Plague

Prologue

London 1665

Five years after his restoration to the throne, after a decade of glum Puritanism, Charles II leads his citizens by example, enjoying every excess. Many Londoners flock to the reopened places of entertainment: the cockpits, the brothels, the theatres—where for the first time women may perform onstage alongside the men.

For some citizens, though, the wounds of the Civil Wars, which ended with the execution of Charles I in 1649 and the triumph of Oliver Cromwell and Parliament, have never healed. Especially bitter are radical Christians, those dissenters who enjoyed a brief tolerance under Cromwell and who are again persecuted. For them this liberated age has turned London into Babylon and many dream of an Apocalypse to purge the realm of sin.

Some do more than dream.

With its rambling streets, its great mansions, its fetid tenements, London is a city of contrasts. There is not enough clean water; there is too much garbage, there are too many rats. Refugees from Holland and France live ten to a room beside the English, who resent them.

The city is a labyrinth. At its centre sleeps a monster. When the time is right, that monster will wake. And it will want to feed.

The monster is the Great Plague.