She let go of the bucket. It landed with a splash Kivrin could hear, far above them, and then Eliwys was in his arms. Kivrin put her hand to her mouth.
There was a light knock on the door. Kivrin jumped down to open it. It was Agnes.
“Would you not tell me a story now?” she said. She was very bedraggled. No one had braided her hair since yesterday. It stuck out under her linen cap at all angles, and she had obviously slept by the hearth. One sleeve was filthy with ashes.
Kivrin resisted the urge to brush them off. “You cannot come in,” she said, holding the door nearly shut. “You will catch the sickness.”
“There is none to play with me,” Agnes said. “Mother has gone and Rosemund still sleeps.”
“Your mother has only gone out for water,” she said firmly. “Where is your grandmother?”
“Praying.” She reached for Kivrin’s skirt, and Kivrin jerked back.
“You must not touch me,” she said sharply.
Agnes’s face puckered into a pout. “Why are you wroth with me?”
“I’m not angry with you,” Kivrin said more gently. “But you can’t come in. The clerk is very ill, and all who come close to him may”—there was no hope of explaining contagion to Agnes—“may fall ill, too.”
“Will he die?” Agnes said, trying to see around the door.
“I fear so.”
“Will you?”
“No,” she said, and realized she was no longer frightened. “Rosemund will waken soon. Ask her to tell you a story.”
“Will Father Roche die?”
“No. Go and play with your cart till Rosemund wakes.”
“Will you tell me a story after the clerk is dead?”
“Yes. Go downstairs.”
Agnes went reluctantly down three steps, holding on to the wall. “Will we all die?” she asked.
“No,” Kivrin said. Not if I can help it. She shut the door and leaned against it.
The clerk still lay unseeing and unaware, his whole being turned inward to the battle with an enemy his immune system had never seen before, and had no defenses against.
The knocking came again. “Go downstairs, Agnes,” Kivrin said, but it was Roche, carrying the bowl of broth he had brought from the kitchen and a hod of red coals. He dumped them into the brazier and knelt beside it, blowing on them.
He had handed the bowl to Kivrin. It was lukewarm and smelled terrible. She wondered what it had in it that had brought the fever down.
Roche stood up and took the bowl, and they tried to spoon the broth into the clerk, but it dribbled off his huge tongue and down the sides of his mouth.
Someone knocked.
“Agnes, I told you, you can’t come in here,” Kivrin said impatiently, trying to mop up the bedclothes.
“Grandmother sent me to bid you come.”
“Is Lady Imeyne ill?” Roche said. He started for the door.
“Nay. It is Rosemund.”
Kivrin’s heart began to pound.
Roche opened the door, but Agnes did not come in. She stood on the landing, staring at his mask.
“Is Rosemund ill?” Roche asked anxiously.
“She fell down.”
Kivrin darted past them and down the steps.
Rosemund was sitting on one of the benches by the hearth, and Lady Imeyne was standing over her.
“What’s happened?” Kivrin demanded.
“I fell,” Rosemund said, sounding bewildered. “I hit my arm.” She held it out to Kivrin, the elbow crooked.
Lady Imeyne murmured something.
“What?” Kivrin said, and realized the old lady was praying. She looked around the hall for Eliwys. She wasn’t there. Only Maisry huddled frightenedly by the table, and the thought flickered through Kivrin’s mind that Rosemund must have tripped over her.
“Did you fall over something?” she asked.
“Nay,” Rosemund said, still sounding dazed. “My head hurts.”
“Did you hit your head?”
“Nay.” She pulled her sleeve back. “I hit my elbow on the stones.”
Kivrin pushed the loose sleeve up past her elbow. It was scraped, but there was no blood. Kivrin wondered if she could have broken it. She was holding it at such an odd angle. “Does this hurt?” she asked, moving it gently.
“Nay.”
She twisted the forearm gently. “Does this?”
“Nay.”
“Can you move your fingers?” Kivrin said.
Rosemund waggled them each in turn, her arm still crooked. Kivrin frowned at it, puzzled. It might be sprained, but she didn’t think she’d be able to move it so easily. “Lady Imeyne,” she said, “would you fetch Father Roche?”
“He cannot help us,” Imeyne said contemptuously, but she started for the stairs.
“I don’t think it’s broken,” Kivrin said to Rosemund.
Rosemund lowered her arm, gasped, and jerked it up again. The color drained from her face, and beads of sweat broke out on her upper lip.
It must be broken, Kivrin thought, and reached for the arm again. Rosemund pulled away and, before Kivrin even realized what was happening, toppled off the bench and onto the floor.
She had hit her head this time. Kivrin heard it thunk against the stone. Kivrin scrambled over the bench and knelt beside her. “Rosemund, Rosemund,” she said. “Can you hear me?”
She didn’t move. She had flung her injured arm out when she fell, as if to catch herself, and when Kivrin touched it, she flinched, but she didn’t open her eyes. Kivrin looked round wildly for Imeyne, but the old woman was not on the stairs. She got to her knees.
Rosemund opened her eyes. “Do not leave me,” she said.
“I must fetch help,” she said.
Rosemund shook her head.
“Father Roche!” Kivrin called, though she knew he could not hear her through the heavy door, and Lady Eliwys came through the screens and ran across the flagged floor.
“Has she the blue sickness?” she said.
No. “She fell,” Kivrin said. She laid her hand on Rosemund’s bare, outflung arm. It felt hot. Rosemund had closed her eyes again and was breathing slowly, evenly, as if she had fallen asleep.
Kivrin pushed the heavy sleeve up and over Rosemund’s shoulder. She turned her arm up so she could see the armpit, and Rosemund tried to jerk away, but Kivrin held her tightly.
It was not as large as the clerk’s had been, but it was bright red and already hard to the touch. No, Kivrin thought. No. Rosemund moaned and tried to pull her arm away, and Kivrin laid it gently down, arranging the sleeve under it.
“What’s happened?” Agnes said from halfway down the stairs. “Is Rosemund ill?”
I can’t let this happen, Kivrin thought. I must get help. They’ve all been exposed, even Agnes, and there’s nothing here to help them. Antimicrobials won’t be discovered for six hundred years.
“Your sins have brought this,” Imeyne said.
Kivrin looked up. Eliwys was looking at Imeyne, but absently, as if she hadn’t heard her.
“Your sins and Gawyn’s,” Imeyne said.
“Gawyn,” Kivrin said. He could show her where the drop was, and she could go get help. Dr. Ahrens would know what to do. And Mr. Dunworthy. Dr. Ahrens would give her vaccine and streptomycin to bring back.
“Where is Gawyn?” Kivrin said.
Eliwys was looking at her now, and her face was full of longing, full of hope. He has finally got her attention, Kivrin thought. “Gawyn,” Kivrin said. “Where is he?”
“Gone,” Eliwys said.
“Gone where?” she said. “I must speak with him. We must go fetch help.”
“There is no help,” Lady Imeyne said. She knelt beside Rosemund and folded her hands. “It is God’s punishment.”
Kivrin stood up. “Gone where?”
“To Bath,” Eliwys said. “To bring my husband.”
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK
(070114–070526)
I decided I’d
better try to get this all down. Mr. Gilchrist said he hoped with the opening of Mediaeval we’d be able to obtain a firsthand account of the Black Death, and I guess this is it.
The first case of plague here was the clerk who came with the bishop’s envoy. I don’t know if he was ill when they arrived or not. He could have been and that was why they came here instead of going on to Oxford, to get rid of him before he infected them. He was definitely ill on Christmas morning when they left, which means he was probably contagious the night before, when he had contact with at least half the village.
He has transmitted the disease to Lord Guillaume’s daughter, Rosemund, who fell ill on … the twenty-sixth? I’ve lost all track of time. Both of them have the classic buboes. The clerk’s bubo has broken and is draining. Rosemund’s is hard and growing larger. It’s nearly the size of a walnut. The area around it is inflamed. Both of them have high fevers and are intermittently delirious.
Father Roche and I have isolated them in the bower and have told everyone to stay in their houses and avoid all contact with each other, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Nearly everyone in the village was at the Christmas feast, and the whole family was in here with the clerk.
I wish I knew whether the disease is contagious before the symptoms appear and how long the incubation period is. I know that the plague takes three forms: bubonic, pneumonic, and septicemic, and I know the pneumonic form is the most contagious since it can be spread by coughing or breathing on people and by touch. The clerk and Rosemund both seem to have the bubonic.
I am so frightened I can’t even think. It washes over me in waves. I’ll be doing all right, and then suddenly the fear swamps me, and I have to take hold of the bed frame to keep from running out of the room, out of the house, out of the village, away from it!
I know I’ve had my plague inoculations, but I’d had my T-cells enhanced and my antivirals, and I still got whatever it was I got, and every time the clerk touches me, I cringe. Father Roche keeps forgetting to wear his mask, and I’m so afraid he’s going to catch it, or Agnes. And I’m afraid the clerk is going to die. And Rosemund. And I’m afraid somebody in the village is going to get pneumonic, and Gawyn won’t come back, and I won’t find the drop before the rendezvous.
(Break)
I feel a bit calmer. It seems to help, talking to you, whether you can hear me or not.
Rosemund’s young and strong. And the plague didn’t kill everyone. In some villages no one at all died.
27
They took Rosemund up to the bower, making a pallet on the floor for her in the narrow space beside the bed. Roche covered it with a linen sheet and went out to the barn’s loft to fetch bed coverings.
Kivrin had been afraid Rosemund would balk at the sight of the clerk, with his grotesque tongue and blackening skin, but she scarcely glanced at him. She took her surcote and shoes off and lay down gratefully on the narrow pallet. Kivrin took the rabbit-skin coverlid from the bed and put it over her.
“Will I scream and run at people like the clerk?” Rosemund asked.
“Nay,” Kivrin said, and tried to smile. “Try to rest. Does it hurt anywhere?”
“My stomach,” she said, putting her hand to her middle. “And my head. Sir Bloet told me the fever makes men dance. I thought it was a tale to frighten me. He said they danced till blood came out of their mouths and they died. Where is Agnes?”
“In the loft with your mother,” Kivrin said. She had told Eliwys to take Agnes and Imeyne up to the loft and shut themselves in, and Eliwys had done it without even a backward glance at Rosemund.
“My father comes soon,” Rosemund said.
“You must be quiet now and rest.”
“Grandmother says it is a mortal sin to fear your husband, but I cannot help it. He touches me in ways that are not seemly and tells me tales of things that cannot be true.”
I hope he dies in agony, Kivrin thought. I hope he is infected already.
“My father is even now on his way,” Rosemund said.
“You must try to sleep.”
“If Sir Bloet were here now, he would not dare to touch me,” she said and closed her eyes. “It would be he who was afraid.”
Roche came in, bearing an armload of bedclothes, and went out again. Kivrin piled them on top of Rosemund, tucked them in around her, and laid the fur she had taken from the clerk’s bed back over him.
The clerk still lay quietly, but the hum in his breathing had begun again, and now and then he coughed. His mouth hung open, and the back of his tongue was coated with a white fur.
I can’t let this happen to Rosemund, Kivrin thought, she’s only twelve years old. There must be something she could do. Something. The plague bacillus was a bacteria. Streptomycin and the sulfa drugs could kill it, but she couldn’t manufacture them herself, and she didn’t know where the drop was.
And Gawyn had ridden off to Bath. Of course he had. Eliwys had run to him, she had thrown her arms around him, and he would have gone anywhere, done anything for her, even if it meant bringing home her husband.
She tried to think how long it would take Gawyn to ride to Bath and back. It was seventy kilometers. Riding hard he could make it there in a day and a half. Three days, there and back. If he were not delayed, if he could find Lord Guillaume, if he did not fall ill. Dr. Ahrens had said untreated plague victims died within four or five days, but she did not see how the clerk could possibly last that long. His temp was up again.
She had pushed Lady Imeyne’s casket under the bed when they brought Rosemund up. She pulled it out and looked through it at the dried herbs and powders. The contemps had used homegrown remedies like St. John’s wort and bittersweet during the plague, but they had been as useless as the powdered emeralds.
Fleabane might help, but she couldn’t find any of the pink or purple flowers in the little linen bags.
When Roche came back, she sent him for willow branches from the stream, and steeped them into a bitter tea. “What is this brew?” Roche asked, tasting it and making a face.
“Aspirin,” Kivrin said. “I hope.”
Roche gave a cup to the clerk, who was past caring what it tasted like, and it seemed to bring his temp down a little, but Rosemund’s rose steadily all afternoon, till she was shivering with chills. By the time Roche left to say vespers, she was almost too hot to touch.
Kivrin uncovered her and tried to bathe her arms and legs in cool water to bring the fever down, but Rosemund wrenched angrily away from her. “It is not seemly you should touch me thus, sir,” she said through chattering teeth. “Be sure I shall tell my father when he returns.”
Roche did not come back. Kivrin lit the tallow lamps and tucked the bed coverings around Rosemund, wondering what had become of him.
She looked worse in the smoky light, her face wan and pinched. She murmured to herself, repeating Agnes’s name over and over, and once she asked fretfully, “Where is he? He should have been here ere now.”
He should have been, Kivrin thought. The bell had tolled vespers half an hour ago. Roche is in the kitchen, she told herself, making us soup. Or he has gone to tell Eliwys how Rosemund is. He isn’t ill. But she stood up and climbed on the window seat and looked out into the courtyard. It was getting colder, and the dark sky was overcast. There was no one in the courtyard, no light or sound anywhere.
Roche opened the door, and she jumped down, smiling. “Where have you been? I was—” she said and stopped.
Roche was wearing his vestments and carrying the oil and viaticum. No, she thought, glancing at Rosemund. No.
“I have been with Ulf the Reeve,” he said. “I heard his confession.” Thank God it’s not Rosemund, she thought, and then realized what he was saying. The plague was in the village.
“Are you certain?” she asked. “Does he have the plague boils?”
“Aye.”
“How many others are in the household?”
“His wife and two sons,” he said tiredly. “I bade her wear a mask and se
nt her sons to cut willows.”
“Good,” she said. There was nothing good about it. No, that wasn’t true. At least it was bubonic plague and not pneumonic, so there was still a chance the wife and two sons wouldn’t get it. But how many other people had Ulf infected, and who had infected him? Ulf would not have had any contact with the clerk. He must have caught it from one of the servants. “Are any others ill?”
“Nay.”
It didn’t mean anything. They only sent for Roche when they were very ill, when they were frightened. There might be three or four other cases already in the village. Or a dozen.
She sat down on the window seat, trying to think what to do. Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One third to one half of Europe.
“No!” Rosemund screamed, and struggled to rise.
Kivrin and Roche both dived for her, but she had already lain back down. They covered her up, and she kicked the bedclothes off again. “I will tell Mother, Agnes, you wicked child,” she murmured. “Let me out.”
It grew colder in the night. Roche brought up more coals for the brazier, and Kivrin climbed up in the window again to fasten the waxed linen over the window, but it was still freezing. Kivrin and Roche huddled by the brazier in turn, trying to catch a little sleep, and woke shivering like Rosemund.
The clerk did not shiver, but he complained of the cold, his words slurred and drunken-sounding. His feet and hands were cold and without feeling.
“They must have a fire,” Roche said. “We must take them down to the hall.”
You don’t understand, she thought. Their only hope lay in keeping the patients isolated, in not letting the infection spread. But it has already spread, she thought, and wondered if Ulfs extremities were growing cold and what he would do for a fire? She had sat in one of their huts by one of their fires. It would not warm a cat.
The cats died, too, she thought and looked at Rosemund. The shivering racked her poor body, and she seemed already thinner, more wasted.
“The life is going out of them,” Roche said.