Doomsday Book (20 page)

The woman leaned into the light from the window. The white coif was yellowed and it was not a robe, but a kirtle like Kivrin's, with a dark green surcote over it. It was badly dyed and looked like it had been made from a burlap sack, the weave so large Kivrin could see it easily even in the dim light. She must be a servant, then, but servants didn't wear linen wimples or carry bunches of keys like the one that hung from the woman's belt. She had to be a person of some importance, the housekeeper, perhaps.

And this was a place of importance. Probably not a castle, because the wall the bed lay up against wasn't stone -- it was unfinished wood -- but very likely a manor house of at least the first order of nobility, a minor baron, and possibly higher than that. The bed she was lying in was a real bed with a raised wooden frame and hangings and stiff linen sheets, not just a pallet, and the coverings were fur. The stone seat under the window had embroidered cushions in it.

The woman tied the cloth to little projections of stone on either side of the narrow window, stepped down from the windowseat and leaned over to get something. Kivrin couldn't see what it was because the bed-hangings obstructed her view. They were heavy, almost like rugs, and had been pulled back and tied with what looked like rope.

The woman straightened up again, holding a wooden bowl, and then, catching her skirts up with her free hand, stepped onto the windowseat and began brushing something thick onto the cloth. Oil, Kivrin thought. No, wax. Waxed linen used in place of glass in windows. Glass was supposed to have been common in fourteenth-century manor houses. The nobility were supposed to have carried glass windows along with the luggage and the furniture when they travelled from house to house.

I must get this on the corder, Kivrin thought, that some manor houses didn't have glass windows, and she raised her hands and pressed them together, but the effort of holding them up was too great, and she let them fall back onto the coverings.

The woman glanced over toward the bed and then turned back to the window and went on painting the cloth with long, unconcerned strokes. I must be getting better, Kivrin thought. She was right by the bed the whole time I was ill. She wondered again how long that time had been. I will have to find out, she thought, and then I must find the drop.

It couldn't be very far. If this was the village she had intended to go to, the drop wasn't more than a mile away. She tried to remember how long the trip to the village had taken. It had seemed to take a long time. The cutthroat had put her on a white horse, and it had had bells on its harness. But he wasn't a cutthroat. He was a kind-looking young man with red hair.

She would have to ask the name of the village she had been brought to, and hopefully it would be Skendgate. But even if it wasn't, she would know from the name where she was in relation to the drop. And, of course, as soon as she was a little stronger, they could show her where it was.

What is the name of this village you have brought me to? She had not been able to think of the words last night, but that was because of the fever, of course. She had no trouble now. Mr. Latimer had spent months on her pronunciation. They would certainly be able to understand, "
In whatte londe am I?
" or even, "
Whatte be thisse holding?
" and even if there were some variation in local dialect, the interpreter would automatically correct it.

"
Whatte place hast thou brotte me?
" Kivrin said.

The woman turned, looking startled. She stepped down from the windowseat, still holding the bowl in one hand and the brush in the other, only it wasn't a brush, Kivrin could see as she approached the bed. It was a squarish wooden spoon with a nearly flat bowl.

"
Gottebae plaise tthar tleve
," the woman said, holding spoon and bowl together in front of her. "
Beth naught agast.
"

The interpreter was supposed to translate what was said immediately. Maybe Kivrin's pronunciation was all off, so far off that the woman thought she was speaking a foreign language and was trying to answer her in clumsy French or German.

"
Whatte place hast thou brotte me?
" she said slowly so the interpreter would have time to translate what she said.

"
Wick londebay yae comen lawdayke awtreen godelae deynorm andoar sic straunguwlondes. Spekefaw eek waenoot awfthy taloorbrede.
"

"
Lawyes sharess loostee?
" a voice said.

The woman turned around to look at a door Kivrin couldn't see, and another woman came in, much older, her face under the coif wrinkled and her hands the hands Kivrin remembered from her delirium, rough and old. She was wearing a silver chain and carrying a small leather chest. It looked like the casket Kivrin had brought through with her, but it was smaller and bound with iron instead of brass. She set the casket down on the windowseat.

"
Auf specheryit darmayt?
"

She remembered the voice, too, harsh and almost angry- sounding, speaking to the woman by Kivrin's bed as if she were a servant. Well, perhaps she was, and this was the lady of the house, though her coif was no whiter, her dress no finer. But there weren't any keys at her belt, and now Kivrin remembered that it wasn't the housekeeper who carried the keys but the lady of the house.

The lady of the manor in yellowed linen and badly-dyed burlap, which meant that Kivrin's dress was all wrong, as wrong as Latimer's pronunciations, as wrong as Dr. Ahrens' assurances that she would not get any mediaeval diseases.

"I had my inoculations," she murmured, and both women turned to look at her.

"
Ellavih swot wardesdoor feenden iss?
" the older woman asked sharply. Was she the younger woman's mother, or her mother-in- law, or her nurse? Kivrin had no idea. None of the words she'd said, not even a proper name or a form of address, separated itself out.

"
Maetinkerr woun dahest wexe hoordoumbe,
" the younger woman said, and the older one answered, "
Nor nayte bawcows derouthe.
"

Nothing. Shorter sentences were supposed to be easier to translate, but Kivrin couldn't even tell whether she had said one word or several.

The younger woman's chin in the tight coif lifted angrily. "
Certessan, shreevadwomn wolde nadae seyvous,
" she said sharply.

Kivrin wondered if they were arguing over what to do with her. She pushed on the coverlet with her weak hands, as if she could push herself away from them, and the young woman set down her bowl and spoon and came immediately up beside the bed.

"
Spaegun yovor tongawn glais?
" she said, and it might be, "Good morning," or "Are you feeling better?" or "We're burning you at dawn," for all Kivrin knew. Perhaps her illness was keeping the interpreter from working. Perhaps when the fever went down, she would understand everything they said.

The old woman knelt beside the bed, holding a small silver box at the end of the chain between her folded hands, and began to pray. The young woman leaned forward to look at Kivrin's forehead and then reached around behind her head, doing something that pulled at Kivrin's hair, and she realized they must have bandaged the wound on her forehead. She touched her hand to the cloth and then put it on her neck, feeling for her tangled locks, but there was nothing there. Her hair ended in a ragged fringe just below her ears.

"
Vae motten tiyez thynt,
" the young woman said worriedly. "
Far thotyiwort wount sorr.
" She was giving Kivrin some kind of explanation, though Kivrin couldn't understand it, and actually she did understand it: she had been very ill, so ill she had thought her hair was on fire. She remembered someone -- the old woman? -- trying to grab at her hands and her flailing wildly at the flames. They had had no alternative.

And Kivrin had hated the unwieldy mass of hair and the endless time it took to wash, had worried about how mediaeval women wore their hair, whether they braided it or not, and wondered how on earth she was going to get through the sixteen days of her practicum without washing it. She should be glad they had cut it off, but all she could think of was Joan of Arc, who had had short hair, who they had burned at the stake.

The young woman had drawn her hands back from the bandage and was watching Kivrin, looking frightened. Kivrin smiled at her, a little quaveringly, and she smiled back. She had a gap where two teeth were missing on the right side of her mouth, and the tooth next to the gap was brown, but when she smiled she looked no older than a first year student.

She finished untying the bandage and laid it on the coverlet. It was the same yellowed linen as her coif, but torn into fraying strips, and stained with brownish blood. There was more blood than Kivrin would have thought there would be. Mr. Gilchrist's wound must have started bleeding again.

The woman touched Kivrin's temple nervously, as if she wasn't sure what to do. "
Vexeyaw hongroot?
" she said, and put one hand behind Kivrin's neck and helped her raise her head.

Her head felt terribly light. That must be because of my hair, Kivrin thought.

The older woman handed the young one a wooden bowl, and she put it to Kivrin's lips. Kivrin sipped carefully at it, thinking confusedly that it was the same bowl that had held the wax. It wasn't, and it wasn't the drink they'd given her before. It was a thin, grainy gruel, less bitter than the drink last night, but with a greasy aftertaste.

"
Thasholde nayive gros vitaille towayte,
" the older woman said.

Definitely her mother-in-law, Kivrin thought.

"
Shimote lese hoor fource
," the young woman answered back mildly.

The gruel tasted good. Kivrin tried to drink it all, but after only a few sips she felt worn out.

The young woman handed the bowl to the older one, who had come around to the side of the bed, too, and eased Kivrin's head back down onto the pillow. She picked up the bloody bandage, touched Kivrin's temple again as if she was debating whether to put the bandage back on again, and then handed it to the other woman, who set it and the bowl down on the chest that must be at the foot of the bed.

"
Lo, liggethsteallouw,
" the young woman said, smiling her gap-toothed smile, and there was no mistaking her tone even though she couldn't make out the words at all. The woman had told her to go to sleep. She closed her eyes.

"
Durmidde shoalausbrekkeynow,
" the older woman said, and they left the room, shutting the heavy door behind them.

Kivrin repeated the words slowly to herself, trying to catch some familiar word. The interpreter was supposed to enhance her ability to separate out phonemes and recognize syntactical patterns, not just store Middle English vocabulary, but she might as well be listening to Serbo-Croatian.

And maybe I am, she thought. Who knows where they've brought me? I was delirious. Maybe the cutthroat put me on a boat and took me across the Channel. She knew that wasn't possible. She remembered most of the night's journey, even though it had a disjointed, dreamlike quality to it. I fell off the horse, she thought, and a redheaded man picked me up. And we came past a church.

She frowned, trying to remember more about the direction they had travelled. They had headed into the woods, away from the thicket, and then come to a road, and the road forked, and that was where she had fallen off. If she could find the fork in the road, perhaps she could find the drop from there. The fork was only a little way from the tower.

But if the drop were that close, she was in Skendgate and the women were speaking Middle English, but if they were speaking Middle English, why couldn't she understand them?

Maybe I hit my head when I fell off the horse, and it's done something to the interpreter, she thought, but she had not hit her head. She had let go and slid down until she was sitting on the road. It's the fever, she thought. It's somehow keeping the interpreter from recognizing the words.

It recognized the Latin, she thought, and a little knot of fear began to form in her chest. It recognized the Latin, and I can't be ill. I had my inoculations. She remembered suddenly that her plague inoculation had itched and made a lump under her arm, but Dr. Ahrens had checked it just before she came through. Dr. Ahrens had said it was all right. And I can't have the plague, she thought. I don't have any of the symptoms.

Plague victims had huge lumps under their arms and on the insides of their thighs. They vomited blood, and the blood vessels under their skin ruptured and turned black. It wasn't the plague, but what was it, and how had she contracted it? She had been inoculated against every major disease extant in 1320, and anyway, she hadn't been exposed to any disease. She had begun to have symptoms as soon as she came through, before she had even met anyone. Germs didn't just hover near the drop, waiting for someone to come through. They had to be spread by contact or sneezing or fleas. The plague had been spread by fleas.

It's not the plague, she told herself firmly. People who have the plague don't wonder if they have it. They're too busy dying.

It wasn't the plague. The fleas that had spread it lived on rats and humans, not out in the middle of a forest, and the Black Death hadn't reached England till 1348. It must be some mediaeval disease Dr. Ahrens hadn't known about. There had been all sorts of strange diseases in the Middle Ages -- the king's evil and St. Vitus's dance and unnamed fevers. It must be one of them, and it had taken her enhanced immune system awhile to figure out what it was and begin fighting it. But now it had, and her temperature was down and the interpreter would begin working. All she had to do was rest and wait and get better. Comforted by that thought, she closed her eyes again, and slept.