"I have sent him to Courcy, as I told you," Imeyne said defensively. "No doubt the rain keeps him."
"Only to Courcy?" Eliwys said angrily. "Or have you sent him otherwhere for a new chaplain?"
Imeyne drew herself up. "Father Roche is not fit to say the Christmas masses if Sir Bloet and his company come," she said. "Would you be shamed before Rosemund's fiancé?"
Eliwys went absolutely white. "Where have you sent him?"
"I have sent him with a message to the bishop, saying that we are in sore need of a chaplain," she said.
"To Bath?!" Eliwys said, and raised her hand as if she would strike her.
"Nay. Only to Cirencestre. The archdeacon was to lie at the abbey for Yule. I bade Gawyn give him the message. One of his churchmen will bear it thence. Though, certes, things go not so ill in Bath that Gawyn could not go thence himself without harm, else my son would have quitted it."
"Your son will be ill-pleased to find we have disobeyed him. He bade us, and Gawyn, keep to the manor till he come."
She still sounded furious, and as she lowered her hand, she clenched it into a fist, as if she would have liked to box Imeyne's ears the way she does Maisry's. But the color had come back in her cheeks as soon as Imeyne said, "Cirencestre," and I think she was at least a little relieved.
"Certes, things go not so ill in Bath that Gawyn could not go thence without harm," Imeyne said, but it's obvious Eliwys doesn't think he can. Is she afraid he'd ride into a trap or that he might lead Lord Guillaume's enemies here? And are things going so "ill" that Guillaume can't quit Bath?
Perhaps all three. Eliwys has been to the door to look out into the rain at least a dozen times this morning, and she's in as bad a temper as Rosemund was in the woods. Just now she asked Imeyne if she was certain the archdeacon was at Cierncestre. She's obviously worried that if he wasn't, Gawyn will have taken the message into Bath himself.
Her fear has infected everyone. Lady Imeyne has slunk off into a corner with her reliquary to pray, Agnes whines, and Rosemund sits with her embroidery in her lap, staring blindly at it.
I took Agnes to Father Roche this afternoon. Her knee was much worse. She couldn't walk at all, and there was what looked like the beginning of a red streak above it. I couldn't tell for certain — the entire knee is red and swollen-but I was afraid to wait.
There was no cure for blood poisoning in 1320, and it's my fault her knee is infected. If I hadn't insisted on going to look for the drop, she wouldn't have fallen. I know the paradoxes aren't supposed to let my presence here have any effect on what happens to the contemps, but I couldn't take that chance. I wasn't supposed to be able to get catch anything, either.
So when Imeyne went up to the loft, I carried Agnes over to the church to ask him to treat her. It was pouring by the time we got there, but Agnes wasn't whining over getting wet, and that frightened me more than the red streak.
The church was dark, and smelled musty. I could hear Father Roche's voice from the front of the church, and it sounded like he was talking to someone. "Lord Guillaume has still not arrived from Bath. I fear for his safety," he said.
I thought perhaps Gawyn had come back, and I wanted to hear what they said about the trial, so I didn't go forward. I stood there with Agnes in my arms and listened.
"It has rained these two days," Roche said, "and there is a bitter wind from the west. We have had to bring the sheep in from the fields."
After a minute of peering into the dark nave, straining to see, I finally made him out. He was on his knees in front of the rood screen, his big hands folded together in prayer.
"The steward's babe has a colic on the stomach and cannot keep his milk down. Tabord the Cottar fares ill."
He wasn't praying in Latin, and there was none of the priest at Holy Reformed's sing-song chanting or the vicar's oratory in his voice. He sounded businesslike and matter-of-fact, the way I sound now, talking to you.
God was supposed to be very real to the contemps in the 1300's, more vivid than the physical world they inhabited. "You do but go home again," Father Roche told me when I was dying, and that's what the contemps are supposed to have believed — that the life of the body is illusory and unimportant, and the real life is that of the eternal soul, as if they were only visiting life the way I am visiting this century, but I haven't seen much evidence of it. Eliwys dutifully murmurs her aves at vespers and matings and then rises and brushes off her kirtle as if her prayers had nothing to do with her worries over her husband or the girls or Gawyn. And Imeyne, for all her reliquary and her Book of Hours, is concerned only about her social standing. I'd seen no evidence that God was real at all to them till I stood there in the damp church, listening to Father Roche.
I wonder if he sees God and heaven as clearly as I can see you and Oxford, the rain falling in the quad and your spectacles steaming up so you have to take them off and polish them on your muffler. I wonder if they seem as close as you do, and as difficult to get to.
"Preserve our souls from evil and bring us safely into heaven," Roche said, and as if that were a cue, Agnes sat up in my arms and said, "I want Father Roche."
Father Roche stood up and started toward us. "What is it? Who is there?"
"It is Lady Katherine," I said. "I have brought Agnes. Her knee is — " What? Infected? "I would have you look at her knee."
He tried to look at it, but it was too dark in the church, so he carried her over to his house. It was scarcely lighter there. His house is not much larger than the hut I took shelter in, and no higher. He had to stoop the whole time we were there to keep from bumping his head against the rafters.
He opened the shutter on the only window, which let the rain blow in, and then lit a rushlight and set Agnes on a crude wooden table. He untied the bandage, and she flinched away from him.
"Sit you still, Agnus," he told her, "and I will tell you how Christ came to earth from far heaven."
"On Christmas Day," Agnes said.
Roche felt around the wound, poking at the swollen parts, talking steadily. "And the shepherds stood afraid, for they knew not what this light was. And sounds they heard, as of bells rung in heaven. But they beheld it was God's angel come down to them."
Agnes had screamed and pushed my hands away when I tried to touch her knee, but she let Roche prod the red area with his huge fingers. There was definitely the beginning of a red streak. Roche touched it gently and brought the rushlight closer.
"And there came from a far land," he said, squinting at it, "three kings bearing gifts." He touched the red streak again, gingerly, and then folded his hands together, as if he were going to pray, and I thought, don't pray. Do something.
He lowered his hands and looked across at me. "I fear the wound is poisoned," he said. "I will make an infusion of hyssop to draw the venom out." He went over to the hearth, stirred up a few lukewarm-looking coals, and poured water into an iron pot from a bucket.
The bucket was dirty, the pot was dirty, the hands he'd felt Agnes's wound with were dirty, and, standing there, watching him set the pot on the fire and dig into a dirty bag, I was sorry I'd come. He wasn't any better than Imeyne. An infusion of leaves and seeds wouldn't cure blood poisoning any more than one of Imeyne's poultices, and his prayers wouldn't help either, even if he did talk to God as if He was really there.
I almost said, "Is that all you can do?" and then realized I was expecting the impossible. The cure for infection was penicillin, T-cell enhancement, antiseptics, none of which he had in his burlap bag.
I remember Mr. Gilchrist talking about mediaeval doctors in one of his lectures. He talked about what fools they were for bleeding people and treating them with arsenic and goat's urine during the Black Death. But what did he expect them to do? They didn't have analogues or antimicrobials. They didn't even know what caused it. Standing there, crumbling dried petals and leaves between his dirty fingers, Father Roche was doing the best he could.