Dooms Day Book

Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with our time, Mr. Dunworthy, it was founded by Maisry and Sir Bloet. And all the people who stayed and tried to help, like Roche, caught the plague and died.

(Break)

Lady Imeyne is unconscious and Roche is giving her the last rites. I told him to.

“It is the disease that speaks. Her soul has not turned against God,” I said, which isn’t true, and perhaps she does not deserve forgiveness, but she does not deserve this either, her body poisoned, rotting, and I can scarcely condemn her for blaming God when I blame her. And neither is responsible. It’s a disease.

The consecrated wine has run out, and there is no more olive oil. Roche is using cooking oil from the kitchen. It smells rancid. Where he touches her temples and the palms of her hands, the skin turns black.

It’s a disease.

(Break)

Agnes is worse. It’s terrible to watch her, lying there panting like her poor puppy and screaming, “Tell Kivrin to come and get me. I do not like it here!”

Even Roche can’t stand it. “Why does God punish us thus?” he asked me.

“He doesn’t. It’s a disease,” I said, which is no answer, and he knows it.

All of Europe knows it, and the Church knows it, too. It will hang on for a few more centuries, making excuses, but it can’t overcome the essential fact—that He let it happen. That He comes to no one’s rescue.

(Break)

The bells have stopped. Roche asked me if I thought it was a sign the plague had stopped. “Perhaps God has come to help us after all,” he said.

I don’t think so. In Tournai church officials sent out an order stopping the bells because the sound frightened the people. Perhaps the Bishop of Bath has sent one out as well.

The sound was frightening, but the silence is worse. It’s like the end of the world.

Chapter Thirty

Mary had been dead almost the entire time he had been ill. She had come down with it the day the analogue arrived. She had developed pneumonia almost immediately, and on the second day her heart had stopped. The sixth of January. Epiphany.

“You should have told me,” Dunworthy had said.

“I did tell you. Don’t you remember?”

He had no memory of it at all, had had no warning even when Mrs. Gaddson was allowed free access to his room, when Colin had said, “They won’t tell you anything.” It had not even struck him as odd that she hadn’t come to see him.

“I told you when she got ill,” Colin had said, “and I told you when she died, but you were too ill to care.”

He thought of Colin waiting outside her room for news and then coming and standing by his bedside, trying to tell him. “I’m sorry, Colin.”

“You couldn’t help it that you were ill,” Colin said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He had told Ms. Taylor that, and she had not believed him any more than he believed Colin now. He did not think that Colin believed it either.

“It was all right,” Colin said. “Everyone was very nice except Sister. She wouldn’t let me tell you even after you started getting better, but everyone else was nice except the Gallstone. She kept reading me Scriptures about how God strikes down the unrighteous. Mr. Finch rang my mother, but she couldn’t come, and so he made all the funeral arrangements. He was very nice. The Americans were nice, too. They kept giving me sweets.

“I’m sorry,” Dunworthy had said then and after Colin had gone, expelled by the ancient sister. “I’m sorry.”

He had not been back, and Dunworthy didn’t know whether the nurse had barred him from the infirmary or whether, in spite of what he said, Colin would not forgive him.

He had abandoned Colin, gone off and left him at the mercy of Mrs. Gadsson and the sister and doctors who would not tell him anything. He had gone where he could not be reached, as incommunicado as Basingame, salmon fishing on some river in Scotland. And no matter what Colin said, he believed that if Dunworthy had truly wanted to, illness or no, he could have been there to help him.

“You think Kivrin’s dead, too, don’t you?” Colin had asked him after Montoya left. “Like Ms. Montoya does?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“But you said she couldn’t get the plague. What if she’s not dead? What if she’s at the rendezvous right now, waiting for you?”

“She’d been infected with influenza, Colin.”

“But so were you, and you didn’t die. Maybe she didn’t die either. I think you should go see Badri and see if he has any ideas. Maybe he could turn the machine on again or something.”

“You don’t understand,” he’d said. “It’s not like a pocket torch. The fix can’t be switched on again.”

“Well, but maybe he could do another one. A new fix. To the same time.”

To the same time. A drop, even with the coordinates already known, took days to set up. And Badri didn’t have the coordinates. He only had the date. He could “make” a new set of coordinates based on the date, if the locationals had stayed the same, if Badri in his fever hadn’t scrambled them as well and if the paradoxes would allow a second drop at all.