Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,219
said I wasn’t allowed to tell him,” Colin said, looking defiantly at her.
“Tell me what? Is Gilchrist ill?” He remembered looking at the screens and then collapsing forward into Gilchrist’s arms. He wondered if he had infected him when he fell.
Montoya said, “Mr. Gilchrist died of the flu three days ago.”
Dunworthy looked at Colin. “What else did they instruct you to keep from me?” Dunworthy demanded. “Who else died while I was ill?”
Montoya put up her thin hand as if to stop Colin, but it was too late.
“Great-aunt Mary,” Colin said.
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK
(077076–078924)
Maisry’s run away. Roche and I looked everywhere for her, afraid she’d fallen ill and crawled into some corner, but the steward said he saw her starting into the woods while he was digging Walthef’s grave. She was riding Agnes’s pony.
She will only spread it, or make it as far as some village that already has it. It’s all around us now. The bells sound like vespers, only out of rhythm, as if the ringers had gone mad. It’s impossible to make out whether it is nine strokes or three. Courcy’s double bells tolled a single stroke this morning. I wonder if it is the baby. Or one of the chattering girls.
She is still unconscious, and her pulse is very weak. Agnes screams and struggles in her delirium. She keeps shrieking for me to come, but she won’t let me near her. When I try to talk to her, she kicks and screams as if she were having a tantrum.
Eliwys is wearing herself out trying to tend Agnes and Lady Imeyne, who screams “Devil!” at me when I tend her and nearly gave me a black eye this morning. The only one who lets me near him is the clerk, who is beyond caring. He cannot possibly last the day. He smells so bad we’ve had to move him to the far end of the room. His bubo has started to suppurate again.
(Break)
Gunni, second son of the steward.
The woman with the scrofula scars on her neck.
Maisry’s father.
Roche’s altar boy, Cob.
(Break)
Lady Imeyne is very bad. Roche tried to give her the last rites, but she refused to make her confession.
“You must make your peace with God ere you die,” Roche said, but she turned her face to the wall and said, “He is to blame for this.”
(Break)
Thirty-one cases. Over seventy-five percent. Roche consecrated part of the green this morning because the churchyard is nearly full.
Maisry hasn’t come back. She’s probably sleeping in the high seat of some manor house the inhabitants have fled, and when this is all over she’ll become the ancestor of some noble old family.
Perhaps that’s what’s wrong with our time, Mr. Dunworthy, it was founded by Maisry and the bishop’s envoy and Sir Bloet. And all the people who stayed and tried to help, like Roche, caught the plague and died.
(Break)
Lady Imeyne is unconscious and Roche is giving her the last rites. I told him to.
“It is the disease that speaks. Her soul has not turned against God,” I said, which isn’t true, and perhaps she does not deserve forgiveness, but she does not deserve this either, her body poisoned, rotting, and I can scarcely condemn her for blaming God when I blame her. And neither is responsible. It’s a disease.
The consecrated wine has run out, and there is no more olive oil. Roche is using cooking oil from the kitchen. It smells rancid. Where he touches her temples and the palms of her hands, the skin turns black.
It’s a disease.
(Break)
Agnes is worse. It’s terrible to watch her, lying there panting like her poor puppy and screaming, “Tell Kivrin to come and get me. I do not like it here!”
Even Roche can’t stand it. “Why does God punish us thus?” he asked me.
“He doesn’t. It’s a disease,” I said, which is no answer, and he knows it.
All of Europe knows it, and the Church knows it, too. It will hang on for a few more centuries, making excuses, but it can’t overcome the essential fact—that He let this happen. That He comes to no one’s rescue.
(Break)
The bells have stopped. Roche asked me if I thought it was a sign the plague had stopped. “Perhaps God has been able to come to help us after all,” he said.
I don’t think so. In Tournai church officials sent out an order stopping the bells because the sound frightened the people. Perhaps the Bishop of Bath has sent one out as well.