The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (17 page)

“I
know that silence,” Tristan says. “Lady Jayne was the same and we weren’t even
married.”

Lady
Jayne was lost in the plague. I rarely hear Tristan speak of her.

“You
know what drove me mad?” he continues. “When she used to ask me which dress she
should wear. Dresses are a part of her world, not mine. If she can’t work it
out, how in the nine hells does she expect me to? God’s blood! I should have fetched
a mace and a battle ax and asked, ‘Darling, which one do you think I should use
today? The mace can turn a man’s head to powder, but there’s something elegant
about an ax blade ripping through flesh, don’t you think? I’m just so torn.’”

Morgan
hoots and wipes at his eyes again as Tristan chuckles. They notice my silence.

“What
about you, Ed?” Morgan asks. “What vexes you about Elizabeth?”

I
think about it for a time.

“My
Elizabeth runs my household. She feeds me, she never denies me our marital bed,
and she is unwavering in her support. Each time I return home, she runs to me
and makes me feel like I am the king of England.” The grief wells in my throat.
“What fault can I find in someone who gives me everything I — ”

A
man screams somewhere to our left.

We
stop our horses and listen. Another scream rings out, flat and toneless across
the rolling hills. Tristan points westward, past a field thick with turnips. I
nod and we ride through the leafy plot and up a slope.

When
we reach the top, we look out across a vast landscape of low, rolling hills
divided by hedges and ploughed fields. Upon one of these hills, perhaps four
hundred yards away, sits a majestic willow. It would be a beautiful image of
the English countryside if not for the twenty or thirty plaguers swarming the
base of tree. They press against the willow like a writhing mantle and claw at
the branches.

A
woman screams from somewhere in that tree. A moment later another scream echoes
from the willow, and this one sounds like a child’s.

All
three of us break into a gallop without exchanging a word and charge down the
slope toward a row of squat hedges. I vault the shrubs and hear Tristan’s howl
of excitement as he and Morgan do the same. Our mounts grunt and blow as we goad
them up the slope with the willow upon it. But fifty yards from the tree we
draw up our horses so quickly that Tristan’s chestnut rears. The plaguers at
the top of the hill haven’t noticed us yet, but it is not these that have
checked our advance. It is the swarm that comes into view on the other side of
the slope.

There
are hundreds of them. Easily hundreds. And they totter toward us in a grisly exodus.
A vast migration of the dead, only a few hundred yards away.

 “Dear
Lord,” Morgan says. “Look at them all!”

“Oh
my,” Tristan says. “Quick Morgan, there’s no time! Bring forth Jesus’s
foreskin!”

“This
is serious, Tristan,” Morgan says.

“I
know it is! Hurry! Smite them with our Lord’s cock!”

“Shut
your mouth, you blasphemous bastard.”

At
least five people squirm upon the weeping branches of the willow. In another
few minutes the endless flood of plaguers will crash around them.

“I’m
going to help them,” I say. “You two have no weapons. You are under no
obligations to follow.” I draw St. Giles’s sword and snap the reins of my
golden mare. She charges toward the willow, with Tristan and Morgan at her
flanks.

There is a mix of
peasants and gentry among the small group of plaguers surrounding the tree. Rich
and poor are united in bloodlust and lunacy. I am not certain if I am sending
infirm people to their rest or banishing demons back to hell. I simply kill. I
kill them with no thought to class or title or holy standing.

St.
Giles’s sword slices off the top half of a nobleman’s head. The man turns to
face me as he dies — even though he has lost everything from his eyes upward — then
tumbles, lifeless, to the ground. The plaguers on the far slope are getting
closer, but I can’t let myself think about them yet.

I
take the head off a peasant with a noose around his neck. I wonder at his story
as he falls backward, twitching. Hands reach for me, but I keep my mare
cantering past them. I slash at the plaguers on one side of my horse’s head,
then the other. I cut them down like autumn wheat and circle the willow, trying
to get a look at the people trapped in the branches.

Tristan
and Morgan ride close to the afflicted, then veer away, trying to draw them
from the tree. A few of the plaguers pull away from the tree to chase after them
and I ride to the spot they have vacated. I position myself beneath a man in
black riding boots clinging to a branch.

“Come
down!” I shout. The man looks at me but he doesn’t let go of the branch.
“Move!”

But
it is too late. The hands of the dead reach for my mount and I spur her out of
reach. The man in the tree finds his courage at that very moment and jumps from
the tree. He thuds to the ground behind me and screams as the demons close in
around him.

“Oh,
holy hell!” I turn my mare and ride back toward him, but the dead have returned.
Six or seven of the afflicted fall upon him. One of the plaguers bites off part
of his cheek and the man screams again. Perhaps it is the same scream that has
not yet ended. A woman in the tree shrieks “Thomas!” and I imagine she is
addressing the clod with the impeccable timing, the one being torn to pieces.

I
ride toward Thomas, but my mare rears. A woman with thin wisps of white hair
hisses and spits blood at us. I turn my horse and cleave open her face. She
cries out, then hisses again with such force that a mist of blood reddens my
mare. I drive my blade deep into the woman’s skull and silence her. Two more of
the afflicted take her place.

Thomas
hasn’t stopped screaming. Plaguers pull at him. One of his arms rips slowly from
his shoulder socket with a series of pops and a volcanic spray of blood. He
shrieks and reaches toward me with his remaining arm. A plaguer bites at the
skin of the man’s upper lip and tears away a swath of flesh. Another demon rips
with black fingers at the opposite side of his face. Thomas cries out again.
Much of the skin of his face is gone, so it looks like a skull screaming at me.
His lidless eyes look into mine as a plaguer with oozing boils on its face
tears the man’s stomach open. I slash at the monsters before me, trying to
reach Thomas to end his misery. I want his screams to stop. Why didn’t the fool
jump when I was beneath him? But there are too many around him.

As
the afflicted converge on Thomas, I turn away and trot my horse to the opposite
side of the tree. Morgan and Tristan do the same. Plaguers stumble past us,
maddened by the scent of blood. A young man in a blue tunic hunches upon one of
the tree’s larger boughs. I reach up and help him climb into the saddle behind
me.

The
first of the massive group of plaguers on the slope reach the hilltop and
shamble toward us. It is time to go.

A
woman sits on the back of Morgan’s horse. Tristan tries to coax someone out of
the branches, but there is no time.

“Morgan,
Tristan! Let’s go! Let’s go!” I shout to be heard over Thomas’s never-ending
screams. Morgan tries to ride off but his horse balks when it sees the approaching
crush of plaguers. I reflect, for an instant, that a warhorse would be useful
here, and tighten my grip on St. Giles’s sword. The woman behind Morgan clings
tightly and sobs as the living dead close in upon them and cut me off. The
plaguers surround his horse. Morgan thrusts his wooden cross out toward the
nearest plaguers. And they recoil from the crucifix.

Three
of them back away and Morgan rides past them. I spin my horse to get a better
look. My eyes are so wide that the air stings at them. “Morgan…” I trail off.

Morgan
rubs the cross. “God’s almighty power.” He glances back toward Tristan, but
Tristan is still trying to pull someone down from the willow. More and more
plaguers crest the hill.

“Tristan,
we’re leaving!” I put Morgan’s miracle out of my mind, kick heels into my mare.
Morgan and I ride from the willow, with the young man behind me and the woman
behind him. We brush past thrusting hands and gallop down the slope, down toward
the Roman road. But when I glance back toward the hilltop I yank hard on the
reins and wheel my horse around. “
Tristan
!”

But
Tristan is beyond my help. He never left the willow. The dead surround him.

I
watch as he slashes and stabs with the bridle knife that I gave him in
Rayleigh. There are too many to fight, and even more crest the hill as I watch.
Tristan’s horse falls to its knees and the plaguers surge forward. Their hands
clutch and yank.

“
Tristan
!”
Spittle arcs from my mouth as I shout. I gallop toward the tree again, but a
mass of the plaguers breaks off from the main group and drives me back. “
Tristan
!”

He
is a lighthouse among the afflicted, slashing and stabbing and kicking from his
horse’s saddle. He glances down the hill toward me.

And
then he disappears among the dead.

I
ride a few yards farther from the willow to make some distance between me and
the approaching plaguers, then turn back again. “
Tristan
!”

The
man behind me speaks. “There is nothing more you can do for him. Go. Get out of
here now!”

“You
can walk if you like.” There is venom in my voice. The young man stops talking.
I look back toward the willow, but Tristan is uphill from me. I can’t make out
what is happening. I can see only the mass of plaguers grabbing and biting at his
horse.

My
heart feels like it has turned to lead. I stare, remembering the time Tristan
buried himself in bodies after the Battle of Nájera so that he could scare the
pages scouring the dead for coins.

I
remember him bursting into Thomas Riley’s tent with one eye closed, screaming
and holding Geoffrey Milton’s tomato-smeared false eye in his hand.

I
remember him emerging from the Thames on my horse, grinning like a fool and
pulling us from the jaws of death.

And
I mourn. It might as well be me tearing Tristan into pieces. I brought him on
this quest. I put him in this danger. I think about Thomas, the man in the
riding boots, and in my mind I see the flesh torn from his face, hear his
shoulder snapping. I look downard and dig my nails into my palms.

“Look!”
The man behind me points toward the willow.

I
lift my gaze. Tristan’s head rises above the throng and my leadened heart
hammers in my chest. He reaches upward and grabs hold of a branch.

I
watch as Tristan pulls himself from the saddle and wraps his legs around the
limb while the afflicted swipe at him. I watch as he flattens himself against
the bottom of the branch. And I laugh as he gives two fingers to the mass of
plaguers that reach for him and rip apart his horse. I must have kept my eyes
open for too long, because I feel them tearing up. I wipe at them and laugh
again.

Tristan
is alive.

“Stay
in the tree!” I scream it as loudly as I can manage. Tristan rolls himself up
onto the bough and sits. He can’t see me, so he leans low to look through the
downy branches and blows me a kiss. “Stay in the tree, you idiot!” I try not to
smile as I shout to him. “We’ll come back for you. You’ll be safe in the tree!”

He
holds up a thumb and I think he nods. And before I can respond, God smites the
earth.

That’s
what it sounds like. An explosion so unearthly that for a moment I am certain
God has come down to earth to finish the job he started with this plague. The
sound echoes across the hills so that I can’t tell where it came from. Plaguers
near the willow fly into the air like daisies chopped by a sickle. One of them
is split into pieces and each of the pieces flies in a different direction.
Something skims off the grass with a resonant thud, then slams high into the willow
branches.

There
is silence. Even the plaguers stop moving.

“What
in bloody hell was that?” The young man behind me pants as he speaks. A few
cheers sound from somewhere off to my right and I spot a handful of men in the
distance, gathered on another hill. When I see what they are gathered around, I
understand what has happened.

They
have a canon.

I
heard guns many times in France, but I never expected to hear the thunder of
them here in England. I wonder who these men are that fired the canon. Such a weapon
requires a skilled crew to operate.

I
back away from the advancing plaguers, and Morgan rides to my side. The woman is
still behind him. “That was something!” he says.

I
nod. “A gun crew. Where on earth did they get that canon?”

Morgan
shrugs.

“From
the old keep,” the woman behind Morgan says, tears running down her cheeks. “They
named the gun the Right Hand of the Lord.”