The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “Hold it like this,” she whispered, cupping Agnes’s fingers over it. “Tightly.”

  Agnes obligingly clenched her little fist. Kivrin folded Agnes’s other hand over the top of the fist in a so-so facsimile of a praying attitude and said softly, “Hold tight to the bell, and it will not ring.”

  Agnes promptly pressed her hands to her forehead in an attitude of angelic piety.

  “Good girl,” Kivrin said, and put her arm around her. She glanced back at the church doors. They were still closed. She breathed a sigh of relief and turned back to face the altar.

  Father Roche was standing there. He was dressed in an embroidered white stole and a yellowed white alb with a hem more frayed than Agnes’s ribbon, and was holding a book. He had obviously been waiting for her, had obviously stood there watching her the whole time she tended to Agnes, but there was no reproof in his face or even impatience. His face held some other expression entirely, and she was reminded suddenly of Mr. Dunworthy, standing and watching her through the thin-glass partition.

  Lady Imeyne cleared her throat, a sound that was almost a growl, and he seemed to come to himself. He handed the book to Cob, who was wearing a grimy cassock and a pair of too-large leather shoes, and knelt in front of the altar. Then he took the book back and began saying the lections.

  Kivrin said them to herself along with him, thinking the Latin and hearing the echo of the interpreter’s translation.

  “ ‘Whom saw ye, O Shepherds?’ ” Father Roche recited in Latin, beginning the responsory. “ ‘Speak: tell us who hath appeared on the earth.’ ”

  He stopped, frowning at Kivrin.

  He’s forgotten it, she thought. She glanced anxiously at Imeyne, hoping she wouldn’t realize there was more to come, but Imeyne had raised her head and was scowling at him, her jaw in the silk wimple clenched.

  Roche was still frowning at Kivrin. “ ‘Speak, what saw ye?’ ” he said, and Kivrin gave a sigh of relief. “ ‘Tell us who hath appeared.’ ”

  That wasn’t right. She mouthed the next line, willing him to understand it. “ ‘We saw the newborn Child.’ ”

  He gave no indication that he had seen what she said, though he was looking straight at her. “I saw …”he said, and stopped again.

  ‘ “We saw the newborn Child,’ ” Kivrin whispered, and could feel Lady Imeyne turning to look at her.

  “ ‘And angels singing praise unto the Lord,’ ” Roche said, and that wasn’t right either, but Lady Imeyne turned back to the front to fasten her disapproving gaze on Roche.

  The bishop would no doubt hear about this, and about the candles and the fraying hem, and who knew what other errors and infractions he had committed.

  “ ‘Speak, what saw ye?’ ” Kivrin mouthed, and he seemed suddenly to come to himself.

  “ ‘Speak, what saw ye?’ ” he said clearly. “ ‘And tell us of the birth of Christ. We saw the newborn Child and angels singing praise unto the Lord.’ ”

  He began the Confíteor Deo, and Kivrin whispered it along with him, but he got through it without any mistakes, and Kivrin began to relax a little, though she watched him closely as he moved to the altar for the Orámus Te.

  He was wearing a black cassock under the alb, and both of them looked like they had once been richly made. They were much too short for Roche. She could see a good ten centimeters of his worn brown hose below the cassock’s hem when he bent over the altar. The alb and cassock had probably belonged to the priest before him, or were castoffs of Imeyne’s chaplain.

  The priest at Holy Re-Formed had worn a polyester alb over a brown jumper and jeans. He had assured Kivrin that the mass was completely authentic, in spite of its being held in midafternoon. The antiphon dated from the eighth century, he had told her, and the gruesomely detailed stations of the cross were exact copies of Turin’s. But the church had been a converted stationer’s shop, they had used a folding table for an altar, and the Carfax carillon outside had been busily destroying “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.”

  “Kyrie eléison,” Cob said, his hands folded in prayer.

  “Kyrie eléison,” Father Roche said.

  “Christe eléison,” Cob said.

  “Christe eléison,” Agnes said brightly.

  Kivrin hushed her, her finger to her lips. Lord have mercy. Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy.

  They had used the Kyrie at the ecumenical service, probably because of some deal Holy Re-Formed’s priest had struck with the vicar in return for moving the time of the mass, and the minister of the Church of the Millennium had refused to recite it and had looked coldly disapproving throughout. Like Lady Imeyne.

  Father Roche seemed all right now. He said the Gloria and the gradual without faltering and began the gospel. “Inituim sancti Envangelii secundum Luke, ” he said, and began to read haltingly in Latin. “ ‘Now it came to pass in those days that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census of the whole world be taken.’ ”

  The vicar had read the same verses at St. Mary’s. He had read it from the People’s Common Bible, which had been insisted on by the Church of the Millennium, and it had begun, “Around then the politicos dumped a tax hike on the ratepayers,” but it was the same gospel Father Roche was laboriously reciting.

  “ ‘And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among men of goodwill.’ ” Father Roche kissed the gospel. “Per evangélica dicta deléantur nostro delieta.”

  The sermon should come next, if there was one. In most village churches the priest only preached at the major masses, and even then it was usually no more than a catechism lesson, the listing of the seven deadly sins or the seven Acts of Mercy. The high mass Christmas morning was probably when the sermon would be.

  But Father Roche stepped out in front of the central aisle, which had nearly closed up again as the villagers leaned against the pillars and each other, trying to find a more comfortable position, and began to speak.

  “In the days when Christ came to earth from heaven, God sent signs that men might know his coming, and in the last days also will there be signs. There will be famines and pestilence, and Satan will ride abroad in the land.”

  Oh, no, Kivrin thought, don’t talk about seeing the Devil riding a black horse.

  She glanced at Imeyne. The old woman looked furious, but it wouldn’t matter what he’d said, Kivrin thought. She’d been determined to find mistakes and lapses she could tell the bishop about. Lady Yvolde looked mildly irritated, and everyone else had the look of tired patience people always got when listening to a sermon, no matter what the century. Kivrin had seen the same look in St. Mary’s last Christmas.

  The sermon at St. Mary’s had been on rubbish disposal, and the dean of Christ Church had begun it by saying, “Christianity began in a stable. Will it end in a sewer?”

  But it hadn’t mattered. It had been midnight, and St. Mary’s had had a stone floor and a real altar, and when she’d closed her eyes, she’d been able to shut out the carpeted nave and the umbrellas and the laser candles. She had pushed the plastic kneeling pad out of her way and knelt on the stone floor and imagined what it would be like in the Middle Ages.

  Mr. Dunworthy had told her it wouldn’t be like anything she had imagined, and he was right, of course. But not about this mass. She had imagined it just like this, the stone floor and the murmured Kyrie, the smells of incense and tallow and cold.

  “The Lord will come with fire and pestilence, and all will perish,” Roche said, “but even in the last days, God’s mercy will not forsake us. He will send us help and comfort and bring us safely unto heaven.”

  Safely unto heaven. She thought of Mr. Dunworthy. “Don’t go,” he had said. “It won’t be anything like you imagine.” And he was right. He was always right.

  But even he, with all his imagining of smallpox and cutthroats and witch burnings, would never have imagined this: that she was lost. That she didn’t k
now where the drop was, and the rendezvous was less than a week away. She looked across the aisle at Gawyn, who was watching Eliwys. She had to talk to him after the mass.

  Father Roche moved to the altar to begin the mass proper. Agnes leaned against Kivrin, and Kivrin put her arm around her. Poor thing, she must be exhausted. Up since before dawn and all that wild running around. She wondered how long the mass would take.

  The service at St. Mary’s had taken an hour and a quarter, and halfway through the offertory Dr. Ahrens’s bleeper had gone off. “It’s a baby,” she’d whispered to Kivrin and Dunworthy as she’d hurried out, “how appropriate.”

  I wonder if they’re in church now, she thought and then remembered it wasn’t Christmas there. They had had Christmas three days after she arrived, while she was still ill. It would be, what? The second of January, Christmas vac nearly over and all the decorations taken down.

  It was starting to get hot in the church, and the candles seemed to be taking all the air. She could hear shiftings and shufflings behind her as Father Roche went through the ritualized steps of the mass, and Agnes sank farther and farther against her. She was glad when they reached the Sanctus and she could kneel.

  She tried to imagine Oxford on the second of January, the shops advertising New Year’s sales and the Carfax carillon silent. Dr. Ahrens would be at the Infirmary dealing with post-holiday stomach upsets and Mr. Dunworthy would be getting ready for Hilary term. No, he’s not, she thought, and saw him standing behind the thin-glass. He’s worrying about me.

  Father Roche raised the chalice, knelt, kissed the altar. There was more shuffling, and a whispering on the men’s side of the church. She looked across. Gawyn was sitting back on his heels, looking bored. Sir Bloet was asleep.

  So was Agnes. She had collapsed so completely against Kivrin there would be no way she could stand for the Paternoster. She didn’t even try. When everyone else stood for it, Kivrin took the opportunity to gather Agnes in more closely and shift her head to a better position. Kivrin’s knee hurt. She must have knelt in the depression between two stones. She shifted it, raising it slightly and cramming a fold of her cloak under it.

  Father Roche put a piece of bread in the chalice and said the Haec Commixtio, and everyone knelt for the Agnus Dei. “ ‘Agnus dei, qui tollis peccata mundi: miserere nobis, ’ ” he chanted. “ ‘Lamb of God, who takest away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us.’ ”

  Agnus dei. Lamb of God. Kivrin smiled down at Agnes. She was sound asleep, her body a dead weight against Kivrin’s side and her mouth slackly open, but her fist was still clenched tightly over the little bell. My lamb, Kivrin thought.

  Kneeling on St. Mary’s stone floor she had envisioned the candles and the cold, but not Lady Imeyne, waiting for Roche to make a mistake in the mass, not Eliwys or Gawyn or Rosemund. Not Father Roche, with his cutthroat’s face and worn-out hose.

  She could never in a hundred years, in seven hundred and thirty-four years, have imagined Agnes, with her puppy and her naughty tantrums, and her infected knee. I’m glad I came, she thought. In spite of everything.

  Father Roche made the sign of the cross with the chalice and drank it. “Dominus vobiscum,” he said and there was a general commotion behind Kivrin. The main part of the show was over, and people were leaving now, to avoid the crush. Apparently there was no deference to the lord’s family when it came to leaving. Or even in waiting till they were outside to begin talking. She could scarcely hear the dismissal.

  “Ite, Missa est, ” Father Roche said over the din, and Lady Imeyne was in the aisle before he could even lower his raised hand, looking like she intended to leave for Bath and the bishop immediately.

  “Saw you the tallow candles by the altar?” she said to Lady Yvolde. “I bade him use the beeswax candles that I gave him.”

  Lady Yvolde shook her head and looked darkly at Father Roche, and the two of them swept out with Rosemund right at their heels.

  Rosemund obviously had no intention of walking back to the manor with Sir Bloet if she could help it, and this should do it. The villagers had closed in behind the three women, talking and laughing. By the time he huffed and puffed his way to his feet, they would be all the way to the manor.

  Kivrin was having trouble getting up herself. Her foot had gone to sleep, and Agnes was dead to the world. “Agnes,” she said. “Wake up. It’s time to go home.”

  Sir Bloet had got to his feet, his face nearly purple with the effort, and had come across to offer Eliwys his arm. “Your daughter has fallen asleep,” he said.

  “Aye,” Eliwys said, glancing at Agnes.

  She took his arm and they started out.

  “Your husband has not come as he promised.”

  “Nay,” Kivrin heard Eliwys say. Her grip tightened on his arm.

  Outside, the bells began to ring all at once, and out of time, a wild, irregular chiming. It sounded wonderful. “Agnes,” Kivrin said, shaking her, “it’s time to ring your bell.”

  She didn’t even stir. Kivrin tried to get the sleeping child onto her shoulder. Her arms flopped limply over Kivrin’s shoulders, and the bell jangled.

  “You waited all night to ring your bell,” Kivrin said, getting to one knee. “Wake up, lamb.”

  She looked around for someone to help her. There was scarcely anyone left in the church. Cob was making the rounds of the windows, pinching the candle flames out between his chapped fingers. Gawyn and Sir Bloet’s nephews were at the back of the nave, buckling on their swords. Father Roche was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if he was the one ringing the bell with such joyous enthusiasm.

  Her numb foot was beginning to tingle. She flexed it in the thin shoe and then put her weight on it. It felt terrible, but she could stand on it. She hoisted Agnes farther over her shoulder and tried to stand up. Her foot caught in the hem of her skirt, and she pitched forward.

  Gawyn caught her. “Good lady Katherine, my lady Eliwys bade me come to help you,” he said, steadying her. He lifted Agnes easily out of her arms and onto his shoulder, and strode out of the church, Kivrin hobbling beside him.

  “Thank you,” Kivrin said when they were out of the jammed churchyard. “My arms felt like they were going to fall off.”

  “She is a stout lass,” he said.

  Agnes’s bell slid off her wrist and fell onto the snow, clattering with the other bells as it fell. Kivrin stooped and picked it up. The knot was almost too small to be seen, and the short ends of ribbon beyond it were frayed into thin threads, but the moment she took hold of it, the knot came undone. She tied it on Agnes’s dangling wrist with a little bow.

  “I am glad to assist a lady in distress,” Gawyn said, but she didn’t hear him.

  They were all alone on the green. The rest of the family was nearly to the manor gate. She could see the steward holding the lantern over Lady Imeyne and Lady Yvolde as they started into the passage. There were a lot of people still in the churchyard, and someone had built a bonfire next to the road, and people were standing around it, warming their hands and passing a wooden bowl of something, but here, halfway across the green, they were all alone. The opportunity she had thought would never come was here.

  “I wanted to thank you for trying to find my attackers, and for rescuing me in the woods and bringing me here,” she said. “When you found me, how far from here was the place? Could you take me to it?”

  He stopped and looked at her. “Did they not tell you?” he said. “ All of your goods and gear that were found I brought to the manor. The thieves had taken your belongings, and though I rode after them, I fear I found naught.” He started walking again.

  “I know you brought my boxes here. Thank you. But that wasn’t why I wanted to see the place you found me,” Kivrin said rapidly, afraid they would catch up with the others before she finished asking him.

  Lady Imeyne had stopped and was looking back their way. She had to get it asked before Imeyne sent the steward back to see what was keeping them.

 
“I lost my memory when I was injured in the attack,” she said. “I thought if I could see the place where you found me, I might remember something.”

  He had stopped again and was looking at the road above the church. There were lights there, bobbing unsteadily and coming rapidly nearer. Latecomers to church?

  “You’re the only one who knows where the place is,” Kivrin said, “or I wouldn’t bother you, but if you could just tell me where it is, I could—”

  “There is nothing there,” he said vaguely, still looking at the lights. “I brought your wagon and your boxes to the manor.”

  “I know” Kivrin said, “and I thank you, but—”

  “They are in the barn,” he said. He turned at the sound of horses. The bobbing lights were lanterns carried by men on horseback. They galloped past the church and through the village, at least a half dozen of them, and pulled up short where Lady Eliwys and the others were standing.

  It’s her husband, Kivrin thought, but before she could finish her thought, Gawyn had thrust Agnes into her arms and taken off toward them, pulling his sword as he ran.

  Oh, no, Kivrin thought, and began to run, too, clumsy under Agnes’s weight. It wasn’t her husband. It was the men who were after them, the reason they were hiding, the reason Eliwys had been so angry at Imeyne for telling Sir Bloet they were here.

  The men with the torches had got down off their horses. Eliwys walked forward to one of the three men still on horseback and then fell to her knees as if she had been struck.

  No, oh, no, Kivrin thought, out of breath. Agnes’s bell jangled wildly as she ran.

  Gawyn ran up to them, his sword flashing in the lantern light, and then he was on his knees, too. Eliwys stood up, and stepped forward to the men on horseback, her arm out in a gesture of welcome.

  Kivrin stopped, out of breath. Sir Bloet came forward, knelt, stood up. The men on horseback flung back their hoods. They were wearing hats of some kind or crowns. Gawyn, still on his knees, sheathed his sword. One of the men on horseback raised his hand, and something glittered.