Dooms Day Book

“Scotland?” he said, as if he had never heard of it.

“Yes,” she said. “We must go away from here. We must take the donkey and go to Scotland.”

He nodded. “We must carry the sacraments with us. And ere we go I must ring the bell for Rosemund, that her soul may pass safely unto heaven.”

She wanted to tell him no, that there wasn’t time, they must leave now, immediately, but she nodded. “I will fetch Balaam,” she said.

Roche started for the bell tower, and she took off running for the barn before he had even reached it. She wanted them to be gone now, now, before anything else happened, as if the plague were waiting to leap out at them like the bogeyman from the church or the brewhouse or the barn.

She ran across the courtyard and into the stable and led the donkey out. She began to strap his panniers on.

The bell tolled once, and then was silent, and Kivrin stopped, the girth strap in her hand, and listened, waiting for it to ring again. Three strokes for a woman, she thought, and knew why he had stopped. One for a child. Oh, Rosemund.

She tied the girth strap and began to fill the panniers. They were too small to hold everything. She would have to tie the sacks on. She filled a coarse bag with oats for the donkey, scooping it out of the grain bin with both hands and spilling whole handfuls on the filthy floor, and knotted it with a rough rope that hung on Agnes’s pony’s stall. The rope was tied to the stall with a heavy knot she couldn’t untie. She ended by having to run to the kitchen for a knife and back again, bringing the sacks of food she had gathered up earlier.

She cut the rope free and sliced it into shorter sections, threw down the knife and went out to the donkey. He was trying to gnaw a hole in the sack of oats. She tied it and the other bags to his back with the pieces of rope and led him out of the courtyard and across the green to the church.

Roche was nowhere in sight. Kivrin still needed to fetch the blankets and the candles, but she wanted to put the sacraments in the panniers first. Food, oats, blankets, candles. What else had she forgotten?

Roche appeared at the door. He was not carrying anything.

“Where are the sacraments?” she called to him.

He didn’t answer. He leaned for a moment against the church door, staring at her, and the look on his face was the same as when he had come to tell her about the miller. But they’ve all died, she thought, there’s nobody left to die.

“I must ring the bell,” he said and started across the churchyard toward the belltower.

“There’s no time to ring the funeral toll,” she said. “We must start for Scotland.” She tied the donkey to the gate, her cold fingers fumbling with the rough rope, and hurried after him, catching him by the sleeve. “What is it?”

He turned, almost violently, toward her, and the expression on his face frightened her. He looked like a cutthroat, a murderer. “I must ring the bell for vespers,” he said and shook himself violently free of her hand.

Oh, no, Kivrin thought.

“It is only midday,” she said. “It isn’t time for vespers yet.” He’s just tired, she thought. We’re both so tired we can’t think straight. She took hold of his sleeve again. “Come, Father. We must go if we’re to get through the woods by nightfall.”

“It is past time,” he said, “and I have not yet rung them. Lady Imeyne will be angry.”

Oh, no, she thought, oh no oh no.

“I will ring it,” she said, stepping in front of him to stop him. “You must go into the house and rest.”

“It grows dark,” he said angrily. He opened his mouth as if to shout at her, and a great gout of vomit and blood heaved up out of him and onto Kivrin’s jerkin.

Oh no oh no oh no.

He looked bewilderedly at her drenched jerkin, the violence gone out of his face.

“Come, you must lie down,” she said, thinking, we will never make it to the manor house.

“Am I ill?” he said, still staring at her blood-drenched jerkin.

“No,” she said. “You are but tired and must rest.”

She led him toward the church. He stumbled, and she thought, if he falls, I will never get him up. She helped him inside, bracing the heavy door open with her back, and sat him down against the wall.

“I fear the work has tired me,” he said, leaning his head against the stones. “I would sleep a little.”

“Yes, sleep,” Kivrin said. As soon as he had closed his eyes she ran back to the manor house for blankets and a bolster to make him a pallet. When she skidded in with them, he was no longer there.

“Roche!” she cried, trying to see up the dark nave. “Where are you?”

There was no answer. She darted out again, still clutching the bedding to her chest, but he wasn’t in the bell tower or the churchyard, and he could not possibly have made it to the house. She ran back in the church and up the nave and he was there, on his knees in front of the statue of St. Catherine.

“You must lie down,” she said, spreading the blankets on the floor.

He lay down obediently, and she put the bolster behind his head. “It is the bubonic plague, is it not?” he asked, looking up at her.