In the Days of Chivalry: A Tale of the Times of the Black Prince

by Evelyn Everett-Green

"And since your purpose is to go forth with me tomorrow, you must now take some of that rest without which youthful frames cannot long dispense. Since early dawn you have been travelling and working at tasks of a nature to which you are little used. Come with me, therefore, and pass the remaining hours of the night in sleep. I will arouse you for our office of early mass, and then we will forth together. Till then sleep fearlessly and well. Sleep will best fit you for what you will see and hear tomorrow."

So saying, the Father led them into a narrow cell where a couple of pallet beds had been placed, and where some slices of brown bread and a pitcher of spring water were likewise standing.

"Our fare is plain, but it is wholesome. Eat and drink, my sons, and sleep in peace. Wake not nor rise until I come to you again."

The lads were indeed tired enough, though they had scarcely known it in the strange excitement of the journey, and amid the terrible scenes of death and sickness which they had witnessed around and about the Monastery doors since their arrival there. Now, however, that they had received the command to rest and sleep (and to gainsay the Father's commands was a thing that would never have entered their minds), they were willing enough to obey, and had hardly laid themselves down before they fell into a deep slumber, from which neither awoke until the light of day had long been shining upon the world, and the Father stood beside them bidding them rise and follow him.

In a few minutes their simple toilet and ablutions had been performed, and they made their way along the familiar passage to the chapel, from whence a low sound of chanting began to arise. There were not many of the Brothers present at the early service, most of them being engaged in tending the plague-stricken guests beneath their roof. But the Father was performing the office of the mass, and when he had himself partaken of the Sacrament, he signed to the two boys, who were about to go forth with him into scenes of greater peril than any they had witnessed heretofore, to come and receive it likewise.

The service over, and some simple refreshment partaken of, the youths prepared for their day's toil, scarce knowing what they would be like to see, but resolved to follow Father Paul wherever he went, anxious only to accomplish successfully such work as he should find for them to do.

Each had a certain burden to carry with him -- some of the cordials that had been found to give most relief in cases of utter collapse and exhaustion, a few simple medicaments and outward applications thought to be of some use in allaying the pain of those terrible black swellings from which the sickness took its significant name, and some simply-prepared food for the sufferers, who were often like to perish from inanition even before the plague had done its worst. For stricken persons, or those supposed to be stricken, were often turned out of their homes even by their nearest relatives, and forced to wander about homeless and starving, none taking pity upon their misery, until the poison in their blood did its fatal work, and they dropped down to die.

That loosening of the bands of nature and affection in times of deadly sickness has always been one of the most terrible features of the outbreaks of the plague when it has visited either this or other lands. There are some forms of peril that bind men closer and closer together, and that bring into bond of friendship even those who have been before estranged; and terrible though these perils may be, there is always a deep sense of underlying consolation in the closer drawing of the bond of brotherhood. But when the scourge of deadly sickness has passed over the land, the effect has almost always been to slacken this tie; the inherent love of life, natural to human beings, turning to an almost incredible selfishness, and inducing men to abandon their nearest and dearest in the hour of peril, leaving them, if stricken, to die alone, or turning them, sick to death though they might be, away from their doors, to perish untended and without shelter. True, there were many bright exceptions to such a code of barbarity, and devoted men and women arose by the score to strive to ameliorate the condition of the sufferers; but for all that, one of the most terrible features of the period of death and desolation was that of the fearful panic it everywhere produced, and the inhuman neglect and cruelty with which the early sufferers were treated by the very persons who, perhaps only a few days or even hours later, had themselves caught the contagion, and were lying dead or dying in the homes from which they had ejected their own kith and kin before.

Of the fearful havoc wrought in England by this scourge of the Black Death many readers of history are scarcely aware. Whole districts were actually and entirely depopulated, not a living creature of any kind being left sometimes within a radius of many miles; and at the lowest computation made by historians, it is believed that not less than one-half of the entire population perished during the outbreak.

But of anything like the magnitude of such a calamity no person at this time had any conception, and little indeed was Raymond prepared for the sights that he was this day to look upon.