Year of Wonders

by Geraldine Brooks

It was as if there were two of me, walking down those stairs. One of them was the timid girl who had worked for the Bradfords in a state of dread, fearing their hard looks and harsh words. The other was Anna Frith, a woman who had faced more terrors than many warriors.

“Why would I marry? I’m not made to be any man’s chattel. I have my work, which I love.

One walks, if one must walk, in the very center of the roadway to avoid the contagion seeping from dwellings. Those who must move through the poorer parishes cover their faces in herb-stuffed masks contrived like the beaks of great birds.

“Yet God in His infinite and unknowable wisdom has singled us out, alone amongst all the villages in our shire, to receive this Plague. It is a trial for us, I am sure of it. Because of His great love for us, He is giving us here an opportunity that He offers to very few upon this Earth.

And so the rest of us set about learning to live in the wide green prison of our own election.

The map showed it clearly: the way the contagion had spread out from my cottage, a starburst of death.

“Flagellants walked the lanes of this land many hundreds of years ago, when disease and war were here. At the time of the Black Death, they gathered again, sometimes in very great numbers, passing from town to town, drawing the souls of the troubled to them. Their belief is that by grievous self-punishment they can allay God’s wrath. They see Plague as His discipline for human sin. They are poor souls—”