Dirtnap - The Black Death Pt. 01

A great darkness was stirring. There was something on the wind. Something in the sounds of voices.

Fear. Superstition. Greed. Jealousy. It made no difference. In men and women, God fearing or skeptic, a malignant darkness was rising, stretching, sharpening it's claws.

Pestilence, drought, earthquakes, and flooding. Overpopulation and war.

The world was set like a great bonfire, and already the tinder smoldered everywhere. And then a new flame rose in the East, and trails of fire coursed Westward.

The Black Death raced from body to body. Village to village. Town to town. City to city.

And as an inferno of horror blanketed the world, the darkness grinned and licked it's chops.

* * *

Dire predictions had become somewhat redundant. Those who were not too busy dying or tending to the dying were waiting for the next dramatic step in the apocalypse. A rain of fire. The appearance of the devil or God perhaps. Each night there were those who placed their wagers on the world ending before dawn -- for the momentary satisfaction to be had in the event they were vindicated, one assumed.

Oblivious, physics kept the world spinning, as usual. And the sun stayed where it was, but seemed to rise, as usual.

Yellow-orange light poured across the land. It would soon burn away the thin fog hanging over the road to London, but for now it seemed to give the mists a phantasmal life of their own.

John Postlethwait strode through the ghostly pall, with a walking stick in one hand and his leather satchel of tools in the other. He had taken to the road in the wee dark hours of the morning, while the city was still quiet save for the occasional howls of stray mutts, which came less often than they once had done. He wore the full regalia of a plague doctor, even the mask, despite planning to retire from the unpleasant occupation upon reaching Denburry. The past four years administering what passed for medicine to the rapidly diminishing population had taken a toll on him.

Still, wearing the beaked mask and black linens gave him space and some security. Those peasants who were not yet afflicted would generally avoid him like... well, like the plague. Even brigands and thieves didn't think twice about bothering him -- once being sufficient.

From the fog up ahead came the measured clanking of bells. A rider walking his mount or, more likely, someone leading a pack animal. Still a ways off...

So it came as a surprise when a ragged, filthy figure stumbled out of the fog to accost him.

The figure's clothes were torn and stained with dirt, grass, and what John's practiced eye recognized as dried blood. From behind matted grey hair, eyes bulged wide with a tired desperation that rode close to madness, and for a moment John feared the wretch might attack him. Instead, the hoary fellow staggered, reaching forth with grubby, groping hands.

Clank... clunk.

"Oh, thank God. M'lord, please, my son. I fear he's dying."

John drew back before the man could catch his sleeve.

"Fool! I travel on noble business," he lied indignantly, "Stand aside."

Clank... clunk.

The man groveled pitifully, as only those whose suffering has drowned the capacity for shame or pride can do. He fell to one knee, weeping without tears and beginning to babble. Again he leaned forward, reaching.

John turned side-on and thrust down with the butt of his walking stick in the manner of one pinning trout with a spear. Unbalanced, the man went over onto his side in the dirt and weeds of the track. Dew dampened his clothes and provided to one cheek a few crystal clear tears.

Heedless of the pain blossoming in his ribs, the poor soul struggled back to his knees. Scrabbling about, he snatched at the hem of John's cloak as the doctor stepped around him to carry on walking.

Clank... clunk.

"It's only a short ways. Off the road to the North, after the-"

John turned and there was a hard, vibrating tok as the end of his staff met the man's head. Without so much as a grunt, the man crumpled and sprawled like a ragdoll. Looking down at him, John was breathing harder than he had a good reason to. Surreptitiously straightening his cloak, he turned away, pretending not to notice the slow rivulet of blood seeping from the man's ear.

Clank... clunk.

John started, almost walking straight into the oncoming traffic. A mule, laden with packs and bedroll and a rather expensive looking wooden trunk. The beast halted with it's nose scarcely a foot away, so that John had to tip his beaked head down to regard it.

He immediately wished he hadn't. The mule rolled it's eyes up to return his gaze, for all the world as if it knew exactly where his eyes were despite the mask. There was something speculative in it's manner, and John wanted to be far away from it. Or a lot more than a foot, at least.

When the mule lazily twitched an ear, it seemed to break a spell. Glancing around, John was all at once unsure how long he had been standing there. Then the visual center of his brain jabbed him in the cerebral ribs and said 'Where's the beast's owner?'

Whether the creeping sensation along his spine started just before or in response to the voice, John would never be sure.

"You'll find Caesar has a thicker skull... and no respect for the nobility."

The voice was right behind him.

* * *

Robert 'Big Rob' Wimbly leaned over the rail and emptied a bucket of slop into the pig pen. He leaned on the fence and watched as the animals began eating. He grumbled.

"I'd give ye more but we'll be sharin' the booket w'ye soon enough as it is. Eh, well, to say true, we'll be puttin' one'a you on the spit afore that. That's us fed and one less for the rest of you to share with."

Clank... clunk.

Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Rob looked up. There was a figure on the road. One of those bloody bleeders, all in black with the beaky mask. Headed into the city, leading a mule. Big Rob spat.

One could make a lot of slops out of a lanky bird like him, Rob thought.

Before he could pursue the thought, Constance (the old sow he called by his mother-in-law's name -- when his wife wasn't around, anyway) threw herself down and wallowed as if practicing for a competition. Slop and mud spattered the big farmer. Cursing, he lumbered off to fetch a rag.

Clank... clunk.

Further along, a man stood at the roadside, leaning on a wooden spade. Behind him, in a small grassy lot, a grave was being dug. An oversized grave, meant to hold several bodies. Either that or the draftsman had gotten the measurements confused on the plans of a new well.

Every few seconds, a clump of clay cleared the edge of the hole, adding to an existing mound. The rhythm broke off as the party in the hole addressed anyone in a half-mile radius who might be listening - regarding the current division of labor. Specifically about his dissatisfaction with same.

The fellow leaning on his spade seemed not to notice. He carried on watching the plague doctor and his mule until he could see only their backsides. Raising a hand, he cleared his nostrils onto the road before taking up his spade and turning.

Clank... clunk.

As the doctor carried on walking, the smell of smoke, carrying some other odor, gradually overpowered the herbs stuffing the beak of his mask. The fog had burned away, but now the light dimmed as if the edge of a storm front were rolling up from the city. The thin blanket of darkness causing the gloom hung too low to be clouds.

Several times, at high points on the road, where his view was largely unobstructed, he had seen trails of smoke rising from various points further on. Up to now, the hovels and farmhouses and stables had been interspersed with sparse fields of drought choked crops, empty pastures, and narrow tracts of woodland. But now the walls of the city proper could be seen. And, outside the gate, the cause of the smell and the veil of smoke.

On either side of the road, a short walk from the gate, massive pyres burned. A few bits of detritus in the vicinity told a short, sad story. Not long ago, beggars and fugitives had squatted in ramshackle structures along the wall. In the squalor, they lived more or less on equal terms with the vermin of the city. Before anyone had entertained the notion that the rats might have anything to do with the spread of plague, the squatters had sickened and dropped like hothouse orchids in an arctic wind. Their makeshift shelters were then unceremoniously toppled and dragged into heaps to serve as the foundations of the pyres. Onto which the dead were then placed.

More bodies were carted out daily.

The mule's ears twitched and it voiced a weak, halfhearted bray as it passed between the fires.

"It's only going to get worse, I'm afraid." The doctor sympathized without looking round.

* * *

The sun was high in the sky when John Postlethwait came-to.

This was far from being the first thing he noticed, however. He was slow, in fact, to notice anything beyond the pulsing pain in his head that came with each beat of his heart. An attempt to rub his temples brought new pains to his attention. The throbbing in his head suddenly shared the spotlight with aching shoulders and elbow joints.

John groaned, and his throat rasped like sandpaper. There was a moment when the idea that he had been clubbed and subsequently run over by a cart seemed a real possibility.

Finally he cracked his eyelids, and the risen sun seized his attention. Inadvertently looking directly into the sun meant that what mostly seized his attention was a stabbing pain in his eyes that seemed to reach straight back into his already painful head. Laying with a hand over his eyes and moving as little as he possibly could proved too appealing an option to pass up.

Eventually, mercifully, the pain eased up. At which point John registered a sensation other than pain. It was a sensation of the decidedly drafty variety.

Lingering aches and pains temporarily forgotten, John sat up sharply, eyes snapping open. Someone had stripped him down to his short breeches and undershirt. Casting about, he saw no sign of his clothes, mask, hat, or walking stick. He still wore his boots, but the laces were missing.

It was not being a good day. He was not given a lot of time to dwell on the sentiment, nor to consider what he ought to do about it. Movement up the road had turned out to be a man on horseback. The somber fellow's surcoat suggested he was a squire or otherwise sworn to a knight or lord. At second glance, he was riding in advance of a further small group of riders. One of the latter bore a standard from which flapped a pennant.

Bugger.

They might ride on by, ignoring John completely. Knights and Lords were good at ignoring smallfolk. It came with the title. Like money, bad teeth, or the unthinking surety that one was always right.

On the other hand, the bastards might thrash him with a riding crop, feather him with arrows, or simply ride him down. Any excuse would do, especially the way things were going now, but boredom was not uncommonly the only true reason. With this in mind, John did a few very practical calculations and came up with: one road plus one John plus one nobleman's party added up to plus or minus one unpleasant ending to a bad day. Whereas, R + J + N (-J) resulted in... well, chalk the day up as a loss regardless, but at least he wouldn't end it wearing hoof prints.

This was a field of maths that even the most poorly educated peasant tended to manage at considerable speed, and two heartbeats after spotting the riders, John was legging it away from the road, bound for a copse of poplars.

In his haste, he failed to notice the short, crude cross planted in the ground forty or fifty feet off. It was made from a polished piece of wood that had been snapped. Tied with leather laces. It stood at the head of a patch of disturbed earth.

* * *

The city had it's high points. It is generally agreed that containing a lot of people is a hallmark of a city, and London still boasted somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 souls, give or take. In 1349 this certainly qualified. Although it must be said that mere months ago the number had been closer to 70,000.

The Renaissance would wait for the plague to mostly burn itself out before turning up. It would be rather a good deal later than that when indoor plumbing would catch on. It is possible that of all the contemporary cities of the world, London was top of the heap in terms of something positive. In 1349, however, with people emptying their chamber pots into the streets and alleys, it was a definite contender for the title of city most likely to be compared to an open latrine.

There were those in the city who were more thoroughly inured to those unfortunate circumstances than others. Butchers, gong fermors, and barber-surgeons, for instance. But no other soul could boast the same impenetrable indifference to the foul and fetid features of the city as the unforgettable, but hopefully avoidable personage of Dick the rat catcher.

Dick was a walking encyclopedia of ailments. His nose ran constantly when it wasn't congested or scabbed over. His eyes sometimes ran when they weren't swollen shut. His ears probably should have run, but owing to some evil confluence of conditions, they instead harbored plugs of wax which were doubtless culturing like fine blue cheese.

Hair grew all over him, but everywhere it grew in irregular patches, through hardscrabble dandruff. He suffered arthritis in his ankles, water in his knees, grinding shoulder, and pre-tennis elbows. Paint would bubble and peel in close proximity to his feet -- even through his boots.

Dick's mouth was, thankfully, a small orifice, and mostly obscured by his wirebrush mustaches. When he would pause to cough and hawk, which was often enough, bets would be taken on what color the spit would be.

It was generally agreed that the most amazing thing about Dick was that he was, in fact, walking at all. As such, it was accepted that he was able to pass closely amongst the human and animal denizens of the festering city without contracting the plague. He was simply too crowded and inhospitable for even the Great Mortality to squeeze aboard.

Dick passed the new plague doctor on his way back from the city wall on Broad Street, heading across Threadneedle on his way to Bridge Street. One plague doctor more or less meant little to Dick. He knew his place, and it was in the muck. Anyone with Doctor in their title moved in strata far above. Most people with or without a title, for that matter. But he did make a mental note to find out where the new arrival would be boarding so that he could make a respectful inquiry.

Some of these doctors used all manner of oddities in their medical practices. If you were willing to use the term medical very loosely. He could, and had, made an extra penny procuring said oddities, provided he always kept a couple of arm's length distance and stood downwind. Mostly he'd arranged to leave the goods in question outside a door, and knock -- whereupon the agreed to sum would be slid out under, or tossed out through a cracked door.

The normal order of things having deteriorated of late, there was little business to be had as a rat catcher. Not that there were not so many rats -- but paying a professional to deal with them was no longer anywhere on anyone's list of priorities. And there were rumors that giving charity to able-bodied beggars might soon be officially outlawed. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Dick had a suspicion that he would be categorized as able-bodied in the event he resorted to begging.

Perhaps he could take up a social service endeavor. Something like what old Harry the Leper had done before the wild dogs got him. Dick remembered it fondly. Harry used to sit in the market with a sign, charging a groat to remove his mask. Then he had charged a ha'penny to put it back on.

* * *

While John Postlethwait legged it off the road somewhere North of the city walls, the man who now wore his mask and coats was finally obtaining directions to a likely landlord.

The information came from a tall, spindly woman on the other side of middle-aged. Times being what they were, this meant somewhere around 40. She wore her grey hair pulled so tightly into a bun that it did unusual and vaguely disturbing things to the wrinkles which made up most of her face. Initially she greeted him with the critical look which certain women reserve for everything that fails to have whiskers, claws, and approximately nine lives.

"To whom might one speak about lodgings here in the city?" he asked.

"You might speak to anyone as cares to listen -- if you don't care what comes of it." she replied sharply.

They stood there in silence for a few breaths.

Finally the man spoke again.

"Forgive me. I am called Felix. I come from Northern Hereford to help treat the afflicted."

"More fool you," the woman glowered, "But as long as you're here, you might visit the Bridge and speak to the mayor or one of his minions. Contrarywise, you might visit the parish clerks. If you've silver to hand, you might just pick an emptied house and move in. A landlord will find you sooner or later, I shouldn't doubt. That's assuming you're not afeared of filling rooms the plague has emptied."

"I see," Felix acknowledged, "Thank you-"

"Or..." she interrupted slowly, "if you're truly for helping the afflicted, you might go over to Cordwainer Street and call at Rubbery Hall."

"Rubbery...?"

"Lord Rubbery." the woman grated, for all the world as if it should mean something.

Felix tipped his head on one side in an unwittingly corvine movement.

"Lord Ash Rubbery. He lives over to Cordwainer. Queer sort. They say he's turned half the Hall into an infirmary."

"And he lives there?" Felix posed with some incredulity.

"Queer sort. I said. Go look for yourself. Can't miss the place. There's a great shining herring over the door."

Felix forbore asking about the last bit, lest he find that that way lay madness.

"I have eggs need coddling," the woman turned toward a nearby doorstep, "go away now."

Nodding, Felix twitched the lead, and with Caesar in tow he plodded down Threadneedle Street. Despite his already bleak expectations, the state of the city still managed to impress.

The man leading the mule wore a name taken off a dead man, the boots off another, and the mask from a third, merely bruised and concussed, man. In his time he had enjoyed, or at least survived, more than his fair share of travel. Hailing from somewhere East of Constantinople, he had come West in a meandering course which turned sometimes North and sometimes South, but always West. And from a Northward jaunt to Norway, finally West by merchant ship, stocked with fish and blubber, to the rainy isle of England.

In the course of these travels he had passed muddy, failing hamlets. He had camped outside squalid villages, rather than pressing in amongst the fleas, lice, flies, and worst of all, the humans hosting them. There had even been a few cities wherein the stables or stockyards were preferable to the local room and board purportedly intended for humans.

But none of them was a match in his mind for the corpulent titan of wretchedness that was London. He passed peasants on his way, still going about their business with a quiet dread, in their eyes. None strayed very close to him, but he nonetheless learned something about their reactions to the threat posed by the plague. He learned it despite the herbs stuffed in the beak of his mask.

On the one hand were the folk who had taken to washing themselves assiduously, some adorning themselves with herbs, flowers, or perfumes. The vendors of garlic, ginger, pepper, or moderately affordable scents would still be enjoying steady business.