Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (2 page)

I have tried prayer. I tried a relic from Saint Luke, the healer. I even flogged my own back until it bled. I would be there still, in the cathedral with my Elizabeth, flogging and praying, if I had not noticed the black marks on her wrist.

The plague forced me to bind my angel to a torch bracket so she could not afflict others. But she hated the bonds. She struggled against the silk cords, yanked her arms, and hissed. And the cords left their mark. Black rings of dead flesh.

Her body will not heal. Every bump. Every scrape. Every cut. Every wound she suffers will be hers for eternity. Her body will fall apart in time. And though I would love her no matter what physical state she is in, I wonder if her mind is falling to pieces as well.

I padded the silk cords with feathers and hay and tried to put such thoughts from my mind, but they would not go. For two days I gave myself to God and prayed that He would heal her. But He did not listen. And I understood that Elizabeth’s only hope lay with an alchemist who might not exist, on an island that might never be found.

So I stood with tears in my eyes and kissed Elizabeth’s fingers, said good-bye as she hissed, as she tried to bite through the padded silk gag around her mouth. Before I left, I drew a silk glove and a phial of lavender oil from a pouch at her belt. I sprinkled her scent onto the silk and tucked the glove into a pouch at my belt. “God helps those who help themselves, my angel,” I said to her. I’m not sure where I first heard that phrase. Brother Phillip assures me that it is not in the Bible and that, in fact, God wants us to rely on Him and not on ourselves. But if that were true, the Jews would still be slaves, and Goliath’s army would have crushed the Israelites.

I have no sling and I have no staff, but I am fairly certain that I can part the sea of plaguers beneath the prior’s house.

The chickens squawk and cluck as they tumble into the pit. I hear wings fluttering and pray that some of the birds make it past the plaguers.

Most of Phillip’s chickens die swift and horrible deaths. A few make it to the wet tunnel leading out of the monastery. The mob of lurching plaguers pursues the screeching birds down the passage. The creatures were human once and are perhaps human still. But they do not look human. They look like demons. Bloody, snarling creatures with terrible wounds on their bodies and eyes as black as the Abyss. I hope Phillip’s clever chickens can wade the river at the end of the tunnel, or my Red Sea will crash upon me before I am through.

I wait for a time, calculating the speed of chickens chased by demons. When I imagine the animals would have cleared the tunnel, I take a deep breath. I don my great helm, light a thick altar candle, and say good-bye to Brother Phillip. He is a bastard and a coward and it is because of him and his brothers that my Elizabeth needs this alchemist in the first place, but I cannot stay angry at him. There is not enough spine in Phillip for the anger to take hold.

“Godspeed, Sir Edward,” he says.

I descend the rungs quickly and draw my sword when I reach the bottom. It is the sword of Saint Giles, and Saint Giles is my saint. Not because he is the patron saint of the insane, but because he is the saint of Bodiam, the village where Elizabeth grew up. She loves Saint Giles and so I adopted him. I only hope the adoption is mutual.

“If any of the chickens survived,” Brother Phillip calls, “can you bring them back before you go?”

I would like to believe this is more of his newfound wit.

I walk through the long tunnel holding my candle as far forward as I can. The thick flame flickers and glistens back at me from a hundred moist stones. Halfway through the passage, the candlelight gleams off something metallic. I nearly fall to my knees at the sight.

It is Tristan’s blood-soaked helmet.

Chapter 2

There is no other trace of Tristan. Just the great helm, half-submerged in water and spattered with blood. I can think of no reason to take a helmet off in a tunnel filled with demons. Demons whose bites inflict plague. I scoop up the helmet and pin it between my candle arm and my chest.

If Tristan has come to harm, it is my fault. I should have left with him. We should be searching for this alchemist together. He stayed by my side throughout our journey to St. Edmund’s Bury, and I should have been at his side when he left.

Dozens of bodies litter the tunnel floor. I pause at each one to make certain that Tristan is not among them. He is not. I am not certain if these are the plaguers that we killed on the way in or fresh ones cut down by Tristan on his way out. The bodies of the afflicted are dead and decaying from the moment they succumb to the plague, which makes it impossible to tell when they were finally destroyed. A faint breeze in the tunnel makes the candle flame dance.

I hear footsteps in the distance. The uneven gait of the dead. I hold Saint Giles’s sword as far forward as I can and walk quietly onward. The candlelight makes the blade glow like molten steel.

Snarls echo in the passageway. I pad forward, readying myself to fly back toward the rungs. My sword trembles. Something darker than the tunnel’s darkness moves in the distance. My heart pounds. Not because I might die, but because I might die before healing Elizabeth.

Candlelight washes over the living dead. One of the chickens was not clever enough. Or fast enough. Two plaguers fight over the carcass like wild dogs. One of them sees a bigger prize in me and abandons the chicken. It is a female. A slim girl of no more than fourteen wearing a tattered chemise and walking with bare feet. She steps drunkenly toward me. The bright flame of my candle glints from her soulless eyes.

If there is a cure for this plague, then I pray God will forgive me for the scores I have murdered. And for the murders I must yet commit. I let Tristan’s helmet drop and whip my blade across the girl’s throat. She gurgles and claws at her neck, and I am reminded of Allison Moore, whom I slew upon the banks of the River Medway when I mistook her for a plaguer. But this girl does not die like Allison Moore. She advances again, blood seeping onto the collar of her chemise, spreading and blooming like a liquid rose.

I strike again, and this time she falls. Her companion, a man wearing a soiled silk doublet and cap, finishes with the chicken and approaches me. The bird’s blood is smeared across his face. It takes seven hacks of my sword to keep him from rising again. The massive candle gutters dangerously with each blow. I wipe my blade on his doublet and retrieve Tristan’s helmet before moving onward.

Light streams into the tunnel from the entrance 150 yards further along. The birds must have cleared the river, because I see the last of the plaguers shuffle out of the passageway and into the water. Clever chickens.

And there, at the mouth of the tunnel, I find a message from Tristan.

My hand cannon leans against the wall just inside the open gate, where we left it when we arrived two days ago. A blood-soaked shred of fabric has been draped over the barrel of the cannon. There are words scrawled across it; Tristan must have painted the message before leaving the monastery.

Good of you to come

 Heading toward Brantry to find a lustful horse. (Don’t tell Morgan.)

Chelmsford after that

A skin and pouch lie next to the cannon on the muddy floor. The skin contains powder for the gun; the pouch holds five iron shots, wadding, and two powder-coated firing cords. I put away my sword and lean the cannon against my shoulder.

The clouds drift away from the sun. The light shines warm against my face. Tristan is alive.

Or at least he was when he left this tunnel. I stare down the River Lark toward St. Edmund’s Monastery, where my Elizabeth waits, tied with padded silk to a torch bracket. I pray to God and Saint Giles that I find this alchemist, but I know they will not help me. Alchemy is a sin.

The clouds blot out the sun once more.

The cobbled streets of St. Edmund’s Bury are empty. Deserted stone buildings sit shoulder to shoulder, monuments to a dead civilization. I doubt even the rats remain in them. A chicken wobbles past me and disappears into an alley between a butcher’s shop and a candlemaker’s home. One of Brother Phillip’s, I’m sure. Clever chicken.

My ankle burns with each step. It is a wound from a week ago, the result of a disagreement with a brown bear in Rayleigh. Sister Mildred applied Saint-John’s-wort and bound the ankle tightly with linen strips. It is a remedy that worked well enough in the confines of the monastery, but not even Saint John can ease the pain I feel after the first mile.

I leave the town and make my way into the countryside, drawing out the glove I borrowed from Elizabeth and breathing in her scent. She gave me this glove once before. At the Earl’s Tournament, in Nottingham; the only tournament I ever won. When I returned the glove to her after the contest, she cherished it more than the golden rod I was awarded, or the four horses I won from other knights. She kept it in a pouch at her side from that moment on.

I stop to rest every hundred paces or so, making it slow going. During one such break I decide to load my cannon. I have never loaded a cannon, but I have watched Tristan do it. It is a nervous business. These weapons explode when packed improperly. I have seen it. It is unpleasant.

The barrel is wet, so I wrap a stick in strips of cloth and run it through the iron cylinder before carefully packing the powder. I roll a strip of wool wadding around one of the iron projectiles and jam the slug deep into the barrel with the stick.

I continue my journey, stopping at every stable I see, but I have little hope of finding a horse. The afflicted have an uncanny ability to find life and to take it. The horses I do come across are little more than ribs and hooves. Sometimes the plaguers leave a skull.

The land here in East Anglia is supposed to be flat. So flat, they say, that a man can watch a horse run away for two days. But here, near St. Edmund’s Bury, this is not true. My ankle feels every hill and valley. I will have to find a horse soon or my journey will end in Suffolk.

My wrist itches. I slide the steel gauntlets off and stare. The world spins. I look away, take several deep breaths, then look back again. It is the same. I am cut. A small gash across the top of my wrist. Hardly noticeable.

But I do not know how I got it.

I search my memory of the encounter with the two plaguers in the tunnel. Did either of them get close enough to bite me? Could the man in the doublet have caught me with his teeth while I hacked him to bits? Sweat dampens my entire body. I study the wound. It is probably from the metal of my gauntlet. Or perhaps I scraped it on the crude rungs of the ladder when I first entered the tunnel. Maybe the gauntlet slid forward and I ran my wrist against the stone walls without noticing. I look away, then back again. Nothing has changed.

I am cut.

I continue southward and cross a field that is littered with cattle bones.

Perhaps I scratched myself with my nails and broke the skin.

Another farmhouse lies ahead, and a stable. It will be the fourth stable that I search. When I am twenty yards from the structure, I see a man dressed in a tattered robe on his hands and knees in the grass, his arse in the air. A tuft-eared red squirrel stands on two legs a few paces from him, nibbling at something in its paws.

Maybe I brushed my wrist against the edge of the wheelbarrow
.

My foot snaps a twig and the squirrel’s keen ears catch the sound. The animal drops the morsel and scurries off. The man rises to his feet and runs after the squirrel, but it is a hopeless chase. The animal disappears in a quicksilver dash up an elm trunk. The man throws his arms skyward and shakes his hands.

“What you ask is impossible!” he screams toward the heavens. “Send the demons! Take me now, for I cannot do it, oh Lord, I cannot do it!”

He hears my footsteps when I am only a few paces away and he whirls to face me. His head is more beard than face, and his eyes grow wide when he sees me. He runs in the same direction as the squirrel, throwing his hands up and shouting, “I am sorry! I will do it! I will do it!
Mea maxima culpa!
”

He trips on the dangling fabric of his robe and falls to the ground. “I am sorry! Oh, Lord, I am sorry!” He sobs and makes no attempt to rise.

I remove my helm and kneel at his side. “I didn’t mean to frighten you,” I say.

The man rolls on his back, his eyes shut tightly. “Do it. Finish me. Bring an end to my pitiful life. I can strive no longer.
Mea maxima culpa
.”

I recognize his Latin from mass: “my most grievous fault.” He is riddled with guilt, as every good Christian should be.

 “You want me to kill you?” I relegate the wound to the cellar of my mind and give the man my full attention.

“Plunge your fangs into my throat. Rend me with your claws. Burn me with your fiery breath. I am ready.”

“I have a sword,” I say. “Will that do?”

He opens one eye.

I shrug. “I could light you on fire, but it will take some time.”

“Are you a demon?” he asks.

“That depends on whom you ask,” I say.

He sits up. His robe is soiled by grass and Lord knows what else. “You are not here to take my life?”

“I’ve killed enough today, I think. Maybe I’ll keep you around until tomorrow.”

His eyes grow wide again and I smile, then feel a storm of guilt for smiling when Elizabeth is locked in a cathedral.
Mea maxima culpa
.

“I’m not here to kill you.” I rise to my feet and help him stand. “I’m sorry I spooked your meal.”

He stares at me and cocks his head.

“The squirrel. I scared it off.” I set Tristan’s great helm down and reach past the hand cannon into the sack that hangs from my shoulder. “I’ll break bread with you to make amends.”

He looks horrified. “I was not going to eat the squirrel! I would never have eaten it! Not ever!”

“Weren’t you trying to catch it?”

“Yes,” he says. “Our Heavenly Father instructed me to catch it.”