And she, trying to form the word though her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak, afraid she would die and they would never know what had happened to her.
“Are you called Katherine?” Agnes was demanding, and she could hear the little girl’s voice clearly under the interpreter’s translation. It sounded just like Kivrin.
“Aye,” Kivrin said, and felt like crying.
“Blackie has a …” Agnes said. The interpreter didn’t catch the word. Karette? Chavette? “It is red. Do you wish to see it?” and before Kivrin could stop her, she went running out through the still partly opened door.
Kivrin waited, hoping she would come back and that a karette wasn’t alive, wishing she had asked where she was and how long she’d been here, though Agnes was probably too young to know. She looked no more than three, though of course she would be much smaller than a modern three-year-old. Five, then, or possibly six. I should have asked her how old she was, Kivrin thought, and then remembered that she might not know that either. Joan of Arc hadn’t known how old she was when the Inquisitors asked her at her trial.
At least she could ask questions, Kivrin thought. The interpreter was not broken after all. It must have been temporarily stymied by the strange pronunciations, or affected somehow by her fever, but it was all right now, and Gawyn knew where the drop was and could show it to her.
She sat up straighter among the pillows so she could see the door. The effort hurt her chest and made her dizzy, and her head ached. She anxiously felt her forehead and then her cheeks. They felt warm, but that could be because her hands were cold. It was icy in the room, and on her excursion to the chamber pot, she hadn’t seen any sign of a brazier or even a warming pan.
Had warming pans been invented yet? They must have. Otherwise how would people have survived the Little Ice Age? It was so cold.
She was beginning to shiver. Her fever must be going back up. Were they supposed to come back? In History of Meds she had read about fevers breaking, and after that the patient was weak, but the fever didn’t come back, did it? Of course it did. What about malaria? Shivering, headache, sweats, recurring fever. Of course they came back.
Well, it obviously wasn’t malaria. Malaria had never been endemic to England, mosquitoes didn’t live in Oxford in midwinter and never had, and the symptoms were wrong. She hadn’t experienced any sweating, and the shivering she was having was due to fever.
Typhus produced headache and a high fever, and it was transmitted by body lice and rat fleas, both of which were endemic to England in the Middle Ages and probably endemic to the bed she was lying on, but the incubation period was too long, nearly two weeks.
Typhoid fever’s incubation period was only a few days, and it caused headache, aching in the limbs, and high fever, too. She didn’t think it was a recurring fever, but she remembered it was normally highest at night, so that must mean it went down during the day and then up again in the evening.
Kivrin wondered what time it was. Eliwys had said, “It grows dark,” and the light from the linen-covered window was faintly blue, but the days were short in December. It might only be midafternoon. She felt sleepy, but that was no sign either. She had slept off and on all day.
Drowsiness was a symptom of typhoid fever. She tried to remember the others from Dr. Ahrens’s “short course” in mediaeval medicine. Nosebleeds, coated tongue, rose-colored rash. The rash wasn’t supposed to appear until the seventh or eighth day, but Kivrin pulled her shift up and looked at her stomach and chest. No rash, so it couldn’t be typhoid. Or smallpox. With smallpox, the pox started appearing by the second or third day.
She wondered what had happened to Agnes. Perhaps someone had belatedly had the good sense to bar her from the sickroom, or perhaps the unreliable Maisry was actually watching her. Or, more likely, she had stopped to see her puppy in the stable and forgotten she was going to show her chavotte to Kivrin.
The plague started out with a headache and a fever. It can’t be the plague, Kivrin thought. You don’t have any of the symptoms. Buboes that grew to the size of oranges, a tongue that swelled till it filled the whole mouth, subcutaneous hemorrhages that turned the whole body black. You don’t have the plague.
It must be some sort of flu. It was the only disease that came on so suddenly, and Dr. Ahrens had been upset over Mr. Gilchrist’s moving the date up because the antivirals wouldn’t take full effect until the fifteenth, and she’d only have partial immunity. It had to be the flu. What was the treatment for the flu? Antivirals, rest, fluids.
Well then, rest, she told herself, and closed her eyes.
She did not remember falling asleep, but she must have, because the two women were in the room again, talking, and Kivrin had no memory of their having come in.
“What said Gawyn?” the old woman said. She was doing something with a bowl and a spoon, mashing the spoon against the side of it. The iron-bound casket sat open beside her, and she reached into it, pulled out a small cloth bag, sprinkled the contents into the bowl, and stirred it again.
“He found naught among her belongings that might tell us the lady’s origins. Her goods had all been stolen, the chests broken open and emptied of all that might identify her. But he said her wagon was of rich make. Certes, she is of good family.”
“And certes, her family searches for her,” the old woman said. She had set down the bowl and was tearing cloth with a loud ripping sound. “We must send to Oxenford and tell them she lies safe with us.”
“No,” Eliwys said, and Kivrin could hear the resistance in her voice. “Not to Oxenford.”
“What have you heard?”
“I have heard naught,” Eliwys said, “but that my lord bade us keep here. He will be here within the week if all goes well.”
“If all had gone well he would have been here now.”
“The trial had scarce begun. Mayhap he is on his way home even now.”
“Or mayhap …” another one of those untranslatable names, Torquil? “waits to be hanged, and my son with him. He should not have meddled in such a matter.”
“He is a friend, and guiltless of the charges.”
“He is a fool, and my son more fool for testifying on his behalf. A friend would have bade him leave Bath.” She ground the spoon into the side of the bowl again. “I have need of mustard for this,” she said and stepped to the door. “Maisry!” she called, and went back to tearing the cloth. “Found Gawyn aught of the lady’s attendants?”
Eliwys sat down on the window seat. “No, nor of their horses nor hers.”
A girl with a pocked face and greasy hair hanging over it came in. Surely this couldn’t be Maisry, who dallied with stableboys instead of watching her charges. She bent her knee in a curtsy that was more of a stumble and said, “Wotwardstu, Lawttymayeen?”
Oh, no, Kivrin thought. What’s wrong with the interpreter now?
“Fetch me the pot of mustard from the kitchen and tarry not,” the old woman said, and the girl started for the door. “Where are Agnes and Rosemund? Why are they not with you?”
“Shiyrouthamay,” she said sullenly.
Eliwys stood up. “Speak up,” she said sharply.
“They hide (something) from me.”
It wasn’t the interpreter after all. It was simply the difference of the Norman English the nobles spoke and the still Saxon-sounding dialect of the peasants, neither of which sounded anything like the Middle English Mr. Latimer had blithely taught her. It was a wonder the interpreter was picking up anything at all.
“I was seeking them when Lady Imeyne called, good lady,” Maisry said, and the interpreter got it all, though it was taking several seconds. It gave an imbecilic slowness to Maisry’s speech, which might or might not be appropriate.
“Where did you look for them? In the stable?” Eliwys said, and brought her hands together on either side of Maisry’s head like a pair of cymbals. Maisry howled and clapped a dirty hand to her left ear. Kivrin shrank back against the pillows.
“Go
and fetch the mustard to Lady Imeyne and find you Agnes.”
Maisry nodded, not looking particularly frightened but still holding her ear. She stumbled another curtsy and went out no more quickly than she had come in. She seemed less upset by the sudden violence than Kivrin was, and Kivrin wondered if Lady Imeyne would get her mustard anytime soon.
It was the swiftness and the calmness of the violence that had surprised her. Eliwys had not even seemed angry, and as soon as Maisry was gone she went back to the window seat, sat down, and said quietly, “The lady could not be moved though her family did come. She can bide with us until my husband returns. He will be here by Christmas surely.”
There was noise on the stairs. Apparently she had been wrong, Kivrin thought, and the ear boxing had done some good. Agnes rushed in, clutching something to her chest.
“Agnes!” Eliwys said. “What do you here?”
“I brought my …” the interpreter still didn’t have it. Charette? “to show the lady.”
“You are a wicked child to hide from Maisry and come hence to disturb the lady,” Imeyne said. “She suffers greatly from her injuries.”
“But she told me she wished to see it.” She held it up. It was a toy two-wheeled cart painted red and gilt.
“God punishes those who bear false witness with everlasting torment,” Lady Imeyne said, grabbing the little girl roughly. “The lady cannot speak. You know full well.”
“She spoke to me,” Agnes said sturdily.
Good for you, Kivrin thought. Everlasting torment. What horrible things to threaten a child with. But this was the Middle Ages, when priests talked constantly of the last days and the final judgment, of the pains of hell.
“She told me she wished to see my wagon,” Agnes said. “She said she did not have a hound.”
“You are making up tales,” Eliwys said. “The lady cannot speak,” and Kivrin thought, I have to stop this. They’ll box her ears, too.
She pushed herself up on her elbows. The effort left her breathless. “I spoke with Agnes,” she said, praying the interpreter would do what it was supposed to. If it chose to blink out again at this moment and ended up getting Agnes a beating, that would be the last straw. “I bade her bring her cart to me.”
Both women turned and looked at her. Eliwys’s eyes widened. The old woman looked astonished and then angry, as if she thought Kivrin had deceived them.
“I told you,” Agnes said, and marched over to the bed with the wagon.
Kivrin lay back against the pillows, exhausted. “What is this place?” she asked.
It took Eliwys a moment to recover herself. “You rest safely in the house of my lord and husband …” The interpreter had trouble with the name. It sounded like Guillaume D’lverie or possibly Devereaux.
Eliwys was looking at her anxiously. “My husband’s privé found you in the woods and brought you hence. You had been set upon by robbers and grievously injured. Who attacked you?”
“I know not,” Kivrin said.
“I am called Eliwys, and this is the mother of my husband, the Lady Imeyne. What is your name?”
And now was the time to tell them the whole carefully researched story. She had told the priest her name was Katherine, but Lady Imeyne had already made it clear she put no stock in anything he said. She didn’t even believe he could speak Latin. Kivrin could say he had misunderstood, that her name was Isabel de Beauvrier. She could tell them she had called out her mother’s, her sister’s name in her delirium. She could tell them she had been praying to St. Catherine.
“Of what family are you?” Lady Imeyne asked.
It was a very good story. It would establish her identity and position in society and would ensure that they wouldn’t try to send for her family. Yorkshire was too far away, and the road north was impassable.
“Whither were you bound?” Eliwys said.
Mediaeval had thoroughly researched the weather and the road conditions. It had rained every day for two weeks in December, and there had been a hard frost to freeze the mired roads till late January. But she had seen the road to Oxford. It had been dry and clear. And Mediaeval had thoroughly researched the color of her dress, and the prevalence of glass windows among the upper classes. They had thoroughly researched the language.
“I remember not,” Kivrin said.
“Naught?” Eliwys said, and turned to Lady Imeyne. “She remembers naught.”
They think I’m saying “naught,” Kivrin thought, that I don’t remember anything. The inflection, the pronunciation didn’t differentiate between the two words.
“It is her wound,” Eliwys said. “It has shaken her memory.”
“No … nay …” Kivrin said. She was not supposed to feign amnesia. She was supposed to be Isabel de Beauvrier, from the East Riding. Just because the roads were dry here didn’t mean they weren’t impassable farther north, and Eliwys would not even let Gawyn ride to Oxford to get news of her or to Bath to fetch her husband. She surely wouldn’t send him to the East Riding.
“Can you not even remember your own name?” Lady Imeyne said impatiently, leaning so close Kivrin could smell her breath. It was very foul, an odor of decay. She must have rotting teeth, too.
“What is your name?”
Mr. Latimer had said Isabel was the most common woman’s name in the 1300s. How common was Katherine? And Mediaeval didn’t know the daughters’ names. What if York shire wasn’t distant enough, after all, and Lady Imeyne knew the family. She would take it as further proof that she was a spy. She had better stay with the common name and tell them she was Isabel de Beauvrier.
The old woman would be only too happy to believe that the priest had gotten her name wrong. It would be further proof of his ignorance, of his incompetence, further reason to send to Bath for a new chaplain. But he had held Kivrin’s hand, he had told her not to be afraid.
“My name is Katherine,” she said.
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK
(001300–002018)
I’m not the only one in trouble, Mr. Dunworthy. I think the contemps who’ve taken me in are, too.
The lord of the manor, Lord Guillaume, isn’t here. He’s in Bath, testifying at the trial of a friend of his, which is apparently a dangerous thing to do. His mother, Lady Imeyne, called him a fool for getting mixed up in it, and Lady Eliwys, his wife, seems worried and nervous.
They’ve come here in a great hurry and without servants. Fourteenth-century noblewomen had at least one lady-in-waiting apiece, but neither Eliwys nor Imeyne has any, and they left the children’s—Guillaume’s two little girls are here—nurse behind. Lady Imeyne wanted to send for a new one, and a chaplain, but Lady Eliwys won’t let her.
I think Lord Guillaume must be expecting trouble and has spirited his womenfolk away here to keep them safe. Or possibly the trouble’s already happened—Agnes, the littler of the two girls, told me about the chaplain’s death and someone named Gilbert whose “head was all red,” so perhaps there’s already been bloodshed, and the women have come here to escape it. One of Lord Guillaume’s privés has come with them, and he’s fully armed.
There weren’t any major uprisings against Edward II in Oxfordshire in 1320, although no one was very happy with the king and his favorite, Hugh Despenser, and there were plots and minor skirmishes everywhere else. Two of the barons, Lancaster and Mortimer, took sixty-three manors away from the Despensers that year—this year. Lord Guillaume—or his friend—may have got involved in one of those plots.
It could be something else entirely, of course, a land dispute or something. People in the 1300s spent almost as much time in court as the contemps in the last part of the twentieth century. But I don’t think so. Lady Eliwys jumps at every sound, and she’s forbidden Lady Imeyne to tell the neighbors they’re here.
I suppose in one way this is a good thing. If they aren’t telling anyone they’re here, they won’t tell anyone about me or send messengers to try to find out who I am. On the other hand, there is the chance of arm
ed men kicking in the door at any moment. Or of Gawyn, the only person who knows where the drop is, getting killed defending the manor.
(Break)
15 December 1320 (Old Style). The interpreter is working now, more or less, and the contemps seem to understand what I’m saying. I can understand them, though their Middle English bears no resemblance to what Mr. Latimer taught me. It’s full of inflections and has a much softer French sound. Mr. Latimer wouldn’t even recognize his “Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote.”
The interpreter translates what the contemps say with the syntax and some of the words intact, and at first I tried to phrase what I said the same way, saying “Aye” and “Nay” and “I remember naught of whence I came,” but thinking about it’s deadly—the interpreter takes forever to come up with a translation, and I stammer and struggle with the pronunciations. So I just speak modern English and hope what comes out of my mouth is close to being right, and that the interpreter isn’t slaughtering the idioms and the inflections. Heaven only knows how I sound. Like a French spy probably.
The language isn’t the only thing off. My dress is all wrong, of far too fine a weave, and the blue is too bright, dyed with woad or not. I haven’t seen any bright colors at all. I’m too tall, my teeth are too good, and my hands are wrong, in spite of my muddy labors at the dig. They should not only have been dirtier, but I should have chilblains. Everyone’s hands, even the children’s, are chapped and bleeding. It is, after all, December.
December the fifteenth. I overheard part of an argument between Lady Imeyne and Lady Eliwys about getting a replacement chaplain, and Imeyne said, “There is more than time enough to send. It is full ten days till Christ’s mass.” So tell Mr. Gilchrist I’ve ascertained my temporal location at least. But I don’t know how far from the drop I am. I’ve tried to remember Gawyn bringing me here, but that whole night is hopelessly muddled, and part of what I remember didn’t happen. I remember a white horse that had bells on its harness, and the bells were playing Christmas carols, like the carillon in Carfax Tower.