Philip Ziegler - The Black Death

But as Blakwater was richer than Preston Stautney, so the villeins of Blakwater were richer than the free tenants with the solitary exception of the miller who somehow contrived to unite independence with affluence. Their poverty was a source of constant chagrin to the freeholders, but, since the Bishop clearly intended that they should do no better while he remained their lord, they saw little hope of remedying the position.

Finally, on the fringe of the village, a ramshackle hovel provided shelter of a sort for poor Mad Meg; deformed from birth, shunned by her contemporaries and now grown crazed in squalid loneliness. Some said that she was a witch and the children used to enjoy chanting rude slogans outside her hut but nobody seriously believed that she could make successful mischief.

In spite of its position nearly two hours walk from the highway, Blakwater was by no means cut off from the outside world. Down the little track came every kind of pedlar and huckster, free labourers looking for a new home, quack doctors, pardoners and friars, travelling shoemakers, the occasional minstrel, and seamen or voyagers taking a short cut across country to or from the Hampshire coast. It was one of these last who told the villagers that a dreadful plague was raging on the continent of Europe. He had not actually seen anything of it himself, nor indeed met anyone who had, but in Bordeaux, which he had lately visited, the port had been buzzing with horrific stories. The villagers were not particularly impressed. Where was this plague then? In Italy. And where was Italy? Rome they had heard of but the sailor did not know whether it was in Rome or not. ‘Poor folk,’ they muttered perfunctorily, and let the matter slip from their minds.

A few weeks later – it must have been in March or April 1348 – they heard the same story again. This time it came from one of the serfs at Preston Stautney, a man who had accompanied his master to the war and was now on his way home. He too had not seen anything himself but he claimed actually to have spoken to a Franciscan friar who had been in Avignon a few weeks after the plague arrived. He told of whole families wiped out, of pits filled with dead, of black clouds of lethal smoke destroying all who smelled or even saw it, of men erect and healthy at one moment and dying in agony at the next. Again the villagers nodded their heads sadly. England might not be paradise but at least it was a safer and better place than those unknown and dangerous countries across the sea.

It was not till the beginning of September that a report came that the plague had crossed the Channel and there were now victims on English soil. The news still made surprisingly little impression on the villagers. A plague in Dorset seemed to have little more relevance to their lives than in France or Italy. The harvest was in full swing and the only thing that really mattered was that they should get in the lord’s wheat in time to deal with their own before it rained. Any other consideration would have to wait. And when the harvest was safely in and they had time to concentrate on the news they still saw little to discomfit them. The plague was now said to be moving away towards the west. It was ridiculous to suppose that the Bishop would let it get any closer to his diocese.

Then came that Sunday in October when the parson mounted even more slowly than usual to his pulpit and, in a voice that he seemed to control with difficulty, told the congregation that he had received a letter in Latin from the Bishop and was now going to read a translation of it. ‘A voice in Rama has been heard…’ began the message, and went on to tell of the horrors which the plague had inflicted on people all over the world. The villagers shuffled their feet and looked furtively at one another. What were they supposed to do about it? ‘…this cruel plague’, the parson read on, ‘as we have heard, has already begun to afflict the various coasts of the realm of England. We are struck by the greatest fear lest, which God forbid, the fell disease ravage any part of our city and diocese…’

Roger Tyler drew in his breath and gave a look of shocked dismay at his wife and children beside him. Could it be then that the threat was real; that this dreadful thing could happen here in Blakwater? The parson droned on about psalms and penances but Roger barely listened. His mind was filled with a sense of dawning horror, a fear of something unknown and awful yet, in a curious way, painfully familiar. Perhaps, without realizing it, he had for several months been preparing himself for the news which had now arrived. He felt suddenly cold and pulled his tunic closer around him with a half-unconscious gesture.

It might have been the fact that the parson was speaking in church so that no one could argue or ask questions which made the whole thing seem more fearful. Somehow it was not quite as bad when he talked it over with his friends in the churchyard after the service. The Bishop didn’t say that the plague was coming, merely that it might. Evidently he believed that the saying of penances might avert the danger – well, the villagers could say plenty of those. After all, a plague was something which happened in big cities, not peaceful country villages. Probably, too, there was a lot of nonsense being talked about its severity. Everyone knew how exaggerated reports of this kind could be.

So the villagers comforted one another and, on the whole, they did it well. There was unusual activity around the church for a week or two but after a time even this began to flag and things went on much as before. The Bishop sent the parson another letter but he had nothing new to say. He wanted them all to pray, of course. Well, that was what Bishops were for and they would do as he said, but they were not going to panic because a lot of foreigners were dying at the other side of the country. They questioned avidly any new arrival at the village but the plague never reached any place of which they had heard.

Then, a week before Christmas, a pedlar stumbled into the village with the eager gloom of one who has bad news to break and means to make the most of it. He had been travelling to Winchester, he said, and had just reached the point where the track to Blakwater met the highway when he saw a group of men and women riding furiously in the other direction. Two or three of them were people of distinction, the rest servants. One of the servants stopped near him to adjust the baggage on his horse and the pedlar asked him what the hurry was. They were fleeing from the plague, was the answer. Hundreds were dying every day in Winchester, the graveyards were overflowing, there was fighting in the streets. He galloped off after his master, leaving the pedlar to look after himself as best he could.

There was no easy comfort now for the villagers. If the plague was in Winchester today then it might be in Blakwater tomorrow. The parson organized all the men of the village into a barefoot procession, carrying crosses and singing psalms. They marched around the village and ended up in the churchyard. But, as the parson privately admitted to Roger, he did it more to keep the people busy than in the hope that it would do much good. If God had decided that his people must be punished he was not likely to be deflected from his purpose at this late hour. ‘If it must come, it must come,’ he concluded gloomily, looking down the track that led to Winchester. Roger looked too; but what he was looking for he did not know: a sick man, perhaps – or the spectre of Death riding on a black horse?

The villagers were in an odd mood all that week. There was a strange, febrile gaiety. Everyone laughed and joked a lot and avoided talking about the dread that was uppermost in their minds. The village was always a friendly place but there was now an unusual sense of comradeship. People spontaneously helped each other; even Mad Meg was treated with unusual respect. The twelve days of Christmas were observed with all the usual jollification: more than usual, indeed, since everyone except the children was behaving as if he was acting a part and, like every amateur actor, was badly over-playing it. There was some suggestion that the steward should cancel the traditional dinner for the tenants on Christmas night; ‘At Christmas we banket, the rich with the poor,’ as Thomas Tusser was later to put it. But the outcry was immediate and the dinner was held with all its usual bawdy fun and the election of a lord of Misrule.