Doomsday Book

He still did not appear to have wakened, but when Kivrin wrung out a strip torn from the altar cloth and bathed his forehead with it, he said, without opening his eyes, "I feared that you had gone."

She wiped the crusted blood by his mouth. "I would not go to Scotland without you."

"Not Scotland," he said. "To Heaven."

She ate a little of the stale manchet and cheese from the food sack and tried to sleep a little, but it was too cold. When Roche turned and sighed in his sleep, she could see his breath.

She built a fire, pulling up the stick fence around one of the huts and piling the sticks in front of the rood screen, but it filled the church with smoke, even with the doors propped open. Roche coughed and vomited again. This time it was nearly all blood. She put the fire out and made two more hurried trips for as many furs and blankets as she could find and made a sort of nest of them.

Roche's fever went up in the night. He kicked at the covers and raged at Kivrin, mostly in words she couldn't understand, though once he said, clearly, "Go, curse you!" and over and over, furiously, "It grows dark!"

Kivrin brought the candles from the altar and the top of the rood screen and set them in front of St. Catherine's statue. When his ravings about the dark got bad, she lit them all and covered him up again, and it seemed to help a little.

His fever rose higher, and his teeth chattered in spite of the rugs heaped over him. It seemed to Kivrin that his skin was already darkening, the blood vessels hemorrhaging under the skin. Don't do this. Please.

In the morning he was better. His skin had not blackened after all; it was only the uncertain light of the candles that had made it seem mottled. His fever had come down a little and he slept soundly through the morning and most of the afternoon, not vomiting at all. She went out for more water before it got dark.

Some people recovered spontaneously and some were saved by prayers. Not everyone died who was infected. The death rate for pneumonic plague was only ninety per cent.

He was awake when she went in, lying in a shaft of smoky light. She knelt and held a cup of water under his mouth, tilting his head up so he could drink.

"It is the blue sickness," he said when she let his head back down.

"You're not going to die," she said. Ninety per cent. Ninety per cent.

"You must hear my confession."

No. He could not die. She would be left here all alone. She shook her head, unable to speak.

"Bless me, Father, for I have si

He hadn't si

" — in thought, word, deed, and omission. I was angry with Lady Imeyne. I shouted at Maisry." He swallowed. "I had carnal thoughts of a saint of the Lord."

Carnal thoughts.

"I humbly ask pardon of God, and absolution of you, Father, if you think me worthy."

There is nothing to forgive, she wanted to say. Your sins are no sins. Carnal thoughts. We held down Rosemund and barricaded the village against a harmless boy and buried a six- month-old baby. It is the end of the world. Surely you are to be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

She raised her hand helplessly, unable to speak the words of absolution, but he did not seem to notice. "Oh, My God," he said, "I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee."

Offended thee. You're the saint of the Lord, she wanted to tell him, and where the hell is He? Why doesn't he come and save you?

There was no oil. She dipped her fingers in the bucket and made the sign of the cross over his eyes and ears, his nose and mouth, his hands that had held her hand when she was dying.

"Quid quid deliquiste," he said, and she dipped her hand in the water again and marked the cross on the soles of his feet.

"Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine," he prompted.

"Ab omnibus malis," Kivrin said, "praeteritis, praesentibus, et futuris." Deliver us, we beseech, Thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present and to come.

"Perducat te ad vitam aeternam," he murmured.

And bring thee unto life everlasting. "Amen," Kivrin said, and leaned forward to catch the blood that come pouring out of him.

He vomited the rest of the night and most of the next day, and then sank into unconsciousness in the afternoon, his breathing shallow and unsteady. Kivrin sat beside him, bathing his hot forehead. "Don't die," she said when his breathing caught and struggled on, more labored. "Don't die," she said softly. "What will I do without you? I will be all alone."

"You must not stay here," he said. He opened his eyes a little. They were red and swollen.

"I thought you were asleep," she said regretfully. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"You must go again to heaven," he said, "and pray for my soul in purgatory, that my time there may be short."

Purgatory. As if God would make him suffer any longer than he was already.

"You will not need my prayers," she said.

"You must return to that place whence you came," he said, and his hand came up in a vague drifting motion in front of his face, as if he were trying to ward off a blow.

Kivrin caught his hand and held it, but gently, so as not to bruise the skin, and laid it against her cheek.

You must return to that place whence you came. Would that I could, she thought. She wondered how long they had held the drop open before they gave up. Four days? A week? Perhaps it was still open. Mr. Dunworthy wouldn't have let them close it while there was any hope at all. But there isn't, she thought. I'm not in 1320. I'm here, at the end of the world.

"I can't," she said. "I don't know the way."

"You must try to remember," Roche said, freeing his hand and waving it. "Agnes, pass the fork."

He was delirious. Kivrin got up on her knees, afraid he might try to rise again.

"Where you fell," he said, putting his hand under the elbow of the waving one to brace it, and Kivrin realized he was trying to point. "Pass the fork."

Past the fork.

"What is past the fork?" she asked.

"The place where first I found you when you fell from heaven," he said and let his arms fall.

"I thought that Gawyn had found me."

"Aye," he said as if he saw no contradiction in what she said. "I met him on the road while I was bringing you to the manor."

He had met him on the road.

"The place where Agnes fell," he said, trying to help her remember. "The day we went for the holly."

Why didn't you tell me when we were there? Kivrin thought, but she knew that, too. He had had his hands full with the donkey, which had balked at the top of the hill and refused to go any farther.

Because it saw me come through, she thought, and knew that he had stood over her, in the glade, looking down at her as she lay there with her arm over her face. I heard him, she thought. I saw his footprint.

"You must return to that place, and thence again to heaven," he said and closed his eyes.

He had seen her come through, had come and stood over her as she lay there with her eyes closed, had put her on his donkey when she was ill. And she had never guessed, not even when she saw him in the church, not even when Agnes told her he thought she was a saint.

Because Gawyn had told her he had found her. Gawyn, who was 'like to boast', and who had wanted more than anything to impress Lady Eliwys. "I found you and brought you hence," he had told her, and perhaps he didn't even consider it to be a lie. The village priest was no one, after all. And all the time, when Rosemund was ill and Gawyn had ridden off to Bath and the drop opened and then closed again forever, Roche had known where it was.

"There is no need to wait for me," he said. "No doubt they long for your return."