And while all of this was going on – while taxes were renegotiated, walls fixed, goods smuggled in and out, fairs canceled, supplies delivered, clothes burned, orders issued, and meetings held – people were getting sick and dying. They died at home, in a hospital, or somewhere in-between, usually just a few days after suddenly becoming feverish, delirious, nauseous, wracked with pain, and suffering from buboes. I began the long, meandering and jumbled passage of the great Castilian plague in the Palace. It ends by the sickbed or, more probably, by a mattress.