The Posie Chronicles

The Vernetii letters:
By
Adam O’Donoghue


Letter 1, Drafted 12/08/1374
Dear my beloved niece,
In these dark times alas doth the angles smile their grim faces of vanity and despair a cursing chorus to these blasphemous tidings, a plague approaches; salivating the very essence of decay and decadents. Our sins shall be repented in blood and written in the quill of a devil’s hand, but nigh Armageddon. I shouldn’t have weaned from the Zodiacs warnings, for it has rebutted in consequence. A close clan of Jupiter, Saturn and Mars signs the happenings of wonderful or terrible, violent events to come.
Fear not my child for you are young and the aurora of innocence, the halo that brings thoughts of youngling angels playing with the damned devils neither knowing of fate, destiny nor the very dynasty they belong to: its bright light shall see you spared, though my indulgences are on a whim break as their girth has not yet inflated to an affluent proportion.
Folk say that this ‘black death’ a name birthed by the devils sore that swells in the riches of pain and agony, has the demonic features of a haggling cough that suddenly rises in the throat on the 2nd day and then by next two zenith ridden shards of the moon, if it indeed shine its elegant but sympathetic face down on own misery, our agony. Deaths bony hand, the sentinel of the black angle, has already driven the poor victim’s soul to the dynasty of ones own livelihood.
Italy has become a chaotic place, once a beauty complimented by the aqueducts that wed our cities to the water, though some waters are weeds that vine from the filth of humanity, dog and rat alike. Now day’s rotation leaves, the sneering soul a blasphemous man, one with now neither family nor seed, the flagellants have appeared, though truth be told they are as bad as the plague. Mortals scared with the mental pains of lost and grief because of god’s protection, and thus are reflected, as clear as mirrors in the slash lines of the whips that they carry in their dead trances of empty glassy eyes of empathy’s absence. The deep terrenes of flesh are pools of a scabbed soul, airs regeneration forces these sympathetic redden caps to emerge, a sign of the wish to start again, a wish for new life, the renaissance of the mad men.
Doctors have calculated, devised and formulate many questions, some with temporary answers enveloped in the white glow of faith. Some to the treatment of the plague and the burning rumour of witch remedies of toads and bulbars; contained in the unexplored regions of the king’s and some in the far rein of Asia, absorb the poisons of the death and purify the patience; though sadly in my bed ridden state none of these remedies have since worked.
I am dying Maria, and do not cry for thee, my soul is being purged.
I am sincerely sorry if this letter is the last you here from me, I will write more letters to you before this disease ends my mortal life, but does life ever end.
My prayers are to you.

Sincerely but not goodbye,
Your uncle,
St. Mickle Vornetii




Letter 2, Drafted 14/06/1374
Dear my mortal angle,
The plague still haunts us and my fragile and gaunt body. My money has shrivelled into the collapsed purse containing nothing but the mere air that gives use life, though gives me an ill depression as the fruits of the devils thwart my body with their shearing provenance; humps of blood, sized to the scale of goose eggs, vials of a dark black entity swimming through my veins. When Dust to dust come on its chariot of faith and time, a nomad of limbo I shan’t become for it shall clam my future in the nexus of the afterlife due to my immortal reprimand to you.
Visions of my life haunt my deluded head, my time in this Abbey as the almoner pictures of the poverty I helped burn flood back by the waves but alas my service has not pleased the divine lord.
My infirmarer, a young nun, stays by my side, and all twelve of us. She an angle to all of us, whispering sweet nothings of hope and dignity as beautiful as the chorus of heaven, but her intervention with deaths work has seen her grow the demon toad of the his old widow and I think soon she will be with us, in our isolated and dark dormitory lit only by the eerie candles that shine their dim light on the doomed inhabitants that lie with me I our final stages of mortality.
Lectio Divina has engulfed most of my spare time as Opus Manuum has eluded my capabilities and strength and Opus Dei has not been allowed. I lie here, my only wish or plea is to see your face one last time before I am welcome in his house of eternal enlightenment, my wings are in reserve, as I write these final letters too you.
The Cellarer a round man, beacon of good luxury shines from his excessive girth, sighs and rubs his skinny baled head as rats, black creatures of the devil, invest our treasure of hard labour seen through out our years. The wine has spilled and the boar has been mock by the gnashing teeth of vermin and other offerings of game from lasts month have been desecrated with filth as the writhing tails of the rats mock those by showing the foul remains of our intended food in the specks of their dung. Hay cutting as being the labour in the month, has been shipped to a locate barn due to the generous offering of a local merchant. Though his wife is in the final stages of the disease and the villagers are gathering to flee to distant lands, many god guide their souls.