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Authors: Kate Ellis

Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #General

The Plague Maiden (38 page)

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Historical Note

In June 1348 sailors from plague-ridden Gascony in France disembarked at the port of Melcombe in Dorset, only thirty miles
away from the Devon border. As well as their cargo they brought with them the plague bacillus,
Yersinia pestis
, spread by rat fleas, and within eighteen months almost half the population of Britain would be dead.

The dead at that time were normally interred carefully with their feet facing east so that they could stand and face Jerusalem
on the Day of Judgement. But when the plague struck there were so many corpses and so few people left to bury them that they
were often thrown unceremoniously in huge communal pits. Families were split, the healthy moving away from the sick to avoid
infection. In some cases parents were forced to abandon children for whom nothing could be done in order to save those who
remained well. In records of the time, such as manorial rolls and lists of clergy, one can see the names of men and women
struck through as they died, a poignant reminder of what the population faced as they watched their family, friends and neighbours
succumb and waited with dread to see whether they would be next.

Seaports such as Dartmouth in Devon fared particularly badly as ships brought the infection in from elsewhere. Priests tending
the sick and giving the last rites to the dying were especially vulnerable, and the diocese of Exeter was
one of the worst hit in England, losing half its clergy.

Understandably the survivors at the time came to regard death as a constant companion and the art of the time – in illustrated
books and on the walls of churches – reflects this. The story of the Three Living and the Three Dead, referred to in this
book, was particularly popular, as were paintings of a grisly ‘dance of death’. Two-layer (or transi) tombs depicting a dead
nobleman or bishop in rich robes above and a rotting corpse beneath became fashionable. All were equal in death and ‘King
Death’ mocked the pretensions of social superiority.

I hope the people of Ashwell in Hertfordshire will forgive me for using a variation of the graffiti on the wall of their parish
church tower in this story. It was possibly carved by their despairing priest as he watched his parishioners dying. ‘Miserable,
wild, distracted, the dregs of the people alone survive to bear witness.’ It serves as a harrowing reminder of the horrors
endured by the population in the fourteenth century.

Things could never be the same in England again after the devastation of the Black Death. However, the resultant shortage
of labour led to the end of serfdom and an improvement in the economic prospects of the survivors as labour became a ‘sellers’
market’. Every cloud has a silver lining of some kind.

To come forward in time, I was surprised to discover in the course of my research that in the 1960s and 1970s Devon had indeed
been sprayed with massive quantities of E. coli 162 and
Bacillus globigii
as part of secret germ warfare tests. The government claimed that the trials posed no risk to public health; however, it
was later found that the old, the young and those with lowered immunity were at risk of lung infections. Farmers lost cattle
to an E. coli infection around the time of the trials and in a village at the centre of the test area many miscarriages and
severe birth defects were reported.

On 12 November 1997 the Member of Parliament for
Teignbridge praised the
Western Morning News
for bringing the matter to the public’s attention and reminded the House of Commons that many people in the area still suffered
a growing number of unexplained illnesses and medical conditions.

When I first had the idea for
The Plague Maiden
, I feared that the notion of inflicting germ warfare trials on Devon might be considered a little far fetched. But then sometimes
the truth is harder to believe than fiction.

BOOK: The Plague Maiden
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