The cook cried out something, and Kivrin went around the barricade to her. She was crouched on her pallet, struggling to get up. "Must go home," she said.
Kivrin coaxed her down again and fetched her a drink of water. The bucket was nearly empty, and she picked it up and started out with it.
"Tell Kivrin I would have her come to me," Agnes said. She was sitting up.
Kivrin put the bucket down. "I'm here," Kivrin said, kneeling down beside her. "I'm right here."
Agnes looked at her, her face red and distorted with rage. "The wicked man will get me if Kivrin does not come," she said. "Bid her come now."
I've missed the rendezvous. I lost count of the days, taking care of Rosemund, and I couldn't find Agnes, and I didn't know where the drop was.
You must be worried sick, Mr. Dunworthy. You probably think I've fallen among cutthroats and murderers. Well, I have. And now they've got Agnes.
She has a fever, but no buboes, and she isn't coughing or vomiting. Just the fever. It's very high — she doesn't know me and keeps calling to me to come. Roche and I tried to bring it down by sponging her with cold compresses, but it keeps going back up.
Lady Imeyne has it. Father Roche found her this morning on the floor in the corner. She may have been there all night. The last two nights she has refused to go to bed and has stayed on her knees, praying to God to protect her and the rest of the godly from the plague.
He hasn't. She has the pneumonic. She's coughing and vomiting mucus streaked with blood.
She won't let Roche or me tend her. "She is to blame for this," she told Roche, pointing at me. "Look at her hair. She is no maid. Look at her clothes."
My clothes are a boy's jerkin and leather hose I found in one of the chests in the loft. My dress got ruined when Lady Imeyne vomited on me, and I had to tear my shift up for cloths and bandages.
Roche tried to give her some of the willow bark tea, but she spat it out. She said, "She lied when she said she was waylaid in the woods. She was sent here."
Bloody spittle dribbled down her chin as she spoke and Roche wiped it off. "It is the disease that makes you believe these things," he said gently.
"She was sent here to poison us," Imyene said. "See how she has poisoned my son's children. And how she would poison me, but I will not let her give me aught to eat or drink."
"Hush," Roche said sternly. "You must not speak ill of one who seeks to help you."
She shook her head, turning it wildly from side to side. "She seeks to kill us all. You must burn her. She is the devil's servant."
I've never seen him angry before. He looked almost like a cutthroat again. "You know not whereof you speak," he said. "It is God who has sent her to help us."
I wish it were true, that I were of any help at all, but I'm not. Agnes screams for me to come and Rosemund lies there as if she were under a spell and the clerk is turning black, and there's nothing I can do to help any of them. Nothing.
All the steward's family have it. The youngest boy, Lefric, was the only one with a bubo, and I've brought him in here and lanced it. There's nothing I can do for the others. They all have pneumonic.
The steward's baby is dead.
The Courcy bells are tolling. Nine strokes. Which one of them is it? The bishop's envoy? The fat monk, who helped steal our horses? Or Sir Bloet? I hope so.
Terrible day. The steward's wife and the boy who ran from me when I went to find the drop both died this afternoon. The steward is digging both their graves, though the ground is so frozen I don't see how he can even make a dent in it. Rosemund and Lefric are both worse. Rosemund can scarcely swallow and her pulse is thready and irregular. Agnes is not as bad, but I can't get her fever down. Roche said vespers in here tonight.
After the set prayers, he said, "Good Jesus, I know you have sent what help you can, but I fear it cannot prevail against this dark plague. Thy holy servant Katherine says this terror is a disease, but how can it be? For it does not move from man to man, but is everywhere at once."
It is.
Ulf the Reeve
Sibbe, daughter of the steward.
Joan, daughter of the steward.
The cook (I don't know her name)
Walthef, oldest son of the steward.
Over fifty per cent of the village has it. Please don't let Eliwys get it. Or Roche.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
He called for help, but no one came, and he thought that everyone else had died and he was the only one left, like the monk, John Clyn, in the monastery of the Friars Minor. "I, waiting for death till it come…"
He tried to press the button to call the nurse, but he couldn't find it. There was a hand bell on the bedstand next to the bed, and he reached for it, but there was no strength in his fingers, and it clattered to the floor. It made a horrible, endless sound, like some nightmarish Great Tom, but nobody came.
The next time he woke, though, the bell was on the bedstand again, so they must have come while he was asleep. He squinted blurrily at the bell and wondered how long he had been asleep. A long time.
There was no way to tell from the room. It was light, but there was no angle to the light, no shadows. It might be afternoon or mid-morning. There was no digital on the bedstand or the wall, and he didn't have the strength to turn and look at the screens on the wall behind him. There was a window, though he could not raise himself up enough to see properly out of it, but he could see enough to tell that it was raining. It had been raining when he went to Brasenose — it could be the same afternoon. Perhaps he had only fainted, and they had brought him here for observation.
"'I also will do this unto you,'" someone said.
Dunworthy opened his eyes and reached for his spectacles, but they weren't there. "'I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and burning ague.'"
It was Mrs. Gaddson. She was sitting in the chair beside his bed, reading from the Bible. She was not wearing her mask and gown, though the Bible still seemed to be swathed in plastene. Dunworthy squinted at it.
"'And when ye are gathered together within your cities, I will send the pestilence among you.'"
"What day is it?" Dunworthy asked.
She paused, looked curiously at him, and then went on placidly. "'And ye shall be delivered into the hand of the enemy.'"
He could not have been here very long. Mrs. Gaddson had been reading to the patients when he went to find Gilchrist. Perhaps it was still the same afternoon, and Mary had not come in to throw Mrs. Gaddson out yet.
"Can you swallow?" the nurse said. It was the ancient sister from Supplies.
"I need to give you a temp," she croaked. "Can you swallow?"
He opened his mouth, and she put the temp capsule on his tongue. She tipped his head forward so he could drink, her apron crackling.
"Did you get it down?" she asked, letting him lean back a bit.
The capsule was lodged halfway down his throat, but he nodded. The effort made his head ache.
"Good. Then I can remove this." She stripped something from his upper arm.
"What time is it?" he asked, trying not to cough up the capsule.
"Time for you to rest," she said, peering farsightedly at the screens behind his head.
"What day is it?" he said, but she had already hobbled out. "What day is it?" he asked Mrs. Gaddson, but she was gone, too.
He could not have been here long. He still had a headache and a fever, which were Early Symptoms of Influenza. Perhaps he had only been ill a few hours. Perhaps it was still the same afternoon, and he had awakened when they moved him into the room, before they had had time to connect a call button or give him a temp.