The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (23 page)

Matilda fights through tears to speak a verse: “Blessed are…blessed are the dead who die in the Lord. They may…they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them.”

“Amen,” Morgan says.

I take the firing cord from Tristan so he can hold the gun steady, then dip the flame into the touchhole. A heartbeat of silence passes. An explosion deafens us. Fire belches from Tristan’s hands. Smoke swirls through the room.

And God’s Love sends Sir Thomas to Jesus. Quickly and without pain.

We barricade ourselves in the kitchen, using casks of brine to bar all three doors. When we are done, Tristan looks at the barrels, then back at me. I know he wonders why we aren’t fleeing Danbury yet.

“I need some quiet time,” I say. “Time to think.” But all the time in the world won’t settle the sick feeling in my stomach. I am the angel of death, and I will have to kill Morgan, Tristan, and Matilda before this day is over.

When the room is secure we sit in glum silence on buckets or pots and avoid looking at one another.

“The phials,” Matilda says. “They cause the plague.” Her breathing is swift and erratic again. Morgan pulls her close to him and kisses her hair.

“I am so sorry,” he whispers, his eyes glistening with tears. “I have murdered you.”

“Oh, Heavenly Father,” She closes her eyes and tears squeeze from beneath the lids. “Oh, Christ our Lord.” She runs her fingers over Morgan’s beard. “You didn’t know, darling. You didn’t know.”

I think of Elizabeth, and my heart aches for them.

Morgan rests his forehead against hers and weeps. “We must pray. If we pray, God will listen, for we are devout. He will listen to us.”

Morgan has no armor. Only a tunic and trousers and boots. His weapons and armor sit on the floor of my chamber upstairs. Tristan sits on a small cask. At his feet is a large shoulder bag holding four of the hand cannons from the gun room. One of the weapons is more than four feet long. I wonder how the guns haven’t torn through the bag. Next to the shoulder bag, on the ground, sits a haversack that Tristan stuffed with powder skins, iron projectiles, and other items from the gun room.

Tristan clears his throat. “I got sick,” he says. “I purged all over my helmet.” Zhuri moves his bucket farther away as Tristan addresses Morgan. “When you speak with God, can you put in a good word for me?”

I stand and touch Tristan’s forehead. “You’re not feverish.”

“Not yet,” Tristan says. It seems as if he wants to make a joke, but he simply sighs and looks at me. His lips are tight and he won’t stop fidgeting with his hands.

“So, should we take care of them now or when they change?” Zhuri asks.

“Hold one moment,” Morgan says. “You’ll not take care of anyone!”

I think back to Morgan’s tale about his first plaguers. How he tore them to pieces to save his daughter. He was once a priest and is not quick to anger, but when he is on the precipice of fury, anything can set him off. I know he is stretched across that precipice right now.

“Something has to be done,” Zhuri says. “In another hour or two, we will be trapped in this room with the three of you. I would prefer you went to Jesus before you can no longer remember his lessons.”

“Give it a try.” Morgan stands and glowers. “Try sending me to Jesus.”

“No.” Zhuri takes a step toward Morgan, scowls, and corrects him. “Try
to send
me to Jesus.”

Morgan sails over the precipice.

Zhuri sits on his bucket, with a scrap of fabric stuffed into his bleeding nostril. His vest is torn and his cheek swollen from one of Morgan’s blows. Morgan and Matilda kneel in the pantry and pray over Morgan’s assorted relics. Tristan has found a case of walnuts. For each one he eats, he throws three more at a pot that he has set faceup in the distance.

“If there is a God,” he says. “I know I haven’t endeared myself to Him. I have ignored Him and so He has ignored me. If God exists, then I deserve this fate.” He tosses a walnut toward the pot. It misses and skids across the wooden floor. “But I don’t know if I have met two people more devout than Morgan and Matilda.” He looks up at me. “So why is God ignoring them?”

I shrug. “Maybe it’s a test. Maybe he’s testing them like he tested Job.”

“Yes, Job. God made a wager, didn’t He? He let Satan torture Job almost to madness so He could prove a point.” Tristan tosses another walnut toward the bucket. The nut hits the rim with a clink and bursts in a shower across the floor. “God can be a heartless bastard.”

Glass shatters in the distance. Tristan, Zhuri, and I glance at one another and lift our ears to the sound.

I shrug. “It was the Old Testament God, Tristan. He was grumpy back then.”

We sit in silence for a time and I try to come to a decision about the three afflicted members of our party. I know I can’t do anything while they still possess their humanity. And I can’t just leave them when they lose it.

Tristan throws another three walnuts toward the pot. Before he can throw a fourth, the door that leads into the Red Hall shakes. Something snarls outside.

“So much for quiet time,” Tristan says.

I quote Job at him: “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away.”

“Seems he’s doing a lot of taking these days.”

The door shakes again but the brine barrels hold it closed.

“How did they find us?” Zhuri asks. The fabric stuffed in his nose makes his voice sound pinched.

“They are hungry,” Tristan says. “We’re in the kitchen.”

“Perhaps they can hear us,” I say. Everyone falls silent. Morgan and Matilda walk back from the pantry. She leans against him as she walks. Sweat glistens on her forehead.

“How many are out there?” Morgan asks.

I walk quietly toward the door and peer underneath. There are two pairs of feet. But as I watch another pair joins them. Then another. I keep looking, until there are too many pairs to count. The door shudders as they pound upon it. They groan and hiss, and my heart begins its familiar dance.

“Too many,” I whisper. I don’t know why I whisper. They know we are here.

A thunderous pounding shakes the other door, the one that leads to the great hall.

“They are in the great hall as well!” Zhuri says. “We will be trapped!” He draws the hunting knife from his belt and, trembling, points it toward the thudding door. He glances back to the servants’ entrance at the rear of the kitchen. “There is only one way out.”

“And it’s the servants’ entrance,” Tristan says. “How mortifying.”

It is a tiny door. I would have to duck to pass through it, and I think my shoulders would brush both sides. “Where does that door go?” I ask.

Zhuri shrugs. “To the servants’ quarters. I think there’s another door past it, leading out of the manor.”

“Good,” I say. “Everyone up. We leave now.”

“What happens when we get outside?” Zhuri asks. “There are more than a hundred villagers in Danbury. How will we get past them all?”

I touch the hilt of my sword. Glance at the hand cannons by Tristan’s feet. “We’ll think of something.”

Matilda vomits.

Everyone stares at her as she dabs at her mouth with her fingers. Tristan drops a walnut and it shatters on the floor.

“Allah protect us!” Zhuri stumbles over his bucket, trying to get away from her. He falls and scuttles backward.

Morgan makes a sound I have never heard him make before: part sob, part moan. He pulls Matilda into his chest and rocks her, makes the sound again, and it shreds my heart. “You will be all right. You will be all right. You will be all right.” He looks at me over her shoulder, his eyes pleading. I can’t hold his gaze. She holds his shoulders with long, slender fingers. I study those fingers, and a blackness darker than any I have known settles in my chest.

“She’s blighting!” Zhuri shouts. “Allah help us, she’s blighting!”

“Shut your filthy mouth!” Morgan’s shout is loud enough to echo.

“She has to be put down! She will kill us all!” Zhuri points his knife in her direction.

The door to the Red Hall slams against the brine barrels. The plaguers have forced it open a few inches. They bang against it, so that it slams against the casks again and again. Clawed hands snake through the gap and scrape at the door and wall.

“How is she sick so soon?” Tristan says. “I was with Lilly for hours and she was fine.”

Matilda throws up again. She looks at Zhuri with terror, and he looks back at her with the same. She turns to Tristan. “Half…the phial,” she says.

The Red Hall door grinds opens another inch. The afflicted roar and shriek and reach through the gap, like lunatics trapped in coffins. I have trouble thinking, with those screams in my ears. My heart races. They are getting in. Dear God, they are getting in.

“You drank half the phial?” Tristan says.

Matilda nods.

“For all that is holy!” Zhuri shouts. “She’s turning!
We must go
!”

Tristan patiently holds up his forefinger to Zhuri. “And Morgan only had a drop?”

Morgan’s eyes glisten with tears again. “I didn’t have any. You knocked it out of my hands before I could drink.”

Tristan’s mouth drops open. My heart stutters in my chest.

The banging of the door is ceaseless. The plaguers see us through the gap and they shriek with renewed energy. Zhuri scrambles to the door and shoves at the barrels.

“You told me you drank from it,” I say.

“What?” Morgan’s brows furrow. “When?”

“Outside Matilda’s room!” Tristan says. “ Edward asked if you and Matilda drank from it, and you said yes, you stupid bastard!”

“I said Matilda had.”

“No.” Tristan and I say it at the same time.

The banging door is a ceaseless, maddening drumbeat. A frenzied rhythm to the demented hymn of howling plaguers. One of them, a man, thrusts his face against the gap and screams. His eyes are wide and black and maddened. His tongue, unnaturally long, thrashes from his mouth.

“You’re not going to plague?” Tristan asks.

Morgan isn’t listening. He strokes at Matilda’s hair and whispers to her and holds her tight against his chest.

Banging. Banging. Banging. I can’t suffer it any longer. It is driving me mad. Banging. Banging. Banging. The war drum of the dead.

Zhuri sits with his back against the brine barrels. The pounding door shoves him and the casks forward another inch. “They are getting in! We have to go! We have to go! We have to go!”

One of the plaguers is partly in the room. His arm curls around the door and part of his maddened face juts through the gap. He has a black, curling moustache. A great red boil mars his cheek. The skin beneath one of his eyes has been torn away. More arms lunge into the room from behind him and thrash against the wall.

The pounding at the door of the great hall grows louder. The thick oak shudders, and cracks appear in the frame.

“Christ almighty!” I run to the servant entrance. “Tristan, help me with these barrels.”

I glance at Morgan. He kneels with Matilda, his back to me. Her head lies against his shoulder. She looks up and her eyes meet mine. There is less humanity in them. Something in the color or the way she looks at me. Her lip twitches into the suggestion of a snarl. She shakes her head and sobs. “Morgan…”

“It’s all right, my love.” He strokes her hair again. “Oh, Jesus, our Lord, it’ll be all right my love.”

“Morgan…” She says again. “Morgan…”

Tristan looks at Matilda and freezes, with his hands around one of the casks. “Mother of God.”

Her head twitches. The muscles in her face jerk. “Morgan!” It is a question and exclamation and prayer all at once. “
Morgan
!”

“Move the fucking barrels Tristan!” I shout. “Move the fucking barrels!”

“Morgan, get away from her!” Tristan runs toward the couple.

“God will spare her!” Morgan cries. “God will save her!”

“Edward!” Zhuri’s voice is tinged with panic. “Oh, merciful Allah! They are inside!”

The man with the moustache is nearly in the room. Zhuri has both his feet against the casks, but there are too many pushing against him. I hear the splintering of wood from the great hall door.

I rock the last barrel away from the servants’ door and draw my sword. “Door’s clear! Go! Go! Go!” It takes three steps to reach the man with the moustache. I lash St. Giles’s sword with such force that it lodges in his face. Just above the eyes. The plaguer’s neck snaps backward. His head cracks against the doorframe. The man’s howls drown out the other cries in the room. But he does not die. I put a hand on his forehead to help wrench the sword free. And I finish the job with a slow thrust into his palate.

Tristan drags the bag of cannons and his helmet into the servant hallway. He darts back to help Zhuri pull Morgan toward the door. Matilda is locked in Morgan’s arms, her fingers hooked and trembling on his back. The four of them creep slowly toward the servants’ entrance, Matilda dragging along the floor.

“She can’t come!” Zhuri screams. “She’s blighting! She’ll come for us!”