter. They were conscious and lucid and were already giving the house officer the names of all their contacts when he and Mary got there. He took a good look at each of them and shook his head. "They might have been part of that crowd on the High Street, I can't tell," he said.

  "It's all right," she said. "You can go home if you like."

  "I thought I'd wait and have my blood test," he said.

  "Oh, but that isn't till -- " she said, looking at her digital. "Good Lord, it's after six."

  "I'll just go up and check on Badri," he said, "and then I'll be in the waiting room."

  Badri was asleep, the nurse said. "I wouldn't wake him."

  "No, of course not," Dunworthy said and went back down to the waiting room.

  Colin was sitting crosslegged in the middle of the floor, digging in his duffel. "Where's Great-Aunt Mary?" he asked. "She's a bit flakked at my showing up, isn't she?"

  "She thought you were safely back in London," Dunworthy said. "Your mother told her your train had been stopped at Barton."

  "It was. They made everyone get off and get on another train going back to London."

  "And you got lost in the changeover?"

  "No. I overheard these people talking about the quarantine, and how there was this terrible disease and everybody was going to die and everything -- " He stopped to rummage further in his duffel. He took out and replaced a large number of items, tapes and a pocket vidder and a pair of scuffed and dirty runners. He was obviously related to Mary. "And I didn't want to be stuck with Eric and miss all the excitement."

  "Eric?"

  "My mother's livein." He pulled out a large red gobstopper, picked off a few bits of lint, and popped it in his mouth. It made a mumplike lump in his cheek. "He is absolutely the most necrotic person in the world," he said around the gobstopper. "He has this flat down in Kent and there is absolutely nothing to do."

  "So you got off the train at Barton. What did you do then? Walk back to Oxford?"

  He took the gobstopper out of his mouth. It was no longer red. It was a mottled bluish-green color. Colin looked critically at all sides of it and put it back in his mouth. "Of course not. Barton's a long way from Oxford. I took a taxi."

  "Of course," Dunworthy said.

  "I told him I was reporting the quarantine for my school paper and I wanted to get vids of the blockade. I had my vidder with me, you see, so it seemed the logical thing." He held up the pocket vidder to illustrate, and then stuffed it back in the duffel and began digging again.

  "Did he believe you?"

  "I think so. He did ask me which school I went to, but I just said, very offended, 'You should be able to tell,' and he said St. Edward's, and I said, 'Of course.' He must have believed me. He took me to the perimeter, didn't he?"

  And I was worried about what Kivrin would do if no friendly traveller came along, Dunworthy thought. "What did you do then, give the police the same story?"

  Colin pulled out a green wool jumper, folded it into a bundle, and laid it on top of the open duffel. "No. When I thought about it, it was rather a lame story. I mean, what is there to take pictures of, after all? It's not like a fire, is it? So I just walked up to the guard as if I were going to ask him something about the quarantine, and then just at the last I dodged sideways and ducked under the barrier."

  "Didn't they chase you?"

  "Of course. But not for more than a few streets. They're trying to keep people from getting out, not in. And then I walked about awhile till I saw a street sign I recognized."

  Presumably it had been pouring rain this entire time but Colin hadn't mentioned it, and a collapsible umbrella wasn't among the items he'd rooted out of his bag.

  "The hard part was finding Great-Aunt Mary," he said. He lay down with his head on the duffel. "I went to her flat, but she wasn't there. I thought maybe she was still at the tube station waiting for me, but it was shut down." He sat up, rearranged the wool jumper, and lay back down. "And then I thought, she's a doctor. She'll be at the infirmary."

  He sat up again, punched the duffel into a different shape, lay down and closed his eyes. Dunworthy leaned back in the uncomfortable chair, envying the young. Colin was probably nearly asleep already, not at all frightened or disturbed by his adventures. He had walked all over Oxford in the middle of the night, or perhaps he had taken further taxis or pulled a collapsible bicycle out of his duffel, all by himself in a freezing winter rain, and he wasn't even fazed by the adventure.

  Kivrin was all right. If the village wasn't where it was supposed to be she would walk until she found it, or take a taxi, or lie down somewhere with her head on her folded-up cloak, and sleep the undauntable sleep of youth.

  Mary came in. "Both of them went to a dance in Headington last night," she said, dropping her voice when she saw Colin.

  "Badri was there, too," Dunworthy whispered back.

  "I know. One of them danced with him. They were there from nine to two, which puts it at from twenty-five to thirty hours and well within a forty-eight hour incubation period, if Badri's the one who infected them."

  "You don't think he did?"

  "I think it's more likely all three of them were infected by the same person, probably someone Badri saw early in the evening, and the others later."

  "A carrier?"

  She shook her head. "People don't usually carry myxoviruses without contracting the disease themselves, but he or she coul
d have had only a mild manifestation or have been ignoring the symptoms."

  Dunworthy thought of Badri collapsing against the console and wondered how it were possible to ignore one's symptoms.

  "And if," Mary went on, "this person was in South Carolina four days ago -- "

  "You'll have your link with the American virus."

  "And you can stop worrying over Kivrin. She wasn't at the dance in Headington," she said. "Of course, the connection is more likely to be several links away."

  She frowned, and Dunworthy thought, several links that haven't checked in to hospital or even rung up a doctor. Several links who have all ignored their symptoms.

  Apparently Mary was thinking the same thing. "These bellringers of yours, when did they arrive in England?"

  "I don't know. But they only arrived in Oxford this afternoon, after Badri was at the net."

  "Well, ask them anyway. When they landed, where they've been, whether any of them have been ill. One of them might have relations in Oxford and have come up early. You've no American undergraduates in college?"

  "No. Montoya's an American."

  "I hadn't thought of that," Mary said. "How long has she been here?"

  "All term. But she might have been in contact with someone visiting from America."

  "I'll ask her when she comes in for her bloodwork," she said. "I'd like you to question Badri about any Americans he knows, or students who've been to the States on exchange."

  "He's asleep."

  "And so should you be," she said. "I didn't mean now." She patted his arm. "There's no necessity of waiting till seven. I'll send someone in to take blood and BP so you can go home to bed." She took Dunworthy's wrist and looked at the temp monitor. "Any chills?"

  "No."

  "Headache?"

  "Yes."

  "That's because you're exhausted." She dropped his wrist. "I'll send someone straightaway."

  She looked at Colin, stretched out on the floor. "Colin will have to be tested as well, at least till we're certain it's droplet."

  Colin's mouth had fallen open, but the gobstopper was still firmly in place in his cheek. Dunworthy wondered if he were likely to choke. "What about your nephew?" he said. "Would you like me to take him back to Balliol with me?"