Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,205

at Rosemund.

“Rosemund isn’t dying,” Kivrin said, and followed his gaze.

She looked already dead, her chapped lips half-open and her eyes blind and unblinking. Her skin had taken on a yellowish cast and was stretched tautly over her narrow face. No, Kivrin thought desperately. I must do something to stop this. She’s twelve years old.

Roche moved forward with the chalice, and Rosemund raised her arm, as if in supplication, and then let it fall.

“We must open the plague boil,” Kivrin said. “We must let the poison out.”

She thought he was going to refuse, to insist on hearing Rosemund’s confession first, but he did not. He set the chrism and chalice down on the stone floor and went to fetch a knife.

“A sharp one,” Kivrin called after him, “and bring wine.” She set the pot of water on the fire again. When he came back with the knife, she washed it off with water from the bucket, scrubbing the encrusted dirt near the hilt with her fingernails. She held it in the fire, the hilt wrapped in the tail of her surcote, and then poured boiling water over it and then wine and then the water again.

They moved Rosemund closer to the fire, the side with the bubo facing it so they could have as much light as possible, and Roche knelt at Rosemund’s head. Kivrin slipped her arm gently out of her shift and bunched the fabric under her for a pillow. Roche took hold of her arm, turning it so the swelling was exposed.

It was almost the size of an apple, and her whole shoulder joint was inflamed and swollen. The edges of the bubo were soft and almost gelatinous, but the center was still hard.

Kivrin opened the bottle of wine Roche had brought, poured some on a cloth, and swabbed the bubo gently with it. It felt like a rock embedded in the skin. She was not sure the knife would even cut into it.

She picked up the knife and poised it above the swelling, afraid of cutting into an artery, of spreading the infection, of making it worse.

“She is past pain,” Roche said.

Kivrin looked down at her. She hadn’t moved, even when Kivrin pressed on the swelling. She stared past them both at something terrible. I can’t make it worse, Kivrin thought. Even if I kill her, I can’t make it worse.

“Hold her arm,” she said, and Roche pinned her wrist and halfway up the forearm, pressing her arm flat to the floor. Rosemund still didn’t move.

Two quick, clean slices, Kivrin thought. She took a deep breath and touched the knife to the swelling.

Rosemund’s arm spasmed, her shoulder twisting protectively away from the knife, her thin hand clenching into a claw. “What do you do?” she said hoarsely. “I will tell my father!”

Kivrin jerked the knife back. Roche caught at Rosemund’s arm and pushed it back against the floor, and she hit weakly at him with her other hand.

“I am the daughter of Lord Guillaume D’Iverie,” she said. “You cannot treat me thus.”

Kivrin scooted out of her reach and scrambled to her feet, trying to keep the knife from touching anything. Roche reached forward and caught both her wrists easily in one hand. Rosemund kicked out weakly at Kivrin. The chalice fell over and wine spilled out in a dark puddle.

“We must tie her,” Kivrin said, and realized she was holding the knife aloft, like a murderer. She wrapped it in one of the cloths Eliwys had torn, and ripped another into strips.

Roche bound Rosemund’s wrists above her head while Kivrin tied her ankles to the leg of one of the upturned benches. Rosemund didn’t struggle, but when Roche pulled her shift up over her exposed chest, she said, “I know you. You are the cutthroat who waylaid the Lady Katherine.”

Roche leaned forward, pressing his full weight down on her forearm, and Kivrin cut across the swelling.

Blood oozed and then gushed, and Kivrin thought, I’ve hit an artery. She and Roche both lunged for the pile of cloths, and she grabbed a thick wad of them and pressed them against the wound. They soaked through immediately, and when she released her hand to take the one Roche handed her, blood spurted out of the tiny cut. She jammed the tail of her surcote against it, and Rosemund whimpered, a small, helpless sound like Agnes’s puppy, and seemed to collapse, though there was nowhere for her to fall.

I’ve killed her, Kivrin thought.

“I can’t stop the bleeding,” she said, but