Chapter 20: Worry

(Will Archer narrates)

Another day draws to a conclusion, and still no deliveries from Alwen, and no message returned from Henry, usually so reliable in his work. Even if there is no ale fit to send, the fresh water sent on earlier carts was invaluable. I have the maids and cooks boiling more cauldrons than ever, so I avoid the kitchens like the ... well, I just don’t go there any more.

The plague is still raging through Riverside where I have confined the pestilence. There are still more and more deaths every day for its evil ravaging of body and mind, and sometimes I wonder whether I did the people of Riverside a disservice by insisting that any person who appeared well could be a carrier and I dared not let them roam, less they spread it throughout the county or the Kingdom. But there are far fewer people catching it in the other quarters, thus isolating it in Riverside. Even in the Castle, where so many were housed at the beginning of the outbreak, many of the initial sufferers are now recovering their strength, including Jake Moor and Robert my Castle lieutenant.

Neighbouring towns have sent us more fresh citrus fruits, after the marketeers, who called several days ago, have spread the word. It has cost much in boiled silver coin, but seeing the immediate relief such tinctures bring immediately they are administered, is indeed worth every penny.

I cannot help but take heart from the fact that even those families who were sick in the other three quarters of the town, isolated in their homes, have not spread the pestilence to their neighbours. It leads me to think that the poor built and tight packed tenements of the Riverside, with its swampy ground, would best be cleared of houses, of bone heaps and night soil pits, so only workshops and warehouses use it during the day, and more ditches dug down the middling paths to drain the land better.

But such thoughts are for the future, my mind returns to the present.

Do I dare to risk it, not just for my person but for all innocents who live in this county that I hold responsibility for the protection of, to venture forth to find out how my dear family fares? I am not sick yet, but who can guess how long this evil ferments in the body until its true purpose becomes apparent and emerges in the form of sickness?