It was the miller's wife who ordered the woolen stuff from London. When the chest arrived it was taken to the tailors and set before the fire.
At the end of the working day the chest was opened. The wool had become damp on its journey, and now it was warmed by the heat of the fire. When the lid was lifted fleas spattered out and lighted voraciously on the miller's wife and the tailor. If they scratched themselves a little more than usual it wasn't noted. They were too busy planning coats and breeches from the fine new fabric.
The people of Laveringham knew there was plague about, but they liked to think it was a disease of the low lying lands. Now they found themselves afflicted.
The tailor was the first to die. The miller's wife dug graves for all her family before she too succumbed.
The village was quarantined. Food was left at certain places half a mile from the nearest house. No one could enter. No one could leave.
Death and suffering stalked every street. Young children died alone in cold and empty houses. The church was locked.
If the dead had no one to bury them, then the village idiot dumped their bodies in a mass grave on the common. For his effort he claimed all the belongings of the people he buried. As the villagers died around him the idiot grew rich and fat.
For more than a year people died. A town of six hundred now held less than forty. Then a month went by without a death. There was hope that the plague had left them. Plague emptied houses were burned. The roads were reopened and people tried to smile once more.
The village idiot built five new houses, sound and strong. Survivors who had had nothing before found themselves householders. Widows, widowers and orphans formed new families and faced a different world than the one they had known. New pitfalls. New opportunities.
But it was three centuries before the village of Laveringham held six hundred souls again.