Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

“It’s a demon,” the guard says. “They got a demon locked up in here.”

  But it is not a demon. The torchlight glitters off a chain on the floor. Someone has bound the creature to the wall, and I suddenly understand who this poor soul was.

  The guard sconces the torch and draws his dagger. He aims the pommel of the dagger at the door and lifts his fist to pound on the oak. “I ain’t gonna be killed by no demon.”

  “No,” I say. I raise the dagger in my bound hands, fight through a twinge of guilt, and plunge it through the back of his neck. “You ain’t.”

  He tries to turn but I hold the dagger tightly as he gurgles and spasms.

  The woman’s voice rings out from the dark. “I will care for you always.”

  More mad laughter.

  I lower the dead guard to the floor of the room. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m so terribly sorry.”

  “What is that thing?” Tristan gestures toward the darkness with his bound hands.

  “It’s the alchemist’s failure.” I nod toward the darkness and borrow the alchemist’s words. “The other was not successful.”

  I wipe the blade on the guard’s trousers and tuck the dagger into my boot. “Gerald will want his horse seen to,” I say. “Hopefully, he’ll drink something. Maybe eat before he deals with us.” It is wishful thinking. Gerald’s hatred of us will keep us foremost in his mind. While we live, we are an itch in his mind. And I do not think he will wait long to scratch.

  I aim the torch toward the left side of the room. The cylindrical object I saw before looks like a well. I step forward and realize with dread what it is.

  “God’s Boils,” I say.

  “What?” Tristan asks.

  “What’s the second most common way for an army to breach a fortification?”

  He steps forward and looks. “No, no, no, no, no.” He shakes his head. “I think I’ll let Sir Gerald have me.”

  It is a cesspit. The place where all the garderobes in the tower empty into. We must wade through the cesspit and climb a shit-covered, piss-soaked shaft to freedom.

  I lower myself down into the cesspit. It is like climbing into a giant intestine. The filth reaches my stomach. A deep swamp of human excrement. I take two steps and gag, then vomit.

  “Lovely,” Tristan says. “Shit, piss, and your vomit.”

  The creature behind us cackles.

  I wipe at my mouth with a sleeve. “Someone finally finds you funny,” I say.

  Chains rattle and clink as they go taut again and again. The creature is struggling against its bonds.

  I hear Tristan gagging behind me, but I do not have the will to look back and gloat. I reach the stone shaft that leads up to the various floors of the tower and pull myself into it. The shaft is wide enough for me to brace my knees against one wall and my back against the other. Square niches pierce the shaft at intervals, putlock holes used by the builders to support scaffolds. To climb, I simply have to shove with my knees so that my shoulders slide upward along the wall. I then place my bound hands in a putlock hole and pull my knees upward until they are bent again. I am a human inchworm. My shoulders push through the feces as I glide upward, like a plough through a muddy field.

  I vomit again as I climb. My eyes water, but still I climb. I hear Tristan pull himself into the shaft.

  “I’m…sorry about Belisencia,” I say, trying to think of something other than what we are doing. “I had no idea.”

  He does not respond immediately. Only the sounds of our shuffling climb interrupt the silence, the moist scrape of bodies through feces-caked walls. I know now what a turd’s journey through the body feels like. And smells like.

  “I’m glad she’s married,” he says. “It’ll be easier to get rid of her.”

  Something drips onto my cheek just below my eye. I am not certain if it is liquid or solid, and I do not want to know.

  “You don’t mean that,” I say.

  The shaft splits at an angle away from me. The alchemist said to get to the top. Of course he did. It is not him climbing through four stories of shit. I continue inching my way up through the main shaft.

  “No,” Tristan says. “I don’t mean it.” His sigh echoes in the tunnel. “How could I have gotten involved with her? She’s been nothing but trouble since the start.”

  Down below the chain rings over and over, faster and faster, as the creature yanks against it. I brace a foot against the angled shaft and push as hard as I can, until my back begins to rise along the lubricated wall. A thought rises in my head and I chuckle.

  “What?” Tristan calls.

  “Belisencia,” I say. “She’s John of Gaunt’s fault.”

  Tristan chuckles, then laughs, and I laugh with him. Our laughter rings loudly in the tunnel, so we stifle it as best we can. Tristan’s snorts echo.

  “I’m sure there’s more to her marriage than we imagine,” I say. I fought for John of Gaunt once, but he became my enemy years later, when his avarice and hunger for power turned him into a monster. He has many children. I have heard of Elizabeth of Lancaster but I know little about her. And even less about John Hastings, who apparently is her husband.

  My foot slips in the branching shaft and I have to brace myself with my hands to keep from becoming wedged in the tunnel. “God’s Teeth!”

  “If you fall on me with your shit-stained bum and send me into that cesspit below, Edward, I swear our friendship will be over.”

  I take hold of a putlock hole and pull with all my strength. “Your loss,” I say. “‘Woe to him that is alone when he falls into the cesspit and has not another to lift him out of the shit.’”

  We laugh again, quietly, and for the next two floors our giggles intersperse our groans.

  A jingling crack sounds from far below. Then the sound of a dragging chain.

  “Edward?”

  “Just keep climbing.”

  My nose stings with the stench of this place. I wipe at it and manage only to smear feces across my face. Tristan vomits again.

  “At least…at least if we are caught again,” Tristan says, “I won’t mind so much being pissed on by Sir Gerald and his new friend.”

  We pass a second branching. Two more floors to go. I lean forward and brush at my back, dislodging the mound of tepid shit that has accumulated across my shoulders.

  “Oi!” Tristan calls. “Oi! What’s wrong with you?”

  “Sorry.” I try not to laugh as I continue my climb.

  I chuckle again as I push myself upward, then cough as the acrid fumes of the tunnel fill my lungs. Light shines faintly from above. I say a prayer to Saint Giles; when navigating a tunnel of shit, you can only really pray to the patron saint of the insane.

  “The alchemist should really see a doctor,” Tristan says. “Urgently.”

  Something hisses below us. Then the sound of nails on stone and faint grunts.

  “Edward, I can’t look down in this position!” Tristan’s words come out fast and loud.

  “I’m fairly certain you don’t want to,” I say. “Keep climbing. She’ll never catch us.”

  A woman’s voice calls up, resonant in the shaft. “I love you.”

  “I get that a lot,” Tristan calls down. “I like you, I do. You’re a lovely…thing. Someday you’ll make some…other thing…a lovely wife. But I prefer my women to have a certain bit of…well…sanity, really. And eyes. And maybe a touch more hair. Does that make me shallow and tedious?” His words tumble from him swiftly and I know he is on the edge of hysteria.

  The scraping nails grow closer. The grunts grow louder. How can she be gaining on us?

  “Edward, move faster!” Tristan’s hand shoves at my legs. “Why am I always on the bottom?”

  The light above us grows closer. I squirm upward, rocking back and forth, hearing the wet sounds of my progress and Tristan’s labored breathing down below. The glow becomes a circle of light. The top of the garderobe. I wedge my fingers in a putlock hole and drag my knees upward. The worst physical exper
ience I have ever had is almost over.

  “We’re almost there, Tristan.”

  “So soon?” he replies, but his voice is tinged with fear.

  Something growls from below us. Then a voice so sweet that I can’t imagine it came from the same throat. “May I suck the juice from your eyes?”

  A voice calls down from above. “Hello?” The word echoes in the garderobe shaft. Tristan and I stop moving. The voice sounds again, but much fainter. “Sounded…someone there…” I hear the murmur of another voice but cannot make out any of the words.

  I continue to climb as quietly as I can, not certain whether the voices are friend or foe. The first voice rings out again, louder. “Hurry up. I want to watch King Gerald piss on those knights. I’m going to squat. You’d best be done when I am.”

  Foe, then. I use both hands to pull the dagger from my boot. The circle of light is blotted out and I know I must act.

  Immediately.

  I wriggle upward, take a breath, and sheathe the dagger in the arse above me. It is not a plaguer scream that rings out, although it is similar in volume and passion. When a man sees a plaguer, he screams from the soul. But when a man has a dagger shoved into his arsehole, he screams from somewhere else entirely.

  The dagger is pulled from my grasp. Light returns to the shaft. I jam my toe into a putlock hole and push with all the strength I have. A thick slab of wood with a hole cut from it is the only thing separating me from clean air. I brace my back against the wall and pound with my fists until I dislodge it, then hook my elbows over the stone ledge and pull myself upward. I brace myself for an attack, but none comes. The alchemist kneels with his back to me in the center of his workshop. The man I stabbed lies on his stomach and groans.

  “I could use some assistance,” I say.

  “That is out of the question,” he replies. “You are covered in filth. There is a tub and two buckets of water just outside the necessarium. Use them and stay there. Do not step into my workshop until I am done here.”

  I claw my way out of the shaft, groaning and straining with the effort. Clumps of wet shit splat onto the floor beside me as I bend low and hold out a hand to Tristan. He takes the hand and scrambles out, then peers into the hole. “I felt her hand on me, Edward! I kicked at her and I think she fell back to the bottom.” He places the slab of wood back over the shaft opening and looks at the alchemist. “Did he just call this privy a necessarium? My grandmother calls it that.” He brushes feces from his clothes. “What are you doing with that man? You’re not buggering him, are you? A priest once told me that buggery is the cause of this plague.”

  “I’m not buggering him,” the alchemist replies calmly. “Your friend stabbed him in the anus. A filthy canal. The wound must be treated at once.”

  “You don’t have to talk to me about filthy canals,” Tristan responds. He peers warily into the garderobe.

  “You stabbed me in the…the anus!” the man whimpers. “You’re a bastard and a knave! In my filthy canal!”

  I strip my fouled clothes off and step into the small wooden tub just outside the garderobe.

  “If I do not treat him, the wound will fester and rot,” the alchemist says.

  “You are treating one of Sir Gerald’s men,” I say.

  “I am treating a human,” he replies. “Are the plaguers not enemies enough? Must you fight each other, too?”

  I squat down in the tub and pour one of the buckets of water over my head. The alchemist is right, of course. I spoke similar words to Tristan and Praeteritus not long ago. Humans should look after each other now. It is difficult to remember that when one particular human wants to strip your flesh and piss upon your pulp.

  Chapter 54

  We wait, wrapped in wool blankets and still smelling of shit, as the alchemist finishes salving the guard. “Wash the area thoroughly after each bowel movement and apply this ointment,” says the alchemist as we tie the man’s hands with cord.

  “So what happens now?” I say.

  “Sir Gerald is touring the wine cellars at the moment,” the alchemist replies. “I told him there was something of great interest to him there. Something he had to see immediately.”

  “What is it?” I ask.

  “There is nothing of great interest down there,” he says. “My man will show him a vintage of wine made in Thunresleam. I doubt Sir Gerald will be very impressed by it, but it has given us time.”

  He motions us to his workbench and lifts the lid off a large glass bottle. “Pull your hands apart as far as you can.”

  I pull my hands until the chain between them is taut. The alchemist tilts the bottle over the links and a few drops of liquid fall from it. The drops sizzle and smoke when they touch the metal chain. He tilts the bottle again and a few more drops fall free. More smoke rises from the chain. One of the links falls, ringing across the floor, and then I am free.

  “What is that?” I ask.

  “A very powerful acid.” He frees Tristan in the same way, then seals the bottle. He takes an even larger bottle from his desk and gives it to me. The bottle is empty. “You can collect the dragon blood in this.”

  “He’ll know you did it,” I say. “Gerald will know you set us free.”

  The alchemist hands us our cannons, my sword, and our shoulder sacks. “You will strike me once in the face to give evidence to the fact that I did no such thing,” he says. “And this noble creature that you stabbed in the anus will vouch that you overpowered the two of us.”

  “Why will he do that?” Tristan asks.

  “Because that wound you gave him will take a long time to heal. It is a tricky wound in a filthy place, so it might never heal. If he wants my best care and a chance at recovery, I think it only fair he assist me. I might even spare some Malta fungus if he is convincing.”

  “Malta fungus?” asks the guard.

  “It’s not really fungus,” Tristan whispers to him.

  The alchemist lifts two folded brown robes from a chair and hands one to me. “I apologize. I could not bring your armor without attracting suspicion. You must let God be your armor now.”

  I take a robe and look at the alchemist. “That woman in the cellar,” I say. “She was the second test subject, wasn’t she?”

  He clears his throat and uses the hem of Tristan’s robe to wipe a fallen chunk of feces from the floor. “Yes.” He hands the robe to Tristan, his lips drawn tightly. “She was.” He closes his eyes and makes the sign of the cross.

  “You loved her?” I ask.

  Tristan scowls as he takes the robe, examines the soiled hem.

  “I, too, know what it is like to lose a wife, Sir Edward.” He looks into my eyes and lets out a long, ragged breath. “I will help your Elizabeth. Whether the dragon blood works or not. I promise I will help.” There is something in his eyes, a message for me that I do not understand. He quotes scripture: “‘Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.’ I will heal your wife, Sir Edward.”

  I stare at him for a long moment, and he back at me. He clears his throat and turns away. “Go to the docks one at a time, and board the cog. I have men waiting to take you wherever you wish to go.”

  I put a hand on the alchemist’s shoulder. “You are the best man I have met on my travels, Dominic. I grieve for your wife.”

  He nods, his eyes growing glassy, and clears his throat again. “Where is it you will go?”

  “South,” I reply. “We have a dragon to slay.”

  Tristan thrusts his robe toward me. “Edward, would you mind terribly if we traded?”

  We leave the tower and walk halfway down the stairs before I realize that I forgot to hit the alchemist. I return to his chamber and push open the door, only to find him on his hands and knees at the base of the wall that holds the window. The guard is still on his stomach, head toward the workbench, eyes closed.

  I enter the chamber. The alchemist jerks upright at my footsteps and stands abruptly. His body is taut as a strung bo
w. “What…what is it?”

  “Is everything well?” I scan the room for any danger.

  The alchemist glances back at the floor just beneath the window, and the tension drains from his shoulders. “Just a little preservation. Rain sweeps in from the window sometimes and mold grows along the floor. I cannot tolerate filth in my workspace. I must scrub it away. All of it. Do you understand? I will abide no dirt or disorder.”

  I look at the floor. It is perfectly clean. I look back at the alchemist. There is something damaged about him. Some species of the third plague courses through his veins and affects his thoughts. But in these dark times I suppose all of us suffer some sort of madness.

  “I’m afraid I have to bring a bit off disorder to your face,” I say.

  “Oh.” He touches his cheek. “I had forgotten. Good of you to remember.”

  He walks toward me and I hit him before he expects the blow. He falls backward with a grunt and nods, touches his cheek again, and winces.

  No one finds anything strange about two cowled monks in a monastery. We slip past armored men like two ghosts. Two of Sir Brian’s guards linger by the docks, but they run past us as the first shouts go up from the church. Daniel, the man who was cured of plague, waits for us in the cog. He looks in the direction of the shouts and shakes his head. “Someone’s about to get very angry.”

  Tristan and I leap into the ship. A charcoal fire burns in a clay pot that has been lashed to the mast, probably to light the cloth-covered rails that surround the hull.

  “Put your blade to my back,” Daniel whispers. I draw Saint Giles’s sword and touch the tip to Daniel’s back.

  “Head toward Norwich,” I say.

  “We can’t leave Belisencia,” Tristan says.

  “We don’t have a choice,” I say. “We’ll come back for her.”

  “Sir Gerald won’t be happy,” he replies. “He’ll torture her.”

  “Not a chance,” I say. “She’s King Richard’s cousin and she’s married to Sir Brian’s brother. Even if Gerald dares to cross Richard, he won’t cross his new ally.” I shrug. “The worst they’ll do is piss on her symbolically.”