Doomsday Book (24 page)

The plague started out with a headache and a fever, and Dr. Ahrens had been worried about her plague inoculation. She had wanted to wait until the swelling under Kivrin's arm went down. It can't be the plague, Kivrin thought. You don't have any of the symptoms. Buboes that grew to the size of oranges, a tongue that swelled till it filled the whole mouth, subcutaneous hemorrhages that turned the whole body black. You don't have the plague.

It must be some sort of flu. It was the only disease that came on so suddenly, and Dr. Ahrens had been upset over Mr. Gilchrist's moving the date up because the antivirals wouldn't take full effect until the fifteenth, and she'd only have partial immunity. It had to be the flu. What was the treatment for the flu? Antivirals, rest, fluids.

Well then, rest, she told herself, and closed her eyes.

She did not remember falling asleep, but she must have, because the two women were in the room again, talking, and Kivrin had no memory of their having come in.

"What said Gawyn?" the old woman said. She was doing something with a bowl and a spoon, mashing the spoon against the side of it. The iron-bound casket sat open beside her, and she reached into it, pulled out a small cloth bag, sprinkled the contents into the bowl and stirred it again.

"He found naught among her belongings that might tell us the lady's origins. Her goods had all been stolen, the chests broken open and emptied of all that might identify her. But he said her wagon was of rich make. Certes, she is of good family."

"And certes, her family searches for her," the old woman said. She had set down the bowl and was tearing cloth with a loud ripping sound. "We must send to Oxenford and tell them she lies safe with us."

"No," Eliwys said, and Kivrin could hear the resistance in her voice. "Not to Oxenford."

"What have you heard?"

"I have heard naught," Eliwys said, "but that my lord bade us keep here. He will be here within the week if all goes well."

"If all had gone well he would have been here now."

"The trial had scarce begun. Mayhap he is on his way home even now."

"Or mayhap ... ," another one of those untranslatable names, Torquil? " ... waits to be hanged, and my son with him. He should not have meddled in such a matter."

"He is a friend, and guiltless of the charges."

"He is a fool, and my son more fool for testifying on his behalf. A friend would have bade him leave Bath." She ground the spoon into the side of the bowl again. "I have need of mustard for this," she said and stepped to the door. "Maisry!" she called, and went back to tearing the cloth. "Found Gawyn aught of the lady's attendants?"

Eliwys sat down on the windowseat. "No, nor of their horses nor hers."

A girl with a pocked face and greasy hair hanging over it came in. Surely this couldn't be Maisry, who dallied with stableboys instead of watching her charges. She bent her knee in a curtsey that was more of a stumble and said, "
Wotwardstu
,
Lawttymayeen?
"

Oh, no, Kivrin thought. What's wrong with the interpreter?

"Fetch me the pot of mustard from the kitchen and tarry not," the old woman said, and the girl started for the door. "Where are Agnes and Rosemund? Why are they not with you?"

"
Shiyrouthamay
," she said sullenly.

Eliwys stood up. "Speak up," she said sharply.

"They hide (something) from me."

It wasn't the interpreter after all. It was simply the difference of the Norman English the nobles spoke and the still Saxon-sounding dialect of the peasants, neither of which sounded anything like the Middle English Mr. Latimer had blithely taught her. It was a wonder the interpreter was picking up anything at all.

"I was seeking them when Lady Imeyne called, good lady," Maisry said, and the interpreter got it all, though it was taking several seconds. It gave an imbecilic slowness to Maisry's speech, which might or might not be appropriate.

"Where did you look for them? In the stable?" Eliwys said, and brought her hands together on either side of Maisry's head like a pair of cymbals. Maisry howled and clapped a dirty hand to her left ear. Kivrin shrank back against the pillows.

"Go and fetch the mustard to Lady Imeyne and find you Agnes."

Maisry nodded, not looking particularly frightened but still holding her ear. She stumbled another curtsey and went out no more quickly than she had come in. She seemed less upset by the sudden violence than Kivrin was, and Kivrin wondered if Lady Imeyne would get her mustard any time soon.

It was the swiftness and the calmness of the violence that had surprised her. Eliwys had not even seemed angry, and as soon as Maisry was gone she went back to the windowseat, sat down, and said quietly, "The lady could not be moved though her family did come. She can bide with us until my husband returns. He will be here by Christmas surely."

There was noise on the stairs. Apparently she had been wrong, Kivrin thought and the ear-boxing had done some good. Agnes rushed in, clutching something to her chest.

"Agnes!" Eliwys said. "What do you here?"

"I brought my ... ," the interpreter still didn't have it.
Charette
? "to show the lady."

"You are a wicked child to hide from Maisry and come hence to disturb the lady," Eliwys said. "She suffers greatly from her injuries."

"But she told me she wished to see it." She held it up. It was a toy two-wheeled cart painted red and gilt.

"God punishes those who bear false witness with everlasting torment," Lady Imeyne said, grabbing the little girl roughly. "The lady cannot speak. You know full well."

"She spoke to me," Agnes said sturdily.

Good for you, Kivrin thought. Everlasting torment. What horrible things to threaten a child with. But this was the Middle Ages, when priests talked constantly of the last days and the final judgment, of the pains of hell.

"She told me she wished to see my wagon," Agnes said. "She said she did not have a hound."

"You are making up tales," Eliwys said. "The lady cannot speak," and Kivrin thought, I have to stop this. They'll box her ears, too.

She pushed herself up on her elbows. The effort left her breathless. "I spoke with Agnes," she said, praying the interpreter would do what it was supposed to. If it chose to blink out again at this moment and ended up getting Agnes a beating, that would be the last straw. "I bade her bring her cart to me."

Both women turned and looked at her. Eliwys's eyes widened. The old woman looked astonished and then angry, as if she thought Kivrin had deceived them.

"I told you," Agnes said, and marched over to the bed with the wagon.

Kivrin lay back against the pillows, exhausted. "What is this place?" she asked.

It took Eliwys a moment to recover herself. "You rest safely in the house of my lord and husband ... " The interpreter had trouble with the name. It sounded like Guillaume D'Iverie or possibly Devereaux.

Eliwys was looking at her anxiously. "My husband's
privй
found you in the woods and brought you hence. You had been set upon by robbers and grievously injured. Who attacked you?"

"I know not," Kivrin said.

"I am called Eliwys, and this is the mother of my husband, the Lady Imeyne. What is your name?"

And now was the time to tell them the whole carefully researched story. She had told the priest her name was Katherine, but Lady Imeyne had already made it clear she put no stock in anything he said. She didn't even believe he could speak Latin. Kivrin could say he had misunderstood, that her name was Isabel de Beauvrier. She could tell them she had called out her mother's, her sister's name in her delirium. She could tell them she had been praying to St. Katherine.

"Of what family are you?" Lady Imeyne asked.

It was a very good story. It would establish her identity and position in society and would ensure that they wouldn't try to send for her family. Yorkshire was too far away, and the road north was impassable.

"Whither were you bound?" Eliwys said.

Mediaeval had thoroughly researched the weather and the road conditions. It had rained every day for two weeks in December, and there hadn't been a hard frost to freeze the mired roads till late January. But she had seen the road to Oxford. It had been dry and clear. And Mediaeval had thoroughly researched the color of her dress, and the prevalence of glass windows among the upper classes. They had thoroughly researched the language.

"I remember not," Kivrin said.

"Not?" Eliwys said, and turned to Lady Imeyne. "She remembers not." They think I'm saying "naught," Kivrin thought, that I don't remember anything. The inflection, the pronunciation didn't differentiate between the two words.

"It is her wound," Eliwys said. "It has shaken her memory."

"No ... nay ... ," Kivrin said. She was not supposed to feign amnesia. She was supposed to be Isabel de Beauvrier, from the East Riding. Just because the roads were dry here didn't mean they weren't impassable farther north, and Eliwys would not even let Gawyn ride to Oxford to get news of her or to Bath to fetch her husband. She surely wouldn't send him to the East Riding.

"Can you not even remember your own name?" Lady Imeyne said impatiently, leaning so close Kivrin could smell her breath. It was very foul, an odor of decay. She must have rotting teeth, too.

"What is your name?"

Mr. Latimer had said Isabel was the most common woman's name in the 1300's. How common was Katherine? And Mediaeval didn't know the daughters' names. What if Yorkshire wasn't distant enough, after all, and Lady Imeyne knew the family. She would take it as further proof that she was a spy. She had better stay with the common name and tell them she was Isabel de Beauvrier.

The old woman would be only too happy to believe that the priest had gotten her name wrong. It would be further proof of his ignorance, of his incompetence, further reason to send to Bath for a new chaplain. And he had held Kivrin's hand, he had told her not to be afraid.

"My name is Katherine," she said.

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOOMSDAY BOOK (001300-002018)

I'm not the only one in trouble, Mr. Dunworthy. I think the contemps who've taken me in are, too.

The lord of the manor, Lord Guillaume, isn't here. He's in Bath, testifying at the trial of a friend of his, which is apparently a dangerous thing to do. His mother, Lady Imeyne, called him a fool for getting mixed up in it, and Lady Eliwys, his wife, seems worried and nervous.

They've come here in a great hurry and without servants. Fourteenth-century noblewomen had at least one lady-in-waiting apiece, but neither Eliwys nor Imeyne has any, and they left the children's -- Guillaume's two little girls are here -- nurse behind. Lady Imeyne wanted to send for a new one, and a chaplain, but Lady Eliwys won't let her.

I think Lord Guillaume must be expecting trouble and has spirited his womenfolk away here to keep them safe. Or possibly the trouble's already happened -- Agnes, the littler of the two girls, told me about the chaplain's death and someone named Gilbert whose "head was all red," so perhaps there's already been bloodshed, and the women have come here to escape it. One of Lord Guillaume's
privйs
has come with them, and he's fully armed.

There weren't any major uprisings against Edward II in Oxfordshire in 1320, although no one was very happy with the king and his favorite, Hugh Despenser, and there were plots and minor skirmishes everywhere else. Two of the barons, Lancaster and Mortimer, took sixty-three manors away from the Despensers that year -- this year. Lord Guillaume -- or his friend -- may have got involved in one of those plots.

It could be something else entirely, of course, a land dispute or something. People in the 1300's spent almost as much time in court as the contemps in the last part of the twentieth century. But I don't think so. Lady Eliwys jumps at every sound, and she's forbidden Lady Imeyne to tell the neighbors they're here.

I suppose in one way this is a good thing. If they aren't telling anyone they're here, they won't tell anyone about me or send messengers to try to find out who I am. On the other hand, there is the chance of armed men kicking in the door at any moment. Or of Gawyn, the only person who knows where the drop is, getting killed defending the manor.

(Break)

15 December, 1320 (Old Style.) The interpreter is working now, more or less, and the contemps seem to understand what I'm saying. I can understand them, though their Middle English bears no resemblance to what Mr. Latimer taught me. It's full of inflections and has a much softer French sound. Mr. Latimer wouldn't even recognize his "
Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote
."

The interpreter translates what the contemps say with the syntax and some of the words intact, and at first I tried to phrase what I said the same way, saying "Aye" and "Nay" and, "I remember naught of whence I came," but thinking about it's deadly -- the interpreter takes forever to come up with a translation, and I stammer and struggle with the pronunciations. So I just speak modern English and hope what comes out of my mouth is close to being right, and that the interpreter isn't slaughtering the idioms and the inflections. Heaven only knows how I sound. Like a French spy probably.