Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"What is your name?"

Mr. Latimer had said Isabel was the most common woman's name in the 1300's. How common was Katherine? And Mediaeval didn't know the daughters' names. What if Yorkshire wasn't distant enough, after all, and Lady Imeyne knew the family. She would take it as further proof that she was a spy. She had better stay with the common name and tell them she was Isabel de Beauvrier.

The old woman would be only too happy to believe that the priest had gotten her name wrong. It would be further proof of his ignorance, of his incompetence, further reason to send to Bath for a new chaplain. And he had held Kivrin's hand, he had told her not to be afraid.

"My name is Katherine," she said.

I'm not the only one in trouble, Mr. Dunworthy. I think the contemps who've taken me in are, too.

The lord of the manor, Lord Guillaume, isn't here. He's in Bath, testifying at the trial of a friend of his, which is apparently a dangerous thing to do. His mother, Lady Imeyne, called him a fool for getting mixed up in it, and Lady Eliwys, his wife, seems worried and nervous.

They've come here in a great hurry and without servants. Fourteenth-century noblewomen had at least one lady-in-waiting apiece, but neither Eliwys nor Imeyne has any, and they left the children's — Guillaume's two little girls are here-nurse behind. Lady Imeyne wanted to send for a new one, and a chaplain, but Lady Eliwys won't let her.

I think Lord Guillaume must be expecting trouble and has spirited his womenfolk away here to keep them safe. Or possibly the trouble's already happened — Agnes, the littler of the two girls, told me about the chaplain's death and someone named Gilbert whose "head was all red," so perhaps there's already been bloodshed, and the women have come here to escape it. One of Lord Guillaume's privés has come with them, and he's fully armed.

There weren't any major uprisings against Edward II in Oxfordshire in 1320, although no one was very happy with the king and his favorite, Hugh Despenser, and there were plots and minor skirmishes everywhere else. Two of the barons, Lancaster and Mortimer, took sixty-three manors away from the Despensers that year — this year. Lord Guillaume-or his friend-may have got involved in one of those plots.

It could be something else entirely, of course, a land dispute or something. People in the 1300's spent almost as much time in court as the contemps in the last part of the twentieth century. But I don't think so. Lady Eliwys jumps at every sound, and she's forbidden Lady Imeyne to tell the neighbors they're here.

I suppose in one way this is a good thing. If they aren't telling anyone they're here, they won't tell anyone about me or send messengers to try to find out who I am. On the other hand, there is the chance of armed men kicking in the door at any moment. Or of Gawyn, the only person who knows where the drop is, getting killed defending the manor.

15 December, 1320 (Old Style.) The interpreter is working now, more or less, and the contemps seem to understand what I'm saying. I can understand them, though their Middle English bears no resemblance to what Mr. Latimer taught me. It's full of inflections and has a much softer French sound. Mr. Latimer wouldn't even recognize his " Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote ."

The interpreter translates what the contemps say with the syntax and some of the words intact, and at first I tried to phrase what I said the same way, saying "Aye" and "Nay" and, "I remember naught of whence I came," but thinking about it's deadly — the interpreter takes forever to come up with a translation, and I stammer and struggle with the pronunciations. So I just speak modern English and hope what comes out of my mouth is close to being right, and that the interpreter isn't slaughtering the idioms and the inflections. Heaven only knows how I sound. Like a French spy probably.

The language isn't the only thing off. My dress is all wrong, of far too fine a weave, and the blue is too bright, dyed with woad or not. I haven't seen any bright colors at all. I'm too tall, my teeth are too good, and my hands are wrong, in spite of my muddy labors at the dig. They should not only have been dirtier, but I should have chilblains. Everyone's hands, even the children's, are chapped and bleeding. It is, after all, December.

December the fifteenth. I overheard part of an argument between Lady Imeyne and Lady Eliwys about getting a replacement chaplain, and Imeyne said, "There is more than time enough to send. It is full ten days till Christ's mass." So tell Mr. Gilchrist I've ascertained my temporal location at least. But I don't know how far from the drop I am. I've tried to remember Gawyn bringing me here, but that whole night is hopelessly muddled, and part of what I remember didn't happen. I remember a white horse that had bells on its harness, and the bells were playing Christmas carols, like the carillon in Carfax Tower.

The fifteenth of December means it's Christmas Eve there, and you'll be giving your sherry party and then walking over to St. Mary the Virgin's for the ecumenical service. It is hard to comprehend that you are over seven hundred years away. I keep thinking that if I got out of bed (which I can't because I'm too dizzy — I think my temp is back up) and opened the door I would find not a mediaeval hall but Brasenose's lab, and all of you waiting for me, Badri and Dr. Ahrens and you, Mr. Dunworthy, polishing your spectacles and saying I told you so. I wish you were.

Lady Imeyne did not believe Kivrin's story about having amnesia. When Agnes brought her hound, which turned out to be a tiny black puppy with huge feet, in to Kivrin, she said, "This is my hound, Lady Kivrin." She held it out to Kivrin, clutching its fat middle. "You can pet him. Do you remember how?"

"Aye," Kivrin said, taking the puppy out of Agnes's too- tight grasp and stroking its baby-soft fur. "Aren't you supposed to be at your sewing?"

Agnes took the puppy back from her. "Grandmother went to chide with the steward, and Maisry went out to the stable." She twisted the puppy around to give it a kiss. "So I came to speak to you. Grandmother is very angry. The steward and all his family were living in the hall when we came hence." She gave the puppy another kiss. "Grandmother says it is his wife who tempts him to sin."

Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like "grandmother." The word hadn't even existed until the eighteenth century, but the interpreter was taking huge, disconcerting leaps now, though it left Agnes's mispronunciation of Katherine intact and sometimes left blanks in places where the meaning should have been obvious from context. She hoped her subconscious knew what it was doing.

"Are you a daltriss , Lady Kivrin?" Agnes said.

Her subconscious obviously didn't know what it was doing. "What?" she asked.

"A daltriss ," Agnes said. The puppy was trying desperately to squirm out of Agnes's grip. "Grandmother says you are one. She says a wife fleeing to her lover would have good cause to remember naught."

An adultress. Well, at least it was better than a French spy. Or perhaps Lady Imeyne thought she was both.

Agnes kissed the puppy again. "Grandmother said a lady had no good cause to travel through the woods in winter."

They were both right, Kivrin thought, Lady Imeyne and Mr. Dunworthy. She still had not found out where the drop was, although she had asked to speak with Gawyn when Lady Eliwys came in the morning to bathe her temple.

"He has ridden out to search for the wicked men who robbed you," Eliwys had said, putting an ointment on Kivrin's temple that smelled like garlic and stung horribly. "Do you remember aught of them?"