Chapter 1: the Monk's Tale

Introduction

In the late Middle Ages the Black Death, the greatest and most deadly outbreak of infectious disease in history, ravaged Europe, eventually killing between one third and a half of the population.

The disease, which is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, was carried by fleas living on the rats that were found in ports and on board ships, and humans were infected by the bite of a flea. Transmission may also occur via the respiratory route in droplets containing bacteria emitted by infected individuals through coughing or sneezing.

The first cases of bubonic plague were seen in 1346 in the Genoan port of Caffa, in the Crimea, and the disease was carried to Europe on the merchant vessels plying their trade between Italy and the Black Sea ports. The first case was seen in England in June 1348 in the port of Weymouth, Dorset, in a sailor from Gascony. By autumn the disease had reached London, and the rest of the country by summer 1349, before dying down by December. It is estimated that in England alone more than 1.4 million people died in the space of a few months.

At the time the disease was generally called the Great Pestilence or the Great Mortality, and was not given the name by which it is known today until the seventeenth century. The disease received its name bubonic plague because of the appearance of swellings in the groin, neck and armpits, known as buboes, which oozed pus and blood when opened. The appearance of buboes was followed by fever, malaise and vomiting of blood, and 80% of victims died within two to seven days of being infected.

The Italian writer Boccaccio lived through the plague as it swept through the city of Florence in 1348, and the experience inspired him to write The Decameron, the story of seven men and three women who escape the disease by fleeing to a villa outside the city. This story is inspired by Boccaccio, and imagines a similar and equally diverse group of people in Yorkshire in 1349, and the tales they tell to amuse each other as they travel south in search of a new life.

Prologue

Cawood, April 24th in the year of grace 1349 - yesterday perchance I found myself in the great city of York, just three leagues from here. I was there with my wife Godgifu to attend the festivities attending on the feast of St George.Yesterday Sir Miles Stapleton, Lord of Bedale and Knight of the Garter - a new order of chivalry instituted last year under the banner of St George by our glorious king Edward III by the grace of God - was in attendance at the Minster to give thanks for his recent magnificent victories in the tourney.

As a true son of Yorkshire, I sought to combine business with pleasure, and after the service in the Minster I sought out Will, a timber merchant of my acquaintance, in the tavern of the White Hart, as I needed to order some wood for erection of stands for the Mayday celebrations in our village - I am a joiner and carpenter by trade, and also the village undertaker. While I was taking a pint or two of ale with Master Will, I overheard a man saying that he had been told that the first cases of the Great Pestilence had been seen in the great port of Kingston on the Humber. We received news last summer of how the pestilence had ravaged London and the South of the country, but we had prayed that we would be spared. This Sunday I must make an offering to the priest to pray for our salvation, God be feared.

Cawood, May 2nd in the year of grace 1349 - the celebrations went off well yesterday.Father Julian said mass in the church, and then we all sojourned to the tavern, while all the girls and boys of the village looked so sweet dancing round the maypole. A great beast was roasted on the village green for the feasting, and there was much laughter and carousing. Some of the older lads and lasses slipped away from time to time for a little merrymaking of their own - there are always a few more weddings than usual at Michaelmasstide, and February brings its crop of new babies.

By eventide everyone had feasted and drunk to their hearts content, some too much so - there would be a few sore heads in the morning I thought. We were all making ready to make out way to our beds, when a man rushed in to the inn in great alarm, and when he could catch his breath, blurted out that the pestilence was in York, and the priests were saying masses in the Minster for the deliverance of the city.

Cawood, May 5th. I am Godgifu, wife of that good man Oswine. My husband was taken sick yesterday with such terrible chills, and now he is burning with fever. This morning terrible swellings the size of an egg appeared in his armpit and groin. He is tossing about in the bed in his extremity, and I have been applying wet cloths to his forehead to soothe him but to no avail. I fear for his life, but I constantly pray to the Virgin that he be spared this terrible pestilence. I do not know what I will do if he dies, or where I will go, for I will certainly be put out on the street by the Squire, and I have no children to take me in.

Cawood, May 14th. I can no longer call on the name of the Lord, for he has surely forsaken us. What dire sin we have committed I know not, but we are cast into the darkness of hell, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. The priest has fled, and the village is strangely silent, no sound of good wives gossiping at their doors, or the happy laughter of children playing. I awoke two days ago to find my dear wife dead on the floor, lying in a pool of her own vomit and blood. The stench was terrible. I am still very weak, but I managed to crawl to the hearth, and filled my belly with cold potage and mouldy bread. I do not have the strength to bury my wife, so I covered her body with a blanket, and said a prayer for her soul, may God have mercy, for she was a good woman even though she couldn't give me any children to carry my name. Some people said I should have put her aside, but I loved her dearly, and that I would not do. I grieve for her, and such terrible loneliness afflicts my soul, but I no longer have tears to shed.

Cawood, 21st May. I have decided after much thought that I must leave my home and this village, and make my way to York. There is none other left alive here, and I have no future in this place. At least I have my trade to fall back on, for surely there will be work for a carpenter wherever there are people still alive, if only to make coffins for the dead. I have managed to find some food in the houses of my neighbours - it cannot be theft if one takes from the dead what they no longer have need of. Tomorrow I shall set out, carrying my tools and what money I have, to seek a better fortune in the world.

York, The White Hart, 23rd May. And so I find myself in a motley company, a ragbag collection of men - and a few women - survivors of the judgement of God, if there is a God, which I start to doubt. Some of us were fortunate not to be afflicted, but there are others, such as me, who have been through the fire, and come out alive, though not unscathed. None will ever forget the horrors we have seen, and we will all bear the scars until our mortal life's end. All have reported whole villages with not a single soul left alive. Strange to tell, this pestilence was no respecter of persons, men and women of high rank, and of none, were struck down. Nor did God protect his servants, priests and monks were taken, despite their piety and prayers, and it seems to me that prayers and sacrifices have been no protection against the Angel of Death. What point therefore in continuing in the old ways of obedience, when even the Church could not save its own?

We have been arguing since noon about what should be the best thing to do. There is no work here in the city, not even for those with a trade. Some have argued that it would be better to stay and wait for the return of the good times. Others, and I count myself among their number, believe that to wait on fortune is futile. It might be many months, even years before the true ordering of society is restored, and in the meantime we all need to earn our bread and board, if we are not to descend to the level of vagabonds and thieves, and take what we need. Tomorrow there will be more arguing, tempers will flare, and blood will be spilled - more deaths to add to the harvest of the Devil which has brought us to this pass. A small band have therefore taken a different council, and tomorrow will set out on a journey into the unknown, South to the heart of the kingdom. London will be their goal, for they have heard that its streets are paved with gold, and there is work for everyman. It is there that they go, to seek their fortunes, and to carve out a new future for themselves. So, without a backward glance I will go too, free from the ties of past allegiance and obligation, not with a light heart, for I have lost all that was dearest to me, but at least with hope.

Our Journey Begins

Tadcaster, The Kings Head, 24th May. We are a small band of adventurers, just twelve in number. What a strange fellowship we make, some tradesmen, such as myself, but our number includes a monk - or former monk, for he has cast off his habit and taken the garb of an ordinary man - a friar, cook, miller, and a pedlar of fancies, and three women, one the widow of a merchant, the other a bawd, whose whores either perished or fled, all except one who was with her, I forget the rest. All drawn together by circumstance, not a group you would normally expect to find travelling together. I'm afraid that we took a couple of palfreys from the stables for the widow and the bawd, who would otherwise have found the journey too arduous. Their owners were dead, so we gave the innkeeper a few crowns to take them off his hands. They would probably have gone to the knackers else, but it was much less than their true worth.