by Dan Davis
I sighed, for the Jews had been expelled from England decades before. It was common knowledge that plenty of them had changed their names and hidden themselves amongst the population, pretending to be Christians but continuing their dark rites in secret. No one ever met one of these secret Jews but everyone knew they were there amongst the townsfolk.
“If that is the case,” I said, “surely they would be intent on destroying London, or Bristol, or Oxford, or York. Not Hawkedon and Hartest.”
He sniffed, looking over his shoulder before turning back to me. “Colchester’s got them new foreigners, sir. Might be they creep up here in the night.”
“The Flemish weavers? They are good Christians, not Jews.”
“Still foreign, sir.”
“Post your sentries, then. But for God’s sake ensure they are not armed or they will like as not spear Mistress Heyward when she comes to collect water one morning.”
It was a Monday when the first people fell ill in Hawkedon and we all knew what it was, though at first there was still a tragic hope that it was an ordinary affliction that would pass.
A mere three days after the illness came, the first of my people died in blistering agony.
The villeins and freemen stayed in their homes and I stayed in my manor. What could I do? I was powerless. It was tempting to administer my blood to some of the pestilent but I saw how that path might save a life, or not, but would likely lead to my own downfall. Men and women grew suspicious of everything as they watched in helplessness as their parents and their children died first. But the strong and healthy, in the prime of their lives, died also.
I begged for our priests to come and to pray and to visit each of my people, especially the afflicted, and this some of them did. One kindly old priest rode from home to home, dealing out blessing and rites for four days without rest before dying in the night of the fifth.
In desperation, I sent for the finest physicians in the county and to the neighbouring ones, promising that I would pay whatever cost was asked. Just one of my men returned successfully and the doddery old fellow with a fat, red face that he brought back with him claimed to be a physician of the highest learning, although I had never heard of him. I met him in the confines of my solar in my private wing at Hawkedon, and had him sit with me while I asked what experience he had.
“I come from Ely,” he said, proudly. “Where I have successfully kept the pestilence at bay throughout this plague.”
“Indeed?” I replied, impressed. “Ely is an island in the pestilential fens and yet it is free from the spreading mortality?”
“Well,” he said, spreading his stubby-fingered hands, “I have treated a great number of the afflicted. Some have even survived.”
“What is the method of treatment? It seems to me that the servants die in more ways than I can understand. Some die where they stand and some few lay abed for a week and then rise, weakened but alive. What can be done, sir?”
He nodded, sagely. “It is a confusing story indeed. It seems as though it may afflict the victim in one of three ways. Most commonly, they fall ill with a fever that hits them very hard indeed. A day or two later, they break out in the boils, clustered in the armpits and groin. Many of these I have seen and they may grow to the size of an apple in a single night. If the sufferer is able to speak he will complain of blinding headaches and violent chills while his body sweats freely and uncontrollably. Within five or six days from the first signs of sickness, they will be dead.”
“God preserve us,” I said. “This is how my people have been dying, yes.”
He held up a finger. “That is merely the first of the three forms, as I stated. Another form is rather better and if God decrees that I become afflicted, this is the form I wish to receive.”
“Ah!” I said. “So, this is the gentler form?”
He laughed so hard that his face turned purple. “Dear me, no. I speak of those who die with almost no warning. Surely you have heard of these, sir? A man will kiss his wife goodnight in fine health and be discovered dead in the morning. You may soon find yourself witnessing a man or woman or child suddenly fall to the ground and begin a terrible shaking, with limbs and features rigid and quivering most violently. When you go to their aid, you will discover that they are quite dead, perhaps with putrefied blood oozing from their various orifices. It strikes with such rapidity that the suffering is certainly over quickly. Thanks to God’s mercy.”
I gripped my hands together in front of me. “There was a third form of death, you said?”
“Yes indeed. One where you might say it falls between the other kinds. It is preceded by terrible coughing which brings up enormous amounts of blood before their end. These poor souls take just two or three days from their first bloody cough to their burial but those days will be filled with agony as they struggle for every breath. They will vomit up their stomach contents, and then whatever water, ale, or wine you can get into them and then quickly it is blood that they vomit, almost ceaselessly. Their fingers turn black and die, as do the toes. No doubt the rest of them would follow in like fashion, if their body was not emptied of blood. This is perhaps the worst form of the pestilence.”
There was nothing I could say in response. My instinct was to pray to God but there was a profound sense that He was not listening to our prayers. Worse, it was hard to avoid the feeling that we were all being punished by Him. But what monstrous sins had those living in that time committed that the people I had known earlier had not?
A letter arrived at my home from Stephen in the hands of a young messenger who shook as he stood before me.
“Are you suffering from the pestilence, son?”
The messenger looked horrified. “Oh, no, sir. Thanks be to God. Simply cold and weary from the hard riding and…” He hung his head. “My father and my sister died not three days past, sir. Yet I am hale and in fine health, praise God, sir.”
I took a full step backwards. And then another.
“You are one of Stephen Gossett’s servants, yes?”
“Indeed, sir. And a fine master he is, sir. None better in all Christendom, so we all say, sir, especially in these days. Fair as the day is—”
“Yes, yes, I’m sure,” I muttered as I broke Stephen’s seal. Then I froze as I read the words, before calling one of my own servants over. “Escort this young man to the kitchens, see him fed well, give him good ale and provisions for his journey back to London. Give him a good, fresh horse. The black rouncey.” I stepped forward and placed a hand on the young fellow’s shoulder. “Tell your master I am coming immediately. That is all.”
As they left, I read the letter again.
Richard. Regretfully, Sir Thomas and Lady Eva are struck down by the pestilence. They yet live. Please come at once. Your faithful servant, Stephen Gossett.
10. Pestilence
I rode to London with all haste, taking Walter and a handful of healthy servants. The roads had degenerated since I last travelled them, with the surfaces washed out and pitted so deeply with eroded pits they were like elongated ponds. Worse, the ways had not been cleared of all the wild growth from weeds and bushes and felled trees blocked the way. Most were natural deadfalls but one seemed felled with a purpose.
“Robbers done it, sir,” Walt said, riding to me with his sword drawn after investigating the trunk.
“I doubt they will attack us, Walt,” I replied, though I drew my own sword and watched the undergrowth closely for the next mile or two.
We saw few other travellers and those that we passed we kept a distance from and they kept away from us, almost all covering their mouths and noses as they did so.
Rushing, we made the distance in three days which was as swiftly as anyone could hope for. Even so, I was fighting to control my distress over every mile. I had already lost John and now I was at risk of losing my dearest companion and the woman I had loved for longer than any other. Eva was no longer my wife and what passion we had once experienced was by then a century past but
the thought of losing her was almost more than I could bear.
When I arrived at the townhouse, I did not pause to change or even to wash but strode into the house, scattering servants while I cried out for Stephen. He came clattering down the main stairs, banging to a stop on the steps before reaching the bottom.
“Richard, thank God. They are this way.”
I followed, taking the steps two at a time, up to the rooms on the uppermost floor. Though it was a bright day outside, it was dark in the bedchamber and it took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the lamplight. I had slept in those rooms before and recalled how the windows allowed a pleasant view over the Thames and the ships that filled it. Now, they were shuttered and covered with heavy, dark cloth.
Stephen ushered me fully inside the larger of the two rooms and closed the door behind me. “The doctors said not to allow the bad air into the chambers,” he explained, speaking softly.
Servants moved away from the bed as I approached, pulling back the linen curtain. A single candle, fixed to one of the bedposts, gave enough light to see that Eva lay within, her hair loose, wet with sweat and plastered to the sheets. Her face was waxy and pale and translucent as marble. The stench was quite foul. The only sign that she lived was her breathing, which was shallow and rapid.
“Eva?” I said, quietly.
She stirred and groaned and then fell silent.
“Is it truly the pestilence?” I asked Stephen, reaching down to touch her brow. It was fiercely hot and slick with sweat.
“She has the signs,” Stephen said, then rushed to explain. “So the doctors tell me.”
I pulled back the sheets. “Avert your eyes, Stephen,” I said.
An old woman appeared as if from nowhere at my side, grabbing at my arm with her sharp little fingers. “How dare you, sir. You must not. It is unseemly, sir.”
“She is my wife,” I said to the servant, which gave her pause. I did not add that she had left me eighty years before but nevertheless she had been my wife for forty years before that and I knew her body almost as well as I knew my own.
“It is true,” Stephen said, over his shoulder. His definition of truth was always a loose one.
“Even so,” the old servant said, firmly.
“You are quite right, good woman,” I said. “Would you be good enough to help me bare her shoulder?”
She peeled back the sheets and I lifted Eva’s arm.
“Here, sir,” the servant said, and handed me a lamp.
Holding it close, I saw the enormous black pustule half-filling her armpit.
“Dear God,” I muttered. “There are more?” I asked. “Her nether regions?”
The old woman coughed to indicate that she did not think it seemly to discuss it but she then whispered. “Yes, sir.”
“How long?” I asked Stephen as I covered Eva again. “How long has she been like this?”
“Come with me,” he said and led me across into the second chamber. Hugh, the squire, knelt at the side of Thomas’ bed in prayer.
He got to his feet in that stiff-legged way that a man does when he has been at prayer for many hours.
“Sir Richard. Thank you for coming, sir. I know that Sir Thomas would be greatly pleased that you have come.”
“How is he?”
Hugh took a deep breath. “The physicians say it is the strangest case they have seen. Thomas and the Lady Eva both, sir. How they are afflicted by the pestilence and yet cling to life, neither dying nor recovering, as some are said to do.” Hugh glanced at Stephen then back to me. “Of course, we cannot tell the physicians about the Gift. Surely it is the blood that preserves them so, my lord?”
I nodded, patting him on the shoulder as I crossed to the bed.
Thomas looked like a dead man. His aged face had sunken further, and he was thin as a skeleton.
“Others I have seen suffering from this affliction,” I said, “were crying out and raving from their pain.”
“They have done so, many times,” Hugh said. “After the blood.”
“You have given them blood,” I said, seeking confirmation, “and it does not cure them.”
“For a time,” Stephen said, softly. “It rouses them enough to accept a little broth, perhaps some morsels of bread soaked in milk or ale. The black blisters recede and they are often able to converse. And then their anguish begins anew. Eventually, they fall into this state of deathlessness until we rouse them again.”
“Perhaps more blood would help? Increase the number and size of the draughts.”
Stephen shook his head, sadly. “At first, I filled them both with so much that they vomited it back up. I also gave them blood once they woke, and again twice every hour, but still they fall back into this. I attempted giving them blood the instant they collapse, thus bringing them back to health over and over in quick succession. But there was no increase in effectiveness. Always, they return to this. And now, half my servants have fallen to the pestilence and more have fled this house and the city. I tell the survivors that bleeding them daily is what is keeping them free of the plague but every soul in the city grows suspicious.”
“Suspicious of you?”
He waved away my concern. “Suspicious of everyone, of everything. Fear reigns, now. Ancient superstitions half-forgotten are being spoken once more. But my servants trust me and those that remain will continue to be loyal. I ensure I take very good care of them, with the best food I can find, hot fires to keep them warm and dry, even physicians for their families, if the bastard piss prophets can be enticed to attend anyone any more. No, my servants will be here to supply us with blood until this plague passes and our friends recover from their affliction.”
“When the plague passes, they will also recover?”
“So the physicians said.”
Hugh dared to speak up. “Some say it will never pass. We are dying one after the other until all will have perished and so this is surely the end of the world.”
Increasingly, I feared that very thing. It certainly seemed far worse than I could have imagined, had I not ridden across some of the country and seen the horrors of London. Still, it is a leader’s duty to provide strength and hope and so I searched for something comforting to say.
“It is a hard time, yes. As hard as any I have seen. Yet order remains in the streets, does it not? The dead do not lay in their beds but are buried by their loved ones and their neighbours. This is a pestilence, no more.”
“What have we done to deserve it, sir?” Hugh asked.
“A great deal of evil,” I said.
“And yet children have done no evil and they die also. Even more so.”
“Some are saying,” Stephen replied, “that God slays the children to punish the parents. And that the inexplicably random nature of the death is itself punishment for the wickedness of humanity as a whole.”
“But if God is just, why would He do that?” Hugh asked, close to despair.
I wished to snap at him to ask a bloody priest but I held my tongue.
Stephen had an answer, as always. “One of the physicians told me the pestilential miasmas are due to a particular alignment of the heavens, and that God has no hand in this at all. That it is as natural as a storm.”
“Of course it is God,” I said. “He did it before, did he not? When he sent the Great Flood of Noah to cleanse the Earth.”
Stephen bowed. “Of course.”
Hugh was not satisfied. “But why—”
“Enough,” I said. “Let us rouse them so I can cure them with my own blood. They have suffered enough, whether God wills it or not.”
I decided that Thomas would be first. If anything went badly wrong, it would be he that bore the brunt rather than Eva. And I knew that he would not want it any other way.
Using the instrument, I bled myself into a cup.
“Should I..?” Stephen began, reaching out to take it.
I ignored him and sat on the edge of the bed. “Thomas?” I called. “Thomas, it is Richard.�
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He groaned and muttered.
“Come on, now, old man,” I said brusquely as I lifted his head up. The hair at the back of his head was sodden with sweat and a strong, foul stench gusted up to my nose. My stomach churned.
I poured some into his mouth and he stirred himself, slurping at it in a most disgusting fashion. The effects began almost at once and he reached up to grasp my hand and tip the rest of the cup into his mouth while he gulped it down.
Thomas opened his eyes and gasped, then clutched at his stomach while he thrashed his head side to side. After a few moments, he sighed and sank back.
He looked at me.
“Richard.”
“Thomas, thank God. You have returned to us.”
“Yes, yes,” he said. “What took you so long?”
“How do you feel?” I asked.
He considered it for a moment and sat up. I moved back as he pulled back the covers and got to his feet, standing in his sweat-soaked shirt. “I feel well,” he said, speaking slowly and wiping his lips. “This was your blood, Richard?”
“You can tell the difference?”
“I have been drinking mortal’s blood every day, or near enough. It is difficult to recall clearly. But yes, I believe this does feel different.” Hope dawned on his aged features. “By God, I feel hearty indeed.”
“Praise God,” I said, turning to Stephen. “Now, let us see to Eva.”
I was gratified when it went much the same as with Thomas. When Eva awoke and confirmed that she felt fully well, I gave her time to wash and be dressed and waited downstairs in the hall, drinking wine. Stephen’s servants managed to find enough fresh produce in London to make for us a rather impressive impromptu feast to celebrate and first Thomas and then Eva joined us while the dishes were served.
Our first course was an array of boiled meats in sauces, of which my favourite was an excellent beef pottage in wine with herbs and spices. After that, we had meats in jelly with roast kid, and a dish of roast heron and one of woodcock which I devoured almost entirely by myself. The third course brought us dozens of small, delicate sparrows and swallows with bowls of fruit compotes, cooked with huge amounts of sugar. After that, when I declared I could eat no more, they brought out a half dozen cheeses which I tucked into with heroic vigour and good cheer.
