Doomsday Book (38 page)

Roche stopped and stood beside his donkey while Rosemund cantered back to him and they caught up, and Kivrin wondered wryly if he had lost his way. But as soon as they came up to him, he plunged off through a thicket and onto an even narrower path that wasn't visible from the road.

Rosemund couldn't pass Father Roche and his donkey without shoving them aside, but she followed nearly treading on the donkey's hind hooves, and Kivrin wondered again what was bothering her. "Sir Bloet has many powerful friends," Lady Imeyne had said. She had called him an ally, but Kivrin wondered if he really was, or if Rosemund's father had told her something about him that made her so distressed at the prospect of his coming to Ashencote.

They went a short way along the path, past a thicket of willows that looked like the one by the drop, and then turned off the path, squeezing through a stand of firs and emerging next to a holly tree.

Kivrin had been expecting holly bushes like the ones in Brasenose's quad, but this was a tree. It towered over them, spreading out above the confines of the spruces, its red berries bright among the masses of glossy leaves.

Father Roche began taking the sacks from the back of the donkey, Agnes attempting to help him. Rosemund pulled a short, fat-bladed knife our of her girdle and began hacking at the sharp-leaved lower branches.

Kivrin waded through the snow to the other side of the tree. She had caught a glimpse of white she thought might be the stand of birches, but it was only a branch, half-fallen between two trees and covered with snow.

Agnes appeared, with Roche behind her carrying a wicked- looking dagger. Kivrin had thought that knowing who he was would work some transformation, but he still looked like a cutthroat, standing there looming over Agnes.

He handed Agnes one of the coarse bags. "You must hold the bag open like this," he said, bending down to show her how the top of the bag should be folded back, "and I will put the branches into it." He began chopping at the branches, oblivious to the spiky leaves. Kivrin took the branches from him and put them in the bag carefully, so the stiff leaves wouldn't break.

"Father Roche," she said, "I wanted to thank you for helping me when I was ill and for bringing me to the manor when I -- "

"When that you were fallen," he said, hacking at a stubborn branch.

She had intended to say, "when I was set upon by thieves," and his response surprised her. She remembered falling off the horse and wondered if that was when he had happened along. But if it was, they had already come a long way from the drop, and he wouldn't know where it was. And she remembered him
there
, at the drop.

There was no point in speculating. "Do you know the place where Gawyn found me?" she asked, and held her breath.

"Aye," he said, sawing at a thick branch.

She felt suddenly sick with relief. He knew where the drop was. "Is it far from here?"

"Nay," he said. He wrenched the branch off.

"Would you take me there?" Kivrin asked.

"Why would you go there?" Agnes asked, spreading her arms out wide to keep the bag open. "What if the wicked men be still there?"

Roche was looking at her as if he were wondering the same thing.

"I thought that if I saw the place, I might remember who I am and where I came from," she said.

He handed her the branch, holding it so she could take it without being stabbed. "I will take you there," he said.

"Thank you," Kivrin said. Thank you. She slid the branch in next to the others, and Roche tied the top shut and hoisted the bag over his shoulder.

Rosemund appeared, dragging her bag in the snow behind her. "Are you not finished yet?" she said.

Roche took her bag, too, and tied them on the donkey's back. Kivrin lifted Agnes onto her pony and helped Rosemund mount, and Father Roche knelt and linked his big hands so Kivrin could step up into the stirrup.

He had helped her back on the white horse when she fell off. When that she was fallen. She remembered his big hands steadying her. But they had come a long way from the drop by then, and why would Gawyn have taken Roche all the way back to the drop? She did not remember going back, but it was all so dim and confused. In her delirium it must have seemed farther than it was.

Roche led the donkey back through the firs and onto the path, going back the way they had come. Rosemund let him get ahead and then said, in a voice just like Imeyne's, "Where goes he now? The ivy lies not this way."

"We go to see the place where Lady Katherine was set upon," Agnes said.

Rosemund looked at Kivrin suspiciously. "Why would you go thence?" she asked. "Your goods and gear have already been fetched to the manor."

"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.

"Does Rosemund like Sir Bloet?" Kivrin asked. Of course she didn't like him. She had been hateful, ill-tempered, nearly hysterical ever since she heard he was coming.

"
I
like him," Agnes said. "He is to give me a silver bridle-chain when they wed."

Kivrin looked ahead at Rosemund, waiting far down the road. Sir Bloet might not be old and dissipated at all. She was assuming that the way she had assumed Lady Yvolde was his wife. He might be young, and Rosemund's bad temper might only be nervousness. Or she might change her mind about him before the wedding. Girls weren't usually married till they were fourteen or fifteen, certainly not before they started exhibiting signs of maturation.