“And you all arrived in Oxford yesterday morning?”
“Yes.”
“None of your group came early, to see the sights or visit friends?”
“No,” she said, sounding shocked. “We’re on tour, Mr. Dunworthy, not on vacation.”
“And you said that none of you had been ill?”
She shook her head. “We can’t afford to get sick. There are only six of us.”
“Thank you for your help,” Dunworthy said and sent her back down to the common room.
He rang up Mary, who couldn’t be found, left a message, and started down Finch’s asterisks. He rang up Andrews, Jesus College, Mr. Basingame’s secretary, and St. Mary’s without getting through. He rang off, waited a five minute interval and tried again. During one of the intervals, Mary phoned.
“Why aren’t you in bed yet?” she demanded. “You look exhausted.”
“I’ve been interrogating the bellringers,” he said. “They’ve been here in England for three weeks. None of them came to Oxford before yesterday afternoon and none of them are ill. Do you want me to come back and question Badri?”
“It won’t do any good, I’m afraid. He’s not coherent.”
“I’m trying to get through to Jesus to see what they know of his comings and goings.”
“Good,” she said. “Ask his landlady, too. And get some sleep. I don’t want you getting this.” She paused. “We’ve got six more cases.”
“Any from South Carolina?”
“No,” she said, “and none who couldn’t have had contact with Badri. So he’s still the index case. Is Colin all right?”
“He’s having breakfast,” he said. “He’s all right. Don’t worry about him.”
He didn’t get to bed until after one-thirty in the afternoon. It took him two hours to get through to all the starred names on Finch’s list, and another hour to discover where Badri lived. His landlady wasn’t at home, and when Dunworthy got back, Finch insisted on going over the complete inventory of supplies.
Dunworthy finally got away from him by promising to telephone the NHS and demand additional lavatory paper. He let himself into his rooms.
Colin had curled up on the window seat, his head on his pack and a crocheted laprobe over him. It didn’t reach as far as his feet. Dunworthy took a blanket from the foot of the bed and covered him up, and sat down in the Chesterfield opposite to take off his shoes.
He was almost too tired to do that, though he knew he would regret it if he went to bed in his clothes. That was the province of the young and non-arthritic. Colin would wake refreshed in spite of digging buttons and constricting sleeves. Kivrin could wrap up in her too-thin white cloak and rest her head on a tree stump none the worse for wear, but if he so much as omitted a pillow or left his shirt on, he would wake stiff and cramped. And if he sat here with his shoes in his hand, he would not get to bed at all.
He heaved himself out of the chair, still holding the shoes, switched the light off, and went into the bedroom. He put on his pajamas and turned back the bed. It looked impossibly inviting.
I shall be asleep before my head hits the pillow, he thought, taking off his spectacles. He got into bed and pulled the covers up. Before I’ve even switched off the light, he thought, and switched off the light.
There was scarcely any light from the window, only a dull gray showing through the tangle of darker gray vines. The rain beat faintly against the dry leaves. I should have drawn the curtains, he thought, but he was too tired to get up again.
At least Kivrin wouldn’t have to contend with rain. It was the Little Ice Age. It would be snow if anything. The contemps had slept huddled together by the hearth until it had finally occurred to someone to invent the chimney and the fireplace, and that hadn’t been extant in Oxfordshire villages till the mid– fifteenth century. But Kivrin wouldn’t care. She would curl up like Colin and sleep the easy, the unappreciated sleep of the young.
He wondered if it had stopped raining. He couldn’t hear the patter of it on the window. Perhaps it had slowed to a drizzle or was getting ready to rain again. It was so dark, and too early for the afternoon to be drawing in. He drew his hand out from under the covers and looked at the illuminated numbers on his digital. Only two. It would be six in the evening where Kivrin was. He needed to phone Andrews again when he woke up and have him read the fix so they would know exactly where and when she was.
Badri had said there was only four hours’ slippage, that he’d doublechecked the first-year apprentice’s coordinates and they were correct, but he wanted to make certain. Gilchrist had taken no precautions and even with precautions, things could go wrong. Today had proved that.
Badri had had the full course of antivirals. Colin’s mother had seen him safely onto the tube and given him extra money. The first time Dunworthy had gone to London he had almost not made it back, and they had taken endless precautions.
