Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (38 page)

Tristan and I haul the dragon carcass to one side and run toward the monastery buildings, swords in hand. Small skirmishes are taking place all over the monastery grounds. Perhaps the word “skirmish” is a bit kind. The soldiers of Sir Gerald and Sir Brian are being butchered. Praeteritus leads his lepers across the monastery grounds. He wears the pigeon-crested roman helmet again and has cast off the white robe. The sticks forming the cross-staff have been discarded, revealing his spear. He screams to the white-robed soldiers around him and brutalizes men with his spear like an ancient Roman king.

Bodies lie scattered near the inner gatehouse, including one with a shield. I pause long enough to pick up the shield, and tell Tristan to bugger himself when he smirks. We run through the inner gatehouse and head toward the church. I glance toward the docks as we pass, but all I see are the freshly carved stakes of the new palisade. Daniel attacked the palisade from his cog when he heard the handbells. He was the distraction I knew we would need. Leftover wood from the palisade lies smoldering to one side.

We reach the church ahead of most of the lepers and three soldiers in chain mail charge in our direction. One runs off at the sight of us or perhaps the sight of the leper army behind us. I rush in on another swiftly, getting inside his swing and knocking him to the ground. I point my blade downward, raise it for the killing blow.

The soldier holds one arm up, his head turned away, his eyes closed. I kick his sword away from him. “Stand up,” I say. “Run away. Hurry!”

He looks at me with disbelief, then scrambles to his feet and runs toward the postern gate. But he is not fast enough. Three lepers tackle him and bludgeon him with wooden sticks and a metal spike. I turn away, sickened.

“Belisencia,” Tristan says. He pulls open the church doors and runs inside. I follow.

“Belisencia!” he shouts. “
Belisencia!
” His voice echoes through the nave. I run past him to the door of the alchemist’s tower, feeling for the bottle of blood in my shoulder sack.

A woman shouts from the chancel. “Tristan!” Someone rushes toward us.

“Belisencia!” Tristan nearly knocks her over, then picks her up and twirls her, his forehead against hers.

“I was praying for you,” she says. “I was kneeling there, praying to the Mother that you would come, and here you are!”

They laugh and embrace, then she pulls away from him. “He’s thirteen years old, Tristan.”

“What?”

“My husband. He’s thirteen years old. They married me to him when he was eight. Our marriage was never consummated. I will have it annulled. I swear it.”

“Married to an eight-year-old boy?” Tristan asks. “What kind of nun are you?”

“This kind,” she says and kisses him on the lips.

He smiles when she pulls away. “I like those kind of nuns.”

“Belisencia,” I say. “Where is the alchemist?”

She sees me and her smile fades. “Edward…”

“I don’t have time, Belisencia. Just tell me where he is.”

“Edward…” She shakes her head. “I…I tried to stop them…”

A fear grips me. A terror so powerful that it paralyzes me.

Belisencia pulls away from Tristan, and tears tumble down her cheeks. “Oh Edward. I am so sorry. I cannot express how sorry I am.”

The paralysis leaves me. I barrel through the church doors and out toward the docks.

He is alive. He is alive. He is alive. He has to be.

The pile of wood by the palisade continues to burn. I cannot look directly at it. I know what I will see. The scent of burning flesh drifts on the wind, but I still cannot accept what I must accept.

He is alive. He has to be.

I look directly at the burning woodpile. It is not leftover material from the palisade. It is a pyre. Three priests stand in front of it, shouting. One holds up a Bible. The lepers do not dare attack priests. Many of them have gathered to listen.

Mother Mary. Saint Giles. Heavenly Father. Holy Spirit. Jesus Lord…No.

“Whatever you ask in prayer,” the priest shouts, “you will receive if you have faith!”

The burning husk of a man is tied to a stake at the center of the woodpile. I fall to my knees and pull at my hair.

“‘For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment,’” the priest shouts. “This man we burn today thought he was greater than God. But no one is greater than God. And no one can seek to undo His works.”

Sparks rise in a gust of wind, and blue smoke tumbles from the pyre. My hopes burn with the alchemist. He is dead because of me.

Mea maxima culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

I stare into the skies, feeling the sting of raindrops on my forehead. How could the Virgin be so cruel? How could she bring me through this journey, then take it all away at the last mile? I am in hell. The realization finally settles on me. I have died, and I am in hell.

“‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding!’” The priest shouts. “‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen!’”

It is the same line the alchemist quoted to me before I left the tower. How can the same verse be used by two people with such different views?

“I will help your Elizabeth,”
the alchemist said
.
“Whether the dragon blood works or not. I promise I will help.”

How could he have helped? If the dragon blood did not work, he would have been in the same situation as before. Stuck. Frustrated. Nearly defeated. His words had rung in my ears like an empty promise. A reassurance meant to show camaraderie or to motivate me in my journey. But as I think on them, I wonder. He was a clever man, and his gaze that day held a hidden meaning.

The conviction of things not seen.

I am running before I realize it. Lepers walk aimlessly through the monastery, staring in awe at their new home. Tristan and Belisencia are on their way to the docks. I dart past them and storm into the church, then run up the endless circle of spiral stairs until I reach the alchemist’s workshop. It is in ruins. Shattered glass everywhere. Tables overturned. I hope he did not live to see this mess. Only his workbench seems unaffected.

I step over a table, my boots crunching on broken glass, and a voice calls out from the far side of the room.

“At least one good thing will come of this day.” Sir Gerald sits against a wall to my left. He wears his armor, but no helmet. Twisted scars wind along his face like gnarled tree roots. I draw my sword as he stands, but he shakes his head. “You will not deny me this time, Sir Edward. I may die today, but I will die holding your cold, black heart.”

I walk toward the workbench, avoiding a fallen jug and a broken mortar. “You can live, Gerald. I will tell them to let you go. I don’t want to kill you.”

He raises something toward me. A sculpted pipe so old that the iron has gone green. It is half again as long as his hand and looks as if its surface was once ornately carved. He holds a tiny candle in his other hand. “King Brian gave this hand bombard to me,” he says, gesturing toward the pipe. “It’s smaller than yours, but it will do the task required of it.”

I hear Tristan’s voice in my head, a half dozen irreverent replies to Gerald’s comment, but I remain silent.

“This one came from Asia. You light the back and death erupts from the front.” He takes a step toward me. I notice a familiar glass bottle on the workbench. “We tortured the alchemist. He told me that he had a cure for the plague,” Gerald says. “He said it was on the shelf closest to the door, but he lied. All I found were dried plants. And by the time I got back to him, the fools were already burning him.” He takes another step. “But I knew that you would know. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To find the cure. You and he were thick as mud, weren’t you? Did you truly think I would believe that ridiculous story about how you escaped?”

“Put the cannon down, Gerald,” I say. “I will walk out of the tower with you and tell them to let you go. I swear it.”

Gerald raises the canon and takes another step toward me. He is two strides away. “God will reward me for killing you, Edward. He will give me everlasting glory.” He draws the candle toward the touchhole. “I will cut off your head and shit in your dead mouth, and God will smile.”

“I don’t want to kill you, Gerald,” I say. “Put down the cannon and yield.”

“You don’t want to kill me?” He laughs. “You don’t want to kill me? You are the one on the death side of this gun, Edward. And you ask me to yield? Are you mad?”

In these times of madness…

“I am truly sorry, Gerald.” The sword of Saint Giles hums as I swing it with all my strength. The blade strikes the glass bottle on the workbench, shattering it, sending glass and liquid toward Gerald. He flinches as the fluid spatters him. For an instant he looks at me with confusion and perhaps a touch of humor. But only for an instant. Then his screams tear through the workshop.

He howls as the liquid eats away at the flesh of his hands. The cannon falls, clattering, to the wood floor. I kick the weapon away as Gerald screams and works madly at the strap of his bevor. The acid eats slowly through his breastplate. He yanks the bevor off his neck and hurls it away, then fumbles at the straps of his breastplate.

No man deserves to die like this. I sheathe my sword and run toward the garderobe. The water in the tub is full of feces and urine, but it is all I have. I use a bucket to scoop some out and return to Gerald.

“It’s eating me!” He shouts. “It’s eating me!”

I dump the feculent water over him and when I turn to gather more, he barrels into me, knocking me to the ground. I land on my knees, but before I can turn to face him I hear my sword slide from its sheath.

“That…that is…agony,” he says, glancing at his burned hands. I spot the hand cannon beside one of the toppled tables. Too far away. “I’m done with you, Edward Dallingridge! Die, demon.
Right fucking now!
”

He raises Saint Giles’s sword in both bleeding hands and jabs it down at me with every ounce of strength he has. I roll toward the hand cannon, knowing the brigandine won’t stop Gerald’s blow. Knowing that I must try to live, for Elizabeth. I feel pressure at my ribs. Soldiers often do not feel the sword blows that kill them. I feel only a slight pressure. My hand clenches the cannon.

“
No!
” Gerald’s scream echoes across the room. “
No! No! No! No! No!
”

I tumble to one wall and snatch a candle from a sconce, but I needn’t have bothered with the dramatics. Gerald hasn’t moved. He stands with tears in his eyes.

“Why won’t you ever die?” He looks at my sword in his burned hands. Only the hilt remains. Shards of steel litter the floor. I look at my sheath; holes have been burned through the leather.

Gerald tosses the hilt aside and slumps against the wall. “The sword shattered. It just shattered.”

I touch the spot where he stabbed me and shrug. “God is my armor.”

I let him leave the tower. Every instinct says I should kill him, but I let him go. If humanity is to survive, then we must show ourselves to be human. And perhaps by letting him live, I will buy Elizabeth’s life.

I kneel by the window where I saw the alchemist before I left. I run my fingernails along the wooden planks. One of them is loose. I rock it from side to side, pulling upward with my nails, until the short plank rises. I toss it aside and draw a tiny brass coffer from the hole. My hands tremble as I work the latch. I take a long breath. Then I flip open the top.

Inside are three ampoules with Arabic writing on them.

Chapter 59

I walk toward the docks. Many of the lepers have gathered by the pyre and listen to the shouting priests. Tristan and Belisencia are there, too, as is Praeteritus.

“The monastery is yours now.” Tristan sounds unusually sober. “Looks like your lepers found a home.”

I take my place beside them and once again watch as a man burns for mixing tinctures to cure the plague. I do not know if he smiled as the flames licked his body. His body is beyond expression now. The fire has turned him into a shadow. A husk. An empty vessel from which no cures will ever flow again. My teeth grind with such force that a chip comes free from one of them.

The priests shout, spittle flying from their lips. They tell the gathered crowd that alchemy is a sin. That prayer is the only true and righteous weapon against plague.

But they are wrong.

I look down at the three phials in my hand. The baked clay glows orange in the light of the flames. Alchemy may be a sin, but prayer is not the only weapon we have. I hold a new weapon in my fist. And if I burn in hell for using it, then I, too, will smile as the flames lick my flesh. For I will have saved the woman I adore and earned eternal salvation in her eyes.

Episode 1: Historical Note

The episode you have just read is as historically accurate as I could make it. As I mentioned in the previous book, Sir Edward Dallingridge is a real knight. He was favored by King Richard II and the earl of Arundel and went on to become a knight of the shire and warden of London (for a time). But perhaps his most enduring accomplishment was the castle he and his wife, Elizabeth Wardieu, built at Bodiam, in Sussex. Visit it if you have a chance; I can’t recommend it more highly. Of all the castles in England, Bodiam is my favorite. I believe it embodies the romance, the chivalry, and the adventure of the Middle Ages, even though the interior was gutted in the seventeenth century, during the Civil War.

In this episode I mention a manor house called Lutons Place, in Long Melford. That manor house still exists, although it is now known by the name Kentwell Hall and is another place worth visiting. It does not look as it would have looked in Edward’s time, but it is still a quirky old manor with centuries of history. The poet John Gower, a close friend of Geoffrey Chaucer, owned the manor for a time before the Clopton family moved in.