Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

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 channel to Germany and the Low Countries. It had even gone to Norway, floating in on a ship of dead men. There was nowhere that was safe.

"Is Gawyn here?" Rosemund asked, and she sounded like her mother, her grandmother. "I would have him ride to Courcy and tell Sir Bloet that I would come to him."

"Gawyn?" Eliwys said from her pallet. "Is he coming?"

No, Kivrin thought. No one's coming. Not even Mr. Dunworthy.

It didn't matter that she had missed the rendezvous. There would have been no one there. Because they didn't know she was in 1348. If they did, they would never have left her here.

Something must have gone wrong with the net. Mr. Dunworthy had been worried about sending her so far back without slippage checks . "There could be unforeseen complications at that distance," he'd said. Perhaps an unforeseen complication had garbled the fix or made them lose it, and they were looking for her in 1320. I've missed the rendezvous by nearly thirty years, she thought.

"Gawyn?" Eliwys said again and tried to rise from her pallet.

She could not. She was growing steadily worse, though she still had none of the marks of the plague. When it began to snow, she had said, relieved, "He will not come now until the storm is over," and gotten up and gone to sit with Rosemund, but by the afternoon she had to lie down again, and her fever went steadily higher.

Roche heard her confession, looking worn out. They were all worn out. If they sat down to rest, they were asleep in seconds. The steward, coming in to look at his children, had stood at the barricade, snoring, and Kivrin had drowsed off while tending the fire and burned her hand badly.

We can't go on like this, she thought, watching Father Roche making the sign of the cross over Eliwys. He'll die of exhaustion. He'll come down with the plague.

I have to get them away, she thought again. The plague didn't reach everywhere. There were villages that were completely untouched. It had skipped over Poland and Bohemia, and there were parts of northern Scotland it had never reached.

" Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis ," Father Roche said, his voice as comforting as it had been when she was dying, and she knew it was hopeless.

He would never leave his parishioners. The history of the Black Death was full of stories of priests who had abandoned their people, who had refused to perform burials, who had locked themselves in their churches and monasteries and run away. She wondered now if those statistics were inaccurate, too.

And even if she found some way to take them all, Eliwys, turning even now as she made her confession to look at the door, would insist on waiting for Gawyn, for her husband, to come, as she was convinced they would now that the snow had stopped.