Dooms Day Book

Maisry had got out of the high seat and was huddled against the wall, looking terrified. “Where is she?” Kivrin demanded.

Maisry put a hand up defensively to her ear and gaped at her.

“That’s right,” Kivrin said. “I will box your ears unless you tell me where she is.

Maisry buried her face in her skirts.

“Where is she?” Kivrin said, and jerked her up by her arm. “You were supposed to watch her. She was your responsibility!”

Maisry began to howl, a high-pitched sound like an animal.

“Stop that!” Kivrin said. “Show me where she went!” she pushed her toward the screens.

“What is it?” Roche said, coming in.

“It’s Agnes,” Kivrin said. “We must find her. She may have gone out into the village.”

Roche shook his head. “I did not see her. She is likely in one of the outbuildings.”

“The stables,” Kivrin said, relieved. “She said she wanted to go see her pony.”

She was not in the stables. “Agnes!” she called into the manure-smelling darkness, “Agnes!” Agnes’s pony whinnied and tried to push its way out of its stall, and Kivrin wondered when it had last been fed, and where the hounds were. “Agnes.” She looked in each of the boxes and behind the manger, anywhere a little girl might hide. Or fall asleep.

She might be in the barn, Kivrin thought, and came out of the stable, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness. Roche was just emerging from the kitchen. “Did you find her?” Kivrin asked, but he didn’t hear her. He was looking toward the gate, his head cocked as if he were listening.

Kivrin listened, but she couldn’t hear anything. “What is it?” she asked. “Can you hear her crying?”

“It is the Lord,” he said and ran towards the gate.

Oh, no, not Roche, Kivrin thought, and ran after him. He had stopped and was opening the gate. “Father Roche,” Kivrin said, and heard the horse.

It was galloping toward them, the sound of the hoofs loud on the frozen ground. Kivrin thought, he meant the lord of the manor. He thinks Eliwys’s husband has finally come, and then, with a shock of hope, it’s Mr. Dunworthy.

Roche lifted the heavy bar and slid it to the side.

We need streptomycin and disinfectant, and he’s got to take Rosemund back to hospital with him. She’ll have to have a transfusion.

Roche had the bar off. He pushed on the gate.

And vaccine, she thought wildly. He’d better bring back the oral. Where’s Agnes? He must get Agnes safely away from here.

The horse was nearly at the gate before she came to her senses. “No!” she said, but it was too late. Roche already had the gate open.

“He can’t come here,” Kivrin shouted, looking about wildly for something to warn him off with. “He’ll catch the plague.”

She’d left the spade by the empty pigsty after she buried Blackie. She ran to get it. “Don’t let him through the gate,” she called, and Roche flung his arms up in warning, but he had already ridden into the courtyard.

Roche dropped his arms. “Gawyn!” he said, and the black stallion looked like Gawyn’s, but a boy was riding it. He could not have been older than Rosemund, and his face and clothes were streaked with mud. The stallion was muddy, too, breathing hard, and spattering foam, and the boy looked as winded. His nose and ears were brightened with the cold. He started to dismount, staring at them.

“You must not come here,” Kivrin said, speaking carefully so she wouldn’t lapse into English. “There is plague in this village.” She raised her spade, pointing it like a gun at him.

The boy stopped, halfway off the horse, and sat down in the saddle again.

“The blue sickness,” she added, in case he didn’t understand, but he was already nodding.

“It is everywhere,” he said, turning to take something from the pouch behind his saddle. “I bear a message.” He held out a leather wallet toward Roche, and Roche stepped forward for it.

“No!” Kivrin said and took a step forward, jabbing the spade at the air in front of him. “Drop it on the ground!” she said. “You must not touch us.”

The boy took a tied roll of vellum from the wallet and threw it at Roche’s feet.

Roche picked it up off the flagstones and unrolled it. “What says the message?” he asked the boy, and Kivrin thought, of course, he can’t read.

“I know not,” the boy said. “It is from the Bishop of Bath. I am to take it to all the parishes.”

“Would you have me read it?” Kivrin asked.

“Mayhap it is from the lord,” Roche said. “Mayhap he sends word that he has been delayed.”

“Yes,” Kivrin said, taking it from him, but she knew it wasn’t.

It was in Latin, printed in letters so elaborate they were hard to read, but it didn’t matter. She had read it before. In the Bodleian.

She leaned the spade against her shoulder and read the message, translating the Latin:

“The contagious pestilence of the present day, which is spreading far and wide, has left many parish churches and other livings in our diocese without parson or priest to care for their parishioners.”

She looked at Roche. No, she thought. Not here. I won’t let that happen here.