Dooms Day Book

“She’s caught a chill,” she told Eliwys and Roche almost fiercely. “She was outside all afternoon. She’s caught cold,” but after Roche left to say vespers, she uncovered Agnes and felt under her arms, in her groin. She even turned her over, looking for a lump between the shoulderblades like the boy’s.

Roche didn’t ring the bell. He came back with a ragged quilt that was obviously from his own bed, made it into a pallet, and moved Agnes onto it.

The other vespers bells were ringing. Oxford and Godstow and the bell from the southwest. Kivrin couldn’t hear Courcy’s double bell. She looked at Eliwys anxiously, but she didn’t seem to be listening. She was looking across Rosemund at the screens.

The bells stopped, and Courcy’s started up. They sounded odd, muffled and slow. Kivrin looked at Roche. “Is it a funeral bell?”

“Nay,” he said, looking at Agnes. “It is a holy day.”

She had lost track of the days. The bishop’s envoy had left Christmas morning and in the afternoon she had found out it was the plague, and after that it seemed like one endless day. Four days, she thought, it’s been four days.

She had wanted to come at Christmas because there were so many holy days even the peasants would know what day it was, and she couldn’t possibly miss the rendezvous. Gawyn went to Bath for help, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought, and the bishop took all the horses, and I didn’t know where it was.

Eliwys had stood up and was listening to the bells. “Are those Courcy’s bells?” she asked Roche.

“Yes,” he said. “Fear not. It is the Slaughter of the Innocents.”

The slaughter of the innocents, Kivrin thought, looking at Agnes. She was still asleep, and she had stopped shivering, though she still felt hot.

The cook cried out something, and Kivrin went around the barricade to her. She was crouched on her pallet, struggling to get up. “Must go home,” she said.

Kivrin coaxed her down again and fetched her a drink of water. The bucket was nearly empty, and she picked it up and started out with it.

“Tell Kivrin I would have her come to me,” Agnes said. She was sitting up.

Kivrin put the bucket down. “I’m here,” Kivrin said, kneeling down beside her. “I’m right here.”

Agnes looked at her, her face red and distorted with rage. “The wicked man will get me if Kivrin does not come,” she said. “Bid her come now

.”

Transcript from the Doomsday Book

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I’ve missed the rendezvous. I lost count of the days, taking care of Rosemund, and I couldn’t find Agnes, and I didn’t know where the drop was.

You must be worried sick, Mr. Dunworthy. You probably think I’ve fallen among cutthroats and murderers. Well, I have. And now they’ve got Agnes.

She has a fever, but no buboes, and she isn’t coughing or vomiting. Just the fever. It’s very high—she doesn’t know me and keeps calling to me to come. Roche and I tried to bring it down by sponging her with cold compresses, but it keeps going back up.

(Break)

Lady Imeyne has it. Father Roche found her this morning on the floor in the corner. She may have been there all night. The last two nights she has refused to go to bed and has stayed on her knees, praying to God to protect her and the rest of the godly from the plague.

He hasn’t. She has the pneumonic. She’s coughing and vomiting mucus streaked with blood.

She won’t let Roche or me tend her. “She is to blame for this,” she told Roche, pointing at me. “Look at her hair. She is no maid. Look at her clothes.”

My clothes are a boy’s jerkin and leather hose I found in one of the chests in the loft. My dress got ruined when Lady Imeyne vomited on me, and I had to tear my shift up for cloths and bandages.

Roche tried to give her some of the willow bark tea, but she spat it out. She said, “She lied when she said she was waylaid in the woods. She was sent here.”

Bloody spittle dribbled down her chin as she spoke and Roche wiped it off. “It is the disease that makes you believe these things,” he said gently.

“She was sent here to poison us,” Imyene said. “See how she has poisoned my son’s children. And how she would poison me, but I will not let her give me aught to eat or drink.”

“Hush,” Roche said sternly. “You must not speak ill of one who seeks to help you.”

She shook her head, turning it wildly from side to side. “She seeks to kill us all. You must burn her. She is the devil’s servant.”

I’ve never seen him angry before. He looked almost like a cutthroat again. “You know not whereof you speak,” he said. “It is God who has sent her to help us.”

I wish it were true, that I were of any help at all, but I’m not. Agnes screams for me to come and Rosemund lies there as if she were under a spell and the clerk is turning black, and there’s nothing I can do to help any of them. Nothing.

(Break)

All the steward’s family have it. The youngest boy, Lefric, was the only one with a bubo, and I’ve brought him in here and lanced it. There’s nothing I can do for the others. They all have pneumonic.

(Break)

The steward’s baby is dead.

(Break)