The Scourge (Kindle Serial) (6 page)

I would let myself drown but Elizabeth waits for me in St. Edmund’s Bury, so I kick against the muddy floor and make toward the northern bank. The oarsmen had gotten us more than halfway across. It can’t be that deep here. I push past the grabbing hands, push through bodies as if swimming through a cornfield. I break from the water and suck in the English air, pull myself onto the northern bank. But I can’t stop. They still pull at me. They drag me back toward the Thames. I think of Elizabeth and pull against them, clawing at the English clay. It is a terrifying tug o’ war. One of my boots comes loose and I am suddenly free. There are afflicted on the bank, slipping toward me, sliding in mud and falling into the river. I stand and stagger onward.

“Edward!” It is Sir Morgan. He is on the bank. A half-dozen plaguers surround his prone body, biting at his mail. His gauntleted hands cover the back of his head. “Edward!”

I race back toward him but slip on the mud and glide past him into the river.When I crawl back to his position, there are four more of them around him. I draw my sword and impale two with one thrust. They cry out but don’t fall. I wrench the sword to the side, sending them toward the river. The awkward weight of the two bodies wrenches the sword from my grasp. . The blade falls away from them and into the dark waters. I knock another plaguer to the ground with my shoulder and help Morgan to his feet. But there are so many. Our horses are drowned in the Thames and we are surrounded. The moans sound like a battlefield of wounded men. Like a choir of the dead. They surround us. We turn our backs to each other, but neither one of us has a sword.

I’m sorry, Elizabeth.

Rows and rows of them press into us, their hands reaching, their mouths open. Something that was once a priest shrieks and bites my great helm over and over again. His white robes are spattered with blood. Teeth scrape against my greaveas an afflicted woman tries to bite into my shin. I have no weapons, so I just shove and strike with my fists. Their mouths are everywhere. It won’t be long before they find a gap in my armor. My right boot is gone, so I keep my foot well back from them. Sir Morgan trips on my leg and we lose our defensive stance. The lurching dead get between us, and I know it is over.

Until a scream rings out from the river.

Sir Tristan bursts from the water, riding my horse and swinging his sword like some old-world sea-god. He screams and cuts his way through the plaguers, leaning low and hacking at the rotting bodies.. Sir Morgan climbs into the saddle behind Tristan. My horse cries out as the afflicted tear into him, but he doesn’t fall. I lunge in front of Tristan and sprawl out like saddlebags around the horse’s shoulder. The gelding is a warhorse, meant to wear heavy barding and to carry a knight in full armor and all his gear. But three knights in armor is asking a lot of it. The beast grunts and buckles under our weight. Tristan digs his spurs deeper than any bite, and the horse lurches forward, unsteady and slow. Tristan cuts down a man in a herald’s doublet and the gelding staggers away from the crowd.

It is like sailing through lilied waters. The afflicted part before us, brushing against the horse’s flanks. If the plaguers were more organized, they could have stopped the slow horse with ease. But they go for the meaty flanks of the gelding and allow it to slip past them. I lose my gauntlet and hide that hand under the other. If their teeth find my flesh then I may as well slide off the horse and let them finish me. We ride through the lurching sea of plague, until their numbers thin. Until, eventually, nothing paws at us. My horse rides another two hundred paces before his back legs give out. Sir Morgan and I tumble to the ground as the gelding rolls over. Tristan leaps from the saddle before he gets pinned.

We rise to our feet. The horse froths and thrashes on the ground. Great rents and gouges mark his flanks. I stroke the gelding’s warm nose as I slit its throat, and I whisper that he’s done well as the light fades from his eyes. We walk quickly toward the north, avoiding anything that moves in the night. Sir Morgan squeezes the water from his beard. Tristan shivers as he walks.

“Good thinking, freeing the horse,” I say.

“I didn’t think the Holy Spirit was going to help much,” he says.

“Shut that blasphemous mouth of yours,” Morgan says. “And thank you.”

We find shelter that night at a fortified church in the wooded town of Alvilea. The church is devoted to St. Michael and, like most fortified structures in England these days, it is filled with townsfolk.

St. Michael was the angel who threw down Lucifer during the war in the heavens. It is said that he will weigh our souls on Judgment Day and decide if we are worthy of entering the Kingdom of Heaven. If he weighs mine, he will find it heavy with sin, but I will beg him to let me into the Holy Kingdom. I will pound at the doors of heaven for all eternity if I must. Because that is where Elizabeth will be.

The priests of St. Michael’s say little. I think they are numb. It has been two months since the plague was first discovered. A “scourge” they called it then. Not a plague but a scourge. And that scourge swept England like a poisonous wind. We were conquered by our dead before we could even define their affliction.

The priests at St. Michael’s have not recovered. They are still somewhere between scourge and plague. Two months ago they were tending their flock. Today, they are sheltering it.

As I pass the stables I notice eight horses in the stalls and I offer to buy three of them. A priest named Father William seems to be in charge at St. Michael’s, for he shakes his head and responds, “They are God’s horses. And God’s horses are not for sale.”

“God doesn’t need horses,” I say. “We do.”

I raise my price, but money doesn’t have the same allure that it once did. Father William refuses again. Our negotiations span two hours and a bottle of wine. Once again it is the thigh bone of St. Luke that resolves the argument.

Everyone wants to believe that there is a cure. St. Michael may have thrown down the Dark Lord, but it is St. Luke, the healer, whom Father William puts faith in. I promise the priest that I will bring the saint’s leg back to Alvilea on the way home, before I take it to Lord James in Dartford. God’s love can’t be bought, but the price of a saint is three sturdy horses.

Father William tries to give us the three thinnest steeds in the stable. I brush past them and find two keen-eyed chestnuts for Tristan and Morgan. And for me, I find the most handsome mare I’ve seen. A golden palfrey with long legs and yellow mane. She must have belonged to a lord. I wonder how she ended up trapped in this stable. There is a wildness to her bright eyes, but she nuzzles me as I stroke her nose.

“This is my horse,” I say to Father William. He looks as if he wants to protest, but I silence him with a look. “This one.”

Father William doesn’t offer us a bed that evening. We spend the night on the cold stone floor of the church nave, surrounded by villagers in wool blankets. I fall asleep to the scent of incense and I dream of Elizabeth. She is trapped in a labyrinth where everything moves too slowly. Allison Moore is there too, blood still spurting from the slit in her neck. The two of them run as if underwater, and I am not there to slay the Minotaur. I am not there.

Father William offers us nothing to break our fast. He glares at me as I pull the boots off a dead man outside the priory – I have had only one since the Thames. The priest watches us leave on his three best horses and reminds us of our bargain. “God will strike you down if you do not return with the saint’s leg!”

Tristan snorts. “That may be the most peculiar thing anyone has ever said to me.” He watches as Father William and the Church of St. Michael grow smaller, then waves to the priest. “What sort of punishment do you think God would inflict on us?”

“Perhaps a scourge,” I say.

Tristan smiles.

“How is it that I find myself in the company of such blasphemers?” Morgan asks.

“Incredible fortune.” Tristan points skyward. “Someone up there likes you.”

Towns nurture plague, so I am wary of entering them. But I know of a talented blacksmith in Corringham. The horses we lost have been replaced, but two of our three swords lie at the bottom of the Thames. Jacob the smith has made swords for me in the past and his work is exemplary. So we ride into the deserted streets of Corringham.

The hamlet, just north of the Thames estuary, is a scattering of thatch-roofed homes and has an ox mill. There are mudflats to the south, shrublands to the north, and in the center is a great stone church. We pass dead cattle in a field. Shaggy, horned things that have been torn apart and eaten raw. I don’t think we will find Jacob here.

Morgan and I send darting glances toward each of the homes we pass, searching for the plagued. Tristan seems unconcerned. He holds his sword out in front of him and stares at the blade.

“This Jacob,” he says. “Can he make me a sword that is curved?”

Morgan and I ignore him, but that never stops Tristan. “Think of it. When you fight another knight, what’s the greatest obstacle? Why, his shield. If I had a curved sword — ”

A scream echoes across Corringham and does what Morgan and I could not — silences Tristan. It is a woman’s scream. We hear it again. I slap the reins against my palfrey’s golden neck and canter toward the sound. Tristan and Morgan follow.

“Maybe it’s another farmer’s daughter trapped in her home,” Tristan calls.

I ride toward the huge grinding mill on the outskirts of town, a mill once powered by oxen. The oxen no longer power anything. They lie dead and rotting outside, at the foot of the main axle. But there is something alive near the mill. A few somethings.

Two men in leather vests hold a woman facedown on the ground. A third man, farmer or fisherman perhaps, rapes her from behind. A thin, blond man stands a few paces away, watching. The woman wears what might have been a fine silk dress. She struggles and howls, but the men keep her pinned to the grass. A thickset man with close-cropped hair pushes her face into the earth and laughs.

I leap off my horse and feel a twinge in my ankle. Leaping off horses was easier to do when I was young and invincible. I don’t even have a sword, so I stomp toward the men, empty handed. “Stop!”

The rapist stops and looks at me with eyes so wide I can see the red around them. His pale, freckled arse is frozen high in the air. The blond man dashes forward and blocks my path with a smile and upraised hands. “Hallo, sir, I am David Lords.”

I shove him out of the way. Tristan grabs two handfuls of his tunic as I storm toward the other three men.

“Wait… please!” I hear David Lords scuffling with Tristan. The rapist stands and hops away from me while hauling his trousers up. The thickset man stands between me and the woman, his arms crossed.

“It ain’t what it seems!” David shouts from behind me.

I lower my shoulder and knock the big man to the ground. “It seems like you are all going to die,” I shout. “Every last one of you!”

The last man lets go of the lady and sprints away from the mill, looking back at me in terror. I have been told that I am a formidable man when angry, that I strike terror into the hearts of my enemies. I lean down to help the noblewoman up and realize that it was not me who struck terror into the man’s heart. It was the woman.

The men are raping a plaguer.

I am so shocked that I simply stare as the woman staggers to her feet. Her red hair is matted by thick clots of black blood. She opens her mouth and snarls at me, lunges for my face and wakes me from my stupor. She has a pretty, upturned nose and I break it with a wild swing of my mailed fist. She howls and stumbles backward, then advances again. The thickset man in the leather vest, the one who didn’t run, grabs a long wooden pole that leans against the mill house. The pole has a loop of rope on one end. He drops the rope loop over her head and pulls her back with practiced ease. She shrieks and scratches at the rope, but she can’t break free of the snare.

The blond man, David Lords, puts a hand on my shoulder and smiles. “See, m’lord? No harm done.”

I take a swing at him too and send him to the grass with his face cut open. Morgan helps David to his feet, then shakes him so hard that the man’s tunic rips. “You will be damned for this!” His voice is hoarse with the strength of the shout. “Damned! Damned for eternity!”