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

by Evelyn Everett-Green

"It is the hand of the Lord," he said, "and perchance He smites in mercy as well as in wrath, delivering men from the evil to come. Let us arise and go hence. Our work is for the living and not the dead."

For those three to have attempted to bury all that hamlet would have been an absolute impossibility. Dreadful as was the thought of turning away and leaving the place as it was, it was hopeless to do otherwise, and possibly in the town men might be found able and willing to come out and inter the corpses in one common grave.

With hearts full of awe, the two lads followed their conductor. He had been through similar scenes in other lands. To him there was nothing new in sights such as this. Even the sense of personal peril, little as he had ever regarded it, had long since passed away. But it was something altogether new to Raymond and his companion; and though they had seen death in many terrible forms upon the battlefield, it had never inspired the same feelings of horror and awe. It was impossible to forget that they might at any moment be breathing into their lungs the same deadly poison which was carrying off multitudes on every side, and although there was no conscious fear for themselves in the thought, it could not but fill them with a quickened perception of the uncertainty of life and the unreality of things terrestrial.

In perfect silence the walk towards the little town was accomplished; and as they neared it terrible sights began to reveal themselves even along the roadside. Plainly indeed to be seen were evidences of attempted flight from the plague-stricken place; and no doubt many had made good their escape, but others had fallen down by the wayside in a dying state, and these dead or dying sufferers were the first tokens observed by the travellers of the condition of the town.

Not all were dead, though most were plainly hopeless cases. Raymond and Roger had both learned something during the hours of the previous night, when they had helped the good Brothers over their tasks; and they fearlessly knelt beside the poor creatures, moistening their parched lips, answering their feeble, moaning plaints, and summoning to the side of the dying the Father, who could hear the feeble confession of sin, and pronounce the longed-for absolution to the departing soul.

Passing still onwards -- for they could not linger long, and little enough could be done for these dying sufferers, all past hope -- they reached the streets of the town itself; and the first sight which greeted their eyes was the figure of a man stripped naked to the waist, his back bleeding from the blows he kept on inflicting upon himself with the thick, knotted cord he held in his hands, a heavy and rough piece of iron being affixed to the end to make the blows more severe. From the waist downwards he was clothed with sackcloth, and as he rushed about the streets shrieking and castigating himself, he called aloud on the people to repent of their sins, and to flee from the wrath of God that was falling upon the whole nation.

Yet, though many dead and dying were lying in the streets about him, and though cries and groans from many houses told that the destroyer was at work there, this Flagellant (as these maniacs, of which at that time there were only too many abroad, were called) never attempted to touch one of them, though he ran almost over their prostrate bodies, and had apparently no fear of the contagion. There were very few people abroad in the streets, and such as were sound kept their faces covered with cloths steeped in vinegar or some other pungent mixture, and walked gingerly in the middle of the road, as if afraid to approach either the houses on each side or the other persons walking in the streets.

A cart was going about, with two evil-looking men in it, who lifted in such of the dead as they found lying by the roadside, and coolly divested them of anything of any value which they chanced to have upon them before conveying them to the great pit just outside which had been dug to receive the victims of the plague.

A wild panic had seized upon the place. Most of the influential inhabitants had fled. There was no rule or order or oversight observed, and the priest of the church, who until this day had kept a certain watch over his flock, and had gone about encouraging and cheering the people, had himself been stricken down with the fell malady, and no one knew whether he were now living or dead.

As the Father passed by, people rushed out from many doors to implore him to come to this house or the other, to administer the last rites to some one dying within. There were other houses marked with a red cross on the doors, which had been for many days closed by the town authorities, until these had themselves fled, being assured that no person could live in that polluted air. What had become of the wretched beings thus shut up, when the watchers who were told off to guard them had fled in terror, it was hard to imagine; and whilst the Father responded to the calls of those who required spiritual assistance at the last dread hour, Raymond beckoned to Roger to follow him in his visitation to those places where the distemper had first showed itself, and where people had hoped to confine it by closing the houses and letting none go forth.