Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,58

carried glass windows along with the luggage and the furniture when they traveled from house to house.

I must get this on the corder, Kivrin thought, that some manor houses didn’t have glass windows, and she raised her hands and pressed them together, but the effort of holding them up was too great, and she let them fall back onto the coverings.

The woman glanced over toward the bed and then turned back to the window and went on painting the cloth with long, unconcerned strokes. I must be getting better, Kivrin thought. She was right by the bed the whole time I was ill. She wondered again how long that time had been. I will have to find out, she thought, and then I must find the drop.

It couldn’t be very far. If this was the village she had intended to go to, the drop wasn’t more than a mile away. She tried to remember how long the trip to the village had taken. It had seemed to take a long time. The cutthroat had put her on a white horse, and it had had bells on its harness. But he wasn’t a cutthroat. He was a kind-looking young man with red hair.

She would have to ask the name of the village she had been brought to, and hopefully it would be Skendgate. But even if it wasn’t, she would know from the name where she was in relation to the drop. And, of course, as soon as she was a little stronger, they could show her where it was.

What is the name of this village you have brought me to? She had not been able to think of the words last night, but that was because of the fever, of course. She had no trouble now. Mr. Latimer had spent months on her pronunciation. They would certainly be able to understand, “In whatte londe am I?” or even, “Whatte be thisse holding?” and even if there were some variation in local dialect, the interpreter would automatically correct it.

“Whatte place hast thou brotte me?” Kivrin said.

The woman turned, looking startled. She stepped down from the window seat, still holding the bowl in one hand and the brush in the other, only it wasn’t a brush, Kivrin could see as she approached the bed. It was a squarish wooden spoon with a nearly flat bowl.

“Gottebae plaise tthar tleve, ” the woman said, holding spoon and bowl together in front of her. “Beth naught agast.”

The interpreter was supposed to translate what was said immediately. Maybe Kivrin’s pronunciation was all off, so far off that the woman thought she was speaking a foreign language and was trying to answer her in clumsy French or German.

“Whatte place hast thou brotte me?” she said slowly so the interpreter would have time to translate what she said.

“Wick londebay yae comen lawdayke awtreen godelae deynorm andoar sic straunguwlondes. Spekefaw eek waenoot awfthy taloorbrede.”

“Lawyes sharess toostee?” a voice said.

The woman turned around to look at a door Kivrin couldn’t see, and another woman came in, much older, her face under the coif wrinkled and her hands the hands Kivrin remembered from her delirium, rough and old. She was wearing a silver chain and carrying a small leather chest. It looked like the casket Kivrin had brought through with her, but it was smaller and bound with iron instead of brass. She set the casket down on the window seat.

“Auf specheryit darmayt?”

She remembered the voice, too, harsh and almost angry-sounding, speaking to the woman by Kivrin’s bed as if she were a servant. Well, perhaps she was, and this was the lady of the house, though her coif was no whiter, her dress no finer. But there weren’t any keys at her belt, and now Kivrin remembered that it wasn’t the housekeeper who carried the keys but the lady of the house.

The lady of the manor in yellowed linen and badly dyed burlap, which meant that Kivrin’s dress was all wrong, as wrong as Latimer’s pronunciations, as wrong as Dr. Ahrens’s assurances that she would not get any mediaeval diseases.

“I had my inoculations,” she murmured, and both women turned to look at her.

“Ellavih swot wardesdoor feenden iss?” the older woman asked sharply. Was she the younger woman’s mother, or her mother-in-law, or her nurse? Kivrin had no idea. None of the words she’d said, not even a proper name or a form of address, separated itself out.

“Maetinkerr woun dahest wexe hoordoumbe,” the younger woman said, and the older one answered,