The sins of the world go on being piled up endlessly, one on another, so that they cannot fail to come to the attention of the Lord Himself. Yet the Lord God is a merciful God who shows his mercy and love and willingness gently to bring the unrighteous back to the paths of the righteous by wiping out the peoples of the earth on an infrequent yet regular basis. For was it not the case that, just as the Flood was sent to chastise sinners and return mankind from evil to the ways of goodness, the visitation of the Huns warned the people of Gaul of their manifold wrongdoings, as I related in Book 2 of my original Histories (available from good bookshops, by the way, as well as a multitude of online retail outlets)? Have not countless pestilences, wars and famines acted as a scourge for the sinners of past centuries, and were not the backsliding and false promises of Antoninus the Slippery, the Laborator Mayor of the Palace of whom I have told you, chastised by the coming of the third Oasis album, and those that came thereafter when that warning went unheeded? So it was that in the first year of the rule of Boris son of John, which was also the fourth of Donald Dux, a terrible plague came out of the land of Cathay and swept across the whole world.

This was truly a terrible plague and cost the lives of thousands of good people so that the grief across the world at the loss of their loved ones cannot be described in these pages. It came unexpectedly in the winter and the land of the Lombards was the first in Europe to be sorely afflicted, although many in the eastern lands of Asia had, I am sorry to say, already perished. Although the rulers of the Lombards were not unprepared for such a pestilence, such was the scale of the disease that they were overwhelmed. The land of the Visigoths was the next to be scourged similarly and then the disease came to the Franks and the people beyond the Rhine. These were the best organised and, under the leadership of the wise woman who governed them, responded effectively and with generosity to other lands. In the Antipodes, the plague was confronted with wisdom and effectiveness, although it is possible that the Cynocephali, Blemmyes and Sciapodes who live there were less susceptible to the disease. Nonetheless, the heartbreak and tragedy lay beyond my capacity to relate.

The realms that were ravaged worst of all were the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons and Others, and the lands of the North Aremoricans and in many ways this was the consequence of their election of the Wrong-Haired Kings, as a certain wise man had called them. For Donald who, as has already been related my New Histories, was a great artist this represented a great new opportunity for his devilish, absurdist performance art. At first he spoke only of how wise the rulers of Cathay had been and of how there was no threat to the North Aremoricans for only perhaps fifteen people had been taken sick and they would all, said Donald, survive. His weak-minded son Drooper proclaimed that such was his father’s power the plague would disappear like magic in the month of May. Then, when more people were taken ill, Donald claimed that everything was under control and that anyone who wished could consult with an apothecary with ease to find out if they were infected. The apothecaries of the land had a means of prognostication at their disposal, said he, that was better than anyone else’s and that many people had said this. On he went in his mad way, declaring that there was no such plague at all, and then that the whole thing was simply a cunning plot by the followers of the former Dux Obama and his successor Josephus ‘Two-Teeth’, to make Donald look bad. As ever, the whole people of the North Aremoricans were all taken in by this and shouted and gnashed their teeth and railed at each other. As ever, the subtleties of Donald’s clever satire on the tribalization of politics and the evacuation of all empathy from the discourse of partisan politics sailed, as they say, right over their heads. Thus does Satan work his myriad tricks.

Donald’s great friend, Boris son of John, acted in his usual foolish manner. In spite of the fact that the Kingdom of the Angles, Saxons, Britons, Picts and Scots had much warning because few of its people were taken ill during the ravages of the plague in Italy and Spain, he did nothing. Like the dux of the North Aremoricans he claimed that there was no threat to his people. How does evil stalk this land! The Faction of the Right Bastards was so obsessed with the Rebellion against the Western Empire and with ensuring that no rich man paid his dues that they had actually reduced the numbers of apothecaries who knew about plague and diminished their supplies of medicine and masks that could stave off the disease. During this whole time, the wicked Dominicus of Comminges had secured his position as the real power in the land, and taken the title of Mayor of the Mayor of the Palace. Deceived by the broad expanse of his head, many people thought him to be a very wise man with a massive brain but in this, diabolo instigante, they were very wrong. Dominicus persuaded Boris both that there was no danger from the plague and also that, if there was, the best thing to do was to let everyone catch it and die. I do not know why he thought this but he was, after all, a Right Bastard. Boris followed this wicked advice like some latter-day Nero or Herod, although everyone sane knew this was an unspeakably terrible idea. I will tell you more about this wicked man soon enough. Meanwhile the Laboratores did little enough to object to this, for they had spent all the months since Boris’ victory squabbling with each other about who should succeed Count Jeremiah Corbinus as their leader. For their part, those of the faction of Open Handed Mob Rule had seemingly gone away to hide in a cave or something for reasons I know not. And thus the machinations of the Devil went unchecked by anyone other than the Wise Woman who governed the Picts and Scots who did what she could. Even this was not enough.

As I result, I am heartbroken to have to say, many thousands of the Angles and Others died needlessly and, of them, many were the good people who tended to the sick. And the families of the smitten could not be with their loved ones as they lay ill or dying but had to say goodbye by remote conferencing software, as it is called. And if this doesn’t make you, as the common herd say in their vulgar way, really fucking angry, you have truly not been paying attention.