"I know. I spent two full days calling every trout and salmon guide in Scotland before I decided I couldn't wait any longer. If you ask me, he's nowhere near Scotland. She pulled a pocketknife out of her jeans and began scraping at the rough edge of the bone. "Speaking of the NHS, would you do something for me? I keep calling their number but it's always busy. Would you run over there and tell them I've got to have some more help? Tell them the dig's of irreplaceable historical value, and it's going to be irretrievably lost if they don't send me at least five people. And a pump." The knife snagged. She frowned and chipped some more.
"How did you get Basingame's authorization if you didn't know where he was? I thought you'd said the form required his signature."
"It did," she said. An edge of bone flew suddenly off and landed on the plastene shroud. She examined the bone and dropped it back in the box, no longer frowning. "I forged it."
She crouched by the tomb again, digging for more bones. She looked as absorbed as Colin examining his gobstopper. He wondered if she even remembered that Kivrin was in the past, or if she had forgotten her as she seemed to have forgotten the epidemic.
He rang off, wondering if Montoya would even notice, and walked back to Infirmary to tell Mary what he had found out and to begin questioning the secondaries again, looking for the source. It was raining very hard, spilling off the downspouts and washing away things of irreplaceable historical value.
The bellringers and Finch were still at it, ringing the changes one after another in their determined order, bending their knees and looking like Montoya, sticking to their bells. The sound pealed out loudly, leadenly, through the rain, like an alarum, like a cry for help.
Christmas Eve 1320 (Old Style.) I don't have as much time as I thought. When I came in from the kitchen just now, Rosemund told me Lady Imeyne wanted me. Imeyne was deep in earnest conversation with the bishop's envoy, and I supposed from her expression that she was cataloguing Father Roche's sins, but as Rosemund and I came up, she pointed to me and said, "This is the woman I spake of."
Woman, not maid, and her tone was critical, almost accusing. I wondered if she'd told the bishop her theory that I was a French spy.
"She says she remembers naught," Lady Imeyne said, "yet she can speak and read." She turned to Rosemund. "Where is your brooch?"
"It is on my cloak," Rosemund said. "I laid it in the loft."
Rosemund went, reluctantly. As soon as she was gone Imeyne said, "Sir Bloet brought a loveknot brooch to my granddaughter with words on it in the Roman tongue." She looked at me triumphantly. "She told their meaning, and at the church this night she spoke the words of the mass ere the priest had said them."
"Who taught you your letters?" the bishop's envoy asked, his voice blurred from the wine.
I thought of saying Sir Bloet had told me what the words meant, but I was afraid he'd already denied it. "I know not," I said. "I have no memory of my life since I was waylaid in the woods, for I was struck upon the head."
"When first she woke she spoke in a tongue none could understand," Imeyne said, as if that were further proof, but I had no idea what she was trying to convict me of or how the bishop's envoy was involved.
"Holy Father, go you to Oxford when you leave us?" she asked him.
"Aye," he said, sounding wary. "We can stay but a few days here."
"I would have you take her with you to the good sisters at Godstow."
"We go not to Godstow," he said, which was clearly an excuse. The nunnery wasn't even five miles from Oxford. "But I will inquire of the bishop for news of the woman on my return and send word to you."
"I wot she is a nun for that she speaks in Latin and knows the passages of the mass," Imeyne said. "I would have you take her to their convent that they may ask among the nunneries who she may be."
The bishop's envoy looked even more nervous, but he agreed. So I have till whenever they leave. A few days, the bishop's envoy said, and with luck that means they won't leave till after the Slaughter of the Innocents. But I plan to put Agnes to bed and talk to Gawyn as soon as possible.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Kivrin didn't get Agnes to bed till nearly dawn. The arrival of the "three kings," as she continued to call them, had woken her completely, and she refused to even consider lying down for fear she might miss something, even though she was obviously exhausted.
She tagged after Kivrin, as she tried to help Eliwys bring in the food for the feast, whining that she was hungry, and then, when the tables were finally set and the feast begun, refused to eat anything.
Kivrin had no time to argue with her. There was course after course to be brought across the courtyard from the kitchen, trenchers of venison and roast pork and an enormous pie Kivrin half-expected blackbirds to fly out of when the crust was cut. According to the priest at Holy Re-formed, fasting was observed between the midnight mass and the high mass Christmas morning, but everyone, including the bishop's envoy, ate heartily of the roast pheasant and goose and stewed rabbit in saffron gravy. And drank. The "three kings" called constantly for more wine.
They had already had more than enough. The monk was leering at Maisry, and the clerk, drunk when he arrived, was nearly under the table. The bishop's envoy was drinking more than either of them, beckoning constantly to Rosemund to bring him the wassail bowl, his gestures growing broader and less clear with every drink.
Good, Kivrin thought. Perhaps he'll get so drunk he'll forget he promised Lady Imeyne he'd take me to the nunnery at Godstow. She took the bowl around to Gawyn, hoping to have an opportunity to ask him where the drop was, but he was laughing with some of Sir Bloet's men, and they called to her for ale and more meat. By the time she got back to Agnes, the little girl was sound asleep, her head nearly in her manchet. Kivrin picked her up carefully and carried her upstairs to Rosemund's bower.
Above them, the door opened. "Lady Katherine," Eliwys said, her arms full of bedding. "I am grateful you are here. I have need of your help."
Agnes stirred.
"Bring the linen sheets from the loft," Eliwys said. "The churchmen will sleep in this bed, and Sir Bloet's sister and her women in the loft."
"Where am I to sleep?" Agnes asked, wriggling out of Kivrin's arms.
"We will sleep in the barn," Eliwys said. "But you must wait till we have made up the beds, Agnes. Go and play."
Agnes didn't have to be encouraged. She hopped off down the stairs, waving her arm to make her bell ring.
Eliwys handed Kivrin the bedding. "Take these to the loft and bring the miniver coverlid from my husband's carven chest."
"How many days do you think the bishop's envoy and his men will stay?" Kivrin asked.
"I know not," Eliwys said, looking worried. "I pray not more than a fortnight or we shall not have meat enough. See you do not forget the good bolsters."
A fortnight was more than enough, well past the rendezvous, and they certainly didn't look like they were going anywhere. When Kivrin climbed down from the loft with the sheets, the bishop's envoy was asleep in the high seat, snoring loudly, and the clerk had his feet on the table. The monk had one of Sir Bloet's waiting women backed into a corner and was playing with her kerchief. Gawyn was nowhere to be seen.
Kivrin took the sheets and coverlid to Eliwys, then offered to take bedding out to the barn. "Agnes is very tired," she said. "I would put her to bed soon."
Eliwys nodded absently, pounding at one of the heavy bolsters, and Kivrin ran downstairs and out into the courtyard. Gawyn was not in the stable nor the brewhouse. She lingered near the privy until two of the redheaded young men emerged, looking at her curiously, and then went on to the barn. Perhaps Gawyn had gone off with Maisry again, or joined the villagers' celebration on the green. She could hear the sound of laughter as she spread straw on the bare wooden floor of the loft.