Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

"She wots that if she see the place she will remember somewhat," Agnes said. "Lady Kivrin, if you remember you who you are, must you return home?"

"Certes, she will," Rosemund said. "She must needs return to her family. She cannot stay with us forever." She was only doing this to provoke Agnes, and it worked.

"She can !" Agnes said. "She will be our nurse."

"Why would she wish to stay with such a mewling babe?" Rosemund said, kicking her horse into a trot.

"I am no babe!" Agnes called after her. "You are the babe!" She rode back to Kivrin. "I do not wish you to leave me!"

"I won't leave you," she said. "Come, Father Roche is waiting."

He was at the road, and as soon as they rode up, he started on. Rosemund was already far ahead, dashing along the snow- filled path, sending up sprays of snow.

They crossed a little stream and came to a fork, the part they were on curving away to the right, the other continuing nearly straight for a hundred meters or so and then making a sharp jog to the left. Rosemund sat at the fork, letting her horse stamp and toss its head to express her impatience.

I fell off the white horse at a fork in the road, Kivrin thought, trying to remember the trees, the road, the little stream, anything. There were dozens of forks along the paths that criss-crossed Wychwood Forest and no reason to think this was the one, but it apparently was. Father Roche turned right at the fork and went a few meters and then plunged into the woods, leading the donkey.

There were no willows where he left the road, and no hill. He must be going back the way Gawyn had brought her. She remembered them going a long way through the woods before they came to the fork.

They followed him into the trees, Rosemund in the rear, and almost immediately had to dismount and lead their horses. Roche wasn't following any path that Kivrin could see. he picked his way through the snow, ducking under low branches that showered snow down on his neck, and skirting around a spiny clump of blackthorn.

Kivrin tried to memorize the scenery so she could find her way back here, but it all had a defeating sameness. As long as there was snow she could follow their foot- and hoofprints. She would have to come back alone before it melted and mark the trail with notches or scraps of cloth or something. Or breadcrumbs, like Hansel and Gretel.

It was easy to see how they, and Snow White, and the princes, had got lost in the woods. They had only gone a few hundred meters and already, looking back, Kivrin wasn't sure which direction the road lay, even with the footprints. Hansel and Gretel could have wandered for months and never found their way back home, or found the witch's cottage either.

Father Roche's donkey stopped.

"What is it?" Kivrin asked.

Father Roche led the donkey off to the side and tied it to an alder tree. "This is the place."

It wasn't the drop. It was scarcely even a clearing, only a space where an oak tree had spread out its branches and kept the other trees from growing. It made almost a tent, and under it the ground was only powdered with snow.

"Can we build a fire?" Agnes asked, walking under the branches to the remains of a campfire. A fallen log had been dragged over to it. Agnes sat down on it. "I am cold," she said, poking at the blackened stones with her foot.

It hadn't burned very long. The sticks were barely charred. Someone had kicked dirt on it to put it out. Father Roche had squatted in front of her, the light from the fire flickering on his face.

"Well?" Rosemund said impatiently. "Do you remember aught?"

She had been here. She remembered the fire. She had thought they were lighting it for the stake. But that couldn't be right. Roche had been at the drop. She remembered him leaning over her as she sat against the wagon wheel.

"Are you sure this is the place where Gawyn found me?"

"Aye," he said, frowning.

"If the wicked man comes, I will fight him with my dirk," Agnes said, pulling one of the half-charred sticks out of the fire and brandishing it in the air. The blackened end broke off. Agnes squatted next to the fire and pulled out another stick and then sat down on the ground, her back against the log, and struck the two sticks together. Pieces of charred wood flew off them.

Kivrin looked at Agnes. She had sat against the log while they made the fire, and Gawyn had leaned over her, his hair red in the fire's light, and said something to her that she couldn't understand. And then he had put the fire out, kicking it apart with his boots, and the smoke came up and blinded her.

"Have you remembered you?" Agnes said, tossing the sticks back among the stones.

Roche was still frowning at her. "Are you ill, Lady Katherine?" he asked.

"No," she said, trying to smile. "It was just…I'd hoped that if I saw the place where I was attacked, I might remember."

He looked at her solemnly a moment, the way he had in the church, and then turned and went over to his donkey. "Come," he said.

"Have you remembered?" Agnes insisted, clapping her fur mittens together. They were covered with soot.

"Agnes!" Rosemund said. "Look you how you have dirtied your mittens." She pulled Agnes roughly to her feet. "And you have ruined your cloak, sitting in the cold snow. You wicked girl!"

Kivrin pulled the two girls apart. "Rosemund, untie Agnes's pony," she said. "It is time to go gather the ivy." She brushed the snow off Agnes's cloak and wiped ineffectually at the white fur.

Father Roche was standing by his donkey, waiting for them, still with that odd, sober expression.

"We'll clean your mittens when we get home," she said hastily. "Come, we must go with Father Roche."

Kivrin took the mare's reins and followed the girls and Father Roche back the way they had come for a few meters and then in another direction that brought them almost immediately out onto a road. She couldn't see the fork, and she wondered if they were farther along the road or on a different road altogether. It all looked the same — willows and little clearings and oak trees.

It was clear what had happened. Gawyn had tried to take her to the manor, but she had been too ill. She had fallen off his horse and he had taken her into the woods and built a campfire and left her there, propped against the fallen log, while he went for help.

Or he had intended to build a fire and stay there with her until morning, and Father Roche had seen the campfire and come to help, and between them they had taken her to the manor. Father Roche had no idea where the drop was. He had assumed Gawyn had found her there, under the oak tree.

The image of him leaning over her as she sat against the wagon wheel was part of her delirium. She had dreamed it as she lay in the sickroom, the way she had dreamed the bells and the stake and the white horse.

"Where does he go now?" Rosemund asked peevishly, and Kivrin felt like slapping her. "There is ivy nearer to home. And now it begins to rain."

She was right. The mist was turning into a drizzle.

"We could have been finished and home ere now if the babe Agnes had not brought her puppy!" She galloped off ahead again, and Kivrin didn't even try to stop her.

"Rosemund is a churl," Agnes said.

"Yes," Kivrin said. "She is. Do you know what's the matter with her?"

"It is because of Sir Bloet," Agnes said. "She is to wed him."

"What?" Kivrin said. Imeyne had said something about a wedding, but she'd assumed one of Sir Bloet's daughters was to marry one of Lord Guillaume's sons. "How can Sir Bloet marry Rosemund? Isn't he already married to Lady Yvolde?"

"Nay," Agnes said, looking surprised. "Lady Yvolde is Sir Bloet's sister."

"But Rosemund isn't old enough," she said, and knew she was. Girls in the thirteen hundreds had frequently been betrothed before they were of age, sometimes even at birth. Marriage in the Middle Ages had been a business arrangement, a way to join lands and enhance social standing, and Rosemund had no doubt been groomed from Agnes's age to be married to someone like Sir Bloet. But every mediaeval story of virginal girls married to toothless, dissipated old men came to her in a rush.