Lives Lived and Lives Lost

Life #73: The Black Death

Life # 73: That time Tom and Harry died of the Black Death

Bremen, Holy Roman Empire, 1350

“You’re going to have to repeat that,” Tom rasped, barely able to keep his eyes open, his cheeks glowing with a fever. “Because it sounded like you just suggested I die a painful death from the bubonic plague to satisfy your curiosity.”

“Well, no,” Harry said, adjusting her woollen skirts as she kneeled beside their simple bed so she could wipe the sweat off Tom’s forehead with a cold, damp cloth. “But also yes.”

Tom managed to crack open one bloodshot eye to give his soulmate a half-hearted glare. “Harry, let’s just end it now. There’s nothing stopping us.”

“I know.” Harry swiped the cloth across Tom’s cheeks. They had a simple rule when it came to suicide. As long as they didn’t have young children they could step out of a life if it became too painful one way or another. But if they had children that weren’t yet adults and capable of looking after themselves, they had to stick around, no matter what. Both Tom and Harry had been orphans their first life and they weren’t about to put their own children through a similar ordeal if they could help it.

This life they lost their infant daughter to scarlet fever the previous year and Harry had suffered a miscarriage just a few months prior, probably due to malnutrition. Food was getting scarcer by the day what with the Black Death sweeping across the whole of Europe and Asia, leaving millions and millions dead in its wake, with fields of crops left to rot without enough workers to harvest them.

Tom ran a small business with his brother Hans as grain importers, bringing in wheat and barley on merchant ships in Bremen port in what one day would be modern Germany, but due to the plague, commerce was in decline and Tom barely brought home enough money to keep them fed and housed. Harry earned a few coins on the side as an herb woman, selling homemade remedies for things like rashes and headaches, but while she could cure many small ailments with her modern knowledge of medicinal plants, even she couldn’t produce any antibiotics to cure the bubonic plague without modern technology.

“Aren’t you at least a bit medically curious, though?” Harry asked, sitting back and giving Tom a pleading look, hoping to tickle Tom’s professional curiosity. They’d both been medical doctors more than once at that point. “We’re in the middle of the great plague and we’ve got this unique opportunity to experience what it’s like to die from the bubonic plague.”

Tom made a throaty sound of disbelief which ended in a coughing fit. Harry reached for a clay cup of boiled and cooled water for Tom to drink.

“Think about it,” Harry rambled on because her inner-scientist and medical doctor were insanely curious about what it was like to go through such a devastating historical event. They’d known they were going to live through the Black Death once they got their memories back and realized where and when they were living and they’d taken every precaution they could, keeping their small house in Bremen pest free as much as possible. Harry had adopted a handful of cats over the years to help with this. Their small dog, a terrier mix named Nils who had been an excellent rat catcher, had been taken away the previous year, along with all other dogs in the city of Bremen, in the mistaken belief they were spreading the plague while in reality they were holding the spread back by keeping the local rat population under control. Harry had vocally and vehemently opposed this policy until Tom had literally dragged her away once the authorities had threatened to throw Harry into the slammer for obstructing the law.