The previous evening, the reeve had explained how John’s mother, Enyd, had sent him to Exeter with the news that his elder brother had been stricken with the fever that had crept into Stoke over the past four days. So far, eight had been afflicted and two of those had died. William, whose solicitude for his free tenants and villeins was well known, had refused to hide himself away in the manor house, but had insisted on visiting the sick and arranging for food and firewood to be supplied to them.
‘He forbade the ladies to accompany him, though they both wished to help,’ Alfred had said. ‘Within a day and a night, he started shivering and soon was yellow, being brought back to collapse on his bed. Only God knows why he was so stricken, when myself, the priest and several others escaped, though we were also helping to aid the sufferers.’
‘What of my mother and sister? Do they remain in good health?’ demanded John. His mother, Enyd, was a sprightly woman in her early sixties, and Evelyn, six years younger than John, was a placid spinster.
‘They show no signs of the curse, thanks be to Christ,’ Alfred reassured him. There was no one else in the family to be concerned about, as William’s wife Alice had died of a childbirth fever three years earlier.
The horses made good time on the firm roads, as the slight frost that had followed the rain had hardened the mud without being severe enough to leave icy patches. In an hour and a half they reached Dawlish, and it was with reluctance that John trotted straight through the little port without calling on Hilda. A few miles further along the track that hugged the coast, they passed the turning into Holcombe, the other de Wolfe manor, where Hilda’s father was the reeve.
‘Do they know there about my brother’s illness?’ shouted John over the noise of the hooves.
‘I sent a message yesterday, but told them to stay away from Stoke in case they bring back the contagion,’ replied Alfred.
At Teignmouth the tide was ebbing fast out of the river, but they had to wait fretfully for half an hour until the water was low enough for their horses to safely navigate the ford to the sand-spit on the other side. From there it was only a few minutes’ canter to reach the head of the wooded valley that held John’s birthplace of Stoke-in-Teignhead. The village was unnaturally quiet; no work was being done in the strip-fields and the single village street was empty. Smoke filtered out from beneath the eaves of many of the tofts to prove that people were alive, but the villagers were shunning any unnecessary contact with each other. As they passed two of the small thatched cottages, John saw ominous boards nailed across the doors, with a black cross painted on them.
They neared the manor house at the further end of the village before they saw the first living person walking towards them, the priest of St Andrew’s Church. He held up his hand and John reined up alongside, fearful that Father Martin had been to the manor to administer the last rites. Thankfully, the sturdy priest was more reassuring.
‘Lord William is no worse, even if not improved, Sir John. He is weak, but still alive, for which I thank the Holy Virgin — as well as your mother and sister, who are tending him like a baby.’
The parson called William ‘lord’ as befitted the eldest son and holder of the manor title, whereas John was ‘sir’ by virtue of his military knighthood.
‘Is there more of the plague in the village?’ asked John.
‘Two more of the sick children have died, God save their souls,’ admitted Father Martin. ‘And two more have fallen ill in another house. I’m on my way to them now, to see if there is anything I can do.’
He looked exhausted, and John suspected that he had hardly slept since the yellow plague had come to Stoke.
They rode on and clattered over the small bridge across the ditch around the house, a defence which had not been needed since before John was born. Inside the stockade, almost an acre of ground held the square stone-built house and the profusion of sheds, huts and barns that made this a working farm as well as a family home.
Though the courtyard had been empty, the sound of their arrival brought boys out of the stables to take their horses. The old steward hurried out to greet them and shepherded John and Gwyn into the house. There was a large central hall, with two pairs of rooms divided off from it on either side and an upper solar built out over a porch at the front. John ordered Gwyn to stay in the hall, as he did not wish to increase the risk of him catching the contagion in the sickroom and taking it back to his family.
In one of the side rooms he found William lying on a low bed and attended solicitously by his mother and sister, with the steward’s large wife and a younger servant hovering anxiously in the background. The Lord of Stoke appeared to be asleep, his mouth open and his eyes shut, but his breathing was laboured and a sheen of sweat lay on his forehead and face, in spite of the coldness of the room. His face was yellow, as were the hands that lay across his chest. On a table near the bed were bowls of boiled water, flasks of liniment and cloths to lay on the patient’s fevered brow and body. A large bunch of herbs was stuck into a jug, and in the firepit at one side of the room fragrant smoke curled up from where other dried herbs had been sprinkled on the logs. These attempts at treatment suggested desperate frustration that was echoed in the haggard faces of Evelyn and Enyd. They came to embrace him, Evelyn with tears seeping from her eyes.
‘He is no worse today, though no better,’ whispered his mother. ‘All we can do is pray for him.’
They all sank to their knees in the clean rushes that covered the floor, hands clasped and heads bowed. John initially felt he was being false, as he had little real faith in pleading for his brother’s recovery when children were lying dead in the village from the same ailment. But as he raised his head and saw his brother’s face as he strained to cling to life, a wave of love and pity flowed over him, and he fervently asked for God’s mercy on a man who had come from the same womb as himself.
After few moments Enyd rose and took John’s arm to lead him back into the hall, where Gwyn was waiting with the reeve.
‘You men must be tired and hungry after your journey,’ she said firmly.
The steward marshalled a couple of young serving girls to bring food and drink from the outside kitchen, and soon they were sitting eating at a table near the firepit.
‘We feel so helpless to do anything either for William or the others in the village,’ said a distraught Evelyn. ‘There is no physician anywhere nor even an apothecary nearer than Brixham.’
‘I doubt it would help much if there were,’ said John cynically. ‘I have a new doctor living next door to me and he flatly refuses to attend any victims, saying there is nothing he can do for them.’
The steward, hovering behind them with a jug of cider, said that he had heard that morning that new cases were being spoken of in Brixham and Dartmouth, further down the coast.
‘All at ports and harbours,’ muttered Gwyn. ‘It must be coming in from abroad, surely?’
‘I seems like it, but how would it have reached Stoke?’ growled John.
‘We have tradesmen in every day,’ answered Evelyn. ‘They bring in fish from Teignmouth — and we had a chapman through here last week. God knows where he’d been before coming here.’
John could hear the suppressed panic in everyone’s voice, which was also beginning to appear in Exeter. This was an invisible foe, stalking the streets and fields with a stealth that could not be detected. If disease came from a rabid dog, then it could be slain, but this yellow plague could be neither seen, heard nor smelled, which made it doubly terrifying.