Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

  Father Ralf turns away from me halfway through my request and looks to the crowd. “We will throw Sara the Martyr to the dragon tomorrow. Gather here at noon once again, and we will perform the ceremony.”

  “Tell me, priest,” Tristan says. “How does this dragon protect your village?”

  The priest sweeps the crucifix in a broad arc. “Look around you,” he says. “Simply look around. Do you see any demons? Is there even one afflicted soul in sight? The dragon devours them. It keeps our lands free of plague. And all it asks is for one virgin a month.” He sneers at Tristan. “Although I think perhaps its demands may change now that you fools attacked it.”

  I scan the crowd for anyone who might look simple. “The dragon eats the afflicted?”

  Ralf nods. “It protects us.”

  “How do you know the dragon requires virgins?” Tristan smirks. “Did it speak with you?”

  “There are other ways to communicate,” Father Ralf replies.

  “You’re insane,” Tristan says.

  “The dragon,” Belisencia says. “Does it…does it breathe fire?”

  Ralf nods. “It burned down Wormingford a month ago. Seeking revenge for wrongs committed long ago, you see? Avenging its kin. Everyone in the village was killed. Not even the animals escaped.”

  Wormingford is a village south of Bure. I have heard people say that Saint George slew a dragon there, when the place was known as Withermundsford. Those same people say that a mound of earth and grass has covered the dragon’s body, but that the creature’s bones still lie where it fell. That is why they changed the name to Wormingford: to honor England’s patron saint. Why they did not change the name to St. George’s Ford is beyond my understanding.

  “And you are happy with this pact you have made?” I ask. “This is an acceptable way to live? Feeding your daughters to this beast of hell?”

  “Bure does not burn,” the priest replies. “Our children are safe. The village is protected.”

  “And what happens when you run out of virgins?” I say. “Will you make a new pact?”

  Father Ralf takes a long, deep breath. “What choice do we have?”

  “You can kill it,” I say. “You can send it back to hell.”

  The priest shakes his head solemnly. “We cannot kill it. No one can.”

  “And why not?’ I ask.

  Father Ralf closes his eyes. “I had a vision,” he says. “A dark and terrible vision. Long before this foul beast arrived. A most prophetic vision. An image sent to me from God himself. A terrifying message that foretold of the coming anguish. A waking dream that made me cry out with horror. ‘No!’ I shouted to the heavens. ‘Lord, tell me this is not the future I see. Tell me that such terrible things will not—’”

  “The vision,” Tristan snaps. “Get to the vision.”

  Father Ralf clears his throat. “My vision was that a serpent would come to Bure. And that no man alive could slay it. In the vision, I was made aware that only the blood of virgins would appease the dragon.”

  “I have a solution,” Tristan replies. “What’s say we rid the town of virgins? I’d be happy to offer my assistance.”

  Belisencia crosses her arms and quotes scriptures with a sour look on her face. “‘Put to death the earthly things in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry.’”

  “A rather complete list,” Tristan replies. “You might as well add happiness. What a sad place this world must seem to the truly devout. Does God allow for any enjoyment of the beauty He has created?”

  Father Ralf clears his throat and recites another verse. “‘Let your fountain be blessed, and rejoice in the wife of your youth, a lovely deer, a graceful doe. Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight; be intoxicated always in her love.’”

  Tristan laughs. “Father Ralf!”

  The priest shrugs. “I like that verse.” He repeats a portion of it in a sing-song voice: “‘Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight.’”

  “If my priest had read verses like that, I would have been in the front pew at every mass,” Tristan says. “Tell me, Father, what other wonderful things does the Bible say about breasts?”

  The priest scratches at his cheek. “There is not much else. Mostly the Bible talks about breasts withering.”

  “That’s not appealing, Father,” Tristan replies. “What does it say about virgins?”

  “They’re not virgins,” the bearded man shouts from the crowd.

  “Sorry?” Tristan says.

  “We only had four virgins in the village,” the man replies. “So we had to start feeding the dragon ordinary—”

  “I have no time for this,” I snap. “Father, I seek a simpleton who lives in your village. Do you know him? Is he there in the crowd?”

  Father Ralf stares at me, then looks downward and rolls the staff between his fingers absently. He does not meet my gaze. “Why do you seek him?”

  “I need to talk with him,” I say.

  “His master is an alchemist,” Belisencia says. “And some say this alchemist has a cure for this plague.”

  The priest’s eyes grow wide. He crosses himself and backs away from me. “Alchemy is a mortal sin!”

  I give Belisencia a scathing look, then address the priest. “We must seek any help we can find in these terrible times, Father.”

  The priest backs away farther, holding the staffed crucifix to the sky, like Moses. “‘There shall not be found among you any one that useth an enchanter, or a witch. Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’”

  Tristan shakes his head. “I liked the verse about the breasts better.”

  Chapter 27

  “I propose a new rule,” I say as we knock on another door. “Belisencia is not to speak to anyone we meet on our quest.”

  “Hallelujah,” Tristan replies.

  “I was trying to help,” she snaps.

  I knock again at the door as a light drizzle washes down on us. It is a thatched cottage a dozen paces south of the Stour, with a small window beside the entrance. This is the third such cottage we have approached. Father Ralf sent the crowd back to their homes after Belisencia’s revelation and told the villagers not to speak with us or they would be guilty of abomination. So we search for the simpleton without their help.

  “Can you believe that priest?” Tristan says. “He has no qualms feeding virgins to a dragon so plague will not find his village, but he draws the line at alchemy.”

  “They’re not virgins, Tristan,” Belisencia replies. “They ran out.”

  Tristan laughs and she smiles, but it is a guilty smile. “I should not laugh. It is cruel.”

  “No, it is human,” Tristan says. “In these times of madness, only human sacrifice will save us.”

  It grates on me that they are joking when we have no way of finding the simpleton, but there is no sense imposing my anguish on them.

  “Tell me, Belisencia,” Tristan says. “What happens to a soul when it is eaten by a dragon in purgatory? Does it spend eternity in a steaming pile of wyrm dung?”

  Belisencia’s smile fades. “That’s not funny, Tristan.”

  I bang on the door as loudly as I can. Someone moves inside the cottage. A gaunt face peers out from the window.

  “Don’t tell me you still think we are in purgatory,” Tristan says.

  “I do not know where we are,” she says. “But there was a dragon in the middle of this village. How many dragons have you seen on earth, Tristan?”

  Someone shouts from behind the door. “Go away! Alchemy is a sin!”

  “So is human sacrifice,” Tristan calls.

  “Please,” I say. “My wife is dying. Please.”

  “Alchemy is an abomination!”

  Red rage rises in me, burns in my cheeks. I grip the latch on the door with the strength of my fury and twist slowly until the wood creaks. I
could tear down this door and search the cottage for the simpleton. It would be easy. But I take three deep breaths and walk away instead. Cold rainwater seeps under the collar of my breastplate and trickles down my back. The rain beads on our armor and glistens like jewels in Belisencia’s wool cloak.

  “Someone will talk to us,” Tristan says.

  “Of course they will,” Belisencia adds. “We just need to find the right person.”

  I do not respond. The simpleton may be within a few hundred paces of me but I am powerless to find him. Perhaps we are in purgatory. Perhaps this is my punishment, to seek this simpleton for an eternity.

  There must be twenty-five or thirty homes in the village, as well as a tavern and twin rows of flint-faced buildings that house vendors and workshops. It would take a full day or more to speak with everyone. And we still might not find the answer.

  “We need help,” I say.

  It is a new church, and it seems as if the tower is not yet completed. An ornate porch frames the central doorway. A thing of cusped and foiled arches made from great beams of ship wood and smaller curving planks. We walk through the door and I sweep my gaze over the interior.

  Angel carvings decorate the corbeled arches. Thick, fluted columns rise skyward and latticed stained-glass windows turn sunlight into colored patterns on the walls. We sit in the frontmost pew in the nave of St. Mary’s Church, only a few paces from the altar. I pray at times and speak with Tristan and Belisencia at others. I do not know what to expect. All I know is that the Virgin helped me once. And, if nothing else, I want to thank her properly for what she did for me at the Lutons’ Manor.

  The doors to the church open again and I look back to see Father Ralf enter with a short, stocky man. The priest flinches when he sees us and whispers to the man at his side. Only one hissing, echoing word makes it to my ears: “heretics.” The two men stride down the nave, past us, their footsteps ringing out across the church. They vanish through a small, iron-studded door at the east transept.

  “Want to hear something humorous?” Tristan asks.

  “No,” Belisencia and I say together.

  “When I was a child,” Tristan continues, “my parents took me to London to watch as a dozen sinners were hanged.”

  “Quite humorous,” Belisencia says.

  “We gathered in a square, where soldiers raised thick wooden poles from which they would hang the sinners,” Tristan says. “The poor condemned souls were paraded in front of us. People in the crowd threw vegetables at them. Some spit at the sinners. But what I thought cruelest of all were the horrible insults that were shouted. One insult in particular. Men and women in the crowd called these poor people ‘hairy ticks.’”

  “You are a fool,” Belisencia says. “Heretics?”

  “I was seven years old,” he replies. “That’s what it sounded like to me. It was the vilest insult I had ever heard. A hairy tick. Ticks are repulsive, but hairy ones? The thought of them made me shiver. It was worse than maggots.

  “Then the priests addressed the crowd, and they spoke of a hairy sea, which was where I assumed hairy ticks went when they died.”

  Belisencia laughs. “To the hairy sea?”

  “Can you imagine how horrible such a place would be? Feeling those hairs creeping over you as you drowned, over and over for eternity—because I imagined that’s what you would do in the hairy sea: drown. I told my older brother about all of it when I returned home and he tormented me for years. Whenever I was caught in mischief, he would call me a hairy tick and tell me I would be sent to the hairy sea. It gave me nightmares.” He shakes his head. “It still gives me nightmares.”

  Belisencia and Tristan laugh, their voices echoing in the church. But the laughter stops when the great wooden doors of the church rattle open again.

  An old woman approaches, hunched and holding a woolen shawl over her head against the drizzle outside. “You are the knighth,” she says, her lisping voice like wind through dead reeds.

  “We are,” I say. “Do you know where the simpleton lives?”

  Faded green eyes peer out at me from a face cracked like the desert floor, creased and weathered, the lips sunken in a toothless mouth. She looks like my grandmother, may God protect her departed soul. And, as I think on it, a bit like Tristan’s grandmother, too. It is odd how age turns all women into the same person.

  “I know where he ith,” she says.

  “Tell me, old woman.” I stand and nod to her.

  Someone laughs from the east transept, behind the small door that Father Ralf and his guest disappeared through. The old woman looks to the door. Her milky eyes grow wide and she turns to leave.

  “Wait!” I grab her thin arm gently. It is like holding a staff wrapped in wool. I glance back toward the door and speak quietly. “I will pay you.”

  She shakes her head and whispers, “I have no need for coin.”

  “Surely there is something you want,” I say. “Tell us where the simpleton lives and we will repay you however we can.”

  The cracked desert floor splits as she smiles. I was wrong; she has one tooth left in her mouth, a yellowed pebble that juts above her sunken bottom lip. She points a finger at me. “I will tell you where the thimpleton ith, but you will pay me firtht.”

  Take while the patient is in pain. I live in a world of doctors now.

  “We will pay you if you can repeat the sacred words,” Tristan says. “Simon sows seeds sinfully in the summer sun.”

  “Stop it, Tristan,” I say. “What is the price we must pay, woman?”

  She leans forward and glances toward the door before speaking.

  “Thlay the dragon, mighty knigth. Thlay the Dragon of Bure.”

  Chapter 28

  “Father Ralf says the dragon cannot be killed,” I say.

  “Then you will never find the thimpleton,” she replies.

  I study the old woman. She smiles, but there is no humor in her eyes. There is only desperation.

  “Why do you want the dragon killed?” I ask. “I thought it protected Bure.”

  She shakes her head. “The dragon protecth Father Ralf and the men of the village. It doeth nothing for the women.”

  “So you represent the women of the village?” I say.

  “I reprethent Sara,” she replies. “Thee is my granddaughter.”

  “I see. And Sara is to be sacrificed tomorrow.”

  “No,” she says. “Thee will not be. Becauthe you will kill the dragon today.”

  The rain will render our cannons unreliable, so we leave them with Belisencia and run whetstones over the burrs in our blades. We secure the worn leather straps of our armor, don our helmets, and we stride out of the church into a gray world. It is late afternoon but the thick clouds overhead and the ceaseless, hazy drizzle turn day into evening. The cooling temperatures have wreathed the Stour in a thick, coiling mist that cloaks the water.

  How many times have Tristan and I marched out to battle like this? The sounds are as familiar to me as the song of the thrush or the feel of the wind on the downs: plates clanking, weighted footsteps on soft earth, breath echoing in helms. I look to Tristan and put my hand on the hilt of my sword. He nods and we draw our blades together.

  We have killed Frenchmen, Tristan and I. We have defeated Italians, Spaniards, and Scots. Fought bears and witches, man-eating dogs and angry bulls. We have vanquished whatever enemies this world has sent at us and enjoyed the earthly prizes that came with the victories. But today is different. Today’s foe is not of this world. Today we fight hell’s champion, and Elizabeth is the prize.

  A blond-haired boy of eight or nine plays in the rain, throwing rocks at a small wooden boat in a large puddle. His wide eyes study us, from our mailed boots to our steel helms. I nod to him. He stands and reaches a hand out to touch our armor as we pass. I take off my gauntlet, dig into a purse, and toss him a handful of pennies. The boy picks them up and hurls them toward the ship and into the puddle. Not even children will take coins anymore.
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br />   We follow the smoldering Stour into the forest. Push through reed and sedge, our mailed boots sinking deep in the waterlogged soil. I hear a second rush of the river in my helmet, like the ocean in a shell. I glance into the misty Stour but see only white nothingness. It is like staring into oblivion. As if the world simply ceases in that channel.

  “If the dragon is in there,” Tristan says, “I don’t think we will find it.”

  “Let’s hope it finds us, then.” I did not consider the possibility of not finding the beast. I wonder if Saint George had to search for his wyrm.

  “Edward,” Tristan says. “I don’t want the dragon to find us first. If it finds us before we find it, we will spend eternity in steaming wyrm dung.”

  “Then stop talking and search.” I pick up a branch from the forest floor and push my way through oak leaves to the river’s edge. The branch is taller than I am, and when I dip it into the river I cannot touch the bottom. “It’s deep here,” I say. “Don’t fall in.”

  I push through a scatter of purple harrow, the thorns clawing at my mail like skeletal fingers. It is even darker in the forest. Rain trickling through the leaves mimics footsteps in every direction. At least I hope it is the rain making those sounds. The mist makes it impossible to be sure. Something dark moves by the riverbank. I jump backward, my armor clattering against Tristan’s.

  “What?” Tristan shouts, breath coming in ragged blasts through his helm, like some great guttering furnace.

  The darkness coils and slips past me into the river, which lies a few paces to our right. A water snake.

  “Wrong sort of wyrm,” I say.

  “I propose a new rule,” Tristan says. “No jumping unless you are certain you see the dragon.”

  “You can go first if you want,” I say.

  “Proceed, Sir Edward.”

  I proceed.

  Dragons have lurked in England for centuries, although I cannot recall hearing of one that lived in my lifetime. The tales of knights slaying these monsters are always ancient ones. Saint George is the most famous of these knights. It is said he slew several dragons in England, including the one at Withermundsford. Lancelot, a knight who lived in the time of a king named Arthur, slew one too. And there are others. Each territory of England has half-forgotten stories of local knights fighting local dragons. And other countries apparently have them too. I knew an old knight named Ethelbert whose grandfather used to tell stories about the Crusades. Apparently, there were dragons in the Muslim lands. “But they didn’t call them dragons,” Ethelbert said. “They called them aw-teen.” There may well have been aw-teen in the arab lands, but I have not heard of any famous Muslim dragon slayers.