Dooms Day Book

And maybe I am, she thought. Who knows where they’ve brought me? I was delirious. Maybe the cutthroat put me on a boat and took me across the Channel. She knew that wasn’t possible. She remembered most of the night’s journey, even though it had a disjointed, dreamlike quality to it. I fell off the horse, she thought, and a redheaded man picked me up. And we came past a church.

She frowned, trying to remember more about the direction they had travelled. They had headed into the woods, away from the thicket, and then come to a road, and the road forked, and that was where she had fallen off. If she could find the fork in the road, perhaps she could find the drop from there. The fork was only a little way from the tower.

But if the drop were that close, she was in Skendgate and the women were speaking Middle English, but if they were speaking Middle English, why couldn’t she understand them?

Maybe I hit my head when I fell off the horse, and it’s done something to the interpreter, she thought, but she had not hit her head. She had let go and slid down until she was sitting on the road. It’s the fever, she thought. It’s somehow keeping the interpreter from recognizing the words.

It recognized the Latin, she thought, and a little knot of fear began to form in her chest. It recognized the Latin, and I can’t be ill. I had my inoculations. She remembered suddenly that her plague inoculation had itched and made a lump under her arm, but Dr. Ahrens had checked it just before she came through. Dr. Ahrens had said it was all right. And I can’t have the plague, she thought. I don’t have any of the symptoms.

Plague victims had huge lumps under their arms and on the insides of their thighs. They vomited blood, and the blood vessels under their skin ruptured and turned black. It wasn’t the plague, but what was it, and how had she contracted it? She had been inoculated against every major disease extant in 1320, and anyway, she hadn’t been exposed to any disease. She had begun to have symptoms as soon as she came through, before she had even met anyone. Germs didn’t just hover near the drop, waiting for someone to come through. They had to be spread by contact or sneezing or fleas. The plague had been spread by fleas.

It’s not the plague, she told herself firmly. People who have the plague don’t wonder if they have it. They’re too busy dying.

It wasn’t the plague. The fleas that had spread it lived on rats and humans, not out in the middle of a forest, and the Black Death hadn’t reached England till 1348. It must be some mediaeval disease Dr. Ahrens hadn’t known about. There had been all sorts of strange diseases in the Middle Ages—the king’s evil and St. Vitus’s dance and unnamed fevers. It must be one of them, and it had taken her enhanced immune system awhile to figure out what it was and begin fighting it. But now it had, and her temperature was down and the interpreter would begin working. All she had to do was rest and wait and get better. Comforted by that thought, she closed her eyes again, and slept.

* * *

Someone was touching her. She opened her eyes. It was the mother-in-law. She was examining Kivrin’s hands, turning them over and over again in hers, rubbing her chapped forefinger along the backs, scrutinizing the nails. When she saw Kivrin’s eyes were open, she dropped her hands, as if in disgust, and said, “Sheavost ahvheigh parage attelest, baht hoore der wikkonasshae haswfolletwe?”

Nothing. Kivrin had hoped that somehow, while she slept, the interpreter’s enhancers would have sorted and deciphered everything she’d heard, and she would wake to find the interpreter working. But their words were still unintelligible. It sounded a little like French, with its dropped endings and delicate rising inflections, but Kivrin knew Norman French—Mr. Dunworthy had made her learn it—and she couldn’t make out any of the words.

“Hastow naydepesse?

” the old woman said.

It sounded like a question, but all French sounded like a question.

The old woman took hold of Kivrin’s arm with one rough hand and put her other arm around her, as if to help her up. I’m too ill to get up, Kivrin thought. Why would she make me get up? To be questioned? To be burned?

The younger woman came into the room, carrying a footed cup. She set it down on the windowseat and came to take Kivrin’s other arm. “Hastontee natour yowrese?” she asked, smiling her gap– toothed smile at Kivrin, and Kivrin thought, maybe they’re taking me to the bathroom, and made an effort to sit up and put her legs over the side of the bed.

She was immediately dizzy. She sat, her bare legs dangling over the side of the high bed, waiting for it to pass. She was wearing her linen shift and nothing else. She wondered where her clothes were. At least they had let her keep her shift. People in the Middle Ages didn’t usually wear anything to bed.