Even though her father told her not to. "I'll be perfectly all right," she had told Mr. Dunworthy. "I can take care of myself."

"She should not have gone into the woods, should she?" Agnes said.

"She wanted to see what was there. She thought she would go just a little way," Kivrin said.

"She should not have," Agnes said, passing judgment. "I would not. The woods are dark."

"The woods are very dark, and full of frightening noises."

"Wolves," Agnes said, and Kivrin could hear her scooting closer to the table, trying to get as close to Kivrin as she could. Kivrin could imagine her huddled against the wood, her knees up, hugging the little wagon.

"The girl said to herself, 'I don't like it here,' and she tried to go back, but she could not see the path, it was so dark, and suddenly something jumped out at her!"

"A wolf," Agnes breathed.

"No," Kivrin said. "It was a bear. And the bear said, 'What are you doing in my forest?'"

"The girl was frightened," Agnes said in a small, frightened voice.

"Yes. 'Oh, please don't eat me, Bear,' the girl said. 'I am lost and cannot find my way home.' Now the bear was a kindly bear, though he looked cruel, and he said, 'I will help you find your way out of the woods,' and the girl said, 'How? It is so dark.' 'We will ask the owl,' the bear said. 'He can see in the dark.'"

She talked on, making up the tale as she went, oddly comforted by it. Agnes stopped interrupting, and after awhile Kivrin raised herself up, still talking, and looked over the barricade. "'Do you know the way out of the wood?' the bear asked the crow. 'Yes,' the crow said."

Agnes was asleep against the table, the cape spilled out around her and the cart hugged to her chest.

She should be covered up, but Kivrin didn't dare. All the bedclothes were full of plague germs. She looked over at Lady Imeyne, praying in the corner, her face to the wall. "Lady Imeyne," she called softly, but the old lady gave no sign she had heard.

Kivrin put more wood on the fire and sat back down against the table, leaning her head back. "'I know the way out of the woods,' the crow said, 'I will show you,'" Kivrin said softly, "but he flew away over the treetops, so fast they could not follow."

She must have slept, because the fire was down when she opened her eyes and her neck hurt. Rosemund and Agnes still slept, but the clerk was awake. He called to Kivrin, his words unrecognizable. The white fur covered his whole tongue, and his breath was so foul Kivrin had to turn her head away to breathe. His bubo had begun to drain again, a thick, dark liquid that smelled like rotting meat. Kivrin put a new bandage on, clenching her teeth to keep from gagging, and carried the old one to the far corner of the hall, and then went out and washed her hands at the well,puring the icy water from the bucket over one hand and then the other, taking in gulps of the cold air.

Roche came into the courtyard. "Ulric, Hal's son," he said, walking with her into the house, "and one of the steward's sons, the eldest, Walthef." He stumbled the into bench nearest the door.

"You're exhausted," Kivirn said. "You should lie down and rest."

On the other side of the hall, Imeyne stood up, getting awkwardly to her feet, as though her legs had fallen asleep, and started across the hall toward them.

"I cannot stay. I came to fetch a knife to cut the willows," Roche said, but he sat down by the fire and stared blankly into it.

"Rest a minute at least," Kivrin said. "I will fetch you some ale." She pushed the bench to the side and started out.

"You have brought this sickness," Lady Imeyne said.

Kivrin turned. The old lady was standing in the middle of the hall, glaring at Roche. She held her book to her chest with both hands. Her reliquary dangled from them. "It is your sins have brought the sickness here."

She turned to Kivrin. "He said the litany for Martinmas on St. Eusebius' Day. His alb is dirty." She sounded as she had when she was complaining to Sir Bloet's sister, and her hands fumbled with the reliquary, counting off his sins on the links of the chain. "He did not shut the church door after vespers last Wednesday."

Kivrin watched her, thinking, she's trying to justify her own guilt. She wrote the bishop asking for a new chaplain, she told him where they were. She can't bear the knowledge that she helped bring the plague here, Kivrin thought, but she couldn't summon up any pity. You have no right to blame Roche, she thought, he has done everything he can. And you've sat in a corner and prayed.

"God has not sent this plague as a punishment," she told Imeyne coldly. "It's a disease."

"He forgot the Confiteor Deo," Imeyne said, but she hobbled back to her corner and lowered herself to her knees. "He put the altar candles on the rood screen."

Kivrin went over to Roche. "No one is to blame," she said.

He was staring into the fire. "If God does punish us," he said, "it must be for some terrible sin."

"No sin," she said. "It is not a punishment."

"Dominus!" the clerk cried, trying to sit up. He coughed again, a racking, terrible cough that sounded like it would tear his chest apart, though nothing came up. The sound woke Rosemund and she began to whimper, and if it isn't a punishment, Kivrin thought, it certainly looks like one.

Rosemund's sleep had not helped her at all. Her temp was back up again, and her eyes had begun to look sunken. She jerked as if flogged at the slightest movement.

It's killing her, Kivrin thought. I have to do something.

When Roche came in again, she went up to the bower and brought down Imeyne's casket of medicines. Imeyne watched, her lips moving soundlessly, but when Kivrin set it in front of her and asked her what was in the linen bags, she put her folded hand up to her face and closed her eyes.

Kivrin recognized some of them. Mr. Dunworthy had made her study medicinal herbs, and she recognized comfrey and lungwort and the crushed leaves of tansy. There was a little pouch of powdered mercury sulfide, which no one in their right mind would give anyone, and a packet of foxglove, which was almost as bad.

She boiled water and poured in every herb she recognized and steeped it. The fragrance was wonderful, like a breath of summer, and it tasted no worse than the willow-bark tea, but it didn't help either. By nightfall, the clerk was coughing continuously, and red blotches had begun to appear on Rosemund's stomach and arms. Her bubo was the size of an egg and as hard. When Kivrin touched it, she screamed with pain.

During the Black Death the doctors had put poultices on the buboes or lanced them. They had also bled people and dosed them with arsenic, she thought, though the clerk had seemed better after his buboes broke, and he was still alive. But lancing it might spread the infection or, worse, take it into the bloodstream.

She heated water and wet rags to lay on the bubo, but even though the water was lukewarm, Rosemund screamed at the first touch. Kivrin had to go back to cold water, which did no good. None of it's doing any good, she thought, holding the wet cold cloth against Rosemund's armpit. None of it.

I must find the drop, she thought. But the woods stretched on for miles, with hundreds of oak trees, dozens of clearings. She would never find it. And she couldn't leave Rosemund.

Perhaps Gawyn would turn back. They had closed the gates of some cities — perhaps he would not be able to get in, or perhaps he would talk to people on the roads and realize Lord Guillaume must be dead. Come back, she willed him, hurry. Come back.

Kivrin went through Imeyne's bag again, tasting the contents of the pouches. The yellow powder was sulfur. Doctors had used that during epidemics, too, burning it to fumigate the air, and she remembered learning in History of Meds that sulfur killed certain bacteria, though whether that was only in the sulfa compounds she couldn't remember. It was safer than cutting the bubo open, though.