Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,103

of his wife’s bitter tea, a dark, burly man who looked uncomfortable in his Sunday-best jerkin and a too-elaborate silver belt, and a boy about Rosemund’s age came in to tell Eliwys that her mare’s forefoot was “amiss.” But the priest didn’t come again. “He has gone to shrive the cottar,” Agnes told her.

Agnes was continuing to be an excellent informant, answering all of Kivrin’s questions readily, whether she knew the answers or not, and volunteering all sorts of information about the village and its occupants. Rosemund was quieter and very much concerned with appearing grown-up. “Agnes, it is childish to speak so. You must learn to keep a watch on your tongue,” she said repeatedly, a comment that happily had no effect whatsoever on Agnes. Rosemund did talk about her brothers and her father who “has promised he will come to us for Christmas without fail.” She obviously worshiped him and missed him. “I wish I had been a boy,” she said when Agnes was showing Kivrin the silver penny Sir Bloet had given her. “Then I had stayed with Father in Bath.”

Between the two girls, and snatches of Eliwys’s and Imeyne’s conversations, plus her own observations, she was able to piece together a good deal about the village. It was smaller than Probability had predicted Skendgate would be, small even for a mediaeval village. Kivrin guessed it contained no more than forty people, including Lord Guillaume’s family and the steward’s. He had five children in addition to the baby.

There were two shepherds and several farmers, but it was “the poorest of all Guillaume’s holdings,” Imeyne said, complaining again about them having to spend Christmas there. The steward’s wife was the resident social climber, and Maisry’s family the local ne’er-do-wells. Kivrin recorded everything, statistics and gossip, folding her hands in prayer whenever she had the chance.

The snow that had started when they brought her back to the manor continued all that night and into the next afternoon, snowing nearly a foot. The first day Kivrin was up, it rained, and Kivrin hoped the rain would melt the snow, but it merely hardened the crust to ice.

She was afraid she’d have no hope at all of recognizing the drop without the wagon and boxes there. She would have to get Gawyn to show it to her, but that was easier said than done. He only came into the hall to eat or to ask Eliwys something, and Imeyne was always there, watching, when he was, so she didn’t dare approach him.

Kivrin began taking the girls on little excursions—around the courtyard, out into the village—in the hope that she might run into him, but he was not in the barn or the stable. Gringolet was not there either. Kivrin wondered if he had gone after her attackers in spite of Eliwys’s orders, but Rosemund said he was out hunting. “He slays deer for the Christmas feast,” Agnes said.

No one seemed to care where she took the little girls or how long they were gone. Lady Eliwys nodded disstractedly when Kivrin asked if she might take the little girls to the stable, and Lady Imeyne didn’t even tell Agnes to fasten her cloak or wear her mittens. It was as if they had given the children over into Kivrin’s care and then forgotten them.

They were very busy with preparations for Christmas. Eliwys had recruited every girl and old woman in the village and set them to baking and cooking. The two pigs were slaughtered, and over half the doves killed and plucked. The courtyard was full of feathers and the smell of baking bread.

In the 1300s Christmas had been a two-week celebration with feasting and games and dancing, but Kivrin was surprised that Eliwys was doing all this under the circumstances. She must be convinced Lord Guillaume would really come for Christmas, as he’d promised.

Imeyne supervised the cleaning of the hall, complaining constantly about the poor conditions and the lack of decent help. This morning she had brought in the steward and another man to take down the heavy tables from the walls and set them on two trestles. She was supervising Maisry and a woman with the patchy white scars of scrofula on her neck while they scrubbed the table with sand and heavy brushes.

“There is no lavender,” she said to Eliwys. “And not enough new rushes for the floor.”

“We shall have to make do with what we have, then,” Eliwys said.

“We have no sugar for the subtlety, either, and no