but Kivrin knew Norman French—Mr. Dunworthy had made her learn it—and she couldn’t make out any of the words.
“Hastow naydepesse?” the old woman said.
It sounded like a question, but all French sounded like a question.
The old woman took hold of Kivrin’s arm with one rough hand and put her other arm around her, as if to help her up. I’m too ill to get up, Kivrin thought. Why would she make me get up? To be questioned? To be burned?
The younger woman came into the room, carrying a footed cup. She set it down on the window seat and came to take Kivrin’s other arm. “Hastontee natour yowrese?” she asked, smiling her gap-toothed smile at Kivrin, and Kivrin thought, Maybe they’re taking me to the bathroom, and made an effort to sit up and put her legs over the side of the bed.
She was immediately dizzy. She sat, her bare legs dangling over the side of the high bed, waiting for it to pass. She was wearing her linen shift and nothing else. She wondered where her clothes were. At least they had let her keep her shift. People in the Middle Ages didn’t usually wear anything to bed.
People in the Middle Ages didn’t have indoor plumbing either, she thought, and hoped she wouldn’t have to go outside to a privy. Castles sometimes had enclosed garderobes, or corners over a shaft that had to be cleaned out at the bottom, but this wasn’t a castle.
The young woman put a thin, folded blanket around Kivrin’s shoulders like a shawl, and they both helped her off the bed. The planked wooden floor was icy. She took a few steps and was dizzy all over again. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought.
“Wotan shay wootes nawdaor youse der jordane?” the old woman said sharply, and Kivrin thought she recognized jardin, the French for garden, but why would they be discussing gardens?
“Thanway maunhollp anhour,” the young woman said, putting her arm around Kivrin and draping Kivrin’s arm over her shoulders. The old woman gripped her other arm with both hands. She scarcely came to Kivrin’s shoulder, and the young woman didn’t look like she weighed more than ninety pounds, but between them they walked her to the end of the bed.
Kivrin got dizzier with every step. I’ll never make it all the way outside, she thought, but they had stopped at the end of the bed. There was a chest there, a low wooden box with a bird or possibly an angel carved roughly into the top. On it lay a wooden basin full of water, the bloody bandage that had been around Kivrin’s forehead, and a smaller, empty bowl. Kivrin, concentrating on not falling over, didn’t realize what it was until the old woman said, “Swoune nawmaydar oupondre yorresette” and pantomimed lifting her heavy skirts and sitting on it.
A chamber pot, Kivrin thought gratefully. Mr. Dunworthy, chamber pots were extant in country village manor houses in 1320. She nodded to show she understood and let them ease her down onto it, though she was so dizzy she had to grab at the heavy bed hangings to keep from falling, and her chest hurt so badly when she tried to stand up again that she doubled over.
“Maisry!” the old woman shouted toward the door. “Maisry, com undtvae holpoon!” and the inflection indicated clearly that she was calling someone—Marjorie? Mary?—to come and help, but no one appeared, so perhaps she was wrong about that, too.
She straightened a little, testing the pain, and then tried to stand up, and the pain had lessened a little, but they still had to nearly carry her back to the bed, and she was exhausted by the time she was back under the bed coverings. She closed her eyes.
“Slaeponpon donu paw daton,” the young woman said, and she had to be saying “Rest,” or “Go to sleep,” but she still couldn’t decipher it. The interpreter’s broken, she thought, and the little knot of panic started to form again, worse than the pain in her chest.
It can’t be broken, she told herself. It’s not a machine. It’s a chemical syntax and memory enhancer. It can’t be broken. It could only work with words in its memory, though, and obviously Mr. Latimer’s Middle English was useless. Whan that Aprille with his shoures sote. Mr. Latimer’s pronunciations were so far off the interpreter couldn’t recognize what it was hearing as the same words, but that didn’t mean it was broken.