Emeline took one deep breath. “I’m sorry for you, and for your wife,” she said softly, “but you should have warned me. I’ll say my own prayers for you and your wife and son. But now I must get back to my own family.”
There were five sticks, two at her back, one each side and one at her face. The tallest of the men shook his head again. “Tis the abbot’s orders, and the only way, he says, to stop the Great Mortality in its fury. God sends what punishment He will, and tis up to us to do the penance. Without us, there’s fathers will run off and leave their sons dying. There’s daughters will scream and hide, with no care for the mother left writhing in pain. Deadly fear it is, and must be controlled. All the folk of our village will stay where they belong, and that’s our orders. So you’ll come with us.”
They wouldn’t touch her, keeping their distance, nor stand close enough to breathe her breath, but they herded her with their long sticks as though she was a wayward goose wandering from the flock. Emeline felt the panic rise into her chest like great black wings. She stared, shrugging away the sticks, trying to step back. “You’ve no right. I’m not one of your villagers and I have no sickness. I met this man just moments ago, and barely touched him.”
“Barely touched?” one man answered. “Isn’t it enough to stand side by side? In our village there’s those as has touched no one, but only stood close in church. Father John, he took confession, nothing more, and on the other side of the screen, but was caught like a flea trapped in an armpit. We buried him two days gone, poor priest, and since then it’s the whole village is dying. We’ve bare one cottage or two without the wailing and the pain.”
“My brother died three days ago,” mumbled the fat one, “and now his son’s sick as a field mouse under the plough.”
One of the men glowered. “At first there was six of us told to keep the village shut up tight, with no one in and no one out. Then Blackie got sick. We buried him yesterday and now we’s only five. Me – I’m strong as an ox. But from us five, we’ll go, one by one. A merry dance, I reckon, waiting for Mister Death to come slipping under the door.”
Emeline started to speak but found she was crying so hard that none of her words made sense. She remembered what had happened to Nicholas and the haunting memory of his family’s tragedy, then how he had feared having caught the pestilence himself, what his decision had been, what he had insisted upon, and how finally it had been all right. With a freeze of ice down her back, finally she managed to ask, “How will I know – if I’m sick?”
“It’s the rash first,” said another, and pointed with his stick at the man crying, guttural and distraught at her side.
“First I have to explain to my family.” She wondered if she could escape, or if they would stop her and beat her, and if she could risk carrying possible death to Avice. Perhaps even to Nicholas. “At least if I can write a letter.”
The fat man sniggered. “And who gets to deliver it then, and where to, and who finds the paper and the pen?”
“But my mother is Baroness Wrotham and my husband – his father is the Earl of Chatwyn. I can’t just – disappear.”
They didn’t believe her. “And dressed like the queen herself as you are, mistress, with sweat and stains on your gown, and holes in your shoes.”
She was pushed forwards, three sticks hard to her back. “I’m simply travel worn – and was at the Fox and Pheasant –” but her voice trailed off. She whispered. “If I come with you, where will you put me?”
“With him.” The first man nodded, pointing again with his stick. “Or you sleeps in the monastery if they lets you. They won’t let none of the rest of us in, but with you not from our village – well, maybe the monks will take pity.”
The fifth man was frowning. “She ain’t from around here,” he said, scratching his head. “Her clothes says she’s no lady, but there’s no laundry maid wears a gown like that neither. If she ain’t touched no one, I reckon we let her go.”
“But if we let her go, she’ll tell all around and have half the countryside running in panic. I’m doing as the abbot says, and there’s no one will spread not sickness nor tales with me to stop them.”
Emeline could feel the chilly trickle of tears down her cheeks, and the tremble in her knees. She would not let herself fall and whispered, though only to herself, “I only wanted to help.”
“Which is what we’s doing the same,” the last man nodded, slow and apologetic. “’Tis a terrible death, mistress, and can have a whole county in their graves in a week. So we keep it close, we keep it quiet, we keep it in the village, and we keep the other folk safe.”
“I’ll carry the bucket and take water to the sick. But I don’t understand.” Emeline looked up, facing the first man. “How long have your people been dying? Have you sent for a doctor? How long is there between touching someone, and getting sick? I’m staying at the Fox and Pheasant and no one there knows anything of this.” And then she thought of old Bill lying sick and feverish, and once again her voice trailed off.
The man nodded. “The landlord and his missus, they knows. But they won’t say. They’d have no business left, with folk running for their lives. Best say nothing – and there’s not one soul yet has died there. It’s close as close all right, but close don’t mean touching. Like Restlebury Village not one mile away, yet not one man, woman nor child lies sick there. Which is why we’s keeping tight shut away – the sick stays at home and no spit nor snot spreads beyond our lanes. Nor doctor will come, for they knows there’s nort they can do ’cept sicken their selves.”
Another interrupted. “Old man Hammond went for the doctor when his daughter got sick. No one knew it were the pestilence. But the doctor never come. Was scared, he was, and right to be when he heard what the sickness sounded like.”
“Little Lizzy Hammond, she were the first, five days back, and dead not long after. Five days of shitting bloody hell.”
Emeline slapped his stick away. “They’ll have paper and ink to spare at the monastery. I have to write to my sister. And in the meantime, I’ll walk willingly, but not with your cudgels in my back or your threats in my face.”
The last man, still wavering and apologetic, muttered, “Then give us your name, lady, and I’ll take a message to the inn. If I tells the landlord, he’ll tell your sister. Can’t do no better than that. But first I must ask the abbot’s permission.”
Pallid and hesitant, the moon dipped behind clouds, and darkness shrouded the land. But they did not walk far. The first houses clustered around a green, but no window showed candlelight and no soul moved or opened their doors. Even the church bell remained silent. Across the square and beyond the thatched roofs and little brick chimneys, she could see the stretch of the monastery and its grounds. Nothing moved except the flutter of leaves.
The man beside her mumbled, “My house is here, lady. Will you come with me, even sick as we are, and help my wife as you said you would?”
“Dear God,” whispered Emeline, “must I invite my own end?”
The tall man following her, still keeping what distance he could between them, said, “It ain’t no choice, lady, for you’ll not carry the pestilence back to the Fox, nor spread death beyond our village. Maybe we’ll make sure a quiet message is took to the inn, but it’s here you’ll stay, and I reckon a roof over your head is better than just the wind and the stars above. At dawn, if you wants, we’ll move you to the monastery.”
It was little more than a croft, with a narrow flight of creaking steps leading from the one room below to the one room above. It was below where the woman lay on a straw pallet, tucked all around with two thin blankets, and the open fire flickering in sinking ashes close by her toes. The hearth was a stone slab with no chimney, so smoke filled the space and all the room seemed to swirl in a thick and dirty haze. There were shelves and stools and a small table with crooked legs, but they merged into the smoke like little shadows, barely real.