An English Whelp: Witness to the Black Death (1335-1350 AD)

My name is, well, I've gone through quite a few, really, but this is the one I was born with: Benjamin Upham. I was born in a town in the south west of England in the Year of Our Lord Thirteen Hundred and Thirty Five, in mid-December, so it may as well have been 1336. At the time, and for centuries on until modern medicine, sanitation, and reliable heating came along, most children born in mid winter didn't last long. To say that I was resilient is an understatement. Must be genetic, as I still can count one brother, several children, and my father among the living. As far as I know anyways.

My family could be said to be moderately well off, as my dad was a sergeant at arms for the local sheriff. Today you would only find such squalid poverty in the worst third world nations, and the folks in question would not be well off at all. Says a lot for the state of the common man in fourteenth century England…

Father ultimately became sheriff when I was five. But, then again, the Black Death also came to England when I was five… That was oh so long ago, but it is one of the events that I can still remember clearly. The mass graves, the great funeral pyres, the futile attempts at quarantine. The stuff currently in the news makes me laugh, as it hardly gives more than the sniffles. This on the other hand was pure terror. Nobody understood how it was spreading or even really what was going on, beyond the fact that people were just dying. Our town lost roughly half of the folks who lived in it. Many other places were simply wiped out and quickly returned to nature. And as quickly as the Plague came, it was gone. Just like that.

Out of the Eight Hundred and Forty Three souls who lived in our town at the start of 1341, Four hundred Sixty One were counted as being lost to the plague. This included the Parish Priest, the first three replacement priests sent by the Bishop, (number four got sent once the plague had ended) the Sheriff, the first replacement to hold that office, Lord ah whatishisname, (such a nobody that I have forgotten his name) all of his heirs, the baker and his whole family, and God alone remembers who else.

In all of the years since, only in 1918 have I seen anything that was near as bad as that, and that was the influenza pandemic that occurred that year. It alone caused me the same fear as when I was really just a boy.

Marriage / My Father's Son (1351-1366 AD)

I married at sixteen, not unusual for those times. Her name was Mary-Jo, daughter of the local smith. I was only three years older than her, her age at marriage being normal for those times too. Sure a couple of children followed, but not as fast as one would have expected at the time. Sort of like my parents.

When I was twenty one, my father joined a bunch of religious fanatic on some minor crusade or other, one that wasn't numbered like the great crusades. I was promptly told that as of then I'd inherited his job. I was now sheriff. Mother died not long after. Among her things was a letter addressed to me, from my father, to be given to me on my mother's death. Literacy was rare at the time, but those who enforce what passed for the law at the time were expected to be literate, more or less.

Father's letter was a shocker. He had gone off on the crusade because people had started asking questions. Questions about why he wasn't aging in a noticeable manner. I'd never noticed, but then, dad had always been dad, so why would I notice that he looked twenty years younger than his actual forty seven? I did find it interesting that his father, my grandfather had lived to be over 100, though he'd died before I was born. In the Fourteenth Century, and for most of the time both before and since, even in modern times in some places, people believed in silly things like witches and demons and Satanic pacts. Such was the case in Fourteenth Century England… No wonder dad left in the way that he did. Had he stayed, at best people would believe him to be cursed, and would then go looking for the witch. Guess where they would look first? My father left to go fight in a pointless war because he really did love my mother, and didn't want to see her burned as a witch.

That was something that I kept in mind. Especially when I was trying to sleep at night.

I really did love Mary-Jo, and I am my father's son. Which is why after fifteen years of marriage I left her. I decided that it would be best if I left before people really started noticing what I was beginning to see in the mirror. Thirty in 1366 sort of looks like fifty five or sixty today. Most people were in that poor health, at lived in such poor conditions, that they were prematurely aged, and died young. I still looked good, with no gray yet, almost all of my teeth (I had had a few punched out), no wrinkles. So I followed in my father's footsteps and went off on some pointless Crusade… Don't blame me. Left to my own devices, I can be such an idiot.

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