The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (18 page)

Morgan
glances back at her and smiles. “Thy right hand, oh Lord, is become glorious in
power.”

She
wipes at her eyes with a finger and smiles timidly back at Morgan, then
finishes the verse: “Thy right hand, oh Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.”

I
look at the woman. Tufts of black hair poke out from beneath a linen coif. She
has plump lips and high cheekbones and an exotic tilt to her eyes. She is
pretty, and Morgan can’t take his eyes off her.

Until
three clamorous pops ring out from the willow. Wood creaks as if the world’s
largest oak door is slowly swinging open, and the top third of the willow
topples with a chorus of cracks. Tristan and a woman in the tree have to
scramble to avoid being struck. The base of the broken shard remains in the
tree, joined to the trunk by pale, twisted strands of wood. But the shaggy tip crashes
slowly to the ground, viny branches trembling and whipping and whispering on
the way down.

 “Oh
heavens, no.” Morgan runs a hand through his hair.

I
look at the fallen treetop and shake my head. “The right hand of the Lord missed.”

A
deathly silence settles over us as the first of the afflicted crawl along the
new bridge and into the willow tree.

I
firmly believe that humans have an innate appreciation for history. When we
walk through a medieval castle or ancient ruins, I think there is something
inside each of us that is awed by the thought of the people who once dwelled
there. Of bridging the centuries and making contact with those that came before
us.

For
 many Christians, that awe is multiplied when those that came before are
recognized as saints or martyrs. Saints straddle the line between earth and
heaven, and, for the devout, it is a religious experience to touch something
that once belonged to them. In the medieval age, religion had a much stronger
reach into people’s lives, so it is not surprising that so much importance was
placed upon holy artifacts.

Relics
were considered so important that no church altar could be consecrated unless
it contained a holy artifact — a practice that, to an extent, still survives
today in the Catholic Church. Relics were so sought after that it was common
for thieves  to visit other countries so they could break into churches and
monasteries and steal the artifacts therein. These holy relics were taken to
the thieves’ country and paraded in public like stolen university mascots.

Like
anything in the world that has a perceived value, many relics were forgeries.
John Calvin, the father of Calvinism, once quipped that if all the alleged
pieces of the True Cross were put together, you could build a ship with them.

But
relics help Christians sustain their faith and devotion to the church, much as
old castles and ruins sustain historians. Religious artifacts and the gorgeous
reliquaries that contain them are a rich part of medieval history, and both
historians and Christians venerate them, if sometimes for different reasons.

The toppled willow crest groans as
the afflicted swarm onto it. They clamber on hands and knees like drunken ants,
edging ever closer to the heart of the tree where Tristan and three others huddle.
One of the plaguers loses his balance and drops into the surging sea of bodies
that washes against the willow.

“It’s like a plague of locusts,”
Morgan says. “Like from the Old Testament.”

The woman behind him sniffs and
quotes more scripture. “In appearance, the locusts were like horses prepared for
battle: their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and
their teeth like lions’ teeth.”

I do not remember that verse from
the Bible, but it sends a chill through me. The Old Testament is a frightening
book, full of magic and cruelty and angry gods.

I’m not sure the plaguers are agile
enough to reach Tristan or the others, but I don’t want to give them the time
to try. I look back toward the gun crew. They are coaxing four oxen back toward
the wheeled cannon, presumably to secure them to the cart again.

“Why don’t they fire again?” Morgan
asks.

“Because they have to reload,” I
say. “A good crew can fire only four or five times a day.” The men around the
cannon can’t seem to get the cattle to move in the same direction. One of the crewmen
stumbles and is almost trampled by an ox. I wonder how these men fired the gun
at all.

A plaguer has reached the willow
center. It is a man in a brown overcoat. I can see him moving through the gaps
in the branches. A woman in the tree screams. I crouch in my saddle until I get
a good look though the branches. The plaguer reaches toward the woman. Tristan slides
on his arse across a branch and drops down beside her and kicks the plaguer in
the shoulder three times. The man in the overcoat tumbles from the bough, his
body crashing against a tree limb on the way down. He thumps onto the grass, then
stands unsteadily and walks back toward the fallen treetop.

“What do we do?” Morgan asks.

“Something biblical.” I turn my
mare toward the gun crew. “Something from the Old Testament.”

There are seven
men around the cannon. One of them wears ancient armor and waves stiffly as we
approach. He raises the visor on his beaked hounskull, revealing long white
whiskers and a gaunt, seamed face.

“Sent a few of them ghouls to hell,
didn’t we?” He points to a stocky young man beside him. “Joseph said we should
aim right at them, but Joseph ain’t never fired a gun before. You have to
account for the distance.”

The woman behind Morgan slides
gently from the saddle and hugs the old man tightly. My passenger, the young
man, drops to the ground and is welcomed by the men of the gun crew.

“You’ve fired a cannon before?” I
ask the old man.

“Aye,” he says. “I was at Calais.
My crew fired twenty-two shots at the city wall.”

He pumps his fist again and again,
saying “Boom!” with each thrust. I am concerned that he plans to do this
twenty-two times, so I interrupt. “A wonderful mess you must have made of that
wall.” I smile. I need his help.

Joseph points to the broken tree
and addresses the old man. “You may have done well in Calais, Robert, but you made
a mess over there.”

“He couldn’t have known the shot
would bounce like that,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t think plaguers can climb very
well. Just the same, we should get those people out of the tree quickly.”

“You see this gun?” Robert says. “I
fired one just like it in Calais, for King Edward.”

Morgan and I glance at one another.
I hear snickers from the rest of the gun crew. Joseph looks embarrassed.

Matilda hugs the old man again.
“You told them that already, Robert.”

“Sent twenty-two shots at the city
walls.”

I extend my right hand before he
can start pumping his fist again, and we shake.

Joseph tells me that the old man’s
name is Robert Bailey and that they live in a nearby town called Danbury. They
are all servants to a knight named Thomas St. Clere. The young man I rescued
from the tree is Sir Thomas’s son, and Matilda is the knight’s niece. Matilda’s
sister, Cecilia, is still in the willow. As is Cecilia’s eight-year-old son,
and their cousin, Lilly. George, the man with the riding boots, was a stableman.
My stomach churns as I think of George’s fleshless scream.

For some reason a large group of
these young nobles decided to flee Danbury and make for the south. They didn’t
make it far.

Robert tries to tell me about
Calais again but I don’t have time to humor him. I hold up a hand and explain
my idea to him and to Joseph and the gun crew. They listen quietly and when I
get to the end, Robert shakes his head.

“Sir Thomas ain’t gonna like that.
Ain’t gonna like that at all.”

“Robert, there are — ”

The old man raises a hand to
silence me in the same way that I silenced him. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t help,
now did I?” He winks.

The New Testament
says that Jesus Christ was murdered for our benefit. That his death washed away
our sins and saved us from eternal hell. But before the Lamb of God allowed
himself to be sacrificed, priests had to find other ways to keep the demons at
bay. The most common way was by killing regular lambs. What we borrowed from
the devil, we paid for with the blood of sheep and chickens and goats. Until
the cost of our sins became too great, and God’s son had to cover the debt.

I look to the endless swarm of
demons beneath the willow tree and I understand that mankind’s sins have finally
exceeded even the Son of God’s value. We are in debt once again. And hell has
come to collect.

We drive the oxen to the base of
the rolling hill that holds the willow. I heft a bearded ax that I borrowed
from the gun crew and I walk to the last ox. The animal’s back leg is deformed
from birth or injury. I stroke the beast’s nose as four men take hold of the creature’s
yoke. The ax handle feels slick in my hands. Morgan looks anxious, so I humor
him. “You have words? Something they used to say?”

Morgan flips through his Bible and
shakes his head. “I don’t truly know. Leviticus talks about this sort of thing,
but I don’t know if there are any rules.”

Matilda provides another verse from
the Bible: “And he gave unto Adam and to Eve commandments that they should
worship the Lord their God and should offer the firstlings of their flocks as
an offering unto the Lord.”

“Did you memorize the bloody
thing?” I ask.

Another cry rings out from the
willow.

“Someone’s screaming,” Robert says.
He points with a shaking finger. “Up there, in that tree.”

I raise the ax but Morgan stops me.

“Wait!” Sir Morgan’s eyes race back
and forth along a page. He whispers and squints as he reads the Latin text.
“Don’t kill that one. It says here they have to be without defect.”

“There are people up there.” Robert
points to the willow. His voice rings with amazement. “People in that tree.”

“I’m killing all four, Morgan. Tell
God he doesn’t have to accept this one if He doesn’t want to.” I think about Sir
Morgan’s miracle. The way the plaguers fell away from him when he thrust that
cross at them. For a moment I wonder if I should spare this one. But I think
about the sins I have committed on this journey, about the monstrous debt I
have accrued. I wonder if four oxen are enough. I take a deep breath.

And I wash my sins in the blood of
animals.

The plaguers
don’t wait for all the animals to go down. I see them bobbing toward us as I
raise the ax to kill the last of the oxen. Perhaps we have killed enough for
our purposes. But if I spare this one, I am trading a clean death for a
terrible one. I look to Robert Bailey and he shrugs, then wrinkles his nose and
nods, so I kill the last beast.

“Robert, Joseph, get clear of the
blood and take your people back to Danbury. Morgan and I will finish this.”