Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

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."

"Hush," she said gently. "Try to sleep."

He sank into a troubled doze again, his hands still moving restlessly, trying to point and plucking at the coverings. He pushed the covers off and reached for his groin again. Poor man, Kivrin thought, he was not to be spared any indignities.

She placed his hands back on his chest and covered him, but he pushed the covering down again and pulled the tail of his tunic up over his breeches. He grabbed for his groin and then shuddered and let go, and something in the movement made Kivrin think of Rosemund.

She frowned. He had vomited blood. That, and the stage the epidemic had reached had made her think he had the pneumonic plague, and she hadn't seen any buboes under his arms when she took his coat off. She pulled the tail of his robe aside, exposing his coarsely woven woolen hose. They were tight around his middle and entangled with the tail of his alb. She would never be able to pull them off without lifting him, and there was so much wadded cloth she couldn't see anything.

She laid her hand gently on his thigh, remembering how sensitive Rosemund's arm had been. He flinched but did not waken, and she slid her hand to the inside and up, only just touching the cloth. It was hot. "Forgive me," she said and slid her hand between his legs.

He screamed and made a convulsive movement, his knees coming up sharply, but Kivrin had already jerked back out of the way, her hand over her mouth. The bubo was gigantic and red hot to the touch. She should have lanced it hours ago.

Roche had not awakened, even when he screamed. His face was mottled, and his breath came steadily, noisily. His spasmodic movement had sent his coverings flying again. She stopped and covered him. His knees came up, but less violently, and she pulled the coverings up around him and then took the last candle from the top of the rood screen, put it in the lantern and lit it from one of St. Catherine's.

"I'll be back in just a moment," she said, and went down the nave and out.

The light outside made her blink, though it was nearly evening. The sky was overcast, but there was little wind, and it seemed warmer outside than in the church. She ran across the green, shielding the open part of the lantern with her hand.

There was a sharp knife in the barn. She had used it to cut the rope when she was packing the wagon. She would have to sterilize it before she lanced the bubo. She had to open the swollen lymph node before it ruptured. When the buboes were in the groin, they were perilously close to the femoral artery. Even if Roche didn't bleed to death immediately, all that poison would go straight into his bloodstream. It should have been lanced hours ago.

She ran between the barn and the empty pig sty and into the courtyard. The stable door stood open, and she could hear someone inside. Her heart jerked. "Who is there?" she said, holding the lantern up.

The steward's cow was standing in one of the stalls, eating the spilled oats. She raised her head and lowed at Kivrin, and started toward her at a stumbling run.

"I don't have time," Kivrin said. She snatched up the knife from where it lay on the tangle of ropes and ran out. The cow followed, lumbering awkwardly because of its overfull udder and mooing piteously.

"Go away ," Kivrin said, near tears. "I have to help him or he'll die." She looked at the knife. It was filthy. When she had found it in the barn, it had been dirty, and she had laid it down in the manure and dirt of the barn floor betweentimes while she was cutting the ropes.