Doomsday Book by Connie Willis Page A

middle of a wood, instead of on the Oxford- Bath road, it would just confirm what Mr. Dunworthy was thinking, that Mr. Gilchrist hadn't known what he was doing and that she couldn't take care of herself, and then she remembered that it wouldn't make any difference, that he would never hear her report until she was safely back.
    If she got safely back, which she wouldn't if she was still in this wood when night fell. She stood up and looked around. It was either late afternoon or very early morning, she couldn't tell in the woods, and she might not be able to tell by the sun's position even when she got where she could see the sky. Mr. Dunworthy had told her that people sometimes stayed hopelessly turned around for their entire stay in the past. He had made her learn to sight using shadows, but she had to know what time it was to do that, and there was no time to waste on wondering which direction was which. She had to find her way out of here. The forest was almost entirely in shadow.
    There was no sign of a road or even a path. Kivrin circled the wagon and boxes, looking for an opening in the trees. The woods seemed thinner to what felt like the west, but when she went that way, looking back every few steps to make sure she could still see the weathered blue of the wagon's cloth covering, it was only a stand of birches, their white trunks giving an illusion of space. She went back to the wagon and started out again in the opposite direction, even though the woods looked darker that way.
    The road was only a hundred yards away. Kivrin clambered over a fallen log and through a thicket of drooping willows, and looked out onto the road. A highway, Probability had called it. It didn't look like a highway. It didn't even look like a road. It looked more like a footpath. Or a cowpath. So these were the wonderful highways of fourteenth-century England, the highways that were opening trade and broadening horizons.
    The road was barely wide enough for a wagon, though it was obvious that wagons had used it, or at least a wagon. The road was rutted into deep grooves, and leaves had drifted across and into the ruts. Black water stood in some of them and along the road's edge, and a skim of ice had formed on some of the puddles.
    Kivrin was standing at the bottom of a depression. The road climbed steadily up in both directions from where she was, and to what felt like the north, the trees stopped halfway up the hill. She turned around to look back. It was possible to catch a glimpse of the wagon from here -- the merest patch of blue -- but no one would. The road dived here into woods on either side, and narrowed, making it a perfect spot in which to be waylaid by cutthroats and thieves.
    It was just the place to lend credibility to her story, but they would never see her, hurrying through the narrow stretch of road, or if they did catch sight of the barely visible corner of blue, they would think it was someone lying in wait and spur their horses into flight.
    It came to Kivrin suddenly that, lurking there in the thicket, she looked more like one of those cutthroats than like an innocent maiden who'd been recently coshed on the head.
    She stepped out onto the road and put her hand up to her temple. " O holpen me, for I am ful sore in drede !" she cried.
    The interpreter was supposed to automatically translate what she said into Middle English, but Mr. Dunworthy had insisted she memorize her first speeches. She and Mr. Latimer had worked on the pronunciation all yesterday afternoon.
    " Holpen me, for I haf been y-robbed by fel thefes ," she said.
    She considered falling down on the road, but now that she was out in the open she could see it was even later than she'd guessed, nearly sundown, and if she was going to see what lay at the top of the hill, she had better do it now. First, though, she needed to mark the rendezvous with some kind of sign.
    There was nothing distinctive about any of the willows along the road. She looked for a rock