Doomsday Book

Colin backed the door open. "The sister comes on duty in half an hour. You don't want her to find you up." He let the door swing shut. "I'm sorry I wasn't back sooner, but I had to take immunization schedules out to Godstow."

Dunworthy leaned against the door. There might be too much slippage, and the tech was in a wheelchair, and he was not sure he could walk as far as the end of the corridor, let alone back to his room. So worried. He had thought Badri meant, You were so worried I decided to refeed the coordinates, but he had meant, I put on a backup. A backup.

"Are you all right?" Colin asked. "You're not having a relapse or anything, are you?

"No," he said.

"Did you ask Mr. Chaudhuri if he could redo the fix?"

"No," he said. "There was a backup."

"A backup?" he said excitedly. "You mean, another fix?"

"Yes."

"Does that mean you can rescue her?"

He stopped and leaned against the stretcher trolley. "I don't know."

"I'll help you," Colin said. "What do you want me to do? I'll do anything you say. I can run errands, and fetch things for you. You won't have to do a thing."

"It might not work," Dunworthy said. "The slippage…"

"But you're going to try, aren't you? Aren't you?"

A band tightened round his chest with every step, and Badri had already had one relapse, and even if they managed it, the net might not send him through.

"Yes," he said. "I'm going to try."

"Apocalyptic!" Colin said.

Lady Imeyne, mother of Guillaume D'Iverie.

Rosemund is sinking. I can't feel the pulse in her wrist at all, and her skin looks yellow and waxen, which I know is a bad sign. Agnes is fighting hard. She still doesn't have any buboes or vomiting, which is a good sign, I think. Eliwys had to cut off her hair. She kept pulling at it, screaming for me to come and braid it.

Roche has anointed Rosemund. She couldn't make a confession, of course. Agnes seems better, though she had a nosebleed a little while ago. She asked for her bell.

You bastard! I will not let you take her. She's only a child. But that's your specialty, isn't it? Slaughtering the i

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Agnes died the day after New Year's, still screaming for Kivrin to come.

"She is here," Eliwys said, squeezing her hand. "Lady Katherine is here."

"She is not," Agnes wailed, her voice hoarse but still strong. "Tell her to come!"

"I will," Eliwys promised, and then looked up at Kivrin, her expression faintly puzzled. "Go and fetch Father Roche," she said.

"What is it?" Kivrin asked. He had administered the last rites that first night, Agnes flailing and kicking at him as if she were having a tantrum, and since then she had refused to let him near her. "Are you ill, lady?"

Eliwys shook her head, still looking at Kivrin. "What will I tell my husband when he comes?" she said, and laid Agnes's hand along her side, and it was only then that Kivrin realized she was dead.

Kivrin washed her little body, which was nearly covered with purplish-blue bruises. Where Eliwys had held her hand, the skin was completely black. She looked like she had been beaten. As she has, Kivrin thought, beaten and tortured. And murdered. The slaughter of the i

Agnes's surcote and shift were ruined, a stiffened mass of blood and vomit, and her everyday linen shift had long since been torn into strips. Kivrin wrapped her body in her white cloak, and Roche and the steward buried her.

Eliwys did not come. "I must stay with Rosemund," she said when Kivrin told her it was time. There was nothing she could do for Rosemund — the girl still lay as still as if she were under a spell , and Kivrin thought the fever must have caused some brain damage. "And Gawyn may come," Eliwys said.

It was very cold. Roche and the steward puffed out great clouds of condensation as they lowered Agnes into the grave, and the sight of their white breath infuriated Kivrin. She doesn't weigh anything, she thought bitterly, you could carry her in one hand.

The sight of all the graves angered her, too. The churchyard was filled, and nearly all the rest of the green that Roche had consecrated. Lady Imeyne's grave was almost in the path to the lychgate, and the steward's baby did not have one — Father Roche had let it be buried at its mother's feet though it had been baptized — and the churchyard was still full.

What about the steward's youngest son, Kivrin thought angrily, and the clerk? Where do you plan to put them? The Black Death was only supposed to have killed one-third to one- half of Europe. Not all of it.

"Requiescat in pace, Amen," Roche said, and the steward began shoveling the frozen dirt onto the little bundle.

You were right, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought bitterly. White only gets dirty. You're right about everything, aren't you? You told me not to come, that terrible things would happen. Well, they have. And you can't wait to tell me I told you so. But you won't have that satisfaction because I don't know where the drop is, and the only person who does is probably dead.

She didn't wait for the steward to finish shovelling dirt down on Agnes or for Father Roche to complete his chummy little chat with God. She started across the green, furious with all of them: with the steward for standing there with his spade, eager to dig more graves, with Eliwys for not coming, with Gawyn for not coming. No one's coming, she thought. No one.

"Katherine," Roche called.

She turned, and he half-ran up to her, his breath like a cloud around him.

"What is it?" she demanded.

He looked at her solemnly. "We must not give up hope," he said.

"Why not?" she burst out. "We're up to eighty-five per cent, and we haven't even gotten started. The clerk is dying, Rosemund's dying, you've all been exposed. Why shouldn't I give up hope?"

"God has not abandoned us utterly," he said. "Agnes is safe in His arms."

Safe, she thought bitterly. In the ground. In the cold. In the dark. She put her hands up to her face.

"She is in heaven, where the plague ca

"Nor things to come," Kivrin said.

"Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," he said. He put his hand on her shoulder, gently, as if he were anointing her. "It was His love that sent you to help us."

She put her hand up to his where it rested on her shoulder and held it tightly. "We must help each other," she said.

They stood there like that for a long minute, and then Roche said, "I must go and ring the bell that Agnes's soul may have safe passage."

She nodded and took her hand away. "I'll go check on Rosemund and the others," she said and went into the courtyard.

Eliwys had said she needed to stay with Rosemund, but when Kivrin got back to the manor house, she was nowhere near her. She lay curled up on Agnes's pallet, wrapped in her cloak, watching the door. "Perhaps his horse was stolen by those that would flee the pestilence," she said, "and that is why he is so long in coming."

"Agnes is buried," Kivrin said coldly, and went to check on Rosemund.

She was awake. She looked up solemnly at Kivrin when she knelt by her and reached for Kivrin's hand.