Six servants at the oars paddle against the current, pulling the cog forward slowly. Daniel and another servant unfurl the square sail. Figures approach the abbey from the south. Maybe ten of them. Lurching slowly through the swamps. More and more plaguers are being drawn to St. Benet’s.
We drift downstream along the river, following the winding waterway through Norfolk. After a time Daniel anchors the boat and tells us that we are two miles northeast of Norwich.
“How long will you be?” he asks.
“Four or five hours at most,” I say.
“I’ll wait until dusk,” he replies. “I can’t stay any longer than that. We can only light the ship’s rails on fire once, and there are plaguers in these waters.”
We drop down from the boat into waist-deep water and wade through reeds and cowbane and onto the shore. We strip and bathe in the river to wash away the remnants of our journey through the garderobe.
“So why are we here?” Tristan asks. “Why not go straight to Bure?”
I tug his robe. “God is our armor,” I say. “But a suit of chain mail never hurts.”
Chapter 55
Praeteritus and his lepers live within the crumbling flint walls of an old Roman fortress in Caistor St. Edmund. Soiled tents and crude wooden huts fill the spaces inside the walls. It looks more like a siege encampment than a home. Lepers sit around fires or walk the tent village in their white robes.
“There are better places to live,” I say. “Abandoned homes everywhere.”
Praeteritus shrugs. “Abandoned homes don’t have curtain walls.” He touches the flint wall as he walks. “Besides, this place was Roman once. I like the Romans.”
A beautiful sound rises from behind us. Voices. Dozens of voices. A choir of lepers stands near one of the walls, singing a hymn. Another leper stands with his back to me, guiding their voices. I have heard many choirs in my days. Some of the finest choirs ever assembled. But I am ambushed by the song of these poor, cursed people in this desolate and filthy camp. An ache resonates somewhere deep inside me. A sorrow for our race. I hear the voice of God in their song.
Praeteritus takes us to one of the wooden huts and pushes through the linen curtain that serves as a door. “Sit,” he says, motioning toward a trestle table that is little more than a board on stone blocks, and four chairs cut from logs. He rummages through a chest and returns with something in his hand. “Have a look at that.” He places two metal disks on the table.
They are ancient coins. On the front of the first coin is the profile of a man wearing an ivy wreath on his head.
“That’s a Roman on there,” he says. “A real Roman.”
I look carefully. There are faded words on the perimeter of the coin. I recognize one of the words. “Caesar.”
Tristan reads one of the other words. “Nero.” He glances up. “He was a king of Rome once.”
“Was he the one who crossed the River Rubicon?” I ask.
“No, that was a different one. This one was a musician, I think.”
“A musician-king?” Praeteritus asks.
“A fiddler, I think,” Tristan says. “I’m not certain.”
The second coin bears another Roman. This one wears a helmet with a great crest upon it. The words on this coin are unreadable. Praeteritus walks back to the chest and draws a helmet from it. It is a Roman helmet, and it bears a similar crest to the one on the coin, except it uses white feathers instead of horsehair. I have seen ancient helmets before, but none in such good condition.
“I found this buried. Right here, in Caistor, when we tried to dig ditches to make the fortress stronger. This helmet was in a tomb for a Roman solider. Maybe it belonged to the man on the coin.” He holds it up and turns it in the light. “I’ve spent days polishing it. And I put pigeon feathers in the crest. Not sure what they used to use.”
“They used horsehair,” I say. “But it looks fine with feathers.”
“Horsehair? How’d they get the hairs to stick up?”
I shrug. “Some Roman trick, I suppose.”
“Interesting people, the Romans,” Praeteritus says. “They built things—amazing things. They conquered everything. They could make hair stand straight. And their kings were musicians.” He shakes his head. “Where’d they go? What happened to them? No one can tell me where they went to.”
“They went home,” Tristan replies. “They went home to fiddle and make helmets.”
Praeteritus stands and draws the curtain aside. He looks out at his empire of lepers and sighs. “Home.” He gazes out for a time, then returns and sets the helmet on the table. “You said you needed help.”
“We hoped you might have some armor we could borrow,” I say. “And perhaps a sword.”
“Preferably ones made less than five hundred years ago,” Tristan adds.
Praeteritus looks at our robes. “You lose your armor and weapons?”
“We know where they are,” I reply. “So they’re not truly lost.”
“You only want to borrow some?” he asks.
I nod. “We’ll return them tomorrow.”
He leans back in the log chair and crosses his arms. “Lending armor is like lending a ship. You don’t never know if you’ll get it back, do you?”
“You’ll get it back,” I say. “We have a small task that would be easier to accomplish with armor.”
“Sounds interesting. What kind of task?”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell—”
“We’re going to slay a dragon,” Tristan blurts. “We’re going to be famous, Edward and I.”
Praeteritus finds us two coats of leather brigandine, an old bascinet helm, and a rusted sword. But he will only lend them to us if we allow him to accompany us.
“I ain’t never seen a dragon before,” he says.
“We’d be glad for your company,” I say.
“But keep your distance,” Tristan says. “We found the dragon. We will slay it. It belongs to us. You understand that, leper king?”
“I understand that you’ll likely need me to save you again,” he replies. “But I just want to see it. Dragons are like Romans, ain’t they? They were here once. Strong and everywhere. And now they’re gone. They’re just ghosts.”
“Yes,” Tristan replies. “And like the Romans, this dragon will make your hair stand up straight. So stay back and let us deal with it.”
Tristan and I walk back to the ship in our new armor. Praeteritus wears the Roman helmet with its pigeon-feather crest and his chain-mail hauberk. He carries a spear in his hand, a shield on his back, and a short sword at his side. In the fading light he looks strange and imposing.
Daniel takes us eastward, toward the coast, tacking along the maze of small waterways until we reach the North Sea. We sail along the Norfolk coast for a time, crossing into Suffolk sometime in the early evening. A bright moon hangs in the sky and paints a band of rippling white upon the sea. Daniel moors the ship in a cove near a village that he names as Lowestoft and we sleep huddled on the deck.
We continue early the next morning, pushing slowly through a thick mist until the sun burns our way clear. A few hours into the day, Daniel points to what looks like a bay.
“Estuary of the River Stour,” he says. He takes us into the gaping estuary and we wind through the narrowing river until it becomes too small for the boat to go any farther. “Won’t be but three miles or so from here,” Daniels says. “I’ll moor out in the estuary and come back tomorrow morning, if that’s enough time.”
I borrow a coil of rope and thank him as we hop down into the river. The water is chest high, so we hold our weapons and armor over our heads and wade through reed and nettles and onto shore. I point toward the west. “Our dragon awaits.”
The last time we came to Bure, it was from the west. This time we come from the east, which is for the best. We will not have to enter the village to get to the dragon’s cave. We spot two or three outcroppings of stone that look similar before we finally reach the jut of massive
boulders that Tristan and I scaled. The cave mouth remains sealed.
“That’s it,” I say.
Praeteritus squints toward the cave, then looks at me, the pigeon feathers quivering on his helm. “That? That’s the dragon’s lair? What sort of tiny dragon did you fight?”
“Tiny?” Tristan scoffs. “That thing will shake you about like a straw doll. It can swallow half of you with one bite.”
Praeteritus shrugs. “I suppose it don’t matter how big it is. Fire breath can kill, no matter the size of the dragon.”
Tristan and I exchange glances. “It…we don’t think it can breathe fire,” I say.
Praeteritus laughs and stands straight. “What’s wrong with you? You’re knights. You can’t kill a tiny dragon that don’t breathe fire?”
Tristan leans in toward the tall warrior. “Just wait till you see it, leper king. You’ll run screaming, you will.”
“Course,” Praeteritus replies with a smirk. “I’ll run screaming from that little chameleon.”
We pull the stones away one by one, pausing each time to look and listen. When only one large stone remains, I tell Praeteritus to wait upstream, towards the village.
“You’ll be able to see the dragon from the shore there,” I say. “And still be out of harm’s way.”
He wades the waist-deep water reluctantly and climbs the far bank of the river. “Shout if you need me,” he calls.
“We won’t,” Tristan replies. “Just stay there, pigeon king.”
Tristan and I take hold of the last stone and roll it away from the cave and into the river, then we scramble back as far as we can and draw our cannons. Tristan lights a firing cord while I watch for the beast.
“It doesn’t seem fair,” I say. “Killing it with a cannon.”
“Course it’s fair,” he replies. He curses because the flint has gotten wet and is not sparking well. “Saint Gilbert killed his with a bow and arrow.”
Tristan keeps striking at the flint. I throw small rocks into the cave until I see motion.
“Tristan.”
He glances up, nods, then continues to work the flint.
The creature glides forward slowly. It has no expression. It might as well be a statue slipping through the river. The rows of shining white teeth glimmer in the afternoon light.
“Tristan.”
“I know.” He keeps striking the flint. A few sparks fly from it, but not enough to light the cord.
The creature finds a submerged stone and props itself on it, so that much of its body is exposed.
“Tristan!”
A shower of sparks fly from the stone. “There!” he cries.
The cord ignites and Tristan uses it to light a second cord, which he hands to me.
We aim the cannons, lift the firing cords, and shout, “Hallelujah!”
The blasts from the guns are especially loud here by the river. My ear rings with the sound. Thick, white smoke swallows the dragon, and when it clears, there is no sign of the creature.
“Cack!” Tristan raises his head to the skies. “House of Gemini! We blew it into nothingness!”
A shriek of terror sounds from the far shore. I turn in time to see the dragon leap from the water, mouth agape, and lunge at Praeteritus. The tall warrior holds his spear out and topples backward. Man and beast fall to the shore in a writhing mass of scales and metal links, teeth and pigeon feathers. Praeteritus screams as I wade through the river toward them.
When I reach the far bank, the dragon has stopped moving. And so has Praeteritus. I look at the beast. There is no sign that our cannons hit it. Praeteritus’s spear is in the dragon’s mouth. Only two feet of the shaft protrudes from the massive jaws. The rest of the weapon is inside the beast, except for the spearhead, which juts out from the creature’s spine. The dragon impaled itself.
Praeteritus moans. I kick at the corpse, hoping to roll the body away, but the creature is too heavy. Tristan and I kneel and shove with all our strength until we get the top half of the beast off Praeteritus.
“Are you hurt?” I ask.
He peers up at me, blood on his face, his eyes wide. “Is…is it dead?”
“It’s dead,” I say.
“It leaped at me. It would’ve had me if you didn’t kill it.”
“I didn’t kill it,” I say. “You did.”
It should not upset me so much that Tristan and I did not kill it. The dragon is dead. We have its blood. And yet there is a great sadness inside me. Every priest dreams of sainthood. Every merchant dreams of riches. And every knight, no matter how much he may deny it, dreams of slaying a dragon. It is in our blood.
“God’s bollocks!” Tristan shouts at Praeteritus. “I told you to stay away from it, didn’t I? Didn’t I?”
“I killed it?” Praeteritus sits up and kicks the dragon’s body off his leg.
I point my chin toward the spear. “You killed it.”
“You didn’t kill it,” Tristan says. “It leaped onto your spear because we frightened it so much. So, in actuality, it was our kill.”
“I killed it,” Praeteritus says with a chuckle.
“You planned this all along!” Tristan says. “You wanted to kill it! I ought to stab you in the filthy canal!”
“Praeteritus, Slayer of the Bure Dragon,” he says, smiling.
Tristan imitates the scream Praeteritus made before the dragon leaped, making it sound girlish, then he shakes his hands and mocks the man in a childlike voice. “Is…is it dead?”
Something rustles in the trees. I stand and draw my sword.
“A wonderful story for the ages that will be,” Tristan says. “The peasant boy so ugly that a dragon killed itself rather than—”
“Quiet!” I whisper. I scan the forest. Figures approach slowly. I remember the last time figures approached us in this forest. We only survived because the dragon scared off the endless mass of plaguers. I glance at the dead carcass next to us. We will get no such reprieve this time.
A voice calls out from the forest. “Who’s there?”
“Not a plaguer.” Tristan waves off the voice and turns to me. “I propose a new rule. We do not bring vulturous spectators when we are hunting dragons.”
A figure pushes through the branches of a hazel tree and peers at us from the north bank. It is Father Ralf, the priest of Bure. “What are you doing here?” he shouts.
I take hold of the spear shaft and lift it so the dragon’s head rises. “Renegotiating your pact,” I shout.
Other villagers appear at the river’s edge. The priest stumbles back at the sight of the dragon. He shakes his head vigorously. “That…that cannot be! I had a vision. A prophecy. No man alive can kill that beast!”
“Then it’s a good thing we brought him.” I point to Praeteritus. “He’s been dead for years.”
Chapter 56
I draw out the empty bottle that the alchemist gave me and wash it in the river. Tristan and Praeteritus tilt the dragon’s body sideways, and blood from its wound trickles down into the bottle. When I have as much blood as it will hold, I stopper the bottle and place it back into my shoulder sack.
We tie Daniel’s rope to the creature’s back legs and take turns dragging the massive corpse back toward Dedham. The blood in the creature will likely harden on our journey, but perhaps some will be left when we reach the abbey. The beast is heavy and is forever getting caught in among logs or stones or brambles. It is a long journey back.
It is night when we finally yank the dragon corpse into an abandoned fisherman’s hut along the Stour estuary and fall asleep sitting against one of the walls.
We spot the square sail of Daniel’s cog early the next morning and wave until he spots us from the prow. He waves back stiffly.
He leaps onto the dock and starts tying the mooring lines. “Your friends at the monastery have made things difficult for us.”
“Difficult in what way?”
He clears his throat. “I spoke with the captain of a hulk coming south from Norfolk
. He said he stopped at St. Benet’s to trade last night. They’re building a palisade along the riverbank where the docks are.”
“Covering their weak spot,” I say.
“He also said that they were slaughtering cows outside the monastery walls.”
“What a waste,” Tristan says.
But it is more than a waste. It is a strategy.
“Sir Gerald is summoning an army,” I say. “He’s a fool. Doesn’t he learn?”
Daniel nods. “There’s worse news.” He licks at his lips and takes an interest in the mooring lines. “They let Father Simon in.”
“Father Simon?” Tristan says. “The priest who led the mob?”
Daniel nods without looking at us. “Gerald wouldn’t let the mob in. Just the three priests.” He turns to face us, his nostrils flaring. “But how long will it take before the priests convince Sir Gerald to burn Dominic at the stake?”
“Not long, I would imagine.” I say. “Sir Gerald sees himself as a devout man. I am certain he has no love for the alchemist, and I have no doubt he could be persuaded to dispose of him. Especially if he had any suspicions that the alchemist helped us escape.
“We’re wasting time,” Tristan says. “We should get back to the monastery as quickly as we can.”
“And how will we get past the army of plaguers that will be waiting for us, Tristan?”
He rubs at his cheek. “We can…well…”
“How will we get into the monastery?” I ask.
“There must be…” he stares toward the estuary and thinks.
“How will we defeat forty armed-and-armored men?”
No one speaks for a long time. We would need at least fifty men to assault the monastery. Eighty would be better. And we would need armor and weapons for all of them. Cutting a path through plaguers is dangerous enough with a full harness. In brigandine, with exposed legs, arms, and hands, it would be suicide. And even if we did have our full kits, it would be pointless if we could not find a way into the abbey.
A wind gusts, and one of Praeteritus’s pigeon feathers comes free from his crest and hits me in the face. I turn to him, irked at the interruption, and am struck by a thought so powerful that I know I cannot take credit for it. It is divine intervention. I hear the voice of God.
Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) Page 28