The Black Death

by Philip Ziegler

  There was no easy comfort now for the villagers. If the plague was in Winchester today then it might be in Blakwater tomorrow. The parson organized all the men of the village into a barefoot procession, carrying crosses and singing psalms. They marched around the village and ended up in the churchyard. But, as the parson privately admitted to Roger, he did it more to keep the people busy than in the hope that it would do much good. If God had decided that his people must be punished he was not likely to be deflected from his purpose at this late hour. ‘If it must come, it must come,’ he concluded gloomily, looking down the track that led to Winchester. Roger looked too; but what he was looking for he did not know: a sick man, perhaps – or the spectre of Death riding on a black horse?

  The villagers were in an odd mood all that week. There was a strange, febrile gaiety. Everyone laughed and joked a lot and avoided talking about the dread that was uppermost in their minds. The village was always a friendly place but there was now an unusual sense of comradeship. People spontaneously helped each other; even Mad Meg was treated with unusual respect. The twelve days of Christmas were observed with all the usual jollification: more than usual, indeed, since everyone except the children was behaving as if he was acting a part and, like every amateur actor, was badly over-playing it. There was some suggestion that the steward should cancel the traditional dinner for the tenants on Christmas night; ‘At Christmas we banket, the rich with the poor,’ as Thomas Tusser was later to put it. But the outcry was immediate and the dinner was held with all its usual bawdy fun and the election of a lord of Misrule.

  When the plague came in the end it was not by way of Winchester but through the back door from Preston Stautney. It had been a mild, wet winter and Bartholomew Thomasyn was barely recognizable for mud when he staggered up the track that linked the two villages. He had married a girl from Blakwater and so was well known there but the friendly greetings died on the lips of the peasants as he stammered out his news. His wife was dead, he said, and their little daughter with her. At least six other villagers were dead or dying. With nothing left to hold him to his house, he had fled. Soon others would be following his example. The village was doomed and all who stayed there would perish. He had not slept for three days nor eaten for twenty-four hours. His father-in-law led him away to get some rest and the group of peasants that had clustered around broke up with scarcely a word.

  That afternoon the reeve walked quietly around the village asking a few of the wiser or senior inhabitants to come to a meeting in the hall of the manor. The steward was away on his travels but the parson was going to be there. Roger, of course, was among those invited. The group duly assembled but, when they were all seated around the table, no one seemed to have any idea what to say or do. The parson should have taken the lead but he looked ill and half-asleep and contributed nothing to the discussion while the reeve muttered some prepared preamble about the need to do something urgently and then looked helplessly around for contributions.

  In the end Roger spoke up. Everyone who knew anything about the plague, he said, agreed that it was fatal to have any contact with the victims. The village, therefore, must cut itself off. Travellers should be forbidden to use the road through the village; if they wanted to by-pass it through the fields then they were welcome to do so but they should come no closer. Above all the village must have nothing to do with Preston Stautney. If anyone from there tried to enter Blakwater, they must be turned away – by force if necessary. This was not uncharitable for, after all, there was nothing that could be done to help. Anyway, charity began at home. Their first duty was to their wives and children.

  No one spoke up against Roger’s plan but one of the elder villeins stirred uneasily at the end of the table. What about Bartholomew Thomasyn, he asked; was he to be allowed to stay? ‘He must go,’ put in Roger quickly, before anyone else could speak. He knew as he spoke how harsh his words must sound to Bartholomew’s father-in-law who was also at the meeting but he thought of his wife and children and knew that he was right. The reeve would back him and he could over-persuade the other villeins but he was nervous lest the parson should oppose him and argue that it was their Christian duty to help the sick. He glanced down towards the end of the table but the parson had his head sunk in his hands and gave no sign even of listening to the discussion. Bartholomew’s father-in-law protested but without much conviction. To all of them the peril seemed too great to leave room for sentimentality.

  Suddenly the parson lurched to his feet. The peasants fell silent and looked expectantly towards him but, instead of speaking, he turned away and staggered through the door. Was he overcome by anger at their lack of charity, wondered Roger nervously? They watched him totter down the path towards the manor gate, reeling from one side to the other and seeming every instant about to fall. ‘Parson had a bit too much to drink?’ speculated one of the villagers. As he spoke the parson pitched forward on his face, tried to drag himself to his feet, then fell forward again and lay still. In a few seconds Roger was at his side. His breath was coming with a heavy wheezing noise, his cheeks were so hot that Roger snatched away his hand in alarm as he touched them. They carried him to his house and pulled the clothes from his twitching, fevered body. Under both armpits and in his groin red boils were growing: still small but not so small that those who saw them could doubt that they were the dreaded plague buboes about which they had heard so much.

  Without looking at each other, without a word, the villagers slipped from the parsonage and fled to their own houses. Against the immense peril of the plague they had no recourse save that of prayer. Yet now the sickness of the parson seemed to have cut them off even from that ultimate hope. If God first struck down His chosen servant how terrible must be His wrath against the others! For a few hours they skulked indoors, scarcely venturing even to look outside. Everywhere, it seemed, the poisoned breath of the plague must be awaiting them. It was almost dark before Roger pulled himself together and walked out into the silent lane. He went from house to house, calling to the inhabitants. No other case of the plague had yet occurred. At the parsonage the parson had dropped into a restless sleep. He tossed and turned but his fever had grown a little milder. Could it be that Blakwater would escape lightly, that God would content himself with this dire warning and now avert his wrath. There seemed at least a ray of hope.

  This happened on a Monday. On Tuesday there was no new case and the villagers began to creep cautiously from their houses and to talk together in hushed voices. On Wednesday there was still no further outbreak. The parson’s buboes had swollen and were now inflamed and painful but he himself had recovered consciousness and showed no signs of imminent decease. In sharp reaction to their earlier despair a wave almost of euphoria overcame the villagers. Surely the danger of a worse outbreak must fast be passing? Most of the peasants went off to work in the fields and, generally, life was returning to normal. Seeing Bartholomew Thomasyn outside his father-in-law’s house Roger remembered his plan for sealing off the village. With the plague already inside, there was little point in such precautions.

  Wednesday was cold but clear. Roger rose at his usual time, looked anxiously at his family and saw with relief that all were well. Another night safely passed: he walked outside into his garden. His aunt’s house was quiet and no smoke came from the fire. Odd, she was usually up before him. In sudden apprehension he ran to the door. As he approached he heard a low moaning from within. The old lady was sprawled in a heap on the ground; she must have been overcome on her way to seek help. Her face was haggard, her eyes sunken and blood-shot. Her swollen tongue protruded from dry, cracked lips. She was barely conscious but aware that Roger was beside her. ‘Water!’ she croaked, in a whisper that hardly reached her nephew’s ear, ‘Water!’ When a pot of water was brought, she drank it down greedily; she was unable to control the movements of her tongue and, in spite of Roger’s efforts, a lot of the water dribbled down her front on to the floor. When the pot was empty she fell back exhausted, breathing
stertorously but apparently a little the better for her drink.

  Roger left her house to break the news to his wife. As he stepped from the hut he heard a harsh scream from behind him. The wife of one of the villeins burst out from her house into the road. In her arms she carried her little child; yesterday a healthy, cheerful boy of four months, now transformed in a few hours into a distorted and pain-racked caricature. ‘My baby,’ was all she could cry. Again and again: ‘My baby!’ ‘My baby!’ ‘My baby!’ Her husband ran after her and, with Roger’s help, mother and child were hustled back into their house. Even as they got inside the door the child stiffened itself in a final spasm of agony and lay back dead.

  Almost stunned with horror Roger went back into the road. Was there any chance that the parson might be better and able to give consolation to the still hysterical mother? He walked quickly to the parsonage. As he entered he staggered back, overcome by the horrifying stench. The parson’s buboes had burst. His eyes wide open, his fists clenched, he was lying dead, staring blankly upwards from the pool of suppurating black filth which had oozed from the open boils. Roger turned and fled. Once in the garden he knelt and was violently sick.

  With the parson’s death and the steward away the steward’s clerk was the only villager left who knew how to read and write. Usually he went with the steward on his travels but this time he had luckily stayed behind. In the name of the reeve he now wrote to the Bishop explaining the disasters which had overtaken the village and pleading that a new priest might be sent them as soon as possible. The letter was taken to the highway by one of the villeins and entrusted to the first respectable-looking traveller who came along. Now the village could only wait and hope.

  The next two months were an almost uninterrupted nightmare. Sometimes two or three days at a time would pass without any new victims and the hopes of the villagers would begin to rise, but always in the end the disease struck again. One by one they sickened and died: the survivors kept the tally of the dead and wondered secretly who would be the next to go. It seemed that the hunger of the plague would only be satisfied when the last inhabitant had followed his parson to the grave. The old reeve was one of the first to die, leaving the village with no sort of leadership. All the men who had the courage and the strength rallied to the hall of the manor and elected Roger their new reeve. The court was not properly constituted in the absence of the steward but, in the circumstances, no one was disposed to worry about formalities. Apart from this one burst of corporate activity, the village lapsed into total apathy. Nobody tended the fields – for who would be left alive to reap the harvest? The cattle were neglected; the flimsy houses began to fall into disrepair; men and women lost all interest in their own appearance and lurked fearfully in their houses as if afraid to face the open air.

  Almost the only occupation which aroused any interest was burying the dead. In the parson’s absence, the steward’s clerk used to read the service. After ten days or so of this, however, an itinerant friar turned up on the way to his religious house at Romsey. He promised the villagers that he would stay at Blakwater until a new priest arrived or the plague was over and he was as good as his word; tending the sick and laying out the dead with a fearlessness which quickly won him the respect and affection of the people. Then a new problem arose. In the first three weeks more than twenty people died and the old churchyard, crowded even before the epidemic, was quickly choked with new graves. Even if it had not been, Roger had a theory that it was dangerous to bury the plague victims so close to the centre of the village. He asked the friar to consecrate a new plot of land a few hundred yards away on the edge of the lord’s demesne. At first the friar refused; the plague could not frighten him but the anger of the Bishop if a new churchyard was opened without his permission and the payment of the usual fee was quite a different matter. However Roger promised that the fee would be paid and everything regularized in due course and, in the end, the friar grudgingly agreed.

  The very next day a chaplain of the bishop’s rode into the village. The letter had been received and would be acted on, he told Roger, but there was no hope that the new priest would be in Blakwater for another three weeks at least. At the moment the Bishop had more than eighty benefices vacant in the diocese and, though he was doing all he could to fill them, some delay was inevitable. The chaplain looked coldly at the friar and still more coldly at the new graveyard but, since he could do nothing to remedy the matter, wisely held his peace. The ugly sullenness of the villagers probably warned him that it would be unwise to push them far.

  When the chaplain rode on to Preston Stautney, Roger went with him so as to see how his neighbours were faring. Only then did he realize that, however badly Blakwater had suffered, others had fared still worse. The community had disintegrated. Of the sixteen or seventeen houses only four seemed still to be inhabited. The door of the church was standing open and somebody had been chopping up the stalls, presumably for firewood. Of the parson there was no trace at all, unless a large mound of freshly-dug earth in a corner of the churchyard covered both priest and flock. The only people they could find were a couple of old women sunning themselves forlornly outside their houses. All the others were dead, they said, dead or run away. The chaplain cross-examined them in an effort to get some rather more precise information and in the end established that at least a dozen villagers had taken to the woods in the hope of escaping the plague. But whether they were still alive or had been struck down in their flight, the old hags neither knew nor cared.

  Soberly Roger returned to his home. He had seen so much suffering in the last few weeks, had felt so much pity and so much fear, that it seemed he had no emotion left which could be squeezed out for the sake of these further victims. Indeed, as he walked down the hillside to Blakwater he caught himself in a mood of self-congratulation at his own light escape. Uneasily he crossed himself and dismissed the dangerous thought from his mind. He had cause to remember his gesture and the moment of disquiet which had inspired it. When he arrived home he found his eldest son groaning with pain, vomiting almost continuously and in a high fever. The boy died after four days of intolerable suffering.

  Even before he was in his grave Roger’s only daughter and his wife were on their sick beds. The former was one of the very few who were infected by the plague but still survived – her life was in great danger for several days but by some freak of chance the buboes proved less malignant than in other cases and subsided or suppurated harmlessly. Roger’s wife fought for her life for more than a week, clinging on tenaciously even when her body had been reduced to a shattered and malodorous hulk. In the end she succumbed and Roger cursed the god who could bring such misery on his defenceless servants.

  Impotent, resentful, panic-stricken: the villagers were in a mood to revenge themselves on any target which came within their range. Poor Mad Meg provided an easy victim. Someone had met her by night conversing suspiciously with her obviously diabolic cat. Someone else had seen her lurking near the well – armed with poison without a doubt. A crowd of villagers worked themselves into a drunken frenzy on beer looted from the house of the ale-brewer and marched indignantly towards her house. Mad Meg heard them coming and slipped away into the woods. Probably she would have escaped their clumsy pursuit if one of the peasants had not seized hold of her cat and, brandishing it by the tail, smashed its head against a rock. In hysterical defence of the only living creature that had shown her any trace of love, Meg ran out from her hiding place among the trees. The villagers attacked her with sticks and stones and battered her to death in the clearing outside her miserable hovel.

  Even the longest nightmare must end. By the time that the new parson arrived in early March the worst was over. The plague lingered for another two months but its full ferocity was past. A gap of four days occurred before the next case, then of five, then of a week; by the beginning of August there had been no new attack for nearly two months and the villagers could feel themselves safe. Thirty-eight of them had died, three other
s had been infected but had recovered, poor Mad Meg also had her claim to be a victim of the plague. Little by little the survivors began to look about them, to realize that they were still alive and likely to remain so, to pick up the pieces of their lives again.

  They had plenty to do to keep themselves occupied. All the work in the fields had been neglected for more than six months and now, with a greatly weakened labour force, they had to make good the wasted time. But there were compensations. The same amount of land and cattle was now available to be shared out among fewer people; this meant that the work was harder but also that the reward was greater. Roger, who had considered himself one of the most over-worked villeins on the manor, was pressed by the steward to take on half his neighbour’s land at a nominal rent. Anything, the steward pleaded, was better than that it should go to waste. Reluctantly Roger agreed and found to his surprise that, with some hired help from one of the freemen of Blakwater, he could manage the extra land quite easily. Two or three other villeins also took on extra land and found themselves increasingly prosperous as a result.

  However much new land the more energetic villeins had taken on, it would not by itself have been enough to fill the gaps left by the plague. But Preston Stautney’s loss proved to be Blakwater’s gain. The tenants of Sir Peter, who had escaped death by taking refuge in the woods, now saw little to attract them in their stricken village with its barren land and thriftless landlord. Some fled to more distant parts to make a new life but a few – four men in all with what was left of their families – arrived one day at Blakwater and appealed to the reeve and steward to let them settle. They said they were even prepared to give up their status of free men and to bind themselves to tender service to the Lord Bishop in exchange for a house and land.

  Roger was anxious to take them in but the steward was less certain. The King had not yet passed his new laws forbidding the movement of free labour but it was, to say the least, unneighbourly to attract away peasants from a nearby village. Besides, though the four men claimed to be free, the steward had some private doubts whether they could prove their status in a court of law. But labour was short and expensive and the harvest had to be got in. In the end the steward agreed that they could stay until the Bishop’s representative paid his next visit and that the question would then be put to him. By the time the latter did come the men were firmly installed and it seemed a pity to disturb an arrangement which was working so satisfactorily. It was decided that they could stay, at least unless Sir Peter protested strongly. Since nobody thought fit to tell Sir Peter where his errant tenants were to be found, such a protest was never made.