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To bring some joy into my story posts moving towards the Black Death: I commissioned the wonderful @artist-ellen to draw a younger, more historical version of Benjamin and Malika and look how beautiful it turned out!
Previously / Legacy Tag
Transcript below:
Windenburg Military Hospital, 1943
1349 – Day 4 – Pelham Townhome
While the earl’s family is mourning his loss and Maud is preparing Philippa for what is to come – namely, her marriage, although it will be in name only for quite a few years – life continues elsewhere in Praaven. As he promised his son Bertrand, Peter Pelham has taken custody of his two young grandsons, Roger and Emil. There is no one else to properly look after them – save Geneviève Stirling, all their maternal family is dead, and she is hardly more than a child herself, married or not. There is Catherine de Bellefaye, he supposes, the widow of Elisaria Chevalier’s nephew, but that woman has her hands full with her own children.
Frankly, Peter is glad to have charge of the boys. His wife Maria, the boys’ grandmother, passed away during the plague, and Betrand was their only child. Caring for his grandsons gives him purpose.
Peter Pelham has led an indolent life, supported by his father’s well-paid position with the earl and the generous dowry his mother (Edith Crawley) brought into the marriage. He studied law at Oxford for a time, but since his return to Praaven, he has done little with the learning he acquired. Now that his grandson, who served as the earl’s steward, is gone, he has taken up that position, but a worse time for that one couldn’t imagine.
Comforting his grandsons is easier. They still haven’t quite accepted the death of their father – how could they, at seven and six? They’re terribly young to have lost both of their parents. Watcher knows what would have become of them had the plague taken Peter as well.
Roger especially is angry and distant, but as long as the boy isn’t disrespectful, Peter lets him be. Children at that age are often sullen, and Roger has more reason for his irritability than most. Emil, though, clings to him, always asking for attention and stories. Peter even takes to reading to him in the evenings. It distracts him from how empty the house feels, and if he can do the boy a kindness at the same time, all the better.
Previous: 1349, Day 4, Part 2/7 <--> Next: 1349, Day 4, Part 4/7
1348 – Day 1 – Elbenhawke Hall
The illness that takes Amelia Pelham comes on quick. One morning, she is as sprightly as a spring morning, and the next, she is complaining about aches and running a fever that has her return to bed as soon as she tries to get out of it.
This rapid decline in health is certainly concerning, but not bad enough for the rest of the family to fear for her just yet. Most of them have survived worse, and with the attentive care of her attendants and physician, they all hope that the illness will abate as quickly as it came. And initially, this seems justified – she gets worse at first, even delirious at times, and ails for a few days, but after that, her fever eases and she seems to improve. Her maids are with her the entire time, and even the baroness herself spends day and night with her to try to nurse her back to health.
And then, one morning, David is awakened by a grave-faced maid, who lowers her gaze and tells him that Mistress Amelia must have passed in the night. “I am so sorry, sir”, she says, trembling. “I was so sure that the tisane I made her would help, but I must have followed her ladyship’s instructions wrong, or…”
David, blank-faced, waves her words away and runs to his wife’s quarters himself, but what he sees only confirms the girl’s words. His wife of nearly thirteen years, the lively, opinionated, but always passionate Amelia lies on the bed still and pale, her face drawn after the long days of illness and blue around the lips.
For a while, he can just stand there motionless, uncomprehending. A few days ago, everything was fine, and now his wife is just…gone? It’s inconceivable. No, it’s wrong. It’s against the natural order of things.
But wrong or not, it’s the truth. Death is like that sometimes, sudden and cruel. Watcher knows, after losing most of his children, two wives and a sister, David has reason enough to know that. That still doesn’t make it easier to tell the children – Georgina, Charles and Eustace most of all, but Morgana too – that Amelia is gone, or to make the proper arrangements, or to watch her be interred in the family crypt. The days that pass make the truth sink in a little more, but even as he stands before his wife’s tomb, David still feels a little…wooden. As if some crucial part of him had been carried off with her.
He’s sure Amelia would love that. Theirs wasn’t even a love match, and yet, he finds it very difficult to imagine life without her, force of nature that she was.
In all their grief, the family hardly notices how Lady Elbenhawke does her utmost to stay in the background of every ritual they do, from the vigil to the burial. The only one to speak to her about how quiet she is is her husband, but he attributes it to exhaustion, or melancholy – after all, she cared for her good-sister for days, and it was all for nothing. Of course she would be in low spirits.
“It’s not your fault”, he tells her once, when they are alone. “You did what you could.”
She says nothing to that, only lowers her gaze as if words fail her. It’s not a lie, exactly. After all, how could she explain to him that it eats at her, watching her good-brother and the children grieve, knowing that there is every chance that she is to blame for their mother’s death? Oh, the maid may blame herself, but she didn’t choose the wrong dosage of the herbs, even if Viviane made her believe she did.
No, the girl did just what she was supposed to, and Viviane’s good-sister is dead now because of that. It’s the dosage that makes the poison. Viviane’s mother always used to say that.
She watches Amelia’s family mourn as long as she can bear, but eventually, quietly, she slips away and walks slowly up the winding stairs and out into the garden. This deep into spring, the air is mild enough that its caress doesn’t bother her even without a cloak. And it’s blessedly quiet out here.
She wanders for a while before eventually dropping down on a stone bench, suddenly bone-tired. She supposes it’s the anxiety of the last few days finally taking its toll. Always fearing someone would grow wise to what she has done, that the maid would remember that she followed her instructions to the latter, that Viviane’s confusion when she disputed her measurements after the fact was play-acted. But over the last few years of masquerade, she’s apparently become too good an actress, or the girl was simply too distraught, unwilling to believe that her lady would deliberately mislead her. After all, which noblewoman of rank would know how to brew poisons?
Well. An earl’s daughter wouldn’t, perhaps. The daughter of a village healer, on the other hand…
Viviane looks up at the sky then, wondering if her mother might be looking at the same stars. Wondering what she would say about what she has done. She didn’t mean to, and now, days later, she tries to tell herself that it was the lack of sleep that drove her insane, or that it was a kindness with how much Amelia was suffering, or that she would have died anyway. But she knows those are only lies to make herself feel less wretched.
How can it be that she quite possibly ended the life of a woman she initially meant to save?
Because she did want to. She knows perfectly well that the other woman has misliked and mistrusted her for years, possibly since she first set foot in the manor, but she believes in justice and goodness enough to know that Amelia didn’t deserve to die for that.
But during the long hours of her vigil, as she cooled her good-sister’s brow and put poultices on her and did whatever else the physician prescribed, the knowledge that this woman was planning to take her safety away, take her son’s future, hammered ever louder in her head. David and Amelia might have believed that their argument on the day of James’ christening wasn’t overheard, but it was. And eventually, whispers had made their way to her.
People were doubting her. Still doubting her, even after she had finally given the baron a male heir, something neither of her predecessors managed.
It was so easy. A simple poison disguised as a remedy, easily explainable as a tragic, but bitterly regretted mistake. It should honestly frighten her how easily a life can be extinguished if only one has the proper knowledge. If she is fortunate, the gossiping servants might view this as a sign of the Watcher’s disfavour. After all, she and her son are alive, while Amelia and her daughters are dead.
The thought brings her no joy. All she can think of is what punishment may await her for what she has done. She can only hope that the Watcher will have mercy on her son, at least. It’s all she dares to pray for now.
Previous: 1348, Day 1, Part 3/6 <--> Next: 1348, Day 1, Part 5/6
1349 – Day 4 – Townsend Farm (2/2)
As Benjamin suggested, they approach the Bransons with their request as soon as they are able. Michael is far too young to be fed anything but a mother’s milk for a long stretch, and even getting him to ingest anything at all is a challenge. Listening to him cry from hunger is painful beyond belief. Especially because every minute of it deepens Hugh’s terrified conviction that he won’t survive.
They even take Michael along when they go to Mahlsberg to talk to their cousins. They need to see what dire straits the boy is in, and besides, he needs to be fed as soon as possible. Luckily, Benjamin proves correct in his assessment - Thomas’ wife Elizabeth takes one look at the boy and immediately decides to take him inside so she can nurse him, judging quite rightly that it is high time. This leaves Benjamin and Hugh to explain their wish to Thomas and Freddy, who are sympathetic, but unsure.
“You aren’t the only ones who lost people”, Freddy says. “I feel for you, Hugh, I really do, but there’s just me and Tom now to see to the fields. We need someone to keep house.”
Hugh almost cannot believe what he is hearing. “My son could die!” he yells, jarred out of his despondency by his righteous indignation. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
“Peace, Hugh.” His grandfather puts a comforting, restraining hand on his shoulder. He is weary, but still in control of himself. “What they are saying is perfectly understandable. How about this: young Elizabeth, if she is willing, comes to live with us for a while. In the meantime, we’ll send my granddaughter Gemma to you. That way, both of our households have what they need.”
Both Thomas and Freddy consider this. Truth be told, Thomas doesn’t relish the thought of having his wife and daughter live elsewhere, even if it’s only for a time. Who knows if he’ll even see them again if he sends them away now? Either of their households could be struck by this plague anew.
But he is also not a monster. He doesn’t want his cousin’s boy to die. And without Elizabeth, the baby surely will.
His father is less hesitant. After a few moments of thinking, he nods. “I think that would be acceptable. Your Gemma’s a capable girl.”
“If Elizabeth agrees to his”, Thomas interjects. His father waves him off.
“Why wouldn’t she? She couldn’t get her hands on that boy fast enough. She’s a woman. They’re bred for that sort of thing.”
Crudely put as the point is, Freddy is entirely correct. When Elizabeth hears of the plan, she agrees almost immediately. She may not like the thought of being separated from her husband any more than Thomas does, but she’s also keen to help. Ever since this plague began, she has felt powerless, but here, at last, is a chance for her to do good. Besides, the Townsends are wealthy for peasants. She’s sure she’ll eat well while she’s with them, and that, in turn, will be good for her daughter.
Besides, she and Thomas will be able to visit each other, dangerous as that is right now. The walk from the village to the farm isn’t that long. She tells Thomas as much, but he merely sighs. “As far as I’m concerned, it might as well be leagues, love. But I understand why you have to do this.”
And just like that, the matter is settled.
Gemma isn’t too enthused when she learns that she will be living with their Branson cousins for close to a year – until Michael is old enough to survive on something other than milk – and articulates that quite clearly when her grandfather and brother lay the matter before her. She’s of a mind to refuse, especially because she feels that they haven’t even deigned to give her safety one thought, but Hugh is adamant. This was the only way to make the Bransons agree to send Elizabeth to live with them, and without her, Michael will die. To his mind, there was no choice to be made at all.
Gemma crosses her arms. “Did it occur to you that you could simply give Michael to our cousins until he is old enough?”
“You honestly want me to send my two-month-old son away?” He jumps up, eyes blazing. “Are you insane? He and Hannah are all I have left of their mother!”
“So you sacrifice your sole remaining sister instead?”, she yells back.
“I’m not sacrificing anything, you’re just being dramatic!”
“Enough!” Unlike his grandchildren, Benjamin shouts only to make them turn towards him, and then restrains his voice. “Your brother is right, Gemma, at least in part. You’re no less safe in Mahlsberg than you are here. As should be evident.” He looks meaningfully at the empty chairs around the table. “Moreover, you’re the only one who can go. Hugh shouldn’t leave his children, Giles is too young, and I am needed here as well.”
“You could just give Michael to the Bransons for a few months”, Gemma repeats. “I realize it’d be difficult, but it’s not as if Hugh can’t visit him there.”
Before Hugh can start yelling at his sister again, Benjamin raises a hand. “The Bransons are serfs, Gemma”, he explains gently. “I doubt they have food enough that Elizabeth can nurse two children without one of them getting short shrift.”
“We have enough food stored”, Gemma insists obstinately. “We could share what we have with them.”
By all considerations, she is right. But the simple truth of the matter is, Benjamin doesn’t want either of his two great-grandchildren away from the farm, and he can tell by the desperate look in Hugh’s eyes that he couldn’t bear that, either. The last few years have been an up and down for the boy that must have taken its toll.
That doesn’t mean he wants Gemma to leave, of course. If it were up to him, he’d never let what is left of his family out of his sight again. But life is about making hard choices sometimes.
“The decision is already made, Gemma”, he says patiently. “Consider it practice for when you move into the household of your husband. You’ll have to accustom yourself to being on your own in another family then, too.”
Some complicated emotion flickers across Gemma’s face, and Benjamin can tell that she wants to argue further. But then, she shrugs and rises from the table. “If that is your wish, Grandfather, I’ll comply. Now then, I have to make sure the chickens are in the coop for the night. You can discuss the rest without me, I am sure.”
And then she stalks out, clearly upset, but Benjamin doesn’t follow her. She wanted to be treated like an adult? She has to learn what that entails.
Luckily, when they return to Mahlsberg the following day – they actually left Michael there overnight, which was painful enough for Hugh – Gemma doesn’t complain. She isn’t thrilled, but behaves courteously enough towards Thomas and Frederick. Then, they return to the farm with Elizabeth and the two infants. The girl seems a little unsure now that it is actually time to leave her marital home, but she faces it bravely.
Which is all anyone can ask of her.
As unbelievable as it seems after a calamity like the Great Mortality, the Townsends begin to put their lives together again, piece by piece. Not easily, of course; there are mornings where Hugh just lies in bed staring up at the ceiling, unable to will himself to move, until he hears his daughter call for him or baby Michael’s wails. His need to care for them is just about the only thing that keeps him afloat after the tragedy.
Giles, more than anything, is confused, and Benjamin feels old in a way he never has before.
But tragedies, even big ones, happen, and despite their terror of the plague returning, they can’t just sit around and wait for it to do so. Because if they’re wrong, and it doesn’t, and they let their fields fall into ruin, they’ll starve. Maybe not immediately, but come winter. With only Benjamin, Hugh and Giles left to do the work – Elizabeth has her hands full with the small children and the unfamiliar house – there is certainly no shortage of things to be done.
Elizabeth does her best to be helpful. She misses her husband and feels a little overawed at this big farm, but she quickly takes a liking to Michael and to Hugh’s darling little daughter. Her own Lucy is growing well, and she hopes that in time, the two girls can be friends. Hannah seems fascinated enough with peering into Lucy’s crib and even tries to prod her into playing with her. In truth, all of them are just trying to take one step after on the other, to focus on the next task so they don’t have to think about what happened. But as happens so often in human history, that turns out to be exactly the way forward.
Previous: 1349, Day 4, Part 4/7 <--> Next: 1349, Day 4, Part 6/7
1349 – Day 4 – Townsend Farm (1/2)
It is a great point of contention among the children of the Watcher whether their Lady is a good and kind and merciful deity, or instead one that is hard and unforgiving, meting out punishments because the world has become wicked. In actuality, She is not as all-powerful as the sims worshipping her would like to believe and frequently grieved at the misery she is forced to dole out. Sadly, there is little way to inform Her children of that, and, frankly, there would be little point to the exercise.
But the Watcher does have a certain room for action, and it is that which gives the Townsends their last respite before the plague makes its way into their household as well. Those last two months or so between it decimating Mahlsberg and the first symptoms in their own home are nerve-wrecking, but as weeks pass without any of them getting sick, they start to hope that maybe, just maybe, it will pass them by. In that time, Miriam and Hugh bond with their little son, Michael, and watch their daughter Hannah grow. All they pray for is that whatever happens, those two will be spared.
They’re not the only ones to try to pretend nothing is happening. Malcolm helps on the fields when he isn’t shut up in the workshop, trying to ignore the world beyond their farm’s gate. He feels as if he should be helping their neighbours somehow, but what is he supposed to do? None of them have any idea what caused this plague or how to stop it. Even the parson is at a loss now, and more or less saying that they need to let this run its course. That the Watcher has a plan. Malcolm, at least, does not find that idea comforting.
Sometimes, Giles wanders into his workshop to talk to him, or Margaret does, or Effie. Trying to coax him into a game of dominoes. At times, it even works.
Malika and Benjamin look upon their family with a mixture of concern and appreciation. They have not yet heard that they already lost one daughter – there are few travellers nowadays, and with them staying away from the village as much as possible, news takes longer than usual to reach them. Nor do they have any idea about the birth of their granddaughter Benedicta or Jacquetta’s death to childbed fever. But they pay great attention to the family they do have here, and try to take joy in them despite everything.
Gemma does her very best to be a shoulder to lean on in all of this, to take over household chores for her grandmother, to show that she can be just as mature and capable as a woman twice her tender fourteen years.
If it were possible to freeze time for them, the Watcher probably would. But that, sadly, is not how life works, and in the end, fate comes upon the Townsends as it has upon all their neighbours.
Malika is the first to complain about headaches, about pains in her limbs and of feeling thirsty and feverish. It doesn’t take long for them to spot the pustules on her neck – which soon grow into the buboes they saw on some of their neighbours. There are worse things later, open sores and violet splotches, but those first signs are enough to throw the entire household into disarray.
Benjamin staunchly refuses to leave his wife’s side when her fever takes a turn for the worse and she becomes too dizzy and weak to rise from her bed, nor to even entertain her pleas to take her to languish in the shed, where her presence will pose less threat to the rest of them.
“How are you supposed to recover in that drafty old thing?”, he responds sternly. It makes her smile sadly despite her weakness.
“Most people don’t recover from this, my love.”
“Maybe most people don’t. But you will.”
He stubbornly clings to that conviction. He can’t consider anything else. Malika’s been his wife since he was what, fourteen, fifteen? He’s known her since they were both children. There is no life for him without her. She’s been part of it for as long as he’s been on this earth, or nearly so. She has to get better, because he can’t let her go.
Instead, she gets worse by the hour, and she doesn’t remain the only one for long. Only days after her, Margaret begins to complain of feeling feverish, followed by Effie, then Miriam, and finally, Malcolm. The rest of them – Hugh, Benjamin himself, Gemma and young Giles – are hard-pressed to tend to them, see to Hugh’s son and daughter and feed themselves. They even neglect their livestock and field, but what are they supposed to do, with five people ailing?
If Benjamin is stoic in the face of his wife’s decline, Hugh is inconsolable. He simply refuses to believe Miriam is truly ill, until her weakness and the dark buboes marring her skin don’t leave him any other choice. How is this possible? She is so young. So strong. They were just starting their lives together. They have two young children who need their mother. Michael is only two months old.
He is so focused on his wife and children that Benjamin has to yell at him once to remind him that his sisters and father need attention to, that Gemma can’t take care of everything alone, and that if he wants to be man of the house one day, he needs to put his feelings aside. Hugh doesn’t like it, but he complies.
He can’t bear watching his beloved deteriorate, anyhow.
Malika, unsurprisingly, is the first to succumb to the fever or the pain or the frequent vomiting or whatever it is that eventually kills her. Gemma is beside her until the end; her every being is yelling at her to flee, that the black, stinking lumps, big as eggs, are a mark of evil influence, that she’ll be the next to die. She’s crying as her grandmother takes her last rattling breath. But she doesn’t flee and she doesn’t flinch, but simply calls for her grandfather and brothers. Her voice is so hoarse she barely recognizes it.
After Malika’s death, it takes only a few days for the rest of those afflicted to follow. Miriam and Malcolm hold out the longest, but only by two or three days. By the end of November, all of them – Malika, her son, both girls and Miriam – are dead, and the survivors are exhausted, grief-stricken and so overwhelmed by despair that it wouldn’t have taken much for them to lie down and die alongside them.
It’s probably the younger children that have Benjamin, Hugh and Gemma compose themselves enough to keep going. Giles at least grasps what is happening, but Hannah has been wailing intermittently for the past few days. She doesn’t understand why she can’t see her Mama, or what the moans and screams mean. And Michael? Feeding Michael has been a battle ever since Miriam first fell ill. Initially, Hugh simply carried him to her, because lack of sustenance would kill him just as surely as the plague, but now…
Now he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know anything anymore.
It would be charming to think that Benjamin and his grandchildren handle this situation rationally and with the pragmatism expected of someone growing up in a world where death is rampant. But even Benjamin has never experienced half his family dying at a stroke. Even the famine he witnessed in his youth wasn’t this devastating. He just lost his wife of more than forty years, his eldest son, two grandchildren, and his granddaughter-by-law. Even he feels as if the entire world has gone mad. What deity could want this? What does all of this mean?
And if this is the herald of the end of the world, does it even matter what they do next? Chances are, they are all going to die, anyway.
In the end, pragmatism wins out, but it is a near thing. They turn to practical matters – the funeral arrangements, how to ward off the plague from the rest of them, what to do about the chores and the crops. It feels hollow and senseless, but they cling to this slight sense of normalcy for dear life – nothing else makes sense enough to.
It doesn’t happen all at once, of course. Benjamin, despite the hole in his chest and his ever-renewed grief when he turns to his wife, meaning to ask her advice, only to remember that she is gone, finds it easiest to put that aside and act. For Giles, Gemma and especially Hugh, it’s harder. They’re young still; even Hugh, the eldest, is only seventeen.
Seventeen, a father of two, and now a widower.
The evening of his wife’s (and father’s) death, he breaks. Miriam’s body is still upstairs, as are Maggie’s, Effie’s and his father’s. Only Malika, who died days before the others, has been carried off to the churchyard for burial. And now that there are no more dying family members to care for, the whole enormity of the last fortnight descends upon him.
It’s mostly inarticulate sobbing into his grandfather’s shoulder while Benjamin struggles not to cry himself, but eventually, he manages a choked, but understandable ‘And now Michael is going to die too!”
Benjamin doesn’t need to ask what he means. It is well known that infants who lose their mothers have little chance of survival. “He won’t”, he promises, nevertheless. “We’ll find a way to feed him.”
“How?” Hugh looks up at him with red-rimmed, puffy eyes. “We don’t even have a cow or a goat.”
Even that wouldn’t help. Although he never had to resort to it himself – because Malika, Watcher bless her, survived every birth in good health – Benjamin heard stories enough about how only a mother’s milk can sustain a child in the first few months of life. He thinks for a moment, his thoughts sluggish from exhaustion and grief, but eventually, a thought strikes him.
“We’ll ask Thomas Branson’s’ wife”, he suggests. “She’s still nursing their daughter.”
“She might be dead”, Hugh responds desolately. He isn’t even angry, or disbelieving. There is nothing in his eyes but a sad acceptance that everything good in the world is gone. “Or she might not want to.”
“She was still hale when we…a few days ago.” It’s still too hard to acknowledge his wife’s death and burial aloud, even after everything. “And I can’t imagine that a girl as kind as her would leave a baby to starve. Don’t despair – it won’t do any of us any good.”
Speaking the words, he feels like a liar. Why shouldn’t they despair? What future is there to be had after something like this? Yes, they survived, but any of them might die at any point. Who is to say evil spirits aren’t already doing their work upon them? But right now, they live, and if the Watcher wills it, for whatever reason, they will continue to do so. Even in the midst of his despair, some part of Benjamin stubbornly clings to that vision. He knows very well what Malika would have to say about him just giving in to what Fate dictates.
In the end, it is this indomitable human spirit which guides the family through the weeks and months after the calamity.
Although the costs for a proper burial are so high that Benjamin and Hugh eventually decide to dig the graves themselves, all of their lost family members receive a proper burial, overseen by the – generously paid – village parson. They simply cannot bear the thought of a mass grave or, worse, of throwing their loved ones into a ditch or the river. It is not a pleasant task, but they accomplish it without flinching.
Somehow, it even feels…cleansing. As if by doing this last office for their dear ones, they are seeking atonement. For surviving. For not saving them. Why would the Watcher take Miriam’s life, or Malika’s, or Margaret’s or Effie’s or Malcolm’s, and leave the rest of them alive? What did those five do that the rest of them haven’t?
Those are questions they’ll likely never get answers to – and they are far from the only people to ask them. The parson tells them that it was a simple matter of chance, that the Watcher surely wished to prove to them that when the world is wicked, even the innocent suffer.
It is not a comforting thought, how much the world must have fallen into darkness for their Lady to resort to this, but it is the only explanation that makes what is happening even somewhat understandable. So, they accept it, and pray that this punishment will end before there is nothing left to salvage.
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1348 – Day 3 – Glennborough Farm
In the glen, where Elias and Ciara live with their daughters, the situation is a similar one, although in their case, their survival is a far more remarkable feat.
Aside from theirs, only two families live in the glen. Anyone could be forgiven for thinking that in such a sparsely populated place, the plague is sure to pass them by, like it does the Brophys. And yet, they would be wrong. Seón ó Brien, patriarch of one of the other families, has the ill fortune of travelling to town shortly after the pestilence reaches it, unaware of what has transpired. By the time he recognizes the danger, it is already too late. He discovers the first boils on his body a day or two after his return. From him, it spreads to the rest of his family, and then to the widow and her son that make up the final family of the settlement.
Ciara and Elias react quickly once they get a shouted warning from the ó Brien home, quickly enough to ward off the illness, or so they believe. They do not go beyond the bounds of their farm, they shutter their windows to keep out any bad air that could drift over from the pestilential houses, they burn herbs to cleanse their home of whatever impurities manage to slip through. They even forbid Órlaith from playing outside, much to her annoyance.
For three or four days, Ciara actually thinks that they did it. She feels terrible for her neighbours, but intensely grateful that they slipped the noose. But then, she goes to check on Gráinne one morning when her daughter starts wailing, and pulls her swaddling cloth aside only to discover a swelling the size of a quail’s egg on her neck.
At first, she doesn’t even know what she is looking at. All she heard was that people in town were falling ill in droves, and that nearly everyone who catches the pestilence dies of it. But then, her mind supplies something about black buboes. Her daughter’s boil isn’t black, but she pulls the cloth away even further, and discovers one under each arm. Gráinne is hot to the touch, too.
That is the moment she begins to scream. “Elias! Elias, come quick!”
Frantic, she turns to Gráinne again, nearly sure now that her daughter must have caught this mysterious illness. She is so small, less than a year old. If grown men cannot fight this pestilence, how should an infant? But most men do not have magic. Her husband does. He’ll know what to do. He’ll heal her. He must.
Elias arrives moments later, out of breath from rushing in from the field outside. Dimly, Ciara wonders how desperate she must have sounded to cause that panic-stricken look on his face. But she doesn’t waste time on that – instead, she lifts the cloth to show her husband their daughter’s predicament and stumbles over herself to explain her fears. “You have to help her”, she begs. “She’ll die otherwise.”
“I…I can’t.” Elias stumbles forwards to examine the boils. “I don’t know how.”
“There must be some spell!”
“If there is, I don’t know it.” He spreads his hands, his gaze riveted to his daughter’s marred body. He is shaking now, his voice almost pleading, though with whom, even he doesn’t know. “I was never properly trained.”
“Well, do something!”
Unusually forceful as it is, Ciara’s tone stirs him into action. So he does something. He casts whatever positive spell he can on their tiny daughter, but although her crying stops and it seems to ease her pain, the boils only grow in the hours that follow, as does her fever. And before the next morning dawns, she is dead.
The worst part is, Ciara isn’t even surprised. She knew her baby daughter would die the moment she discovered the boils. But part of her, a foolish, stupid part, still hoped for a miracle. But why should her daughter be spared? They’ve been far too lucky far too long.
They bury her in the churchyard, danger be damned. To try to protect the rest of them, Elias casts some spells to make them more fortunate, hoping that this will let them avoid the pestilential air. When she hears this, Ciara wants to ask why he didn’t just cast this spell over them all in the first place, to ward off the evil that has befallen their daughter. Maybe if he had, Gráinne would still be alive.
She wants to, but she lacks the energy to fight with him now. It wouldn’t bring her daughter back, anyway.
(TW: somewhat graphic descriptions of dead bodies)
Even after Gráinne’s passing, Ciara, Elias and Órlaith stay clear of the other huts. They feel terrible for it, knowing that as good children of the Watcher, they should be trying to help their neighbours, but they know they’d likely die for nothing. They couldn’t save Gráinne, so what are they supposed to do for anyone else?
That resolve lasts until Elias hears the wailing. Over the last few days, the sounds of life from the two other inhabited huts have become fewer and farther between, but now, he suddenly remembers that the ó Briens have a young son, Domhnall, who is around four years old. The cries he hears are just young enough that they might stem from a boy that age, but horribly distorted, almost animalian.
The sound tugs at his heartstrings, but he forces himself to turn away and continue tending to the crops. Surely whoever is still alive in that house will see to him. Or maybe he is dying himself, afflicted by the same plague that took his father – and Elias’ daughter.
His resolve weakens as the crying continues unabated, and he tries to remember when he last caught sight of any of his neighbours. It must have been days. In the beginning, Reeba – little Domhnall’s mother – or one of his older siblings would still try to weed and water, but they must be too weak for that now. Or beyond caring about what is happening on their fields.
As darkness falls, he can’t bear it anymore. He simply runs to the ó Briens’ door, heedless of whether it is a good idea or not. He doesn’t even stop when the stench hits him. Nor does he try to call out to anyone. He simply wrenches open the door, eager to get this over with.
What he sees makes him stagger.
He has seen dead bodies before – his murdered sister and his too-young nephew the most gruesome of them, not to mention the mutilated body of his daughter. But even Gráinne’s sight pales in comparison to what is before him now. The ó Brien’s bodies are bloated and marked with the black sores. They must have been lying on their pallets and on the floor for days, rotting without anyone there to give them their last rites. The only thing more horrible than their sight is the stench, of rot, of vomit and of excrement.
And amidst it all he spots the wailing boy on the floor, unmarked by the pestilence, but filthy and beside himself.
Elias doesn’t even think. He simply snatches up the screaming toddler and runs, back to the safety of his home, where he prays the stench won’t reach. He knows it is cowardly of him, that he should give his neighbours the proper burial they deserve, but in that moment, fleeing is the only thought in his head. He can save their son, but that is all. Watcher knows if he’ll ever be able to make himself go back in there.
Surprisingly, when he tells Ciara about what happened, she isn’t angry about the risk he put them all under. She simply takes Domhnall, who is shaking, into her arms, saying that his parents would want them to look after him. There is a faraway look in her eyes as she speaks, but now that the true horror of what he saw is seizing upon him, Elias doesn’t press her.
Ciara doesn’t say as much to her husband, but silently, she considers him bringing Domhnall into their home as a gift by the Watcher. In the days since Gráinne’s death, she feels as if she has been going mad, but now, there is this small child who needs her, who has lost his parents and siblings just like she lost her daughter. It gives her a purpose to go on. Something that makes her feel less useless.
She has her work cut out for her, too; Domhnall doesn’t speak, has to be coaxed to eat, and often simply sits on the floor staring at nothing, unless he is trying to run outside to look for his Mamaí and Daidí and siblings. At only four or five, he cannot understand why his family is suddenly gone. Ciara isn’t even sure he remembers watching them die.
She can hardly wrap her head around what has happened herself. Only a few days ago, all of her neighbours were alive, and now? Now they seems to be the only ones left. Elias checked. The widow, Catriona, and her boy are dead, too. She cannot understand why the Watcher would do this. What have they done, any of them, to be punished like this? And how long until whatever struck the others down comes back for the four of them?
That fear is almost debilitating, and having Órlaith and Domhnall to look after is probably the only thing that keeps her from hiding in some corner. The grief for her younger daughter only adds fuel to that, and more than once, she finds herself wrecked by sobs once everyone is sleeping.
She doesn’t even know if anyone she knows and loves is still alive. They have had no word from town since the unfortunate Séon returned, but with things as they are, they are too afraid to leave the glen.
All they can do is pray, but when she looks at the other houses, empty of anything but ghosts, Ciara wonders whether there is even a point. She cannot believe that a Watcher who would do something like that would care to hear them.
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