Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3)

by Roberto Calas

  I sit upon a barded white destrier—a fine horse with a restless step. The stables are behind me, as is Pantaleon di Alessandria, bound and on his knees before a dozen soldiers.

  The last time I jousted was in France, nearly five years ago. So much has changed since that tournament in Normandy. I touch the helmet upon my head. Richard provided a frog helm for the joust, and it is not comfortable. I can see very little and hear even less. The entire thing hangs suspended on my head by a web of leather cords intended to keep the steel from slamming into my face when struck by a lance. I suppose it is a clever invention, but I would have preferred my great helm.

  Richard waits at the far end, on a long-legged, skittish grey charger. He looks across the field and raises his lance in the air.

  Fire courses through my limbs. It has been too long since I stared down the list at an opponent. And what an opponent it is. My heart pounds. Not because I face the King of England, but because the King of England stands between me and Elizabeth.

  Richard’s charger lowers its head and strains, churning the grass and rattling forward. The king is sloppy. Just a hair out of rhythm with his horse, but a tilt is a contest of hairs. The difference between a master of the lists and a dead man can be slimmer than the width of a blade of grass.

  I raise my lance high. It is made from carved sycamore. Far lighter than the oak shafts they use on the Continent. It feels like a thunderbolt in my hands. I grew up shattering lightweight lances like this, and would have nothing else in hand when Elizabeth’s life is at stake. My blood burns hotter as I tighten my grip.

  I cannot sing and I am not overly fond of dancing, but I can put the tip of a lance through a ring that fits on a woman’s finger. Richard is sloppy. So I will make my horse dance and let this sliver of sycamore sing upon the king’s face.

  The destrier lurches forward, not as spry as the charger on the other end, but powerful and fearless. The world rises and falls through the frog-mouth slit. Leather cords creak. The cheers of the crowd become a distant ocean. I listen instead to the rhythm of my steed, and the horse listens to mine. We dance together to the rattling hymn of armored plates. Until the rattles grow steady. Until they are one. A heartbeat of steel.

  Nowel, nowel, nowel.

  King Richard rumbles closer. I couch the sycamore shaft in the lance rest, and tap the butt against my side so I know its precise position. I told myself I would let Richard take the first pass, but the song of the lists rages in my head. It has been too long since I threw down an opponent in the jousts.

  Nowel, nowel, nowel.

  There is no barrier, and his horse edges too far toward me. I use my knees to warn the destrier but the gelding is already adjusting its course. At the last instant, my steed turns its head back toward Richard. My lance rises as the king twists in the saddle. There is an explosion of soft wood upon my shield. Shards rain against my helm.

  My lance does not shiver. The steel tip sings upon his helmet with the thunderous clank of metal on metal. A thunderbolt hurled at the king. The shock of it rattles the bones of my arm. But Richard takes the worst of it. He tumbles from the saddle, head back, spurs high and gleaming in the setting sun. He hits the ground with a dangerous clatter.

  I drop my lance and turn to look at the king. He lies in a heap of gilded plates upon the grass. Two squires and a man-at-arms rush out to him. He is not moving. Perhaps I should not have hit him so hard.

  The distant ocean surges back and crashes into me. The crowd’s roar is louder than it has been all day. I look into the benches and cannot believe what I see. The lords and ladies are cheering the fall of their king.

  I ride to the far side of the field and wheel my horse. The king rises slowly to his feet, slapping hands away and brushing himself off. His helmet is askew, but he looks to the crowd for a long moment. His shoulders rise and fall in a long, deep breath. A squire straightens the king’s helmet and bolts it into place, then helps him onto the charger. Richard kicks his spurs into the beast much harder than he needs to and rides toward the stable side of the field.

  Angry kings are dangerous. Angry, insane kings are murderous. Will Richard help me if I beat him in all three passes? He sentenced Pantaleon to a horrible fate simply because the mercenary had grown tiresome. What would he do to someone who embarrasses him in front of the nobility?

  A soldier hands me a new lance. I raise it high and look to the king. He jabs his lance into the air and starts toward me. He is angry, and it throws him even more out of rhythm. I tap my gelding’s armored flanks and he lunges forward, tossing his head and blowing. He is a lively old horse, strong and dependable. Together, we could throw Richard down all afternoon, but I do not know if we should.

  Richard’s petulance is legendary, and I am certain his madness has not improved this condition.

  “We’re going to lose this pass, old boy,” I say. “It won’t be your fault.”

  I would not risk losing a point if I thought Richard could beat me. But I must let him have a modicum of victory. My heart pounds at the risk I am taking, but it is a calculated risk.

  Richard leans forward in his saddle and tilts his head to one side. He looks stylish, but it only makes him more unstable in the saddle. It embarrasses me to give up the pass to him, but only fools humiliate kings.

  We approach. I raise my lance the width of a blade of grass. The steel coronel of Richard’s weapon glances off the top of my shield and strikes my bevor hard enough to take my breath. I fall back against the saddle’s cantle. The tip of my lance grazes the king’s spaulder with a clink.

  Sir Simon, who was chosen by Richard as the chevalier d'honneur, sits at the center of the piled-stone wall. He sips at a goblet and raises a banner in his left hand without much enthusiasm. Richard has won the pass.

  The king shouts at his horse and sets it into a jangling, high-stepped prance.

  Let him gloat. He will be on the grass in a moment.

  A soldier hands me another lance. The Italian still sits on his knees by the stable, his hands bound behind him. He stares at the ground, his face expressionless, but his chest surges with swift breaths. I glance at the stable. The bar has been replaced in the door brackets. I wonder how many plaguers are left inside. How many afflicted souls are counting on me? I know of at least one, and she waits for me in St. Edmund’s Bury.

  I slap the frog-helm with the edge of my shield and howl as the destrier bounds forward. I am champion of the dead. My lance must be true.

  Richard rumbles toward me. I do not trust Sir Simon to give me a point unless it is definitive. The king will have to be unhorsed again. I growl in my helm, and tap the sycamore shaft against my side. My feet push against the stirrups. The destrier grunts with each step.

  Richard’s lance rises. Too high. A dozen blades of grass too high. I dip my lance into place. I want to strike the center of his helm again. Lances rise on impact, so I aim for his throat. He leans toward me. I shift the lance to center it.

  I am sorry, Your Majesty.

  He leans farther toward me. I correct again. The lance feels wrong. I tap the shaft against my side. The butt is too far from me. Something is not right. Richard yanks his reins hard in my direction. What is he doing? An eye fills the frog-mouth slit of my helm. A horse’s eye.

  No tilt barrier.

  My destrier lunges to one side but Richard’s charger moves too quickly. It is a sickening blow. A horse makes a short, high pitch noise I have never heard before. The world tumbles. There is grass. A screaming crowd. Horseflesh and armor. All of it spinning end over end. A horse shrieks. The earth kicks me in the face and the distant ocean swallows me.

  When the seas slowly subside, when the bell-tower clang that echoes in my head fades away, I realize that I cannot feel my legs.

  A hoarse voice sounds from behind me.

  “I win.”

  Chapter 17

  It takes six soldiers to lift the dead destrier off me. Two men help me stand and the numbness in my legs turns into a t
housand stinging insects. God or Saint Giles or the stars of Gemini were with me today, because the horse rolled onto me at the very end of its fall. The poor destrier. I never even knew his name.

  Richard’s horse is still alive. It lies on the ground, head shaking, eyes rolling, until a soldier draws a knife across its throat.

  The collision of horses means the final pass was a draw. I did not win. But I did not have to. I simply needed to ensure that Richard did not.

  The crowd cheers as I take a few hesitant steps. Someone claps me on the back heavily and I stumble forward.

  “Listen to them, Edward! Listen to them!” Richard gazes at the crowd and holds up an arm to them. He winces and clutches at his shoulder, raises the other arm instead. A thick clod of earth is wedged into the corner of his visor “They love us!” He takes one of my hands and raises it into the air. The cheers are like a rockslide. Richard laughs. “They love us!”

  That we both survived and are relatively uninjured is evidence that God still watches the earth. I pull my hand out of Richard’s grasp and work at the bolts that keep the helmet attached to the breastplate. “You will help me reach my wife, Your Majesty?”

  Two squires rush to Richard’s side and help him remove his helm.

  “We had a bargain, Edward,” he says. “You had to beat me in three passes. And you did not.”

  I give up on the bolts. “It displeases me to disagree with Your Highness, but you did not say I had to win. Only that I couldn’t lose.”

  He furrows his brows, shakes his head. “That is not what I said.”

  One of the squires pries off the bolts for me and another helps me take off the helm. Of course that is what he said. His words have echoed in my mind since he uttered them: If I don’t win, then my exhibition ends.

  And Richard most certainly did not win.

  He sees my expression and laughs. “Don’t be sullen. We shall discuss it. Now smile for the crowd, Edward. Smile for the good people of England.”

  The squires work like ants, stripping off our armor, one piece at a time. Richard beams at the cheering crowd.

  I force steadiness into my voice. “Why are you at Framlingham, Your Highness?” I ask.

  “I was on my way to Scotland with an army.” He smiles and I catch a glint of lunacy in his eyes. “Do you know what’s worse than a Scot?” He waits for my answer and I simply shake my head. He barks a laugh. “A fucking dead person that tries to eat you!” He cackles wildly and tries to speak again. “Although . . . although only marginally worse.”

  I wait for him to grow serious. A red-haired, freckled squire pulls off my breastplate and scurries away with it.

  “You fled to Framlingham?” I ask.

  He looks at me with a refinement that I did not imagine he possessed anymore, raises a finger to me. “Kings do not flee. They simply change their military objectives.” He laughs madly again.

  “And Framlingham became your new objective?”

  “Anywhere that didn’t have dead people trying to eat me seemed a sound military objective.”

  The last of our armor is removed and Richard leads me back toward the benches.

  “You’re not with Henry Bolingbroke are you?” the king asks as we walk.

  “Henry Bolingbroke?”

  Richard waves dismissively. “Of course not. Pay no mind.”

  We reach the tiered benches. Soldiers shove people from their seats so that a path forms to the canopied platform. Richard walks first, smiling and holding up his good arm. The crowd applauds and whistles as we pass by, but it is me they clap on the back. Richard glances back and notices the attention I am getting and his smile flickers and fades.

  Tristan, Morgan, and Zhuri stand in the platform. Sir Simon sits in a wooden chair to the right of the throne, sipping from his goblet and ignoring us.

  Morgan clasps his hands together. “Thank Our Lord in Heaven that you are both alive.”

  Tristan grins. “Edward, were you singing out there?”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about,” I reply.

  “It sounded like singing to me,” Zhuri says. “In the broadest sense of the word, at any rate.”

  The two of them laugh.

  “Two knights mock the knight they serve,” Chaucer says. “You should feel shame, the two of you . . .”

  I nod my thanks.

  “. . . what he did upon that field could never, in any sense at all, be called singing.”

  The three of them burst into peals of laughter.

  “You’ve found your humor again, Geoffrey?” Richard snaps. “Perhaps you can pen a comedy for me.”

  Chaucer’s laughter dries up. “A Divine Comedy that would be.”

  Richard sits on the throne and rests his chin on one hand. A squire brings two lead goblets. The king takes one and hands the other to me. He drinks and motions with his eyes toward a chair on his left. I nod to my companions and sit beside the king.

  The jester returns to the jousting field and stands on the wall. He points a finger at the crowd, turns around and pulls his pants down. The noble men and women cheer.

  “Can we discuss my wife, now?” I ask. “Would you lend me men, that I might reach her, Your Majesty? Two hundred men would be ample.”

  Richard slumps in his throne and traces a lily burnished upon his boot. “Is your wife healthy, Edward?”

  “She is not, Your Majesty.”

  He peers at me sidelong. “Then leave her be. She is with God now.”

  I shake my head firmly. “She is sick, Your Highness. And she can be cured.”

  Richard watches the jester and says nothing.

  “Is your queen here?” I ask. Perhaps Queen Anne would be more sympathetic to my request.

  The king does not look at me. His eyes stare toward the jester, but I do not believe he sees the man. “She is.” His hand clutches into a fist. “She is in the chapel.”

  Richard was roundly criticized for his choice in wives. Anne of Bohemia brought nothing with her. No powerful alliances. No fortune to fill England’s coffers. Choosing her was a strategic blunder, but it is said Richard loves her with all his heart. And I cannot fault a man for that. I take a long draw of wine from the goblet.

  “You knew my father, did you not?” Richard says.

  “A great man.” I do not lie when I say it. Edward the Black Prince was the best man I have ever known. I crossed all of France with him and fought by his side at Limoges and Najera. “If you cannot spare two hundred men, Your Highness, I can make do with half that.”

  Sir Gerald can’t have more than a hundred men with him.

  Richard stares out toward the field with half-lidded eyes.

  “How many French widows did my father make?” he mumbles.

  I take three deep breaths. Elizabeth tells me I should do so whenever my temper threatens to overwhelm me. “He made an immeasurable number of widows, Your Highness,” I reply. “The convents overflowed.”

  The king leans back and his jaw tightens. “And how many towns did he burn?”

  “Hundreds, Your Majesty,” I reply. “France lost the warmth of the sun for all the smoke.”

  He turns to me, his breath coming in ragged bursts. His hand grips the goblet so tightly that the thin rim bends. “How much French blood did my father loose?”

  “Enough to turn the Seine red for a year,” I reply. “Enough to drown every French son of a whore three times over, your majesty.”

  His eyes shimmer, then tears course down his cheeks like French rivers. He wipes at his face with a bloodstained hand, takes hold of my cloak, and yanks me close to him. “Then why,” he snarls, “did the King of France proclaim a day of mourning when my father died?”

  My eloquence dies.

  “Tell me Edward. Why did King Charles parade through the streets of Paris with five thousand horsemen, in my father’s honor? It is a mystery no one has ever bothered to explain to me. The Black Prince killed tens of thousands. So why did the men and women of France weep
in the streets at the news of his death?”

  I am trapped by my own words. “I . . . your father . . . your father was a very special man.” Edward had a grace to him that I have never known in another man. He was the embodiment of chivalry, and even his enemies loved him.

  Richard shoves me backward and turns toward the jousting field again. “What will my own people do when I die? Will they even notice, Edward? Will they weep in the streets with joy? My reign was never meant to occur.” He sweeps a hand to encompass everything beyond the walls of Framlingham. “England was ready for a golden age. My grandfather was nearly dead and the greatest Englishman ever to live was going to take up the crown. Edward, the Black Prince! And what happened, Sir Edward? What did they get, instead?” His next words hold so much anger that I flinch from them. “They got me.”

  He downs the wine in his goblet and hurls it clanging along the benches. I feel a touch of despair, not at the king’s words, but at the memory of Edward’s death. Richard is correct. No man, alive or dead, could have filled the chasm left in our hearts by the Black Prince. I touch my chest and feel the bulge of Elizabeth’s cure beneath my gambeson.

  “I am a crowned heartache, Edward,” he says. “I am a dead prince’s shadow.”

  “You have the chance, Your Majesty, to be a greater king than any in our history. We are facing calamity, and Your Majesty will shine.”

  He glances at me, and for a moment I fear he will make me sing again. I finish the wine in my goblet.

  “My marriage is the only great thing I have ever done,” he says. “I married a saint, Edward. A woman loved by everyone. She is the only reason the people tolerate me.”

  “That is not true,” I consider each word carefully. “You are young and they are unsure of you, perhaps, but you are their king. They wait for you to save them, Your Majesty. If Queen Anne is loved, then let her be your strength as you lead England out of these dark times. Let her be the hunger in your belly.”