Doomsday Book

"Oh, Rosemund," Kivrin said, tears stinging her nose and eyes. "Sweetheart, how do you feel?"

"Hungry," Rosemund said. "Has my father come?"

"Not yet," Kivrin said, and it even seemed possible that he might. "I will fetch you some broth. You must rest until I come back. You have been very ill."

Rosemund obediently closed her eyes. They looked less sunken, though they still had dark bruises under them. "Where is Agnes?" she asked.

Kivrin smoothed her dark, tangled hair back from her face. "She is sleeping."

"Good," Rosemund said. "I would not have her shouting and playing. She is too noisy."

"I will fetch you the broth," Kivrin said. She went over to Eliwys. "Lady Eliwys, I have good news," she said eagerly. "Rosemund is awake."

Eliwys raised herself up on one elbow and looked at Rosemund, but distractedly, as if she were thinking of something else, and presently she lay down again.

Kivrin, alarmed, put her hand to Eliwys's forehead. It seemed warm, but Kivrin's hands were still cold from outside, and she couldn't tell for certain. "Are you ill?" she asked.

"No," Eliwys said, but still as if her mind were on something else. "What shall I tell him?"

"You can tell him that Rosemund is better," she said, and this time it seemed to get through to her. Eliwys got up and went over to Rosemund and sat down beside her. But by the time Kivrin came back from the kitchen with the broth, she had gone back to Agnes's pallet and lay curled up under the fur-trimmed cloak.

Rosemund was asleep, but it was not the frightening deathlike sleep of before. Her color was better, though her skin was still drawn tightly over her cheekbones.

Eliwys was asleep, too, or feigning sleep, and it was just as well. While she had been in the kitchen, the clerk had crawled off his pallet and halfway over the barricade, and when Kivrin tried to haul him back, he struck out at her wildly. She had to go fetch Father Roche to help subdue him.

His right eye had ulcerated, the plague eating its way out from inside, and the clerk clawed at it viciously with his hands. "Domine Jesu Christe," he swore, "fidelium defunctorium de poenis infermis." Save the souls of the faithful departed from the pains of hell.

Yes, Kivrin prayed, wrestling with his clawed hands, save him now.

She rummaged through Imeyne's medical kit again, searching for something to kill the pain. There was no opium powder, and was the opium poppy even in England yet in 1348? She found a few papery orange scraps that looked a little like poppy petals and steeped them in hot water, but the clerk couldn't drink it. His mouth was a horror of open sores, his teeth and tongue caked with dried blood.

He doesn't deserve this, Kivrin thought. Even if he did bring the plague here. Nobody deserves this. "Please," she prayed, and wasn't sure what she asked.

Whatever it was, it was not granted. The clerk began to vomit a dark bile, streaked with blood, and it snowed for two days, and Eliwys grew steadily worse. It did not seem to be the plague. She had no buboes and she didn't cough or vomit, and Kivrin wondered if it were illness or simply grief or guilt. "What shall I tell him?" Eliwys said over and over again. "He sent us here to keep us safe."

Kivrin felt her forehead. It was warm. They're all going to get it, she thought. Lord Guillaume sent them here to keep them safe, but they're all going to get it, one by one. I have to do something. But she couldn't think of anything. The only protection from the plague was flight, but they had already fled here, and it had not protected them, and they couldn't flee with Rosemund and Eliwys ill.

But Rosemund's getting stronger every day, Kivrin thought, and Eliwys doesn't have the plague. It's only a fever. Perhaps they have another estate where we could go. In the north.

The plague was not in Yorkshire yet. She could see to it that they kept away from the other people on the roads, that they weren't exposed.

She asked Rosemund if they had a manor in Yorkshire. "Nay," Rosemund said, sitting up against one of the benches. "In Dorset," but that was of no use. The plague was already there. And Rosemund, though she was better, was still to weak to sit up for more than a few minutes. She could never ride a horse. If we had horses, Kivrin thought.

"My father had a living in Surrey, also," Rosemund said. "We stayed there when Agnes was born." She looked at Kivrin. "Did Agnes die?"

"Yes," Kivrin said.

She nodded as if she were not surprised. "I heard her screaming."

Kivrin couldn't think of anything to say to that.

"My father is dead, isn't he?"

There was nothing to say to that either. He was almost certainly dead, and Gawyn, too. It had been eight days since he had left for Bath. Eliwys, still feverish, had said this morning, "He will come now that the storm is over," but even she had not seemed to believe it.

"He may yet come," Kivrin said. "The snow may have delayed him."

The steward came in, carrying his spade, and stopped at the barricade in front of them. He had been coming in every day to look at his son, staring at him dumbly over the upturned table, but now he only glanced at him and then turned to stare at Kivrin and Rosemund, leaning on his spade.

His cap and shoulders were covered with snow, and the blade of the spade was wet with it. He has been digging another grave, Kivrin thought. Whose?

"Has someone died?" she asked.

"Nay," he said, and went on looking almost speculatively at Rosemund.

Kivrin stood up. "Did you want something?"

He looked at her blankly, as if he could not comprehend the question, and then back at Rosemund. "No," he said, and picked up the spade and went out.

"Goes he to dig Agnes's grave?" Rosemund asked, looking after him.

"No," Kivrin said gently. "She is already buried in the churchyard."

"Goes he then to dig mine?"

"No," Kivrin said, appalled. "No! You're not going to die. You're getting better. You were very ill, but the worst is over. Now you must rest and try to sleep so you can get well."

Rosemund lay down obediently and closed her eyes, but after a minute she opened them again. "My father being dead, the crown will dispose of my dowry," she said. "Think you Sir Bloet still lives?"

I hope not, Kivrin thought, and then, poor child, has she been worrying about her marriage all this time? Poor little thing. His being dead is the only good to come out of the plague. If he is dead. "You mustn't worry about him now. You must rest and get your strength back."

"The king will sometimes honor a previous betrothal," Rosemund said, her thin hands plucking at the blanket, "if both parties be agreed."

You don't have to agree to anything, Kivrin thought. He's dead. The bishop killed them.

"If they are not agreed, the king will bid me marry who he will," Rosemund said, "and Sir Bloet at least is known to me."

No, Kivrin thought, and knew it was probably the best thing. Rosemund had been conjuring worse horrors than Sir Bloet, monsters and cutthroats, and Kivrin knew they existed.

Rosemund would be sold off to some nobleman the king owed a debt to or whose allegiance he was trying to buy, one of the troublesome supporters of the Black Prince, perhaps, and taken God knew where to God knew what situation.

There were worse things than a leering old man and a shrewish sister-in-law. Baron Garnier had kept his wife in chains for twenty years. The Count of Anjou had burned his alive. And Rosemund would have no family, no friends, to protect her, to tend her when she was ill.

I'll take her away, Kivrin thought suddenly, to somewhere where Bloet can't find her and we'll be safe from the plague.

There was no such place. It was already in Bath and Oxford, and moving south and east to London, and then Kent, north through the Midlands to Yorkshire and back across the cha