Death is a Welcome Guest

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The Black Death may have been named for the way its symptoms affected its victims’ bodies, or it may have been so called because of its scope and dreadfulness. It is impossible to know true figures for how many people died, but it is generally agreed that the first wave of the pandemic (1340–1400) killed at least a third of the population of Europe. The Black Death was a democratic killer. The young, the old, the poor and the rich, the educated and uneducated, religious and irreligious were all at risk. Everyone who survived had lost someone they were close to and had lived with the imminent prospect of their own death.

The first wave of the plague pandemic left the world altered. There were more jobs, higher wages and increased social mobility. Some people with no expectations of ever inheriting anything became wealthy as a result of the deaths of successive relatives. A lack of manpower meant that women were able to access economic and social freedoms previously denied to them. The arts were also changed; inspired by the knowledge that death is everywhere. I am fascinated by the survivors of the Black Death. How must it have felt to still be alive in such a changed world?

The Bubonic Plague still exists in parts of China and America. Its final outbreak in Glasgow, the city where I live, was in 1907 and was quickly dealt with. We need not fear another mass outbreak of the disease. But scientists are agreed that there will be another pandemic at some point in the near future. What it will be, when it will hit, and how many will die is uncertain. All we can be sure of is that it will come.

Thanks are due to several people who helped me during the writing of this book. Roland Philipps and Eleanor Birne of John Murray have both been enthusiastic supporters of the Plague Times trilogy. They have given me invaluable care and editorial advice.

My agent, David Miller of Rogers, Coleridge and White, cast his beady eye over the manuscript several times and discussed it with insight and good sense. He has saved me from devastating geographical mistakes and much more.

As usual I have neglected my friends and family in favour of books and the blank page. Thanks once again to them for sticking with me.

Special thanks are due to my partner, the writer Zoë Strachan who has been living surrounded by plagues and pandemics for a few years now. She read this book at the early and later stages and it is much improved for her rigour and expertise.