Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  She wondered what had happened to Agnes. Perhaps someone had belatedly had the good sense to bar her from the sickroom, or perhaps the unreliable Maisry was actually watching her. Or, more likely, she had stopped to see her puppy in the stable and forgotten she was going to show her chavotte to Kivrin.

  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.

  The language isn’t the only thing off. My dress is all wrong, of far too fine a weave, and the blue is too bright, dyed with woad or not. I haven’t seen any bright colors at all. I’m too tall, my teeth are too good, and my hands are wrong, in spite of my muddy labors at the dig. They should not only have been dirtier, but I should have chilblains. Everyone’s hands, even the children’s, are chapped and bleeding. It is, after all, December.

  December the fifteenth. I overheard part of an argument between Lady Imeyne and Lady Eliwys about getting a replacement chaplain, and Imeyne said, “There is more than time enough to send. It is full ten days till Christ’s mass.” So tell Mr. Gilchrist I’ve ascertained my temporal location at least. But I don’t know how far from the drop I am. I’ve tried to remember Gawyn bringing me here, but that whole night is hopelessly muddled, and part of what I remember didn’t happen. I remember a white horse that had bells on its harness, and the bells were playing Christmas carols, like the carillon in Carfax Tower.

  The fifteenth of December means it’s Christmas Eve there, and you’ll be giving your sherry party and then walking over to St. Mary the Virgin’s for the ecumenical service. It is hard to comprehend that you are over seven hundred years away. I keep thinking that if I got out of bed (which I can’t because I’m too dizzy—I think my temp is back up) and opened the door I would find not a mediaeval hall but Brasenose’s lab, and all of you waiting for me, Badri and Dr. Ahrens and you, Mr. Dunworthy, polishing your spectacles and saying I told you so. I wish you were.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lady Imeyne did not believe Kivrin’s story about having amnesia. When Agnes brought her hound, which turned out to be a tiny black puppy with huge feet, in to Kivrin, she said, “This is my hound, Lady Kivrin.” She held it out to Kivrin, clutching its fat middle. “You can pet him. Do you remember how?”

  “Aye,” Kivrin said, taking the puppy out of Agnes’s too– tight grasp and stroking its baby-soft fur. “Aren’t you supposed to be at your sewing?”

  Agnes took the puppy back from her. “Grandmother went to chide with the steward, and Maisry went out to the stable.” She twisted the puppy around to give it a kiss. “So I came to speak to you. Grandmother is very angry. The steward and all his family were living in the hall when we came hence.” She gave the puppy another kiss. “Grandmother says it is his wife who tempts him to sin.”

  Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like “grandmother.
” The word hadn’t even existed until the eighteenth century, but the interpreter was taking huge, disconcerting leaps now, though it left Agnes’s mispronunciation of Katherine intact and sometimes left blanks in places where the meaning should have been obvious from context. She hoped her subconscious knew what it was doing.

  “Are you a daltriss, Lady Kivrin?” Agnes said.

  Her subconscious obviously didn’t know what it was doing. “What?” she asked.

  “A daltriss,” Agnes said. The puppy was trying desperately to squirm out of Agnes’s grip. “Grandmother says you are one. She says a wife fleeing to her lover would have good cause to remember naught.”

  An adultress. Well, at least it was better than a French spy. Or perhaps Lady Imeyne thought she was both.

  Agnes kissed the puppy again. “Grandmother said a lady had no good cause to travel through the woods in winter.”

  They were both right, Kivrin thought, Lady Imeyne and Mr. Dunworthy. She still had not found out where the drop was, although she had asked to speak with Gawyn when Lady Eliwys came in the morning to bathe her temple.

  “He has ridden out to search for the wicked men who robbed you,” Eliwys had said, putting an ointment on Kivrin’s temple that smelled like garlic and stung horribly. “Do you remember aught of them?”

  Kivrin had shaken her head, hoping her faked amnesia wouldn’t end in some poor peasant’s being hanged. She could scarcely say, “No, that isn’t the man,” when she supposedly couldn’t remember anything.

  Perhaps she shouldn’t have told them she couldn’t remember anything. The probability that they would have known the de Beauvriers was very small, and her lack of an explanation had obviously made Imeyne even more suspicious of her.

  Agnes was trying to put her cap on the puppy. “There are wolves in the woods,” she said. “Gawyn slew one with his ax.”

  “Agnes, did Gawyn tell you of his finding me?” Kivrin asked.

  “Aye. Blackie likes to wear my cap,” she said, tying the strings in a choking knot.