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Two weeks before Christmas, Rajiv Mahendra, a trainee doctor at Oxford's John Radcliffe hospital, encounters a patient with rare symptoms that are sinisterly familiar. In India, the disease is known as bubonic plague. The last time it occurred on a large scale in Europe, it was known as the Black Death and killed off one third of the population. Driven by morbid curiosity, American history student Daniel Warren sneaks into the hospital to see the patient, but is discovered by a female reporter from the local newspaper. In a misguided attempt to keep her quiet, Warren reveals that the patient had been working on a building site close to the former village of Nether Ditchford, where the entire population died in the winter of 1348-49. Could the bacteria have been accidentally awakened from a state of dormancy? The idea seems impossible, but is it?