• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 3814 0

they supposed their blood needed thinning. They also used traditional herbal remedies – some effective – common sense and prayer. Indeed, in some cases the miraculous was considered a normal cure: no doctor discouraged the lines of people suffering from scrofula dutifully filing past the king whose touch, it was confidently believed, could cure that ailment. The natural sciences were in a similar state. Educated men still disputed whether unicorns’ horns had magical properties. But in recent decades a new spirit of rational enquiry had been growing. The great investigative genius of William Harvey had shown that blood actually circulated in the body: he had also begun to study how the human foetus develops. Robert Boyle, through careful experiment, had formulated laws for the behaviour of gases. And of all the places in which he might have lived none, surely, could be better than London. For London was the home of the Royal Society.

The Royal Society of London had begun as an informal discussion club twenty years before. Meredith’s first introduction to it had been in the year of the Restoration, when he was allowed to attend a lecture given by a leading young astronomer – like himself a clergyman’s son – named Christopher Wren. Membership of this club was restricted, though as a doctor of medicine, he was welcome to attend any lectures, which took place on Wednesday afternoons. King Charles too became a member and had granted the organization a royal charter after which it had become known simply as the Royal Society.

Some months ago, with great timidity, Richard Meredith had even delivered a short paper which had earned him kind words from Wren and several others. Yet even so, he had never expected the wonderful news of the day before.

“Doctor Meredith, you have been elected a full member of the society.” No wonder that his cup of joy had been full. At least until an hour ago.

Doctor Meredith had not taken much notice of the trouble when a few cases appeared in May. Sporadic visits like this had been a feature of summer in London for centuries. Nor was he worried when more appeared in June. There were none in the parishes along Cheapside; Watling Street was untouched. No significant outbreak had occurred, he reminded himself, for nearly twenty years and nothing really major since the reign of King James I. So when people asked him if they had cause to worry, he had reassured them: “Avoid the area to the west by Drury Lane and Holborn. The city is hardly touched, though.” The weather was exceedingly warm that month. “This dry heat,” most medical men concluded, “will increase the element of fire in men’s blood. This will produce yellow bile and make them choleric.” Perhaps, he supposed, that was causing the sickness to increase. By July, he heard of growing numbers down in Southwark and on the road to the east, outside Aldgate. But this morning, when they had shown him the document, he had received a severe shock.

The Bill of Mortality was a document produced every week. In two long columns it noted the numbers who had died, of each of some fifty causes, in the city and surrounding parishes of London. Most of the numbers were small. “Apoplexy: 1. Dropsy: 40. Infants: 21.” But near the top of the second column, the clerk had pointed to one, terrifying number: 1843. And beside it the single, awful word: Plague.

Plague, Contagion, the Black Death: all names for the same condition. “Do you mean to leave London?” the clerk had asked.

“No. I am a doctor.”

“All the doctors I’ve seen so far this morning,” the clerk smiled, “are leaving. They say they have to attend their rich patients, and as the rich will leave, they have to do so too. However,” he said approvingly, “if you really mean to stay, we have something you had better wear.”

Ned tried to hold his ground, but the monster was coming directly at him. Where could he attack the creature? It had no legs. Its arms were too thick to get a grip on. His snarls and barks grew furious, but did no good.

And then the monster did something extraordinary. It took off its head.