Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"Rosemund does not ride in seemly fashion for a maid," Agnes said primly.

She had ridden out ahead of the donkey and was nearly out of sight where the road curved, waiting impatiently for them to catch up.

"Rosemund!" Kivrin called, and Rosemund galloped back, nearly colliding with the donkey and then pulling her mare's reins up short.

"Can we go no faster than this?" she demanded, wheeled around, and rode ahead again. "We will never finish ere it rains."

They were riding in thick woods now, the road scarcely wider than a bridle path. Kivrin looked at the trees, trying to remember having seen them. They passed a thicket of willows, but it was set too far back from the road, and a trickle of ice- bordered water ran next to it.

There was a huge sycamore on the other side of the path. It stood in a little open space, draped with mistletoe. Beyond it was a line of wild service trees, so evenly spaced they might have been planted. She didn't remember ever having seen any of this before.

They had brought her along this road, and she'd hoped that something might trigger her memory, but nothing looked familiar at all. It had been too dark and she had been too ill.

All she really remembered was the drop, though it had the same hazy, unreal quality as the trip to the manor. There had been a clearing and an oak and a thicket of willows. And Father Roche's face bending over her as she sat against the wagon wheel.

He must have been with Gawyn when he found her, or else Gawyn had brought him back to the drop. She could see his face clearly in the light from the fire. And then she'd fallen off the horse at the fork.

They hadn't come to any fork yet. She hadn't even seen any paths, though she knew they had to be there, cutting from village to village and leading to the fields and the hut of the sick cottar Eliwys had gone to see.

They climbed a low hill, and at the top of it Father Roche looked back to see if they were following. He knows where the drop is, Kivrin thought. She had hoped he had some idea where it was, that Gawyn had described it to him or told him which road it lay along, but he hadn't had to. Father Roche already knew where the drop was. He had been there.

Agnes and Kivrin came to the top of the hill, but all she could see was trees, and below them more trees. They had to be in Wychwood Forest, but if they were there were over a hundred square kilometers in which the drop could be hidden. She would never have found it on her own. She could scarcely see ten meters into the underbrush.

She was amazed at the thickness of the woods as they came down the hill into the heart of them. There were clearly no paths between the trees here. There was scarcely any space at all, and what there was was filled with fallen branches and tangled thickets and snow.

She had been wrong about not recognizing anything — she knew these woods after all. It was the forest Snow White had got lost in, and Hansel and Gretel, and all those princes. There were wolves in it, and bears, and perhaps even witch's cottages, and that was where all those stories had come from, wasn't it, the Middle Ages? And no wonder. Anyone could get lost in there.

Roche stopped and stood beside his donkey while Rosemund cantered back to him and they caught up, and Kivrin wondered wryly if he had lost his way. But as soon as they came up to him, he plunged off through a thicket and onto an even narrower path that wasn't visible from the road.

Rosemund couldn't pass Father Roche and his donkey without shoving them aside, but she followed nearly treading on the donkey's hind hooves, and Kivrin wondered again what was bothering her. "Sir Bloet has many powerful friends," Lady Imeyne had said. She had called him an ally, but Kivrin wondered if he really was, or if Rosemund's father had told her something about him that made her so distressed at the prospect of his coming to Ashencote.

They went a short way along the path, past a thicket of willows that looked like the one by the drop, and then turned off the path, squeezing through a stand of firs and emerging next to a holly tree.

Kivrin had been expecting holly bushes like the ones in Brasenose's quad, but this was a tree. It towered over them, spreading out above the confines of the spruces, its red berries bright among the masses of glossy leaves.

Father Roche began taking the sacks from the back of the donkey, Agnes attempting to help him. Rosemund pulled a short, fat-bladed knife our of her girdle and began hacking at the sharp-leaved lower branches.

Kivrin waded through the snow to the other side of the tree. She had caught a glimpse of white she thought might be the stand of birches, but it was only a branch, half-fallen between two trees and covered with snow.

Agnes appeared, with Roche behind her carrying a wicked- looking dagger. Kivrin had thought that knowing who he was would work some transformation, but he still looked like a cutthroat, standing there looming over Agnes.

He handed Agnes one of the coarse bags. "You must hold the bag open like this," he said, bending down to show her how the top of the bag should be folded back, "and I will put the branches into it." He began chopping at the branches, oblivious to the spiky leaves. Kivrin took the branches from him and put them in the bag carefully, so the stiff leaves wouldn't break.

"Father Roche," she said, "I wanted to thank you for helping me when I was ill and for bringing me to the manor when I — "

"When that you were fallen," he said, hacking at a stubborn branch.

She had intended to say, "when I was set upon by thieves," and his response surprised her. She remembered falling off the horse and wondered if that was when he had happened along. But if it was, they had already come a long way from the drop, and he wouldn't know where it was. And she remembered him there , at the drop.

There was no point in speculating. "Do you know the place where Gawyn found me?" she asked, and held her breath.

"Aye," he said, sawing at a thick branch.

She felt suddenly sick with relief. He knew where the drop was. "Is it far from here?"

"Nay," he said. He wrenched the branch off.

"Would you take me there?" Kivrin asked.

"Why would you go there?" Agnes asked, spreading her arms out wide to keep the bag open. "What if the wicked men be still there?"

Roche was looking at her as if he were wondering the same thing.

"I thought that if I saw the place, I might remember who I am and where I came from," she said.

He handed her the branch, holding it so she could take it without being stabbed. "I will take you there," he said.

"Thank you," Kivrin said. Thank you. She slid the branch in next to the others, and Roche tied the top shut and hoisted the bag over his shoulder.

Rosemund appeared, dragging her bag in the snow behind her. "Are you not finished yet?" she said.

Roche took her bag, too, and tied them on the donkey's back. Kivrin lifted Agnes onto her pony and helped Rosemund mount, and Father Roche knelt and linked his big hands so Kivrin could step up into the stirrup.

He had helped her back on the white horse when she fell off. When that she was fallen. She remembered his big hands steadying her. But they had come a long way from the drop by then, and why would Gawyn have taken Roche all the way back to the drop? She did not remember going back, but it was all so dim and confused. In her delirium it must have seemed farther than it was.

Roche led the donkey back through the firs and onto the path, going back the way they had come. Rosemund let him get ahead and then said, in a voice just like Imeyne's, "Where goes he now? The ivy lies not this way."

"We go to see the place where Lady Katherine was set upon," Agnes said.

Rosemund looked at Kivrin suspiciously. "Why would you go thence?" she asked. "Your goods and gear have already been fetched to the manor."