A Fragile Peace by Paul Bannister Read Free Book Online

outwardly adopt their faith so their soldiers would follow me against the Romans.
    It had worked, and we had inflicted enough damage on the legions in Gaul that the emperor had opted to leave us alone, but the gods had neither forgotten nor forgiven my treachery to them. Their wrath was to be seen on every street where putrid, shrouded bodies lay awaiting the death carts, in the open pits where lime-doused corpses were hastily tossed without ceremony and often, without even mourners because a whole family had died.
    I saw it in village after empty village: the silence would be broken by the lowing of byre-fast cattle needing to be milked, here and there lay the bodies of dead animals, swine, rats, and the pathetic wool bundles that once were sheep. All were stinking, fetid carcasses that even the carrion crows would not touch. Then would appear the unburied corpse of a man, lying where he had died, his body spot-blackened and bloodied, with great boils oozing stench and pestilence into the air.
    The habitations were silent, too, as survivors locked themselves away or fled their homes, and the dead, lying where they died, made no noise. The fields, orchards and gardens were untended and animals roamed among the abandoned crops.
    Nuns and friars were among the few who would care for the sick, and they, too, soon succumbed to the plague, emptying the monasteries and convents as even the caregivers died. In the prisons and town jails, almost all died – the plague swept through closed communities like a swamping wave and only very few could escape it once it entered within their walls.
    The fugitive travellers we saw on the roads stayed away from us, and twice we came across hamlets where armed men waved us away, threatening us with their weapons. At the second of those settlements, I saw where the villagers had set up a place several hundred paces from their homes where they left coins for outsiders to take in exchange for food. One or two brave souls recognised that we were a party of some authority and cautiously came to converse, to obtain news or advice. They told how the fever had come, with sneezing, spitting of blood, coughing and heavy sweating.
    “The victims told us of feeling weak, then of aches and chills, lord,” one said. “My neighbour, a smith, was a strong man but in a single day he went from strong to dead. His tongue was coated white, he had boils bigger than eggs on his body, great black and red boils in his groin and armpits, at his throat, too. He pissed black, and he stank foully.”
    For some, death took mere hours, for others, they suffered four long days of blistering pain and a madman’s ‘Dance of Death’ from the agonizing torment that preceded their last breath. Some depraved souls, infected with the plague, threatened to enter houses and contaminate those within unless bribed with money or sex to leave. A few used their last hours and fading strength to prepare for death, and the Christian clergy, at my request, authorized even laymen to hear each other’s confessions.
    On my travels around the kingdom, where I could I addressed the aldermen and jarls. “Find which communities have the plague, order those infected to be confined to their houses, and mark the doors to notify all that this is a plague house,” I commanded. “Shut up all those houses for at least five weeks, then burn all bedding and clothes of the plague victims. If an infected man has to tend his beasts or crops, he must avoid all contact with others.
    “Appoint watchmen to enforce these laws, and imprison any who break them. Designate a burial place for plague victims and only bury them after nightfall. Burn rosemary or juniper, sage, bay or frankincense to cleanse the air in houses. Carry burning herbs from room to room to purify each, and heat flint stones in a fire then drop them into a bucket of vinegar so the solution gives off purifying odours.” Floors and food preparation surfaces, I instructed, should be washed