Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,68
robbers steal it?”
Kivrin shook her head, smiling at the odd idea.
“Maisry says the robbers stole your tongue,” Agnes said. She pointed at Kivrin’s forehead. “Hurt you your head?”
Kivrin nodded.
“I hurt my knee,” she said, and tried to pick it up with both hands so Kivrin could see the dirty bandage. The old woman was right. It was already slipping. She could see the wound under it. Kivrin had supposed it was just a skinned knee, but the wound looked fairly deep.
Agnes tottered, let go of the knee, and leaned against the bed again. “Will you die?”
I don’t know, Kivrin thought, thinking of the pain in her chest. The mortality rate for smallpox had been seventy-five percent in 1320, and her augmented immune system wasn’t working.
“Brother Hubard died,” Agnes said wisely. “And Gilbert. He fell from his horse. I saw him. His head was all red. Rosemund said Brother Hubard died of the blue sickness.”
Kivrin wondered what the blue sickness was—choking perhaps, or apoplexy—and if he was the chaplain that Eliwys’s mother-in-law was so eager to replace. It was usual for noble households to travel with their own priests. Father Roche was apparently the local priest, probably uneducated and possibly even illiterate, though she had understood his Latin perfectly well. And he had been kind. He had held her hand and told her not to be afraid. There are nice people in the Middle Ages, Mr. Dunworthy, she thought. Father Roche and Eliwys and Agnes.
“My father said he would bring me a magpie when he comes from Bath,” Agnes said. “Adeliza has a tercel. She lets me hold him sometimes.” She held her bent arm up and out, the dimpled fist closed as if a falcon were perched on her imaginary gauntlet. “I have a hound.”
“What is your hound’s name?” Kivrin asked.
“I call him Blackie,” Agnes said, though Kivrin was certain that was only the interpreter’s version. More likely she had said Blackamon or Blakkin. “He is black. Have you a hound?”
Kivrin was too surprised to answer. She had spoken and made herself understood. Agnes hadn’t even acted like her pronunciation was unusual. She had spoken without thinking about the interpreter or waiting for it to translate, and perhaps that was the secret.
“Nay, I have no hound,” she said finally, trying to duplicate what she’d done before.
“I will teach my magpie to talk. I will teach him to say, ‘Good morrow, Agnes.’ ”
“Where is your hound?” Kivrin said, trying again. The words sounded different to her, lighter, with that murmuring French inflection she had heard in the women’s speech.
“Do you wish to see Blackie? He is in the stable,” Agnes said. It sounded like a direct response, but the way Agnes talked it was difficult to tell. She might simply have been volunteering information. To be sure, Kivrin would have to ask her something completely off the subject and something with only one answer.
Agnes was stroking the soft fur of the bed covering and humming a toneless little tune.
“What is your name?” Kivrin asked, trying to let the interpreter control her words. It translated her modern sentence into something like, “How are youe cleped?” which she was not sure was correct, but Agnes didn’t hesitate.
“Agnes,” the little girl said promptly. “My father says I may have a tercel when I am old enough to ride a mare. I have a pony.” She stopped stroking the fur, propped her elbows on the edge of the bed, and rested her chin in her little hands. “I know your name,” she said, sounding smugly pleased. “It is Katherine.”
“What?” Kivrin said blankly. Katherine. How had they come up with Katherine? Her name was supposed to be Isabel. Was it possible that they thought they knew who she was?
“Rosemund said none knew your name,” she went on, looking smug, “but I heard Father Roche tell Gawyn you were called Katherine. Rosemund said you could not speak, but yet you can.”
Kivrin had a sudden image of the priest bending over her, his face obscured by the flames that seemed constantly in front of her, saying in Latin, “What is your name that you might be shriven?”
And she, trying to form the word though her mouth was so dry she could hardly speak, afraid she would die and they would never know what had happened to her.
“Are you called Katherine?” Agnes was demanding, and she could hear the little girl’s voice clearly under the interpreter’s translation. It sounded just like Kivrin.