Plague!

And so, unbidden, plague came to the lands of Mittelheim. No one knows from whence it came; nor, indeed, where 'Whence' might be; or, in truth, whether 'whence' is the right word and whether 'from' might be better and a bit less pretentious; and also, in parallel, whether the word 'unbidden' isn’t also a bit lah-di-dah. Whatever, plague has arrived: the hard hand of Pestilence, stalking the land like a taller-than-average stork with a dodgy hip, laying low both lord and peasant, though the former at least probably has a better quality of pillow to be low in.

As the numbers of afflicted begin to mount*, the citizens of the wide lands of Mittelheim turn to the most important and pressing issue: finding someone to blame. Foreigners are an obvious choice: as any self-respecting Mittelheimer knows, silly accents have been for centuries a sure cause of epidemics. Sellers of soap have also quickly found themselves in metaphorical hot water. Many blame excessive bathing as a self-evident source of the virulent malaise. For others, mainly in Fenwick, the origin is widely believed to be bad humours caused by contact with rudely shaped fruit and vegetables.

One of the few in Mittelheim that might view the plague in a more positive light is Death himself. For him, the sudden bout of mass illness has come as a bit of a relief. With the slow pace of military operations in the region, there has been much less to do of late. This new and sudden increase in earthly expiration has had for Death at least two benefits. First, since many of those that have expired have been in their beds, there has been much less bending down to do, which has helped Death with his lumbago.

Mittelheim Plague Doctors with a Local Quack

Second, it has stopped Death's apprentice, Cheese, from continuing to suffer terminal boredom. Boredom generally is rarely a good thing: but it becomes a partcular problem if the individual it afflicts literally has the power of life and death. Statisticians studying the manner of recent fatalities in Mittelheim might well raise an eyebrow at some of the new categories of mortality that have emerged in these recent times; times which Death suspects probably correlate heavily with those periods when he was on a break and Cheese was in charge of the reaping of souls. Thus, in addition to the more expected categories of final departure (such as the pox, flux, dropsy, biliousness, canker, and effluvia), there has been an increase in incidences of death through such causes as: the inhalation of potatoes; being crushed by a commode; being Welsh; having a terminally curly moustache; and being morbidly afraid of underwear. Indeed, there have been more than the usual number of souls that have found that their journey towards the white light has been accompanied by the sounds of someone sniggering.

This new turn of events has had some profound implications for the conduct of military operations during the current war in Mittelheim. In Fort Pippin, the governor ruminates on its implications ...







* Except in Fenwick, where, for obvious double entendre related reasons, the list of casualties can only 'grow' rather than 'mount'.