Mask of Black Death

Plague years of London. Tragic true story of a new arrival in London.

        MASK OF BLACK DEATH.

When Paul came to the city he was only a lad of sixteen and had been born and bred in a village about twenty miles from the city. His childhood was not easy; being a son of a widowed mother, he did not have much schooling and had to rely upon the generosity of the local gentry and land owners for his survival. His mother hired herself on the day jobs working in the fields or as a domestic servant on meagre wages but Paul being a faithful and gentle child helped her mother to cope with her lonely joyless life.

 His mother though in her thirties only, was already looking like a withered old woman. Poverty, hunger and intensity of cold of that period had broken her body and the loneliness of a dull life had taken its toll upon her mind. Paul often watched her grumbling and talking to herself. He pitied her and resolved to do something when he grows up; hoping to help her to lead a relatively easy life. He planned to go to the big city one day to find decent work. Being a clever boy, he picked some reading and writing at home and learnt to do simple sums too.

 One day while accompanying his mother to work in the fields, he found young lass in the company of his mother’s friend and a fellow worker. Looking at her in his first glance, he found a heaven in her tender looking face and fell in love with her immediately. The lass recognised something unusual in receiving admiring looks from a boy and liked it. Paul and Laura found a mutual attraction for each other and a sort of emotional bond in mutual.

 ***

Paul has been in the city for few months now. It was a crowded, dirty place and full of wretched people. But still people thronged to this metropolis in the hope of finding some work, better than being in the countryside starving and at the mercies of squires or landowners or so called gentry; who just treated them like galley slaves- some farm animals put to harness to fulfil their own fancies. True the surroundings in the city were oppressive and at times he wanted to run away to his native village but when he pondered over the matter he realised that it was just like jumping out of frying pan into the fire and he decided to stay put.

 The town was foul smelling and unsanitary. There was not much of draining system and people threw dirty water from upstairs windows down to pavement and it did not mattered whether there were pedestrians below or not. Street were narrow and dark like sewers and when it rained there were pools of water accumulations and mixed with rubbish from the household; made it doubly stinking and suffocating to the inhabitants.

Still people had to have a hovel for living in but the land was spare and very costly as to build new houses. So illegal ram shackled buildings and houses began to mushroom all over the place and civic authorities were unable to control the spreading sprawls of poor habitations all over the place especially in the central area. In spite of demolishing orders from the authorities, these temporary dwellings became a permanent fixture of the city. These were divided and subdivided to increase rental yield ands in such a hovel Paul found a refuge at last.

 At the top of the society were the royalty connected people. Rich gentry and the gentlemen not so rich came next. The yeoman, farmers with plenty of land in the country came third. The lowest level was occupied by craftsmen, day labourers, vagabonds, thieves and unemployed

 

He was living near Saldgate midway between the church and the Redchappel. Firstly he hated the area and its neighbouring districts but slowly got used to it. He had to find some sort of employment and found a job as meat porter in the City garden meat market. When the delivery cart came in, full of animal carcasses it was his job to carry them on his back across the street to the storage depot where he was working. He had to start work very early in the morning when it was hardly day light to late evening. When he was not carrying those corpses, he was engaged in cutting them to different portions for supply to shops and eateries. The job was smelly, back breaking and disgusting; a living all the time with dead animals. Still there was no occasion to moan as he was lucky to have even a job to go to.

 Though his wages were low, he resolved to save something to help his mother to alleviate pain and suffering of his mother by providing her with some extra cash, to buy her a novelty which she always wanted but could never afford and he never forgot that.  Also he remembered Laura whose love had gone under his skin. He wanted to be near her and made plan to call her to the city and eventually marry her and live together with her. For this he needed some bigger accommodation.

It seemed amazing but he managed to save some money and gave to her mother and next thing he wanted to do was to have Laura by his side. He felt utterly alone in the big city and a close companionship of someone would do wonder to his life and morale. He spoke of to his mother and she seemed to be pleased with what he had in mind. He went to see Laura’s father, her mother being dead and he did not raise any objection to it. The couple’s plan was to get engaged and live for a while together until he had saved enough for the marriage expenditure.

One day she arrived to his two roomed rundown cottage but it did not bother them as they found a heaven in each other’s arms.

 

 

****

 

There was sadness, a blankness, pain and suffering on every face. There were screams of women and children from every window, for people already dead in the house or dying. In early days of plague, it shook the passer-by’s but now people had become immune to commonality of such occurrences and their screams and sufferings were in vain like a cry in the wilderness and no one even bothered to listen to it.

When the people came out into the streets, instead of walking on the payments, they walked in the middle of the street in case they rubbed accidentally against the people coming out of their houses and infected them with deadly pest. There were no newspapers, radios or other media to spread the news around and people from infected area acted as a sort of reporters but were heavily influenced with their own emotional reactions to dread and hopelessness.

In an autumnal morning, he set out to work. Normally at that time in the morning the streets  were deserted and not many, horses , carriages or people milled around , but he  was astounded with great amount of all these going around  and on enquiring he was told .

‘Don’t you know there are fears of a great plague visiting the city and thousands of people are going to die? It has come from Holland where it is rampart and a Dutch sailor has died in the docks and his mates and other people around have fallen sick. Soon it will be spread all over the city.’

Rich people or who could afford it were leaving the city en- mass, some in horse driven carriages, on horseback  with their luggage and essentials all loaded up with their servants either accompanying them in ram shackled carriages  or following them on foot. Some had their luggage pushed on hand cart and were moving away. There was a dreaded air of silence as if everybody was afraid to speak and only the metallic sound of horses’ hoofs was heard.

 

All around there was a pall of dejection and the spirits were down and it affected the nerves of everybody and headaches or painful body ensued brought on by the fears of the pest. When she woke Laura felt unwell, Paul wanted to stay home but she assured him that she will be all right in his absence. With heavy heart he went to work but could not concentrate on and came early to his home.

His world collapsed when he found a swelling in armpit of Laura, his head began to spin as he detected the suspicion of the deadly thing. The swelling began to get larger and began to spread all over the body, she began to scream and began to suffer delirium but somehow managed to sleep but in the morning it was worse, she could hardly remember who she was. She started screaming and kept falling from her bed.

He tried to muffle her screams lest the plague guards hear it and seal the house closed and then nobody could enter or leave it - even put a red cross on the outside as a marked house, infected with deadly pest.

Laura took to bed but a heavy delirium set in her mind and she began to fall from the bed onto floor repeatedly, without even realizing it. Paul watched her beloved woman suffering so much pain but could not do anything about it .Tears was trickling down his eyes and he wanted to scream in order to lessen his pain. Imagine how it would have been for Laura suffering from pain and disorientation. Her speech was affected and body temperatures rose affecting her nerves and brain. She took to stumbling movement in her gate across the room.

 During the night it was a hellish time .Laura’s body was changing fast, instead of her pleasant appearance, it was being changed to a ghoulish appearance with her skin darkening, with red lumpy boils appearing all over the body. The infection had caused gangrene of flesh and the disease was fast attacking her lungs and heart. Her screams of pain combined with gasping suffocating breaths were enough to drive Paul beyond the bounds of sanity.

 He wanted to escape from that overwhelming grief and did not matter as to how. Laura was breathing her last breaths and there was nothing further to do inside the house. He jumped from the back window and started running through deadly lanes of the city. The Plague guard saw him escaping and followed him as he neared the pit where all the dead bodies were piled up on top of each other. The stench from the rotten flesh was overwhelming and he stood at the edge of that precipice.

 The guard came behind and gave him a mighty whack across his head, cracking his skull. The mighty blow brought blood pouring across his face; he stumbled and fell into that stinking flesh of dead corpses.

Durlabh Singh© 2016.