Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,162

on the unwitting residents of this churchyard.

Montoya was holding the stones up to the light again, chipping with her fingernails at an occasional clot of mud and then rubbing at the surface, and he realized suddenly that what she was examining were bones. Vertebrae, perhaps, or the knight’s toes. Recquiescat in pace.

She found the one she had apparently been looking for, an uneven bone the size of a walnut, with a curved side. She dumped the rest back into the tray, rummaged in the pocket of her shirt for a short-handled toothbrush, and began scrubbing at the concave edges, frowning.

Gilchrist would never accept spontaneous mutation as a source. He was too in love with the theory that some fourteenth-century virus had come through the net. And too in love with his authority as Acting Head of the History Faculty to give in, even if Dunworthy had found ducks swimming in the churchyard puddles.

“I need to get in touch with Mr. Basingame,” he said. “Where is he?”

“Basingame?” she said, still frowning at the bone. “I don’t have any idea.”

“But—I thought you’d found him. When you phoned Christmas Day you said you had to find him to authorize your NHS dispensation.”

“I know. I spent two full days calling every trout and salmon guide in Scotland before I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. If you ask me, he’s nowhere near Scotland.” She pulled a pocketknife out of her jeans and began scraping at the rough edge of the bone. “Speaking of the NHS, would you do something for me? I keep calling their number but it’s always busy. Would you run over there and tell them I’ve got to have some more help? Tell them the dig’s of irreplaceable historical value, and it’s going to be irretrievably lost if they don’t send me at least five people. And a pump.” The knife snagged. She frowned and chipped some more.

“How did you get Basingame’s authorization if you didn’t know where he was? I thought you’d said the form required his signature.”

“It did,” she said. An edge of bone flew suddenly off and landed on the plastene shroud. She examined the bone and dropped it back in the box, no longer frowning. “I forged it.”

She crouched by the tomb again, digging for more bones. She looked as absorbed as Colin examining his gobstopper. He wondered if she even remembered that Kivrin was in the past, or if she had forgotten her as she seemed to have forgotten the epidemic.

He rang off, wondering if Montoya would even notice, and walked back to Infirmary to tell Mary what he had found out and to begin questioning the secondaries again, looking for the source. It was raining very hard, spilling off the downspouts and washing away things of irreplaceable historical value.

The bell ringers and Finch were still at it, ringing the changes one after another in their determined order, bending their knees and looking like Montoya, sticking to their bells. The sound pealed out loudly, leadenly, through the rain, like an alarum, like a cry for help.

TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK

(066440–066879)

Christmas Eve 1320 (Old Style). I don’t have as much time as I thought. When I came in from the kitchen just now, Rosemund told me Lady Imeyne wanted me. Imeyne was deep in earnest conversation with the bishop’s envoy, and I supposed from her expression that she was cataloging Father Roche’s sins, but as Rosemund and I came up, she pointed to me and said, “This is the woman I spake of.”

Woman, not maid, and her tone was critical, almost accusing. I wondered if she’d told the bishop her theory that I was a French spy.

“She says she remembers naught,” Lady Imeyne said, “yet she can speak and read.” She turned to Rosemund. “Where is your brooch?”

“It is on my cloak,” Rosemund said. “I laid it in the loft.”

“Go and fetch it.”

Rosemund went, reluctantly. As soon as she was gone Imeyne said, “Sir Bloet brought a loveknot brooch to my granddaughter with words on it in the Roman tongue.” She looked at me triumphantly. “She told their meaning, and at the church this night she spoke the words of the mass ere the priest had said them.”

“Who taught you your letters?” the bishop’s envoy asked, his voice blurred from the wine.

I thought of saying Sir Bloet had told me what the words meant, but I was afraid he’d already denied it. “I know not,” I said. “I have no memory of my life since I was