"Shh," Kivrin said. "You're all right. You just had the wind knocked out of you."

Father Roche caught up to them, and Agnes immediately flung herself across into his arms. He hugged her against him. "Hush, Agnus," he murmured in his wonderful comforting voice. "Hush." Her screams quieted to sobs.

"Where did you hurt yourself?" Kivrin asked, brushing the snow from Agnes's cloak. "Did you scrape your hands?"

Father Roched turned her around in his arms so Kivrin could take her white fur mittens off her. Her hands were bright red, but they weren't scraped. "Where did you hurt yourself?"

"She is not hurt," Rosemund said. "She cries because she is a babe!"

"I am not a babe!" Agnes said with such force she nearly flung herself out of Father Roche's arms. "I struck my knee on the ground."

"Which one?" Kivrin asked. "The one you hurt before?"

"Yes! Do not look!" she said as Kivrin reached for her leg.

"All right, I won't," Kivrin said. The knee had been scabbing over. She had probably knocked the scab loose. Unless it was bleeding badly enough to soak through her leather hose, there was no point in making her colder by undressing her here in the snow. "But you must let me look at it at home."

"Can we go thence now?" Agnes asked.

Kivrin looked helplessly across at the thicket. This had to be the place. The willows, the clearing, the treeless crest. It had to be the place. Perhaps she had put the casket farther back in the thicket than she thought, and the snow -

"I would go home now!" Agnes said, and began to sob. "I am cold!"

"All right," Kivrin nodded. Agnes's mittens were too wet to put back on her. Kivrin took off her borrowed gloves and gave them to her. They went all the way up Agnes's arm, which delighted her, and Kivrin began to think she had forgotten about her knee, but when Father Roche tried to put her on her pony, she sobbed, "I would ride with you."

Kivrin nodded again and got on her sorrel. Father Roche handed Agnes up to her and led Agnes's pony up the hill. The donkey was standing at the top, by the side of the road, eating the weeds that poked up through the thin snow.

Kivrin looked back at the thicket through the rain, trying to see the clearing. It's surely the drop, she told herself, but she wasn't sure. Even the hill looked somehow wrong from here.

Father Roche took hold of the donkey's reins, and the donkey immediately stiffened and dug in its hooves, but as soon as Father Roche turned its head and started down the far side of the hill with Agnes's pony, it came willingly.

The rain was melting the snow, and Rosemund's mare slipped a little as she galloped it on the straight stretch back to the fork. She slowed it to a trot.

At the next fork, Roche took the lefthand way. There were willows all along it, and oak trees, and muddy ruts at the bottom of every hill.

"Do we go home now, Kivrin?" Agnes said, shivering against her.

"Yes," Kivrin said. She pulled the tail of her cloak forward over Agnes. "Does your knee still hurt?"

"Nay. We did not gather any ivy." She sat up straight and twisted around to look at Kivrin. "Did you remember you when you saw the place?"

"No," Kivrin said.

"Good," Agnes said, settling back against her. "Now you must stay with us forever."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Andrews did not telephone Dunworthy until late afternoon on Christmas Day. Colin had, of course, insisted on getting up at an ungodly hour to open his small pile of gifts.

"Are you going to stay in bed all day?" he'd demanded while Dunworthy groped for his spectacles. "It's nearly eight o' clock."

It was in fact a quarter past six, pitch black outside, too dark even to see if it was still raining. Colin had had a good deal more sleep than he had. After the ecumenical service, Dunworthy had sent Colin back to Balliol and gone to Infirmary to find out about Latimer.

"He has a fever, but no lung involvement thus far," Mary had told him. "He came in at five, said he'd started feeling headachy and confused around one. Forty-eight hours on the button. There's obviously no need to question him to find out who he contracted it from. How are you feeling?"

She had made him stay for blood tests, and then a new case had come in, and he'd waited to see if he could identify him. It was nearly one before he'd gone to bed.

Colin handed Dunworthy a cracker and insisted he snap it, put on the yellow tissue paper crown, and read his motto aloud. It said, "When are Santa's reindeer most likely to come inside? When the door is open."

Colin was already wearing his red crown. He sat on the floor and opened his gifts. The soap tablets were a huge success. "See," Colin said, sticking out his tongue, "they turn it different colors." They did, also his teeth and the edges of his lips.

He seemed pleased with the book, though it was obvious he wished there were holos. He flipped through the pages, looking at the illustrations.

"Look at this," he said, thrusting the volume at Dunworthy, who was still trying to wake up.

It was a knight's tomb, with the standard carved effigy in full armor on top, his face and posture the image of eternal rest, but on the side, in an inset frieze like a window into the tomb, the dead knight's corpse struggled up in his coffin, his tattered flesh falling away from him like grave wrappings, his skeleton's hands curved into frantic claws, his face a skull's empty socketed horror. Worms crawled in and out between his legs, over and under his sword. "Oxfordshire, c. 1350," the caption read. "An example of the macabre tomb decoration prevalent following the bubonic plague."

"Isn't it apocalyptic?" Colin said delightedly.

He was even polite about the muffler. "I suppose it's the thought that counts, isn't it?" he said, holding it up by one end, and then after a minute, "Perhaps I can wear it when I visit the sick. They won't care what it looks like."

"Visit what sick?" Dunworthy asked.

Colin got up off the floor and went over to his duffel and began rummaging through it. "The vicar asked me last night if I'd run errands for him, check on people and take them medicine and things."

He fished a paper bag out of the duffel. "This is your present," he said, handing it to Dunworthy. "It's not wrapped," he added unnecessarily. "Finch said we ought to save paper for the epidemic."

Dunworthy opened the bag and pulled out a flattish red book.

"It's an appointment calendar," Colin said. "It's so you can mark off the days till your girl gets back." He opened it to the first page. "See, I made sure to get one that had December."

"Thank you," Dunworthy said, opening it. Christmas. The Slaughter of the Innocents. New Year's. Epiphany. "That was very thoughtful."

"I wanted to get you this model of Carfax Tower that plays 'I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day'," Colin said, "but it cost twenty pounds!"

The telephone rang, and Colin and Dunworthy both dived for it. "I'll bet it's my mother," Colin said.

It was Mary, calling from the infirmary. "How are you feeling?"

"Half-asleep," Dunworthy said.

Colin grinned at him.

"How's Latimer?" Dunworthy asked.

"Good," Mary said. She was still wearing her lab coat, but she'd combed her hair, and she looked cheerful. "He seems to have a very mild case. We've established a connection with the South Carolina virus."

"Latimer was in South Carolina?"

"No. One of the students I had you question last night…good Lord, I mean two nights ago. I'm losing all track of time. One of the ones who'd been at the dance in Headington. He lied at first because he'd skipped off from his college to see a young woman and left a friend to cover for him."

"Skipped off to South Carolina?"

"No, London. But the young woman was from the States. She'd flown in from Texas and changed planes in Charleston, South Carolina. The CDC's working to find out what cases were in the airport. Let me speak to Colin. I want to wish him a happy Christmas."