Hero's Island

When the plague broke out in Venice in 1348, the Doge was Andrea of the Dandolo family. More than a century had passed since Enrico Dandolo had used debt to coerce the Crusaders into attacking Constantinople.

Whatever pretext the Crusades had used, there was no denying that many people had grown rich by taking part in them, and the Knights Templar happened to be among them.

Many Dandolos had served as Doge of Venice before Andrea. None of them had encountered such a thorny problem. It was his misfortune to draw the short straw.

Over the six years from 1347 to 1353, bubonic plague killed more than twenty-five million Europeans. As Italy was a vital bridgehead for trade between Europe and the East, it was among the first places struck by the Black Death. There was nowhere to run.

You had no symptoms, but people around you were falling one after another. Would you stay and wait to die with them, or find somewhere deserted to isolate yourself?

Your wife was dead, but your two children showed no symptoms. The municipal officials ordered anyone with a sick person in their household not to leave. In that situation, you had to flee the city for your children's sake.

Yet some places immediately sealed off their villages and refused entry to outsiders. Other than calling upon God, who else could help?

The Church had relief homes that assisted those in need. Not every priest was a fraud; there were good people willing to help others too. The Fat Friar, Hufflepuff's ghost, was one of them. As for whether you met a good person or a bad one, that depended entirely on luck, perhaps the rarest resource in the world.

It was her honeymoon. Of course she would not be sick enough to