Dooms Day Book

Eliwys protested lazily, her eyes still closed, that the bishop’s envoy had said the clerk should not be disturbed, but Imeyne knocked several times, loudly and without result. She waited a few minutes, knocked again, and then came down the steps and knelt at the foot of them to read her Book of Hours and keep an eye on the door so she could waylay the clerk as soon as he emerged.

Agnes batted at her bell with one finger, yawning broadly.

“Why don’t you go up into the loft and lie down with your sister?” Kivrin suggested.

“I’m not tired,” Agnes said, sitting up. “Tell me what happened to the naughty girl.”

“Only if you lie down,” Kivrin said, and began the story. Agnes didn’t last two sentences.

In the late afternoon, Kivrin remembered Agnes’s puppy. Everyone was asleep by then, even Lady Imeyne, who had given up on the clerk and gone up to the loft to lie down. Maisry had come in at some point and crawled under one of the tables. She was snoring loudly.

Kivrin eased her knees carefully out from under Agnes’s head and went out to bury the puppy. There was no one in the courtyard. The remains of a bonfire still smouldered in the center of the green, but there was no one around it. The villagers must be taking a Christmas afternoon nap, too.

Kivrin brought down Blackie’s body and went into the stable for a wooden spade. Only Agnes’s pony was there, and Kivrin frowned at it, wondering how the clerk was supposed to follow the envoy to Courcy. Perhaps he hadn’t been lying, after all, and the clerk was to be the new chaplain whether he liked it or not.

Kivrin carried the spade and Blackie’s already stiffening body across to the church and around to the north side. She laid the puppy down and began chipping through the crusted snow.

The ground was literally as hard as stone. The wooden spade didn’t even make a dent, even when she stood on it with both feet. She climbed the hill to the beginnings of the wood, dug through the snow at the base of an ash tree, and buried the puppy in the loose leaf-mould.

“Requiscat in pace,” she said so she could tell Agnes the puppy had had a Christian burial and went back down the hill.

She wished Gawyn would ride up now. She could ask him to take her to the drop while everyone was still asleep. She walked slowly across the green, listening for the horse. He would probably come by the main road. She propped the spade against the wattle fence of the pigsty and went around the outside of the manor wall to the gate, but she couldn’t hear anything.

The afternoon light began to fade. If Gawyn didn’t come soon, it would be too dark to ride out to the drop. Father Roche would be ringing vespers in another half hour, and that would wake everyone up. Gawyn would have to tend his horse, though, no matter what time he got back, and she could sneak out to the stable and ask him to take her to the drop in the morning.

Or perhaps he could simply tell her where it was, draw her a map so she could find it herself. That way she wouldn’t have to go into the woods alone with him, and if Lady Imeyne had him out on another errand the day of the rendezvous, she could take one of the horses and find it herself.

She stood in by the gate till she got cold and then went back along the wall to the pigsty and into the courtyard. There was still no one in the courtyard, but Rosemund was in the anteroom, with her cloak on.

“Where have you been?” she said. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. The clerk—”

Kivrin’s heart jerked. “What is it? Is he leaving?” He’d woken from his hangover and was ready to leave. And Lady Imeyne had persuaded him to take her to Godstow.

“Nay,” Rosemund said, going into the hall. It was empty. Eliwys and Imeyne must both be in the bower with him. She unfastened Sir Bloet’s brooch and took her cloak off. “He is ailing. Father Roche sent me to find you.” She started up the stairs.

“Ailing?” Kivrin said.

“Aye. Grandmother sent Maisry to the bower to take him somewhat to eat.”

And to put him to work, Kivrin thought, following her up the steps. “And Maisry found him ill?”

“Aye. He has a fever.”

He has a hangover, Kivrin thought, frowning. But Roche would surely recognize the effects of drink, even if Lady Imeyne couldn’t, or wouldn’t.

A terrible thought occurred to her. He’s been sleeping in my bed, Kivrin thought, and he’s caught my virus.

“What symptoms does he have?” she asked.

Rosemund opened the door.

There was scarcely room for them all in the little room. Father Roche was by the bed, and Eliwys stood a little behind him, her hand on Agnes’s head. Maisry cowered by the window. Lady Imeyne knelt at the foot of the bed next to her medicine casket, busy with one of her foul-smelling poultices, and there was another smell in the room, sickish and so strong it overpowered the mustard and leek smell of the poultice.