Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,200

was a bacteria. Streptomycin and the sulfa drugs could kill it, but she couldn’t manufacture them herself, and she didn’t know where the drop was.

And Gawyn had ridden off to Bath. Of course he had. Eliwys had run to him, she had thrown her arms around him, and he would have gone anywhere, done anything for her, even if it meant bringing home her husband.

She tried to think how long it would take Gawyn to ride to Bath and back. It was seventy kilometers. Riding hard he could make it there in a day and a half. Three days, there and back. If he were not delayed, if he could find Lord Guillaume, if he did not fall ill. Dr. Ahrens had said untreated plague victims died within four or five days, but she did not see how the clerk could possibly last that long. His temp was up again.

She had pushed Lady Imeyne’s casket under the bed when they brought Rosemund up. She pulled it out and looked through it at the dried herbs and powders. The contemps had used homegrown remedies like St. John’s wort and bittersweet during the plague, but they had been as useless as the powdered emeralds.

Fleabane might help, but she couldn’t find any of the pink or purple flowers in the little linen bags.

When Roche came back, she sent him for willow branches from the stream, and steeped them into a bitter tea. “What is this brew?” Roche asked, tasting it and making a face.

“Aspirin,” Kivrin said. “I hope.”

Roche gave a cup to the clerk, who was past caring what it tasted like, and it seemed to bring his temp down a little, but Rosemund’s rose steadily all afternoon, till she was shivering with chills. By the time Roche left to say vespers, she was almost too hot to touch.

Kivrin uncovered her and tried to bathe her arms and legs in cool water to bring the fever down, but Rosemund wrenched angrily away from her. “It is not seemly you should touch me thus, sir,” she said through chattering teeth. “Be sure I shall tell my father when he returns.”

Roche did not come back. Kivrin lit the tallow lamps and tucked the bed coverings around Rosemund, wondering what had become of him.

She looked worse in the smoky light, her face wan and pinched. She murmured to herself, repeating Agnes’s name over and over, and once she asked fretfully, “Where is he? He should have been here ere now.”

He should have been, Kivrin thought. The bell had tolled vespers half an hour ago. Roche is in the kitchen, she told herself, making us soup. Or he has gone to tell Eliwys how Rosemund is. He isn’t ill. But she stood up and climbed on the window seat and looked out into the courtyard. It was getting colder, and the dark sky was overcast. There was no one in the courtyard, no light or sound anywhere.

Roche opened the door, and she jumped down, smiling. “Where have you been? I was—” she said and stopped.

Roche was wearing his vestments and carrying the oil and viaticum. No, she thought, glancing at Rosemund. No.

“I have been with Ulf the Reeve,” he said. “I heard his confession.” Thank God it’s not Rosemund, she thought, and then realized what he was saying. The plague was in the village.

“Are you certain?” she asked. “Does he have the plague boils?”

“Aye.”

“How many others are in the household?”

“His wife and two sons,” he said tiredly. “I bade her wear a mask and sent her sons to cut willows.”

“Good,” she said. There was nothing good about it. No, that wasn’t true. At least it was bubonic plague and not pneumonic, so there was still a chance the wife and two sons wouldn’t get it. But how many other people had Ulf infected, and who had infected him? Ulf would not have had any contact with the clerk. He must have caught it from one of the servants. “Are any others ill?”

“Nay.”

It didn’t mean anything. They only sent for Roche when they were very ill, when they were frightened. There might be three or four other cases already in the village. Or a dozen.

She sat down on the window seat, trying to think what to do. Nothing, she thought. There’s nothing you can do. It swept through village after village, killing whole families, whole towns. One third to one half of Europe.

“No!” Rosemund screamed, and struggled to rise.

Kivrin and Roche both dived for her, but she had