Willis, Connie - Doomsday Book (v2.1)

by Doomsday Book (lit)

  Kivrin would have no idea what had happened. She would think she had the wrong place or the wrong time, that she had lost count of the days somehow during the plague, that something had gone wrong with the drop. She would think they had forsaken her.

  "Well?" Mrs. Gaddson said. "Any other requests?"

  "No."

  Mrs. Gaddson flipped back to the Old Testament. "'For they shall fall by the sword, by the famine, and by the pestilence,'" she read. "'He that is far off shall die of the pestilence.'"

  In spite of everything, he slept, waking finally to something that was not endless afternoon. It was still raining, but there were shadows in the room and the bells were chiming four o'clock. William's nurse helped him to the lavatory. The book had gone, and he wondered if Colin had come back without his remembering, but when the nurse opened the door of the bedstand for his slippers, he saw it lying there. He asked the nurse to crank his bed to sitting, and when she had gone he put on his spectacles and took the book out again.

  The plague had spread so randomly, so viciously, the contemps had been unable to believe it was a natural disease. They had accused lepers and Jews and the mentally impaired of poisoning wells and putting curses on them. Anyone strange, anyone foreign was immediately suspected. In Sussex they had stoned two travellers to death. In Yorkshire they had burnt a young woman at the stake.

  "So that's where it got to," Colin said, coming into the room. "I thought I'd lost it."

  He was wearing his green jacket and was very wet. "I had to carry the handbell cases over to Holy Re-formed for Ms. Taylor, and it's absolutely pouring."

  Relief washed over him at the mention of Ms. Taylor's name, and he realized he had not asked after any of the detainees for fear it would be bad news.

  "Is Ms. Taylor all right then?"

  Colin touched the bottom of his jacket, and it sprang open, spraying water everywhere. "Yes. They're doing some bell thing at Holy Re-Formed on the fifteenth." He leaned around so he could see what Dunworthy was reading.

  Dunworthy shut the book and handed it to him. "And the rest of the bellringers? Ms. Piantini?"

  Colin nodded. "She's still in hospital. She's so thin you wouldn't know her." He opened the book. "You were reading about the Black Death, weren't you?"

  "Yes," Dunworthy said. "Mr. Finch didn't come down with the virus, did he?"

  "No. He's been filling in as tenor for Ms. Piantini. He's very upset. We didn't get any lavatory paper in the shipment from London, and he says we're nearly out. He had a fight with The Gallstone over it." He laid the book back on the bed. "What's going to happen to your girl?"

  "I don't know," Dunworthy said.

  "Isn't there anything you can do to get her out?"

  "No."

  "The Black Death was terrible," Colin said. "So many people died they didn't even bury them. They just left them lying in big heaps."

  "I can't get to her, Colin. We lost the fix when Gilchrist shut the net down."

  "I know, but isn't there something we can do?"

  "No."

  "But -- "

  "I intend to speak to your doctor about restricting your visitors," the sister said sternly, removing Colin by the collar of his jacket.

  "Then begin by restricting Mrs. Gaddson," Dunworthy said. "and tell Mary I want to see her."

  Mary did not come, but Montoya did, obviously fresh from the dig. She was mud to the knees, and her curly hair was gray with it. Colin came with her, and his green jacket was thoroughly bespattered.

  "We had to sneak in when she wasn't looking," Colin said.

  Montoya had lost a good deal of weight. Her hands on the bed rail were very thin, and the digital on her wrist was loose.

  "How are you feeling?" she asked.

  "Better," he lied, looking at her hands. There was mud under her fingernails. "How are you feeling?"

  "Better," she said.

  She must have gone directly to the dig to look for the corder as soon as they released her from hospital. And now she had come directly here.

  "She's dead, isn't she?" he said.

  Her hands took hold of the rail, let go of it. "Yes."

  Kivrin had been in the right place, after all. The locationals had been shifted by only a few kilometers, a few meters, and she had managed to find the Oxford-Bath road, she had found Skendgate. And died in it, a victim of the influenza she had caught before she went. Or of starvation after the plague, or of despair. She had been dead seven hundred years.

  "You found it then," he said, and it was not a question.

  "Found what?" Colin said.

  "Kivrin's corder."

  "No," Montoya said.

  He felt no relief. "But you will," he said.

  Her hands shook a little, holding the rail. "She asked me to," she said. "The day of the drop. She was the one who suggested the corder look like a bone spur, so the record would survive even if she didn't. 'Mr. Dunworthy's worried over nothing,' she said, 'but if something should go wrong, I'll try to be buried in the churchyard so you,'" her voice faltered, "'so you won't have to dig up half of England.'"

  Dunworthy closed his eyes.

  "But you don't know that she's dead, if you haven't found the corder," Colin burst out. "You said you didn't even know where she was. How can you be sure she's dead?"

  "We've been conducting experiments with laboratory rats at the dig. Only a quarter of an hour's exposure to the virus is required for infection. Kivrin was directly exposed to the tomb for over three hours. There's a 75 per cent chance she contracted the virus, and with the limited med support available in the fourteenth century, she's almost certain to have developed complications."

  Limited med support. It was a century that had dosed people with leeches and powdered rubies, that had never heard of sterilization or germs or T-cells. They would have stuck filthy poultices on her and muttered prayers and opened her veins. "And the doctors bled them," Colin's book had said, "but many died in despite."

  "Without antibiotics and T-cell enhancement," Montoya said, the virus's mortality rate is forty-nine per cent. Probability -- "

  "Probability," Dunworthy said bitterly. "Are these Gilchrist's figures?"

  Montoya glanced at Colin and frowned. "There is a 75 per cent chance Kivrin contracted the virus, and a 68 per cent chance she was exposed to the plague. Morbidity for bubonic plague is 91 per cent, and the mortality rate is -- "

  "She didn't get the plague," Dunworthy said. "She'd had her plague inoculation. Didn't Dr. Ahrens or Gilchrist tell you that?"

  Montoya glanced at Colin again.

  "They said I wasn't allowed to tell him," Colin said, looking defiantly at her.

  "Tell me what? Is Gilchrist ill?" He remembered looking at the screens and then collapsing forward into Gilchrist's arms. He wondered if he had infected him when he fell.

  Montoya said, "Mr. Gilchrist died of the flu three days ago."

  Dunworthy looked at Colin. "What else did they instruct you to keep from me?" Dunworthy demanded. "Who else died while I was ill?"

  Montoya put up her thin hand as if to stop Colin, but it was too late.

  "Great-Aunt Mary," Colin said.

  TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOOMSDAY BOOK (077076-078924)

  Maisry's run away. Roche and I looked everywhere for her, afraid she'd fallen and crawled into some corner, but the steward said he saw her starting into the woods while he was digging Walthef's grave. She was riding Agnes's pony.

  She will only spread it, or make it as far as some village that already has it. It's all around us now. The bells sound like vespers, only out of rhythm, as if the ringers had gone mad. It's impossible to make out whether it is nine strokes or three. Courcy's double bells tolled a single stroke this morning. I wonder if it is one of the chattering girls who played with Rosemund.

  She is still unconscious, and her pulse is very weak. Agnes screams and struggles in her delirium. She keeps shrieking for me to come, but she won't let me near her. When I try to talk to her, she kicks
and screams as if she were having a tantrum.

  Eliwys is wearing herself out trying to tend Agnes and Lady Imeyne, who screams, "Devil!" at me when I tend her and nearly gave me a black eye this morning. The only one who lets me near him is the clerk, who is beyond caring. He cannot possibly last the day. He smells so bad we've had to move him to the far end of the room. His bubo has started to suppurate again.

  (Break)

  Gunni, second son of the steward.

  The woman with the scrofula scars on her neck.

  Maisry's brother.

  Roche's altarboy, Cob.

  (Break)

  Lady Imeyne is very bad. Roche tried to give her the last rites, but she refused to make her confession.

  "You must make your peace with God ere you die," Roche said, but she turned her face to the wall and said, "He is to blame for this."

  (Break)

  Thirty-one cases. Over seventy-five per cent. Roche consecrated part of the green this morning because the churchyard is nearly full.

  Maisry hasn't come back. She's probably sleeping in the high seat of some manor house the inhabitants have fled, and when this is all over she'll become the ancestor of some noble old family.

  Perhaps that's what's wrong with our time, Mr. Dunworthy, it was founded by Maisry and Sir Bloet. And all the people who stayed and tried to help, like Roche, caught the plague and died.

  (Break)

  Lady Imeyne is unconscious and Roche is giving her the last rites. I told him to.

  "It is the disease that speaks. Her soul has not turned against God," I said, which isn't true, and perhaps she does not deserve forgiveness, but she does not deserve this either, her body poisoned, rotting, and I can scarcely condemn her for blaming God when I blame her. And neither is responsible. It's a disease.

  The consecrated wine has run out, and there is no more olive oil. Roche is using cooking oil from the kitchen. It smells rancid. Where he touches her temples and the palms of her hands, the skin turns black.

  It's a disease.

  (Break)

  Agnes is worse. It's terrible to watch her, lying there panting like her poor puppy and screaming, "Tell Kivrin to come and get me. I do not like it here!"

  Even Roche can't stand it. "Why does God punish us thus?" he asked me.

  "He doesn't. It's a disease," I said, which is no answer, and he knows it.

  All of Europe knows it, and the Church knows it, too. It will hang on for a few more centuries, making excuses, but it can't overcome the essential fact -- that He let it happen. That He comes to no one's rescue.

  (Break)

  The bells have stopped. Roche asked me if I thought it was a sign the plague had stopped. "Perhaps God has come to help us after all," he said.

  I don't think so. In Tournai church officials sent out an order stopping the bells because the sound frightened the people. Perhaps the Bishop of Bath has sent one out as well.

  The sound was frightening, but the silence is worse. It's like the end of the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Mary had been dead almost the entire time he had been ill. She had come down with it the day the analogue arrived. She had developed pneumonia almost immediately, and on the second day her heart had stopped. The sixth of January. Epiphany.

  "You should have told me," Dunworthy had said.

  "I did tell you. Don't you remember?"

  He had no memory of it at all, had had no warning even when Mrs. Gaddson was allowed free access to his room, when Colin had said, "They won't tell you anything." It had not even struck him as odd that she hadn't come to see him.

  "I told you when she got ill," Colin had said, "and I told you when she died, but you were too ill to care."

  He thought of Colin waiting outside her room for news and then coming and standing by his bedside, trying to tell him. "I'm sorry, Colin."

  "You couldn't help it that you were ill," Colin said. "It wasn't your fault."

  He had told Ms. Taylor that, and she had not believed him any more than he believed Colin now. He did not think that Colin believed it either.

  "It was all right," Colin said. "Everyone was very nice except Sister. She wouldn't let me tell you even after you started getting better, but everyone else was nice except the Gallstone. She kept reading me Scriptures about how God strikes down the unrighteous. Mr. Finch rang my mother, but she couldn't come, and so he made all the funeral arrangements. He was very nice. The Americans were nice, too. They kept giving me sweets.

  "I'm sorry," Dunworthy had said then and after Colin had gone, expelled by the ancient sister. "I'm sorry."

  He had not been back, and Dunworthy didn't know whether the nurse had barred him from the infirmary or whether, in spite of what he said, Colin would not forgive him.

  He had abandoned Colin, gone off and left him at the mercy of Mrs. Gadsson and the sister and doctors who would not tell him anything. He had gone where he could not be reached, as incommunicado as Basingame, salmon fishing on some river in Scotland. And no matter what Colin said, he believed that if Dunworthy had truly wanted to, illness or no, he could have been there to help him.

  "You think Kivrin's dead, too, don't you?" Colin had asked him after Montoya left. "Like Ms. Montoya does?"

  "I'm afraid so."

  "But you said she couldn't get the plague. What if she's not dead? What if she's at the rendezvous right now, waiting for you?"

  "She'd been infected with influenza, Colin."

  "But so were you, and you didn't die. Maybe she didn't die either. I think you should go see Badri and see if he has any ideas. Maybe he could turn the machine on again or something."

  "You don't understand," he'd said. "It's not like a pocket torch. The fix can't be switched on again."

  "Well, but maybe he could do another one. A new fix. To the same time."

  To the same time. A drop, even with the coordinates already known, took days to set up. And Badri didn't have the coordinates. He only had the date. He could "make" a new set of coordinates based on the date, if the locationals had stayed the same, if Badri in his fever hadn't scrambled them as well and if the paradoxes would allow a second drop at all.

  There was no way to explain it all to Colin, no way to tell him Kivrin could not possibly have survived influenza in a century where the standard treatment was blood-letting. "It won't work, Colin," he'd said, suddenly too tired to explain anything. "I'm sorry."

  "So you're just going to leave her there? Whether she's dead or not? You're not even going to talk to Badri?"

  "Colin -- "

  "Aunt Mary did everything for you. She didn't give up!"

  "What is going on in here?" the sister had demanded, creaking in. "I'm going to have to ask you to leave if you persist in upsetting the patient."

  "I was leaving anyway," Colin had said and flung himself out.

  He hadn't come back that afternoon or all evening or the next morning.

  "Am I being allowed visitors?" Dunworthy asked William's nurse when she came on duty.

  "Yes," she said, looking at the screens. "There's someone waiting to see you now."

  It was Mrs. Gaddson. She already had her Bible open.

  "Luke Chapter 23:23," she said, glaring pestilentially at him. "Since you're so interested in the Crucifixion. 'And when they were come to the place which is called Calvary, there they crucified him.'"

  If God had known where His Son was, He would never have let them do that to him, Dunworthy thought. He would have pulled him out, He would have come and rescued him.

  During the Black Death, the contemps believed God had abandoned them. "Why do you turn your face from us?" they had written. "Why do you ignore our cries?" But perhaps He hadn't heard them. Perhaps He had been unconscious, lying ill in heaven, helpless Himself and unable to come.

  "'And there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour,'" Mrs. Gaddson read, "'and the sun was darkened ... '"

  The contemps had believed it was the end of the world, that Ar
mageddon had come, that Satan had triumphed at last. He had, Dunworthy thought. He had closed the net. He had lost the fix.

  He thought about Gilchrist. He wondered if he had realized what he had done before he died or if he had lain unconscious and oblivious, unaware that he had murdered Kivrin.

  "'And Jesus led them out as far as to Bethany,'" Mrs. Gaddson read, "'and he lifted up his hands and blessed them. And it came to pass, while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and was carried up into heaven.'"

  He was parted from them, and was carried up into heaven. God did come to get him, Dunworthy thought. But too late. Too late.

  She went on reading until William's nurse came on duty. "Naptime," she said briskly, shoving Mrs. Gaddson out. She came over to the bed, snatched his pillow from under his head, and gave it several sharp whacks.

  "Has Colin come?" he asked.

  "I haven't seen him since yesterday," she said, pushing the pillow back under his head. "I want you to try to go to sleep now."

  "Ms. Montoya hasn't been here?"

  "Not since yesterday." She handed him a capsule and a paper cup.

  "Have there been any messages?"

  "No messages," she said. She took the empty cup from him. "Try to sleep."

  No messages. "I'll try to be buried in the churchyard," Kivrin had told Montoya, but they'd run out of room in the churchyards. They had buried the plague victims in trenches, in ditches. They had thrown them in the river. Towards the end they hadn't buried them at all. They had piled them in heaps and set fire to them.

  Montoya would never find the corder. And if she did, what would the message be? "I went to the drop, but it didn't open. What happened?" Kivrin's voice rising in panic, in reproach, crying, "Eloi, eloi, why hast thou forsaken me?"

  William's nurse made him sit up in a chair to eat his lunch. While he was finishing his stewed prunes, Finch came in.

  "We're nearly out of tinned fruit," he said, pointing at Dunworthy's tray. "And lavatory paper. I have no idea how they expect us to start term." He sat down on the end of the bed. "The university's set the start of term for the twenty-fifth, but we simply can't be ready by them. We still have fifteen patients in Salvin, the mass immunizations have scarcely started, and I'm not at all convinced we've seen the last of the flu cases."