Dooms Day Book

“He is in peril of death,” Roche said. “He must be shriven that he may enter into heaven.”

He’s not going to heaven, Kivrin thought. He brought the plague here.

The clerk opened his eyes. They were bloodshot and swollen, and there was a faint hum to his breathing. He’s dying, she thought.

“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 you 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 antibiotics like tetracycline and streptomycin would have worked, and they 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.”