She might be in the barn, Kivrin thought, and came out of the stable, shielding her eyes from the sudden brightness. Roche was just emerging from the kitchen. "Did you find her?" Kivrin asked, but he didn't hear her. He was looking toward the gate, his head cocked as if he were listening.
Kivrin listened, but she couldn't hear anything. "What is it?" she asked. "Can you hear her crying?"
"It is the Lord," he said and ran towards the gate.
Oh, no, not Roche, Kivrin thought, and ran after him. He had stopped and was opening the gate. "Father Roche," Kivrin said, and heard the horse.
It was galloping toward them, the sound of the hoofs loud on the frozen ground. Kivrin thought, he meant the lord of the manor. He thinks Eliwys's husband has finally come, and then, with a shock of hope, it's Mr. Dunworthy.
Roche lifted the heavy bar and slid it to the side.
We need streptomycin and disinfectant, and he's got to take Rosemund back to hospital with him. She'll have to have a transfusion.
Roche had the bar off. He pushed on the gate.
And vaccine, she thought wildly. He'd better bring back the oral. Where's Agnes? He must get Agnes safely away from here.
The horse was nearly at the gate before she came to her senses. "No!" she said, but it was too late. Roche already had the gate open.
"He can't come here," Kivrin shouted, looking about wildly for something to warn him off with. "He'll catch the plague."
She'd left the spade by the empty pigsty after she buried Blackie. She ran to get it. "Don't let him through the gate," she called, and Roche flung his arms up in warning, but he had already ridden into the courtyard.
Roche dropped his arms. "Gawyn!" he said, and the black stallion looked like Gawyn's, but a boy was riding it. He could not have been older than Rosemund, and his face and clothes were streaked with mud. The stallion was muddy, too, breathing hard, and spattering foam, and the boy looked as winded. His nose and ears were brightened with the cold. He started to dismount, staring at them.
"You must not come here," Kivrin said, speaking carefully so she wouldn't lapse into English. "There is plague in this village." She raised her spade, pointing it like a gun at him.
The boy stopped, halfway off the horse, and sat down in the saddle again.
"The blue sickness," she added, in case he didn't understand, but he was already nodding.
"It is everywhere," he said, turning to take something from the pouch behind his saddle. "I bear a message." He held out a leather wallet toward Roche, and Roche stepped forward for it.
"No!" Kivrin said and took a step forward, jabbing the spade at the air in front of him. "Drop it on the ground!" she said. "You must not touch us."
The boy took a tied roll of vellum from the wallet and threw it at Roche's feet.
Roche picked it up off the flagstones and unrolled it. "What says the message?" he asked the boy, and Kivrin thought, of course, he can't read.
"I know not," the boy said. "It is from the Bishop of Bath. I am to take it to all the parishes."
"Would you have me read it?" Kivrin asked.
"Mayhap it is from the lord," Roche said. "Mayhap he sends word that he has been delayed."
"Yes," Kivrin said, taking it from him, but she knew it wasn't.
It was in Latin, printed in letters so elaborate they were hard to read, but it didn't matter. She had read it before. In the Bodleian.
She leaned the spade against her shoulder and read the message, translating the Latin:
"The contagious pestilence of the present day, which is spreading far and wide, has left many parish churches and other livings in our diocese without parson or priest to care for their parishioners."
She looked at Roche. No, she thought. Not here. I won't let that happen here.
"Since no priests can be found who are willing — " The priests were dead or had run away, and no one could be persuaded to take their place, and the people were dying "without the Sacrament of Penance."
She read on, seeing not the black letters but the faded brown ones she had deciphered in the Bodleian. She had thought the letter was pompous and ridiculous. "People were dying right and left," she had told Mr. Dunworthy indignantly, "and all the bishop was concerned about was church protocol!" But now, reading it to the exhausted boy and Father Roche, it sounded exhausted, too. And desperate.
"If they are on the point of death and can not secure the services of a priest," she read, "then they should make confession to each other. We urge you, by these present letters, in the bowels of Jesus Christ, to do this."
Neither the boy nor Roche said anything when she had finished reading. She wondered if the boy had known what he was carrying. She rolled it up and handed it back to him.
"I have been riding three days," the boy said, slumping forward tiredly in the saddle. "Can I not rest here awhile?"
"It is not safe," Kivrin said, feeling sorry for him. "We will give you and your horse food to take with you."
Roche turned to go into the kitchen, and Kivrin suddenly remembered Agnes. "Did you see a little girl on the road?" she asked. "A five-year-old child, with a red cloak and hood?"
"Nay," the boy said, "but there are many on the roads. They flee the pestilence."
Roche was bringing out a wadmal sack. Kivrin turned to fetch some oats for the stallion, and Eliwys shot past them both, her skirts tangling between her legs, her loose hair flying out behind her.
"Don't — " Kivrin shouted, but Eliwys had already caught hold of the stallion's bridle.
"Where do you come from?" she asked, grabbing at the boy's sleeve. "Have you seen aught of Gawyn Fitzroy?"
The boy looked frightened. "I come from Bath, with a message from the bishop," he said, pulling back on the reins. The horse whinnied, and tossed its head.
"What message?" Eliwys said hysterically. "Is it from Gawyn?"
"I do not know the man of whom you speak," the boy said.
"Lady Eliwys — " Kivrin said, stepping forward.
"He rides a black steed with a saddle chased in silver," she persisted, pulling on the stallion's bridle. "He has gone to Bath to fetch my husband, who witnesses at the Assizes."
"None go to Bath," the boy said. "All who can flee it."
Eliwys stumbled, as though the stallion had reared, and seemed to fall against its side.
"There is no court, nor any law," the boy said. "The dead lie in the streets, and all who but look on them die, too. Some say it is the end of the world."
Eliwys let go of the bridle and took a step back. She turned and looked hopefully at Kivrin and Roche. "They will surely be home soon, then. Is it certain you did not see them on the road? He rides a black steed."
"There were many steeds." He kicked the horse forward toward Roche, but Eliwys didn't move.
Roche stepped forward with the sack of food. The boy leaned down, grabbed it, and wheeled the stallion around, nearly running Eliwys down. She didn't try to get out of the way.
Kivrin stepped forward and caught hold of one of the reins. "Don't go back to the bishop," she said.
He jerked up on the reins, looking more frightened of her than of Eliwys.
She didn't let go. "Go north," she said. "The plague isn't there yet."
He wrenched the reins free, kicked the stallion forward, and galloped out of the courtyard.
"Stay off the main roads," Kivrin called after him. "Speak to no one."
Eliwys still stood where she was.
"Come," Kivrin said. "We must find Agnes."
"My husband and Gawyn will have ridden first to Courcy to warn Sir Bloet," she said, and let Kivrin lead her back to the house.
Kivrin looked in the barn. Agnes wasn't there, but she found her own cloak, left there Christmas Eve. She flung it around her and went up into the loft. She looked in the brewhouse and Roche searched the other buildings, but they didn't find her. A cold wind had sprung up while they stood talking to the messenger, and it smelled like snow.