The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (4 page)

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
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Morgan lets out a long
breath. “Edmund wasn’t the only one with plague. Simon, the old man with the
stutter — the one that used to muck out the stables — he had it too. We have
this stone wall holding back an embankment beside our stables. And Simon, he
just steps off the wall and lands face-first next to Sara. Just falls right on
his face. Made an awful smacking sound. And Sara screams, but she doesn’t run.
She just screams. And Simon gets up, and his nose is broken up from the fall. I
thought he was coming to help me. But then I saw his eyes.”

He stops and fiddles
with the cover of his Bible, then waves the book in our direction. “Abraham was
willing to sacrifice his child to God. Maybe I’m not strong enough in my faith.
I wasn’t going to let those things get my Sara. So I murdered them. The Lord
says thou shalt not kill, but I tore them both apart with my bare hands. I was
red with their blood.” He tucks the Bible into a saddlebag. “Back then, the archbishop
hadn’t yet given permission to send the plagued to God. What I did that day was
a mortal sin. I hope that someday God forgives me.”

Morgan falls silent. I
think of Allison Moore standing on the banks of the Medway. See her hands
fiddling once more with her savaged throat. None of us speak for a time.

Tristan finally breaks
the silence. “Of course he’ll forgive you. All you did was rip two humans to
pieces. It’s not like you buggered a horse.”

Chapter 6

We ride the North
Downs for most of the day. I make certain that we avoid towns and settlements,
avoid anything that can distract us from our mission. Our immediate goal is
Dartford. There is a new bridge there that spans the River Thames. It is a
massive thing of wood, built to provide an eastern crossing. I first saw that
stretch of river fifteen years ago, when the bridge was nothing more than an
architect’s confident smile. I watched as workers lowered pitch-lined timbers
into the river at low tide. The logs, fifteen feet tall each, were bound
together with metal strips. They formed massive cylinders as thick around as
castle towers and heavy enough to resist the river currents. These cofferdams
were set deep into the soft mud so that workers could dig the pier foundations
while the river swirled around them.

It was completed six
years ago, and, when Rye was burned two years later, they added wooden
gatehouses on both sides of the bridge and a stone keep on the Dartford side.
I’ve crossed the bridge many times and I know how secure it is. The crossing
will be a safe and easy one. That is what I tell myself.

Sir Morgan’s peregrine
falcon finds us again as the North Downs peter out. I resist the compulsion to kill
it, and Sir Morgan scares it off. None of us understand how an afflicted falcon
can track us across southern England. Sir Morgan swears the bird’s eyes are
clearer.

We leave the chalk
hills and enter the Thames valley five miles southeast of Dartford. The towns
are larger here, so we avoid them, keeping to the heath and forests. But at
day’s end, when the world turns gray and hope seems to die, we can no longer
avoid settlements. We have reached the Thames at last. And to cross that great
river we must enter Dartford. I am anxious to get the river behind me and to ride
fast and hard to St. Edmund’s Bury, but I must wait a bit longer.

I must
wait, because Dartford is under siege.

A sea of human
silhouettes sway upon the Dartford Bridge. Their movements appear unnatural,
even from the crest of this hill overlooking the city. They are the afflicted.
The returning dead. Mindless hunters, incapable of mercy or understanding. And
they stand between me and my Elizabeth.

Never have I seen so
many of the afflicted. I can’t move. All I can do is stare silently. The mass
of them pushes against the portcullis of the southern gatehouse. I can hear
their screams and imagine soldiers on the other side jabbing spears through the
gate.

After a time, I goad
my horse forward. As we wind our way down the hill, I hear louder cries and
imagine vast cauldrons of boiling water spewing down on the afflicted.

Dartford flies the
banners of St. George and of Lord James Fitzsimmons, earl of Sussex. I identify
myself to the soldiers at the city gate. They usher us into the gatehouse with
crossbows loaded and pointed our way. We have the pleasure of stripping bare
again and are inspected like lost sheep returning home. We bear no wounds, so we
are allowed in the city.

A sergeant wearing
brigandine and a kettle helm puts himself at our service. He calls himself
Philip Chandler. “There’s some plague in Dartford,” he says. “We ain’t fully
clean, m’lord. But Lord James is rooting it out.”

“Are the afflicted
crossing the Thames?” I ask.

“It’s too wide for ’em
to wade. But I hear they broke through Oxford and crossed into Wessex. And we
had plenty of plague in the South before that. We’ll like as not get flanked
soon enough.”

I ask the sergeant to
take us to Lord James. The soldier studies me, then nods curtly and leads us
toward the new keep. We ride through a catatonic city. I see the same vacant
look on every face. The people of Dartford walk slowly. Move deliberately. As
if they are sleepwalking. As if they already have the plague.

There are two guards
outside Lord James’s chamber. An unpleasant odor seeps from beneath the door. Like
rancid meat. The sergeant pauses and looks into my eyes. “Lord James has had
some tragedy, m’lord. He’s…well, he’s been affected a bit by all of this.”

“We’ve all been
affected,” Sir Tristan says.

“Aye, Sir,” the
sergeant says. “But…” He shrugs and raps on the oak door.

A voice calls from
inside the room. “Pass!”

The sergeant opens the
door and gestures for us to enter. I give him a stern look for not announcing
us, then forget all about courtesy. The chamber is lined with the afflicted.
Nearly a dozen of them — men, women, and children with the plague, their eyes an
infinite void. They are bound with manacles and leg-irons and chained to the
stone walls. I stop so suddenly that Sir Tristan runs into me.

Lord James sits at a
carved wooden desk. One of the afflicted, a woman, has freed itself. She leaps
at Lord James from behind. I cry out and draw my sword. Lord James jumps up
from his desk with a scream that echoes in the room. The woman takes hold of
him, but Lord James’s scream was a reaction to me, not her. He pushes the woman
back gently, raises his hands toward me and cries out, “No! Put your sword
away!”

I shoulder the woman
to the ground and stand between her and the earl. Sir Tristan and Sir Morgan
take position at my flanks as the door guards burst into the room. Lord James
brushes past us and helps the plaguer to her feet. She was once a noblewoman, I
think. Her linen dress might once have been regal. The woman leans toward the earl,
moaning, hands grabbing for him. The earl pushes the woman backward gently and tsks
.
“You’ve eaten already, Catherine. I am not food, my love.”

One of the guards asks
Lord James if he is alright, and the earl nods and waves them away. I sheathe my
sword. Tristan and Morgan do the same. We exchange glances. Sir Tristan rolls
his index finger in a circle around his ear, then points to Lord James. I scowl
at Tristan. The earl binds the woman’s hands with a silk cord and ties the other
end to a ring on the wall. I look at the woman’s hands as he ties the knots.
Long fingers, like my Elizabeth’s. The woman moans, then hisses and tugs at her
bonds, but the cord holds her in place. I look into her open mouth.

“You’ve taken her
teeth out,” I say.

“I had her teeth taken
out,” Lord James replies. He studies her. “It changed the shape of her face.”

“She can’t afflict you
if she can’t bite,” Tristan says, nodding his approval.

“Oh, she can still sicken.”
Lord James washes his hands in a bowl on a corner table. The woman’s blood is
on them. “Just have to be careful.”

“Are you starting a
collection, my lord?” Sir Tristan gestures toward the others chained to the
walls. It’s an irreverent comment. Tristan is usually more careful in the
presence of titled gentry, but I know he thinks the earl has gone mad.

Lord James looks to
the mass of writhing, groaning bodies chained to the walls. Some of them are
missing limbs. Some have chunks cut out from their heads. The wounds on these
are so clean that I imagine a surgeon must have made them. One of the men is
missing the entire top of his skull. There seem to be small crosses sticking
into parts of his exposed brain. I stare at them all. I have never been able to
study the afflicted like this.

Lord James takes an aspergillum
from an engraved silver bucket and splashes a plagued child with what I assume
is holy water. The earl makes the sign of the cross in front of the boy, who
wears an embroidered vest stained with blood. The child hisses and snaps at the
earl’s finger with a toothless mouth. Lord James patiently splashes the child
again and makes the sign of the cross. “Faith will heal them,” Lord James says.
“Faith and patience.”

“I’m not certain of
that, my lord,” I say.

Lord James splashes
the child a little more forcefully, the holy water spattering the boy’s face. The
earl dips the aspergillum into the bucket again and splashes again. The boy
flinches at the cold water but doesn’t stop biting. Lord James splashes the
child over and over again, each swing more forceful, the earl’s face tightening
with each stroke until he is scowling. “Faith!” he shouts into the boy’s face.
“Faith and patience!
Faith and patience
!” The last sentence is shouted so
loudly that the guards peer into the room. Lord James doesn’t notice. He grabs
the bucket and dumps the holy water over the child’s blond curls with a growl,
then tries spattering the boy with what is left on the aspergillum but clips
the child in the jaw with it instead. The boy cries out with pain, then
continues to snap his teeth. Lord James strokes the child’s chin where he
struck it. He leans in close and whispers, as the boy shakes away the water
dumped over him, “Faith and patience, little one.”

“My lord,” I say, but
am unsure of what to add.

Sir Morgan draws a
small Bible from a leather pouch at his side and approaches the child. “Praise
the Lord, oh my soul,” he reads, “and forget not all his benefits who forgives
all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit
and crowns you with love and compassion.”

“I have tried
scripture,” Lord James says. “I have tried exorcism. I had a dozen priests
chanting over these poor people. But none of it has yet worked.”

I notice a
bare-chested man among the afflicted. He bears a burn in the shape of a
crucifix upon his left breast. I let out a long sigh. “My lord, I need a boat
to cross the Thames, and some men to cover us while we climb the northern
banks.”

Lord James walks past
me as if I hadn’t spoken. He caresses the face of the woman tied to the iron
ring. She snaps at his hand with her toothless jaws and snarls at him. “Don’t
judge her by how she looks now,” he says. “She was ravishing once.”

“Was that your wife,
my lord?”

“That
is
my
wife, Sir Edward. And I will pray until God lifts this terrible affliction from
her.”

“My wife is in Saint
Edmund’s Bury,” I say. “The plague may not have gotten to her.”

Lord James steeples
his hands in front of his wife and closes his eyes. “There is nothing but
plague in the North. Your wife is like mine now.”

“Perhaps she is not.”

“I am sorry for your
loss, Sir Edward.”

“Then lend me a boat and
five crossbowmen,” I say. “Give me the chance to pray for my wife as you now
pray for yours.”

Lord James opens his
eyes and looks at me. “Travel north of the Thames is forbidden. God has
destroyed the North, like Sodom and Gomorrah. And he has forbidden us from
traveling there.”

“My wife is there,” I
say.

“Perhaps your wife is
a pillar of salt,” Lord James says, and he laughs. I hear the madness in that
laugh.

“I need a boat and
some crossbowmen, my lord.”

“I will give you a
boat and soldiers,” he says, “if you agree to let my surgeons take out your
teeth.”

Sir Tristan snorts.
“You can have Sir Morgan’s teeth.”

Sir Morgan glares. I
would smile if my Elizabeth wasn’t a hundred miles away. “There is a cathedral
in Saint Edmund’s Bury,” I say to Lord James. “And in that cathedral is the thighbone
of St. Luke.”

Lord James opens his
mouth then shuts it. “St. Luke the healer?”

“The very same.”

The earl looks at the afflicted
along his walls. He looks at his wife and runs a hand along her cheek as she
snaps and strains against the silk cord. “You would return with this relic?
Give it to me?”

“Yes, m’lord.”

He turns to look at
me, and there is a guarded hope in his eyes. “How can I be certain that you
will honor your word, Sir Edward? That you will return with the relic?”

BOOK: The Scourge (Kindle Serial)
10.93Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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