"We must give him liquids and keep him warm," she said.

Roche looked at the clerk. "Surely God will help him," he said.

He won't, she thought. He didn't. Half of Europe. "God cannot help us against the Black Death," she said.

Roche nodded and picked up the holy oil.

"You must put your mask on," Kivrin said, kneeling to pick up the last cloth strip. She tied it over his mouth and nose. "You must always wear it when you tend him," she said, hoping he wouldn't notice she wasn't wearing hers.

"Is it God who has sent this upon us?" Roche said.

"No," Kivrin said. "No."

"Has the Devil sent it then?"

It was tempting to say yes. Most of Europe had believed it was Satan who was responsible for the Black Death. And they had searched for the Devil's agents, tortured Jews and lepers, stoned old women, burned young girls at the stake.

"No one sent it," Kivrin said. "It's a disease. It's no one's fault. God would help us if He could, but He…" He what? Can't hear us? Has gone away? Doesn't exist?

"He cannot come," she finished lamely.

"And we must act in His stead?" Roche said.

"Yes."

Roche knelt beside the bed. He bent his head over his hands, and then raised it again. "I knew that God had sent you among us for some good cause," he said.

She knelt, too, and folded her hands.

"Mittere digneris sanctum Angelum," Roche prayed. "Send us Thy holy angel from heaven to guard and protect all those that are assembled together in this house."

"Don't let Roche catch it," Kivrin said into the corder. "Don't let Rosemund catch it. Let the clerk die before it reaches his lungs."

Roche's voice chanting the rites was the same as it had been when she was ill, and she hoped it comforted the clerk as it had comforted her. She couldn't tell. He was unable to make his confession, and the anointing seemed to hurt him. He winced when the oil touched the palms of his hands, and his breathing seemed to grow louder as Roche prayed. Roche raised his head and looked at him. His arms were breaking out in the tiny purplish-blue bruises that meant the blood vessels under the skin were breaking, one by one.

Roche turned and looked at Kivrin. "Are these the last days," he asked, "the end of the world that God's apostles have foretold?"

Yes, Kivrin thought. "No," she said. "No. It's only a bad time. A terrible time, but not everyone will die. And there will be wonderful times after this. The Renaissance and class reforms and music. Wonderful times. There will be new medicines, and people won't have to die from this or smallpox or pneumonia. And everyone will have enough to eat, and their houses will be warm even in the winter." She thought of Oxford, decorated for Christmas, the streets and shops lit. "There will be lights everywhere, and bells that you don't have to ring."

Their conversation had calmed the clerk. His breathing eased, and he fell into a doze.

"You must come away from him now," Kivrin said and led him over to the window. She brought the bowl to him. "You must wash your hands after you have touched him," she said.

There was scarcely any water in the bowl. "We must wash the bowls and spoons we use to feed him," she said, watching him wash his huge hands, "and we must burn the cloths and bandages. The plague is in them."

He wiped his hands on the tail of his robe and went down to tell Eliwys what she was to do. He brought back a bowl of fresh water, but it did not last long. The clerk had come out of his doze and asked repeatedly for a drink. Kivrin held the cup for him, trying to keep Roche away from him as much as possible.

Roche went to say vespers and ring the bell. Kivrin closed the door after him, listening for sounds from below, but she couldn't hear anything. Perhaps they are asleep, she thought, or ill. She thought of Imeyne bending over the clerk with her poultice, of Agnes standing at the end of the bed, of Rosemund underneath him.

It's too late, she thought, pacing beside the bed, they've all been exposed. How long was the incubation period? Two weeks? No, that was how long the vaccine took to take effect. Four days? Three? She could not remember. And how long had the clerk been contagious? She tried to remember who he had sat next to at the Christmas feast, who he had talked to, but she hadn't been watching him. She'd been watching Gawyn. The only clear memory she had was of the clerk grabbing Maisry's skirt.

She went to the door again and opened it. "Maisry!" she called.

There was no answer, and that didn't mean anything, Maisry was probably asleep or hiding, and the clerk had bubonic, not pneumonic, and it was spread by fleas. The chances were that he had not infected anyone, but as soon as Roche came back, she left him with the clerk and took the brazier downstairs to fetch hot coals. And to reassure herself that they were all right.

Rosemund and Eliwys were sitting by the fire, with sewing on their laps, with Lady Imeyne next to them, reading from her Book of Hours. Agnes was playing with her cart, pushing it back and forth over the stone flags and talking to it. Maisry was asleep on one of the benches near the high table, her face sulky even in sleep.

Agnes ran into Imeyne's foot with the cart, and the old woman looked down at her and said, "I will take your toy from you and you cannot play nicely, Agnes," and the sharpness of her reprimand, Rosemund's hastily supressed smile, the healthy pinkness of their faces in the fire's light, were all inexpressibly reassuring to Kivrin. It could have been any night in the manor.

Eliwys was not sewing. She was cutting linen into long strips with her scissors, and she looked up constantly at the door. Imeyne's voice, reading from her Book of Hours, had an edge of worry, and Rosemund, tearing the linen, looked anxiously at her mother. Eliwys stood up and went out through the screens. Kivrin wondered if she had heard someone coming, but after a minute, she came back to her seat and took up the linen again.

Kivrin came on down the stairs quietly, but not quietly enough. Agnes abandoned her cart and scrambled up. "Kivrin!" she shouted, and launched herself at her.

"Careful!" Kivrin said, warding her off with her free hand. "These are hot coals."

They weren't hot, of course. If they were, she wouldn't have come down to replace them, but Agnes backed away a few steps.

"Why do you wear a mask?" she asked. "Will you tell me a story?"

Eliwys had stood up, too, and Imeyne had turned to look at her. "How does the bishop's clerk?" Eliwys asked.

He is in torment, she wanted to say. She settled for, "His fever is down a little. You must keep well away from me. The infection may be in my clothes."

They all got up, even Imeyne, closing her Book of Hours on her reliquary, and stepped back from the hearth, watching her.

The stump of the Yule log was still on the fire. Kivrin used her skirt to take the lid from the brazier and dumped the gray coals on the edge of the hearth. Ash roiled up, and one of the coals hit the stump and bounced and skittered along the floor.

Agnes laughed, and they all watched its progress across the floor and under a bench except Eliwys, who had turned back to watch the screens.

"Has Gawyn returned with the horses?" Kivrin asked, and then was sorry. She already knew the answer from Eliwys's strained face, and it made Imeyne turn and stare coldly at her.

"Nay," Eliwys said without turning her head. "Think you the others of the bishop's party were ill, too?"

Kivrin thought of the bishop's gray face, of the friar's haggard expression. "I don't know," she said.

"The weather grows cold," Rosemund said. "Mayhap he thought to stay the night."

Eliwys didn't answer. Kivrin knelt by the fire and stirred the coals with the heavy poker, bringing the red coals to the top. She tried to maneuver them into the brazier, using the poker, and then gave up and scooped them up with the brazier lid.