Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  Agnes was dead to the world. Kivrin hesitated, hating to have to wake her up, but fairly sure even exhausted five-year-olds weren't excepted from this mass. "Agnes," she said softly.

  "You must needs carry her to the church," Rosemund said, struggling with Sir Bloet's gold brooch. The steward's youngest boy came and stood in front of her with her white cloak, dragging it on the rushes.

  "Agnes," Kivrin said again, and jostled her a little, amazed that the church bell hadn't waked her. It sounded louder and closer than it ever did for matins or vespers, its overtones nearly drowning out the other bells.

  Agnes's eyes flew open. "You did not wake me," she said sleepily to Rosemund, and then more loudly as she came awake, "You promised to wake me."

  "Get into your cloak," Kivrin said. "We must go to church."

  "Kivrin, I would wear my bell."

  "You're wearing it," Kivrin said, trying to fasten Agnes's red cape without stabbing her in the neck with the pin of the clasp.

  "Nay, I have it not," Agnes said, searching her arm. "I would wear my bell!"

  "Here it is," Rosemund said, picking it up off the floor, "It must have fallen from your wrist. But it is not meet to wear it now. This bell calls us to mass. The Christmas bells come after."

  "I shall not ring it," Agnes said. "I would only wear it."

  Kivrin didn't believe that for a minute, but everyone else was ready. One of Sir Bloet's men was lighting the horn lanterns with a brand from the fire and handing them to the servants. She hastily tied the bell to Agnes's wrist and took the girls by the hand.

  Lady Eliwys laid her hand on Sir Bloet's upheld one. Lady Imeyne signalled to Kivrin to follow with the little girls, and the others fell in behind them solemnly, as if it were a procession, Lady Imeyne with Sir Bloet's sister, and then the rest of Sir Bloet's entourage. Lady Eliwys and Sir Bloet led the way out into the courtyard, through the gate, and onto the green.

  It had stopped snowing, and the stars had come out. The village lay silent under its covering of white. Frozen in time, Kivrin thought. The dilapidated buildings looked different, the staggering fences and filthy daubed huts softened and graced by the snow. The lanterns caught the crystalline facets of the snowflakes and made them sparkle, but it was the stars that took Kivrin's breath away, hundreds of stars, thousands of stars, and all of them sparkling like jewels in the icy air. "It shines," Agnes said, and Kivrin didn't know whether she was talking about the snow or the sky.

  The bell tolled evenly, calmly, its sound different again out in the frosty air -- not louder, but fuller and somehow clearer. Kivrin could hear all the other bells now and recognize them, Esthcote and Witenie and Chertelintone, even though they sounded different, too. She listened for the Swindone bell, which had rung all this time, but she couldn't hear it. She couldn't hear the Oxford bells either. She wondered if she had only imagined them.

  "You are ringing your bell, Agnes," Rosemund said.

  "I am not," Agnes said. "I am only walking."

  "Look at the church," Kivrin said. "Isn't it beautiful?"

  It flamed like a beacon at the other end of the green, lit from inside and out, the stained-glass windows throwing wavering ruby and sapphire lights on the snow. There were lights all around it, too, filling the churchyard all the way to the bell tower. Torches. She could smell their tarry smoke. More torches made their way in from the white fields, winding down from the hill behind the church.

  She thought suddenly of Oxford on Christmas Eve, the shops lit for last-minute shopping and the window of Brasenose shining yellow onto the quad. And the Christmas tree at Balliol lit with multi-colored strings of laser lights.

  "I would that we had come to you for Yule," Lady Imeyne said to Lady Yvolde. "Then we had had a proper priest to say the masses. This place's priest can but barely say the Paternoster."

  This place's priest just spent hours kneeling in an ice-cold church, Kivrin thought, hours kneeling in hose that have holes in the knees, and now this place's priest is ringing a heavy bell which has had to be tolled for an hour and will shortly go through an elaborate ceremony that he has had to memorize because he cannot read.

  "It will be a poor sermon and a poor mass, I fear," Lady Imeyne said.

  "Alas, there are many who do not love God in these days," Lady Yvolde said, "but we must pray to God that He will set the world right and bring men again to virtue."

  Kivrin doubted if that answer was what Lady Imeyne wanted to hear.

  "I have sent to the Bishop of Bath to send us a chaplain," Imeyne said, "but he has not yet come."

  "My brother says there is much trouble in Bath," Yvolde said.

  They were almost to the churchyard. Kivrin could make out faces now, lit by the smoky torches and by little oil cressets some of the women were carrying. Their faces, reddened and lit from below, looked faintly sinister. Mr. Dunworthy would think they were an angry mob, Kivrin thought, gathered to burn some poor martyr at the stake. It's the light, she thought. Everyone looks like a cutthroat by torchlight. No wonder they invented electricity.

  They came into the churchyard. Kivrin recognized some of the people near the church doors: the boy with the scurvy who had run from her, two of the young girls who'd helped with the Christmas baking, Cob. The steward's wife was wearing a cloak with an ermine collar and carrying a metal lantern with four tiny panes of real glass. She was talking animatedly to the woman with the scrofula scars who had helped put up the holly. They were all talking and moving around to keep warm, and one man with a black beard was laughing so hard his torch swept dangerously close to the steward's wife's wimple.

  Church officials had eventually had to do away with the midnight mass because of all the drinking and carousing, Kivrin remembered, and some of these parishioners definitely looked like they had spent the evening breaking fasts. The steward was talking animatedly to a rough-looking man Rosemund pointed out as Maisry's father. Both their faces were bright red from the cold or the torchlight or the liquor or all three, but they seemed gay rather than dangerous. The steward kept punctuating what he was saying with hard, thunking claps on Maisry's father's shoulder, and every time he did it the father laughed, a happy helpless giggle that made Kivrin think he was much brighter than she had supposed.

  The steward's wife grabbed for her husband's sleeve, and he shook her off, but as soon as Lady Eliwys and Sir Bloet came through the lychgate, he and Maisry's brother fell back promptly to make a clear path into the church. So did all the others, falling silent as the entourage passed through the churchyard and in the heavy doors, and then beginning to talk again, but more quietly, as they came into the church behind them.

  Sir Bloet unbuckled his sword and handed it to a servant, and he and Lady Eliwys knelt and genuflected as soon as they were in the door. They walked almost to the rood screen together and knelt again.

  Kivrin and the little girls followed. When Agnes crossed herself, her bell jangled hollowly in the church. I'll have to take it off of her, Kivrin thought, and wondered if she should step out of the procession now and take Agnes off to the side by Lady Imeyne's husband's tomb and undo it, but Lady Imeyne was waiting impatiently at the door with Sir Bloet's sister.

  She led the girls to the front. Sir Bloet had already gotten to his feet again. Eliwys stayed on her knees a little longer, and then stood, and Sir Bloet escorted her to the north side of the church, bowed slightly, and walked over to take his place on the men's side.

  Kivrin knelt with the little girls, praying Agnes wouldn't make too much noise when she crossed herself again. She didn't, but when Agnes got to her feet she snagged her foot in the hem of her robe and caught herself with a clanging almost as loud as the bell still tolling outside. Lady Imeyne was, of course, right behind them. She glared at Kivrin.

  Kivrin took the girls to stand beside Eliwys. Lady Imeyne knelt, but Lady Yvolde made only an obeisance. As soon as Imeyne rose, a servant hurried forward with a dark velvet covered prie- dieu and laid it on the floor next to Rosemund f
or Lady Yvolde to kneel on. Another servant had laid one in front of Sir Bloet on the men's side and was helping him get down on his knees on it. He puffed and clung to the servant's arm as he lowered his bulk, and his face got very red.

  Kivrin looked at Lady Yvolde's prie-dieu longingly, thinking of the plastic kneeling pads that hung on the backs of the chairs in St. Mary's. She had never realized until now what a blessing they were, what a blessing the hard wooden chairs were either until they stood again and she thought about how they would have to remain standing through the whole service.

  The floor was cold. The church was cold, in spite of all the lights. They were mostly cressets, set along the walls and in front of the holly-banked statue of St. Catherine, though there was a tall, thin, yellowish candle set in the greenery of each of the windows, but the effect was probably not what Father Roche had intended. The bright flames only made the colored panes of glass darker, almost black.

  More of the yellowish candles were in the silver candelabra on either side of the altar, and holly was heaped in front of them and along the top of the rood screen, and Father Roche had set Lady Imeyne's beeswax candles in among the sharp, shiny leaves. He'd done a job of decorating the church that should please even Lady Imeyne, Kivrin thought, and glanced at her.

  She was holding her reliquary between her folded hands, but her eyes were open, and she was staring at the top of the rood screen. Her mouth was tight with disapproval, and Kivrin supposed she hadn't wanted the candles there, but it was the perfect place for them. They illuminated the crucifix and the Last Judgment and lit nearly the whole nave.

  They made the whole church seem different, homier, more familiar, like St. Mary's on Christmas Eve. Dunworthy had taken her to the ecumenical service last Christmas. She had planned to go to midnight mass at the Holy Re-Formed to hear it said in Latin, but there hadn't been a midnight mass. The priest had been asked to read the gospel for the ecumenical service, so he had moved the mass to four in the afternoon.

  Agnes was fiddling with her bell again. Lady Imeyne turned and glared at her across her piously folded hands, and Rosemund leaned across Kivrin and shhhed her.

  "You mustn't ring your bell until the mass is over," Kivrin whispered, bending close to Agnes so no one else could hear her.

  "I rang it not," Agnes whispered back in a voice that could be heard all over the church. "The ribbon binds too tight. See you?"

  Kivrin couldn't see any such thing. In fact, if she had taken the time to tie it tighter, it wouldn't be ringing at every movement, but there was no way she was going to argue with an overtired child when the mass was going to begin any minute. She reached for the knot.

  Agnes must have been trying to pull the bell off over her wrist. The already fraying ribbon had tightened into a solid little knot. Kivrin picked at its edges with her fingernails, keeping an eye on the people behind her. The service would start with a procession, Father Roche and his acolytes, if he had any, would come down the aisle bearing the holy water and chant the Asperges.

  Kivrin pulled on the ribbon and both sides of the knot, tightening it beyond any hope of ever getting it off without cutting it, but getting a little more slack. It still wasn't enough to get the ribbon off. She glanced back at the church door. The bell had stopped, but there was still no sign of Father Roche and no aisle for him to come up either. The townsfolk had crowded in, filling the whole rear of the church. Someone had lifted a child up onto Imeyne's husband's tomb and was holding him there so he could see, but there wasn't anything to see yet.

  She went back to working on the bell. She got two fingers under the ribbon and pulled up on it, trying to stretch it.

  "Tear it not!" Agnes said in that carrying stage whisper of hers. Kivrin took hold of the bell and hastily pulled it around so it lay in Agnes's palm.

  "Hold it like this," she whispered, cupping Agnes's fingers over it. "Tightly."

  Agnes obligingly clenched her little fist. Kivrin folded Agnes's other hand over the top of the fist in a so-so facsimile of a praying attitude and said softly, "Hold tight to the bell, and it will not ring."

  Agnes promptly pressed her hands to her forehead in an attitude of angelic piety.

  "Good girl," Kivrin said, and put her arm around her. She glanced back at the church doors. They were still closed. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to face the altar.

  Father Roche was standing there. He was dressed in an embroidered white stole and a yellowed white alb with a hem more frayed than Agnes's ribbon, and was holding a book. He had obviously been waiting for her, had obviously stood there watching her the whole time she tended to Agnes, but there was no reproof in his face or even impatience. His face held some other expression entirely, and she was reminded suddenly of Mr. Dunworthy, standing and watching her through the thin-glass partition.

  Lady Imeyne cleared her throat, a sound that was almost a growl, and he seemed to come to himself. He handed the book to Cob, who was wearing a grimy cassock and a pair of too-large leather shoes, and knelt in front of the altar. Then he took the book back and began saying the lections.

  Kivrin said them to herself along with him, thinking the Latin and hearing the echo of the interpreter's translation.

  "'Whom saw ye, O Shepherds?'" Father Roche recited in Latin, beginning the responsory. "'Speak: tell us who hath appeared on the earth.'"

  He stopped, frowning at Kivrin.

  He's forgotten it, she thought. She glanced anxiously at Imeyne, hoping she wouldn't realize there was more to come, but Imeyne had raised her head and was scowling at him, her jaw in the silk wimple clenched.

  Roche was still frowning at Kivrin. "'Speak, what saw ye?'" he said, and Kivrin gave a sigh of relief. "'Tell us who hath appeared.'"

  That wasn't right. She mouthed the next line, willing him to understand it. "'We saw the newborn Child.'"

  He gave no indication that he had seen what she said, though he was looking straight at her. "I saw ... " he said, and stopped again.

  "'We saw the newborn Child,'" Kivrin whispered, and could feel Lady Imeyne turning to look at her.

  "'And angels singing praise unto the Lord,'" Roche said, and that wasn't right either, but Lady Imeyne turned back to the front to fasten her disapproving gaze on Roche.

  The bishop would no doubt hear about this, and about the candles and the fraying hem, and who knew what other errors and infractions he had committed.

  "'Speak, what saw ye?'" Kivrin mouthed, and he seemed suddenly to come to himself.

  "'Speak, what saw ye?'" he said clearly. "'And tell us of the birth of Christ. We saw the new-born Child and angels singing praise unto the Lord.'"

  He began the Confiteor Deo, and Kivrin whispered it along with him, but he got through it without any mistakes, and Kivrin began to relax a little, though she watched him closely as he moved to the altar for the Oromus te.

  He was wearing a black cassock under the alb, and both of them looked like they had once been richly made. They were much too short for Roche. She could see a good ten centimeters of his worn brown hose below the cassock's hem when he bent over the altar. They had probably belonged to the priest before him, or were castoffs of Imeyne's chaplain.

  The priest at Holy Re-Formed had worn a polyester alb over a brown jumper and jeans. He had assured Kivrin that the mass was completely authentic, in spite of its being held in midafternoon. The antiphon dated from the eighth century, he had told her, and the gruesomely detailed stations of the cross were exact copies of Turin's. But the church had been a converted stationer's shop, they had used a folding table for an altar, and the Carfax carillon outside had been busily destroying "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."

  "Kyrie eleison," Cob said, his hands folded in prayer.

  "Kyrie eleison," Father Roche said.

  "Christe eleison," Cob said.

  "Christe eleison," Agnes said brightly.

  Kivrin hushed her, her finger to her lips. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.


  They had used the kyrie at the ecumenical service, probably because of some deal Holy Re-Formed's priest had struck with the vicar in return for moving the time of the mass, and the minister of the Church of the Milennium had refused to recite it and had looked coldly disapproving throughout. Like Lady Imeyne.

  Father Roche seemed all right now. He said the Gloria and the gradual without faltering and began the gospel. "Inituim sancti Envangelii secundum Luke," he said, and began to read haltingly in Latin, "'Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world be taken.'"

  The vicar had read the same verses at St. Mary's. He had read it from the People's Modern Bible, which had been insisted on by the Church of the Millenium, and it had begun, "Around then the P.M. landfilled a tax hike on the ratepayers," but it was the same gospel Father Roche was laboriously reciting.

  "'And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men of good will."'" Father Roche kissed the gospel. "Per evangilica dicta deliantur nostro delнcta."

  The sermon should come next, if there was one. In most village churches the priest only preached at the major masses, and even then it was usually no more than a catechism lesson, the listing of the seven deadly sins or the seven Acts of Mercy. The high mass Christmas morning was probably when the sermon would be.

  But Father Roche stepped out in front of the central aisle, which had nearly closed up again as the villagers leaned against the pillars and each other, trying to find a more comfortable position, and began to speak.

  "In the days when Christ came to earth from heaven, God sent signs that men might know his coming, and in the last days also will there be signs. There will be famines and pestilence, and Satan will ride abroad in the land."