The Devil’s Diadem by Sara Douglass

‘All is in disarray,’ Stephen continued. ‘Edmond has forces spread over much of southern England, trying to keep or restore order, but, of course, even they are being decimated. Now, I think, Edmond has moved to a policy of only entering an area after the plague has spent itself. As for the harvest this year, well, God and his saints shall have to get it in, for I fear common man shall be unable to do so. Whoever survives this, Maeb, may face starvation next winter.

‘As for my father. What can he do? Maybe he also harbours the death. Maybe he is already dead and my messenger shall have no one to tell of our loss. We are on our own for this, sweet Mae. On our own.’

I felt a rush of sympathy for Stephen. He was of an age with me, and yet had to shoulder the responsibilities and cares for this entire castle.

All I could do was shake in fear.

‘What do we do?’ I asked him. ‘What now?’

‘We wait,’ he said. ‘And watch.’

He reached out and pulled me into a gentle embrace. I didn’t resist. More than anything I needed comfort, and to be held.

I rested my head against his chest clad in only a thin linen shirt on this warm summer’s night.

Stephen held me close, stroking my hair, and I slowly relaxed. He drew in a deep breath … and I froze in terror as I heard, very faintly, a crackling deep within his lungs.

Chapter Seven

Without Lady Adelie, Yvette, Evelyn and myself were purposeless. Having cleaned and scrubbed the privy chamber, we spent our time in the solar, indifferently sewing or stitching sundry fabrics that were the worse for our attention. Alice and Emmette sat with us, subdued and grieving the death of their mother. Rosamund and baby John spent several hours with us each day, and they were our only cheerfulness, for neither understood what had happened to their mother and only wanted to play and chortle.

We were waiting for death to strike, all of us save Alice and Emmette who knew not the true nature of their mother’s death.

My mind was almost fully on Stephen. I wondered if I had imagined that crackle in his lungs, if my overall fright had constructed it. I could not bear the thought that he might fall victim to the plague, partly because of my own affection for him and partly because I did not wish to be faced with his request that I should smother his breath.

No. No. I could not do that. It was a sin, a dreadful sin, and would condemn me to hell. How could he ask that of me?

So we sat, mostly in silence, our hands jabbing uselessly in and out of fabric, waiting for death.

On the third day after Lady Adelie’s funeral it arrived.

Evelyn and I were woken in the early hours of the morning by a terrible hacking cough coming from Yvette’s bed. We stumbled up, grabbing at our mantles, terrified at what it might be, and knowing to our very bones that we were right to be so terror-struck.

I lit a candle from the coals in the fireplace and brought it to Yvette’s bedside.

She was still coughing as she retched up gouts of yellow fungus.

It was everywhere; spattering her pillow and covers, staining her mouth and chin and breast.

Amid it all, her frightened eyes, staring at us.

‘Fetch Owain,’ Evelyn murmured. I handed her the candle and fled.

Owain insisted we shift Yvette into the chapel. Evelyn and I said we could nurse Yvette for a few days, surely, in the solar. Owain prevailed.

Yvette could still walk, so Evelyn and myself helped her down the stairwell, across the courtyard of the great keep and through the inner bailey to the chapel. I know Stephen had wanted to keep the fact that the plague had struck inside the castle secret, but it was no longer possible.

Men stopped and stared as Yvette coughed her way across the inner bailey, a yellow-stained cloth gripped to her mouth. When we stepped inside the chapel, it was to see two of the beds already occupied.

‘Men-at-arms,’ Owain said. ‘They came in last night.’

‘Were they from our escort?’ I said, and Owain gave a tight nod.

I felt my stomach, already twisted with fear, clench even tighter.

‘Over here,’ Owain said, leading us to an area partitioned with church screens. Owain left us, and Evelyn and I helped Yvette out of her kirtle and put her to bed in her chemise. No one spoke. There were six trestle beds in this area and I had the feeling six would not be enough.

Evelyn caught my eye. ‘We can take it in turns sitting with Yvette,’ she said, and I nodded dumbly. ‘Return after midday,’ she continued. ‘Have some rest now.’

Again I nodded, leaving the chapel. I did not quite know what to do, so eventually I trod up the stairwell and into the female dormitory where the nurse and the children had their cubicles.

The children and their nurse were gathered in a large space they used as their day room. Alice and Emmette were sitting by a window, looking completely blank.

As I entered, the nurse turned about, John in her arms, and said worriedly, ‘He has such a fever!’

I stood there, then burst into tears.

The next week was hell on earth, for it seemed as though hell itself had crawled into the sunlight and infested the castle. The day after Yvette started to hack up the yellow fungus a further twenty people fell ill.

The day after that, with John already ailing, Alice and Emmette both succumbed to the plague. Coughing up the fungus in the morning, by the evening it had covered their bodies, and Owain made the grim decision to lay them directly on mats on the stone floor of the chapel.

‘Best to save the beds,’ he said.

Yvette was dead. She had died just before the two girls were carried into the chapel, self-immolating in a terrible, shrieking fireball that drove both Evelyn and myself out of the chapel, unable to watch.

The chapel stunk, not only of sickness, but of burned flesh, and smoke seemed to hang continually about its vaulted roof.

Owain worked tirelessly, silently.

Stephen, who had come to see his sisters, was equally grimly silent.

I managed to speak to him outside as he left.

‘What can we do?’ I said.

‘Nothing but endure,’ Stephen answered. ‘Do you still feel well?’

I nodded, but I lied. My body ached and pained all over, but I didn’t know if this was the plague manifesting itself, or just muscle aches caused by sleepless nights and the constant trudging between chapel and keep, the nursing of Yvette and, now, the two girls.

‘God save us,’ I whispered, looking at Stephen. His face was sunken and grey, his skin waxy, and I could see the fever in his eyes.

I did not have to ask him how he fared.

‘I am going to stay with my sisters,’ he said to me. ‘Do for them what needs to be done.’ He paused. ‘Do you understand?’

I nodded, hopeless.

‘And do you remember what I asked of you?’ he said, very softly.

I nodded, too exhausted, too distraught, too heart-sick to be horrified. ‘I —’ Stephen began, then we both jumped, startled by the sound of Alice screaming.

We rushed inside the chapel and behind the screens of the women’s section.

There Alice tossed on her mat locked in some delirium so terrifying she had kicked off all her covers and fought against Evelyn who was trying to restrain her.

‘No!’ Alice screamed, and, sweet Jesu, there was such terror in her voice. ‘No! I do not have it! I do not have it!’

‘Alice!’ Stephen cried, at her bedside. ‘Alice, wake, wake!’

But no matter how he shook her, Alice did not rouse from her delirium. ‘No! No! Stay away. Begone. I do not have it! Not!’

Suddenly she arched her back completely off the bed, her cries now so piteous they tore at my heart. Stephen grabbed at her, thinking to hold her tight, but Alice was, in her extremity, too strong even for him. She fought him off as if he were the Devil, then shrieked, a sound that I shall not forget to my dying day, and collapsed back to the bed, utterly limp.

We all stared, then Owain bent down and placed his hand near her mouth.

‘She is gone,’ he said. He straightened, looking at Stephen. ‘Three have died this way, shrieking as if the Devil himself were after them, and crying that they do not have “it”, whatever “it” might be, nor do they know where “it” is. They have died of sheer dread, I think.’

Owain sighed, then knelt by Alice’s bed, murmuring a prayer.