She twisted her hand around inside the cloak and felt under her arm for the place where she had had the welt from the antiviral inoculation. The welt was still there, though it didn't hurt to touch it, and it had stopped itching. Maybe that was a bad sign, she thought. Maybe the fact that it had stopped itching meant that it had stopped working.

She tried to lift her head. The dizziness came back instantly. She lay her head back down and disentangled her hands from the cloak, carefully and slowly, the nausea cutting across every movement. She folded her hands and pressed them against her face. "Mr. Dunworthy," she said. "I think you'd better come and get me."

She slept again, and when she woke up she could hear the faint, jangling sound of the piped-in Christmas music. Oh, good, she thought, they've got the net open, and tried to pull herself to sitting against the wheel.

"Oh, Mr. Dunworthy, I'm so glad you came back,' she said, fighting the nausea. "I was afraid you wouldn't get my message."

The jangling sound became louder, and she could see a wavering light. She pulled herself up a little farther. "You got the fire started," she said. "You were right about it's getting cold." The wagon's wheel felt icy through her cloak. Her teeth started to chatter again. "Dr. Ahrens was right. I should have waited till the swelling went down. I didn't know the reaction would be this bad."

It wasn't a fire, after all. It was a lantern. Dunworthy was carrying it as he walked toward her.

"This doesn't mean I'm getting a virus, does it? Or the plague?" She was having trouble getting the words out, her teeth were chattering so hard. "Wouldn't that be awful? Having the plague in the Middle Ages? At least I'd fit right in."

She laughed, a high-pitched, almost hysterical laugh that would probably frighten Mr. Dunworthy to death. "It's all right," she said, and she could hardly understand her own words. "I know you were worried, but I'll be perfectly all right. I just — "

He stopped in front of her, the lantern lighting a wobbling circle on the ground in front of her. She could see Dunworthy's feet. He was wearing shapeless leather shoes, the kind that had made the footprint. She tried to say something about the shoes, to ask him whether Mr. Gilchrist had made him put on Authentic Mediaeval Dress just to come and fetch her, but the light's movement was making her dizzy again.

She closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, he was kneeling in front of her. He had set the lantern down, and the light lit the hood of his cloak and folded hands.

"It's all right," she said. "I know you were worried, but I'm all right. Truly. I just felt a little ill."

He raised his head. "Certes, it been derlostuh dayes forgott foreto getest hissahntes im aller," he said.

He had a hard, lined face, a cruel face, a cutthroat's face. He had watched her lying there and then he had gone away and waited for it to get dark, and now he had come back.

Kivrin tried to put up a hand to fend him off, but her hands had got tangled somehow in the cloak. "Go away," she said, her teeth chattering so hard she couldn't get the words out. "Go away."

He said something else, with a rising inflection this time, a question. She couldn't understand what he was saying. It's Middle English, she thought. I studied it for three years, and Mr. Latimer taught me everything there is to know about adjectival inflection. I should be able to understand it. It's the fever, she thought. That's why I can't make out what he's saying.

He repeated the question or asked some other question, she couldn't even tell that much.

It's because I'm ill, she thought. I can't understand him because I'm ill. "Kind sir," she began, but she could not remember the rest of the speech. "Help me," she said, and tried to think how to say that in Middle English, but she couldn't remember anything but the Church Latin. "Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina," she said.

He bowed his head over his hands and began to murmur so low she could not hear, and then she must have lost consciousness again because he had picked her up and was carrying her. She could still hear the jangling sound of the bells from the open net, and she tried to tell what direction they were coming from, but her teeth were chattering so hard she couldn't hear.

"I'm ill," she said as he set her on the white horse. She fell forward, clutching at the horse's mane to keep from falling off. He put his hand up to her side and held her there. "I don't know how this happened. I had all my inoculations."

He led the donkey off slowly. The bells on its bridle jingled tinnily.

Mr. Dunworthy, I think you'd better come and get me.

"I knew it," Mrs. Gaddson said, steaming down the corridor toward them. "He's contracted some horrible disease, hasn't he? It's all that rowing."

Mary stepped forward. "You can't come in here," she said. "This is an isolation area."

Mrs. Gaddson kept coming. The transparent poncho she was wearing over her coat threw off large, spattering drops as she walked toward them, swinging the valise like a weapon. "You can't put me off like that. I'm his mother. I demand to see him."

Mary put up her hand like a policeman. "Stop," she said in her best ward sister voice.

Amazingly, Mrs. Gaddson stopped. "A mother has a right to see her son," she said. Her expression softened. "Is he very ill?"

"If you mean your son William, he's not ill at all," Mary said, "at least so far as I know." She put her hand up again. "Please don't come any closer. Why do you think William's ill?"

"I knew it the minute I heard about the quarantine. A sharp pain went through me when the stationmaster said 'temp quarantine.'" She set down the valise so she could indicate the location of the sharp pain. "It's because he didn't take his vitamins. I asked the college to be sure to give them to him," she said, shooting a glance at Dunworthy that was the rival of any of Gilchrist's, "and they said he was able to take care of himself. Well, obviously, they were wrong."

"William is not the reason the temp quarantine was called. One of the university techs has come down with a viral infection," Mary said.

Dunworthy noticed gratefully that she didn't say "Balliol's tech."

"The tech is the only case, and there is no indication that there will be any others. The quarantine is a purely precautionary measure, I assure you."

Mrs. Gaddson didn't look convinced. "My Willy's always been sickly, and he simply will not take care of himself. He studies far too hard in that drafty room of his," she said with another dark look at Dunworthy. "I'm surprised he hasn't come down with a viral infection before this."

Mary took her hand down and put it in the pocket she carried her bleeper in. I do hope she's calling for help, Dunworthy thought.

"By the end of one term at Balliol, Willy's health was completely broken down, and then his tutor forced him to stay up over Christmas and read Petrarch," Mrs. Gaddson said. That's why I came up. The thought of him all alone in this horrid place for Christmas, eating heaven knows what and doing all sorts of things to endanger his health, was something this mother's heart could simply not bear."

She pointed to the place where the pain had gone through her at the words "temp quarantine." "And it is positively providential that I came when I did. Positively providential. I nearly missed the train, my valise was so cumbersome, and I almost thought, 'Ah, well, there'll be another along,' but I wanted to get to my Willy, so I shouted at them to hold the doors, and I hadn't so much as stepped off at Cornmarket when the stationmaster said, 'Temp quarantine. Train service is temporarily suspended.' Only just think, if I'd missed that train and taken the next one, I would have been stopped by the quarantine."