Dooms Day Book

“Mr. Dunworthy!” Kivrin had called out desperately, and the cutthroat had come and knelt in front of her, the light from his lantern flickering on his face.

“Fear not,” he had said. “He will return soon.”

“Mr. Dunworthy!” she had screamed, and the red-headed man had come and knelt beside her again.

“I shouldn’t have left the drop,” she had told him, watching his face so he wouldn’t turn into the cutthroat. “Something must have gone wrong with the fix. You must take me back there.”

He had unfastened the cloak he was wearing, swinging it easily off his shoulders, and laid it over her, and she knew he understood.

“I need to go home,” she had said to him as he bent over her. He had a lantern with him, and it lit his kind face and flickered on his red hair like flames.

“Godufadur,” he had called out, and she thought, that’s the slave’s name. Gauddefaudre. He will ask the slave to tell him where he found me, and then he’ll take me back to the drop. And Mr. Dunworthy. Mr. Dunworthy would be frantic that she wasn’t there when he opened the net. It’s all right, Mr. Dunworthy, she had said silently. I’m coming.

“Dreede nawmaydde

,” the redheaded man had said and lifted her up in his arms. “Fawrthah Galwinnath coam.”

“I’m ill,” Kivrin said to the woman, “so I can’t understand you,” but this time no one leaned forward out of the darkness to quiet her. Maybe they had tired of watching her burn and had gone away. It was certainly taking a long time, though the fire seemed to be growing hotter now.

The redheaded man had set her on the white horse before him and ridden into the woods, and she had thought he must be taking her back to the drop. The horse had a saddle now, and bells, and the bells jangled as they rode, playing a tune. It was “O Come, All Ye Faithful,” and the bells grew louder and louder with each verse, till they sounded like the bells of St. Mary the Virgin’s.

They rode a long way, and she had thought they must surely be near the drop by now.

“How far is the drop?” she had asked the redheaded man. “Mr. Dunworthy will be so worried,” but he didn’t answer her. He rode out of the woods and down a hill. The moon was up, shining palely in the branches of a stand of narrow, leafless trees, and on the church at the bottom of the hill.

“This isn’t the drop,” she had said, and tried to pull on the horse’s reins to turn it back the way they had come, but she did not dare take her arms from around the redheaded man’s neck for fear she might fall. And then they were at a door, and it opened, and opened again, and there was a fire and light and the sound of bells, and she knew they had brought her back to the drop after all.

“Shay boyen syke nighonn tdeeth,” the woman said. Her hands were wrinkled and rough on Kivrin’s skin. She pulled the bed coverings up around Kivrin. Fur, Kivrin could feel soft fur against her face, or maybe it was her hair.

“Where have you brought me to?” Kivrin asked. The woman leaned forward a little, as if she couldn’t hear her, and Kivrin realized she must have spoken in English. Her interpreter wasn’t working. She was supposed to be able to think her words in English and speak them in Middle English. Perhaps that was why she couldn’t understand them, because her interpreter wasn’t working.

She tried to think how to say it in Middle English. “Where hast thou bringen me to?

” The construction was wrong. She must ask, “What is this place?” but she could not remember the Middle English for place.

She could not think. The woman kept piling on blankets, and the more furs she laid over her, the colder Kivrin got, as if the woman were somehow putting out the fire.

They would not understand what she meant if she asked, “What is this place?” She was in a village. The redheaded man had brought her to a village. They had ridden past a church and up to a large house. She must ask, “What is the name of this village?”

The word for place was demain, but the construction was still wrong. They would use the French construction, wouldn’t they?

“Quelle demeure avez vous m’apportй?’ she said aloud, but the woman had gone away, and that was not right. They had not been French for two hundred years. She must ask the question in English. “Where is the village you have brought me to?” But what was the word for village?

Mr. Dunworthy had told her she might not be able to depend on the interpreter, that she had to take lessons in Middle English and Norman French and German. He had made her memorize pages and pages of Chaucer. “Soun ye nought but eyr ybroken And every speche that ye spoken.” No. No. “Where is this village you have brought me to?” What was the word for village?