Dooms Day Book

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 he 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 naughty girl,” 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 beef 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 windowseat. 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 Fourteenth Century 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 third of every village. Some places had only had one or two cases. In some villages, no one had died at all.