A Plague of Heretics

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The chapman could see that it was an unusual sort of funeral, even for such an outlandish place as Lympstone. There were corpses, bearers, mourners and a grave, but it was nothing like he had ever seen before.

He shrugged his bulky pack from his back and set it down with some relief on the dusty road outside the church gate. Behind him, the track led down to a primitive wharf, where the river lapped against the muddy banks of the estuary of the River Exe. From where he stood, he could see over the low hedge around the churchyard to a corner well away from the existing grave-mounds. Here a flat farm-cart had just arrived, with a patient ox between the shafts. Six sheeted bodies lay on its bare boards, but there was no sign of coffins. Two of the shrouded shapes were pitifully small.

At the side of the cart lay a large pit, a dozen feet square and almost the depth of a man. Some distance away, three labourers leaned on shovels, their noses and mouths swathed in rags, knotted at the backs of their necks.

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