Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,116

for help.

Or he had intended to build a fire and stay there with her until morning, and Father Roche had seen the campfire and come to help, and between them they had taken her to the manor. Father Roche had no idea where the drop was. He had assumed Gawyn had found her there, under the oak tree.

The image of him leaning over her as she sat against the wagon wheel was part of her delirium. She had dreamed it as she lay in the sickroom, the way she had dreamed the bells and the stake and the white horse.

“Where does he go now?” Rosemund asked peevishly, and Kivrin felt like slapping her. “There is ivy nearer to home. And now it begins to rain.”

She was right. The mist was turning into a drizzle.

“We could have been finished and home ere now if the babe Agnes had not brought her puppy!” She galloped off ahead again, and Kivrin didn’t even try to stop her.

“Rosemund is a churl,” Agnes said.

“Yes,” Kivrin said. “She is. Do you know what’s the matter with her?”

“It is because of Sir Bloet,” Agnes said. “She is to wed him.”

“What?” Kivrin said. Imeyne had said something about a wedding, but she’d assumed one of Sir Bloet’s daughters was to marry one of Lord Guillaume’s sons. “How can Sir Bloet marry Rosemund? Isn’t he already married to Lady Yvolde?”

“Nay,” Agnes said, looking surprised. “Lady Yvolde is Sir Bloet’s sister.”

“But Rosemund isn’t old enough,” she said, and knew she was. Girls in the 1300s had frequently been betrothed before they were of age, sometimes even at birth. Marriage in the Middle Ages had been a business arrangement, a way to join lands and enhance social standing, and Rosemund had no doubt been groomed from Agnes’s age to be married to someone like Sir Bloet. But every mediaeval story of virginal girls married to toothless, dissipated old men came to her in a rush.

“Does Rosemund like Sir Bloet?” Kivrin asked. Of course she didn’t like him. She had been hateful, ill-tempered, nearly hysterical ever since she heard he was coming.

“I like him,” Agnes said. “He is to give me a silver bridle-chain when they wed.”

Kivrin looked ahead at Rosemund, waiting far down the road. Sir Bloet might not be old and dissipated at all. She was assuming that the way she had assumed Lady Yvolde was his wife. He might be young, and Rosemund’s bad temper might only be nervousness. Or she might change her mind about him before the wedding. Girls weren’t usually married till they were fourteen or fifteen, certainly not before they started exhibiting signs of maturation.

“When are they to be married?” Kivrin asked Agnes.

“At Eastertide,” Agnes said.

They had come to another fork. This one was much narrower, the two roads running nearly parallel for a hundred meters before the one Rosemund had taken started up a low hill.

Twelve years old and to be married in three months. No wonder Lady Eliwys hadn’t wanted Sir Bloet to know they were here. Perhaps she didn’t approve of Rosemund marrying so young, and the betrothal had only been arranged to get her father out of the trouble he was in.

Rosemund rode to the top of the hill and galloped back to Father Roche. “Where do you lead us?” she demanded. “We come soon to open ground.”

“We are nearly there,” Father Roche said mildly.

She wheeled her mare around and galloped out of sight over the hill, reappeared, galloped back nearly to Kivrin and Agnes, turned the mare sharply, and rode ahead again. Like the rat in the trap, Kivrin thought, frantically looking for a way out.

The drizzle was turning into a sleety rain. Father Roche pulled his hood up over his tonsured head and led the donkey up the low hill. It plodded steadily up the incline to the top, and then stopped. Father Roche jerked on the reins, and the donkey pulled back against them.

Kivrin and Agnes caught up to him. “What’s wrong?” Kivrin asked.

“Come, Balaam,” Father Roche said, and took hold of the reins with both his huge hands, but the donkey didn’t bulge. It strained against the priest, digging in its rear hooves and leaning back so it was nearly sitting.

“Mayhap he likes not the rain,” Agnes said.

“Can we help?” Kivrin asked.

“Nay,” he said, waving them past him. “Ride ahead. It will go better with him if the horses are not here.”

He wrapped the reins around his hand and went around behind as if he intended to