"John," he said, before his cousin could ask a single question, "it has come at last!"
"What has come?"
"The visitation -- the sickness -- the scourge of God. I knew that Father Paul was looking into the future when he pronounced the doom upon this land. It has come; it is amongst us now!"
"Not here -- not in this very place! We must have heard something of it had it been so nigh."
"It has not yet reached this town," answered Raymond, the same strange light shining in his eyes that John had observed there from his entrance. "Listen, and I will tell thee all I myself know. Thou knowest that I have been to Windsor, to meet my brother who is there. Him I found well and happy, brave as ever, knowing naught of this curse and scourge. But even as we talked together, there came a messenger from London in hot haste to see thy father, good John. He had been straight despatched by the King with a message of dire warning. A terrible sickness, which already men are calling by the name of Black Death, has broken out in the south and west of the land, and seems creeping eastward with these hot west winds that steadily blow. It attacks not only men, but beasts and cattle -- that is, it seems to be accompanied by a plague something similar in nature which attacks the beasts. Word has been passed on by the monks of what is happening far away, and already a great terror has seized upon many, and some are for flying the country, others for shutting themselves up in their houses and keeping great fires burning around them. The message to thy father was to have a care for the horses, and to buy no new ones that might by chance carry the seeds of the sickness within them. Men say that the people of London are very confident that they can keep the sickness away from entering their walls, by maintaining a careful guard upon the city gates. At Windsor, I left the town in a mighty fear, folks looking already askance at each other, as if afraid they were smitten with the deadly disease. The news of its appearance is passing from mouth to mouth faster than a horseman could spread the tidings. It had outridden me hither, and I thought perchance thou mightest have heard it ere I reached home."
"Nay, I have heard naught; but I would fain hear more now."
"I know little but what I have already told thee," answered Raymond. "Indeed, it is but little that there is to know at present. The disease seems to me somewhat to resemble that described by Lucretius as visiting Athens. Men sometimes suddenly fall down dead; or they are seized with violent shiverings, their hair bristling upon their heads. Sometimes it is like a consuming fire within, and they run raving mad to the nearest water, falling in perchance, and perishing by drowning, leaving their carcases to pollute the spring. But if it do not carry off the stricken person for some hours or days, black swellings are seen upon their bodies like huge black boils, and death follows rapidly, the victim often expiring in great agony. I have heard that the throat and lungs often become inflamed before the Black Death seizes its victim, and that in districts where the scourge has reached, any persons who appear to have about them even a common rheum are cast forth from their homes even by those nearest and dearest, for fear they are victims to the terrible scourge."
"Misfortune makes men cruel if it do not bind them closer together. Raymond, I see a purpose in thy face -- a purpose of which I would know the meaning. That light in thine eyes is not for nothing. Tell me all that is in thine heart. Methinks I divine it somewhat already."
"Belike thou dost, good John," answered Raymond, speaking very calmly and steadily, "for thou knowest the charge laid upon me by my spiritual Father. 'Fear not, be not dismayed. A thousand shall fall beside thee, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.' Such was the burden of his charge; and shall I shrink or falter when the hour I have waited and watched for all these years has come like a thief in the night? Good John, thou wast the first to teach me that there was a truer, deeper chivalry than that of the tourney or the battlefield. Thou wast the first to understand, and to make me understand, that the highest chivalry was that of our Lord Himself, when He laid down His life for sinners, and prayed for His enemies who pierced and nailed Him to the Cross. His words are ever words of mercy. Were He here with us today upon earth, where should we find Him now? Surely where the peril was greatest, where the need sorest, where the darkness, the terror, the distress blackest. And where He would be, were He with us here, is the place where those who would follow Him most faithfully should be found. Not all perchance; there be claims of kindred, ties of love that no man may lightly disregard: But none such ties bind me. I have but my brother to love, and he is out in the world -- he needs me not. I am free to go where the voice within calls me; and I go forth to-morrow."
"And whither goest thou?" asked John, in a low, awestruck tone.