Connie Willis - Doomsday Book

Kivrin looked at Lady Yvolde's prie-dieu longingly, thinking of the plastic kneeling pads that hung on the backs of the chairs in St. Mary's. She had never realized until now what a blessing they were, what a blessing the hard wooden chairs were either until they stood again and she thought about how they would have to remain standing through the whole service.

The floor was cold. The church was cold, in spite of all the lights. They were mostly cressets, set along the walls and in front of the holly-banked statue of St. Catherine, though there was a tall, thin, yellowish candle set in the greenery of each of the windows, but the effect was probably not what Father Roche had intended. The bright flames only made the colored panes of glass darker, almost black.

More of the yellowish candles were in the silver candelabra on either side of the altar, and holly was heaped in front of them and along the top of the rood screen, and Father Roche had set Lady Imeyne's beeswax candles in among the sharp, shiny leaves. He'd done a job of decorating the church that should please even Lady Imeyne, Kivrin thought, and glanced at her.

She was holding her reliquary between her folded hands, but her eyes were open, and she was staring at the top of the rood screen. Her mouth was tight with disapproval, and Kivrin supposed she hadn't wanted the candles there, but it was the perfect place for them. They illuminated the crucifix and the Last Judgment and lit nearly the whole nave.

They made the whole church seem different, homier, more familiar, like St. Mary's on Christmas Eve. Dunworthy had taken her to the ecumenical service last Christmas. She had planned to go to midnight mass at the Holy Re-Formed to hear it said in Latin, but there hadn't been a midnight mass. The priest had been asked to read the gospel for the ecumenical service, so he had moved the mass to four in the afternoon.

Agnes was fiddling with her bell again. Lady Imeyne turned and glared at her across her piously folded hands, and Rosemund leaned across Kivrin and shhhed her.

"You mustn't ring your bell until the mass is over," Kivrin whispered, bending close to Agnes so no one else could hear her.

"I rang it not ," Agnes whispered back in a voice that could be heard all over the church. "The ribbon binds too tight. See you?"

Kivrin couldn't see any such thing. In fact, if she had taken the time to tie it tighter, it wouldn't be ringing at every movement, but there was no way she was going to argue with an overtired child when the mass was going to begin any minute. She reached for the knot.

Agnes must have been trying to pull the bell off over her wrist. The already fraying ribbon had tightened into a solid little knot. Kivrin picked at its edges with her fingernails, keeping an eye on the people behind her. The service would start with a procession, Father Roche and his acolytes, if he had any, would come down the aisle bearing the holy water and chant the Asperges.

Kivrin pulled on the ribbon and both sides of the knot, tightening it beyond any hope of ever getting it off without cutting it, but getting a little more slack. It still wasn't enough to get the ribbon off. She glanced back at the church door. The bell had stopped, but there was still no sign of Father Roche and no aisle for him to come up either. The townsfolk had crowded in, filling the whole rear of the church. Someone had lifted a child up onto Imeyne's husband's tomb and was holding him there so he could see, but there wasn't anything to see yet.

She went back to working on the bell. She got two fingers under the ribbon and pulled up on it, trying to stretch it.

"Tear it not !" Agnes said in that carrying stage whisper of hers. Kivrin took hold of the bell and hastily pulled it around so it lay in Agnes's palm.

"Hold it like this," she whispered, cupping Agnes's fingers over it. "Tightly."

Agnes obligingly clenched her little fist. Kivrin folded Agnes's other hand over the top of the fist in a so-so facsimile of a praying attitude and said softly, "Hold tight to the bell, and it will not ring."

Agnes promptly pressed her hands to her forehead in an attitude of angelic piety.

"Good girl," Kivrin said, and put her arm around her. She glanced back at the church doors. They were still closed. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to face the altar.

Father Roche was standing there. He was dressed in an embroidered white stole and a yellowed white alb with a hem more frayed than Agnes's ribbon, and was holding a book. He had obviously been waiting for her, had obviously stood there watching her the whole time she tended to Agnes, but there was no reproof in his face or even impatience. His face held some other expression entirely, and she was reminded suddenly of Mr. Dunworthy, standing and watching her through the thin-glass partition.

Lady Imeyne cleared her throat, a sound that was almost a growl, and he seemed to come to himself. He handed the book to Cob, who was wearing a grimy cassock and a pair of too-large leather shoes, and knelt in front of the altar. Then he took the book back and began saying the lections.

Kivrin said them to herself along with him, thinking the Latin and hearing the echo of the interpreter's translation.

"'Whom saw ye, O Shepherds?'" Father Roche recited in Latin, beginning the responsory. "'Speak: tell us who hath appeared on the earth.'"

He stopped, frowning at Kivrin.

He's forgotten it, she thought. She glanced anxiously at Imeyne, hoping she wouldn't realize there was more to come, but Imeyne had raised her head and was scowling at him, her jaw in the silk wimple clenched.

Roche was still frowning at Kivrin. "'Speak, what saw ye?'" he said, and Kivrin gave a sigh of relief. "'Tell us who hath appeared.'"

That wasn't right. She mouthed the next line, willing him to understand it. "'We saw the newborn Child.'"

He gave no indication that he had seen what she said, though he was looking straight at her. "I saw…" he said, and stopped again.

"' We saw the newborn Child ,'" Kivrin whispered, and could feel Lady Imeyne turning to look at her.

"'And angels singing praise unto the Lord,'" Roche said, and that wasn't right either, but Lady Imeyne turned back to the front to fasten her disapproving gaze on Roche.

The bishop would no doubt hear about this, and about the candles and the fraying hem, and who knew what other errors and infractions he had committed.

"'Speak, what saw ye?'" Kivrin mouthed, and he seemed suddenly to come to himself.

"'Speak, what saw ye?'" he said clearly. "'And tell us of the birth of Christ. We saw the new-born Child and angels singing praise unto the Lord.'"

He began the Confiteor Deo , and Kivrin whispered it along with him, but he got through it without any mistakes, and Kivrin began to relax a little, though she watched him closely as he moved to the altar for the Orámus te .

He was hearing a black cassock under the alb, and both of them looked like they had once been richly made. They were much too short for Roche. She could see a good ten centimeters of his worn brown hose below the cassock's hem when he bent over the altar. They had probably belonged to the priest before him, or were castoffs of Imeyne's chaplain.

The priest at Holy Re-Formed had worn a polyester alb over a brown jumper and jeans. He had assured Kivrin that the mass was completely authentic, in spite of its being held in midafternoon. The antiphon dated from the eighth century, he had told her, and the gruesomely detailed stations of the cross were exact copies of Turin's. But the church had been a converted stationer's shop, they had used a folding table for an altar, and the Carfax carillon outside had been busily destroying "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear."