Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)

by Connie Willis

Lady Imeyne is very bad. Roche tried to give her the last rites, but she refused to make her confession. “You must make your peace with God ere you die,” Roche said, but she turned her face to the wall and said, “He is to blame for this.”

Lady Imeyne is unconscious and Roche is giving her the last rites. I told him to. “It is the disease that speaks. Her soul has not turned against God,” I said, which isn’t true, and perhaps she does not deserve forgiveness, but she does not deserve this either, her body poisoned, rotting, and I can scarcely condemn her for blaming God when I blame her. And neither is responsible. It’s a disease. The consecrated wine has run out, and there is no more olive oil. Roche is using cooking oil from the kitchen. It smells rancid. Where he touches her temples and the palms of her hands, the skin turns black. It’s a disease.

Even Roche can’t stand it. “Why does God

punish us thus?” he asked me. “He doesn’t. It’s a disease,” I said, which is no answer, and he knows it. All of Europe knows it, and the Church knows it, too. It will hang on for a few more centuries, making excuses, but it can’t overcome the essential fact—that He let this happen. That He comes to no one’s rescue.

The bells have stopped. Roche asked me if I thought it was a sign the plague had stopped. “Perhaps God has been able to come to help us after all,” he said. I don’t think so. In Tournai church officials sent out an order stopping the bells because the sound frightened the people. Perhaps the Bishop of Bath has sent one out as well. The sound was frightening, but the silence is worse. It’s like the end of the world.

If God had known where His Son was, He would never have let them do that to him, Dunworthy thought. He would have pulled him out, He would have come and rescued him. During the Black Death, the contemps believed God had abandoned them. “Why do you turn your face from us?” they had written. “Why do you ignore our cries?” But perhaps He hadn’t heard them. Perhaps He had been unconscious, lying ill in heaven, helpless Himself and unable to come.

slaughter of the innocents.

She didn’t wait for the steward to finish shoveling dirt down on Agnes or for Father Roche to complete his chummy little chat with God. She started across the green, furious with all of them: with the steward for standing there with his spade, eager to dig more graves, with Eliwys for not coming, with Gawyn for not coming. No one’s coming, she thought. No one.

His right eye had ulcerated, the plague eating its way out from inside, and the clerk clawed at it viciously with his hands. “Domine Jesu Christe, ” he swore, “fidelium defunctorium de poenis infermis. ” Save the souls of the faithful departed from the pains of hell.

He doesn’t deserve this, Kivrin thought. Even if he did bring the plague here. Nobody deserves this. “Please,” she prayed, and wasn’t sure what she asked. Whatever it was, it was not granted.

“Did Agnes die?” “Yes,” Kivrin said. She nodded as if she were not surprised. “I heard her screaming.” Kivrin couldn’t think of anything to say to that. “My father is dead, isn’t he?” There was nothing to say to that either. He was almost certainly dead, and Gawyn, too. It had been eight days since he had left for Bath. Eliwys, still feverish, had said this morning, “He will come now that the storm is over,” but even she had not seemed to believe it.

He was dead, but even that had not relieved his suffering. He looked still in anguish, still in terror, though his face no longer looked even human. The pains of hell.

“Why do you dig three graves?” she said. “Who has died?” The cow nudged her shoulder with its horn. She twisted away from it. “Who has died?” The steward jabbed the spade into the iron-hard ground. “It is the last days, boy,” he said, stepping down hard on the blade, and Kivrin felt a jerk of fear, and then realized he hadn’t recognized her in her boy’s clothes. “It’s me, Katherine,” she said. He looked up and nodded. “It is the end of time,” he said. “Those who have not died, will.” He leaned forward, putting his whole weight on the spade.

“They’re not going to die,” she said. “The Black Death only killed one third to one half of the contemps. We’ve already had our quota.”

They could not stay here. Scotland, she thought, and started for the manor. I could take them to northern Scotland. The plague didn’t reach that far. The steward’s son could ride the donkey, and they could make a litter for Rosemund.

you'd just bring it there with you

Io suiicien lui dami amo. You are here in place of the friend I love.

As Mr. Gilchrist would say, “I’ve taken every possible precaution.”

“You’re looking a good deal better, sir,” Finch said. “I’m so glad. I’m afraid you’re badly needed at Balliol. It’s Mrs. Gaddson. She’s accused Balliol of undermining William’s health. She says the combined strain of the epidemic and reading Petrarch has broken his health. She’s threatening to go to the Head of the History Faculty with it.” “Tell her she’s more than welcome to try. Basingame’s in Scotland somewhere,” Dunworthy said. “I need you to find how long in advance of exposure an inoculation against bubonic plague needs to be given, and I need the laboratory readied for a drop.” “We’re using it for storage just now,” Finch said. “We’ve had several shipments of supplies from London, though none of lavatory paper, even though I specifically requested—”

“Please tell my doctor I wish to see him.” “Dr. Warden will only tell you what I’ve told you,” she said, but she apparently relayed the message because he tottered in after tea. He had obviously been hauled out of a senile retirement to help with the epidemic. He told a long and pointless story about medical conditions during the Pandemic and then pronounced creakily, “In my day we kept people in hospital till they were fully recovered.”

back in my day I had to walk five miles to school uphill both ways

“Mr. Dunworthy, wake up,” Colin whispered. He was shining a pocket torch in his face. “What is it?” Dunworthy said, blinking against the light. He groped for his spectacles. “What’s happened?” “It’s me, Colin,” he whispered. He turned the torch on himself. He was wearing, for some unknown reason, a large white lab coat, and his face looked strained, sinister in the upturned light of the torch. “What’s wrong?” Dunworthy asked. “Nothing,” Colin whispered. “You’re being discharged.” Dunworthy hooked his spectacles over his ears. He still couldn’t see anything. “What time is it?” he whispered. “Four o’clock.” He thrust his slippers at him and turned the torch on the closet. “Do hurry.” He took Dunworthy’s robe off the hook and handed it to him. “She’s likely to come back any moment.”

“I do hope William never decides to take to a life of crime,” he said. “Oh, I don’t think he would, sir. His mother would never allow it.”

And when he began the prayers for the dead, he said, “Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.” Kivrin looked anxiously at him. We must get away from here before he catches it, too, she thought, and didn’t correct him. We don’t have a moment to lose. “Dormiunt in somno pacis, ” Roche said, and picked up the shovel and began filling in the grave.

The bell tolled once, and then was silent, and Kivrin stopped, the girth strap in her hand, and listened, waiting for it to ring again. Three strokes for a woman, she thought, and knew why he had stopped. One for a child. Oh, Rosemund.

Some people recovered spontaneously and some were saved by prayers. Not everyone died who was infected. The death rate for pneumonic plague was only ninety percent. He was awake when she went in, lying in a shaft of smoky light. She knelt and held a cup of water under his mouth, tilting his head up so he could drink. “It is the blue sickness,” he said when she let his head back down. “You’re not going to die,” she said. Ninety percent. Ninety percent. “You must hear my confession.” No. He could not die.

“Oh, my God,” he said, “I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee.” Offended Thee. You’re the saint of the Lord, she wanted to tell him, and where the hell is He? Why doesn’t He come and save you?

“Quid quid deliquiste,” he said, and she dipped her hand in the water again and marked the cross on the soles of his feet. “Libera nos, quaesumus, Domine, ” he prompted. “Ab omnibus malis,” Kivrin said, “praeteritis, praesenti-bus, et futuris.” Deliver us, we beseech Thee, O Lord, from all evils, past, present, and to come. “Perducat te ad vitam aeternam,” he murmured. And bring thee unto life everlasting. “Amen,” Kivrin said, and leaned forward to catch the blood that came pouring out of him.

“It’s a disease,” Kivrin whispered shakily, her hands still over her mouth. “It’s nobody’s fault.”

She untied the ragged points on the hose and he didn’t flinch at her touch, but he moaned a little, and it sounded liquid.

It was twice as big as Rosemund’s and completely black. It should have been lanced hours ago, days ago.

repeat 3rd time

“Beata,” she thought he said and tried to think of the next line, but it didn’t begin with “blessed.” “What?” she said, leaning over him. “In the last days,” he said, his voice blurred by his swollen tongue. She leaned closer. “I feared that God would forsake us utterly,”

“But in His great mercy He did not,” he swallowed again, “but sent His saint unto us.” He raised his head and coughed, and blood rushed out over both of them, saturating his chest and her knees. She wiped at it frantically, trying to stop it, trying to keep his head up, and she couldn’t see through her tears to wipe the blood away. “And I’m no use,” she said, wiping at her tears. “Why do you weep?” he said. “You saved my life,” she said, and her voice caught in a sob, “and I can’t save yours.” “All men must die,” Roche said, “and none, nor even Christ, can save them.” “I know,” she said. She cupped her hand under her face, trying to catch her tears. They collected on her hand and fell dripping onto Roche’s neck. “Yet have you saved me,” he said, and his voice sounded clearer. “From fear.” He took a gurgling breath. “And unbelief.”

The candle flickered into sudden brightness and left them in darkness.

looked at Colin, but he was not looking at the body, but at the clearing beyond. It was larger than the one in front of the steward’s house. At its edges lay half a dozen huts, at the far end the Norman church. And in the center, on the trampled snow, lay the bodies. They had made no attempt at burying them, though by the church there was a shallow trench, a mound of snow-covered dirt piled beside it. Some of them seemed to have been dragged to the churchyard—there were long, sledlike marks in the snow—and one at least had crawled to the door of his hut. He lay half in, half out. “ ‘Fear God,’ ” Dunworthy murmured, “ ‘for the hour of His judgment is come.’ ” “It looks like there was a battle here,” Colin said. “There was,” Dunworthy said. Colin stepped forward, peering down at the body. “Do you think they’re all dead?” “Don’t touch them,” Dunworthy said. “Don’t even go near them.” “I’ve had the gamma globulin,” he said, but he stepped back from the body, swallowing.

“He kicked me.” She tried to push the church door open, winced, and let Colin. “I think he broke some ribs.”

“You must help me with Roche,” she said, squinting into the light. She leaned toward the man and reached for his hand. She thinks he’s still alive, Dunworthy thought, but she said, in that flat, matter-of-fact voice, “He died this morning.” Colin shone the pocket torch on the body. The crossed hands were nearly as purple as the blanket in the harsh light of the torch, but the man’s face was pale and utterly at peace. “What was he, a knight?” Colin said wonderingly. “No,” Kivrin said. “A saint.” She laid her hand on his stiff one. Her hand was callused and bloody, the fingernails black with dirt. “You must help me,” she said. “Help you what?” Colin asked. She wants us to help her bury him,

“Every man must stick to his bell,”

“He rang the bell for everyone, so their souls could go safely to heaven.” “Don’t you think we’d better be going?” Colin whispered. “It’s almost dark out.” “Even Rosemund,” Kivrin said as if she hadn’t heard. “He was already ill. I told him there wasn’t time, that we had to leave for Scotland.” “We must go now,” Dunworthy said, “before the light fails.” She didn’t move or let go of Roche’s hand. “He held my hand when I was dying.” “Kivrin,” he said gently. She laid her hand on Roche’s cheek, looked at him a long moment, and then got to her knees. Dunworthy offered her his hand, but she stood up by herself, her hand pressed to her side, and walked down the nave. At the door she turned and looked back into the darkness. “He told me where the drop was when he was dying, so I could go back to heaven. He told me he wanted me to leave him there and go, so that when he came I would already be there,” she said, and went out into the snow.

It came to Dunworthy suddenly that Mary wasn’t dead, that here in this terrible year, in this century that was worse than a ten, she had not yet died, and it seemed to him a blessing beyond any he had any right to expect.

It was already twilight under the trees. The sky between the black branches of the oak was lavender-blue.

“You know all about the Middle Ages,” he said to Kivrin, “so I thought perhaps you’d help me get ready, you know, teach me things.” “You’re not old enough,” she said. “It’s very dangerous.” “I know,” Colin said. “But I really want to go. You have to help me. Please?” “It won’t be anything like you expect,” she said. “Is the food necrotic? I read in this book Mr. Dunworthy gave me how they ate spoiled meat and swans and things.” Kivrin looked down at her hands for a long minute. “Most of it was terrible,” she said softly, “but there were some wonderful things.” Wonderful things. He thought of Mary, leaning against Balliol’s gate, talking about the Valley of the Kings, saying, “I’ll never forget it.” Wonderful things.

“I got it all on the corder,” she said. “Everything that happened.” Like John Clyn, he thought, looking at her ragged hair, her dirty face. A true historian, writing in the empty church, surrounded by graves. I, seeing so many evils, have put into writing all the things that I have witnessed. Lest things which should be remembered perish with time.

She traced a line down the side of her wrist with her finger. “Io suuicien lui damo amo, ” she said softly. “You are here in place of the friends I love.”