Dooms Day Book

by Connie Willis

  He pulled down on the rope and hung onto it till he was certain he could stand and then let it rise. “Nine,” he said.

  Colin was frowning at him. “Are you having a relapse?” he said suspiciously.

  “No,” Dunworthy said, and let go of the rope.

  The cow had its head in the door. He pushed it roughly aside and walked back to the church and went inside.

  Kivrin was still kneeling beside Roche, her hand still holding his stiff one.

  He stopped in front of her. “I rang the bell,” he said.

  She looked up without nodding.

  “Don’t you think we’d better go now?” Colin said. “It’s getting dark.”

  “Yes,” Dunworthy said. “I think we’d best—” The dizziness caught him completely unaware, and he staggered and nearly fell into Roche’s body.

  Kivrin put out her hand, and Colin dived for him, the torch flashing erratically across the ceiling as he grabbed Dunworthy’s arm. He caught himself on one knee and the flat of his hand and reached out with the other for Kivrin, but she was on her feet and backing away.

  “You’re ill!” It was an accusation, an indictment. “You’ve caught the plague, haven’t you?” she said, her voice showing emotion for the first time. “Haven’t you?”

  “No,” Dunworthy said, “it’s—”

  “He’s having a relapse,” Colin said, sticking the torch in the crook of the statue’s arm so he could help Dunworthy to a sitting position. “He didn’t pay any attention to my placards.”

  “It’s a virus,” Dunworthy said, sitting down with his back to the statue. “It’s not the plague. Both of us have had streptomycin and gamma globulin. We can’t get the plague.”

  He leaned his head back against the statue. “It’s a virus. I’ll be all right. I only need to rest a moment.”

  “I told him he shouldn’t have rung the bell,” Colin said, emptying the burlap sack onto the stone floor. He wrapped the empty sack around Dunworthy’s shoulders.

  “Are there any aspirin left?” Dunworthy asked.

  “You’re only supposed to take them every three hours,” Colin said, “and you’re not supposed to take them without water.”

  “Then fetch me some water,” he snapped.

  Colin looked to Kivrin for support, but she was still standing on the other side of Roche’s body, watching Dunworthy warily.

  “Now,” Dunworthy said, and Colin ran out, his boots echoing on the stone floor. Dunworthy looked across at Kivrin, and she took a step back.

  “It isn’t the plague,” he said. “It’s a virus. We were afraid you had been exposed to it before you came through and had come down with it. Did you?”

  “Yes,” she said, and knelt beside Roche. “He saved my life.”

  She smoothed the purple blanket, and Dunworthy realized it was a velvet cloak. It had a large silk cross sewn in the center of it.

  “He told me not to be afraid,” she said. She pulled the cloak up over his chest, under his crossed hands, but the action left his feet, in thick, incongruous sandals, uncovered. Dunworthy took the burlap bag from around his shoulders and spread it gently over the feet, and then stood up, carefully, holding onto the statue so he wouldn’t fall again.

  Kivrin patted Roche’s hands under the cloak. “He didn’t mean to hurt me,” she said.

  Colin came back in with a bucket half-full of water he must have found in a puddle. He was breathing hard. “The cow attacked me!” he said, scooping a filthy dipper out of the bucket. He emptied the aspirin into Dunworthy’s hand. There were five tablets.

  Dunworthy took two of them, swallowing as little of the water as he could, and handed the others to Kivrin. She took them from him solemnly, still kneeling on the floor.

  “I couldn’t find any horses,” Colin said, handing Kivrin the dipper. “Just a mule.”

  “Donkey,” Kivrin said. “Maisry stole Agnes’s pony.” She gave Dolin the dipper and took hold of Roche’s hand again. “He rang the bell for everyone, so their souls could go safely to heaven.”

  “Don’t you think we’d better be going?” Colin whispered. “It’s almost dark out.”

  “Even Rosemund,” Kivrin said as if she hadn’t heard. “He was already ill. I told him there wasn’t time, that we had to leave for Scotland.”

  “We must go now,” Dunworthy said, “before the light fails.”

  She didn’t move or let go of Roche’s hand. “He held my hand when I was dying.”

  “Kivrin,” he said.

  She laid her hand on his cheek and got to her knees. Dunworthy offered her his hand, but she stood up by herself, her hand pressed to her side, and walked down the nave.

  At the door she turned and looked back into the darkness. “He told me where the drop was when he was dying, so I could go back to heaven. He told me he wanted me to leave him there and go, so that when he came I would already be there,” she said, and went out into the snow.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The snow fell silently, peacefully on the stallion and the donkey waiting by the lychgate. Dunworthy helped Kivrin onto the stallion, and she did not flinch away from his touch as he had been afraid she would, but as soon as she was up, she leaned away from his grasp and took hold of the reins. As soon as he removed his hands, she slumped back against the saddle, her hand against her side.

  Dunworthy was shivering now, clenching his teeth against it so Colin wouldn’t see. It took three tries to get him onto the donkey, and he thought he might slip off at any minute.

  “I think I’d better lead your mule,” Colin said, looking disapprovingly at him.

  “There isn’t time,” Dunworthy said. “It’s getting dark. You ride behind Kivrin.”

  Colin led the stallion over to the lychgate, climbed up on the lintel, and scrambled up behind Kivrin.

  “Do you have the locator?” Dunworthy said, trying to kick the donkey without falling off.

  “I know the way,” Kivrin said.

  “Yes,” Colin said. He held it up. “And the pocket torch.” He flicked it on, and then shone it all around the churchyard, as if looking for something they might have left behind. He seemed to notice the graves for the first time.

  “Is that where you buried everybody?” he said, holding the light steady on the smooth white mounds.

  “Yes,” Kivrin said.

  “Did they die a long time ago?”

  She turned the stallion and started it up the hill. “No,” she said.

  The cow followed them partway up the hill, its swollen udders swinging, and then stopped and began lowing pitifully. Dunworthy looked back at it. It mooed uncertainly at him, and then ambled back down the road toward the village. They were nearly to the top of the hill, and the snow was letting up, but below, in the village, it was still snowing hard. The graves were covered completely, and the church was obscured, the bell tower scarcely visible at all.

  Kivrin did not so much as glance back. She rode steadily forward, sitting very straight, with Colin on behind her, holding not to Kivrin’s waist but to the high back of the saddle. The snow came down fitfully, and then in single flakes, and by the time they were in thick woods again, it had nearly stopped.

  Dunworthy followed the horse, trying to keep up with its steady gait, trying not to give way to the fever. The aspirin was not working—he had taken it with too little water—and he could feel the fever beginning to overtake him, beginning to shut out the woods and the donkey’s bony back and Colin’s voice.

  He was talking cheerfully to Kivrin, telling her about the epidemic, and the way he told it, it sounded like an adventure. “They said there was a quarantine and we’d have to go back to London, but I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to see Great-Aunt Mary. So I sneaked through the barrier, and the guard saw me and said, ‘You there! Stop!’ and started to chase me, and I ran down the street and into this alley.”

  They stopped, and Colin and Kivrin dismounted. Colin took off his muffler, and she pulled up her blood-stiff smo
ck and tied it around her ribs. Dunworthy knew the pain must be even worse than he’d thought, that he should try at least to help her, but he was afraid that if he got down off the donkey, he would not be able to get back on.

  Kivrin and Colin mounted again, she helping him up, and they set off again, slowing at every turning and side path to check their direction, Colin hunching over the locator’s screen and pointing, Kivrin nodding in confirmation.

  “This was where I fell off the donkey,” Kivrin said when they stopped at a fork. “That first night. I was so sick. I thought he was a cutthroat.”

  They came to another fork. It had stopped snowing, but the clouds above the trees were dark and heavy. Colin had to shine his torch on the locator to read it. He pointed down the right– hand path, and got on behind Kivrin again, telling her his adventures.

  “Mr. Dunworthy said, ‘You’ve lost the fix,’ and then he went straight over into Mr. Gilchrist and they both fell down,” Colin said. “Mr. Gilchrist was acting like he’d done it on purpose, he wouldn’t even help me cover him up. He was shivering like blood, and he had a fever, and I kept shouting, ‘Mr. Dunworthy! Mr. Dunworthy!’ but he couldn’t hear me. And Mr. Gilchrist kept saying, ‘I’m holding you personally responsible.’”

  It began to spit snow again, and the wind picked up. Dunworthy clung to the donkey’s stiff mane, shivering.

  “They wouldn’t tell me anything,” Colin said, “and when I tried to get in to see Great-Aunt Mary, they said, ‘We don’t allow children.’”

  They were riding into the wind, the snow blowing against Dunworthy’s cloak in freezing gusts. He leaned forward till he was nearly lying on the donkey’s neck.

  “The doctor came out,” Colin said, “and he started whispering to this nurse, and I knew she was dead,” and Dunworthy felt a sudden stab of grief, as if he were hearing it for the first time. Oh, Mary, he thought.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” Colin said, “so I just sat there, and Mrs. Gaddson, she’s this necrotic person, came up and started reading to me out of the Bible how it was God’s will. I hate Mrs. Gaddson!” he said violently. “She’s the one who deserved to get the flu!”

  Their voices began to ring, the overtones echoing against and around the woods so that he shouldn’t have been able to understand them, but oddly they rang clearer and clearer in the cold air, and he thought they must be able to hear them all the way to Oxford, seven hundred years away.

  It came to Dunworthy suddenly that Mary wasn’t dead, that here in this terrible year, in this century that was worse than a ten, she had not yet died, and it seemed to him a blessing beyond any he had any right to expect.

  “And that was when we heard the bell,” Colin said. Mr. Dunworthy said it was you calling for help.”

  “It was,” Kivrin said. “This won’t work. He’ll fall off.”

  “You’re right,” Colin said, and Dunworthy realized that they had dismounted again and were standing next to the donkey, Kivrin holding the rope bridle.

  “We have to put you on the horse,” Kivrin said, taking hold of Dunworthy’s waist. “You’re going to fall off the donkey. Come on. Get down. I’ll help you.”

  They both had to help him down, Kivrin reaching around him in a way he knew had to hurt her ribs, Colin almost holding him up.

  “If I could just sit down for a bit,” Dunworthy said through chattering teeth.

  “There isn’t time,” Colin said, but they helped him to the side of the path and eased him down against a rock.

  Kivrin reached up under her smock and brought out three aspirin. “Here. Take these,” she said, holding them out to him on her open palm.

  “Those were for you,” he said. “Your ribs—”

  She looked at him steadily, unsmilingly. “I’ll be all right,” she said, and went to tie the stallion to a bush.

  “Do you want some water?” Colin said. “I could build a fire and melt some snow.”

  “I’ll be all right,” Dunworthy said. He put the aspirin in his mouth and swallowed them.

  Kivrin was adjusting the stirrups, untying the leather straps with practiced skill. She knotted them and came back over to Dunworthy to help him up. “Ready?” she said, putting her hand under his arm.

  “Yes,” Dunworthy said, and tried to stand up.

  “This was a mistake,” Colin said. “We’ll never get him on,” but they did, putting his foot in the stirrups and his hands around the pommel and hoisting him up, and at the end he was even able to help them a little, offering a hand so Colin could clamber up the side of the stallion in front of him.

  He had stopped shivering, but he was not sure whether that was a good sign or not, and when they started off again, Kivrin ahead on the jolting donkey, Colin already talking, he leaned into Colin’s back and closed his eyes.

  “So I decided that when I get out of school, I’m going to come to Oxford and be an historian like you,” he said. “I don’t want to come to the Black Death. I want to go to the Crusades.”

  He listened to them, leaning against Colin. It was getting dark, and they were in the Middle Ages in the woods, two cripples and a child, and Badri, another cripple, trying to hold the net open and susceptible to relapse himself. But he could not seem to summon any panic or even any worry. Colin had the locator and Kivrin knew where the drop was. They would be all right.

  Even if they could not find the drop and they were trapped here forever, even if Kivrin could not forgive him, she would be all right. She would take them to Scotland, where the plague never went, and Colin would pull fishhooks and a frying pan out of his bag of tricks and they would catch trout and salmon to eat. They might even find Basingame.

  “I’ve watched sword-fighting on the vids, and I know how to drive a horse,” Colin said, and then, “Stop!”

  Colin jerked the reins back and up, and the stallion stopped, its nose against the donkey’s tail. They were at the top of a little hill. At its bottom was a frozen puddle and a line of willows.

  “Kick it,” Colin said, but Kivrin was already dismounting.

  “He won’t go any farther,” she said. “He did this before. He saw me come through. I thought it was Gawyn, but it was Roche all along.” She pulled the rope bridle off over the donkey’s head, and it immediately bolted back along the narrow path.

  “Do you want to ride?” Colin asked her, already scrambling down.

  She shook her head. “It hurts more mounting and dismounting than walking.” She was looking across at the farther hill. The trees went only halfway up, and above them the hill was white with snow. It must have stopped snowing, though Dunworthy hadn’t been aware of it. The clouds were breaking up, and between them the sky was a pale, clear lavender.

  “He thought I was St. Catherine,” she said. “He saw me come through, like you were afraid would happen. He thought I had been sent from God to help them in their hour of need.”

  “Well, and you did, didn’t you?” Colin said. He jerked the reins awkwardly, and the stallion started down the hill, Kivrin walking beside it. “You should have seen the mess the other places we were. Bodies everywhere, and I don’t think anybody helped them.”

  He handed the reins to Kivrin. “I’ll go see if the net’s open,” he said and ran ahead. “Badri was going to open it every two hours.” He crashed into the thicket and disappeared.

  Kivrin brought the stallion to a stop at the bottom of the hill and helped Dunworthy down.

  “We’d best take his saddle and bridle off,” Dunworthy said. “When we found him, he was tangled in a bush.”

  Together they got the girth uncinched and the saddle off. Kivrin unhooked the bridle and reached up to stroke the stallion’s head.

  “He’ll be all right,” Dunworthy said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  Colin burst through the willows, scattering snow everywhere. “It’s not there.”

  “It’ll open soon,” Dunworthy said.

  “Are we taking the horse with us?” Colin asked. “I th
ought historians weren’t allowed to take anything into the future. But it’d be great if we could take him. I could ride him when I go to the Crusades.”

  He exploded back through the thicket, spraying snow. “Come on, you guys, it could open any time.”

  Kivrin nodded. She smacked the stallion on its flank. It walked a few paces and then stopped and looked back at them questioningly.

  “Come on,” Colin said from somewhere inside the thicket, but Kivrin didn’t move.

  She put her hand against her side.

  “Kivrin,” he said, moving to help her.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said and turned away from him to push aside the tangled branches of the thicket.

  It was already twilight under the trees. The sky between the black branches of the oak was lavender-blue. Colin was dragging a fallen log into the middle of the clearing. “In case we just missed it and have to wait a whole two hours,” he said. Dunworthy sat down gratefully.

  “How do we know where to stand when the net opens?” Colin asked Kivrin.

  “We’ll be able to see the condensation,” she said. She went over to the oak tree and bent down to brush the snow away from its base.

  “What if it gets dark?’ Colin asked.

  She sat down against the tree, biting her lips as she eased herself onto the roots.

  Colin squatted down between them. “I didn’t bring any matches or I’d start a fire,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” Dunworthy said.

  Colin switched on his pocket torch and then switched it off again. “I think I’d better save this in case something goes wrong.”

  There was a movement in the willows. Colin leaped up. “I think it’s starting,” he said.

  “It’s the stallion,” Dunworthy said. “He’s eating.”

  “Oh.” Colin sat back down. “You don’t think the net already opened and we didn’t see it because it was dark?”

  “No,” Dunworthy said.

  “Perhaps Badri had another relapse and couldn’t keep the net open,” he said, sounding more excited than scared.