The Doomsday Book

by Connie Willis

  “Katherine,” Roche said.

  Dying, and far from home. Like I was. She had brought a disease with her, too, and if no one had succumbed to it, it was not because of anything she had done. They had all helped her, Eliwys and Imeyne and Roche. She might have infected all of them. Roche had given her the last rites, he had held her hand.

  Kivrin lifted the clerk’s head gently and laid him straight in the bed. Then she went to the door.

  “I’ll let you give him the last rites,” she said, opening it a crack, “but I must speak to you first.”

  Roche had put on his vestments and taken off his mask. He carried the holy oil and the viaticum in a basket He set them on the chest at the foot of the bed, looking at the clerk, whose breathing was becoming more labored. “I must hear his confession,” he said.

  “No!” Kivrin said. “Not until I’ve told you what I have to.” She took a deep breath. “The clerk has the bubonic plague,” she said, listening carefully for the translation. “It is a terrible disease. Nearly all who catch it die. It is spread by rats and their fleas and by the breath of those who are ill, and their clothes and belongings.” She looked anxiously at him, willing him to understand. He looked anxious, too, and bewildered.

  “It’s a terrible disease,” she said. “It’s not like typhoid or cholera. It’s already killed hundreds of thousands of people in Italy and France, so many in some places there’s no one left to bury the dead.”

  His expression was unreadable. “You have remembered who you are and whence you came,” he said, and it wasn’t a question.

  He thinks I was fleeing the plague when Gawyn found me in the woods, she thought. If I say yes, he’ll think I’m the one who brought it here. But there was nothing accusing in his look, and she had to make him understand.

  “Yes,” she said, and waited.

  “What must we do?” he said.

  “You must keep the others from this room, and you must tell them they must stay in the house and let no one in. You must tell the villagers to stay in their houses, too, and if they see a dead rat not to go near it. There must be no more feasting or dancing on the green. The villagers mustn’t come into the manor house or the courtyard or the church. They mustn’t gather together anywhere.”

  “I will bid Lady Eliwys keep Agnes and Rosemund inside,” he said, “and tell the villagers to keep to their houses.”

  The clerk made a strangled sound from the bed, and they both turned and looked at him.

  “Is there naught we can do to help those who have caught this plague?” he said, pronouncing the word awkwardly.

  She had tried to remember what remedies the contemps had tried while he was gone. They had carried nosegays of flowers and drunk powdered emeralds and applied leeches to the buboes, but all of those were worse than useless, and Dr. Ahrens had said it wouldn’t have mattered what they had tried, that nothing except antimicrobials like tetracycline and streptomycin would have worked, and those had not been discovered until the twentieth century.

  “We must give him liquids and keep him warm,” she said.

  Roche looked at the clerk. “Surely God will help him,” he said.

  He won’t, she thought. He didn’t. Half of Europe. “God cannot help us against the Black Death,” she said.

  Roche nodded and picked up the holy oil.

  “You must put your mask on,” Kivrin said, kneeling to pick up the last cloth strip. She tied it over his mouth and nose. “You must always wear it when you tend him,” she said, hoping he wouldn’t notice she wasn’t wearing hers.

  “Is it God who has sent this upon us?” Roche said.

  “No,” Kivrin said. “No.”

  “Has the Devil sent it then?”

  It was tempting to say yes. Most of Europe had believed it was Satan who was responsible for the Black Death. And they had searched for the Devil’s agents, tortured Jews and lepers, stoned old women, burned young girls at the stake.

  “No one sent it,” Kivrin said. “It’s a disease. It’s no one’s fault. God would help us if He could, but He …” He what? Can’t hear us? Has gone away? Doesn’t exist?

  “He cannot come,” she finished lamely.

  “And we must act in His stead?” Roche said.

  “Yes.”

  Roche knelt beside the bed. He bent his head over his hands, and then raised it again. “I knew that God had sent you among us for some good cause,” he said.

  She knelt, too, and folded her hands.

  “Mittere digneris sanctum Angelum,” Roche prayed. “Send us Thy holy angel from heaven to guard and protect all those that are assembled together in this house.”

  “Don’t let Roche catch it,” Kivrin said into the corder. “Don’t let Rosemund catch it. Let the clerk die before it reaches his lungs.”

  Roche’s voice chanting the rites was the same as it had been when she was ill, and she hoped it comforted the clerk as it had comforted her. She couldn’t tell. He was unable to make his confession, and the anointing seemed to hurt him. He winced when the oil touched the palms of his hands, and his breathing seemed to grow louder as Roche prayed. Roche raised his head and looked at him. His arms were breaking out in the tiny purplish-blue bruises that meant the blood vessels under the skin were breaking, one by one.

  Roche turned and looked at Kivrin. “Are these the last days,” he asked, “the end of the world that God’s apostles have foretold?”

  Yes, Kivrin thought. “No,” she said. “No. It’s only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won’t have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter.” She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. “There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don’t have to ring.”

  Her words had calmed the clerk. His breathing eased, and he fell into a doze.

  “You must come away from him now,” Kivrin said and led Roche over to the window. She brought the bowl to him. “You must wash your hands after you have touched him,” she said.

  There was scarcely any water in the bowl. “We must wash the bowls and spoons we use to feed him,” she said, watching him wash his huge hands, “and we must burn the cloths and bandages. The plague is in them.”

  He wiped his hands on the tail of his robe and went down to tell Eliwys what she was to do. He brought back a length of linen and a bowl of fresh water. Kivrin tore the linen into wide strips and tied one over her mouth and nose.

  The bowl of water did not last long. The clerk had come out of his doze and asked repeatedly for a drink. Kivrin held the cup for him, trying to keep Roche away from him as much as possible.

  Roche went to say vespers and ring the bell. Kivrin closed the door after him, listening for sounds from below, but she couldn’t hear anything. Perhaps they are asleep, she thought, or ill. She thought of Imeyne bending over the clerk with her poultice, of Agnes standing at the end of the bed, of Rosemund underneath him.

  It’s too late, she thought, pacing beside the bed, they’ve all been exposed. How long was the incubation period? Two weeks? No, that was how long the vaccine took to take effect. Three days? Two? She could not remember. And how long had the clerk been contagious? She tried to remember who he had sat next to at the Christmas feast, who he had talked to, but she hadn’t been watching him. She’d been watching Gawyn. The only clear memory she had was of the clerk grabbing Maisry’s skirt.

  She went to the door again and opened it. “Maisry!” she called.

  There was no answer, and that didn’t mean anything, Maisry was probably asleep or hiding, and the clerk had bubonic, not pneumonic, and it was spread by fleas. The chances were that he had not infected anyone, but as soon as Roche came back, she left him with the clerk and took the brazier downstairs to fetch hot coals. And to reassure herself that they
were all right.

  Rosemund and Eliwys were sitting by the fire, with sewing on their laps, with Lady Imeyne next to them, reading from her Book of Hours. Agnes was playing with her cart, pushing it back and forth over the stone flags and talking to it. Maisry was asleep on one of the benches near the high table, her face sulky even in sleep.

  Agnes ran into Imeyne’s foot with the cart, and the old woman looked down at her and said, “I will take your toy from you if you cannot play meetly, Agnes,” and the sharpness of her reprimand, Rosemund’s hastily suppressed smile, the healthy pinkness of their faces in the fire’s light, were all inexpressibly reassuring to Kivrin. It could have been any night in the manor.

  Eliwys was not sewing. She was cutting linen into long strips with her scissors, and she looked up constantly at the door. Imeyne’s voice, reading from her Book of Hours, had an edge of worry, and Rosemund, tearing the linen, looked anxiously at her mother. Eliwys stood up and went out through the screens. Kivrin wondered if she had heard someone coming, but after a minute, she came back to her seat and took up the linen again.

  Kivrin came on down the stairs quietly, but not quietly enough. Agnes abandoned her cart and scrambled up. “Kivrin!” she shouted, and launched herself at her.

  “Careful!” Kivrin said, warding her off with her free hand. “These are hot coals.”

  They weren’t hot, of course. If they were, she wouldn’t have come down to replace them, but Agnes backed away a few steps.

  “Why do you wear a mask?” she asked. “Will you tell me a story?”

  Eliwys had stood up, too, and Imeyne had turned to look at her. “How does the bishop’s clerk?” Eliwys asked.

  He is in torment, she wanted to say. She settled for, “His fever is down a little. You must keep well away from me. The infection may be in my clothes.”

  They all got up, even Imeyne, closing her Book of Hours on her reliquary, and stepped back from the hearth, watching her.

  The stump of the Yule log was still on the fire. Kivrin used her skirt to take the lid from the brazier and dumped the gray coals on the edge of the hearth. Ash roiled up, and one of the coals hit the stump and bounced and skittered along the floor.

  Agnes laughed, and they all watched its progress across the floor and under a bench except Eliwys, who had turned back to watch the screens.

  “Has Gawyn returned with the horses?” Kivrin asked, and then was sorry. She already knew the answer from Eliwys’s strained face, and it made Imeyne turn and stare coldly at her.

  “Nay,” Eliwys said without turning her head. “Think you the others of the bishop’s party were ill, too?”

  Kivrin thought of the bishop’s gray face, of the friar’s haggard expression. “I don’t know,” she said.

  “The weather grows cold,” Rosemund said. “Mayhap Gawyn thought to stay the night.”

  Eliwys didn’t answer. Kivrin knelt by the fire and stirred the coals with the heavy poker, bringing the red coals to the top. She tried to maneuver them into the brazier, using the poker, and then gave up and scooped them up with the brazier lid.

  “You have brought this upon us,” Imeyne said.

  Kivrin looked up, her heart suddenly thumping, but Imeyne was not looking at her. She was looking at Eliwys. “It is your sins have brought this punishment to bear.”

  Eliwys turned to look at Imeyne, and Kivrin expected shock or anger in her face, but there was neither. She looked at her mother-in-law disinterestedly, as if her mind were somewhere else.

  “The Lord punishes adulterers and all their house,” Imeyne said, “as now he punishes you.” She brandished the Book of Hours in her face. “It is your sin that has brought the plague here.”

  “It was you who sent for the bishop,” Eliwys said coldly. “You were not satisfied with Father Roche. It was you who brought them here, and the plague with them.”

  She turned on her heel, and went out through the screens.

  Imeyne stood stiffly, as though she had been struck, and went back to the bench where she had been sitting. She eased herself to her knees and took the reliquary from her book and ran the chain absently through her fingers.

  “Would you tell me a story now?” Agnes asked Kivrin.

  Imeyne propped her elbows on the bench and pressed her hands against her forehead.

  “Tell me the tale of the willful maiden,” Agnes said.

  “Tomorrow,” Kivrin said, “I will tell you a story tomorrow,” and took the brazier back upstairs.

  The clerk’s fever was back up. He raved, shouting the lines from the mass for the dead as if they were obscenities. He asked for water repeatedly, and Roche, and then Kivrin, went out to the courtyard for it.

  Kivrin tiptoed down the stairs, carrying the bucket and a candle, hoping Agnes wouldn’t see her, but they were all asleep except Lady Imeyne. She was on her knees praying, her back stiff and unforgiving. You have brought this upon us.

  Kivrin went out into the dark courtyard. Two bells were ringing, slightly out of rhythm with each other, and she wondered if they were vespers bells or tolling a funeral. There was a half-filled bucket of water by the well, but she dumped it onto the cobbles and drew a fresh one. She set it by the kitchen door and went in to get something for them to eat. The heavy cloths used to cover the food when it was brought into the manor were lying on the end of the table. She piled bread and a chunk of cold meat onto one and tied it at the corners, and then grabbed up the rest of them and carried all of it upstairs. They ate sitting on the floor in front of the brazier and Kivrin felt better almost with the first bite.

  The clerk seemed better, too. He dozed again, and then broke out in a hot sweat. Kivrin sponged him off with one of the coarse kitchen cloths, and he sighed as if it felt good, and slept. When he woke again, his fever was down. They pushed the chest over next to the bed and set a tallow lamp on it, and she and Roche took turns sitting beside him, and resting on the window seat. It was too cold to truly sleep, but Kivrin curled up against the stone sill and napped, and every time she woke he seemed to be improved.

  She had read in History of Meds that lancing the buboes sometimes saved a patient. His had stopped draining, and the hum had gone from his chest. Perhaps he wouldn’t die after all.

  There were some historians who thought the Black Death had not killed as many people as the records indicated. Mr. Gilchrist thought the statistics were grossly exaggerated by fear and lack of education, and even if the statistics were correct, the plague hadn’t killed one half of every village. Some places had only had one or two cases. In some villages, no one had died at all.

  They had isolated the clerk as soon as they’d realized what it was, and she had managed to keep Roche from getting close most of the time. They had taken every possible precaution. And it hadn’t turned into pneumonic. Perhaps that was enough, and they had caught it in time. She must tell Roche they must close the village, keep anyone else from coming in, and perhaps the plague would just pass over them. It had done that. Whole villages had been left untouched, and there were parts of Scotland where the plague had never reached at all.

  She must have dozed, off. When she woke, it was growing light and Roche was gone. She looked over at the bed. The clerk lay perfectly still, his eyes wide and staring, and she thought, He’s died and Roche has gone to dig his grave, but even as the thought formed, she could see the coverings over his chest rise and fall. She felt for his pulse. It was fast and so faint she could scarcely feel it.

  The bell began to ring, and she realized Roche must have gone to say matins. She pulled her mask up over her nose and leaned over the bed. “Father,” she said softly, but he gave no indication at all that he heard her. She put her hand on his forehead. His fever was down again, but his skin didn’t feel normal. It was dry, papery, and the hemorrhages on his arms and legs had darkened and spread. His engorged tongue stuck out between his teeth, hideously purple.

  He smelled terrible, a sickening odor she could smell through her mask. She climbed up on t
he window seat and untied the waxed linen. The fresh air smelled wonderful, cold and sharp, and she leaned out over the ledge and breathed deeply.

  There was no one in the courtyard, but as she drank in the clean, cold air, Roche appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, carrying a bowl of something that steamed. He started across the cobbles to the door of the manor house, and as he did, Lady Eliwys appeared. She spoke to Roche, and he started toward her and then stopped short and pulled up his mask before he answered her. He’s trying to keep clear of people at any rate, Kivrin thought. He passed on into the manor house, and Eliwys went out to the well.

  Kivrin tied the linen to the side of the window and looked around for something to fan the air with. She jumped down, got one of the cloths she had taken from the kitchen, and clambered back up again.

  Eliwys was still by the well, drawing up the bucket. She stopped, holding to the rope, and turned to look toward the gate. Gawyn came through it, leading his horse by the bridle.

  He stopped when he saw her, and Gringolet stumbled into him and flung his head up, annoyed. The expression on Gawyn’s face was the same as it had always been, full of hope and longing, and Kivrin felt a surge of anger that it hadn’t changed, even now. He doesn’t know, she thought. He’s just returned from Courcy. She felt a pang of pity for him, that he had to find out, that Eliwys would have to tell him.

  Eliwys hauled the bucket up even with the edge of the well, and Gawyn took one more step toward her, holding on to Gringolet’s bridle, and then stopped.

  He knows, Kivrin thought. He knows after all. The bishop’s envoy has come down with it, she thought, and he’s ridden home to warn them. She realized suddenly he hadn’t brought the horses back with him. The friar has it, she thought, and the rest of them have fled.

  He watched Eliwys heave the heavy bucket up on to the stone edge of the well, not moving. He would do anything for her, Kivrin thought, anything at all, he would rescue her from a hundred cutthroats in the woods, but he can’t rescue her from this.

  Gringolet, impatient to be in the stable, shook his head. Gawyn put his hand up to his muzzle to steady him, but it was too late. Eliwys had already seen him.