Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

  “That name again,” Tristan says, laughing. “Hugh. Hugh the Baptist. I knew a man named Gruelthorpe. Now there’s a name. Not a biblical name either, but I can respect a man named Gruelthorpe. Gruelthorpe the Baptist is a man who will dunk you whether you want to be dunked or not. He’d have converted thousands.”

  The soldier nods to the others and I know what is coming; I have seen Tristan elicit that nod more times than I can count.

  “Tristan…” I shout, but it is too late. One of the soldiers swings his spear shaft and cracks Tristan in the back of the head. I turn and drive my shoulder into the soldier and he falls backward. Two of the other men grab my arms. Tristan is on his knees, one hand on the ground, the other on his head. I struggle against the two soldiers and free an arm. But a third and fourth man join in. They each take hold of a limb and drive me into the ground. They hold me motionless while another soldier draws back his spear to slam the end of the shaft into my face. I close my eyes and turn my head away.

  “Leave him!”

  I wait two heartbeats before opening one eye and glancing toward the gate. A man with long ringlets of black hair steps toward us. He wears a monk’s robe and a smile that holds so much goodwill that I am instantly suspicious. His hands are covered in blood. “He struggles because he does not yet know the Truth. Cease your struggles, Knight. I am Matheus, king of the Holy Lands. Cease your struggles and listen to the words of the Lord.”

  Another king.

  King Matheus raises his bloodstained hands in a gesture that I assume is meant to convey holiness. But the blood and his overreaching smile make him look malevolent. He walks back through the gate and stops halfway to the manor house at a marble font that looks like it was taken from a church. Two priests near the font fix us with solemn stares. A young man in a white robe holds a platter of strawberries.

  The soldiers shove us forward until we are a few paces from Matheus and the marble basin. Many more soldiers stand guard around the manor house, including two scarred men with hard eyes and the olive skin of foreign mercenaries. These two towering predators stand by the door to the manor house, ten paces from Matheus and the priests.

  Six or seven people in white robes form a line that leads to the font. A girl who cannot be older than nine is among them.

  “How are there pilgrims already?” Tristan asks. “People will follow any cause if they believe there is a breath of religion in it. I should set up my own font. Change my name to Gruelthorpe.”

  “Knights will follow any cause if there is a breath of violence in it,” Belisencia says. “I should set up my own throne. Change my name to Richard.”

  “You don’t look much like a Richard,” Tristan says. He studies her. “You’re more of a Ralf.”

  I look at the pilgrims, and I understand them. These are people starved of hope. When you are starving, you will eat whatever is given to you in the hope that it is food. I, too, am starving, but the Church has not fed me. Nor has it nourished my wife.

  My breath catches when I think of Elizabeth. The machinery of sorrow rattles in my head, but I shut down the mill before it can grind out tears. I will feast on alchemy. I will leave this hellish place, find the cure, and devour the love of my woman.

  At the front of the pilgrims stands a freckled woman with hair so blonde it is nearly white. Blood runs in rivers down her face and soaks the collar and back of her robe. The dark red looks black against her pale tresses. She wipes blood from her eyes and smiles rapturously.

  There is an instant where I see Elizabeth in this women. My beloved has few freckles upon her face, but her legs are spattered with them. I have spent many drowsy hours tracing figure eights between these marks with my forefinger. I wonder if those freckles will still speckle her legs when I bring her the cure. Or if her flesh will be blackened and stained, her mind lost in the madness of this plague. Every heartbeat I spend here brings my angel one heartbeat closer to destruction. The machinery in my head clanks again, but this time it is rage I feel, not sorrow.

  I shrug the soldiers away and bellow at Matheus. “I am Edward of Bodiam, a knight of Sussex and friend to King Richard and the earl of Arundel! You cannot hold us here!”

  “I will not hold you here, Sir Edward,” Matheus says. “I only wish to save you.” The serving boy plucks a strawberry from the platter and feeds it to Matheus.

  “Forcing us to contract the plague is not salvation,” Tristan says.

  The cut on my wrist throbs, but I think perhaps it is simply a festering of the wound. It could not be the plague. Not after two days. I wipe sweat from my brow with the leather palm of my gauntlet and take a deep breath. Matheus gives me a bemused smile. “You have misheard,” he says. “No one will force you to contract the plague.”

  Belisencia covers her face with her hands. “Thank Mary and Joseph,” she says. “Thank the saints and the angels.”

  Matheus steps forward and strokes Belisencia’s hair with bloody fingers; it leaves streaks of gore in her hair. “My poor sister. Did you really think I would force you to do such a thing?” He shakes his head and the boy feeds him another strawberry. “The three of you will listen to Hugh the Baptist,” he says, chewing the strawberry. “And then you will afflict yourselves.”

  Chapter 14

  Matheus whispers to one of the priests, a bald man with a pocked face, then walks a dozen paces to a stout oaken table beside the fishpond. He stands beside one of the benches and waves us toward him. The guards reinforce his request. When we are seated at the opposite bench, Matheus sits and smiles at us. The young man brings the platter of strawberries and sets it on the table.

  I think of my Elizabeth again, bound and dying in St. Edmund’s Bury, and I fight the rage that builds within me once again. We are wasting time. We are wasting Elizabeth’s time. “There is nothing you or your baptist can say to make us afflict ourselves.”

  “And yet,” Matheus says, “you will.” The boy feeds him another strawberry and Matheus speaks as he chews. “Hugh the Baptist will bring peace to your soul. He will free you from the darkness.”

  I hear the bald priest speaking to the next white-robed person in line. “You were baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” he says. “And today you will be baptized in the Blood of Christ.” I glance over. The priest lifts the silver ladle from the font and tips it over the head of a young man with dark hair. The man stiffens as the blood slips past the collar of his robe and down his back.

  “Whose blood it that?” Tristan asks. “Is that from the afflicted?”

  Hugh shakes his head. “It is lamb’s blood. But during the sacred ritual, the blood becomes that of Christ.”

  “How do you know that it becomes Christ’s blood?” Tristan asks.

  “Because God told Hugh the Baptist that it does,” Matheus replies.

  “Have you ever considered that perhaps a mule kicked Hugh the Baptist in the head?”

  The second priest leads the blonde woman toward the small stone outbuilding the guards first pointed out. The temple of Hugh the Baptist is little more than a storage hut.

  I turn back to Matheus. “I have an urgent matter to attend to.” I try to keep the edge from my voice. “You have no authority to hold us here.”

  “I am king of the Holy Lands,” Matheus says. “I have been given the authority by God and Hugh the Baptist.”

  Tristan taps my shoulder. “If Hugh the Baptist gave him the authority, we really can’t argue.”

  “Quiet, Tristan,” I say.

  Matheus chuckles. Despite my contempt for this man, I see the eloquence of speech and demeanor that makes people follow him. He has a warm gaze and a quick smile, and though his geniality seemed affected at first, I am not certain of this now. When cruelty surrounds you for long enough, you learn to fear kindness.

  I do not know if Matheus is sincere or not. Perhaps he truly believes what he says. But I despise him either way, because he keeps me from my Elizabeth. The door to the stone outbuilding opens
with a creak. I glance back. The blood-spattered woman takes several deep breaths, nods as if to herself, then steps inside. The priest follows her and shuts the door.

  The bald priest at the font continues to shout: “All of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death. We were buried therefore with him, by baptism, into death. Just as Christ was raised from the dead, we too will walk in newness of life.”

  I look back at Matheus and he smiles again. A peaceful smile. “You do not know Hugh,” he says. “He is the shepherd in the storm. He gathers the lambs and sends them home. He will bring peace to your soul. He will free you from your darkness. You will understand soon.”

  A woman’s scream from the outbuilding shreds the reverential silence of the manor grounds.

  “I think that woman understands now,” Tristan says.

  Belisencia puts a hand to her chest; her gaze darts from the outbuilding to Matheus. “Why did she scream?”

  “It is Rapture,” Matheus says.

  “Rapture sounds a lot like agony,” Tristan replies.

  The door to the outbuilding opens and the priest steps out. A moment later, the woman stumbles forward, one hand on the doorframe, head low. There is more blood on her now. Something has savaged her shoulder just above the collarbone. It is a wound that only teeth can create.

  She has been afflicted.

  My stomach roils. It is likely that this lovely woman was someone’s Elizabeth. And Matheus has murdered her.

  “Is she…? Did she…?” Belisencia covers her mouth.

  “She has received eternal salvation,” Matheus says. “God has freed her from her darkness.”

  “If I believed in hell,” Tristan says, “there would be a place for you in Lucifer’s fiery garderobe.”

  “Sir Tristan, is it?” Matheus asks. “Do you not believe in hell?”

  “I do,” Tristan replies. “I rode a unicorn through it once.”

  Matheus smiles. “What if I were to show you hell?”

  “You don’t need to show me hell,” Tristan says. “The longer I am forced to talk to you, the more I believe in it.”

  Matheus turns away from Tristan and the veneer of sincerity slips for an instant. In that moment, I catch sight of the real Matheus, the puppet master behind the curtain. He glances my way, sees me staring, and smiles.

  “I will show you hell, Sir Tristan. It is a short distance from here. I will show you hell and I will tell you what God said to Hugh the Baptist. And when I am done, the three of you will, of your own volition, do precisely what that virtuous young woman just did.”

  I stand and lean toward Matheus, my arms trembling with rage. I see soldiers move toward the table at the corners of my vision. “And if we don’t do what she did? What then, king of the Holy Lands?”

  Matheus shrugs, his eyes on the afflicted woman. “Then you will have rejected God.” He glances at the two hulking mercenaries by the font. “And you will burn as heathens.”

  The dark-haired young man in pilgrim’s robes is escorted toward Hugh the Baptist’s temple next. I look at the woman who afflicted herself. She sits on the grass by the manor house carving and whittling at a rounded block of wood. A stocky man sits beside her and helps her with the work. It takes me a moment to realize that she is making a mask. The mask she will wear when she turns.

  “Do you know why God brought this plague upon us?” Matheus asks.

  “Horse buggery,” Tristan says.

  “No,” Matheus replies.

  “Because we have sinned,” Belisencia says. “We have sinned, and this is our punishment.”

  Tristan glances at me, closes his eyes for a moment, then opens them again. I respond in the same way. It is an old signal from our days in France. It means action. The guards have lost interest in us. They watch the baptisms. I glance at the outbuilding, only a few dozen paces away, and nod.

  We leap to our feet and sprint toward Hugh the Baptist’s temple. Despite our armor, we do it so quickly that no one has time to react until we are halfway there.

  The two mercenaries are the first to respond. They run to intercept us. Tristan draws open the door to the outbuilding. I know he wants a hostage, and Hugh is the perfect choice. I stop outside the temple, but I have no time to pivot toward the oncoming soldiers. One of the mercenaries explodes into me and we crash to the clovered grass. The second mercenary pulls at Tristan before he can get inside the temple. Tristan locks his fingers against the doorjamb.

  I try rolling to my feet but another soldier throws himself onto me. More soldiers help pull Tristan from the door. All of them tumble to the ground beside me when Tristan’s fingers lose their grip. Armor flashes. Men grunt. Fists swing. Someone’s blood splatters against my cheek. A booted foot knocks a man away from the scrum. I swing with all my fury at an olive-skinned face near me. My blow is hard enough for the jolt to travel all the way up to my elbow.

  And then it is over. Spearheads glint before my eyes. Swords are drawn. A dark-haired mercenary holds a hand to his cheek and stares at me with murder in his eyes. The door to Hugh’s temple is open still. I peer inside. A man sitting in a chair leans toward me, just a silhouette in the tiny building. The sun catches a corner of the man’s misshapen, scarred mouth. The skin is wrinkled and brown and split around the lips. He whispers something as a soldier shuts the door.

  Matheus looks down at Tristan and me, shakes his head.

  “Hugh the Baptist will bring peace to your souls,” he says. “He will free you from your darkness.”

  Chapter 15

  Two soldiers remove my gauntlets and bind my hands behind me with thick linen cords. I wince as the cords bite into the wound on my wrist. The soldiers do not take any notice of the festering gash, but the pain from the cords is so great that tears come to my eyes. They bind Tristan’s hands as well but leave Belisencia unfettered.

  I cannot seem to catch my breath. Perhaps I am too old to be wandering the countryside in armor.

  Matheus barks an order to one of his soldiers: “Fetch the tapestry.”

  The soldier nods and runs into the manor house, holding his scabbarded sword with one hand so that it does not flap. He returns with a rolled tapestry.

  Matheus leads us toward a small church on the manor grounds. Eight soldiers, including the two foreign mercenaries, join us on our walk. The mercenary I struck in the scuffle watches me the entire way, snarling anytime I look toward him. He has close-cropped black hair and an old scar at the corner of one eye. His cheek is swollen and blue and bears a lobstered imprint from a finger of my gauntlet. I wonder at his nationality. Spanish or Italian maybe. Both breeds are fiery. This one seems an inferno.

  “Where are we going?” Belisencia asks.

  “Sir Tristan wanted to see hell,” Matheus says.

  “I’ve seen hell,” Tristan says. “It’s full of crying women.”

  The church is similar to the one in Edwardstone, only smaller. Long and stony, with a square Norman tower at one end. The double doors open with a clank of iron latches and the creak of old oak. The smell of stone dust and lamp oil wafts from inside. The cool air of the church feels good against my skin, and I realize that I have been sweating. I wonder if I am developing a fever.

  Matheus leads us up the spiral stairs of the tower. The steps curl anticlockwise, as stairs do in most fortifications. Elizabeth wanted the stairs in our castle at Bodiam to curl clockwise. She said she wanted our stairwells to be different. It is one of the few times that I overruled her without trying to see her point. Stairs must be anticlockwise so that defenders are able to swing their swords freely from above. Attackers climbing the stairs have the wall at their right side, so they can only thrust. Tristan once joked that the French should train their soldiers to fight left-handed. But the Church would, of course, be outraged by such a thing. The left hand is the devil’s hand, and all who favor that hand are evil. Elizabeth is left-handed, so this is another of the many subjects upon which the Church and I disagree.

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nbsp; We reach the crenellated summit and stare out at the Suffolk landscape. Lush, green fields and forests spread before us. Matheus’s plaguers drag ploughs across his furlongs and grind wheat with their endless circles at the mill. Smoke rises in columns at intervals where villages and towns burn. Fire is a potent weapon against the plague, but it is indiscriminate. Its hunger rivals that of the plaguers.

  “Do you see them?” Matheus asks. “In that village, do you see them moving?”

  I look closely. Plaguers in a settlement less than a mile away. I can just make out their lurching steps.

  “Demons,” Matheus says. “There are scores of them out there. The village is called Boxford, and it was home to one of the largest foundling home in Suffolk. Dozens of children lived happily there, cared for by monks. But look at it now. Look at it. The demons killed all the children and feed on their bodies still.”

  We stare in silence.

  “I understand all of England is like that,” Matheus says. “The dead walk and eat human flesh. Towns burn. The populations of entire villages live cramped inside churches and castles. Everyone lives in fear.”

  He motions to one side and the soldier holding the tapestry steps forward. Another soldier holds one end and they unroll the fabric. The two men pull the tapestry tight. Belisencia gasps, which is precisely what I feel like doing. I study the tapestry, then look out across the landscape of Suffolk, then back to the tapestry once more.

  “You see it?” Matheus says. “Do you see it?”

  I see it.

  The tapestry looks like the view from this tower. The most striking things in the woven artwork are the plaguers. Perhaps they are not plaguers in the tapestry, but they certainly look like them: staggering, angry creatures that once were human. Lurching bloody monsters that claw and snarl. Towns burn behind them. Humans weep and hold their dead and dying close or shelter inside castle walls. The skies are dark and, in what I can only ascribe to divine coincidence, clouds above us roll over the sun and darken the landscape as we watch.