Dooms Day Book

He leaned against the door jamb, the tightness in his chest suddenly a pain again. Of all his worries over Kivrin, this one had never occurred to him, that she would have gone.

He looked into the other room. Colin ducked his head in the door. “The horse keeps trying to drink out of a bucket that’s out here. Should I let it?”

“Yes,” Dunworthy said, standing so Colin couldn’t see round the partition. “But don’t let him drink too much. He hasn’t had any water for days.”

“There isn’t all that much in the bucket.” He looked round the room interestedly. “This is one of the serf’s huts, right? They really were poor, weren’t they? Did you find anything?”

“No,” he said. “Go and watch the horse. And don’t let him wander off.”

Colin went out, brushing his head against the top of the door.

The baby lay on a bag of flocking in the corner. It had apparently still been alive when the mother died; she lay on the mud floor, her hands stretched out toward it. Both were dark, almost black, and the baby’s swaddling clothes were stiff with darkened blood.

“Mr. Dunworthy!” Colin called, sounding alarmed, and Dunworthy jerked around, afraid he had come in again, but he was still out with the stallion, whose nose was deep in the bucket.

“What is it?” he asked.

“There’s something over there on the ground.” Colin pointed toward the huts. “I think it’s a body.” He yanked on the stallion’s reins, so hard the bucket fell over and a thin puddle of water spilled out on the snow.

“Wait,” Dunworthy said, but he was already running forward into the trees, the stallion following.

“It is a b—” Colin said, and his voice cut off sharply. Dunworthy ran up, holding his side.

It was a body, a young man’s. It lay sprawled face up in the snow in a frozen puddle of black liquid. There was a dusting of snow on his face. His buboes must have burst, Dunworthy thought, and looked at Colin, but he was not looking at the body, but at the clearing.

It was larger than the one in front of the steward’s house. At its edges lay half a dozen huts, at the far end the Norman church. And in the center, on the trampled snow, lay the bodies.

They had made no attempt at burying them, though by the church there was a shallow trench, a mound of snow-covered dirt piled beside it. Some of them seemed to have been dragged to the churchyard—there were long, sled-like marks in the snow—and one at least had crawled to the door of his hut. He lay half-in, half-out.

“‘Fear God,’” Dunworthy murmured, “‘for the hour of His judgment is come.’”

“It looks like there was a battle here,” Colin said.

“There was,” Dunworthy said.

Colin stepped forward, peering down at the body. “Do you think they’re all dead?”

“Don’t touch them,” Dunworthy said. “Don’t even go near them.”

“I’ve had the gamma globulin,” he said, but he stepped back from the body, swallowing.

“Take deep breaths,” Dunworthy said, putting his hand on Colin’s shoulder. “And look at something else.”

“They said in the book it was like this,” he said, staring determinedly at an oak tree. “Actually, I was afraid it might be a good deal worse. I mean, it doesn’t smell or anything.”

“Yes.”

He swallowed again. “I’m all right now.” He looked round the clearing. “Where do you think Kivrin’s likely to be?”

Not here, Dunworthy prayed.

“She might be in the church,” he said, starting forward with the stallion again, “and we need to see if the tomb’s there. This might not be the village.” The stallion took two steps forward and reared his head, his ears back. He whinnied frightenedly.

“Go and put him in the shed,” Dunworthy said, taking hold of the reins. “He can smell the blood, and he’s frightened. Tie him up.”

He led the stallion back out of sight of the body and handed the reins to Colin, who took them, looking worried. “It’s all right,” he said, leading him toward the steward’s house. “I know just how you feel.”

Dunworthy walked rapidly across the clearing to the churchyard. There were four bodies in the shallow pit and two graves next to it, covered with snow, the first to die perhaps, when there were still such things as funerals. He went round to the front of the church.

There were two more bodies in front of the door. They lay face-down, on top of one another, the one on top an old man. The body underneath was a woman. He could see the skirts of her rough cloak and one of her hands. The man’s arms were flung across the the woman’s head and shoulders.

Dunworthy lifted the man’s arm gingerly, and his body shifted slightly sideways, pulling the cloak with it. The kirtle underneath was dirty and smeared with blood, but he could see that it had been bright blue. He pulled the hood back. There was a rope around the woman’s neck. Her long blonde hair was tangled in the rough fibers.

They hanged her, he thought with no surprise at all.

Colin ran up. “I figured out what these marks on the ground are,” he said. “They’re where they dragged the bodies. There’s a little kid behind the barn with a rope around his neck.”