Dooms Day Book

Kivrin looked up. Eliwys was looking at Imeyne, but absently, as if she hadn’t heard her.

“Your sins and Gawyn’s,” Imeyne said.

“Gawyn,” Kivrin said. He could show her where the drop was, and she could go get help. Dr. Ahrens would know what to do. And Mr. Dunworthy. Dr. Ahrens would give her vaccine and streptomycin to bring back.

“Where is Gawyn?” Kivrin said.

Eliwys was looking at her now, and her face was full of longing, full of hope. He has finally got her attention, Kivrin thought. “Gawyn,” Kivrin said. “Where is he?”

“Gone,” Eliwys said.

“Gone where?” she said. “I must speak with him. We must go fetch help.”

“There is no help,” Lady Imeyne said. She knelt beside Rosemund and folded her hands. “It is God’s punishment.”

Kivrin stood up. “Gone where?”

“To Bath,” Eliwys said. “To bring my husband.”

Transcript from the Doomsday Book

(070114-070526)

I decided I’d better try to get this all down. Mr. Gilchrist said he hoped with the opening of Mediaeval we’d be able to obtain a first-hand account of the Black Death, and I guess this is it.

The first case of plague here was the clerk who came with the bishop’s envoy. I don’t know if he was ill when they arrived or not. He could have been and that was why they came here instead of going on to Oxford, to get rid of him before he infected them. He was definitely ill on Christmas morning when they left, which means he was probably contagious the night before, when he had contact with at least half the village.

He has transmitted the disease to Lord Guillaume’s daughter, Rosemund, who fell ill on… the twenty-sixth? I’ve lost all track of time. Both of them have the classic buboes. The clerk’s bubo has broken and is draining. Rosemund’s is hard and growing larger. It’s nearly the size of a walnut. The area around it is inflamed. Both of them have high fevers and are intermittently delirious.

Father Roche and I have isolated them in the bower and have told everyone to stay in their houses and avoid all contact with each other, but I’m afraid it’s too late. Nearly everyone in the village was at the Christmas feast, and the whole family was in here with the clerk.

I wish I knew whether the disease is contagious before the symptoms appear and how long the incubation period is. I know that the plague takes three forms: bubonic, which is spread by fleas on the rats; pneumonic, which is droplet; and septicemic, which goes straight into the bloodstream, and I know the pneumonic form is the most contagious since it can be spread by coughing or breathing on people and by touch. The clerk and Rosemund both seem to have the bubonic.

I am so frightened I can’t even think. It washes over me in waves. I’ll be doing all right, and then suddenly the fear swamps me, and I have to take hold of the bedframe to keep from running out of the room, out of the house, out of the village, away from it!

I know I’ve had my plague inoculations, but I’d had my T– cells enhanced and my antivirals, and I still got whatever it was I got, and every time the clerk touches me, I cringe. Father Roche keeps forgetting to wear his mask, and I’m so afraid he’s going to catch it, or Agnes. And I’m afraid the clerk is going to die. And Rosemund. And I’m afraid somebody in the village is going to get pneumonic, and Gawyn won’t come back, and I won’t find the drop before the rendezvous.

(Break)

I feel a bit calmer. It seems to help, talking to you, whether you can hear me or not.

Rosemund’s young and strong. And the plague didn’t kill everyone. In some villages no one at all died.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

They took Rosemund up to the bower, making a pallet on the floor for her in the narrow space beside the bed. Roche covered it with a linen sheet and went out to the barn’s loft to fetch bedcoverings.

Kivrin had been afraid Rosemund would balk at the sight of the clerk, with his grotesque tongue and blackening skin, but she scarcely glanced at him. She took her surcote and shoes off and lay down gratefully on the narrow pallet. Kivrin took the rabbitskin coverlet from the bed and put it over her.

“Will I scream and run at people like the clerk?” Rosemund asked.

“Nay,” Kivrin said, and tried to smile. “Try to rest. Does it hurt anywhere?”

“My stomach,” she said, putting her hand to her middle. “And my head. Sir Bloet told me the fever makes men dance. I thought it was a tale to frighten me. He said they danced till blood came out of their mouths and they died. Where is Agnes?”

“In the loft with your mother,” Kivrin said. She had told Eliwys to take Agnes and Imeyne up to the loft and shut themselves in, and Eliwys had without even a backward glance at Rosemund.

“My father comes soon,” Rosemund said.

“You must be quiet now and rest.”

“Grandmother says it is a mortal sin to fear your husband, but I cannot help it. He touches me in ways that are not seemly and tells me tales of things that cannot be true.”

I hope he dies in agony, Kivrin thought. I hope he is infected already.