Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

I nod and climb the driver’s box, then crawl to the back of the wagon. Tristan throws the sack into the cart as Belisencia joins me. She studies me with furrowed brows.

  “Did you get hurt, Edward?” she asks.

  I pull the great helm off and shake my head. “Just a bit winded.”

  Tristan shouts at the horses and the wagon rattles toward the Bishop’s Bridge. We pass the sprawling Hospital of St. Giles on our left and I know we will make it out of the city; I remember now that the hospital is that last building before the bridge. I lean to one side and look back. White-robed demons sprint toward us. Dozens of them. A white-capped flood of hunchbacked death hurtling down the thoroughfare.

  The wagon wheels tremble on the smaller stones of the Bishop’s Bridge. The Wensun winds beneath us. The east gate looms ahead. Freedom.

  “Edward!” There is hysteria in Tristan’s voice.

  I squint at the gate, then let my head fall back against the wagon. Of course.

  The gate is closed.

  EPISODE 7

  Chapter 39

  The horses slow upon the bridge and toss their heads as they approach the iron portcullis. One of the geldings nickers. They appear as unhappy as I am to find the gates closed. The nickering animal glances back at us and I am certain I see accusation in its eye.

  “Satan’s barbed cock!” Tristan leaps from the driver’s box in a clamor of steel plates and vaults the four steps leading to the arched gatehouse entryway.

  Belisencia stands beside me in the wagon bed. “Tristan suggested finding a ford to the east!” she shouts. “But you wouldn’t even consider it, would you?”

  Dozens of the creatures rumble toward us, their gaits wild and unsteady. One clips its enormous left leg against its normal-sized right one and sprawls to the stones. The other demons stampede over their fallen comrade, smashing its nodding head into the cobblestones with their grotesque feet.

  “Every other gate we passed was open,” I say. “Every other gate! And you blame me for this?”

  “No, of course not, Edward,” she replies. “It must be John of Gaunt’s fault!”

  I can hear the hysteria in her voice, so I forgive her the sarcasm. A winding rattle cuts through the demon howls. Tristan is cranking the windlass in the gatehouse. I glance back. The portcullis is rising too slowly. We do not have enough time.

  “They’re coming!” Belisencia stands in the wagon and points to the lunging horde of disfigured creatures, as if I cannot see them. “Edward, they’re coming!”

  I step over the back edge of the wagon with one leg and lower myself gingerly onto the bridge. My skin burns with fever. I do not know if my legs will hold my weight for long. I draw Saint Giles’s sword, staggering as I do.

  Perhaps she is right. Perhaps we could have found a ford or another bridge and come back to the city, as Tristan suggested. In my haste I have put her life in danger, and that of Tristan’s.

  Mea maxima culpa.

  Saint Giles’s sword feels heavy in my hand—a steel anchor, made ponderous by the lives it has taken. I have sinned more times than I could ever account for. Sins that span six countries. Sins that have left broken lives and broken families in my wake. Sins that have shattered hearts and driven Christians from God. It would be far easier to count the commandments I have not broken than the ones I have.

  If each sin leaves a dark stain, then my soul must be black as a hanged man’s tongue. Can it get darker? I do not know if I can bear the weight of Tristan’s and Belisencia’s deaths.

  Woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.

  And woe to him who is pulled down while trying to lift his friend up.

  The first of the demons is twenty paces away. They have reached the bridge and stampede toward us in lopsided fury. The chains continue to rattle as Tristan winds the windlass. A foot of space is visible beneath the teeth of the portcullis.

  I glance at Belisencia. I can see the tremble in her shoulders, but the fear does not stop her from hopping down from the cart.

  “Get back in the wagon!” I shout.

  She shakes her head. “If those are demons, then we are in purgatory,” she says. “And if we are in purgatory, then Hugh the Baptist was right.” She takes the cross from her neck. “And if Hugh the Baptist was right, then God has a special purpose for me.”

  “Get back in the wagon, you stubborn cow.” I hold my trembling sword in both hands and straighten my arms. The first demon has a copper bell around its neck, and bloody bandages around its hands. I aim the tip of my blade at the monster’s right eye, which is as large as the mouth of a tankard. And Belisencia steps in front of me.

  “No!” I drop Saint Giles’s sword to the stones and grab her shoulders, but even as I pull at her the demon lunges.

  And it recoils from her.

  I stop moving and gape. Belisencia holds the cross out toward the advancing horde, but the first row of creatures shriek and fall back, like summer wheat rippling from a gale. They howl and collide against the next row of clomping monsters. The bloated creatures in the first two ranks stumble and fall over one another, creating a dam of writhing, white-cloaked flesh.

  I pick up my sword and hack at them as they try to stand, glancing back at Belisencia. She gives me a look of unbridled self-righteousness an instant before a keg-faced demon slips past me and knocks her to the cold stones. I leap to her side, stumbling as I do.

  The demon roars and opens a mouth so cavernous that you could thrust a dagger into it sideways. The brown teeth are broken and jagged. The creature lunges at Belisencia’s face but I jam my sword into the demon’s mouth before it can reach her. The fiend gurgles as the tip of the blade breaks through the back of its skull. But it does not die.

  The fiends on the bridge are disentangling themselves. One throws its body at me. My sword is trapped in the skull of another, so I raise an arm against the hurtling flesh. The weight of the swollen demon knocks me backward. I leave Saint Giles’s sword in the mouth of the other demon.

  Belisencia screams. “Shut the gates!”

  Shut the gates? Is she mad?

  I gather a dram of strength and throw the monster off me, glance back toward the gate.

  Belisencia is back on the wagon. She faces the gatehouse and is bent almost double with her screams. “Tristan! Shut the gates!”

  I look past her, toward the rising gates, and my dram of strength fades. Exhaustion returns like a black tide.

  Woe to Tristan and Belisencia. Woe to Elizabeth.

  I see more white cloaks outside the gate. How many, I cannot tell. What I can tell is that we are surrounded. Demons on either side.

  Chapter 40

  I look away from the portcullis and kick at the fiends advancing on this side of the gate. They fall upon me with their ungainly weight. Pin me to the stones and pull at the plates of my armor. They are clever chickens, these demons. They know they cannot hurt me until my armor is off.

  Two of them pull at my helm with both hands. The strap at my chin bites into my flesh. My sword is still trapped in the head of a demon. I cannot find the weapon. I flail with my hand, striking a swollen arm. It is like punching dough. The strap tightens against my chin and creaks. Either the rivet holding it to my helm will break or my jaw will. I strike at the demons with my hands, pull at them, scratch at their flesh with my gauntlets.

  More and more of them tug at my armor. I kick a gourd-nosed monster in the face three times, crushing cartilage and tearing flesh, but it continues to pry at the greave on my left shin. The greave snaps off and the creature falls backward holding it in two misshapen hands. I swing wildly at another demon with my fist. It is a good blow. An astounding blow. So powerful that it causes the monster’s head to explode in a cloud of blood and bone and flesh.

  I made a demon’s head explode.

  I look at my gauntlet. There is no blood on it. I look back up at the creature as it falls sideways. A man in rusted chain mail stands beside me. I did not make a demon’
s head explode. He did.

  The man swings something heavy and black and another demon head erupts. The pressure on my helm ceases. I glance back at the portcullis. It is up at about waist height. The demons outside make no attempt to enter.

  “Get up!” The man in the rusted mail holds a flail. His entire body lurches as he swings the spiked ball in a slow, wooshing circle. I roll onto my side and struggle to rise. “Get up!”

  I get up and steady myself against the wagon. The creatures on the outside of the city gate still do not approach. There are only a few of them and they stand motionless, watching. But these look different from the ones inside the city. Thinner. Their bodies proportioned correctly.

  I glance back at the man in the chain mail. He is even taller than I am, his shoulders like curtain walls. He stands less than a pace away from me. The flail carves a deadly arc. One of the demons launches itself at him but the spiked ball catches it in midair. The fiend drops to the ground in a cloud of blood as the warrior spins away. But more approach.

  Belisencia leans over the back edge of the cart and reaches past me with her cross. “In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis!” she shouts. The demons back away, hissing, but approach again warily. Whatever power she has over them seems to be fading.

  “In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis!” Belisencia shouts. “In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis! In nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis!”

  “Isn’t there more to that?” the man in the chain mail calls.

  “It’s all I know!” she shouts back.

  He swings the flail, grazing one of the monsters on its log-sized chin. “What kind of nun are you?”

  Tristan bounds out of the gatehouse and leaps toward the driver’s box. He does not lift his foot high enough and it catches on the edge of the platform, sending him clattering off the cart and onto the bridge. “Gate’s up!” he shouts from his knees.

  A demon crawls away from Belisencia. I see a flash of steel in its mouth. My sword.

  “There you are,” I mutter.

  I step forward and take the hilt as the others advance. The man in the chain mail puts a foot on the creature’s back and I pull the sword free.

  Tristan calls from the driver’s box. “I’d like to leave Norwich now, please.”

  “Into the cart!” I shout. The world seems to sway, as if I am on the deck of a lurching ship. I scramble for purchase but cannot lift myself. Belisencia yanks at the back of my bevor.

  “Help him!” she shouts.

  Strong arms shove me into the wagon bed. The man in the chain mail swings the flail in a vicious arc, cracking the skull of an advancing demon, then he leaps into the wagon. He curses as a three-fingered hand grabs his leg and pulls him backward. I break all three of the fingers with my hands and punch at another creature trying to board the cart. The man drags his leg into the wagon bed and spins back to face the horde. The horses pull and the cart lurches forward with a happy chime.

  Belisencia looks at the warrior beside us and gasps. “You’ve been bitten!”

  He lashes the spiked ball with a grunt, skimming the top of a demon’s tuberous head and sending a shower of blood into the Wensum. I see torn flesh on the man’s bare hand. He has indeed been bitten.

  The cart passes under the portcullis. Demons clutch at us, then stop abruptly. They do not pursue us past the gate.

  The white-robed figures outside do not appear to be demons. Not hostile ones anyway. There are only three of them, and they follow behind the cart, a dozen paces back.

  My eyes sting with the hot tears of fever. I close them. “That bite,” I say to the man at my side. “You’ll plague.”

  He shakes his head. “Any of you would plague with this bite,” he says. “But not me.”

  “And why is that?” Belisencia asks.

  The man slumps beside me as we leave the city. I look through the Bishop’s Gate, back into Norwich. The demons roar from inside the city. They leap and raise their clawed, nightmare hands into the air, but they do not follow.

  “I won’t plague,” the man says, “because I’m already dead. I died five years ago.”

  Chapter 41

  The horses snort and fight the bridle. They want to run. They want to flee Norwich as quickly as they can. I understand. I, too, want to put the city behind me. But I know I will not. Not ever. The things I saw in that place will haunt my dreams. The stub-fingered hands will lash at my face. The bloated, misshapen faces—detritus from a butcher’s block—will appear from darkness and shriek. I will run from them forever, but in my dreams they will always be faster.

  I look at Belisencia. She held off the demons. They recoiled from her as if she were the Archangel. She sees me looking and stares down at the cross on her neck, then glances at me. She fidgets with the hem of her robe and looks back at Norwich.

  Tristan shortens the reins, makes the horses walk. The metals chime once more and one of the white-robed, bandaged creatures limping beside the cart rings a handbell in response. They are not demons, these poor souls that walk beside us. They are lepers.

  The man in the chain mail stares into the city. His face could be carved from granite for all the emotion he displays. He is a powerful man. The chain links of his armor strain when his muscles tense. His arms are like sea serpents that have swallowed a quarry of stones; they bulge with muscles that I did not know men had. He is the healthiest dead man I have ever seen. Belisencia notices too.

  “You were magnificent in there,” she says.

  Tristan’s helmeted head turns back to look at us.

  “Who are you?” I ask. “Where did you come from? And why are lepers following us?”

  The man looks away from the city, studies me. “You plagued?”

  “No.” I take my gauntlet off and wipe the sweat from my forehead. “I can’t get the plague, either.”

  The man’s eyes narrow. “Why not?”

  “Because God needs me to heal one of his angels.”

  His hand brushes the pommel of a thick dagger at his belt and he asks again. “Are you plagued?”

  Tristan stops the horses and stands on the driver’s box, fingers touching his own dagger. “He’s dead too,” he says. “We are all dead and this is purgatory. Didn’t you see those men in the city? Swollen heads are one of the signs of Judgment Day. I saw it in a tapestry, so it must be true.”

  The man stands, his eyes nearly even with Tristan’s despite the eight-inch drop from driver’s box to wagon bed. “You’d’ve been dead, that’s clear,” he replies. “If we hadn’t followed you up here to Norwich and saved you. I see you’re too full with emotion to thank me proper.”

  “I’m not plagued,” I say.

  “Then why the fever?”

  “He’s afflicted by the House of Gemini,” Tristan says. “And judging by the symptoms, you’ve got a serious inflammation of your self-worth. We were almost out of there when you appeared.”

  Belisencia taps the man on his mailed shoulder and curtsies when he glances back. “Thank you for saving our lives.”

  “Saving our lives?” Tristan laughs. “We had the gate up already. He’s one of those men who runs forward after the battle and puts his foot on the carcass.”

  The man turns back to Tristan. “It would have been your carcass.” His thumb brushes the dagger’s grip. “Still might.”

  “I can see why you’re dead. I’d have killed you too.” Tristan unstraps his great helm and tosses it into the wagon bed, at the man’s feet. “Still might.”

  I stand with a groan. “Yes, why don’t the two of you kill each other and save the demons the trouble? Don’t you think we have enough enemies without picking fights with each other?” I spit over the side of the cart and fix both of them with a stare. “Is this what we’ve become?”

  Tristan shrugs. “I was like this already.”

  “All I need to know is why you’re sick,” the man says. “You’re sweating too heavy for just that fight, and you can barely hold your feet. If you ain’t plagued, then wh
y the fever?”

  I show him my wrist. “Because doctors are useless.”

  He studies the wound. “That weren’t a bite?”

  “No.” I point to him with my chin. “Now, tell me about your death.”

  Chapter 42

  He tells us that his name is Praeteritus. My Latin was never good, but I think it means “forgotten,” and I am certain it is not his real name. I am also certain that someone gave him the name, because he is not the sort of man who would know Latin. His accent and phrasing mark him as Suffolk peasantry, so deeply rooted in farms that I can almost smell the loam on his breath.

  “What sort of ridiculous name is Praeteritus?” Tristan says. “Sounds like a monk sneezing. You look more like a Ralf.”

  “What was it that killed you?” I ask.

  “The plague,” Praeteritus says, then he shakes his head when I try to speak. “Not this plague. The other one. The Black Death. There are still pockets of it left around, you know.”

  “If that one was black,” Tristan says, “then what color is this one, Ralf?”

  “Red,” I reply.

  I was a child during the Black Death. The disease spared me and most of my family, but it withered England. It crept through every corner of my kingdom, spreading rot and boils, and killing so many that entire villages ceased to exist. Bodies were rolled into great pits and buried in lye, or set aflame like some Old Testament offering. My father told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to England.

  But this sickness is far worse. Entire villages still disappear, but neither lye nor flame will give proper rest to the victims of the Red Plague. This plague does not wither England; it rips the kingdom into a thousand bloody pieces and swallows them all.

  “I got sick from the Black Death five years ago,” Praeteritus says. “And it killed me.”

  The old plague still creeps through the land, still claims victims, but not very often.

  “I realize you serf stock aren’t given much in the way of learning, Ralf,” Tristan says, “but I think you missed an important lesson about the results of death.”