Infinite 01 - Infinite Sacrifice

holding the reins in fisted hands.
    Reckless peasants, merchants, and wayward animals dart in front of the carts, creating a constant stream of disruption. I detest the open-air market, the way the streets are lined with shoddy thatched cottages and shambles. Stalls, selling everything from fabrics to spices, are set up all over, and noisy peddlers are advertising their wares. Everyone comes all over London and the countryside to either bring or purchase their goods for the day. The busy and bawdy traffic is the least of the unpleasantness experienced in Cheapside.
    At dawn, butchers bring their moaning animals to slaughter at Butcher’s Row. There is Pig Lane, Chicken Lane, Cow Lane, and Cock Lane—each lane named for the animal slaughtered there. Butchers tie the doomed lot up and one by one begin slicing them open, spilling their blood, making rivers down the street. They carve them up and discard the inedible body parts on the ground beneath their feet. The sound of dying animals can be heard anywhere you stand in Cheapside, all day long. Blood sits in stagnant pools all over the streets, clotting and thickening as the day progresses, seeping into putrid cesspools. Entrails bake in the sun as rats and flies swarm at opportunistic moments. Every animal has its own smell as it rots on the cobblestones, being crushed and smashed by butchers’ heavy boots.
    All over London, people let livestock roam the streets, in an effort to clean up the garbage thrown from doorways into the gutters. To my right, three enormous sows are rummage through a mixture of bones and decaying debris, snorting away, their fleshy faces covered in filth.
    Someone yells from the window above our cart, “Look out below!”
    Hadrian looks worried, as he knows he has to try to move quickly.
    “Look out below!” they warn again.
    He pulls the horse slightly to the left.
    “Look out below!”
    A full chamber pot is dumped, narrowly missing our cart and splashing up on the wooden sides. The pigs rush over to consume greedily whatever disgusting morsel was thrown down. Whenever I venture through Cheapside, I have to bring a sachet of rosemary to hold to my nose, or else the smell would be nauseating. Hadrian rarely takes me with him to go out. I’m excited to get out of the courtyard and see something different, vile smells or not. Hadrian has new surgical supplies and books coming to him from Paris. We have to go through Cheapside to get to the seaport on the Thames. Finally, we hear the steady creaking of the cart rolling along the muddy road.
    The streets open up to a bustling harbor, every bit as smelly and crowded as the market.
    “You wait here for me. I cannot get any closer to the dock,” Hadrian says without even looking at me.
    He motions two dockhands to come with him. I watch his slightly hunched form disappear into the slender vessel at the end of the pier. It is a beautiful, early fall day. The time when the summer heat has faded away and been replaced by a slight cool breeze. The sun glistens off the water, making even the polluted Thames look sparkling and beautiful. Men shouting and running to the farthest dock breaks the solitude of the moment. I turn to what the commotion is and see a large merchant ship coming into the harbor. At first, nothing looks out of the ordinary, but then I notice how slow the boat is moving, like a ghost gliding among headstones.
    There are no hands on deck. The boat is coming in unmanned, with only one of its sails still tied, two others flapping in the wind. The eerie sounds of the riggings clanging against the masts echoes over the water. Tenders are launched in an attempt to aid the ship, but are too late as it runs aground on the side of the port. The whole seaport turns its attention to this strange anomaly, and many stand openmouthed.
    Did this ship lose its anchor or pull free from its cleats?
    I watch as men pull their small boats astride and climb up the ropes. They’re on the deck for but an instant before they all run screaming off the ship or dive into the water below. The whole seaport knows what that means.
    The Black Death has arrived in London.
    Hadrian comes back with the men carrying a large trunk each. He squints toward the plague ship in annoyed anxiety. “Stay here. I have to see about this.”
    The cart jolts at the added weight, while the dockhands stand and leer at me.
    Hadrian, noticing this, changes his mind. “You better come with me, Elizabeth.”
    We reach the