Tristan folds his arms and tucks his hands beneath them. “Let’s get this wagon free.”
James nods, but hesitates. “You wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t know where Saint George’s shrine is, would you?”
James is an idiot. I glance at the pilgrims he leads and shake my head.
Men will follow anyone.
“William!” The pilgrim named Henry points again to the bullying woman in the cage. “She’s biting him! Simon’s song, she’s going to kill him!”
“She’s just gnawing, Henry,” William replies. “She’s doing no real harm.”
The old man with the big ears waves to get my attention. “Did you say there is a cure?”
“Yes,” I say. “We have seen it.”
The pilgrims whisper to one another, cast hopeful glances toward us. One, a tall man with wisps of black hair pasted to his forehead, calls out: “What kind of cure?”
Tristan and I glance at one another. This is where things will fall apart. God and science live in warring kingdoms.
“It is an elixir,” I say. “It heals the afflicted and completely removes the plague. Now let’s get this wagon free.” I walk toward the oxen but no one follows. A silence settles among the pilgrims as they think about what I have said.
“An elixir for the plague?” James says. “Do you think we’re fools?”
Tristan nods. “Yes, but he’s telling the truth.”
The wagon rolls forward two feet, strains and shudders, then rolls back again. The drover shouts that they need to put something into the rut to ease the wheels out. He whips the Devons again drawing more blood and the plaguers in the cage shriek and reach wildly through the bars toward the bleeding beasts.
“A holy elixir?” James asks. “Water blessed by the Pope?”
“Which Pope?” Tristan says with a grin.
I nudge Tristan into silence. He is joking about the great schism that has shaken our Church. Two men have claimed the papacy; Pope Urban VI and Pope Clement VII. I have heard it said that this schism is the cause of our plague. But I have also heard that horse buggery is the cause, so I do not give such talk much credence.
“It is not a holy cure,” I say. “The elixir was made by an alchemist.”
Gasps rise from among the pilgrims. It is as if I had said Satan made the elixir. The wagon rolls forward, creaks as it rises a few inches, then falls back again.
James tries to speak but can only sputter at first. “Alch . . . alchemy is a sin! We shall not be tempted by such evil!”
“I don’t care what you will be tempted by and what you won’t,” I say. “I only want to free your wagon and continue on my way.”
The elderly man with the large ears scratches at his cheek and looks into my eyes. “You say it works? You say the elixir has cured people?”
James turns on the old man. “Shut your mouth, Joseph, lest evil get inside! Alchemists are the devil’s monkeys! So sayeth the Lord!”
Tristan shakes his head. “You can’t just make up things that the Lord said.”
The old man shrugs. “These men said the cure works, so they did. Maybe God sent this elixir. Don’t the Bible tell us that ‘Every good gift is from above, coming down through the Father of Lights?’”
“So sayeth the Lord,” Tristan adds.
“Do not try to twist the word of God, Joseph. Alchemy is a sin. If even one among us falls to temptation, we all fail. We must remain united in our faith.”
“I just think we should maybe listen to these young gentlemen, so I do,” Joseph replies. “If they know of a cure, it might be—”
One of the pilgrims steps forward, a thick-chested man with a red beard. “Shut that toothless mouth, Joseph. Why must you be so contrary? Always an argument from you. You heard James.” He jabs a finger toward the plaguers in the cage. “All the afflicted will be lost if even one of us loses faith.”
“I want to cure my Agatha, Martin!” the old man’s shout warbles with defiance. “If something can bring her back, then it can’t be bad, can it? I love God with all my heart, and if He sends us a gift, who are we to refuse it? ‘Can you fathom the mysteries of God? They are higher than the Heavens. They are deeper than the depths of the grave.’” He looks at Tristan and nods curtly. “So sayeth the Lord!”
The old man’s feistiness makes me grin. This grizzled wolf is half in the grave, but the hunger for Agatha still burns in his belly.
Martin’s face grows redder than his beard. He clenches and unclenches his fists. “You will stop using the words of the Lord to defend Satan’s works! I am tired of your mouth, old man! We’ve had nothing but grief from you since we started. And I’m through with it. Do you hear me?”
Tristan points at the old man’s ears and smirks. “I’m fairly certain he hears you.”
“This man is an elder,” I growl to Martin. “Don’t speak to him like that. Show him respect.”
A wiry peasant holding a thick walking staff steps forward. “The knight speaks the truth! Leave him alone, Martin. You oughta be ashamed, bringing shouts against an old man.”
“It’s him should be ashamed, Thomas,” Martin says. “He’ll bring doom down on all our families!”
James of Wymondham snarls at me, then raises his staff and shouts to the peasants. “Look at yourselves! See what Satan has wrought? This is what these men of Satan want. To drive us apart! Joseph, will you take the apple they offer? Will you side with the Serpent?”
“You obviously don’t want our help,” I say. “Come, Tristan.” I walk past the wagon, looping wide around the reaching arms of the afflicted. The fresh blood from the backs of the oxen has worked the plaguers into a frenzy. The bars creak as more and more bodies push against the front of the cage. Trembling, blood-spattered arms extend toward the animals.
“I wouldn’t whip them anymore,” Tristan calls to the drover.
The drover whips the oxen one last time and the wagon rises, creaks loudly, then rolls free of the trench. The drover whoops and, at the same moment, terrible shouts rise up from the pilgrims behind us. Shouts so loud and so panicked that Tristan and I draw our swords as we turn.
The pilgrim with the walking stick, Thomas, is on his knees in the mud, staring at the road. Martin, the burly man with the red beard, holds his side with one hand and stares toward the road as well. In fact, all of the gathered pilgrims stare at the same spot—the rut that had trapped the wagon’s wheel. And in that rut lies the old man, Joseph. His body has been driven deep into the mud, but his shoulders are propped against the walls of the furrow so that his head juts forward. His eyes are tightly shut, his mouth open in a four-toothed, silent death scream.
I push my way to the body and stare at him like everyone else. It takes a long moment before I can speak. “You . . . you pushed him under the wagon.”
“No,” Martin and Thomas both say it as one.
“He hit me with that stick.” Martin gestures to Thomas.
“He shoved me!” Thomas replies.
Tristan sheaths his sword and brings his ear to the old man’s shattered chest.
James falls to his knees and covers his mouth with one hand. “They . . . they were pushing and . . . Martin . . . he shoved Thomas into Joseph . . .”
And Joseph became traction for the wagon.
Tristan shakes his head slowly and stands. Bile rises at the back of my throat. More humanity gone from the world.
“It was them.” James’s voice is almost a whisper. He rises to his feet and points a trembling finger at me. “It was their fault. They brought the devil with them!”
Heat rises in my cheeks. I try to calm myself with deep breaths. “We did nothing of the sort.”
“They did this!” James’s voice grows louder, more confident. “Joseph’s blood is on their hands!”
“You’re a lunatic,” Tristan says. “We had nothing to do with his death.”
But the pilgrims make a loose circle around us, scowls on their faces.
“Whoever takes a huma
n life,” James shouts, “shall surely be put to death! So sayeth the Lord!”
Tristan draws his sword again and glances at me. “I think He might actually have said that one.”
Chapter 5
“This nonsense stops now!” I use my battlefield voice, shouting so loudly that it makes my throat raw. “If you want to know what killed him, then look to yourselves! Your foolish squabbles led to this!”
Thomas points toward us. “It was them,” he says. “They did this.”
Martin nods. “They are not men, they are demons.”
Tristan and I try to back away from the pilgrims but hands shove us forward. They have encircled us.
James raises the crucifix high into the air. “God has punished Joseph for listening to the devil. And now we must cast these demons back to Hell.”
A few of the pilgrims shout their agreement, but most just cast wary glances toward us.
“What will you do?” I shout. Rain patters of my breastplate. Thunder rumbles in the distance. “Will you try to kill us? Will that bring Joseph back?”
The two mercenary guards push their way through the crowd and stand beside us. “This ain’t right!” one of them shouts. “These men are knights! They didn’t kill nobody!”
A man in white robes stoops and digs a flint from the mud. He holds the flint up so everyone can see. “The guards are demons as well! The Lord says all demons must be stoned!”
“Amen!” James shouts.
More pilgrims pry stones from the road. “Death to the demons!” Martin shouts.
“Mary’s tits!” shouts the guard. “This is going to be a misery of shit.”
“So sayeth the Lord,” Tristan calls. He hunches low and raises his sword high.
A flint clatters off the back of Tristan’s breastplate. He whirls and glares at the crowd.
“Enough!” I raise my shield and the four of us try to hide behind it. “Back away! No one is going to stone anyone. No more blood will be shed here today. Is that understood?”
Most of the pilgrims still look uncertain, even the ones holding flints. Stones will not harm armored men unless the armored men are on the ground and being bludgeoned. I do not think these pilgrims have the mettle to do such a thing, but I would rather not find out. I balance my sword against my knee and slip my helmet on. Tristan pulls his on as well.
“We’re going to shove past them and run,” I say. “On my signal.”
Tristan shakes his head. “I’m not running from pilgrims, Ed.”
“You’re not going to kill any of them,” I reply. “No one else dies today.”
A scream slices through the rainy afternoon like a shard of broken glass through parchment. I turn toward the wagon.
“Stupid son of a whore!” Tristan shouts.
“Almighty Father,” says one of the guards.
Henry, the pilgrim whose son was being bullied in the cart, has opened the cage door. A river of plaguers tumble from the wagon onto the muddy road. Some of them have already gotten to their feet. And three of these are fighting over Henry. They tear at him with teeth and nails. His linen robes rip loudly. Blood spatters onto the wagon in a red spume. Two of the pilgrims rush to Henry’s side—their shouts sounding flat in the rainy afternoon—and try to pull the plaguers off. But they too get swallowed by the afflicted wave.
Tristan smacks the guards’ horses with his gauntleted hands and the animals run, snorting, toward the south.
“Get the door!” I shout. “Get the door!” But it is too late for that. There are a dozen plaguers outside the cart and more stumbling free. A half-dozen of them gather around the oxen and leap like hunting dogs on bears. The Devons roar and buck, then lope forward dragging the cart with them. Plaguers throw their arms around the necks of the beasts and drag along the road, teeth tearing strips of flesh from the panicked oxen.
“The wagon!” James chases the cart down the road and is knocked off his feet by the plagued woman who was bullying Henry’s boy.
I run to his side but I am not fast enough. The woman bites off a strip of James’s scalp. He screams wildly and beats at her as my sword shaves off a quarter of her skull. She looks at me with eyes of angry nothingness and chews, brain and blood glistening above her brows. Locks of James’s hair poke out from her mouth like half eaten spiders. I swing again and this time she falls back and stops chewing. James screams again and again. His hands touch his scalp and when he sees the blood on them his screams grow louder. There is nothing for him now except pain and the slow onset of plague. I drive my sword through his throat and pray that Saint Giles gives him peace.
A pilgrim stumbles away from me and collapses onto the road. “He . . . he killed James! He killed James! The knight killed Father James!”
“I had to!” I shout, but my voice is drowned out by other pilgrims taking up the call.
“The knight killed James!”
“I had no choice, you stupid bastards,” I shout. “He was going to plague or bleed to death.”
But I cannot press my argument because a wave of plaguers lumber toward us. Most of the pilgrims scream and run northward. An old woman trips and splashes heavily upon the road. She raises a hand toward me as a bald plaguer with thick black brows takes hold of her hair. I leap forward and Saint Giles sends him home. I have no time to help the woman to her feet. Three more plaguers reach me. Their teeth clack against my armor. Their hands pull at my helm.
Tristan’s sword flashes at my side. He has his own plaguer problems. One of the guards lies a few feet away, his mail coat pulled up, his hand twitching as the afflicted tear at his stomach.
A fat man with a leather apron throws his arms around my head. His face is gray and spotted with red boils. The man’s blood-stained mouth grows larger and larger until the jaws latch on either side of my visor. Teeth grate against metal as he gnaws. Another plaguer gets beneath my shield and takes hold of my arm. I feel pressure against the mail at my wrist and gasp. Elizabeth dies if this creature gets its teeth under my gauntlet.
I drop my sword and roar. Draw my dagger and drive it up through the fat man’s chin, into his skull. The jaws stop sawing at my helm. I stab at the plaguer holding my arm as the fat man’s body crashes to the ground in a trembling mound of flesh and boils. Two of the afflicted shove at my waist and crack their teeth against my cuisses. I kick one of them—a woman in a long grey dress—and she falls backward onto the road, sending up a spray of brown water. I drive my dagger into the shining, night-river eye of the other—a man with curly blond hair. He convulses and falls twitching to the mud.
A plaguer crawls on hands and knees toward Tristan and he kicks it in the mouth. A half-dozen others kneel in a circle around a pilgrim’s body and feed. The remaining guard screams and buries his poleaxe into the side of a plagued man’s head. But two other plaguers drag him down. Tristan and I leap at the same time. I grab a wiry man’s worn boot and pull him back away from the guard. The plaguer hisses and lashes at me with his hand. I step on his back and use both hands to drive the sword into his cheek as he cranes his neck to face me. The blade splits his cheek with a crack and pins him to the muddy road. His hand claws at the sword, so I step on his neck, pull the sword free, and let Saint Giles taste his brain.
Tristan is on one knee by the soldier, his sword tip in the mud.
“He hurt?” I ask.
Tristan’s helm pivots to face me and I can see one of his eyes behind the visor. There is a grim assessment in that eye. He shakes his head softly.
The guard pushes himself to a sitting position and stares at his hand. Blood seeps down from beneath his gauntlet. I think about the plaguer biting at my mail and glance at my wrist to make sure there is no blood on me.
“No,” the guard whispers. “No, no.” His voice is so low that I can only just about hear the words. He throws off the gauntlet and stares at the torn flesh on his wrist. “Oh, Mother Mary, no.” He turns to me, his eyes wide under the rim of the nasal helm. His hands clutch at my tabard. “I d
on’t want to die. Oh, Christ above, I don’t want to die.”
“I’m sorry.” My words hardly rise above a whisper. “I am so terribly sorry.”
His breathing is ragged and fast. “I don’t want to die.” He looks toward the circle of plaguers tearing the pilgrim apart, a few paces away. The rain washes the dead man’s blood from their hands as they feed. “I don’t want to die.”
I put one hand behind his neck and touch his helmet with mine. “You will go to the Lord. You will have peace and eternal reward for your deeds today.”
His head jerks away from mine. “A cure!” he paws at my tunic again. “You said there was a cure! You said there was a cure! I can be healed. Yes?”
Three cures, nothing more. So precious little.
I touch my breastplate and feel Elizabeth’s ampoule poke my chest. Tristan catches my eye and shakes his head. We only have the two left, and the second belongs to Morgan.
“Please, do you have it?” the guard asks. “Do you have the cure?”
My soul withers and rises to my throat as I shake my head. “We have none to give you.”
“I have a horse.” The guard’s head shakes with desperation, his hands tighten around my tabard. “I can go. I can get the cure. Where . . . where can I find it? Where?”
I close my eyes. “Syria, perhaps. Nowhere near, my friend. Nowhere near.”
My words murder the hope that lies in the man’s eyes. He throws off his helmet and weeps, hands over his face. “Make it swift,” he sobs. “Please, make it swift.”
I draw my dagger. The rain makes swirling patterns of the plaguer blood on the blade.
We hold life in our hands, but give death, instead.
“Make it swift,” he says again.
I drive the blade into his throat and cradle his head as he sputters and chokes. The guard looks into my eyes and clutches my arm. Blood washes from his mouth and over his lip.
And with each death, the world loses a little more humanity.
His hand falls limply onto my breastplate, making the wet metal squeak, but his eyes do not close. His dead gaze pierces me and I wonder if he knows about the ampoule hanging from my neck already. If God has whispered it to him yet.
Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) Page 3