Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

  “What was it Jesus said? ‘Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life.’” He waggles his finger and frowns as if lecturing us. “But please, good people, this only works with My flesh and blood. Not each other’s. Are we clear on that? Do not force me to make another commandment. I am trusting that all of you will remember the distinction. I will be most annoyed if I return from heaven and find all of you shambling around eating one anoth—”

  “Stop it!” Belisencia’s scream is like a thunderclap. “Stop your blasphemy! You may have no respect for God and Jesus and Christianity, but I do. Did no one ever teach you to be silent when speech might offend?”

  “Yes,” Tristan replies. “The same priest who taught me that I should pluck out my eye if I look with lust upon a woman. And I didn’t take that very seriously either.”

  The day dies slowly as we follow the Roman road for four milestones. We turn at the fourth stone and leave the road, traveling northward upon the flat heaths of northern Suffolk. It was my first time on that particular Roman road, but I have been told it ends after five or six miles at a place called Coddenham. It is a large town, no doubt drowning in plague, and I want no part of it. Cities and towns are death.

  A soft rain falls once more. After another mile or so, we turn eastward again until we find yet another Roman road that leads north, to Norwich. I have been on this one.

  My wrist is red and painful I feel the stirrings of another fever, and it makes me irritable.

  “Are we still rolling straight into the city with our musical wagon?” Tristan asks.

  “We won’t go to the very gates,” I say. “Two hundred paces away is fine. We can drop a few walnuts before we start.”

  “Such a shame,” Belisencia says. “I would love to see the beauty of Norwich once more. Have you ever been there, Edward?”

  “Once,” I say. “But I couldn’t appreciate the beauty.”

  “Why not?” Belisencia asks.

  “Because I was there with John of Gaunt.” The name twists venomously in my mouth. John of Gaunt is uncle to my king, Richard II. I spent three nights in a dungeon because of John and have challenged him to a duel three times.

  “You do not like John of Gaunt?” Belisencia asks.

  “He is the worst of men,” I reply. “Scheming and avaricious. A man who cares only for himself. A man who bullies the weak and cowers before the strong.”

  “Edward and John are old friends,” Tristan says.

  The metals chime as I spit. “The worst thing about him is that he is always at King Richard’s ear, weakening the boy.”

  “Is it he that weakens the boy,” Belisencia replies, “or is Richard simply a weak boy?”

  I open my mouth to speak, then close it and look at her for a long moment before responding. “Richard is my king. And yours too, my lady.”

  “If he is my king,” she replies. “Then where is he?”

  “Not knowing where he is doesn’t strip him of his crown.”

  “But I have heard you ask it yourself,” she says. “Where is Richard? Where are England’s armies? I would like to know this also. Where is Richard? Where were England’s armies when the nuns of my convent were being eaten alive?”

  “He is our king,” I say. “I’m sure that whatever delays him is no fault of his.”

  “Of course not. According to you, it’s never Richard’s fault. All of this must be John of Gaunt’s fault.”

  I yank the reins hard and stop the wagon, turn to face her. “Listen to me, woman. Perhaps you have listened to too many stories. There are schemers everywhere in the kingdom. Men who would pull a kingdom from the hands of a boy simply because he is a boy. Richard is inexperienced, but he is brave. He rode out among ten thousand angry peasants when he was fourteen years old and had them cheering for him by the time he was done. It is not lack of courage that keeps him away. It is death, injury, or the pig-licking John of Gaunt that keeps him from acting. Richard is still king, and you would do well to remember that. Do not meddle in affairs that have nothing to do with you, silly girl.”

  Belisencia’s face is flushed red, her lips drawn tight. One of her brows twitches, but she says nothing. She looks away from me and stares at the horses. I feel Tristan’s hand on my shoulder.

  “Let’s talk about something less offensive, eh?” he says. “Do you remember the man buggering that mare on the roadside? That was something, wasn’t it?”

  I take a long, deep breath and flick the reins. The animals hesitate, so I shout to get them going. They are not wagon horses, and so are not used to the trace and collar. I shout again and they dig into the Suffolk clay and drag us forward once more. Belisencia’s gaze never wavers from the two geldings.

  We travel for another half mile before darkness consumes the world. I take the wagon far off the road, to the edge of a sparse forest, and unharness the horses. We rub them down and tie them to a grizzled oak. Tristan and I stack rocks and logs on either side of the horses and the cart; with luck, the obstacles will slow plaguers if we are found.

  Belisencia sleeps in the bed of the wagon. The space is not long enough for her, so she has to sleep with her knees curled. Tristan volunteers for the first watch, and I am grateful. I strip off my armor and crawl beneath the cart. The last thing I see before sleep claims me is the bottom of the wagon bed, wooden planks that make me feel like I am inside a coffin.

  Chapter 35

  The night is blessedly uneventful. We hitch the horses to the wagon again and set off at first light. The day has dawned bright and clear, but this is England and I know the clouds will gather soon. I apply more of the salve that the nun gave me at Hedingham. My wrist looks even worse today. The pain has returned to my head. I remember the words that Paul the Doctor spoke to Tristan: The stars are against your friend. He will probably die in horrible pain.

  Doctors.

  Belisencia does not speak to me, nor even look in my direction as we ride. It is probably for the best. I do not want another discussion about the king. Richard lives under the shadow of his father, the Black Prince—may God bless his soul—and his grandfather, Edward III. Both were great men. And though Richard has stumbled at times, I always remind myself that he was only ten years old when the crown was placed on his head. King Richard has his father’s blood in him, and with the right guidance I know he can be a mighty king like his grandfather. But he does not have the right guidance. He has John of Gaunt.

  Thick, black smoke columns rise in the distance, to the east and north. More of England returning to dust. We pass an abandoned field of barley, the ridges and furrows arching gently in S-curves. I remember my ploughman at Bodiam making those same curves when working the manorial fields. He would drive the oxen onto the fields at an angle, let them drift back to true by midfield, then slowly angle them again for the next furrow. His passes would trace gentle, perfect curves upon the land. I miss Elizabeth, and I miss Bodiam. We had the perfect life and I was completely unaware of it.

  Our cart chimes past deserted villages. Millhouses still run but grind nothing. The fields are riddled with skeletons that have been picked clean. There are so many bones that I stop noting the differences between animal and human: they become another part of the landscape. Like hedges and flints.

  Our pace is good and sometime in the afternoon we pass out of Suffolk and into the windswept chalklands of Norfolk. We ride ever northward, the winds snapping Belisencia’s robe and fluttering the tops of the walnut sacks. A relentless wind that brings earaches and tears.

  We make Caistor St. Edmund a few hours before sunset. Caistor is an old Roman village, and I have heard stories that it was a stronghold of the British tribes who were here even before the Romans. I passed through it when I came to Norwich with John of Gaunt. It is large enough that I fear the plaguers that might wander its streets, so I turn the wagon off the road before we enter the village.

  I gaze toward Caistor as we pass it, squinting, searching for any life. I spot something near a thatch
ed cottage on the outskirts of the village. A shape moving toward us. The figure stops and watches us pass.

  “Is that a plaguer?” Tristan asks.

  I shrug.

  Another shape limps toward the first. Both are dressed in white and blend in with the pale daub of the cottage. We watch them and they watch us, until the cottage fades from view.

  After another mile, we reach a river, the Yare I believe, and I stop the wagon at its bank.

  “Norwich isn’t far,” I say. “We should settle our plan.”

  “A plan?” says Tristan. “We have a plan?”

  “We’re going to come at the city from the east. I’m going to bring the wagon as close to the gate as I can. But there will be plaguers. Tristan, you keep them off the cart. When there are too many of them to fight, I’ll turn the cart around and we can ride toward the fortress. Belisencia, for every ten chimes you hear, take a walnut out of the bag.”

  “A fine plan,” Tristan says. “Nothing could possibly go awry.”

  “Do you have a better plan?”

  “Yes. We start our journey to the island a mile away from the city. How many walnuts can there be in a mile? Twenty? Thirty? We throw twenty or thirty walnuts out and avoid the city completely.”

  “And what if it’s fifty?” I say. “What if it’s eighty? We could miss the island completely.”

  “What’s the difference?” Tristan replies. “We’ll hit the coast and be within fifty or eighty walnuts of the island.”

  “No we won’t,” I say. “If we turn our cart at the wrong point and go two miles, we could end up a long way from the island. And we don’t even bloody know if we have to turn north or south. How many miles would we have to cover then, Tristan? Five miles of coastline? Ten? And Norfolk is full of swamps and rivers. What if we come to something impassable? We could end up on the wrong side of a river and have to travel back for miles before we found a ford.” I shake my head. “This mad ritual with the walnuts was created for a reason. It probably navigates past all the obstacles. We are going to do this as accurately as possible.” My breath is coming too fast. My chin touches the bevor at my neck and the metal feels icy against my fevered skin. “We are going to get as close to the gate as we can. And we are going to do this properly.”

  We travel eastward. I spot the first of the plaguers to the north. Small groups of them wandering without aim. They turn to face us and there is a moment of hesitation before they lurch toward us. I have seen many plaguers do this. As if they are startled to see us. As if, for one heartbeat, they have forgotten that we are food. But they remember quickly.

  I lash the horses with a branch and the wagon outpaces the afflicted. Tristan rides close to us. “That chiming probably sounds like a dinner bell to them.”

  When I think we have gone a mile, I turn the wagon northward again, toward Norwich, and I find the first problem with my plan.

  Chapter 36

  There is a river in our path.

  The Yare again, or perhaps the Wensun. I should have thought this through. I stare into the dark water and watch small clusters of bodies drift peacefully downstream. The bodies do not move, but I know better than to think them dead. Morgan, Tristan, and I found out in a catastrophic way that dead bodies in rivers are rarely dead these days. There were more bodies than this in the Thames when we crossed it. Many more. So many that when they started moving and climbing onto our boat, we capsized. We tumbled into hell itself, plaguers above and below the surface of the water. It was the hairy sea and we were nearly devoured in it.

  I stand on the driver’s box and squint. I can see the walls of Norwich from the bank of the river. They sweep around the city, a city punctuated by squat, round towers every hundred paces or so. There is no wall on the east side of Norwich, because the river is barrier enough. The east gate is flanked by tall drum towers. We are too far to see if there are plaguers at the eastern bridge. It does not matter. We do not need entrance into the city. We just need to get closer. I sit back down. It is not even possible to start our journey from here, because we are on the wrong side of the river.

  I think of the child in Bure. Theodore. What was it he said about the simpleton and the fortress? He couldn’t go there no more. I begin to understand.

  Tristan and Belisencia are silent. I rub at my eyes. The fever is growing worse.

  “There is only one choice,” I say.

  “I truly hope it’s not the choice I think it is,” Tristan replies.

  “Does the choice you are thinking of involve us riding eastward for miles until we find a ford or bridge?”

  Tristan cocks his head and squints. “Actually, no.”

  “Good,” I reply. “Because that’s not the choice.”

  “Wait…I like that choice.”

  I turn the horses to the west and goad them toward the south gate of Norwich.

  He couldn’t go there no more. Of course he couldn’t; he always had to go through the city. And sometime in the last few months, the city had succumbed to plague. The afflicted occupy Norwich now, an invading army with soldiers recruited from nightmares.

  “Edward,” Tristan says. “Let’s talk about that eastward choice, shall we? I just want to discuss it a bit. Please? Edward?”

  Nothing he says will deter me, and he knows it. This is the only way. We must enter Norwich and cross the entire city to reach the east gate.

  Belisencia brings her hands together, closes her eyes, and prays.

  We pass an abandoned priory on the banks of the river; high grasses and wildflowers slowly devour the stone buildings. Just past the priory is the first gate. A sign over the entrance declares it to be King Street Gate. It lies just west of the river but it is not the main gate of the city. I do not want to travel through winding streets trying to find our way to the east gate. So we ride past.

  Berstrete Gate is a few hundred paces to the west. It is an imposing stone gatehouse with a tall round tower on the left and shorter one on the right, but it is not the one I want, either. I have never been through Berstrete Gate and I do not know where it leads. We rumble past it, and a quarter mile to the west I spot an old leper hospital that I passed the last time I arrived in Norwich. It, too, looks abandoned, and just beyond its overgrown garden lies St. Stephen’s Gate. That is the entrance John of Gaunt took me through. It rises like a castle keep from the flint walls of Norwich. Thick, crenelated towers flank the gatehouse. Angels and saints decorate the stonework, and statues of dead priests and bishops fill niches along the walls.

  Saint Stephen was a deacon who was stoned to death for disagreeing with church doctrine. I think about the church view of alchemy and grit my teeth as I guide the wagon toward his gate.

  “Edward, we will be trapped in that city.” There is no humor in Tristan’s voice as he calls to me from his horse.

  I slow the cart so we can talk. “We won’t be trapped, because there won’t be enough time. We will storm through the city so quickly that the plaguers won’t be able to gather.”

  Tristan shakes his head and pulls his helmet on. “We’d have a chance if we were all riding horses, but with a cart?” His helmet shakes from side to side.

  I put my own helmet on and lash the horses to a canter. “Lie as flat as you can in the cart,” I call back to Belisencia. Her lips quiver as she curls up in the bed. I wish I had a dagger to give her, but I lost mine in the forest outside of Bure.

  St. Stephen’s Gate is open. The spikes of the portcullis poke from the top of the gatehouse like Lucifer’s teeth. I take a long, slow breath. In this plague-swept kingdom, cities and towns are death.

  I pray to Mary, Giles, and God.

  Let us make it through the city. Keep us alive.

  I cross myself, kiss the pommel of Saint Giles’s sword, and take the wagon through the devil’s open mouth.

  And I find nothing.

  It is a city, nothing more. No armies of plaguers. No dead bodies. Just an abandoned city. Rows of tile-roofed, narrow houses line the northwest
side of the cobbled street. Derelict fields lie to the southeast, the ridges and furrows sprouting the first stubble of grass. Our wagon wheels sound like thunder on the silent lane, the chime of the metal strips like a church bell. I squeeze the velvety reins tightly and turn my head to one side, then the other, searching through twin rectangles for the first of the plaguers.

  “Where are they?” Tristan shouts. He holds his sword in one hand, swinging the blade toward our own echoes.

  I understand how he feels; the anticipation is dreadful. It is like a crossbow pointed at my face. I would prefer them to come all at once than to suffer the torture of waiting.

  I spot Norwich Castle up ahead, soaring above us on a motte nearly a hundred feet high. I can make out the great white keep and the walls of the inner bailey. We pass the fields and the houses and reach a baffling junction of streets. Roads split off to the south, the east, the northeast, and the northwest. I stop the wagon and think. The helmet makes my head hurt. It is too hot inside my armor. I do not know which way to go.

  “Ed?” Tristan’s horse tosses its head. It looks as nervous as Tristan does.

  “Give me a moment,” I say.

  “Why are we stopped?” Belisencia’s voice is shrill behind me.

  “A moment!” I shout. The Bishop’s Gate. The name comes to me from nowhere. Perhaps Mary or Giles felt pity on me. The Bishop’s Gate is the eastern gate. It lies near the cathedral, which I remember is northeast of the castle. I study the northeastern road. A trickle of filthy water runs down the central gutter, smelling of sewage and old waste. The road appears to lead directly to the castle. Not where we need to be.

  I slap the reins and turn the cart to the northwest. The crisp clatter of our horses’ hooves spills out across the city again. A stone church with a Norman tower rises in front of us. The sign by the gravestones declares it to be St. Mary’s, and I know I have taken the correct road.

  The thoroughfare widens abruptly into a long market square, but there are no stands or marquees. It is empty and eerie. A gust blows a child’s filthy hat across the cobblestones as we rumble through. Homes of wood and halls of pink carstone stand shoulder to shoulder along the square, but no one moves in them.