Dooms Day Book

He screamed and made a convulsive movement, his knees coming up sharply, but Kivrin had already jerked back out of the way, her hand over her mouth. The bubo was gigantic and red hot to the touch. She should have lanced it hours ago.

Roche had not awakened, even when he screamed. His face was mottled, and his breath came steadily, noisily. His spasmodic movement had sent his coverings flying again. She stopped and covered him. His knees came up, but less violently, and she pulled the coverings up around him and then took the last candle from the top of the rood screen, put it in the lantern and lit it from one of St. Catherine’s.

“I’ll be back in just a moment,” she said, and went down the nave and out.

The light outside made her blink, though it was nearly evening. The sky was overcast, but there was little wind, and it seemed warmer outside than in the church. She ran across the green, shielding the open part of the lantern with her hand.

There was a sharp knife in the barn. She had used it to cut the rope when she was packing the wagon. She would have to sterilize it before she lanced the bubo. She had to open the swollen lymph node before it ruptured. When the buboes were in the groin, they were perilously close to the femoral artery. Even if Roche didn’t bleed to death immediately, all that poison would go straight into his bloodstream. It should have been lanced hours ago.

She ran between the barn and the empty pig sty and into the courtyard. The stable door stood open, and she could hear someone inside. Her heart jerked. “Who is there?” she said, holding the lantern up.

The steward’s cow was standing in one of the stalls, eating the spilled oats. She raised her head and lowed at Kivrin, and started toward her at a stumbling run.

“I don’t have time,” Kivrin said. She snatched up the knife from where it lay on the tangle of ropes and ran out. The cow followed, lumbering awkwardly because of its overfull udder and mooing piteously.

“Go away

,” Kivrin said, near tears. “I have to help him or he’ll die.” She looked at the knife. It was filthy. When she had found it in the barn, it had been dirty, and she had laid it down in the manure and dirt of the barn floor betweentimes while she was cutting the ropes.

She went over to the well and picked up the bucket. There was no more than an inch of water in the bottom, and it had a skim of ice on it. There was not enough to even cover the knife, and it would take forever to start a fire and bring it to a boil. There was no time for that. The bubo might already have ruptured. What she needed was alcohol, but they had used all the wine lancing the buboes and giving sacraments to all the dying. She thought of the bottle the clerk had had in Rosemund’s bower.

The cow shoved against her. “No,” she said firmly, and pushed open the door of the manor house, carrying the lantern.

It was dark in the anteroom, but the sunlight streamed into the hall through narrow windows, making long, smoky, golden shafts that lit the cold hearth and the high table and the wadmal sack of apples Kivrin had spilled out across it.

The rats didn’t run. They looked up at her when she came in, their small black ears twitching, and then went back to the apples. There were nearly a dozen of them on the table, and one sat on Agnes’s three-legged stool, his delicate paws up to his face as if he were praying.

She set down the lantern on the floor. “Get out,” she said.

The rats on the table didn’t even look up. The one who was praying did, across his folded paws, a cold, appraising look, as if she were an intruder.

“Get out of here!” she shouted and ran toward them.

They still didn’t run. Two of them moved behind the salt– cellar, and one of them dropped the apple it was holding with a thunk onto the table. It rolled off the edge and onto the rush– strewn floor.

Kivrin raised her knife. “Get.” She brought it down on the table, and the rats scattered. “Out.” She raised it again. “Of.” She swept the apples off the table and onto the floor. They bounced and rolled onto the rushes. In his surprise or fright, the rat that had been on Agnes’s stool ran straight toward Kivrin. “Here.” She threw the knife at it, and it sprinted back under the stool and disappeared in the rushes.

“Get out of here,” Kivrin said and buried her face in her hands.

“Mwaa,” the cow said from the anteroom.

“It’s a disease,” Kivrin whispered shakily, her hands still over her mouth. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

She went and retrieved the knife and the lantern. The cow had wedged itself halfway through the manor door and got stuck. It lowed at her piteously.