Father Roche and I have isolated them in the bower and have told everyone to stay in their houses and avoid all contact with each other, but I'm afraid it's too late. Nearly everyone in the village was at the Christmas feast, and the whole family was in here with the clerk.

I wish I knew whether the disease is contagious before the symptoms appear and how long the incubation period is. I know that the plague takes three forms: bubonic, which is spread by fleas on the rats; pneumonic, which is droplet; and septicemic, which goes straight into the bloodstream, and I know the pneumonic form is the most contagious since it can be spread by coughing or breathing on people and by touch. The clerk and Rosemund both seem to have the bubonic.

I am so frightened I can't even think. It washes over me in waves. I'll be doing all right, and then suddenly the fear swamps me, and I have to take hold of the bedframe to keep from running out of the room, out of the house, out of the village, away from it!

I know I've had my plague inoculations, but I'd had my T- cells enhanced and my antivirals, and I still got whatever it was I got, and every time the clerk touches me, I cringe. Father Roche keeps forgetting to wear his mask, and I'm so afraid he's going to catch it, or Agnes. And I'm afraid the clerk is going to die. And Rosemund. And I'm afraid somebody in the village is going to get pneumonic, and Gawyn won't come back, and I won't find the drop before the rendezvous.

I feel a bit calmer. It seems to help, talking to you, whether you can hear me or not.

Rosemund's young and strong. And the plague didn't kill everyone. In some villages no one at all died.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

They took Rosemund up to the bower, making a pallet on the floor for her in the narrow space beside the bed. Roche covered it with a linen sheet and went out to the barn's loft to fetch bedcoverings.

Kivrin had been afraid Rosemund would balk at the sight of the clerk, with his grotesque tongue and blackening skin, but she scarcely glanced at him. She took her surcote and shoes off and lay down gratefully on the narrow pallet. Kivrin took the rabbitskin coverlet from the bed and put it over her.

"Will I scream and run at people like the clerk?" Rosemund asked.

"Nay," Kivrin said, and tried to smile. "Try to rest. Does it hurt anywhere?"

"My stomach," she said, putting her hand to her middle. "And my head. Sir Bloet told me the fever makes men dance. I thought it was a tale to frighten me. He said they danced till blood came out of their mouths and they died. Where is Agnes?"

"In the loft with your mother," Kivrin said. She had told Eliwys to take Agnes and Imeyne up to the loft and shut themselves in, and Eliwys had without even a backward glance at Rosemund.

"My father comes soon," Rosemund said.

"You must be quiet now and rest."

"Grandmother says it is a mortal sin to fear your husband, but I cannot help it. He touches me in ways that are not seemly and tells me tales of things that cannot be true."

I hope he dies in agony, Kivrin thought. I hope he is infected already.

"My father is even now on his way," Rosemund said.

"You must try to sleep."

"If Sir Bloet were here now, he would not dare to touch me," she said and closed her eyes. "It would be he who was afraid."

Roche came in, bearing an armload of bedclothes, and went out again. Kivrin piled them on top of Rosemund, tucked them in around her, and laid the fur she had taken from the clerk's bed back over him.

The clerk still lay quietly, but the hum in his breathing had begun again, and now and then he coughed. His mouth hung open, and the back of his tongue was coated with a white fur.

I can't let this happen to Rosemund, Kivrin thought, she's only twelve years old. There must be something she could do. Something. The plague bacillus was a bacteria. Streptomycin and the sulfa drugs could kill it, but she couldn't manufacture them herself, and she didn't know where the drop was.

And Gawyn had ridden off to Bath. Of course he had. Eliwys had run to him, she had thrown her arms around him, and he would have gone anywhere, done anything for her, even if it meant bringing home her husband.

She tried to think how long it would take Gawyn to ride to Bath and back. It was seventy kilometers. Riding hard he could make it there in a day and a half. Three days, there and back. If he were not delayed, if he could find Lord Guillaume, if he did not fall ill. Dr. Ahrens had said untreated plague victims died within four or five days, but she did not see how the clerk could possibly last that long. His temp was up again.

She had pushed Lady Imeyne's casket under the bed when they brought Rosemund up. She pulled it out and looked through it at the dried herbs and powders. The contemps had used homegrown remedies like St. John's wort and bittersweet during the plague, but they had been as useless as the powdered emeralds.

Fleabane might help, but she couldn't find any of the pink or purple flowers in the little linen bags.

When Roche came back, she sent him for willow branches from the stream, and steeped them into a bitter tea. "What is this brew?" Roche asked, tasting it and making a face.

"Aspirin," Kivrin said. "I hope."

Roche gave a cup to the clerk, who was past caring what it tasted like, and it seemed to bring his temp down a little, but Rosemund's rose steadily all afternoon, till she was shivering with chills. By the time Roche left to say vespers, she was almost too hot to touch.

Kivrin uncovered her and tried to bathe her arms and legs in cool water to bring the fever down, but Rosemund wrenched angrily away from her. "It is not seemly you should touch me thus, sir," she said through chattering teeth. "Be sure I shall tell my father when he returns."

Roche did not come back. Kivrin lit the tallow lamps and tucked the bedcoverings around Rosemund, wondering what had become of him.

She looked worse in the smoky light, her face wan and pinched. She murmured to herself, repeating Agnes's name over and over, and once she asked fretfully, "Where is he? He should have been here ere now."

He should have been, Kivrin thought. The bell had tolled vespers half an hour ago. He's in the kitchen, she told herself, making us soup. Or he has gone to tell Eliwys how Rosemund is. He isn't ill. But she stood up and climbed on the window seat and looked out into the courtyard. It was getting colder, and the dark sky was overcast. There was no one in the courtyard, no light or sound anywhere.

Roche opened the door, and she jumped down, smiling. "Where have you been? I was — " she said and stopped.

Roche was wearing his vestments and carrying the oil and viaticum. No, she thought, glancing at Rosemund. No.

"I have been with Ulf the Reeve," he said. "I heard his confession." Thank God it's not Rosemund, she thought, and then realized what he was saying. It was in the village.

"Are you certain?" she asked. "Does he have the plague- boils?"

"Aye."

"How many others are in the household?"

"His wife and two sons," he said tiredly. "I bade her wear a mask and sent her sons to cut willows."

"Good," she said. There was nothing good about it. No, that wasn't true. At least it was bubonic plague and not pneumonic, so there was still a chance the wife and two sons wouldn't get it. But how many other people had Ulf infected, and who had infected him? Ulf would not have had any contact with the clerk. He must have caught it from one of the servants. "Are any others ill?"

"Nay."

It didn't mean anything. They only sent for Roche when they were very ill, when they were frightened. There might be three or four other cases already in the village. Or a dozen.