CHAPTER 1: When The Bell Tolls

The plague did not arrive screaming.

It came quietly, the way rot did—patient, already inside the walls before anyone noticed the smell. It crept in beneath doors and into cellars, settled into the mortar between stones, lingered in the folds of cloth and the hollows of lungs. By the time it announced itself, it had already decided who would listen.

On a morning that smelled of damp earth and old smoke, the church bell rang once.

Then it stopped.

Elizabeth knew something was wrong the moment the sound fell short.

The bell was meant to toll three times for the dead—three slow, measured peals to mark the passing of a soul from flesh to judgment. One ring was an accident. Two meant violence. Three meant God had been acknowledged.

One meant there was no strength left to finish.

She stood in the narrow lane outside her cottage, basket hooked over her arm, and listened to the silence settle. It pressed against her ears, thick and heavy, as though the village itself were holding its breath. The sound of the bell seemed to linger anyway, vibrating faintly in her bones, a ghost of metal and rope refusing to die.

Around her, doors closed with careful slowness. Not slammed—no one wanted to draw attention—but eased shut, wood against wood, as if gentleness might disguise fear. Shutters latched. A woman across the way crossed herself twice, hesitated, then spat into the dirt for luck. Someone murmured a prayer under their breath, the words tumbling over one another too quickly to mean anything.

No one looked at Elizabeth. They rarely did anymore.

Elizabeth adjusted her shawl and began walking toward the church, boots sinking slightly into the mud. The earth was saturated from recent rains, the ground soft enough that her steps left impressions that filled slowly with dark water. The air felt wrong—too sweet, too damp. Smoke from burning herbs curled through the streets: rosemary, juniper, sage. Bundles hung in doorways and windows like charms, tied with string or wire, some already browning at the edges. Anything to drive death away.

Elizabeth had learned long ago that death did not scare easily.

Near the square, the smell shifted. The smoke no longer stood alone. Something heavier threaded through it—warm and metallic, cloying at the back of her throat.

A cart stood near the well, its wooden sides darkened by something that was not water. The boards had absorbed it, soaked it in so deeply that no amount of scrubbing would ever remove the stain. Two men worked quickly, loading a wrapped body onto the bed. Their faces were drawn and gray, eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness or grief. Their hands shook despite the speed of their movements.

They did not pray.

They did not speak.

One of them retched suddenly, bending at the waist, gagging violently before wiping his mouth with his sleeve and forcing himself upright again.

Elizabeth stopped a few paces away.

The cloth slipped as the body was lifted, just enough for her to see the man’s face—swollen, discolored, mouth frozen open as if he had died trying to breathe. The skin beneath his eyes had darkened to bruised purple, stretched tight and shiny. Dark lumps bulged beneath his jaw, round and obscene, pulling the flesh downward.

Elizabeth swallowed and forced herself closer.

“How long?” she asked quietly.

The men startled, glancing at her as though she had risen from the cart itself.

“Since last night,” one muttered. “Fever took him. Then the swellings.”

Elizabeth nodded.

The bell did not ring a third time.

She spent the rest of the morning moving from house to house, knocking where others would not. She did not announce herself loudly. She did not carry a symbol of the church. She carried only her basket and the quiet expectation that suffering would answer.

Inside the houses, the heat was suffocating. Fires burned constantly now, not for warmth but to boil water, to burn rags, to scrub floors already stained dark. The air clung to her skin, heavy with breath and sweat and sickness. It soaked into her clothes, settled in her hair.

She found bodies burning with fever, breath rattling like stones in a jar. She found swollen throats and bloodied lips, sheets stiff with dried pus and bile. She found children pressed into corners, eyes too large for their faces, watching in silence.

Mothers wept until their voices broke. Fathers stood uselessly in corners, hands shaking, eyes hollow.

Elizabeth touched them all.

She counted pulses. Cooled foreheads. Washed blood from mouths and wiped away blackened spittle. She whispered comforts she did not fully believe but could not bear to withhold. She worked until her fingers ached and her back burned, until her basket grew lighter and her sleeves grew heavy with the weight of sickness.

At one door, a woman refused to let her in.

“You bring it with you,” the woman hissed through the wood. “Where you go, death follows.”

Elizabeth rested her forehead against the door, feeling the tremor of fear on the other side. Somewhere inside, a child coughed—small and thin, like a bird trapped in a wall.

“I bring what I can,” Elizabeth said softly. “I cannot take what is already here.”

The door did not open.

She left a bundle of herbs on the step and walked away without looking back.

By midday, the smell had changed.

Rot crept into the air, thick and sweet, clinging to stone and cloth alike. Smoke no longer masked it. It only layered itself on top, like perfume on decay. Flies gathered in dark clusters near doorways marked with ash or nailed-up sheets—warnings to others, or perhaps prayers in their own way.

Elizabeth wiped her hands on her apron and tried not to breathe too deeply.

Near the edge of the village, she found the old woman who had once taught her which plants eased fever and which only dulled pain. The woman lay on her pallet, eyes open but seeing nothing, breath shallow and fast. Her chest rose and fell unevenly, as if each breath were an argument she might lose.

Elizabeth knelt and took her hand.

“You stayed,” the woman rasped.

“I always do,” Elizabeth said.

The woman’s fingers tightened weakly around hers. “They will not forgive you for it.”

Elizabeth did not answer.

When the woman died, the bell did not ring at all.

By evening, the carts rattled through the streets more frequently. Bodies were wrapped hastily, stacked without ceremony. Arms dangled from the sides, fingers dragging through the mud and leaving pale trails. There were too many now for prayers, too many for names.

The bell rang once more at dusk.

Elizabeth stood in the square and listened as the sound faded into the fog rolling in from the fields. The villagers had already retreated indoors, sealing themselves away with their fear and their faith. She was alone beneath the church tower, the bell looming overhead like a judgment that had grown tired of speaking.

She returned home as darkness fell, hands trembling as she set her basket down. The candle she lit guttered violently, its flame bending sideways as though disturbed by a breath she could not feel.

Elizabeth pressed her palm to her sternum and inhaled. The breath scraped.

She closed her eyes.

Death had arrived.