The Archer's Apprentice

The ailment affected a number of the army archery sections I was in. But early on, a wise old archer sergeant swore to me that he had always avoided the bad humours by covering up his nose and mouth, and doing the self same to those who were ill with the ague.

He may have sworn by it, but in my experience it was only partially effective. I believe it was because man is naturally cantankerous and wilful, and will remove anything if in discomfort, even when under pain of a whipping, thus passing the ailment on, unless they be vigorous in sheathing mouth and nose.

We had ridden together most of the day, without stopping at inns, and skirting villages where there were alternative paths that allowed us to miss the centres of population. Dick laughed at my deliberations, even through his mask, pointing out that he had simply ridden through them on his way to catch us at Wellock, without a thought that he might be carrying the infection to the innocent.

He was soon exhausted. Although he had stopped and slept by the roadside the previous night, because the road was unknown to him, he really had no idea how far away from Wellock he actually was. In fact he was only a couple of leagues away, and had barely wiped the sleep from his eyes or worked up a sweat to warm his chilled bones before he met with Robin, shortly after the arrival of dawn.

Poor Dick was almost asleep on his horse by late in the afternoon, before he felt too sick to ride on any more and couldn't go on. He was giddy and faint, having carried an ache in his head for a while, he admitted, and we had found over the past league that he had to stop frequently, both through vomiting and vile shitting. I was worried for him, he was shivering so with chills, yet burning up to the touch. We were running low on water, with scarce a chance to stop anywhere to fill up. We gave up travelling together as he was slowing me down too much. I made him comfortable by the side of the road, with a tree at his back and my dagger for protection. I left him with the only skin of water remaining and covered his fever-shivering body by my thick woollen cloak.

As soon as I arrive at the Castle, I send off three fit men of the night guard to fetch Dick back in a two-wheeled cart.

I find I am desperate in need of sleep too, but cannot rest before finding out the lie of the land with this evil affliction and discover how mighty a foe it will be to combat. Jack Moore, my clerk, who I had given licence by signed instruction to take care of the county in my temporary leave of absence, is himself laid low by the sickness, his throat inflamed and voice so croaky that he can barely talk above a breathy whisper.

About his tiny chamber in the cold stone Castle hangs a thick fug of bad air, his fire in the grate so hot that it burns the very air we need to breathe. I open up the shutters on his window, to let that bad air out and the fresh air in. He immediately complains of the draught with hacking coughs, which cheers me up somewhat. I have long learned that his complaints are often plentiful and inventive, and usually of long duration, so I take heart that he has not given up hope of surviving and may well be on the mend.

In my office I carefully read Jack's meticulous notes by the guttering candle light, I too having opened the shutters to let the cool evening air circulate around me. He logs, in an increasingly hasty hand, lists of who fell sick on each day and what street they lived in, and whether they grew well or faded and died. So far no-one had gotten well in the six days since the illness first started.

I do not know everyone in the town, but I know the rows of streets in it well enough. Those near the river on the west side of town were most affected, while those on the hill in the north east the least.

Those few hill dwellers that were sick, including one old tailor who had died, Jack had noted that they were vendors who had their workshops or market stalls on the edge of Riverside.

I wonder, does the illness travel upon or within the water? If the sickness was in the air, as most of us are led by physicians to believe, why does it not rise to the top of the hill to make more of those people fall ill?

I give this quandary much thought and come to one conclusion, though I have no idea if it is be right one or not. I am pleased that my thoughts lead to action though, as action is always preferred by me. Simply surrendering to any enemy, even one impossible to see by eye, has never ever occurred to me before and cannot be countenanced now.

Anyone who has glass covering a window knows that when you get up close to look out through it, your exhaled breath rests wetly upon the inside of the glass.

Both my office and bedchamber are thickly glazed, as my predecessor Sir Giles was famed for favouring his comfort. So it occurs to me that maybe the bad humours live like dandelion seeds or other similar feather light seeds, but not floating in the air, but within the droplets of water that the sick breathe out, particularly violently through coughing and sneezing.

I have noticed before that even those near invisible vapours can be seen swirling in the shafts of sunlight. Do those tiny drops carry the seeds of man's destruction, I wonder?

I immediately rouse the kitchen staff and cleaners, though they have only been abed a few hours at most.

"There's no time to lose," I tell them, urging immediate action that could save their friends and families, and save them in time, too.

"Fetch fresh well water," I urge, "buckets and buckets of it. Feed the cooking fires with lumber. Fill cauldrons with water and balance every pot over the flames and boil the water therein until it bubbles and steams. Pour that broiled water into barrels, close cover to seal from the air, and leave to cool.

"From today," I bellow so that no man or woman who serves me and the Crown can sleep through and say they didn't hear or fully understand my orders, before I send the kitchen hands off to their labours, "we will drink only cooled boiled water."

I gather up other maids and servants, "Clean by washing all the spare bed linen and tear off into strips for us to wear masks to cover our noses and mouths. Make enough masks for all, both fit and sick, and carry on making more than we need, so they can be changed every day. Wash down every surface with matured lye and wood ash, thoroughly mixed with boiling water. Rinse them off with clean boiled water. Then change and wash all the bed linen in turn, starting with the sick, then the fit and well, and when you're done washing all the linen, start again. I want all bed linen and bed clothes washed every day."

They mutter, they moan, but they do as they are directed.

Eventually, I retire to sleep, but not before I hear that Dick is fetched back safe from where I left him and tucked up in a fresh bed with plenty of water to drink and a pail aside in case of further flux. They return my dagger to me too.

Though abed at last, I lie here frustrated, worrying about the Castle and town. I lie awake, unrested. During my absence, all the sick had been brought into the Castle, in order to contain it there, we not seeing any need for a pest house outside the town before. Jack had thought this the best thing to do at the time, but the number of sufferers outgrew the space within, and were soon too many to cope with. So many sick were still scattered through the various quarters of the town, unmonitored and unnursed.

The plague that has visited the town is unlike anything I have ever seen, with parts of other sicknesses all rolled into one plague. Starting with headaches, then sneezing fit to rattle teeth, then suffering sore throats before coughing up pus from the lungs. Physically, the sick cannot keep anything down, and what does go through them comes out like slurry.

At its height, sick people's noses are running like streams, everyone has headaches and many have limbs they can barely lift, leaving them drained, their muscles almost completely worthless. And they were dying from this ailment, a dozen gone already, mostly young children and old men and women. Five more died in the two days since Dick Eastwall was sent to find me and bring me back.

Some more measures have to be done to stop the spread of this evil, and only I can order whatever measure is needed. But do I really know what I must do?

If only Father Andrew were here. He is the wisest man I know. Maybe he gets his wisdom from Almighty God, and that is no doubt who he would attribute if asked, but I know it is because he lived a full life as a man, a soldier, a traveller and adventurer, long before he found God. I am sure if God went looking for him it must have taken two thirds of a lifetime to track him down!

But I cannot send for him, this sickness has killed men twenty years younger than he. And a messenger to Oaklea may well strike the death nell for that village and all, one in particular, who I hold dear within it.

I rise, though still dark. Everywhere in the Castle, torches burn, fires rage under suspended cauldrons, in the kitchens, the halls and every space in the courtyard. Steam is everywhere. I mount guards to close the north and south town gates, to prevent people coming and going, in a bid to prevent further spread of these venomous humours into the countryside. Jack Moore had done the same thing but, since abed, his orders have suffered neglect.

I send out teams of cleaners, wearing their new face masks, into the town, to scrub surfaces and keep houses of the sick warm, using hot water for the washing of walls, floors, doors and linen. And report back on the sick. The firewood stored by woodcutters in their own yards is seized in the name of the King and used to keep all the fires going. The woodcutters who are fit enough to work are urged to gather more from the surrounding woods, their efforts paid for with coins from the tax collections, boiled bright and clean and safe.

I post pickets along Main Street, with the Riverside on the west side, where the sickness appears to be concentrated. Thus we are keeping that quarter separate from North Borough, Hill Borough, and The Easting, where the sickness is light and sporadic.

One bright spark in all this hell is brought to me this morning. Mistress Burnham, who bakes pies and fell ill among the earliest, seems to have recovered from her racking cough, which almost carried her off to the cemetery. She has her appetite back, I am told, but still her limbs ache too much to move. So I think I will let her tarry on another day or two before she is sent off to attend to her pies.

Now I must sit and wait for the sickness to run its course, before I will be free to see my beloved Alwen again.

I wonder how Robin and his friends are getting on without me, would they have reached Rosemont before it got dark?

7.

Help

(Lady Alwen Archer of Oaklea, pregnant wife of Will Archer, narrates)

Hearing news that Bartown is locked up in isolation from its surroundings has me worried about both of the important people in my life. I am concerned for my husband, lately summonsed from his leave of absence and about to be shut into a town with a silent killer for a bedfellow, if he has not already returned.

I worry also for my dear brother and son Robin, so keen in the practice of his archery, that surely Will would allow him to proceed with his tour, rather than face the risk of catching the sickness in town. But Robin will be alone, with only Henry to care for him and, big as Henry is, he cannot take the place of my William Archer.

I speak to Father Andrew several times during the day. He is a comfort as the only one who understands this business. Thrice I toiled up that hill, and once he came down to me, sitting in my brew house sampling the goods while I worked upon the newest brew!

It helps to keep busy during the day.

I meet with Allyce, the wife of my new estate steward Geoffrey, and her young child. They are settling in. She is so grateful for this chance of a new life, and she loves her cottage already. To me it is small, one room downstairs and two upstairs. The walls are timber framed with wattle and daub and lime plaster on top, with waxed cow hide windows. The roof is thick bundled straw but we are gradually replacing the straw with oak tiles held with wooden pegs, as in other homes on the manor. Meanwhile, the smithy and bow workshops are slate. Allyce tells me that their last home was made of straw bales stacked one on top of the other and only one room high. There were no windows, and fitted with a simple sloping roof covered with a thin layer of straw that let the rain in!

I am so lucky, to have been born and brought up in a well founded and well run inn. We were always comfortable, with lots of paying guests coming and going, so we were rarely short of food and drink. When my mother died and my father sank into a stupor over what he had done to us, it was as if I had to play Mother to both my father and baby Robin. I was still only a child myself. I had no time to go weak with grief over the loss of my mother or my dearest baby Alice. I had no time to worry about anything. I had a sick father and a poor baby brother, born so early in his hatching, that he was tiny, too tiny to survive, the midwives said. But my milk was in for poor Alice, so I was determined that my husband's son survived.

And look at him now!

I had been aware that my mother had run the household side of the business on a rigorous routine of breakfast, clean, wash, lunch, dry and iron, dinner and clean up. We had a lot of maids and cooks and cleaners, a cooper for the brew house and men to look after the horses, and re-shoe them as necessary. The brewing she did once a week, in what is now my much extended brew house at the back. Everyone said she made the best ale in the area. Even other ale wives would ask her the secrets and the recipes, but she would never tell.

When she taught me her recipes, she said it was two simple things, the quality of the well water and cleanliness of the brew house, so the ale wouldn't spoil too soon before it was coopered and sold. I made mistakes at first, but I stuck to her routine and I stopped making mistakes, I honed my skills. My mother taught me to read, write and reckon numbers, to know the price of everything, work out the waste and add a margin; to do the books every day and see that no one cheats you, because they will if they can.

I laugh at some of my thoughts. And those thoughts always go back to my William. He taught me an early lesson of trust, that not everyone cheats and takes from the weak, not everyone.

I never told Mother that Will gave me the six pence in silver coin that he was paid to wed me. He stood there at the wedding in the doorway outside the church. He was tall and strong, his thick black hair too tight and curly to put even a comb through its natural unruliness. He took my tiny hands in both his and gently stroked the back of my hands with his thumbs.

Father Andrew said words in blessing, but his presence really wasn't needed, there was just the two of us, boy and girl. I could hear and feel him breathe. I looked up and he looked down, with a small smile on his face. I heard the slight gasp in his voice as he really looked at me for the first time.

I, too, had only taken peeks at him when he thought no one was looking at him. He leaned forward and I hesitated. I had seen weddings before and there was always a kiss, always. I was with child, the child of a nameless brute, but I had never been kissed by any man other than my family. And now William was my family, though I knew he would be snatched away from me to live the life he had chosen. I prayed that he would take me with him, I prayed that he would stay. I prayed that if he left, he would return.

Our lips touched gently for just a moment and I felt a shockrunning through me from head to toe, like you get rubbing silver and leather together vigorously. And while I was still in shock over our kiss, during which we both kept our eyes on each other, not willing to misswitness our joining. Will had pressed something into my hand, during the kiss, which I automatically clutched to my chest, but then William Archer, my bridegroom, my life, was gone.

And gone, I thought then, for good, perhaps until we met again in Paradise. I looked at what he had pressed into my hand on my wedding day, a small linen pouch containing six pennies. It was his payment for the favour, I later discovered from my mother, but he left it all to me, "for a rainy day", he whispered.

I wore that little pouch around my neck until it started to fray and fall apart, so I strengthened it with a layer of fresh cloth, and relined it, so the original linen was completely enclosed and safe, next to my heart. Since Will's return, the pouch and its treasure had resided in my linen chest.

Now William is in danger, I wear that pouh of pennies again next to my heart.

I sit on a stool outside Geoffrey and Allyce's new home, while she sweeps the dust out of the door. She is exchanging words of praise with me for this or that feature, then disappearing inside again, singing like a fresh-freed linnet, before emerging into the warm sunshine again, her face all asmile. I can see that Allyce is with child, their third born to add to their active toddler and serious new scholar in Father Andrew's youngest grammar class.

Geoffrey didn't mention his wife's condition earlier, I suppose he didn't want to sound as though he was overly desperate to be part of our manor. The more I see of this young couple, the more certain I am that we have made the right choice. Ha! I say "we" but that is because Will had heard of Geoffrey through his regular rounds of the manors in the county, but he left the final decision to me, believing I would get it right. Allyce's joyous singing from inside the cottage makes me smile again.

I am like that too, wanting to sing, but the last day has been a strain. I was like that the first time too. I sang, all the while my first baby grew, my own Alice. I wore my bag of silver coins around my neck, to keep it close to my heart, for my comfort all the time Will was gone. Now, it is around my neck once again until Will returns, as a talisman so that I know that he will return to me, that only God and fatal illness will stop him.

But, I cannot simply exist on thoughts, I must do deeds too, by way of action. It is Bartown market day upon the morrow, and I have my work cut out in the brew house. My brewers are coopering the ales that are going out on both the roads out of the village. I cut back on brewery orders to other customers by half or three quarters, to more than double the ale deliveries to Bartown, three full carts instead of two carts but a quarter empty.

I remember all to well that when the inn's single well failed, many years since, Oaklea folk soon fell sick. And it was from drinking the stream water that used to feed the old mill, burned down when the marauders hit us, the Lord of the Manor never replacing it. We suffered a month or so before the Jew, Jacob came to stay in our Inn, bringing his girl Rebecca. We were suspicious at first, but Father Andrew pulled us into accepting that the Jews worshipped the same God we did, but in a different way, their way. Jacob questioned my father and me about the well, took measurements and within a month we had three new wells. After the new deeper wells were put in, there has been no sickness. Good water makes the best ale.

So, now, in their greatest need, I send ale to Bartown, to replace the bad water.

8.

Hold the fort

(Will Archer narrates)

I have put the shire town of Bartown under Martial Law today. This morning, just before dawn, a baker and his family attempted to row across the river, which is still in full spring flood from the distant hills. They were caught by my guards and stopped. They did it, they said, to escape the pestilence.