Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,242

donkey to the gate, her cold fingers fumbling with the rough rope, and hurried after him, catching him by the sleeve. “What is it?”

He turned, almost violently, toward her, and the expression on his face frightened her. He looked like a cutthroat, a murderer. “I must ring the bell for vespers,” he said and shook himself violently free of her hand.

Oh, no, Kivrin thought.

“It is only midday,” she said. “It isn’t time for vespers yet.” He’s just tired, she thought. We’re both so tired we can’t think straight. She took hold of his sleeve again. “Come, Father. We must go if we’re to get through the woods by nightfall.”

“It is past time,” he said, “and I have not yet rung them. Lady Imeyne will be angry.”

Oh, no, she thought, oh no oh no.

“I will ring it,” she said, stepping in front of him to stop him. “You must go into the house and rest.”

“It grows dark,” he said angrily. He opened his mouth as if to shout at her, and a great gout of vomit and blood heaved up out of him and onto Kivrin’s jerkin.

Oh no oh no oh no.

He looked bewilderedly at her drenched jerkin, the violence gone out of his face.

“Come, you must lie down,” she said, thinking, We will never make it to the manor house.

“Am I ill?” he said, still staring at her blood-covered jerkin.

“No,” she said. “You are but tired and must rest.”

She led him toward the church. He stumbled, and she thought, If he falls, I will never get him up. She helped him inside, bracing the heavy door open with her back, and sat him down against the wall.

“I fear the work has tired me,” he said, leaning his head against the stones. “I would sleep a little.”

“Yes, sleep,” Kivrin said. As soon as he had closed his eyes she ran back to the manor house for blankets and a bolster to make him a pallet. When she skidded in with them, he was no longer there.

“Roche!” she cried, trying to see up the dark nave. “Where are you?”

There was no answer. She darted out again, still clutching the bedding to her chest, but he wasn’t in the bell tower or the churchyard, and he could not possibly have made it to the house. She ran back in the church and up the nave and he was there, on his knees in front of the statue of St. Catherine.

“You must lie down,” she said, spreading the blankets on the floor.

He lay down obediently, and she put the bolster behind his head. “It is the plague, is it not?” he asked, looking up at her.

“No,” she said, pulling the coverlid up over him. “You’re tired, that’s all. Try to sleep.”

He turned on his side, away from her, but in a few minutes he sat up, the murderous expression back, and threw the covers off. “I must ring the vespers bell,” he said accusingly, and it was all Kivrin could do to keep him from standing up. When he dozed again, she tore strips from the frayed bottom of her jerkin and tied his hands to the rood screen.

“Don’t do this to him,” Kivrin murmured over and over without knowing it. “Please! Please! Don’t do this to him.”

He opened his eyes. “Surely God must hear such fervent prayers,” he said, and sank into a deeper, quieter sleep.

Kivrin ran out and unloaded the donkey and untied him, gathered up the sacks of food and the lantern and brought them inside the church. He was still sleeping. She crept out again and ran across to the courtyard and drew a bucket of water from the well.

He still did not appear to have wakened, but when Kivrin wrung out a strip torn from the altar cloth and bathed his forehead with it, he said, without opening his eyes, “I feared that you had gone.”

She wiped the crusted blood by his mouth. “I would not go to Scotland without you.”

“Not Scotland,” he said. “To heaven.”

She ate a little of the stale manchet and cheese from the food sack and tried to sleep a little, but it was too cold. When Roche turned and sighed in his sleep, she could see his breath.

She built a fire, pulling up the stick fence around one of the huts and piling the sticks in front of the rood screen, but it filled the church with smoke, even with the doors propped open. Roche coughed and vomited again. This time it was nearly