The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (13 page)

“I
am!” Christopher shouts. “Most assuredly.”

“Sir
Christopher says that all three of you swore your allegiance to Sir John. And
that you called him king.” As he speaks, a runnel of mucus oozes from his nose
and stops just above his lip. He seems unaware of it.

Tristan
dabs at his upper lip with a finger and clears his throat.

“I
have never called Sir John a king,” I say. “And I would ask that Sir
Christopher come here and repeat his false words in front of me, my lord.”

Lord
Robert rises to his feet with a long groan. He studies the stairs, then begins
a slow, halting descent. His foot slips and he falls back onto the steps with a
shriek, then slides down to the bottom. “Frederick!
Frederick
!”

Sir
Frederick runs to Lord Robert’s side and helps him to his feet. The old man grimaces
and massages his hip as Sir Frederick helps him to the benches on our left. The
knight lifts the tablecloth and puts it in the old man’s hands, then gestures
that he should wipe his nose with it. Lord Robert dabs at the snot on his upper
lip. When he is done he turns to us, and his eyes are almost completely hidden beneath
his brows.

“You
have consorted with a known traitor! You dined with him. You stayed in his
castle. And you sat in on a council meeting! Do you deny any of this?”

“No,
my lord, but — ”

“What
say you, council? What say you of the treacherous Sir Edward and his traitorous
knights?”

“Guilty!”
the men shout as one, their voices echoing off the walls.

Lord
Robert nods solemnly.

“You
called us traitorous knights,” Tristan says. “I don’t think you are meant to
include the verdict when you call for a vote.”

“Shut
your mouth!” Lord Robert rises to his feet and points at Tristan. “Shut it!
Shut it! Shut it!”

“He
does that to everyone, my lord,” Morgan says.

“The
lot of you, silence! The court has ruled. You are guilty!”

The
men cheer again. I wait for them to settle down before I answer Lord Robert. “How
many lords are in this room?”

“What?”
Lord Robert walks toward me, hunched over and leaning on Sir Frederick.

“I
should like to know how many lords are in this room. We are knights and
gentlemen. As such, only a court of lords has the authority to rule on our
guilt. You know this, Lord Robert. So I ask again, how many lords are in this
room?”

Lord
Robert’s eyes bulge. He peers at Sir Frederick, who stares back with tight lips.
There are restless murmurs in the hall. The men are losing interest in the
conversation. They have ruled that we are guilty but we have not yet been
trussed. The bears are not dancing.

Lord
Robert returns to the table. He and Sir Frederick lean their heads toward one
another and whisper, darting glances in our direction. They appear to reach a
conclusion, because Lord Robert smiles wickedly and Sir Frederick helps him
stand.

“You
are correct,” Lord Robert says. “We do not have a court of lords here. But these
are terrible times. Our Heavenly Father has taken so many lords to his breast.
There is no telling when such a court can be convened. And since we do not have
the facilities to confine you here…”

For
a brief moment I think the old man is going to let us go. I even start planning
our route northward, out of Rayleigh. But Lord Robert wants blood. He wants
spectacle.

“…we
shall have a trial by ordeal!” Lord Robert smiles again. “We shall throw a
spoon into a cauldron of boiling oil. If you are innocent, then God will let
you draw it out with your bare hands.”

The
men at the tables cheer. Their shouts echo across the chamber again and startle
a rutting hound. I look at my knights. Even Morgan looks uncomfortable with
this idea.

Tristan
shakes his head. “Welcome to the dung-pit.”

Sir
Morgan opens his Bible and closes his eyes. His lips move in silent prayer. I
think the fool believes God will keep his flesh from burning if he prays hard
enough.

“He’s
not listening,” Tristan says.

Morgan
opens his eyes. “I am praying to Saint John the Evangelist, Tristan. He was
thrown into a vat of boiling oil and God spared him. And if we pray, God may
spare us too.”

Lord
Robert and his men sit quietly at the tables waiting for the oil in the massive
cauldron to boil. Sir Frederick taps a spoon absently against the scarred
tabletop. A man with no shirt and a staggeringly large belly stares into the
pot and wipes at his nose periodically.

How
long we wait like this I don’t know. Long enough for Sir Morgan to flip through
fifteen pages of his Bible. Long enough for me to dwell on the barbarism of
these sorts of trials.

I
haven’t heard of a trial by ordeal in more than thirty years. But I have heard
stories. Half of the peasants who faced such ordeals never recovered from their
burns, even if they completed the task and so proved themselves innocent. I
wonder if Lord Robert will salve our burns if we succeed.

“It
is ready!” The fat man laughs and his jowls jiggle. “The oil, it has come to a
boil!”

Sir
Christopher slides a timber through the cauldron’s handle and, with the help of
another knight, lifts it off the hook from which it dangles. They set the pot
at the foot of the dais and stand behind us with spears in their hands. Sir
Frederick helps Lord Robert to his feet again, and the two take positions
behind the cauldron. Robert’s men form a half circle around us.

I
can smell the pungent fish oil. Lord Robert nods to Frederick, who smiles and
holds up the iron spoon he was tapping. He waves it with a flourish, then drops
it into the cauldron.

“Oh
Christ.” Sir Tristan backs away from the oil, but a broad-shouldered knight
drives a spear shaft crosswise into his back.

“You
do not find this humorous anymore, Sir Tristan?” Lord Robert smiles wickedly, displaying
his few remaining teeth. “Maybe you should go first. God likes a sense of
humor.”

“That’s…that’s
not what Morgan says.” He can’t seem to look away from the boiling oil. “I’m
not…we’re not Sir John’s men. I despise him. You have to believe us.”

Robert’s
men laugh, but only briefly. Their gazes are locked on Tristan and the
cauldron. Sir Christopher shoves me and Morgan forward so we can see the oil.

Sir
Frederick crosses to the table and steals a chicken leg from one of the plates
and returns.  He holds it in the air so everyone can see, then drops it into
the pot. The oil seethes and crackles. It sears the leg instantly. The smell of
burning meat and fish oil mingle. Bits of skin turn brown and peel away. The
scalding oil shrivels and blackens the shank, and, by the time it has settled
on the bottom, only bone and charred scraps of flesh remain.

Tristan
grabs at his hair and backs away from the cauldron. “Oh Jesus. Oh Jesus Christ.”

I
want to scream out that Sir John is dead. That Lord Robert is insane. I want to
rip a spear from the hands of one of the knights and try to fight our way out.
But I know that none of it will help.

Morgan
shouts, “This is no time for blasphemy, Tristan!”

Tristan,
his face a mix of fury and terror, turns on Morgan. “This is precisely the time
for blasphemy, you pox-pricked tewel! Jesus God! They’re going to turn my arm
into a chicken bone, and you’re shouting about blasphemy?”

“The
Holy Ghost has spoken to me, Tristan. God will spare you, as he did St. John.
You will not be injured. But you must not blaspheme.”

“If
God saves me, I’ll join the bloody priesthood!”

The
men around us laugh. Lord Robert chuckles too and motions to the knight behind
Tristan. “Sir Charles, if you would?”

The
knight shoves with his spear. Tristan sets his feet but they slide along the
floor. Dirty thresh piles over his boots. “No!” he shouts. “Wait!
Wait
!”

I
shove Sir Charles. Sir Christopher pounds me in the head with the shaft of his
spear. The blow makes me dizzy, but I continue pawing at Charles, so Christopher
slams the shaft into my back. I fall forward onto my knees, so I am staring
directly into the pot.

The
tips of Tristan’s boots touch the cauldron. “I’m not ready!” he screams. “I am
not bloody ready!”

Sir
Charles draws a dagger and holds it to Tristan’s throat.

“But
we
are ready,” Lord Robert says. “Fetch the spoon, or we take your head.”

Tristan
looks at the oil. He bites at his lip and turns his head away. The dagger draws
blood. “Stop it, you shit-monger, I’ll do it!
I’ll bloody do it
!”

Tristan
stares into the oil for a long moment. Sweat has dampened his hair. He grimaces,
glances at me and Morgan. Morgan lifts his palms into the air and raises his
gaze skyward.

Tristan
raises a trembling hand over the cauldron. His fingers are reflected in the
oil, directly over the spoon, which lies face up beneath a foot and a half of
scalding oil. Bits of chicken sizzle on the surface of the oil. Tristan takes a
long rattling breath.

And
reaches toward the spoon.

In
this episode, Sir Edward and his knights find themselves in Rayleigh Castle, a place
that most likely was half ruined by their day. The castle at Rayleigh, built
just after the Norman Conquest, was given to the de Burgh family by King John
in the early thirteenth century. Robert de Burgh comes from a real family but
he is not a real person, and his castle would most likely have been in King
Richard’s holding by the time of this story. You can still visit the site of the
castle in Essex. It is called Rayleigh Mount now, because only the motte and
ditches remain, but it is preserved in a way that allows you to imagine what
once was there.

In
the story, Lord Robert keeps brown bears in his castle and fights them against
one another. As much as I would like to say I’ve made that up, I can’t. Bear
fighting and bearbaiting were quite popular among the English aristocracy. They
must have been horrific things to witness. Bears were chained to stakes in
arenas called “bear gardens,” and packs of dogs were set upon them. I can only
imagine the wild state of the bears that lived this sort of existence.

The
last thing I would like to touch upon is trial by ordeal. These sorts of trials
were common in the early Middle Ages, although by Edward’s time they would
mostly have disappeared. My thought in the reemergence of this sort of thing is
this: during truly dark times, people and cultures seem to regress. The courts
and laws of England are no longer available in Edward’s England. Society is
reverting to something more primitive and savage and, lacking an authority, relies
on God to render judgments. So trial by ordeal returns.

The
ordeal that Edward and his knights are threatened with in this episode is
slightly different than the traditional ordeals. It is true that typically
these sorts of trials involved the burning of flesh in some way — pulling a
stone from a pot of boiling oil, walking across burning coals, moving a red-hot
ingot from one side of a room to another with bare hands — but that was not
usually the extent of the trial. The wound was the important thing. If there
was no wound, then obviously God had protected the accused and he or she was
innocent. If there was a wound, it would be wrapped and watched. If the wound
healed within a certain amount of time — usually three days or so — then that,
too, was a sign of innocence. But if the wound was still festering after the
allotted time, then God had not protected the accused. And the unhealed wound
became the least of their problems.