it. Past the huts and the steward’s house and the interested pigs, and into the courtyard. The stump of a big ash tree lay on the cobbles in front of the barn, its twisted roots catching the flakes of snow.
“She will have caught her death with her behavior,” Lady Imeyne said, gesturing to Maisry to open the heavy wooden door. “She will no doubt have a relapse.”
It began to snow in earnest. Maisry opened the door. It had a latch like the little door on the rat’s cage. I should have let it go, Kivrin thought, scourge or not. I should have let it go.
Lady Imeyne motioned to Maisry, and she came back to take Kivrin’s arm again. “No,” she said, and shrugged off her hand and Rosemund’s and walked alone and without help through the door and into the darkness inside.
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE DOMESDAY BOOK
(005982–013198)
18 December 1320 (Old Style). I think I have pneumonia. I tried to go find the drop, but I didn’t make it, and I’ve had some sort of relapse or something. There’s a stabbing pain under my ribs every time I take a breath, and when I cough, which is constantly, it feels like everything inside is breaking to pieces. I tried to sit up a while ago and was instantly bathed in sweat, and I think my temp is back up. Those are all symptoms Dr. Ahrens told me indicate pneumonia.
Lady Eliwys isn’t back yet. Lady Imeyne put a horrible-smelling poultice on my chest and then sent for the steward’s wife. I thought she wanted to “chide with” her for usurping the manor, but when the steward’s wife came, carrying her six-month-old baby, Imeyne told her, “The wound has fevered her lungs,” and the steward’s wife looked at my temple and then went out and came back without the baby and with a bowl full of a bitter-tasting tea. It must have had willow bark or something in it because my temp came down, and my ribs don’t hurt quite so much.
The steward’s wife is thin and small, with a sharp face and ash-blond hair. I think Lady Imeyne is probably right about her being the one to tempt the steward “into sin.” She came in wearing a fur-trimmed kirtle with sleeves so long they nearly dragged on the floor, and her baby wrapped in a finely woven wool blanket, and she talks in an odd slurred accent that I think is an attempt to mimic Lady Imeyne’s speech.
“The embryonic middle class,” as Mr. Latimer would say, nouveau riche and waiting for its chance, which it will get in thirty years when the Black Death hits and a third of the nobility is wiped out.
“Is this the lady was found in the woods?” she asked Lady Imeyne when she came in, and there wasn’t any “seeming modesty” in her manner. She smiled at Imeyne as if they were old chums and came over to the bed.
“Aye,” Lady Imeyne said, managing to get impatience, disdain, and distaste all in one syllable.
The steward’s wife was oblivious. She came over to the bed and then stepped back, the first person to show any indication they thought I might be contagious. “Has she the (something) fever?” The interpreter didn’t catch the word, and I couldn’t get it either because of her peculiar accent. Flouronen? Florentine?
“She has a wound to the head,” Imeyne said sharply. “It has fevered her lungs.”
The steward’s wife nodded. “Father Roche told us how he and Gawyn found her in the woods.”
Imeyne stiffened at the familiar use of Gawyn’s name, and the steward’s wife did catch that and hurried out to brew up the willow bark. She even ducked a bow to Lady Imeyne when she left the second time.
Rosemund came in to sit with me after Imeyne left—I think they’ve assigned her to keep me from trying to escape again—and I asked her if it was true that Father Roche had been with Gawyn when he found me.
“Nay,” she said. “Gawyn met Father Roche on the road as he brought you here and left you to his care that he might seek your attackers, but he found naught of them, and he and Father Roche brought you here. You need not worry over it. Gawyn has brought your things to the manor.”
I don’t remember Father Roche being there, except in the sickroom, but if it’s true, and Gawyn didn’t meet him too far from the drop, maybe he knows where it is.
(Break)
I have been