Dooms Day Book

People in the Middle Ages didn’t have indoor plumbing either, she thought, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go outside to a privy. Castles sometimes had enclosed garderobes, or corners over a shaft that had to be cleaned out at the bottom, but this wasn’t a castle.

The young woman put a thin, folded blanket around Kivrin’s shoulders like a shawl, and they both helped her off the bed. The planked wooden floor was icy. She took a few steps and was dizzy all over again. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought.

“Wotan shay wootes nawdaor youse der jordane?” the old woman said sharply, and Kivrin thought she recognized

jardin, the French for garden, but why would they be discussing gardens?

“Thanway maunhollp anhour,” the young woman said, putting her arm around Kivrin and draping Kivrin’s arm over her shoulders. The old woman gripped her other arm with both hands. She hardly came to Kivrin’s shoulder, and the young woman didn’t look like she weighed more than ninety pounds, but between them they walked her to the end of the bed.

Kivrin got dizzier with every step. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought, but they had stopped at the end of the bed. There was a chest there, a low wooden box with a bird or possibly an angel carved roughly into the top. On it lay a wooden basin full of water, the bloody bandage that had been around Kivrin’s forehead, and a smaller, empty bowl. Kivrin, concentrating on not falling over, didn’t realize what it was until the old woman said, “Swoune nawmaydar oupondre yorresette,” and pantomimed lifting her heavy skirts and sitting on it.

A chamberpot, Kivrin thought gratefully. Mr. Dunworthy, chamberpots were extant in country village manor houses in 1320. She nodded to show she understood and let them ease her down onto it, though she was so dizzy she had to grab at the heavy bedhangings to keep from falling, and her chest hurt so badly when she tried to stand up again that she doubled over.

“Maisry!” the old woman shouted toward the door. “Maisry, Com undtvae holpoon!” and the inflection indicated clearly that she was calling someone—Marjorie? Mary?—to come and help, but no one appeared, so perhaps she was wrong about that, too.

She straightened a little, testing the pain, and then tried to stand up, and the pain had lessened a little, but they still had to nearly carry her back to the bed, and she was exhausted by the time she was back under the bedcoverings. She closed her eyes.

“Slaeponpon donu paw daton,” the young woman said, and she had to be saying, “Rest,” or “Go to sleep,” but she still couldn’t decipher it. The interpreter’s broken, she thought, and the little knot of panic started to form again, worse than the pain in her chest.

It can’t be broken, she told herself. It’s not a machine. It’s a chemical syntax and memory enhancer. It can’t be broken. It could only work with words in its memory, though, and obviously Mr. Latimer’s Middle English was useless. Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote. Mr. Latimer’s pronunciations were so far off the interpreter couldn’t recognize what it was hearing as the same words, but that didn’t mean it was broken. It only meant it had to collect new data, and the few sentences it had heard so far weren’t enough.

It recognized the Latin, she thought, and the panic stabbed at her again, but she resisted it. It had been able to recognize the Latin because the rite of extreme unction was a set piece. She had already known what words should be there. The words the women spoke weren’t a set piece, but they were still decipherable. Proper names, forms of address, nouns and verbs and prepositional phrases would appear in set positions that repeated again and again. They would separate themselves out rapidly, and the interpreter would be able to use them as the key to the rest of the code. And what she needed to do now was collect data, listen to what was said without even trying to understand it, and let the interpreter work.

“Thin keowre hoorwoun desmoortale?

” the young woman asked.

“Got tallon wottes,” the old woman said.

A bell began to ring, far away. Kivrin opened her eyes. Both women had turned to look at the window, even though they couldn’t see through the linen.

“Bere wichebay gansanon,” the young woman said.

The old woman didn’t answer. She was staring at the window, as if she could see past the stiffened linen, her hands clasped in front of her as if in prayer.