Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  He breathed rapidly in and out through his open mouth, panting like poor Blackie, his tongue sticking out. It was bright red and looked swollen. His face was an even darker red, and his expression was distorted, as if he were terrified.

  She wondered if he might have been poisoned. The bishop's envoy had been so anxious to leave he had nearly run Agnes down, and he had told Eliwys not to disturb him. The church had done things like that in the thirteen hundreds, hadn't they? Mysterious deaths in the monastery and the cathedral. Convenient deaths.

  But that made no sense. The bishop's envoy and the monk would not have hurried off and given orders not to disturb the victim when the whole point of poison was to make it look like botulism or peritonitis or the dozen other unaccountable things people died of in the Middle Ages. And why would the bishop's envoy poison one of his own underlings when he could demote him, the way Lady Imeyne wanted to demote Father Roche.

  "Is it the cholera?" Lady Eliwys said.

  No, Kivrin thought, trying to remember its symptoms. Acute diarrhea and vomiting with massive loss of body fluids. Pinched expression, dehydration, cyanosis, raging thirst.

  "Are you thirsty?" she asked.

  The clerk gave no sign that he had heard. His eyes were half-closed, and they looked swollen, too.

  Kivrin laid her hand on his forehead. He flinched a little, his reddened eyes flickering open and then closed.

  "He's burning with fever," Kivrin said, thinking, cholera doesn't produce this high a fever. "Fetch me a cloth dipped in water."

  "Maisry!" Eliwys snapped, but Rosemund was already at her elbow with the same filthy rag they must have used on her.

  At least it was cool. Kivrin folded it into a rectangle, watching the priest's face. He was still panting, and his face contorted when she laid the rag across his forehead, as if he was in pain. He clutched his hand to his belly. Appendicitis? Kivrin thought. No, that usually was accompanied by a low-grade fever. Typhoid fever could produce temps as high as forty degrees, though usually not at the onset. It produced enlargement of the spleen, as well, which frequently resulted in abdominal pain.

  "Are you in pain?" she asked. "Where does it hurt?"

  His eyes flickered half-open again, and his hands moved restlessly on the coverlet. That was a symptom of typhoid fever, that restless plucking, but only in the last stages, eight or nine days into the progress of the disease. She wondered if the priest had already been ill when he came.

  He had stumbled getting off his horse when they arrived, and the monk had had to catch him. But he had eaten and drunk more than a little at the feast, and grabbed at Maisry. He couldn't have been very ill, and typhoid came on gradually, beginning with a headache and an only slightly elevated temperature. It didn't reach thirty-nine degrees until the third week.

  Kivrin leaned closer, pulling his untied shift aside to look for typhoid's rose-colored rash. There wasn't any. The side of his neck seemed slightly swollen, but swollen lymph glands went with almost every infection. She pulled his sleeve up. There weren't any rose spots on his arm either, but his fingernails were a bluish-brown color, which meant not enough oxygen. And cyanosis was a symptom of cholera.

  "Has he vomited or had loosening of his bowels?" she asked.

  "Nay," Lady Imeyne said, smearing a greenish paste on a piece of stiff linen. "He has but eaten too much of sugars and spices, and it has fevered his blood."

  It couldn't be cholera without vomiting, and at any rate the fever was too high. Perhaps it was her virus after all, but she hadn't felt any stomach pain, and her tongue hadn't swollen like that.

  The clerk raised his hand and pushed the rag off his forehead and onto the pillow, and then let his arm fall back to his side. Kivrin picked the rag up. It was completely dry. And what besides a virus could cause that high a fever? She couldn't think of anything but typhoid.

  "Has he bled from the nose?" she asked Roche.

  "Nay," Rosemund said, stepping forward and taking the rag from Kivrin. "I have seen no sign of bleeding."

  "Wet it with cold water but don't wring it out," Kivrin said. "Father Roche, help me to lift him."

  Roche put his hands to the priest's shoulders and raised him up. There was no blood on the linen under his head.

  Roche laid him gently back down. "Think you it is the typhoid fever?" he said, and there was something curious, almost hopeful in his tone.

  "I know not," Kivrin said.

  Rosemund handed Kivrin the rag. She had took Kivrin at her word. It was dripping with icy water.

  Kivrin leaned forward and laid it across the clerk's forehead.

  His arms came up suddenly, wildly, knocking the cloth backwards out of Kivrin's hand, and then he was sitting up, flailing at her with both his hands, kicking out with his feet. His fist caught her on the side of her leg, buckling her knees so that she almost toppled onto the bed.

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Kivrin said, trying to get her balance, trying to clutch at his hands. "I'm sorry."

  His bloodshot eyes were wide open now, staring straight ahead. "Gloriam tuam," he bellowed, in a strange high voice that was almost a scream.

  "I'm sorry," Kivrin said. She grabbed at his wrist, and his other arm shot out, striking her full in the chest.

  "Requiem aeternum dona eis," he roared, rising up on his knees and then his feet to stand in the middle of the bed. "Et lux perpetua luceat eis."

  Kivrin realized suddenly that he was trying to sing the mass for the dead.

  Father Roche clutched at his shift, and he lashed out, kicking himself free, and then went on kicking, spinning around as if he were dancing.

  "Miserere nobis."

  He was too near the wall for them to reach him, hitting the timbers with his feet and flailing arms at every turn without even seeming to notice. "When he comes within reach, we must grab his ankles and knock him down," Kivrin said.

  Father Roche nodded, out of breath. The others stood transfixed, not even trying to stop him, Imeyne still on her knees. Maisry pushed herself completely into the window, her hands over her ears and her eyes squeezed shut. Rosemund had retrieved the sopping rag and held it in her outstretched hand as if she thought Kivrin might try to lay it on his head again. Agnes was staring open-mouthed at the clerk's half-exposed body.

  The clerk spun back toward them, his hands pawing at the ties on the front of his shift, trying to rip them free.

  "Now," Kivrin said.

  Father Roche and she reached for his ankles. The clerk went down on one knee, and then, flinging his arms out wide, burst free and launched himself off the high bed straight at Rosemund. She put her hands up, still holding the rag, and he hit her full in the chest.

  "Miserere nobis," he said, and they went down together.

  "Grab his arms before he hurts her," Kivrin said, but the clerk had stopped flailing. He lay atop Rosemund, motionless, his mouth almost touching hers, his arms limply out at his sides.

  Father Roche took hold of the clerk's unresisting arm and rolled him off Rosemund. He flopped onto his side, breathing shallowly but no longer panting.

  "Is he dead?" Agnes asked, and as if her voice had released the rest of them from a spell, they all moved forward, Lady Imeyne struggling to her feet, gripping the bedpost.

  "Blackie died," Agnes said, clutching at her mother's skirts.

  "He is not dead," Imeyne said, kneeling beside him, "but the fever in his blood has gone to the brain. It is often thus."

  It's never thus, Kivrin thought. This isn't a symptom of any disease I've ever heard of. What could it be? Spinal meningitis? Epilepsy?

  She bent down next to Rosemund. The girl lay rigidly on the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, her hands clenched into whitening fists. "Did he hurt you?" Kivrin asked.

  Rosemund opened her eyes. "He pushed me down," she said, her voice quavering a little.

  "Can you stand?" Kivrin asked.

  Rosemund nodded, and Eliwys stepped forward, Agnes still clinging to her skirt. They helped her to her f
eet.

  "My foot hurts," she said, leaning on her mother, but in a minute she was able to stand on it. "He ... of a sudden ... "

  Eliwys supported her to the end of the bed and sat her down on the carved chest. Agnes clambered up next to her. "The bishop's clerk jumped on top of you," she said.

  The clerk murmured something, and Rosemund looked fearfully at him. "Will he rise up again?" she asked Eliwys.

  "Nay," Eliwys said, but she helped Rosemund up and led her to the door. "Take your sister down to the fire and sit with her," she told Agnes.

  Agnes took hold of Rosemund's arm and led her out. "When the clerk dies, we will bury him in the churchyard," Kivrin could hear her say going down the stairs. "Like Blackie."

  The clerk looked already dead, his eyes half-open and unseeing. Father Roche knelt next to him and hoisted him easily over his shoulder, the clerk's head and arms hanging limply down, the way Kivrin had carried Agnes home from the midnight mass. Kivrin hastily pulled the coverlet off the featherbed, and Roche eased him down onto the bed.

  "We must draw the fever from the brain," Lady Imeyne said, returning to her poultice. "It is the spices that have fevered his brain."

  "No," Kivrin whispered, looking at the priest. He lay on his back with his arms out at his sides, the palms up. The thin shift was ripped halfway down the front and had fallen completely off his left shoulder so his outstretched arm was exposed. Under the arm was a red swelling. "No," she breathed.

  The swelling was bright red and nearly as large as an egg. High fever, swollen tongue, intoxication of the nervous system, buboes under the arms and in the groin.

  Kivrin took a step back from the bed. "It can't be," she said. "It's something else." It had to be something else. A boil. Or an ulcer of some kind. She reached forward to pull the sleeve away from it.

  The clerk's hands twitched. Roche stretched to grasp his wrists, pushing them down into the featherbed. The swelling was hard to the touch, and around it the skin was a mottled purplish- black.

  "It can't be," she said. "It's only 1320."

  "This will draw the fever out," Imeyne said. She stood up stiffly, holding the poultice out in front of her. "Pull his shift away from his body that I may lay on the poultice." She started toward the bed.

  "No!" Kivrin said. She put her hands up to stop her. "Stay away! You mustn't touch him!"

  "You speak wildly," Imeyne said. She looked at Roche. "It is naught but a stomach fever."

  "It isn't a fever!" Kivrin said. She turned to Roche. "Let go of his hands and get away from him. It isn't a fever. It's the plague."

  All of them, Roche and Imeyne and Eliwys looked at her as stupidly as Maisry.

  They don't even know what it is, she thought desperately, because it doesn't exist yet, there was no such thing as the Black Death yet. It didn't even begin in China until 1333. And it didn't reach England till 1348. "But it is," Kivrin said. "He's got all the symptoms. The bubo and the swollen tongue and the hemorrhaging under the skin."

  "It is naught but a stomach fever," Imeyne said and pushed past Kivrin to the bed.

  "No -- " Kivrin said, but Imeyne had already stopped, the poultice poised above his naked chest.

  "Lord have mercy on us," she said, and backed away, still holding the poultice.

  "Is it the blue sickness?" Eliwys said frightenedly.

  And suddenly Kivrin saw it all. They had not come here because of the trial, because Lord Guillaume was in trouble with the king. He had sent them here because the plague was in Bath.

  "Our nurse died," Agnes had said. And Lady Imeyne's chaplain, Brother Hubard. "Rosemund said he died of the blue sickness," Agnes had told her. And Sir Bloet had said that the trial had been delayed because the judge was ill. That was why Eliwys hadn't wanted to send word to Courcy and why she had been so angry when Imeyne sent Gawyn to the bishop. Because the plague was in Bath. But it couldn't be. The Black Death hadn't reached Bath until the fall of 1348.

  "What year is it?" Kivrin said.

  The women looked at her dumbly, Imeyne still holding the forgotten poultice. Kivrin turned to Roche. "What is the year?"

  "Are you ill, Lady Katherine?" he said anxiously, reaching for her wrists as if he was afraid she was going to have one of the clerk's seizures.

  She jerked her hands away. "Tell me the year."

  "It is the twenty-first year of Edward III's reign," Eliwys said.

  Edward III, not the Second. In her panic she could not remember when he had reigned. "Tell me the year," she said.

  "Anno domine," the clerk said from the bed. He tried to lick his lips with his swollen tongue. "One thousand three hundred and forty-eight."

  BOOK III

  Buried with my own hands five of my children in a single grave ... No bells. No tears. This is the end of the world.

  Agniola di Tura

  1347

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Dunworthy spent the next two days ringing Finch's list of techs and Scottish fishing guides and setting up another ward in Bulkeley-Johnson. Fifteen more of his detainees were down with the flu, among them Ms. Taylor, who had collapsed forty-nine strokes short of a full peal.

  "Fainted dead away and let go her bell," Finch reported. "It swung right over with a noise like doom and the rope thrashing about like a live thing. Wrapped itself round my neck and nearly strangled me. Ms. Taylor wanted to go on after she came to herself, but of course it was too late. I do wish you'd speak to her, Mr. Dunworthy. She's very despondent. Says she'll never forgive herself for letting the others down. I told her it wasn't her fault, that sometimes things are simply out of one's control, aren't they?"

  "Yes," Dunworthy said.

  He had not succeeded in reaching a tech, let alone persuading him to come to Oxford, and he had not found Basingame. He and Finch had phoned every hotel in Scotland, and then every inn and rental cottage. William had got hold of his credit records, but there were no purchases of fishing lures or waders in some remote Scottish town, as he had hoped, and no entries at all after the fifteenth of December.

  The telephone system was becoming progressively disabled. The visual cut out again, and the recorded voice, announcing that due to the epidemic all circuits were busy, interrupted after only two digits on nearly every call he tried to put through.

  He did not so much worry about Kivrin as carry her with him, a heavy weight, as he punched and repunched the numbers, waited for ambulances, listened to Mrs. Gaddson's complaints. Andrews had not phoned back, or if he had, had not succeeded in getting through. Badri murmured endlessly of death, the nurses carefully transcribing his ramblings on slips of paper. While he waited for the techs, for the fishing guides, for someone to answer the telephone, he pored over Badri's words, searching for clues. "Black," Badri had said, and "laboratory," and "Europe."

  The phone system grew worse. The recorded voice cut in as he punched the first number, and several times he couldn't raise a dial tone. He gave up for the moment and worked on the contacts charts. William had managed to get hold of the primaries' confidential NHS medical records, and he pored over them, searching for radiation treatments and visits to the dentist. One of the primaries had had his jaw X-rayed, but on second look, he saw it had been on the twenty-fourth, after the epidemic began.

  He went over to Infirmary to ask the primaries who weren't delirious whether they had any pets or had been duck-hunting recently. The corridors were filled with stretcher trolleys, each one of them with a patient on it. They were jammed up against the doors of Casualties and crosswise in front of the elevator. There was no way he could get past them to it. He took the stairs.

  William's blonde student nurse met him at the door of Isolation. She was wearing a white cloth gown and mask. "I'm afraid you can't go in," she said, holding up a gloved hand.

  Badri's dead, he thought. "Is Mr. Chaudhuri worse?" he asked.

  "No. He seems actually to be resting a bit more quietly. But we've run out of SPG's. London's promised to send us a shipment to
morrow, and the staff's making do with cloth, but we haven't enough for visitors." She fished in her pocket for a scrap of paper. "I wrote down his words," she said, handing it to him. "I'm afraid most of it's unintelligible. He says your name and -- Kivrin's? -- is that right?"

  He nodded, looking at the paper.

  "And sometimes isolated words, but most of it's nonsense."

  She had tried to write it down phonetically, and when she understood a word, she underscored it. "Can't," he had said, and "black," and "so worried."

  Over half the detainees were down by Sunday morning, and everyone not ill was nursing them. Dunworthy and Finch had given up all notion of putting them in wards, and at any rate they had run out of cots. They left them in their own beds, or moved them, bed and all, into rooms in Salvin to keep their makeshift nurses from running themselves ragged.

  The bellringers fell one by one, and Dunworthy helped put them to bed in the old library. Ms. Taylor, who could still walk, insisted on going to visit them.

  "It's the least I can do," she said, panting after the exertion of walking across the corridor, "after I let them down like that."

  Dunworthy helped her onto the air mattress William had carried over and covered her with a sheet. "'The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,'" he said.

  He felt weak himself, bone-tired from the lack of sleep and the constant defeats. He had finally managed, between boiling water for tea and washing bedpans, to get through to one of Magdalen's techs.

  "She's in hospital," her mother had said. She'd looked harried and tired.

  "When did she fall ill?" Dunworthy'd asked her.

  "Christmas Day."

  Hope had surged in him. Perhaps Magdalen's tech was the source. "What symptoms does she have?" he'd asked eagerly. "Headache? Fever? Disorientation?"

  "Ruptured appendix," she'd said.

  By Monday morning three-quarters of the detainees were ill. They ran out, as Finch had predicted, of clean linens and NHS masks, and more urgently, of temps, antimicrobials, and aspirin. "I tried to ring Infirmary to ask for more," Finch said handing Dunworthy a list, "but the phones have all gone dead."