Chapter 10 - THE YEAR OF BLACK DEATH
The refugees reached Castle Varenne at dusk.
Four hundred at first.
Then more.
Families stretched along the road beyond the vineyards.
Some pushed carts.
Some carried children.
Some carried bodies because they could not yet admit the person was dead.
The village gate remained closed.
Thomas stood above it with Beatrice, Aldren, Agnes, Marta, Peter, Isaac, Henri, and representatives chosen from the village households.
Chosen.
Not appointed by Thomas.
He insisted.
The word mattered.
Below, a woman shouted,
“Please!”
Another voice called,
“We have nowhere!”
Someone in the village shouted back,
“You bring plague!”
The old pattern.
Always waiting.
Thomas looked at Beatrice.
“If we open?”
“Some will be infected.”
“How many?”
“I cannot know.”
“If we close?”
She looked at the road.
“Some will die outside.”
Aldren said, “Most.”
Marta crossed her arms.
“We cannot feed four hundred.”
Isaac answered, “We have grain for perhaps six weeks if rationed harder.”
“Then what?”
“Spring.”
“Fields?”
“Maybe.”
A village elder shook his head.
“No.”
Everyone turned.
“We survived because we controlled entry.”
Thomas looked at him.
“We survived because plague slowed.”
“Same result.”
“No.”
The elder pointed to the road.
“My wife died. My sons died. I have one granddaughter. You ask me to risk her for strangers.”
Thomas had no answer.
That was the truth people like Renard and Matthieu never admitted.
Fear was not always cowardice.
Sometimes fear had a name and a face.
Thomas looked at the granddaughter.
Nine years old.
Standing near the wall.
Then at refugees below.
Children there too.
No choice was clean.
Luc’s voice returned.
Ask who benefits.
Who benefited from closing?
Those already inside.
Who benefited from opening?
Those outside.
That question alone did not solve anything.
Maybe Luc never meant it would.
Thomas turned to Beatrice.
“Can we make an outer camp?”
She nodded slowly.
“Distance from the village. Separate families. Inspect twice daily.”
“Food?”
Marta sighed.
“Thin soup.”
Isaac added, “Work exchange. Wood cutting, field preparation, ditching.”
Aldren said, “And if sickness appears?”
Thomas looked at Black section in his memory.
Burning tents.
Screaming people.
“We isolate the sick.”
“Outside?”
“Yes.”
“Who cares for them?”
Thomas swallowed.
“Volunteers.”
Beatrice looked at him.
“Good.”
The elder objected.
“They’ll still bring disease.”
“Yes.”
Thomas said it plainly.
No promise of safety.
“We may die anyway.”
People murmured.
He continued.
“The plague came through castle walls before we opened them. It entered Saint Aldric before the gates closed. It entered monasteries. Camps. Houses.”
He looked at everyone.
“I cannot promise the gate saves us.”
The elder asked, “Then what can you promise?”
Thomas touched Elena’s cross.
“Nothing.”
That shocked them more than a grand speech.
Thomas continued.
“I can promise we do not pretend cruelty makes us clean.”
Silence.
Aldren smiled faintly.
The council voted.
Not unanimous.
Open outer camp.
Keep inner gate controlled.
It was imperfect.
Human.
They opened.
Refugees entered the valley in groups.
Beatrice examined them.
Those with visible plague went to separate shelters.
Some families refused separation.
They left.
Some lied about symptoms.
One man hid his wife’s swelling.
When discovered, villagers wanted him beaten.
Thomas refused.
Fear had made him lie.
Fear was punishment enough.
The plague came.
Of course it did.
Within ten days, the outer camp lost thirty-two people.
Then cases appeared inside the village.
A child.
A cooper.
Two former soldiers.
Isaac’s eldest son.
People accused the refugees.
Beatrice found the child had never gone near them.
Blame became harder.
Not impossible.
Thomas worked burial crews.
At first people protested.
“You shouldn’t.”
“Why?”
“You lead.”
“So?”
“Leaders don’t dig graves.”
Thomas looked at the man.
“Then they should.”
He dug.
Bodies froze in winter ground.
Graves took hours.
Sometimes they buried three together.
Sometimes ten.
No bells.
Thomas had forbidden nothing.
People themselves stopped ringing them.
Too many dead.
Too much sound.
Agnes became sick in February.
Thomas knew before she did.
She dropped a bowl.
Said she was tired.
That evening fever.
Next morning swelling beneath her arm.
Thomas sat outside her isolation hut.
Agnes looked through the doorway.
“You are staring.”
“Yes.”
“Ugly habit.”
“Yes.”
She smiled weakly.
Beatrice treated her.
Warm cloth.
Water.
Herbs.
Nothing magical.
Nothing certain.
Thomas stayed.
Not touching.
Close enough.
Agnes asked,
“Do you remember the barn?”
“Yes.”
“You stabbed a man with a pitchfork.”
“I remember.”
“You looked like you would faint.”
“I almost did.”
“You are less useless now.”
“Thank you.”
She closed her eyes.
Thomas thought of Luc.
Elena.
Everyone.
By the third day, Agnes began coughing blood.
Thomas’s hope became painful.
She was fourteen.
Fourteen should not be a death sentence.
Nothing cared.
That night Agnes called him closer.
“Thomas.”
“I’m here.”
“If I die—”
“No.”
She laughed weakly.
“You hate promises.”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
She looked at him.
“Then don’t promise anything.”
Thomas almost cried.
Agnes continued.
“Just remember me correctly.”
“What does that mean?”
“Not brave.”
“You are.”
“No.”
“Stubborn?”
“Yes.”
“Annoying?”
“Very.”
She smiled.
“That.”
Thomas held Elena’s cross in one hand.
Agnes saw.
“Your mother was right.”
“About what?”
“You are surviving.”
Thomas looked around.
“At this?”
“No.”
She tapped her chest weakly.
“Inside.”
Thomas could not answer.
Agnes survived.
Barely.
On the fifth day, fever broke.
The swelling drained.
Beatrice stared as if she had witnessed a resurrection.
Some plague victims lived.
Not many.
Enough.
Agnes woke and demanded bread.
Thomas laughed so hard he cried.
Hope returned.
Again dangerous.
Again necessary.
Spring came late.
Snow melted into mud.
Fields needed planting.
Half the village workforce was dead.
Refugees filled the gap.
People who had once been outsiders now dug the same soil.
The distinction blurred.
Not because prejudice disappeared.
Because hunger argued better.
Thomas refused the castle again.
The great hall became grain storage.
The governor’s chambers became an infirmary.
The lower cells became empty.
Thomas insisted on that.
No quarantine prisons.
No political prisoners.
No cages if walls could be replaced by distance and watch.
Lucien Varenne never returned.
Rumor said he died near the southern border.
Another rumor said he lived in a monastery.
A third said peasants killed him.
Thomas stopped caring.
The documents Henri preserved were read publicly in the chapel yard.
Names of confiscated estates.
Orders.
Payments.
The emergency seizures were declared void by the village council.
That meant little in a world where owners were dead.
It mattered to survivors.
Widows recovered houses.
Daughters inherited fields.
Servants claimed abandoned workshops after no kin appeared.
Nothing was simple.
Arguments lasted days.
Sometimes fists settled what records could not.
Thomas learned that justice was not a moment.
It was exhausting work.
Summer 1349 found him seventeen.
Only a year older.
A lifetime older.
The plague still moved across Europe.
Entire towns vanished.
Fields went unharvested.
Laborers demanded wages because there were fewer hands.
Lords threatened laws because power depended on people who had suddenly become scarce.
Priests preached.
Doctors argued.
Merchants returned carefully.
Roads reopened.
Then closed when fever appeared again.
No ending.
Only change.
One afternoon, Thomas walked to the hill above the valley.
Agnes followed.
She had scars beneath her arm.
Peter came too.
Marta sent bread.
Aldren sent himself because he trusted nobody else to carry wine.
Below them, Castle Varenne stood.
Not a noble seat anymore.
A storehouse.
Clinic.
Meeting place.
Children played in the courtyard.
Thomas held Martin’s iron ring.
He had never worn it.
Agnes asked why.
“It’s his.”
“He’s dead.”
“So?”
“That argument never stopped Aldren stealing.”
Aldren drank wine.
“Correct.”
Thomas smiled.
He placed the ring on a stone beside Elena’s wooden cross.
Not abandoning them.
Setting them down.
For a moment.
From the eastern road came travelers.
Thomas stiffened automatically.
Always.
Then he saw a bell hanging from one cart.
No one rang it.
A traveler climbed the hill.
Old man.
Dusty.
“Is this Varenne?”
Thomas looked at the valley.
“Yes.”
“Safe?”
Everyone became silent.
Thomas almost laughed.
A year ago, he would have wanted that word.
Now he knew better.
“No.”
The traveler looked disappointed.
Thomas continued.
“But there is food.”
Agnes added, “Sometimes.”
Peter said, “And rules.”
Aldren groaned.
“Too many.”
Thomas looked at the stranger.
“If you are sick, we have a place away from the houses.”
“If I’m not?”
“Work if you can. Eat either way for three days.”
“Then?”
“Then we see.”
The traveler studied him.
“Who is lord here?”
Thomas looked down at the village council gathering near the old gate.
Beatrice arguing with Isaac.
Marta shouting at someone carrying flour badly.
Children running.
Survivors.
“No one.”
The traveler frowned.
“Someone must rule.”
Thomas thought of Matthieu.
Renard.
Lucien.
Bale.
Camp Four.
Men who always knew what everyone else should sacrifice.
He shook his head.
“Someone must decide.”
“That is ruling.”
“Then many people rule badly together.”
Aldren laughed.
The traveler did not understand.
That was fine.
He walked downhill.
Thomas remained on the ridge.
Distant bells carried from another valley.
Death bells.
Still.
Always.
The Black Death had not ended.
It would kill millions before Europe learned to live around its absence.
Thomas did not know that.
He did not know historians would later give the pestilence a name grander than anyone living through it used.
He did not know kings would change laws because workers disappeared.
He did not know farms would be abandoned, wages would rise, old families would vanish, and new ones would take their place.
He knew only the next meal.
The next fever.
The next grave.
The next stranger at the gate.
He knew Agnes had lived.
Elena had not.
Luc had not.
Beatrice had.
Bale had died afraid.
Aldren still stole wine.
Marta still shouted.
Peter still missed home.
Isaac still wrote names.
And Thomas remained alive.
Not clean.
Not innocent.
Alive.
He had hit men.
Lied.
Used fear.
Watched people die.
Left his mother because she asked him to.
Refused to kill a man he hated.
Opened a gate knowing disease might enter.
Some choices saved people.
Some cost lives.
He would never know the full accounting.
Maybe nobody did.
The sun lowered behind the mountains.
Smoke rose from cooking fires.
Not burning houses.
For tonight, that was enough.
Agnes started downhill.
“You coming?”
Thomas looked east.
The road disappeared into forest.
Somewhere beyond it Saint Aldric sat empty beneath weeds and ash.
He imagined Elena standing at the gate.
Not sick.
Not dying.
Just watching him go.
Surviving does not mean becoming like them.
He finally understood.
She had not told him what kind of man to become.
Only what not to surrender.
Thomas picked up the wooden cross.
Left the iron ring on the stone.
Then followed Agnes toward the village.
Behind them, church bells rang in the distance.
Ahead, someone rang a dinner bell.
For one brief moment, the sounds were impossible to tell apart.
Death.
Life.
Same metal.
Different hands.
May you like
Thomas walked toward the one calling him home.
And the year of black death continued.
