It was raining at Lammas-tide and raining at
the Feast of the Assumption and still raining at Michaelmas. The
crops and the hay, sodden and black, had rotted in the fields, for
they were not worth the garnering. The sheep had died, and the
calves also, so there was little to kill when Martinmas came and
it was time to salt the meat for the winter. They feared a
famine, but it was worse than famine which was in store for them.
For the rain had ceased at last, and a sickly autumn sun shone
upon a land which was soaked and sodden with water. Wet and
rotten leaves reeked and festered under the foul haze which rose
from the woods. The fields were spotted with monstrous fungi of a
size and color never matched before--scarlet and mauve and liver
and black. It was as though the sick earth had burst into foul
pustules; mildew and lichen mottled the walls, and with that
filthy crop Death sprang also from the water-soaked earth. Men
died, and women and children, the baron of the castle, the
franklin on the farm, the monk in the abbey and the villein in his
wattle-and-daub cottage. All breathed the same polluted reek and
all died the same death of corruption. Of those who were stricken
none recovered, and the illness was ever the same--gross boils,
raving, and the black blotches which gave its name to the disease.
All through the winter the dead rotted by the wayside for want of
some one to bury them.
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