Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (16 page)

Morgan’s deep voice booms from behind me. “‘We do this in your name, oh Lord. Our prayers of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise her up.’
Amen
.”

Amens
ripple through the crowd of onlookers. Some fall to their knees and hold clasped hands upward. These are the same lords and ladies who fornicated and gambled on the benches a short time ago. I can see the fear in their postures, in their expressions. If God can heal the afflicted, then He still watches over us. And if He still watches over us, what has He seen?

“You do this in the name of God, do you?” Sir Simon sputters. “You practice sorcery and witchcraft in the name of the Lord?”

“Do shut up, Simon,” Richard says. He motions to the guards and two of them take hold of Simon’s arms.

“Your Majesty, this is a mistake!” Simon shouts.

The king meets my gaze, takes a sharp breath, and tips the ampoule. A liquid the color of rust trickles into the queen’s open mouth. She makes a rasping sound and tries to shake her head, but I clamp her jaw closed. Anne thrashes wildly, burns me with the eternity of her eyes. Her skin blackens under my grip, but I do not let go. I watch her closely, until her throat pulses.

She has swallowed it.

“How long?” Richard says. “How long before I get her back?”

“Thirty breaths,” Zhuri says. “Thirty breaths before it starts to work.”

“Will. . . will those awful black marks heal? And the boils?”

“They will, King Richard. I am told that she will bear scars where her skin has split, but most of the disfigurations will heal.”

Richard clasps his hands and rocks. “I have been without her for over four months.”

“More than,” says Zhuri.

Richard stops rocking. “Sorry?”

“He was agreeing, Your Highness.” I squint at Zhuri.

We wait silently. And as we do, more and more people shuffle into the chapel. Word of the cure has spread. The men and women from the courtyard have come to witness the miracle of life. The resurrection of their queen.

Richard rocks slowly. His trembling voice warbles out a song.

“
Nowel, nowel, nowel
.” It resonates in the high-roofed chapel. “
Out of your sleep arise and wake
.”

Ten breaths and no change.

She strains and screams and snarls like a cornered wolf.

Dear God, it won’t work. It won’t work and Richard will blame me. And a mad king’s blame is a terrible thing.

“
For God has made for mankind’s sake, all of a maid who makes me knell
.”

Another five breaths and still no change. I think of the alchemist’s wife, and the horror she had become. The sweat seeps along my hairline.

“It hasn’t worked,” Sir Simon whispers. “You see, Your Majesty? These men are frauds. Only God may cure the plague.”

But Richard does not seem to hear Simon’s words. He continues to rock, his eyes closed. “
Of all the women she is the belle
.”

Queen Anne draws in a screeching breath. Her back arches.

Richard opens his eyes and strokes her dress wildly. He looks to me, then Zhuri.

The queen falls back onto the cross and her breathing grows softer, more rhythmic. Her eyes close, and the snarl she has worn since I set eyes upon her fades.

Zhuri smiles.

God is at work here. I am watching the invisible hand of God.

Richard covers his mouth with trembling hand. “Oh my puppy! Oh my lovely Anne!”

She opens her eyes and tilts her head so that she can see Richard. The black of her eyes lightens as I watch. Turns a dark, mottled crimson, then pink. A tear rolls down her cheek.

Morgan falls to his knees beside me and prays. “‘Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers us from them all.’”

Richard places his hand behind his queen’s head and touches her forehead with his. “My puppy. My blue-eyed songbird.”

“‘Bless the Lord, oh my soul,’” Morgan continues, “‘and forget not all His benefits, Who forgives all your iniquity, Who heals all your diseases.’”

A trembling smile breaks upon the queen’s face. She tries to reach out to Richard but the padded bindings prevent her from touching him.

Zhuri’s smile spans his face. “She will speak in a moment, like Morgan did.”

Richard pulls back from her. Tears streak his face. “Speak puppy. Speak to me.”

I look to Morgan. “Sorcery?”

He shrugs. “God.”

Tristan scoffs. “Science.”

I look back to Richard.

He is no longer smiling.

A clump of the queen’s hair has fallen out and rests in his hand. He strokes at her head and more hair falls out. “What? What is this? Is it . . . normal?”

A dark, heavy, cold thing tears at my heart.

Zhuri’s smile fades. “I . . .”

The skin of Anne’s face flushes red. Blood sprays from one of the boils and spatters Richard’s cheek. “What is happening? What is happening, Moor!”

Anne arches her back, bucking against the cross, her screams are so powerful that the crowd backs toward the door. She laughs and spits a tooth at Richard. Blood drips from her mouth as more teeth sag and drop from her withering gums. Her breathing becomes a series of whooping gasps that end in laughter and another scream. She throws her head from side to side, banging it against the edges of the wooden cross and tearing great gashes in her cheeks. Hair falls away in great clumps, leaving only ragged patches and bloody streaks of scalp.

“Stroke my cheek, Rithard!” her cries are low-pitched and rasping, her toothless mouth making her lisp. “Eat of my fleth, my lord!” She laughs, and her voice becomes soft and gentle. “Oh Rithard. How I have longed for your touch. Would you be a darling and break my fingerth?” she giggles and runs her tongue along her lips. “Just one or two of them. I want to hear them thnap.
I want to hear them thnap
!”

I am incapable of speech. I can only watch as her skin shrivels and blackens before my eyes.

Richard stares at her without expression, draws a knife from his belt, and jabs it into her eye. I lurch backward, breathing in great gasps. Queen Anne shrieks and laughs and bucks upon the cross. The king rocks the blade back and forth, calmly, until she stops moving.

“Merciful Allah!” Zhuri cries.

Blood wells down to the wooden cross and dribbles onto the floor. Richard releases the knife, wipes blood from his hands gingerly, with his forefingers, and turns to look at me. I cannot return the stare. I can only look at the abomination that Queen Anne has become.

“To be honest,” Tristan mumbles. “My role in finding that cure was rather insignificant.”

“I told you!” Sir Simon shouts. The guards still hold him. “I warned you against this! ‘The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord remains forever!’”

Richard stands and straightens his gambeson. He smiles at the soldiers and nobles behind him, but his eyes well with tears. His voice seems almost casual when he speaks.

“Sir Simon, Edward was curious about legging.” He looks at me—a fury lurking behind the tears—smiles cordially and returns his attention to Simon. “Please take him below and educate him.”

Hands grab my arms roughly and bring me to my feet. I scarcely notice. My thoughts are consumed with Elizabeth and the cure.

It does not work.

The cure does not work on women.

EPISODE 4

Chapter 19

I find myself in the lower courtyard again, but I do not remember walking there.

Thoughts of Elizabeth are a hood upon my mind, a visorless helm that turns the world black and washes all sound away. Two men have been healed by the Syrian tincture, and two women have been destroyed by it. It cannot be a coincidence.

The cure does not work on women.

We are taken to a stone building at the north end of the courtyard. Guards wave us through two iron-studded doors that lead into the prison chambers and down spiral stairs to the dungeon.

I note our travel absently. As if the stone belly of Framlingham is only a dream. I hear nothing. I look without seeing.

It is the smell that finally cuts through my stupor. A seeping mist of decay that drifts through the underground passageway. The armed soldiers behind us make faces and whisper to one another. I flex against the cold manacles that bind my hands behind my back.

We were stripped by these soldiers and forced into itchy white robes before manacles were clamped over our wrists. I thought briefly about resisting, but that would have brought death to all of us, or perhaps an even crueler fate than whatever
legging
is.

They took Elizabeth’s cure from around my neck. I did not stop them. It is poison to her. All of my efforts at finding a cure for her have been for nothing.

The cold stone of the dungeon floor numbs my bare feet. A fat man in a woolen robe wraps a cloth around his face, turns a key, and tugs on the tiny door that leads to the inner dungeon. The wood scrapes loudly against the carved-stone floor, and a stench batters us like a rotting ocean wave. It is the smell of souls decaying. The smell of mortal bodies melting in a small, dark place. Zhuri leans to one side and vomits. I press my hand against my nose and look to the fat jailer, who still holds the cloth to his nose.

“I’d say you get used to it, but you don’t.” He pulls a torch from a bracket beside the door and chuckles. “Not never.”

The four of us are shoved inside. I step over a puddle of carrot-laced vomit. The torchlight glistens from wet stones and thick iron bars. A moan rises from the row of dark cells to my right, a trembling moan that bespeaks suffering of biblical proportions. An old cistern, as wide as I am tall, yawns a few paces to my left. The floor of the dungeon is painted in blood, and my bare feet slip in the grime. Something barely identifiable as a rotting body lies mangled, like man-shaped meat, just outside the jailer’s torchlight. A lunatic laughs in one of the cells, the peals of his laughter echoing and ringing for an eternity.

I have entered Hell’s foyer. This is where I will die. God, Saint Giles, and Mother Mary have turned their faces away. My lifeless body will be hurled into the cistern and my soul will continue to fall, spiraling into the darkness of eternal misery. The devil and his demons will torment me, will burn me without respite. But I will smile as the flames lick my flesh, because their work will distract me from the true agony—the anguish of an eternity without Elizabeth.

A rat feeding on something red and wet peers at me, then continues eating. Zhuri speaks quickly and tightly in Arabic. Morgan takes deep breaths and crosses himself. Tristan is silent, and that is perhaps the most frightening thing of all.

The jailer pushes us toward the back wall of the dungeon. A man kneels there, trembling. His arms are raised up and out to the sides, wrists chained to the water-stained wall. The torchlight falls upon him, and I realize that he is not trembling. The movement is caused by thousands of maggots and insects feeding upon his corpse. Six other sets of bloodstained manacles dangle along the wall.

“No!” Zhuri shouts. “This is a mistake! I have done no wrong!” One of the soldiers cuffs him with a gauntlet, and the Moor doubles over, sobbing. “This is a mistake!”

“Have pride, Moor.” Morgan’s words are harsh, but his tone is gentle. “Die with honor.”

Zhuri chants in Arabic, his stuttering breaths breaking the rhythm of his words.

The jailer unlocks the manacles holding the dead man and kicks the corpse to the stones. Soldiers back Tristan and Morgan against the wall and clamp their wrists with the rusted manacles. Zhuri struggles and two guards beat him. His cry of pain pulls me from my despair, momentarily. I shove at the guards with my shoulder and one of them pounds me in the temple with a dagger pommel. The world rings. When I can see again, Zhuri is bound to the wall and bleeding from nose and forehead.

The jailer grins at me. “Richard wants you to go first, he does.”

The madman laughs again in one of the cells.

Something scrapes along the floor in the cage nearest me. A body moves in the darkness. Hands dark with filth and blood grip the lowest bars of the cell door. A soiled face, bloodspattered and impossibly thin, wedges into one of the squares made by the crossed iron bars. Mud and gore have turned the man’s patchy beard into slime. His mouth opens and closes several times, as if chewing, then a sound emerges. “P-p-p.”

The jailer laughs and mocks the sound. “Puh-puh-puh.” He kicks one of the man’s hands.

The prisoner winces but does not move. “P-p-pity.”

“There ain’t no pity here,” the jailer says. “Only p-p-pain!” He roars with laughter. One of the guards, a tall man with a forked beard, laughs with him.

“P-p-please.” The man in the cell closes his eyes. “P-p-please.”

The jailer kneels so his mouth is only a foot or so above the man’s face. “You was high and coddled all your life, wasn’t you? Giving orders to everyone. And now look at you. Now look at you.”

I realize with a start that I know the prisoner. The room seems to grow darker. I lean against a cold, iron bar to steady myself and kneel in front of the gate.