Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1) - Connie Willis Page 0,73

replacement chaplain, and Imeyne said, “There is more than time enough to send. It is full ten days till Christ’s mass.” So tell Mr. Gilchrist I’ve ascertained my temporal location at least. But I don’t know how far from the drop I am. I’ve tried to remember Gawyn bringing me here, but that whole night is hopelessly muddled, and part of what I remember didn’t happen. I remember a white horse that had bells on its harness, and the bells were playing Christmas carols, like the carillon in Carfax Tower.

The fifteenth of December means it’s Christmas Eve there, and you’ll be giving your sherry party and then walking over to St. Mary the Virgin’s for the interchurch service. It is hard to comprehend that you are over seven hundred years away. I keep thinking that if I got out of bed (which I can’t because I’m too dizzy—I think my temp is back up) and opened the door I would find not a mediaeval hall but Brasenose’s lab, and all of you waiting for me, Badri and Dr. Ahrens and you, Mr. Dunworthy, polishing your spectacles and saying I told you so. I wish you were.

12

Lady Imeyne did not believe Kivrin’s story about having amnesia. When Agnes brought her hound, which turned out to be a tiny black puppy with huge feet, in to Kivrin, she said, “This is my hound, Lady Kivrin.” She held it out to Kivrin, clutching its fat middle. “You can pet him. Do you remember how?”

“Yes,” Kivrin said, taking the puppy out of Agnes’s too-tight grasp and stroking its baby-soft fur. “Aren’t you supposed to be at your sewing?”

Agnes took the puppy back from her. “Grandmother went to chide with the steward, and Maisry went out to the stable.” She twisted the puppy around to give it a kiss. “So I came to speak to you. Grandmother is very angry. The steward and all his family were living in the hall when we came hence.” She gave the puppy another kiss. “Grandmother says it is his wife who tempts him to sin.”

Grandmother. Agnes had not said anything like “grandmother.” The word hadn’t even existed until the eighteenth century, but the interpreter was taking huge, disconcerting leaps now, though it left Agnes’s mispronunciation of Katherine intact and sometimes left blanks in places where the meaning should have been obvious from context. She hoped her subconscious knew what it was doing.

“Are you a daltriss, Lady Kivrin?” Agnes said.

Her subconscious obviously didn’t know what it was doing. “What?” she asked.

“A daltriss” Agnes said. The puppy was trying desperately to squirm out of Agnes’s grip. “Grandmother says you are one. She says a wife fleeing to her lover would have good cause to remember naught.”

An adultress. Well, at least it was better than a French spy. Or perhaps Lady Imeyne thought she was both.

Agnes kissed the puppy again. “Grandmother said a lady had no good cause to travel through the woods in winter.”

Lady Imeyne was right, Kivrin thought, and so was Mr. Dunworthy. She still had not found out where the drop was, although she had asked to speak with Gawyn when Lady Eliwys came in the morning to bathe her temple.

“He has ridden out to search for the wicked men who robbed you,” Eliwys had said, putting an ointment on Kivrin’s temple that smelled like garlic and stung horribly. “Do you remember aught of them?”

Kivrin had shaken her head, hoping her faked amnesia wouldn’t end in some poor peasant’s being hanged. She could scarcely say, “No, that isn’t the man,” when she supposedly couldn’t remember anything.

Perhaps she shouldn’t have told them she couldn’t remember anything. The probability that they would have known the de Beauvriers was very small, and her lack of an explanation had obviously made Imeyne even more suspicious of her.

Agnes was trying to put her cap on the puppy. “There are wolves in the woods,” she said. “Gawyn slew one with his ax.”

“Agnes, did Gawyn tell you of his finding me?” Kivrin asked.

“Aye. Blackie likes to wear my cap,” she said, tying the strings in a choking knot.

“He doesn’t act like it,” Kivrin said. “Where did Gawyn find me?”

“In the woods,” Agnes said. The puppy twisted out of the cap and nearly fell off the bed. She set it in the middle of the bed and lifted it by its front paws. “Blackie can dance.”

“Here. Let me hold it,” Kivrin said, to rescue the poor thing. She cradled it in her arms. “Where in the