A good story about the Black Death

   It is August 1348. In the small quiet village of Kempston, dusk is slowly emerging, and the working peasants are heading home. As the peasants are going home, they leave their crops and fields unprotected. And that’s when the trouble begins.

   The rats were roaming amongst the crops , looking for food. The fleas, unfortunately, find the rats. They jump onto the rats, travel round with them, suck their blood, withdraw the plague germs, and start heading towards the village. The poor, unhygienic, medieval village have no idea what’s happening.

   The next day in the village, work begins. A new cathedral, St. Alban, is being built. Suddenly, a faint bell starts ringing from far off, and the sound grows louder as the ringer comes ever closer. A strange, foreign traveller, masked in black, cloaked in rags and a smell of manure surrounding him, is ringing a small, rusty bell. He sees the villagers staring at him in horror at his state. He has huge bulges under his armpits and round his groin, his mouth is stained with vomit, his face and arms have huge blotches of black down them. He is also clutching his stomach, as he seems to be having terrible spasms from an attacked nervous system. He walked a few steps closer, flopped down on his knees, mumbled his last words (Beware?), and died.

   The people are shocked at the sight of that foreigner, and if that sucked enough, there was worse to come. The next day, 6 of the villagers were complaining they could not work, because huge, painful swellings under their armpits and round groins were causing them agony. The next day, more people were complaining of the pains, only this time, they were vomiting, and had a terrible fever. Then, as the days went by, the symptoms of the illness got worse. Blood was spilling inside their bodies, leaving dark blotches over the body. Terrible spasms from attacked nervous systems left the citizens of the village in agony and searing pain.

   Some lucky people’s buboes (swelling around groin and under armpits) burst the day after the spasms, but only 4 people actually survived by this happening. William Byre, the manager of the St. Alban’s Cathedral, James LeBurne , a 6 year-old boy whose family was wiped out by the Black Death, Susan Jane, a harvest collector, and Agnes, a strange little woman of whom everyone is a bit edgy around.

   3 months later, Susan Jane stands and looks at her once-was village, and thinks of her friends who almost made it to be survivors. William Byre, who decided to try to build the Cathedral by himself, got crushed, and little James couldn’t survive without his family, so he perished from starvation. Basically, everyone was wiped out by the Black Plague except her. She had survived with the help of Agnes. Agnes had a cure. She padded figs and warm rosemary on the buboes, then she burst it. It was painful, but it worked. But, her husband had seen what Agnes had done, and burnt her as a witch. When Susan Jane told her husband what she’d done for her, he was so upset and angry with what he’d done, he committed suicide by slitting his throat. Susan Jane was very upset with what had happened. She kept the ashes in an ancient pot, and buried her husband at the foot of their old, medieval, plague-swept house.

So, what do you think passed the plague through Kempston? Was it the foreign traveller, or the fleas from the rats?