he said, turning to take something from the pouch behind his saddle. “I bear a message.” He held out a leather wallet toward Roche, and Roche stepped forward for it.
“No!” Kivrin said and took a step forward, jabbing the spade at the air in front of him. “Drop it on the ground!” she said. “You must not touch us.”
The boy took a lied roll of vellum from the wallet and threw it at Roche’s feet.
Roche picked it up off the flagstones and unrolled it. “What says the message?” he asked the boy, and Kivrin thought, Of course, he can’t read.
“I know not,” the boy said. “It is from the Bishop of Bath. I am to take it to all the parishes.”
“Would you have me read it?” Kivrin asked.
“Mayhap it is from the lord,” Roche said. “Mayhap he sends word that he has been delayed.”
“Yes,” Kivrin said, taking it from him, but she knew it wasn’t.
It was in Latin, printed in letters so elaborate they were hard to read, but it didn’t matter. She had read it before. In the Bodleian.
She leaned the spade against her shoulder and read the message, translating the Latin:
“The contagious pestilence of the present day, which is spreading far and wide, has left many parish churches and other livings in our diocese without parson or priest to care for their parishioners.”
She looked at Roche. No, she thought. Not here. I won’t let that happen here.
“Since no priests can be found who are willing—” The priests were dead or had run away, and no one could be persuaded to take their place, and the people were dying “without the Sacrament of Penance.”
She read on, seeing not the black letters but the faded brown ones she had deciphered in the Bodleian. She had thought the letter was pompous and ridiculous. “People were dying right and left,” she had told Mr. Dunworthy indignantly, “and all the bishop was concerned about was church protocol!” But now, reading it to the exhausted boy and Father Roche, it sounded exhausted, too. And desperate.
“If they are on the point of death and cannot secure the services of a priest,” she read, “then they should make confession to each other. We urge you, by these present letters, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to do this.”
Neither the boy nor Roche said anything when she had finished reading. She wondered if the boy had known what he was carrying. She rolled the vellum up and handed it back to him.
“I have been riding three days,” the boy said, slumping forward tiredly in the saddle. “Can I not rest here awhile?”
“It is not safe,” Kivrin said, feeling sorry for him. “We will give you and your horse food to take with you.”
Roche turned to go into the kitchen, and Kivrin suddenly remembered Agnes. “Did you see a little girl on the road?” she asked. “A five-year-old child, with a red cloak and hood?”
“Nay,” the boy said, “but there are many on the roads. They flee the pestilence.”
Roche was bringing out a wadmal sack. Kivrin turned to fetch some oats for the stallion, and Eliwys shot past them both, her skirts tangling between her legs, her loose hair flying out behind her.
“Don’t—” Kivrin shouted, but Eliwys had already caught hold of the stallion’s bridle.
“Where do you come from?” she asked, grabbing at the boy’s sleeve. “Have you seen aught of my husband’s privé Gawyn?”
The boy looked frightened. “I come from Bath, with a message from the bishop,” he said, pulling back on the reins. The horse whinnied, and tossed its head.
“What message?” Eliwys said hysterically. “Is it from Gawyn?”
“I do not know the man of whom you speak,” the boy said.
“Lady Eliwys—” Kivrin said, stepping forward.
“Gawyn rides a black steed with a saddle chased in silver,” Eliwys persisted, pulling on the stallion’s bridle. “He has gone to Bath to fetch my husband, who witnesses at the Assizes.”
“None go to Bath,” the boy said. “All who can flee it.”
Eliwys stumbled, as though the stallion had reared, and seemed to fall against its side.
“There is no court, nor any law,” the boy said. “The dead lie in the streets, and all who but look on them die, too. Some say it is the end of the world.”
Eliwys let go of the bridle and took a step back. She turned and looked hopefully at Kivrin and Roche. “They will surely be home soon, then. Is it certain you did not see them on the road? He rides a black steed.”
“There