Dooms Day Book

Kivrin wondered if they were arguing over what to do with her. She pushed on the coverlet with her weak hands, as if she could push herself away from them, and the young woman set down her bowl and spoon and came immediately up beside the bed.

“Spaegun yovor tongawn glais?” she said, and it might be, “Good morning,” or “Are you feeling better?” or “We’re burning you at dawn,” for all Kivrin knew. Perhaps her illness was keeping the interpreter from working. Perhaps when the fever went down, she would understand everything they said.

The old woman knelt beside the bed, holding a small silver box at the end of the chain between her folded hands, and began to pray. The young woman leaned forward to look at Kivrin’s forehead and then reached around behind her head, doing something that pulled at Kivrin’s hair, and she realized they must have bandaged the wound on her forehead. She touched her hand to the cloth and then put it on her neck, feeling for her tangled locks, but there was nothing there. Her hair ended in a ragged fringe just below her ears.

“Vae motten tiyez thynt,” the young woman said worriedly. “Far thotyiwort wount sorr.” She was giving Kivrin some kind of explanation, though Kivrin couldn’t understand it, and actually she did understand it: she had been very ill, so ill she had thought her hair was on fire. She remembered someone—the old woman?—trying to grab at her hands and her flailing wildly at the flames. They had had no alternative.

And Kivrin had hated the unwieldy mass of hair and the endless time it took to wash, had worried about how mediaeval women wore their hair, whether they braided it or not, and wondered how on earth she was going to get through the sixteen days of her practicum without washing it. She should be glad they had cut it off, but all she could think of was Joan of Arc, who had had short hair, who they had burned at the stake.

The young woman had drawn her hands back from the bandage and was watching Kivrin, looking frightened. Kivrin smiled at her, a little quaveringly, and she smiled back. She had a gap where two teeth were missing on the right side of her mouth, and the tooth next to the gap was brown, but when she smiled she looked no older than a first year student.

She finished untying the bandage and laid it on the coverlet. It was the same yellowed linen as her coif, but torn into fraying strips, and stained with brownish blood. There was more blood than Kivrin would have thought there would be. Mr. Gilchrist’s wound must have started bleeding again.

The woman touched Kivrin’s temple nervously, as if she wasn’t sure what to do. “Vexeyaw hongroot?” she said, and put one hand behind Kivrin’s neck and helped her raise her head.

Her head felt terribly light. That must be because of my hair, Kivrin thought.

The older woman handed the young one a wooden bowl, and she put it to Kivrin’s lips. Kivrin sipped carefully at it, thinking confusedly that it was the same bowl that had held the wax. It wasn’t, and it wasn’t the drink they’d given her before. It was a thin, grainy gruel, less bitter than the drink last night, but with a greasy aftertaste.

“Thasholde nayive gros vitaille towayte,” the older woman said.

Definitely her mother-in-law, Kivrin thought.

“Shimote lese hoor fource

,” the young woman answered back mildly.

The gruel tasted good. Kivrin tried to drink it all, but after only a few sips she felt worn out.

The young woman handed the bowl to the older one, who had come around to the side of the bed, too, and eased Kivrin’s head back down onto the pillow. She picked up the bloody bandage, touched Kivrin’s temple again as if she was debating whether to put the bandage back on again, and then handed it to the other woman, who set it and the bowl down on the chest that must be at the foot of the bed.

“Lo, liggethsteallouw,” the young woman said, smiling her gap-toothed smile, and there was no mistaking her tone even though she couldn’t make out the words at all. The woman had told her to go to sleep. She closed her eyes.

“Durmidde shoalausbrekkeynow,” the older woman said, and they left the room, shutting the heavy door behind them.

Kivrin repeated the words slowly to herself, trying to catch some familiar word. The interpreter was supposed to enhance her ability to separate out phonemes and recognize syntactical patterns, not just store Middle English vocabulary, but she might as well be listening to Serbo-Croatian.