Dooms Day Book

It could be Skendgate. I remember a church, and I think this is a manor house. I’m in a bedroom or a solar, and it’s not just a loft because there are stairs, so that means the house of a minor baron at least. There’s a window, and as soon as the dizziness subsides I’ll climb up on the window seat and see if I can see the church. It has a bell—it rang for vespers just now. The one at Ms. Montoya’s village didn’t have a belltower, and that makes me afraid I’m not in the right place. I know we’re fairly close to Oxford, because one of the contemps talked about fetching a doctor from there. It’s also close to a village called Kersey—or Courcy—which is not one of the villages on the map of Ms. Montoya’s I memorized, but that could be the name of the landowner.

Because of being out of my head, I’m not sure of my temporal location either. I’ve been trying to remember, and I think I’ve only been sick two days, but it might be more. And I can’t ask them what day it is because they don’t understand me, and I can’t get out of bed without falling over, and they’ve cut my hair off, and I don’t know what to do. What happened? Why won’t the interpreter work? Why didn’t the T-cell enhancement?

(Break)

There’s a rat under my bed. I can hear it scrabbling in the dark.

Chapter Eleven

They couldn’t understand her. Kivrin had tried to communicate with Eliwys, to make her understand, but she had merely smiled kindly, uncomprehendingly, and told Kivrin to rest.

“Please,” Kivrin had said as Eliwys started for the door. “Don’t leave. This is important. Gawyn is the only one who knows where the drop is.”

“Sleep,” Eliwys said. “I will be back in a little.”

“You have to let me see him,” Kivrin said desperately, but Eliwys was already nearly to the door. “I don’t know where the drop is.”

There was a clattering on the stairs. Eliwys opened the door and said, “Agnes, I bade you go tell—”

She stopped in midsentence and took a step back. She did not look frightened or even upset, but her hand on the lintel jerked a little, as if she would have slammed the door, and Kivrin’s heart began to pound. This is it, she thought wildly. They’ve come to take me to the stake.

“Good morning, my lady,” a man’s voice said. “Your daughter Rosemund told me I would find you in hall, but I did not.”

He came into the room. Kivrin couldn’t see his face. He was standing at the foot of the bed, hidden from her by the hangings. She tried to shift her head so she could see him, but the movement made her head spin violently. She lay back down.

“I thought I would find you with the wounded lady,” the man said. He was wearing a padded jerkin and leather hose. And a sword. She could hear it clank as he took a step forward. “How does she?”

“She fares better today,” Eliwys said. “My husband’s mother has gone to brew her a decoction of woundwort for her injuries.”

She had taken her hand from the door, and his comment about “your daughter Rosemund” surely meant that this was Gawyn, the man she had sent to look for Kivrin’s attackers, but Eliwys had taken two more steps backward as he spoke, and her face looked guarded, wary. The thought of danger flickered through Kivrin’s mind again, and she wondered suddenly if she might not have dreamed Mr. Dunworthy’s cutthroat after all, if that man, with his cruel face, might be Gawyn.

“Found you aught that might tell us of the lady’s identity?” Eliwys said carefully.

“Nay,” he said. “Her goods had all been stolen and the horses taken. I hoped the lady might tell me somewhat of her attackers, how many there were and from what direction they came upon her.”

“I fear she cannot tell you anything,” Eliwys said.

“Is she mute then?” he said and moved so she could see him.

He was not so tall as Kivrin remembered him, standing over her, and his hair looked less red and more blonde in the daylight, but his face still looked as kind as when he had set her on his horse. His black horse Gringolet.

After he had found her in the clearing. He was not the cutthroat—she had dreamed the cutthroat, conjured him out of her delirium and Mr. Dunworthy’s fears, along with the white horse and the Christmas carols—and she must be misunderstanding Eliwys’s reactions the way she had misunderstood their getting her up to use the chamberpot.

“She is not mute, but speaks in some strange tongue I do not know,” Eliwys said. “I fear her injuries have addled her wits.” She came around to the side of the bed and Gawyn followed her. “Good lady. I have brought my husband’s privй Gawyn.”

“Good day, my lady,” Gawyn said, speaking slowly and over– distinctly, as if he thought Kivrin were deaf.

“It was he who found you in the woods,” Eliwys said.

Where in the woods? Kivrin thought desperately.

“I am pleased that your wounds are healing,” Gawyn said, emphasizing every word. “Can you tell me of the men who attacked you?”