World Without End Page 0,347

the terrible stories from Italy and southern France: entire families wiped out, unburied bodies rotting in empty palaces, orphaned toddlers wandering the streets crying, livestock dying untended in ghost villages. Was this to happen to Kingsbridge? "What did the Italian doctors do?"

"Prayed, sang hymns, took blood, prescribed their favourite nostrums and charged a fortune. Everything they tried was useless."

They were standing close together and speaking in low tones. She could see his face by the faint light of the monks' distant candles. He was staring at her with a strange intensity. He was deeply moved, she could tell, but it did not seem to be grief for Mark that possessed him. He was focused on her.

She asked: "What are the Italian doctors like, compared with our English physicians?"

"After the Muslims, the Italian doctors are supposed to be the most knowledgeable in the world. They even cut up dead bodies to learn more about sickness. But they never cured a single sufferer from this plague."

Caris refused to accept such complete hopelessness. "We can't be utterly helpless."

"No. We can't cure it, but some people think you can escape it."

Caris said eagerly: "How?"

"It seems to spread from one person to another."

She nodded. "Lots of diseases do that."

"Usually, when one in a family gets it, they all do. Proximity is the key factor."

"That makes sense. Some say you fall ill from looking at sick people."

"In Florence, the nuns counselled us to stay at home as much as possible, and avoid social gatherings, markets and meetings of guilds and councils."

"And church services?"

"No, they didn't say that, though lots of people stayed home from church too."

This chimed with what Caris had been thinking for years. She felt renewed hope: perhaps her methods could stave off the plague. "What about the nuns themselves, and the physicians, people who have to meet the sick and touch them?"

"Priests refused to hear confessions in whispers, so that they did not have to get too near. Nuns wore linen masks over their mouths and noses so that they would not breathe the same air. Some washed their hands in vinegar every time they touched a patient. The priest-physicians said none of this would do any good, but most of them left the city anyway."

"And did these precautions help?"

"It's hard to say. None of this was done until the plague was rampant. And it wasn't systematic - just everyone trying different things."

"All the same, we must make the effort."

He nodded. After a pause he said: "However, there is one precaution that is sure."

"What's that?"

"Run away."

This was what he had been waiting to say, she realized.

He went on: "The saying goes: 'Leave early, go far and stay long.' People who did that escaped the sickness."

"We can't go away."

"Why not?"

"Don't be silly. There are six or seven thousand people in Kingsbridge - they can't all leave town. Where would they go?"

"I'm not talking about them - just you. Listen, you may not have caught the plague from Mark. Madge and the children almost certainly have, but you spent less time close to him. If you're still all right, we could escape. We could leave today, you and me and Lolla."

Caris was appalled by the way he assumed it had spread by now. Was she doomed already? "And... and go where?"

"To Wales, or Ireland. We need to find a remote village where they don't see a stranger from one year to the next."

"You've had the sickness. You told me people don't get it twice."

"Never. And some people don't catch it at all. Lolla must be like that. If she didn't pick it up from her mother, she's not likely to get it from anyone else."

"So why do you want to go to Wales?"

He just stared at her with that intense look, and she realized that the fear she had detected in him was for her. He was terrified that she would die. Tears came to her eyes. She remembered what Madge had said: "Knowing there's one person in the world who will always be on your side." Merthin tried to look after her, no matter what she did. She thought of poor Madge, blasted by grief at the loss of the one who was always on her side. How could she, Caris, even think of rejecting Merthin?

But she did. "I can't leave Kingsbridge," she said. "Of all times, not now. They rely on me if someone is sick. When the plague strikes, I'm the one they will turn to