Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (27 page)

We walk through the village of tents. Past racks bearing armor and spears and poleaxes. Past iron tripods supporting kettles over cold firepits. It is an absurd thought, that a plagued duke could lead an army. But where could Henry have gone? My heart pounds, not with the thought that Henry might have the plague, but with the possibility that there may not be horses in Stowmarket.

A stout wooden bridge leads across the Gipping. No one stands guard. We walk across it, the donkey’s hooves clattering over the planks. I rest my hand on the pommel of my sword, letting my finger trace the bump of Saint Giles’s tooth in the grip.

Without warning, the ghostly strains of a distant choir break the silence. Voices in harmony, raised toward God. There is no sound like it in all the world. Mortal voices uniting to create something immortal. Something that cannot be of this earth. Something that touches the soul of anyone who hears it. Something that proves the existence of God.

We pass a line of hedges and all of us draw up short and stare.

Tristan lets out a long breath. “There is no God.”

On either side of us, in piles as wide as small churches and high as my waist, lie stacks of smoldering dead. Twisted piles of blackened bones that still simmer and seethe. Dark blue smoke curls toward the Heavens like the sluggish emigration of angry souls.

I know now why I smelled roasting meat.

There is no difference between the bones of the afflicted and the healthy, so I can only imagine that these poor souls had the plague. I do not dare to think of the other possibility. We stare at the charred bodies for a long time while the Heavenly voices swell, stop with perfect precision, then begin again toward a new refrain.

Something hard forms in my chest, somewhere between my sternum and throat. Perhaps the last of my soul has hardened and died. Zhuri covers his eyes with a hand, and I know he struggles against tears. He and the sisters at Hedingham burned scores of plaguers that had gathered around the walls of the convent.

“Let’s find the horses and get out of Stowmarket,” I say.

The song of the choir grows louder as we trudge closer to the town center. I wonder how many families lie in those smoldering piles. How many of those bones belong to children. I tap my breastplate so I can feel Elizabeth’s cure against my chest and walk faster.

Three bodies hang by the neck from a tall oak a short distance away. Two men and a woman. The piles of burning dead were likely plagued, but I am certain that these three were not afflicted. I stare at them as I pass.

The singing comes from a church, of course, a long, stone building with the typical Norman tower and walls strewn with flint. Hundreds of men—perhaps thousands—kneel in the churchyard. They are crammed into every open space. More men gather at the doorway. I can only imagine how crowded it must be inside the church itself.

We walk through an open gate of wrought iron and pick our way through kneeling men.

“Kneel, sirs!” A man whispers to us.

“You have to take a knee, my lord,” another hisses.

I do not have time to take a knee. Richard’s army must surely have left Framlingham by now. And we are still ten miles from St. Edmund’s Bury.

I shove past a man on the carved wooden porch and push into the church. The echoing voices in the choir strike me like a crash of warm water, set my bones trembling. The singers are above us, in the gallery. And before us, kneeling at every pew, are soldiers and priests.

Up by the altar, two knights in full harness hold a man’s head in a barrel. The man’s struggles make water from the barrel slosh onto the floor. Four priests, standing behind the knights, chant toward the drowning man, reading words from Bibles.

And, behind the knights and priests, hanging by a rope tied around her neck, is a woman. She gags and kicks violently, the noose slowly crushing the life from her.

“What is happening here?” I shout.

A priest kneeling by the door hisses at me. “Silence! And kneel! Kneel, or you’ll spoil the ceremony!”

“What ceremony?”

“An exorcism!” The priest’s head jerks to one side in what I can only imagine is a tic. “They are removing the demons from the afflicted man. Now kneel! Before it’s too late!”

“Exorcisms,” Tristan says, “look exactly like drownings.” He glances above the altar. “What about the woman? Is she part of the ceremony?”

“Don’t be a fool,” the priest says, his head jerking again. “The death of a heretic gives power to exorcisms.”

“Has she done anything wrong?” I ask. “Or did you simply pick her at random?”

“Of course she’s done wrong!” The priest snaps. “She’s an alchemist.”

It takes a heartbeat for the words to settle on us.

We drop our packs, as one, and sprint down the aisle.

“Stop!” My words echo, and clash with the choir’s song. “Take her down! Take her down!”

The knights at the barrel pull the plaguer’s head out in a spray of water. They look to us without releasing their hold. One of the priests stops chanting and another urges him to continue by glaring and chanting more loudly.

Two men wearing the arms of Hereford rise and block our approach to the altar. “Halt!” one shouts. “You must kneel and be silent!”

A priest on the foremost pew rises. “They’ll ruin it! They’ll ruin it!”

“You have to cut her down!” I bellow.

The hanging woman’s legs kick with less vigor.

One of Henry’s men drives a shoulder into me, knocking me back into Tristan.

“By order of Henry, Duke of Hereford, I command you to kneel and shut your bloody mouth!”

I crouch and prepare to leap at the man.

“Edward!” Morgan shouts. “This is a church! It is forbidden!”

Necessitas non habet legem.

I lunge and grab the man by the hair, swing him sideways. He topples into the pew, knocking two kneeling men to the ground. Tristan and Pantaleon work together to shove the other guard into the pews on the far side of the aisle. And we run toward the altar.

Soldiers rise to their feet. The knights at the barrel look to the priests, who shake their heads and continue chanting. The plaguer’s head is shoved back into the barrel and both knights and priests watch as we stream past. Tristan leaps, landing on his stomach upon the altar stone. But the altar cloth slides across the polished granite, and he crashes to the floor in a rattle of plates, on the opposite side.

“That hurt,” Tristan calls from behind the altar. “A lot.”

Henry’s men are back on their feet and running toward us.

“Stop them!” one of the men shouts to the soldiers in the pew. “Stop them!”

I lean against the altar and Pantaleon boosts me up, muttering something about “. . . the paid . . . .” The woman’s feet are twitching. She hangs limply from the rope. I hug her legs and lift, putting slack into the rope.

Please don’t die
.

Morgan, Zhuri, and Pantaleon shove at soldiers as they approach.

“Please,” Morgan shouts. “Please, we do not want any more violence. This is a church!”

But there are too many soldiers in the church. They swarm my companions. Tristan leaps to his feet with a flourish and throws himself at the crowd, shouting, “Hallelujah!” He knocks a half dozen of them to the ground.

The voices of the choir surge, as if trying to drown out our screams. The four priests shout their prayers as loudly as they can. One of Henry’s men screams instructions to the soldiers. A dog howls somewhere outside the church. This is what a festival in Hell would sound like. I brace my feet firmly on the altar and grip the woman more tightly.

Please don’t die
.

The other end of the rope runs the length of the church and is tied to the gallery’s railing. “Morgan!” I shout. “Get to the gallery! Get to the gallery and cut the rope!

Two soldiers grab at my legs.

“She’s a heretic!” one of them shouts. “Let her go!”

I kick at the two men.

“Take him down!” Henry’s man shouts. “Take him down!”

More soldiers clutch at me. Arms encircle my legs. I howl at them, insensible words. One of my legs buckles and I dip. The rope goes taut. “
Get off me
!” The words are ripped from my throat. “
Get off me
!”

They pull my legs off the altar, and I am forced to release the woman. I fall onto my breastplate, the metal cracking against granite. The woman’s feet wave madly above my head. I reach toward her helplessly. “
Get off me
!” My finger brushes her heel. “
Get off me
!
In the name of Christ, let me go
!”

Arms grab my waist and yank. I grip the edge of the altar so they cannot pull me away. A dozen hands take hold of my legs. They pull with all their strength. The altar tips backward an inch.

A soldier runs to the front of the altar and draws a dagger.

“She’s our only hope!” I shout.

The soldier raises the dagger over one of my gauntleted hands.

“Don’t!” I bellow. “
Don’t
!”

The man snarls, tenses and—

“Let him go.”

The voice is calm, but loud, and it has an immediate effect.

The choir goes silent. The priests stop chanting one by one. Soldiers grow silent and look toward the pews. The soldier in front of me lowers his dagger and looks back.

A young man stands at the rear of the church, his back straight as a cathedral wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Henry Bolingbroke. He glances up at the dying woman. “Take her down.”

A soldier pulls himself onto the altar, beside me, and lifts the woman so that the rope goes slack again. Another man bows, edges past the duke, and runs toward the gallery stairs.

The soldiers still have a hold on me, but I nod to the young duke. “Thank you, my lord.”

His lips curl into a smirk. “Do not thank me yet. You will take her place.”

Chapter 33

Soldiers pull me upright. One pulls Saint Giles’s sword from its sheath while the others shove me toward Henry Bolingbroke. The man in the gallery lowers the rope slowly and the woman flops against the soldier on the altar. She wheezes and sucks for breath, coughs and clutches at her neck. I close my eyes and thank Mother Mary for sparing the woman. Or for guiding me here in time to save her.

Protect the afflicted, Edward. And put the cure in the proper hands.

The words Father Peter spoke at the priory come back to me.

And where will I find these proper hands?

On the proper person
.

I glance to the dark-haired woman, lying on the church floor, sobbing. I have found the proper person.

The duke takes a step forward and brushes something from the sleeve of his doublet. He wears dark, regal blue, with a chain of office draped over his shoulders. His red beard is trimmed meticulously. “Do I know you?” he asks me.

“We’ve met, my lord. I am Edward Dallingridge. Knight of the shire.”

Recognition lights his face. He is son to John of Gaunt, so I do not know if recognition is a good thing. “Yes! You are Arundel’s man. I remember now.” He waves his hand dismissively toward the soldiers. “Let him go. Sir Edward is a good man. He fought with my father.” He smirks at me again. “And against my father at times. I am sure there is a purpose to his silliness. Walk with me, Edward.”

He turns and strides toward the church door, his boots clicking against the flagstones.

One of the priests beside the barrel, a balding man with a wart beneath one eye, clears his throat. “My lord!”

The duke pauses and looks back. “Father Benjamin?”

“We have . . . there is still the exorcism.” The priest waves toward the barrel. “It’s not complete.”

The knights pull the plaguer’s head out of the barrel. The afflicted man makes a wheezing noise and clicks his teeth.

Henry sighs and raises a hand, palm upward. “Please, Father,” he says. “I have humored you enough. Every soldier in the army has left his post to come here, as you requested. And look. Look at that poor man. All you’ve done is moisten him.”

“We did not have time to finish the rite, my lord! It was working. These . . . these
men
shattered the proceedings with their violence and . . . and their evil desires for the heretic woman.”

“We’ve had more than an hour of singing and praying and dunking that man in holy water, Father,” Henry replies. “The choir is exhausted and, frankly, so am I. Another hour or two will make no difference to the demons. They are not leaving him.”

The priest folds his arms, nods. “Very well, my lord.”

Henry takes two strides toward him. “You understand, don’t you? We’ve given it a long time and it hasn’t worked.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I want to hear you say it. Tell me that you understand.”

The priest clears his throat. Looks nervously to the sides. “I understand, my lord. You are wise in calling an end to the ceremony. The demons have not left him. Perhaps we erred in our execution of the exorcism.”

Henry smiles. “Yes, that’s probably it, Father. Look in your Bibles and see if you can’t make it work next time.” He turns away and calls to one of the men wearing the arms of Hereford. “John, get the men back to their posts. And lock up the alchemist. She’s earned a reprieve, not a pardon.” He motions to me. “Come, Sir Edward. I want to hear why a knight of the shire would fight an army to save a heretic.”