The men who carried these requests and the intermittent replies formed part of what was apparently a small army of envoys, messengers, and inspectors crowding the pestilent roads and paths of Castile, attempting to verify and quantify the alarming rumors and to “understand the nature of the illness.” Valladolid, for example, sent one of its postmen (correos), Simón García, to deliver one of its reports “to wherever the King Our Lord may be.” He was to leave Valladolid “today, Tuesday, May 18, at four in the afternoon.” After García found the itinerant royal court in Barcelona and obtained certification from one of the king’s secretaries, he told Valladolid that, “His Majesty has seen the letter and papers sent by the city,” and García was paid 114 reales the following month after his return.2