Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,243

all blood. She put the fire out and made two more hurried trips for as many furs and blankets as she could find and made a sort of nest of them.

Roche’s fever went up in the night. He kicked at the covers and raged at Kivrin, mostly in words she couldn’t understand, though once he said clearly, “Go, curse you!” and over and over, furiously, “It grows dark!”

Kivrin brought the candles from the altar and the top of the rood screen and set them in front of St. Catherine’s statue. When his ravings about the dark got bad, she lit them all and covered him up again, and it seemed to help a little.

His fever rose higher, and his teeth chattered in spite of the rugs heaped over him. It seemed to Kivrin that his skin was already darkening, the blood vessels hemorrhaging under the skin. Don’t do this. Please.

In the morning he was better. His skin had not blackened after all; it was only the uncertain light of the candles that had made it seem mottled. His fever had come down a little and he slept soundly through the morning and most of the afternoon, not vomiting at all. She went out for more water before it got dark.

Some people recovered spontaneously and some were saved by prayers. Not everyone died who was infected. The death rate for pneumonic plague was only ninety percent.

He was awake when she went in, lying in a shaft of smoky light. She knelt and held a cup of water under his mouth, tilting his head up so he could drink.

“It is the blue sickness,” he said when she let his head back down.

“You’re not going to die,” she said. Ninety percent. Ninety percent.

“You must hear my confession.”

No. He could not die. She would be left here all alone. She shook her head, unable to speak.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” he began in Latin.

He hadn’t sinned. He had tended the sick, shriven the dying, buried the dead. It was God who should have to beg forgiveness.

“—in thought, word, deed, and omission. I was angry with Lady Imeyne. I shouted at Maisry.” He swallowed. “I had carnal thoughts of a saint of the Lord.”

Carnal thoughts.

“I humbly ask pardon of God, and absolution of you, Father, if you think me worthy.”

There is nothing to forgive, she wanted to say. Your sins are no sins. Carnal thoughts. We held down Rosemund and barricaded the village against a harmless boy and buried a six-month-old baby. It is the end of the world. Surely you are to be allowed a few carnal thoughts.

She raised her hand helplessly, unable to speak the words of absolution, but he did not seem to notice. “Oh, my God,” he said, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.”

Offended Thee. You’re the saint of the Lord, she wanted to tell him, and where the hell is He? Why doesn’t He come and save you?

There was no oil. She dipped her fingers in the bucket and made the sign of the cross over his eyes and ears, his nose and mouth, his hands that had held her hand when she was dying.

“Quid quid deliquiste, ” he said, and she dipped her hand in the water again and marked the cross on the soles of his feet.

“Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ” he prompted.

“Ab omnibus malis,” Kivrin said, “praeteritis, praesenti-bus, et futuris. ” Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present, and to come.

“Perducat te ad vitam aeternam, ” he murmured.

And bring thee unto life everlasting. “Amen,” Kivrin said, and leaned forward to catch the blood that came pouring out of him.

He vomited the rest of the night and most of the next day, and then sank into unconsciousness in the afternoon, his breathing shallow and unsteady. Kivrin sat beside him, bathing his hot forehead. “Don’t die,” she said when his breathing caught and struggled on, more labored. “Don’t die,” she said softly. “What will I do without you? I will be all alone.”

“You must not stay here,” he said. He opened his eyes a little. They were red and swollen.

“I thought you were asleep,” she said regretfully. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“You must go again to heaven,” he said, “and pray for my soul in purgatory, that my time there may be short.”

Purgatory. As if God would make him suffer any longer than he was already.

“You will not need my prayers,” she said.

“You must return to that place whence