Bartholomew let himself out of the house. The street was unusually silent as he made his way to the Round Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where Gregory Colet was waiting anxiously.
'Matt?' he said, stepping towards him, his eyes fearful.
Bartholomew held up his hand, warning him to come no closer. 'It has come, Gregory,' he said softly.
'The plague has come to Cambridge.'
The next few weeks passed in a whirlwind for Bartholomew. At first, there were only a few cases, and one of them even recovered. After five days, Bartholomew began to hope that the pestilence had passed them by, and that the people of Cambridge might have escaped the worst of the fever, or that it had burned itself out. Then, without warning, four people became infected one day, seven the next day, and thirteen the day after that. People began to die and Bartholomew found himself with more requests for help than he could possibly answer.
Colet called an urgent meeting of the physicians and surgeons, and Bartholomew described the symptoms he had seen first-hand while he stood in the gallery of St Mary's Church, as far away from the others as possible.
There was much to be done. Gravediggers needed to be found, and collectors of the dead. There were few who wanted such tasks, and there was an argument between the medics on the one hand and the Sheriff on the other about who should pay the high wages to entice people to do it.
The number of cases of the plague continued to rise dramatically. Some people died within a few hours of becoming ill, while others lasted for several days.
Others still seemed to recover, but died as their relatives began to celebrate their deliverance. Bartholomew could see no pattern as to who lived and who died, and he began to doubt his fundamental belief that diseases had physical causes that could be identified and removed. He and Colet argued about it, Colet claiming that he had more success with his leeches than Bartholomew had with his insistence on clean water and bedding, and use of various herbs. To a certain extent that was true, but Colet's patients were wealthier than Bartholomew's, and suffered and died in warm rooms where lack of food was not a problem. Bartholomew did not consider the comparison a fair one. He discovered that in some cases he could ease the discomfort from the buboes by incising them to let the putrescence out, and that probably one in four of his patients might survive.
Term at the University was immediately suspended, and scholars who would usually have stayed in Cambridge for the Christmas break thronged the roads leading north, some taking the plague with them. Bartholomew was horrified that many physicians went too, leaving dozens of sick people to the care of a handful of doctors.
Colet told Bartholomew that the royal physician, Master Gaddesden, had also fled London, going with the King's family to Eltham Castle. The plague was not a disease that would profit the medical profession, for there seemed to be no cure and much risk. In Cambridge, three physicians had already perished, including the master of medicine from Peterhouse and Thomas Exton, who had proclaimed that praying in the churches would deliver people.
The plague seemed to bring with it unending rain. Bartholomew trudged through the muddy streets constantly wet and in a daze of exhaustion, going from house to house to watch people die. He sent a note to Philippa urging her to stay in St Radegund's, and it was advice that all the nuns seemed to take, for none were seen ministering to the sick. The monks and friars at Barnwell and St Edmund's did their duty by administering last rites, and they too began to fall ill.
College life changed dramatically. The remaining students and teachers gathered together in the church to attend masses for the dead and to pray for deliverance, but there were looks of suspicion everywhere. Who had been in contact with the sick? Who might be the next to be struck down? The regular assembling for meals began to break down, and food was left in the hall for scholars to take back to their rooms to eat alone.
Bartholomew wondered whether unchanged rushes on the floors and discarded scraps of food in the scholars' rooms might be responsible for the sudden increase in the number of rats he saw around the College. Master Wilson withdrew completely, and remained in his room, occasionally leaning out of his window to shout orders.
Swynford left to stay with a relative in the country, and Alcote followed Wilson's lead, although Bartholomew occasionally saw him scuttling about in the dead of night, when everyone else was asleep. The three clerics did not shirk from their religious duties, and were tireless in burying the dead and giving last rites.
Abigny made Bartholomew move out of their room and sleep on the pallet bed in his storeroom.
'Nothing personal, Matt,' he said, his face covered with the hem of his gown as he spoke, 'but you are a dangerous man to know since you frequent the homes of the sick. And anyway, you would not wish me to visit Philippa if I had been near the Death.'
Bartholomew was too tired to argue. Master Wilson had tried to isolate the College so that no one could enter. There were plenty of supplies in the storeroom, he had called to the assembled College members from his window, and clean water in the well. They would be safe.
As if to belie his words, one of the students suddenly pitched to the ground. Bartholomew ran over, and noted the symptoms with despair. Wilson's shutters slammed abruptly, and the plan was not mentioned again.
College members began to die. Oddly, the old commoners who Bartholomew thought would be the first to succumb, because they were the weakest, were the last to become infected. The Frenchman Henri d'Evene died on the eve of his planned departure for France. He had been careful to touch nothing that might have been infected by plague bearers; he had drawn his own water from the well, and ate little from the kitchens. He bribed Alexander to let him use Swynford's room while he was gone, because the room faced north, and it was said that north-facing rooms were safe from the plague.
But, as the bell was ringing for Compline, Bartholomew heard a dreadful scream from d'Evene's quarters. He ran up the stairs and hammered on the door.
D'Evene opened it, his face white with terror. He was shirtless, and Bartholomew saw the swellings under his armpits, already turning black with the poisons within. He caught the young man as he swooned in his arms and laid him on the bed. D'Evene tossed and turned with a terrible fever for two days, Bartholomew tending him as much as he could, and died as dawn broke, writhing in agony.
Bartholomew had noticed that the swellings took two forms. If they were hard and dry, and emitted little putrescence when lanced, the patient might survive if he could withstand the fever and the pain. If they were soft, and contained a lot of fluid, the patient would invariably die, regardless of whether the swelling was lanced or not.
Bartholomew and Colet not only had to tend the sick, they had to oversee the removal of bodies from houses and streets. Both knew that if these were not removed as quickly as possible, the streets would become so unhealthy that people would die from other diseases.
The first few men who took on the unwholesome, but handsomely paid, task of removing the dead, quickly caught the plague and died, and it became more and more difficult to find people willing to take the risk.
Bartholomew, walking along the wharves one night after tending people in the rivermen's homes, heard shuffling and muttering at one of the small piers. Going to investigate, he found two dead-collectors dumping their load into the river so that they would not have to go to the cemetery in the dark.
Bartholomew watched the pathetic corpses bob off downstream as they were caught in the current.
'You have committed them to an unhallowed grave,' he whispered. The dead-collectors shuffled uneasily.
'And now their bodies might carry the Death to villages down the river.'