I am currently doing course in writing fiction. This is an early attempt to practice some of the techniques of the course. It should only be of interest to my fellow students.
Revised Draft
The girl was tall, over five feet, and had once been pretty. Red hair and fair skin marked a measure of Viking ancestry but both were now dull as the midwinter sky. Only her eyes retained their old look. Buboes the size of hens’ eggs protruded from her neck. Eggs. She knew what they looked like but only the people of the manor house ever ate eggs. More swellings protruded from the skin under her arms and in the private areas under her skirts. They were tender to the touch but the pain was lost in the fire that burned from head to foot. No longer able to stand she lay on the straw mattress in front of the fireplace and its embers. Her father had carried each of her brothers in turn to the pit on the edge of the village before he had succumbed to the Mortality in his turn. No one would carry her; she was the only one left of the family. The fire was almost gone and the cries of the hungry animals were the only sounds. Night was falling and despite the pain she felt exhaustion overtake her. As she hit that half state on the cusp of sleep she saw, or perhaps felt, the golden light that had no origin. And then she slept.
She awoke in pain. The sounds of Cheapside were subdued but the stench had not abated. The house was unnaturally quiet. The usual clattering of feet on boards was absent. Her mother came in from the street, moving almost silently across the dirt floor of their poor workers’ dwelling. There was news. King Henry and his courtiers had left the city as the plague raged on. Wealthy men were fleeing to their houses in Hackney and Wimbledon. But for the poor there was no escape. Food was hard to find as traders stayed away from the city and worst of all, a great pit had been dug in Smithfield. Once again it appeared that one person in every five – one finger on every counting hand – would succumb to the random whim of the plague. The girl whimpered a little. Her coarse woollen dress scraped the innumerable blisters on her fair skin. She shivered as the waves of heat and cold passed through her thin body and shut her eyes against the golden glow that seemed to be coming from walls and ceiling alike. Her mother cried out once but then came the silence.
Silence fell over the battlefields on the eleventh day of the eleventh month and the four-year nightmare was over. But the nightmare of peace was only just beginning. The girl was little, only just over five feet tall, but tough. Her eyes shone with determination that wouldn’t have been out of place in a Viking warrior. She spoke in an accent that the army nurses could only just comprehend but they understood that she wanted bring comfort to men who had made it through the war only to fall victim to the new plague. Influenza was not a novelty but to thousands of men, and a few women, weakened by the deprivations of years of war this visitation was more deadly than the bullets, shells and gas. Fever, pain and shortness of breath marked the progress of the disease as it spread from man to man and from town to town. Not all died. Some were well enough to be sent home to England on crowded trains and ferries or to the USA in packed troopships. Throughout the nightmare she worked to bring succour where she could. Mostly bringing water to drink and blankets to cover was the best she could manage. Drugs for pain relief were crude and in short supply. For three months she was there and then one day she was not. Her lungs finally surrendered to the battering of the H1N1 Influenza A virus that was yet unknown to even the most eminent men of science. The pain, fever and inability to breathe that had struck down so many in her care found a new victim. The little girl with the strange way of speaking was laid down on a bed recently vacated by a young Man of Kent. As her struggle to breathe reached its climax a golden light suffused the gloom of the side room and she slept.
Faye woke on 28 February 2020 to the sound of the BBC news. “A British man has died on a cruise ship quarantined off the coast of Japan. The man, who has not yet been named is the first British fatality ascribed to a novel virus that emerged in China at the end of last year”.
Third-year nursing student Faye was swimming through a golden glow towards consciousness as Alexa filled the room with the refined tones of the newsreader. She was 22, short, fair haired and very pretty. She had almost completed her degree and hoped to specialise in ICU nursing once she had some experience. This new virus might prove very interesting.
