By 1346, Audloed had made a small name for himself in the religious communities of Lunden. He was being sought after individually versus being recommended by the church in most cases. What set him apart were results. A man using what was considered then as more alternative medicines than what those under the archdiocese could supply or even use.What set him apart was his life’s work of one of the first greenhouses to exist in the Kingdom of England. He’d often lose himself in his medicinal and botanical work. Religious figures interested in sciences often worked with him and even recorded his botanical works in journals of their own, compiling their own studies and mixing them in with their sacred texts. Audloed learned that the internal church community was often filled with those who were brave enough to let their alternative interests shine through by masking them as religious-focused study. He was chosen to take on more grave illnesses and even those infected outside of Lunden. Often reimbursed for his travel to outside communities to heal the sick. While his education told him these were minor fevers and chills, his tie with the church and under the veil of God was something he never spoke out against.
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By the summer of 1348, perhaps even earlier, the bubonic plague, also known in England as The Black Death, arrived on English shores. The arrival and those infected first will always be a mystery, but the sickness started to double for Audited from two to four, from four to sixteen. A private but broad meeting was held with all clergymen of the churches of Lunden and surrounding cities. The idea that a plague was starting to quickly sweep through people in Lunden and larger cities like Norfolk, Cambridge and Peterborough, especially in an internal ruling as the Christian one, brought about a lot of official and personal beliefs. Regardless, the seriousness shook many to their core. It was hard to find a belief other than that it was the wrath of God due to punishment of sins as well as pagan foreigners who were arriving in England had poisoned the wells, but many internally whispered about the simplicity of bad air and the divine position of planets. The alarm of such a divine wrath left even higher clergymen out of important conversations with higher religious figures.
Cities began taking orders from churches during this time, as the wrath of God theory was spreading faster than the plague itself. In this, the occupation of “plague doctor” took shape. They would be physicians and doctors who were knowledgeable in the word of God that would treat victims of the plague in metropolitan and urban areas. These physicians were hired by cities to treat infected patients regardless of income, especially the poor, who could not afford to pay. Regardless of his current reputation, Audloed was chosen as one of only two from St. Etheldreda to be an official religious doctor from that church due to his Irish upbringing, knowledge and communication with the lower classes of society.
While many of these plague doctors were considered empirics, or men with an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence, they were basically the church’s way of seeing into the lives of poor individuals and the best ways to take their money in the name of tribute and the true path to God’s forgiveness. It never made sense to Audloed, ever since his beginning educational days at St. Etheldreda, that everyone was born in sin. Right out of the womb, they were considered unholy. In his experience, nothing was farther from the truth; nothing was more innocent than a newborn child. A lot of views didn’t nor ever would make sense to him, but in the pursuit of becoming a medicinal healer, he never questioned a thing. Father Byrne had bestowed a lot of wisdom on him, and he’d taken it with him wherever he went.
“Wise men speak because they have something to say. Fools speak because they have to say something.”
That was the beauty of wisdom. Regardless of what you learn, from who, where, why, or how, it’s something no one can take from you. After losing Fiadh, he clung to things that could never be taken from him. Knowledge is something that could never be taken, and especially let go, even if one wished to. They were like memories.
There were a lot of things, mental and physical, that he was beaten down by from the church to learn, know and believe, but his doctoral path was his mental freedom from it. This disease, The Great Pestilence, may be the wrath of God, but he knew better.
Shortly after disease sprung up in southern England, towns began to create and initiate contracts with the church. Most doctors were given regions of the kingdom, depending on both their skills as well as their talent with deception. As most of them charged patients or their living families fees to milk the poor of riches for the church, Audloed was specifically selected for his talents of actually healing. While most doctors were sent by themselves regionally, Audloed was assigned the southeastern parts of the kingdom with one of those unfortunate others. The church knew Audloed would not be pursuing riches as the other trusted fellow would, and they would leave for Norfolk. One of his botanical friends studying astronomy would give him a journal, however. Journals were forbidden as they encouraged self-thought and a place to commit sinful thoughts, but Audloed was instructed to keep it secret. When it was discovered, thanks to his reputation, he was able to convince the clergy that it was for recording medicinal recipes as well as documenting patients and their families so he would not cross-examine and treat those the other had already. He’d shown them his first page being simply a list of some twenty patients and families, and he wasn’t pestered for it after that. They knew, in the pursuit of healing, scientific practices would need to be woven in to reach their end goal of treasures, with healing being secondary. A plague doctor's principal task, besides treating people with the plague and collecting money from the poor, was to compile public records of plague deaths.
. . .
By the end of 1348 and early in 1349, with the detrimental onset of winter, the disease was starting to reach as far north as Grimsby and even York. Audloed knew that surely by now the disease would have entered Ireland. Thankfully his family lived remotely, and Fiadh was already gone. If not, it would have diverted him to most likely fake his death and sneak passage back to Ireland. While his counterpart stayed in the most urban of areas like Colchester, Audloed often ventured off to the poorest and most unmarked settlements and villages. He spent more time recording recipes for medicine in his journal, as he knew with the return of spring and plant life, he’d be prepared to create true remedies. While most plague victims fell to their deaths quickly, general medical practices were often shared throughout the doctoral community via news. Audloed came to learn more about methods and tasks other plague doctors were conducting, even if there were zero actual healing results from them. Bloodletting, frogs, and leeches were considered popular tools in healing already, and most of those practices were being applied.
Many had abandoned the doctoral task to take advantage of being sent off to return home and never been seen again. Quite a few of them already had died of plague themselves, ironically those who were just practitioners who were reaping riches for the church in the name of plague healing. Injecting the propaganda that this was more the wrath of God than it was a pestilence was their goal, and it made the common man fear divine punishment and pay more than was needed. Some had also been sought out individually by higher bishops and even the Pope to travel south into countries like France for Paris, Barcelona, Genoa and the Holy Roman Empire, and even Papel States to service the Pope and Catholic church to join the highest of paid plague doctors in the Kingdom of Naples. Some were sent or inspired to travel north from there as well, as traveling became the expectation of a plague doctor.
1349 saw the height of devastation in England that year. Near societal collapse, cases as far north as Edinburgh in Scotland were being reported. Believers in science and The Great Pestilence before were starting to be swayed by the Wrath of God theory. Rome and Florence were reporting as devastating numbers as Paris and London were. Wherever news traveled from in the known world, The Great Pestilence was there ravaging men and women, poor and rich, isolated and urban. Thankfully in Audloed’s case, the arrival of warmer seasons, though rather wet and cool, brought about plants he could use that he normally couldn’t. Regardless of his botanical knowledge, he was not able to replicate a greenhouse as he had back at St. Etheldrea. Regardless, the reputation of his more greedy religious counterparts had sullied him. Some would see Audloed in a plague doctor mask and his sheer presence in the village would send a warning to leave the area and/or that death was near. Though his healings were known in some families and small towns, as some families who were not able to pay in any currency would provide him family emblems or seals. A healed child named Baird, though not from the plague, even gifted him a crow tail feather to give his gratitude for saving his little sister. Though his accent was thick in Scots-Gaelic, his mother translated that he was “thankful for the raven man”. Audloed took that to heart and had never forgotten it, considering it reminded him of himself and Fiadh and their young ages.
Audloed was called back to Norfolk for a meeting of plague doctors. He ignored it, as he did most “calls” in recent months. Under the veil of religious strength, he learned it was a money collection period. His reasoning was different, as the Baird boy reminded him so. It was also a lull in his dreams of Fiadh. She hadn’t visited his dreams in a few months now, and being on the frontlines of death started to weigh on him. Though unreported, he himself fell ill for a week, showing some plague symptoms. He crafted himself remedies and healed himself back to normal, but it was certainly a scare; a time he wished Fiadh would’ve visited him most. When he was about to travel north into Scotland, somewhere in the Lothtan region, one of his last remaining scientific friends at St. Etheldrea met with him. Others had traveled south over the sea to the Holy Roman Empire, but most had died from the plague. After catching up, he had an order to give Audloed. In his predetermined route north to Scotland or inevitably wait for the right time to escape back home to Ireland, Audloed was given a new summons contract, on paper, that he travel to the Kingdom of Denmark or Norway. Since he was not providing any payments from victims as others had, he was ordered to service plague victims elsewhere in the world, but in countries none else had been assigned to. It was apparent his lack of coin or increase in church goers, but respect enough to not have his doctoral contract severed or even released from the church’s services, inspired them of the decision to send him away.
He remembered Byrne’s teachings, his home back in Ireland that he was sick for, but nostalgia for a place and time that no longer existed. He missed Fiadh, but from his teachings, he remembered Byrne’s words most.
“Travel not to find yourself, but to remember who you’ve been all along”.
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