Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (35 page)

“Oi!” Tristan calls. “
Oi
! What’s wrong with you?”

“Sorry.” I try not to laugh as I continue my climb.

I chuckle again as I push myself upward, then cough as the acrid fumes of the tunnel fill my lungs. Light shines faintly from above. I say a prayer to Saint Giles; when navigating a tunnel of shit, you can only really pray to the patron saint of the insane.

“The alchemist should really see a doctor,” Tristan says. “Urgently.”

Something hisses below us. Then the sound of nails on stone and faint grunts.

“Edward, I can’t look down in this position!” Tristan’s words come out fast and loud.

“I’m fairly certain you don’t want to,” I say. “Keep climbing. She’ll never catch us.”

A woman’s voice calls up, resonant in the shaft. “I love you.”

“I get that a lot,” Tristan calls down. “I like you, I do. You’re a lovely…thing. Someday you’ll make some…other thing…a lovely wife. But I prefer my women to have a certain bit of…well…sanity, really. And eyes. And maybe a touch more hair. Does that make me shallow and tedious?” His words tumble from him swiftly and I know he is on the edge of hysteria.

The scraping nails grow closer. The grunts grow louder. How can she be gaining on us?

“Edward, move faster!” Tristan’s hand shoves at my legs. “Why am I always on the bottom?”

The light above us grows closer. I squirm upward, rocking back and forth, hearing the wet sounds of my progress and Tristan’s labored breathing down below. The glow becomes a circle of light. The top of the garderobe. I wedge my fingers in a putlock hole and drag my knees upward. The worst physical experience I have ever had is almost over.

“We’re almost there, Tristan.”

“So soon?” he replies, but his voice is tinged with fear.

Something growls from below us. Then a voice so sweet that I can’t imagine it came from the same throat. “May I suck the juice from your eyes?”

A voice calls down from above. “Hello?” The word echoes in the garderobe shaft. Tristan and I stop moving. The voice sounds again, but much fainter. “Sounded…someone there…” I hear the murmur of another voice but cannot make out any of the words.

I continue to climb as quietly as I can, not certain whether the voices are friend or foe. The first voice rings out again, louder. “Hurry up. I want to watch King Gerald piss on those knights. I’m going to squat. You’d best be done when I am.”

Foe, then. I use both hands to pull the dagger from my boot. The circle of light is blotted out and I know I must act.

Immediately.

I wriggle upward, take a breath, and sheathe the dagger in the arse above me. It is not a plaguer scream that rings out, although it is similar in volume and passion. When a man sees a plaguer, he screams from the soul. But when a man has a dagger shoved into his arsehole, he screams from somewhere else entirely.

The dagger is pulled from my grasp. Light returns to the shaft. I jam my toe into a putlock hole and push with all the strength I have. A thick slab of wood with a hole cut from it is the only thing separating me from clean air. I brace my back against the wall and pound with my fists until I dislodge it, then hook my elbows over the stone ledge and pull myself upward. I brace myself for an attack, but none comes. The alchemist kneels with his back to me in the center of his workshop. The man I stabbed lies on his stomach and groans.

“I could use some assistance,” I say.

“That is out of the question,” he replies. “You are covered in filth. There is a tub and two buckets of water just outside the necessarium. Use them and stay there. Do not step into my workshop until I am done here.”

I claw my way out of the shaft, groaning and straining with the effort. Clumps of wet shit splat onto the floor beside me as I bend low and hold out a hand to Tristan. He takes the hand and scrambles out, then peers into the hole. “I felt her hand on me, Edward! I kicked at her and I think she fell back to the bottom.” He places the slab of wood back over the shaft opening and looks at the alchemist. “Did he just call this privy a necessarium? My grandmother calls it that.” He brushes feces from his clothes. “What are you doing with that man? You’re not buggering him, are you? A priest once told me that buggery is the cause of this plague.”

“I’m not buggering him,” the alchemist replies calmly. “Your friend stabbed him in the anus. A filthy canal. The wound must be treated at once.”

“You don’t have to talk to me about filthy canals,” Tristan responds. He peers warily into the garderobe.

“You stabbed me in the…the anus!” the man whimpers. “You’re a bastard and a knave! In my filthy canal!”

I strip my fouled clothes off and step into the small wooden tub just outside the garderobe.

“If I do not treat him, the wound will fester and rot,” the alchemist says.

“You are treating one of Sir Gerald’s men,” I say.

“I am treating a human,” he replies. “Are the plaguers not enemies enough? Must you fight each other, too?”

I squat down in the tub and pour one of the buckets of water over my head. The alchemist is right, of course. I spoke similar words to Tristan and Praeteritus not long ago. Humans should look after each other now. It is difficult to remember that when one particular human wants to strip your flesh and piss upon your pulp.

Chapter 54

We wait, wrapped in wool blankets and still smelling of shit, as the alchemist finishes salving the guard. “Wash the area thoroughly after each bowel movement and apply this ointment,” says the alchemist as we tie the man’s hands with cord.

“So what happens now?” I say.

“Sir Gerald is touring the wine cellars at the moment,” the alchemist replies. “I told him there was something of great interest to him there. Something he had to see immediately.”

“What is it?” I ask.

“There is nothing of great interest down there,” he says. “My man will show him a vintage of wine made in Thunresleam. I doubt Sir Gerald will be very impressed by it, but it has given us time.”

He motions us to his workbench and lifts the lid off a large glass bottle. “Pull your hands apart as far as you can.”

I pull my hands until the chain between them is taut. The alchemist tilts the bottle over the links and a few drops of liquid fall from it. The drops sizzle and smoke when they touch the metal chain. He tilts the bottle again and a few more drops fall free. More smoke rises from the chain. One of the links falls, ringing across the floor, and then I am free.

“What is that?” I ask.

“A very powerful acid.” He frees Tristan in the same way, then seals the bottle. He takes an even larger bottle from his desk and gives it to me. The bottle is empty. “You can collect the dragon blood in this.”

“He’ll know you did it,” I say. “Gerald will know you set us free.”

The alchemist hands us our cannons, my sword, and our shoulder sacks. “You will strike me once in the face to give evidence to the fact that I did no such thing,” he says. “And this noble creature that you stabbed in the anus will vouch that you overpowered the two of us.”

“Why will he do that?” Tristan asks.

“Because that wound you gave him will take a long time to heal. It is a tricky wound in a filthy place, so it might never heal. If he wants my best care and a chance at recovery, I think it only fair he assist me. I might even spare some Malta fungus if he is convincing.”

“Malta fungus?” asks the guard.

“It’s not really fungus,” Tristan whispers to him.

The alchemist lifts two folded brown robes from a chair and hands one to me. “I apologize. I could not bring your armor without attracting suspicion. You must let God be your armor now.”

I take a robe and look at the alchemist. “That woman in the cellar,” I say. “She was the second test subject, wasn’t she?”

He clears his throat and uses the hem of Tristan’s robe to wipe a fallen chunk of feces from the floor. “Yes.” He hands the robe to Tristan, his lips drawn tightly. “She was.” He closes his eyes and makes the sign of the cross.

“You loved her?” I ask.

Tristan scowls as he takes the robe, examines the soiled hem.

“I, too, know what it is like to lose a wife, Sir Edward.” He looks into my eyes and lets out a long, ragged breath. “I will help your Elizabeth. Whether the dragon blood works or not. I promise I will help.” There is something in his eyes, a message for me that I do not understand. He quotes scripture: “‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ I will heal your wife, Sir Edward.”

I stare at him for a long moment, and he back at me. He clears his throat and turns away. “Go to the docks one at a time, and board the cog. I have men waiting to take you wherever you wish to go.”

I put a hand on the alchemist’s shoulder. “You are the best man I have met on my travels, Dominic. I grieve for your wife.”

He nods, his eyes growing glassy, and clears his throat again. “Where is it you will go?”

“South,” I reply. “We have a dragon to slay.”

Tristan thrusts his robe toward me. “Edward, would you mind terribly if we traded?”

We leave the tower and walk halfway down the stairs before I realize that I forgot to hit the alchemist. I return to his chamber and push open the door, only to find him on his hands and knees at the base of the wall that holds the window. The guard is still on his stomach, head toward the workbench, eyes closed.

I enter the chamber. The alchemist jerks upright at my footsteps and stands abruptly. His body is taut as a strung bow. “What…what is it?”

“Is everything well?” I scan the room for any danger.

The alchemist glances back at the floor just beneath the window, and the tension drains from his shoulders. “Just a little preservation. Rain sweeps in from the window sometimes and mold grows along the floor. I cannot tolerate filth in my workspace. I must scrub it away. All of it. Do you understand? I will abide no dirt or disorder.”

I look at the floor. It is perfectly clean. I look back at the alchemist. There is something damaged about him. Some species of the third plague courses through his veins and affects his thoughts. But in these dark times I suppose all of us suffer some sort of madness.

“I’m afraid I have to bring a bit off disorder to your face,” I say.

“Oh.” He touches his cheek. “I had forgotten. Good of you to remember.”

He walks toward me and I hit him before he expects the blow. He falls backward with a grunt and nods, touches his cheek again, and winces.

No one finds anything strange about two cowled monks in a monastery. We slip past armored men like two ghosts. Two of Sir Brian’s guards linger by the docks, but they run past us as the first shouts go up from the church. Daniel, the man who was cured of plague, waits for us in the cog. He looks in the direction of the shouts and shakes his head. “Someone’s about to get very angry.”

Tristan and I leap into the ship. A charcoal fire burns in a clay pot that has been lashed to the mast, probably to light the cloth-covered rails that surround the hull.

“Put your blade to my back,” Daniel whispers. I draw Saint Giles’s sword and touch the tip to Daniel’s back.

“Head toward Norwich,” I say.

“We can’t leave Belisencia,” Tristan says.

“We don’t have a choice,” I say. “We’ll come back for her.”

“Sir Gerald won’t be happy,” he replies. “He’ll torture her.”

“Not a chance,” I say. “She’s King Richard’s cousin and she’s married to Sir Brian’s brother. Even if Gerald dares to cross Richard, he won’t cross his new ally.” I shrug. “The worst they’ll do is piss on her symbolically.”

Six servants at the oars paddle against the current, pulling the cog forward slowly. Daniel and another servant unfurl the square sail. Figures approach the abbey from the south. Maybe ten of them. Lurching slowly through the swamps. More and more plaguers are being drawn to St. Benet’s.

We drift downstream along the river, following the winding waterway through Norfolk. After a time Daniel anchors the boat and tells us that we are two miles northeast of Norwich.

“How long will you be?” he asks.

“Four or five hours at most,” I say.

“I’ll wait until dusk,” he replies. “I can’t stay any longer than that. We can only light the ship’s rails on fire once, and there are plaguers in these waters.”

We drop down from the boat into waist-deep water and wade through reeds and cowbane and onto the shore. We strip and bathe in the river to wash away the remnants of our journey through the garderobe.

“So why are we here?” Tristan asks. “Why not go straight to Bure?”

I tug his robe. “God is our armor,” I say. “But a suit of chain mail never hurts.”

Chapter 55

Praeteritus and his lepers live within the crumbling flint walls of an old Roman fortress in Caistor St. Edmund. Soiled tents and crude wooden huts fill the spaces inside the walls. It looks more like a siege encampment than a home. Lepers sit around fires or walk the tent village in their white robes.

“There are better places to live,” I say. “Abandoned homes everywhere.”

Praeteritus shrugs. “Abandoned homes don’t have curtain walls.” He touches the flint wall as he walks. “Besides, this place was Roman once. I like the Romans.”

A beautiful sound rises from behind us. Voices. Dozens of voices. A choir of lepers stands near one of the walls, singing a hymn. Another leper stands with his back to me, guiding their voices. I have heard many choirs in my days. Some of the finest choirs ever assembled. But I am ambushed by the song of these poor, cursed people in this desolate and filthy camp. An ache resonates somewhere deep inside me. A sorrow for our race. I hear the voice of God in their song.

Praeteritus takes us to one of the wooden huts and pushes through the linen curtain that serves as a door. “Sit,” he says, motioning toward a trestle table that is little more than a board on stone blocks, and four chairs cut from logs. He rummages through a chest and returns with something in his hand. “Have a look at that.” He places two metal disks on the table.

They are ancient coins. On the front of the first coin is the profile of a man wearing an ivy wreath on his head.