Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (6 page)

My horse grunts when I snap my calf against its flank. I have to whip the damp reins and shout to get the animal walking forward, and it takes a jab of my spurs to make it canter.

We close the distance swiftly. My eyes pick out more details as we near the cart. Two people. One in the wagon bed and one in the driver’s box. The one in the wagon bed wears a white robe with the hood pulled up against the rain. A thick blanket is draped over his shoulders. The driver wears a brown cloak with the hood up. It is the same cart I noticed near the mill, where I gave the archer a cure for his son.

Stakes have been affixed along the outside edges of the cart. A forest of stakes pointing in odd directions, so that an advancing plaguer will impale itself no matter what direction it approaches from.

The figure in the back of the cart cranes his neck at the sound of our horses. I think it is a man, although I cannot be sure because his face is obscured by a white veil. Only his eyes are uncovered.

“I don’t like the look of that one,” Tristan calls. “There’s something terribly wrong with him.”

The man in the robe speaks to the driver, who hands back a long bundle wrapped in canvas. The veiled figure unwraps the canvas and raises a thick, wooden crossbow to his shoulder.

Tristan veers his horse away from me so we present smaller targets and calls to me, “Canvas is probably better than silk.”

“Make way!” I shout at the cart. “Make way!”

The cart drifts to one side of the road and the crossbow follows our approach. I glance at the men as we canter past. The driver wears a leather gambeson under the cloak. The hood shadows his face, but I can see that he is dark and bearded. Perhaps an Italian. Tristan pretends to doff his cap, and we are past.

One of the men in the cart calls to us. “Wait!”

I do not wait. Elizabeth has waited too long already. I lash the reins, shout at my horse, and break into a gallop. I will not wait. I will not stop.

I stop after three miles.

I do not want to stop, but darkness swallows the countryside. Clouds smother the crescent moon and the air becomes blacker than a plaguer’s eye. I cannot see the road ahead. My horse stumbles and I realize I can go no farther without risking its life. I consider walking the rest of the way, but it would take me all night and all the next day to reach St. Edmund’s Bury—and a battle awaits.

A battle against an army that has neither horses nor spears. Their weapons are sheathed in fingers and lips, and their banners are the tattered shreds of robe and tunic that hang from their rotting bodies. But there is no army in England more dangerous. They are a thousand strong, have a poisonous bite, and do not know fear. They do not rout and they do not surrender. Their war cry trembles with the savage echo of evil, for in their illness they take orders from Satan himself. And if they win, Hell will claim another acre of God’s earth.

I do not want a forced march before I face that army, so I will rest tonight and fight every plaguer in St. Edmund’s Bury tomorrow if I have to. The saints will rise from their graves and fight at my side. Angels of war will hurl lightning, and God himself will help smite the legions of dead and bring them home to Heaven. For tomorrow I will heal the most beautiful of his creatures.

Tomorrow I will wake my Elizabeth.

Tristan lights one of his firing cords and we use its flickering light to guide our horses off the road. We walk in the dark, our boots sloshing in ankle deep water, the night’s chill drawing gooseflesh on my rain-soaked back. There are a cluster of priories and convents on the border of Norfolk and Suffolk, east of the Roman road, and I intend to find one.

It feels like we walk for an eternity before a distant light appears. An orange glow that promises warmth and perhaps food. And most of all, safety. We pick up our pace, tugging at the horses and taking long, hopping steps through the flooded fields.

There are only two structures, but they rise high into the night sky. An abbot once told me that monasteries were built as high as possible to remind the inhabitants that a monk is not bent over, but stands erect before God. And this priory stands taller than anything around it, starkly out of place on this flat, sodden land of marshes.

Smaller wings and apses jut from the lengths of the two buildings giving the impression of many buildings. And every wall is graced with tall, arched and latticed windows.

The lights we noticed come from several of these windows, and from a massive wheel window piercing the highest floor of the tallest building.

Small groups of plaguers mill around the monastery. In these days of plague, the afflicted gather around places of life like flies around dung. Tristan ties his horse’s reins to my horse’s and we draw our swords. I touch my breastplate and feel the guilty reassurance of Elizabeth’s cure. We kill six plaguers quietly, but not quietly enough; more shapes lurch toward us in the darkness. I pound on the door while Tristan uses a windlass to pull back the wet cord of his crossbow. The horses toss their heads and back away from the approaching plaguers.

“I’m beginning to hate abbey doors,” he says.

Tristan and I have found ourselves fighting for life outside churches and monasteries too often. But it is not the doors that are the problem.

“I’m beginning to hate slow monks,” I say.

Tristan nods his agreement. “So sayeth the Lord.”

More and more shapes draw toward us. Men who were once monks. Men who were farmers and haywards. A nun, and a young boy wearing the skirts of infancy. All of them bleeding and rotting, like the victims of a Hellish war. A bald farmer with a nose half torn off gets too close and Tristan fires the crossbow. The string is wet, but the man is only ten feet away and even a water-logged cord can bring death at that distance. The bolt carves through a boil on the man’s forehead and buries itself in his skull. The farmer’s head snaps backward and he crumples to the ground. Tristan attaches the windlass to the crossbow and begins winding the cord again.

I raise my fist to pound once more upon the oak but a resonant clanking echoes from inside. The towering door creaks open a few inches and a soldier’s hard face peers out. “What?” he says.

I motion toward the mass of afflicted staggering toward us. “What do you think?”

The man sighs and watches Tristan miss a plagued nun with his next shot. I step forward and drive the tip of Saint Giles’s sword through her eye socket, then kick her lifeless body backward.

 “Alright,” the soldier says. “Inside, quickly.”

Chapter 7

The abbey is full of men, women and children. It is the same throughout England. The houses of God have become the houses of man, and while monks may stand upright before Him, the families I see do not. They slouch and stare downward, huddle together and cast prayers toward the floor. I would pity them, but most of the families look complete. Husbands hold wives, and I envy them.

The abbot is named Peter and he does not look into our eyes when he speaks. Monks are an odd breed. Mother Mary is the only woman they are allowed, so Jesus becomes the hunger in their bellies.

The abbot rings a hand bell and tells us there is little food at the abbey, and no beds available. A young postulant holding a basket trots down the long gallery hallway and bows to us. I take a loaf of raveled bread from the basket and thank Abbot Peter for the safety of his walls.

Tristan and I follow the postulant back along the gallery, leading our geldings. A monastery is no place for a horse, but horses are worth more than silver these days, and I need mine to reach Elizabeth. We leave our steeds to graze in the cloisters and find an empty corner of the dormer to sleep in.

I dream that night of armies clashing. The forces of Heaven and Hell meeting in a seminal battle, and England is the prize. But in the dream I cannot tell which side is which. Cannons with demon mouths erupt, three quick bursts, and the battle begins. I am caught in the middle of the battlefield. Another three cannons shake the skies and the armies rage toward one another. I crouch and cover my head as the next cannonade fires. And as the armies collide, I wake and take deep gulps of air.

The cannons erupt once more. Four, five, six bursts. I do not know how the cannons from my dream can follow me back to the abbey. It takes a moment for sleep to fall away completely and for me to realize the sound is not cannons, but a pounding on the monastery doors.

Tristan is already on his feet, buckling his sword. I do the same and, with a glance at our armor on the floor, we hurry down the stairs and through the galley hallway that leads to the great double doors.

The door is partly open when we arrive. The soldier that allowed us into the abbey peers out. Abbot Peter is behind him, rubbing his fingertips together and trying to see through the small opening. A dozen sleepy families watch from their makeshift beds along the gallery.

“What about him?” the soldier says to someone outside. “Is he plagued?”

I can only make a few words of a reply from beyond the door. “. . . fine! . . . sake! . . . the door!” Snarls ring out from outside. The voice grows much louder. “We. Are. Going. To die!”

The soldier glances at Peter, who shrugs. The door opens and two men stumble inside. They turn and drive their shoulders into the door as hands reach through. They are the men who we passed earlier, on the cart. Tristan and I push past Peter as the soldier jabs at the afflicted with a shortspear. The weight of the plaguers drives the door open further. Two of the afflicted slip inside: A tall man with a leather cap tied under his chin, and a naked woman. Tristan and I drive our swords into the man’s stomach at the same time, then realize our mistake.

“I’ll get the woman,” I say. But Tristan is already drawing his sword out of the man’s belly and our blades clang as we both stab her. He laughs but the situation is not humorous. Both plaguers are still alive and we have no armor. The man’s hands clamp around my left arm. I drive my sword into his mouth with such force that the tip drives through the back of his skull.

Tristan swings his blade with two hands and knocks the woman into me. I slip on blood and fall to one knee, my sword still in the man’s mouth. Tristan hacks at the woman again and again. Blood everywhere. I leverage the male plaguer to the ground and put my foot on his throat. He flails at me with his hands and catches me in the side of the head. I grunt and drive the sword with both hands at his forehead. The blade skips off bone and gouges his temple, so I plunge my sword down again and finally break through the skull. His legs kick once, then he is still.

I glance at Tristan. He is blood spattered and panting, but unharmed.

“Now that was a storm of shit,” he says.

Peter glares at him. I shake my head and gesture with my chin toward the watching children. Tristan covers his mouth. “My apologies,” he calls to them. “It was a storm of ships. Like a tempest at sea. That’s what I intended.”

Someone chuckles behind me. “That’s what
I meant
.”

Tristan and I spin around so quickly that a spot of blood is fired from my tunic and splatters the door. I look at the man before me. “Zhuri?”

“My friends!” Zhuri shouts. “I was certain that was you on the Roman road!”

“God’s mighty penis!” Tristan embraces him with one arm, holding his bloodstained sword at a distance. Peter hisses at the words, but I do not think Tristan hears it. “How did you find us?”

The man in the white robe and veil finally speaks. “We followed the sounds of blasphemy.”

The abbey seems to spin around me. I stumble backward and look carefully at the man who has spoken. “That’s . . . that’s not possible.”

Tristan’s sword falls jangling to the stone floor. He touches his mouth with one hand. “How . . . what . . .”

The man removes his veil. The skin of his face is broken in places by shining red wounds, and laced with black streaks. The side of his jaw is one long, healing sore, but he grins anyway.

Tristan looks as unsteady as I do. He places both hands on his head. “Morgan?”

Sir Morgan laughs. “It seems the Lord is done testing me.”

Life has come from death. The world has gained humanity.

Morgan is cured.

“Hallelujah!” Zhuri shouts.

EPISODE 2

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