Pestilence Card (A)

On the way home from France we passed through a place called Bazas. While we were there a man became ill. He was a sailor who had just come back from a trip to Sicily. He had been feeling ill for a couple of days before we arrived. He complained of giddiness, shivering, vomiting and pains all over his body. Then lumps appeared under his arm. Red things they were. Well, they were red at first, then they got bigger and darker. He also had a lot of small spots all over his body. The thing I remember most of all was the terrible smell. It seemed that he was rotting to death. Before he died, people all over Bazas began complaining of feeling ill. Our commander decided to get out of the town as soon as possible. After leaving Bazas we went to Blaye. No one here had the disease but sailors from Blaye told stories of how villages all over Europe had been destroyed by the disease they called the pestilence.

Pestilence Card (B)

I was in Tonbridge yesterday when all of a sudden, the town was swamped with visitors. Most of them had come from London. Others had come from villages south of the city. The people said they were fleeing from the pestilence. One man told me that the streets of London are full of dead bodies. Many people had stories to tell of the disease. One young woman told me that that she was the only one from a family of eight who had survived. Another man, a pedlar, told me that the disease was all over England. He said that it had spread through the West Country, then London, and was now heading for Kent and Sussex. When I heard that I decided to get on my horse and head back to Yalding as fast as I could.