There was nowhere to sit in the hut, if that was really what it was. The floor was as covered with sacks and tools as if it was a shed after all, and there was no furniture except an uneven table whose rough legs splayed unevenly from the center. But the table had a wooden bowl and a heel of bread on it, and in the center of the hut, in the only cleared space, a little fire was burning in a shallow, dug-out hole.

It was apparently the source of all the smoke even though there was a hole in the ceiling above it for a draft. It was a little fire, only a few sticks, but the other holes in the unevenly stuffed walls and roof drew the smoke, too, and the wind, coming in from everywhere, gusted it around the cramped hut. Kivrin started to cough, which was a terrible mistake. Her chest felt as if it would break apart with every spasm.

Gritting her teeth to keep from coughing, she eased herself down on a sack of onions, holding onto the spade propped against it and then the fragile-looking wall. She felt immediately better as soon as she was sitting down, even though it was so cold she could see her breath. I wonder how this place smells in the summer, she thought. She wrapped her cloak around her, folding the tails like a blanket across her knees.

There was a cold draft along the floor. She tucked the cloak around her feet and then picked up a bill hook lying next to the sack and poked at the meager fire with it. The fire blazed up halfheartedly, illuminating the hut and making it look more than ever like a shed. A low lean-to had been built on at one side, probably for a stable because it was partitioned off from the rest of the hut by an even lower fence than the cottage had had. The fire wasn't bright enough for Kivrin to see into the lean-to corner, but a scuffling sound came from it.

A pig, maybe, although the peasants' pigs were supposed to have been slaughtered by now, or maybe a milchgoat. She poked at the fire again, trying to get a little more light from the corner.

The scuffling sound came from in front of the pathetic fence, from a large dome-shaped cage. It was elaborately out-of- place in the filthy corner with its smooth curved metal band, its complicated door, its fancy handle. Inside the cage, his eyes glinting in the firelight Kivrin had stirred up, was a rat.

He sat on his haunches, his hand-like paws holding the chunk of cheese that had tempted him into imprisonment, watching Kivrin. There were several other crumbled and probably moldy bits of cheese on the floor of the cage. More food than in this entire hut, Kivrin thought, sitting very still on the lumpy sack of onions. One wouldn't think they had anything worth protecting from a rat.

She had seen a rat before, of course, in History of Psych and when they tested her for phobias during her first years, but not this kind. Nobody had seen this kind, in England at least, in fifty years. It was a very pretty rat, actually, with silky black fur, not much bigger than History of Psych's white laboratory rats, not nearly as big as the brown rat she'd been tested with.

It looked much cleaner than the brown rat, too. He had looked like he belonged in the sewers and drains and tube tunnels he'd no doubt come out of, with his matted dust-brown coat and long, obscenely naked tail. When she had first started studying the Middle Ages, she had been unable to understand how the contemps had tolerated the disgusting things in their barns, let alone their houses. The thought of the one in the wall by her bed had filled her with revulsion. But this rat was actually quite clean-looking, with its black eyes and shiny coat. Certainly cleaner than Maisry, and probably more intelligent. Harmless-looking.

As if to prove her point, the rat took another dainty nibble on the cheese.

"You're not harmless, though," Kivrin said. "You're the scourge of the Middle Ages."

The rat dropped the chunk of cheese and took a step forward, his whiskers twitching. He took hold of two of the metal bars with his pinkish hands and looked appealingly through them.

"I can't let you out, you know," Kivrin said, and his ears pricked up as if he understood her. "You eat precious grain and contaminate food and carry fleas and in another twenty-eight years you and your chums will wipe out half of Europe. You're what Lady Imeyne should be worrying about instead of French spies and illiterate priests." The rat looked at her. "I'd like to let you out, but I can't. The Black Death was bad enough as it was. It killed over a third of Europe. If I let you out, your descendants might make it even worse."

The rat let go of the bars and began running around the cage, crashing against the bars, circling in frantic, random movements.

"I'd let you out if I could," Kivrin said. The fire had nearly gone out. Kivrin stirred it again, but it was all ashes. The door she had left open in the hope that the boy would bring someone back looking for her banged shut, plunging the hut in darkness.

They won't have any idea where to look for me, Kivrin thought, and knew they weren't even looking yet. They all thought she was in Rosemund's bower asleep. Lady Imeyne wouldn't even check on her until she brought her her supper. They wouldn't even start to look for her until after vespers, and by then it would be dark.

It was very quiet in the hut. The wind must have died down. She couldn't hear the rat. A twig on the fire snapped once, and sparks flew onto the dirt floor.

Nobody knows where I am, she thought, and put her hand up to her chest as if she had been stabbed. Nobody knows where I am. Not even Mr. Dunworthy.

But surely that wasn't true. Lady Eliwys might have come back and gone up to put more ointment on, or Maisry might have come in from the stable or the boy might have darted off to fetch the men from the fields, and they would be here any minute, even though the door was shut. And even if they didn't realize she was gone until after vespers, they had torches and lanterns, and the parents of the boy with scurvy would come back to cook supper and find her and would go and fetch someone from the manor. No matter what happens, she told herself, you're not completely alone, and that comforted her.

Because she was completely alone. She had tried to convince herself she wasn't, that some reading on the net's monitor's had told Gilchrist and Montoya something had gone wrong, that Mr. Dunworthy had made Badri check and recheck everything, that they knew what had happened somehow and were holding the drop open. But they weren't. They no more knew where she was than Agnes and Lady Eliwys did. They thought she was safely in Skendgate, studying the Middle Ages, with the drop clearly located and the Domesday Book already half full of observations about quaint customs and rotation of crops. They wouldn't even realize she was gone until they opened the drop in two weeks.

"And by then it will be dark," Kivrin said.

She sat still, watching the fire. It was nearly out, and there weren't any more sticks anywhere that she could see. She wondered if the boy had been left at home to gather faggots and what they would do for a fire tonight.

She was all alone, and the fire was going out, and nobody knew where she was except the rat who was going to kill half of Europe. She stood up, cracking her head again, pushed the door of the hut open, and went outside.

There was still no one in sight in the fields. The wind had died down, and she could hear the bell from the southwest tolling clearly. A few flakes of snow drifted out of the gray sky. The little rise the church was on was completely obscured with snow. Kivrin started toward the church.

Another bell began. It was more to the south and closer, but with the higher, more metallic sound that meant it was a smaller bell. It tolled steadily, too, but a little behind the first bell so that it sounded like an echo.