A woman was standing on tip-toe on the stone seat under the window, fastening a cloth over the opening. She was wearing a black robe and a white wimple and coif, and for a moment Kivrin thought, I'm in a nunnery, and then remembered that women covered their hair when they were married. Only unmarried girls wore their hair loose and uncovered.
The woman didn't look old enough to be married, or to be a nun either. There had been a woman in the room while she was ill, but that woman had been much older. When Kivrin had clutched at her hands in her delirium, they had been rough and wrinkled, and the woman's voice had been harsh with age, though perhaps that had been part of the delirium, too.
The woman leaned into the light from the window. The white coif was yellowed and it was not a robe, but a kirtle like Kivrin's, with a dark green surcote over it. It was badly dyed and looked like it had been made from a burlap sack, the weave so large Kivrin could see it easily even in the dim light. She must be a servant, then, but servants didn't wear linen wimples or carry bunches of keys like the one that hung from the woman's belt. She had to be a person of some importance, the housekeeper, perhaps.
And this was a place of importance. Probably not a castle, because the wall the bed lay up against wasn't stone — it was unfinished wood — but very likely a manor house of at least the first order of nobility, a minor baron, and possibly higher than that. The bed she was lying in was a real bed with a raised wooden frame and hangings and stiff linen sheets, not just a pallet, and the coverings were fur. The stone seat under the window had embroidered cushions in it.
The woman tied the cloth to little projections of stone on either side of the narrow window, stepped down from the windowseat and leaned over to get something. Kivrin couldn't see what it was because the bed-hangings obstructed her view. They were heavy, almost like rugs, and had been pulled back and tied with what looked like rope.
The woman straightened up again, holding a wooden bowl, and then, catching her skirts up with her free hand, stepped onto the windowseat and began brushing something thick onto the cloth. Oil, Kivrin thought. No, wax. Waxed linen used in place of glass in windows. Glass was supposed to have been common in fourteenth-century manor houses. The nobility were supposed to have carried glass windows along with the luggage and the furniture when they travelled from house to house.
I must get this on the corder, Kivrin thought, that some manor houses didn't have glass windows, and she raised her hands and pressed them together, but the effort of holding them up was too great, and she let them fall back onto the coverings.
The woman glanced over toward the bed and then turned back to the window and went on painting the cloth with long, unconcerned strokes. I must be getting better, Kivrin thought. She was right by the bed the whole time I was ill. She wondered again how long that time had been. I will have to find out, she thought, and then I must find the drop.
It couldn't be very far. If this was the village she had intended to go to, the drop wasn't more than a mile away. She tried to remember how long the trip to the village had taken. It had seemed to take a long time. The cutthroat had put her on a white horse, and it had had bells on its harness. But he wasn't a cutthroat. He was a kind-looking young man with red hair.
She would have to ask the name of the village she had been brought to, and hopefully it would be Skendgate. But even if it wasn't, she would know from the name where she was in relation to the drop. And, of course, as soon as she was a little stronger, they could show her where it was.
What is the name of this village you have brought me to? She had not been able to think of the words last night, but that was because of the fever, of course. She had no trouble now. Mr. Latimer had spent months on her pronunciation. They would certainly be able to understand, "In whatte londe am I?" or even, "Whatte be thisse holding?" and even if there were some variation in local dialect, the interpreter would automatically correct it.
"Whatte place hast thou brotte me?" Kivrin said.
The woman turned, looking startled. She stepped down from the windowseat, still holding the bowl in one hand and the brush in the other, only it wasn't a brush, Kivrin could see as she approached the bed. It was a squarish wooden spoon with a nearly flat bowl.
"Gottebae plaise tthar tleve," the woman said, holding spoon and bowl together in front of her. "Beth naught agast."
The interpreter was supposed to translate what was said immediately. Maybe Kivrin's pronunciation was all off, so far off that the woman thought she was speaking a foreign language and was trying to answer her in clumsy French or German.
"Whatte place hast thou brotte me?" she said slowly so the interpreter would have time to translate what she said.
"Wick londebay yae comen lawdayke awtreen godelae deynorm andoar sic straunguwlondes. Spekefaw eek waenoot awfthy taloorbrede."
"Lawyes sharess loostee?" a voice said.
The woman turned around to look at a door Kivrin couldn't see, and another woman came in, much older, her face under the coif wrinkled and her hands the hands Kivrin remembered from her delirium, rough and old. She was wearing a silver chain and carrying a small leather chest. It looked like the casket Kivrin had brought through with her, but it was smaller and bound with iron instead of brass. She set the casket down on the windowseat.
"Auf specheryit darmayt?"
She remembered the voice, too, harsh and almost angry- sounding, speaking to the woman by Kivrin's bed as if she were a servant. Well, perhaps she was, and this was the lady of the house, though her coif was no whiter, her dress no finer. But there weren't any keys at her belt, and now Kivrin remembered that it wasn't the housekeeper who carried the keys but the lady of the house.
The lady of the manor in yellowed linen and badly-dyed burlap, which meant that Kivrin's dress was all wrong, as wrong as Latimer's pronunciations, as wrong as Dr. Ahrens' assurances that she would not get any mediaeval diseases.
"I had my inoculations," she murmured, and both women turned to look at her.
"Ellavih swot wardesdoor feenden iss?" the older woman asked sharply. Was she the younger woman's mother, or her mother-in- law, or her nurse? Kivrin had no idea. None of the words she'd said, not even a proper name or a form of address, separated itself out.
"Maetinkerr woun dahest wexe hoordoumbe," the younger woman said, and the older one answered, "Nor nayte bawcows derouthe."
Nothing. Shorter sentences were supposed to be easier to translate, but Kivrin couldn't even tell whether she had said one word or several.
The younger woman's chin in the tight coif lifted angrily. "Certessan, shreevadwomn wolde nadae seyvous," she said sharply.
Kivrin wondered if they were arguing over what to do with her. She pushed on the coverlet with her weak hands, as if she could push herself away from them, and the young woman set down her bowl and spoon and came immediately up beside the bed.
"Spaegun yovor tongawn glais?" she said, and it might be, "Good morning," or "Are you feeling better?" or "We're burning you at dawn," for all Kivrin knew. Perhaps her illness was keeping the interpreter from working. Perhaps when the fever went down, she would understand everything they said.
The old woman knelt beside the bed, holding a small silver box at the end of the chain between her folded hands, and began to pray. The young woman leaned forward to look at Kivrin's forehead and then reached around behind her head, doing something that pulled at Kivrin's hair, and she realized they must have bandaged the wound on her forehead. She touched her hand to the cloth and then put it on her neck, feeling for her tangled locks, but there was nothing there. Her hair ended in a ragged fringe just below her ears.