The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (35 page)

“Edward?”

I grunt inquisitively.

“Ed!”

“What is it?”

“They can climb!”

I glance down. Tristan kicks at the nearest one, a woman with tiny blue bows in her matted hair and dried blood smeared across her mouth.

“We can climb quicker,” I say, and we do.

But I reach the top and the wooden door above me is locked.

Tristan stops just beneath me. I can see the afflicted getting closer to him. They are silhouetted in the torchlight from below; skinny reaching things that hiss and jerk and grasp.

“I’d like to leave the tunnel, Ed.” His voice is tinged with panic. He kicks at the woman again. She rolls her head from side to side and the blood on her mouth makes it seem as though she has an impossibly wide smile.

I pound on the wooden door. Again and again and again. I scream. Tristan screams too and I’m not sure if he’s trying to be heard or just crying out in terror. I bang on the door with the butt of my knife. So close. Two inches of wood separate me from Elizabeth. Two inches of English oak.

Tristan cries out again and this time I know it is fear. The woman has his foot in her hand. Her reddened mouth clamps on the ankle of his boot.

I brace myself against the rungs and drive my shoulders into the door. It moves. I do it again. Then again. The door shifts, and suddenly it is no longer there. Light streams into the shaft from above, heavenly light, the light of salvation.

I pull myself up and take Tristan’s hand. The creature below holds his foot with unnatural strength. I fight her for Tristan. It seems like a long struggle, but Tristan kicks at her with his other foot. Once, twice, and I hear the third kick break bones in her face. She lets go.

We sprawl onto the wooden floor and I distantly take note of a man in monk robes. Tristan slams the door down on the woman’s hands. She screams so loudly and with such a high pitch that it hurts my ears. Tristan stamps on the fingers that protrude from under the door. He roars and stamps again and again even though I’m sure the fingers are no longer attached to the hand.

The man in the monk’s robes clears his throat. Tristan and I turn to look at him, breathing hard, our tabards painted in blood and filth. The monk fidgets with his hands and speaks.

“You shouldn’t use that entrance.”

We are in a small, bare room within the prior’s house. A massive steel crucifix above a carved desk is the only decoration. The monk says he is Brother Phillip and tells us he is the only monk left at St. Edmund’s Bury. He is a short man, and his eyebrows twitch oddly when he speaks. I ask if he knows my wife, the Lady Elizabeth Dallingridge.

“There were many ladies here, Sir Edward,” he says.

“Where are they now?” I ask. “Where are they?” My body is flowing with battle frenzy and the realization that I have reached my destination. The realization that I could shout Elizabeth’s name and she might hear it.

“There was a disturbance.” He won’t meet my gaze as he speaks. “A disturbance among the townspeople.”

“That’s a little more than a disturbance, Brother Phillip.” Tristan points out the window toward the curtain walls.

“There was a disturbance among the townspeople,” Brother Phillip repeats. “They caused this. It is their fault.”

“Where are the noblewomen who were here?” I fight the urge to shake the monk. “Where is my wife?”

“It was the townspeople,” he says again. “They have been so violent. So angry. Our abbey is here by the grace of God. We answer only to Him, not to burghers or farmers.”

I lose the fight and shake the monk so hard that his teeth click. This abbey is the most powerful in all of England, and the monks and priors live like kings on the backs of the populace. I have no time or patience for one of their ilk. “Where is my wife!”

The monk’s eyebrows twitch more and his face grows paler. “I…I…”

Tristan pulls the monk from my hands. “Sir Edward has had a long journey, Brother Phillip.” His words are soothing but I can see the tension in his posture. “Lady Elizabeth, his wife, was staying with her aunt in the town. She is tall and slender and fair of hair. Have you seen her?”

The monk stares at the rushes on the floor as he smoothes his robes. “Many lords and ladies sought safety in the abbey when the plague began. But the townsfolk rose up. Not the plagued townsfolk. The regular ones. It was a riot. They rolled barrels down the hill and shattered the Great Gate. They murdered prior John. Murdered him!”

This checks my anger. Prior John dead? Perhaps the drooling gudgeons are smarter than the prior thought.

“They took his head off!”

“What happened to the lords and ladies?” Tristan demands. “What happened to them?”

Brother Phillip shakes his head. “The townspeople blamed us for the plague. Us. Can you imagine? We had nothing to do with it. They have not a shred of evidence. It is ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.”

“So the townspeople rioted again,” Tristan says. “They breached the Great Gate and killed the prior?”

“They killed the prior and eight monks,” Brother Phillip says. “The monks that survived fled to safety through Prior John’s tunnel.”

“They fled,” Tristan says. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

I recall the gnawed bones and monk robes in the tunnel, but only distantly. I can feel the rage coming over me. The red flames that overcame me in Hadleigh. “Did anyone go with the monks? Any of the lords and ladies?”

“Some did,” Brother Phillip says, and the despair is like a frost across my body. “They fled when Prior John was caught. The townspeople…they ripped the prior apart. They staked his head to the Great Gate!”

“Yes, yes,” Tristan says. “For all that is holy, what happened to the other lords and ladies? The ones that didn’t go into the tunnel?”

The monk points southward. “The dormitories. Many of the lords and ladies barricaded themselves in the dormitories.”

I am out of the room before Tristan can take a breath to respond. “And they are still there?” I hear Tristan say.

“I fear they are,” Brother Phillip says.

Something about his tone stops me with my hand on the latch to the outer door. I walk back to the room with the trap door in it.

“You
fear
they are?” I ask. The monk takes a step back under my glare. “Why do you fear it?”

Brother Phillip looks to Tristan as I advance on him. “I…they…”

The red flames rise. My hand is around his throat. He is against the wall. I don’t remember how we got into this position. All I see is his twitching face and the terror upon it. “Tell me everything right now! Right now! Tell me everything, or I will throw you into that tunnel!”

His face turns white and I think he is about to faint. I slap him and his eyes flutter open. He speaks quietly. “The plague. The plague got among them.”

My scalp tightens at his words. The world tilts. “
What
?” I scream it into his face.

“Well, the…a man…a lord was afflicted. And he…he gave them the plague.”

“
All of them
?
He gave all of them the plague
?”

“I…I should think so. Well, I can’t imagine any of them weren’t afflicted.”

I shake him again, press my hand against his forehead and bring my face close enoughto his to feel his twitching brows against my forehead. “
And why is that
?”

“Because…” He glances toward the door and I know he wants to flee. “Because they were…locked in the great hall with him.”

Tristan stands beside me, probably to keep me from squeezing the life out of Brother Phillip. “How do you know this?” Tristan asks.

“I…I just know.”

“How!” My hand tightens on his throat. “
How do you know
?”

“We…we heard them!” he shouts. “We heard them calling.”

“And you…
you did nothing
?”

“There was plague in the room!” he shouts. “There was plague inside! We had to lock them…grghh!”

His words are cut off as my hand squeezes his throat. I am lost in the red fires of fury. “So while my wife was screaming for help, you were barring the door so they couldn’t get out? Is that what you are telling me? Is that what St. Benedict teaches?”

Through the haze of red I feel the monk’s fists pound my arm. His eyes are closed. He makes choking sounds. Tristan uses both his hands to pry me off. Brother Phillip falls coughing to the floor. Tristan shoves me backward.

“You’ll kill him, Ed!”

“He deserves it!” I shout back. “He deserves it!”

“You’ll kill him, Ed,” Tristan repeats. His voice is calm, soothing. I turn and run toward the door, calling back: “Have him take you to the relic.”

“You…can’t,” Brother Phillip says between gasps. “You can’t open…dormitories.”

I dash out of the prior’s house, past the garderobe and the chapel to the north, and arc around to the dormitories. They are clustered against a mass of buildings just beside the enormous abbey cathedral.

She is not there. She will not be in there.

A great beam of wood has been affixed to the dormitory doors with blackened metal brackets. I heft at the beam. Try to pry it loose. Slam my shoulder against the door. Nothing.

Dear God, let me in!

I search desperately for something to batter at the beam. Something. Anything. Inspiration strikes. I run back to the prior’s house. Tristan and the monk are gone. I rip the giant steel crucifix from the wall and haul it back to the dormitory.

She fled to safety. She never came to the abbey
.

It takes five blows with the crucifix to knock one of the metal brackets from the door. One end of the beam falls to the ground. I grab hold of it and pull back and forth. I fall backward when the second bracket breaks free and have a moment to think about what I am doing. The first thumps ring out from the other side of the door.

She is not in there
.
She is safe
.

The door shudders. I stand and draw my sword. Maybe I can find a shield somewhere in the abbey. And just as I have that thought, the great wooden doors burst open. Lords and ladies spill out of the room, but there is no nobility left in them. They are bloody, growling things. Grasping, biting things. Ugly things. And I kill them. I slash and jab and kick and rend and puncture. A rage is upon me like none I have ever known. Blood covers every inch of me. I am the Angel of Death. I am vengeance. I am the Holy Hand of God. And I kill them all.

I kill them all, save one.

Tristan is out of words.

All he can do is put a hand on my shoulder as I tie Elizabeth’s wrists with a length of rope. She snarls and her teeth crash against my breastplate as I tie the other end of the rope to a torch bracket in the great cathedral of St. Edmund’s Bury. Sunlight streams through the stained glass windows, leaving splashes of color at our feet.

I have been a fool.

I have turned away from God so many times that I have forgotten where to find him. He is here. He is before me. Elizabeth is God’s reminder. This is what my wickedness has wrought.

I spoke of drunkards and irrationality this morning, of people delving into the absurd because of their religion. But can something truly be irrational if it is done in God’s name? Is it better to be sensible in a godless world or delirious in the Kingdom of Heaven?

My Elizabeth stands before me. Long and slender. My beautiful Elizabeth. I stroke the golden waves of her hair. I have found my wife, and in so doing, I have found heaven. God has sent me an angel to show me the way back.

My angel scratches at me.

I kiss her long fingers, then hold up the hilt of my sword so she can see St. Giles’s tooth.

“She calms when I show her the tooth,” I say. “Do you see it? It soothes her. St. Giles is soothing her.”

Tristan doesn’t reply. He keeps his hand on my shoulder. I know he wants me to leave. He spoke earlier of a cure. Of the alchemist on an island fortress, the man Isabella mentioned. Brother Phillip also heard of this alchemist, and of a cure for the plague. That’s what Tristan told me as we brought Elizabeth to the church. I don’t know who is a less reliable source of knowledge, a dead witch or that spineless monk. But I know magic is not the answer. God is testing us. Only faith will heal Elizabeth.

Faith and patience.

I look to the bone on the altar. Only half of St. Luke’s thighbone remains. Tristan spoke of that too.

Brother Phillip confessed that the monks had ground up half of the saint’s thigh over the years. They had crushed St. Luke’s leg into a powder and mixed it into the yeast of the Holy Communion. Parts of St. Edmund’s remains were also ground into the bread. Even a few of the dead priors were dug up and their bodies minced and thrown in.

“Brother Phillip said it is something that has been done throughout history,” Tristan told me. “In St. Edmund’s Bury. In York. In Norwich. In many of the churches and monasteries of England. The monks at St. Edmund’s Abbey have been doing it since the first riots, more than fifty years ago. The monk said that peasants are more docile when they ingest little bits of saints and holy men.”

Tristan then told me an idiotic story about a cook who ate an entire loaf of the communion bread and became sick. Became plagued. Utter nonsense.