“I never had the chance to shut it,” he replies. “The gate is still open.”
Chapter 49
The first blush of sunlight paints the eastern sky as we leave the abbey church. There are more plaguers in the church yard. Too many to count. Magnus and I each hold one of Riggio’s arms. The others follow behind, swords drawn, heads turning from side to side as they track the approaching plaguers.
We help Riggio past St. James’s Church with its stone cockleshell sculptures, across the great court, to the Abbey Gate. This is a massive gatehouse—as big as some keeps—rising three stories. Statutes of bishops and abbots and great lords stand in niches on every side of the stone tower. I pull open the thick oaken door at the side. We climb a set of cramped spiral stairs into the barracks chamber above the arching gate.
There is nothing left in the chamber but a table, three chairs, and broken bits of wooden furniture. A dove flutters madly through an arrow slit and out of the tower. I help Magnus set Riggio down, then run back to the spiral staircase and continue climbing. Tristan and Morgan follow. We do not stop until we have reached the battlemented roof of the structure. I place my hand on one of the merlons and stare out across St. Edmund’s Bury. My eyes shut and do not open for far too long. I open them, shake my head to shed fatigue.
Richard’s army glows in the distance, marching toward the town. Gerald’s army is nowhere to be seen. God’s army stands at the monastery walls, growling and hissing, scraping at the stones with bloody hands. Elizabeth must be among them.
I lean through a crenel and stare down into the town square. It is called Angel Hill, that square, but I see no angels. I see no long golden hair. No blue dress with a bow on the back. Dawn battles night in the east, but darkness still sucks all color from Angel Hill. Shadows make it difficult to tell man from woman.
I walk to the opposite side of the gatehouse and stare down into the abbey’s great court. Not many plaguers have reached the northern section of the monastery. Only three that I can see. A dozen cows and countless sheep linger in a walled enclosure at the rear of the churchyard. One of the sheep bawls into the night.
“I could live here,” Tristan says. “Lovely gardens. Fascinating history. Plenty of alehouses.” He glances down at the horde along the abbey walls. “Shame about the neighbors.” I look at him, and something in my eyes makes him place a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find her,” he says quietly.
An opening in the crenelations leads to a narrow wall-walk that spans most of the compound. We step through the gap and hustle along the battlements until we reach the Norman Gatehouse. I glance down at the yawning arch beneath us, barred by double portcullises. There is as much darkness here as anywhere. I cannot see her.
“Not so many plaguers inside the monastery as I would have thought,” Morgan says. “If that pig door is still open, why haven’t they overrun the abbey?”
I walk to the opposite side of the Norman Gate and stare down into the church yard. Beyond the charnel house is the great cemetery. The wooden crosses glow in the moonlight. They look like hilts in the night, like swords plunged into sacred soil, like a war between the living and the dead.
Only twenty five or thirty plaguers linger in the churchyard.
“Let’s have a look at the pig hatch,” I say.
We walk the battlements to the corner of the monastery, where St. Mary’s church stands. This was where Elizabeth joined the afflicted throng. I stare down into that throng with such intensity that my eyes water.
Where are you, Elizabeth?
I close my eyes, feel her long, cool fingers against my cheek. Smell lemon and strawberry. See her crooked smile. When she is happy, truly happy, she looks sad. As if the surge of emotion is too much for her. As if she cannot believe that such joy is possible. I see her sad bliss, feel her lips against mine. And I open my eyes.
Moonlight glitters on golden strands of hair. For the briefest of moments, there is a bow, and then it is gone.
“Elizabeth!” I shout down. “Elizabeth!”
Morgan and Tristan pull me back from the crenelations.
“We’ll find her, Edward,” Morgan says.
“She’s going to be coy and difficult tonight,” Tristan says. “Let’s find her some flowers before we start shouting across the entire town, eh?”
They are right, of course. If Gerald hears my shouts, he will know we are alive. I step back to the crenelations and gaze down once more. Did I imagine the bow? Even if I did not, there must be hundreds of bows in that crowd. Her scent lingers in my mind.
“Pig hatch?” Tristan says.
I nod.
We enter the church tower through a tiny wooden door, and emerge from another, which leads to the abbey’s southern wall. Tristan stops after twenty paces and laughs.
I follow his gaze down toward the pig hatch and understand why there are not many plaguers in the abbey. Morgan sighs.
An afflicted woman, fat and draped in luxuriant fabrics, has wedged herself in the gate. She is on hands and knees, half in and half out, motionless like an animal resigned to a trap.
“She’s a savior,” Tristan says. “If the alchemist girl succeeds, I think we should cure that woman first.”
The abbey is safe. Gerald likely thinks it has been overrun, but a portly noblewoman has secured our fortification. I stare back toward the town, across the rippling waves of plaguers.
The abbey is safe, but we are trapped inside.
Elizabeth waited for me in this abbey for months. I travelled a hundred and fifty miles, through demon armies, angry knights and mad kings. I faced every imaginable obstacle to reach this town, with a cure in hand. And now it is I who am trapped in the monastery.
And Elizabeth is outside.
All but one of the Genoese are asleep, on the floor, when we return to the Abbey Gate. Domenic I son watch. He stares at the door from a wooden stool.
Morgan sits against a wall and tries to say a prayer for us, but his words grow further and further apart until they become snores. Tristan turns the old table upside down and lies inside, taps one of the upward-facing legs. “A four-poster.”
He grins, and is asleep before I can take three breaths.
I gesture to Domenico and raise a forefinger. “If I fall asleep, wake me in one hour. Understand? Uno ora.”
The Italian nods. I sit against a wall and think of Elizabeth. She is outside, alone among thousands of the afflicted, and I do not have much time to find her. Richard’s army will arrive tonight and, in the morning, he will set his men to the slaughter. I must . . . wake early. And . . .
I yawn.
I must wake early and find . . . wake early . . .
I open my eyes. A shaft of sunlight streams through an arrow slit, painting my face. Domenico is slouched on the stool, asleep.
Morning!
I jump to my feet. My bones pop and grind. Muscles burn with yesterday’s exertions. Elizabeth is outside. I rush to the battlements. Clouds smother the sky, but the day is bright enough to make me blink. Elizabeth. I will find her now. The blue dress and the bow, the radiant blonde hair. She will be outside the walls.
I lean over the parapets and look for an angel on Angel Hill.
And see no one.
I stare from one side to the other. The streets are empty.
There are no plaguers outside the monastery.
Chapter 50
No!
I lean forward so far that I almost fall from the tower. Angel Hill is empty. How can it be possible? Richard! Oh dear God, he slaughtered them all in the night! He slaughtered them and I heard nothing!
I fall to my knees, raise clasped hands to the sky, but can think of no prayer to offer. How can army slaughter thousands of plaguers without—
Faint snarls and howls rise in the distance.
I scramble to my feet and look eastward. The abbey walls block my view, but I can hear them! The plaguers have moved toward the east gate. I run along the narrow battlement and look down toward t
he town gate. And I breathe a sigh.
Tristan and Morgan emerge from the Abbey Gate and stare down onto Angel Hill. Both of them flinch at the empty street, then run along the battlements to my side.
“Remember when we did that in Falaise?” Tristan laughs and addresses Morgan. “Roger Miller—one of our footmen—fell asleep one day at his post. So Sir Robert moved the entire army to a forest a quarter-mile away. Do you remember the crazed expression he had when he finally found us, Edward?” Tristan chuckles. “Even the French were laughing, up on the walls.”
Morgan nods, but does not smile. “Why did the plaguers move?”
I let out a long sigh. “What could lure five thousand plaguers away from an abbey full of livestock?”
They look down toward the East Gate.
“An army of four thousand men,” I reply. “Richard is outside the town gates.”
We stare down on Mustow Street. Plaguers are packed onto the road, between the abbey walls on one side and the rows of tightly packed cottages and shops on the other. The front of the column is pressed against the town’s East Gate, snarling and reaching through the bars of the portcullis. The rest of the plaguers stream back for hundreds of paces, shoving and hissing into the air.
Richard’s army stands outside the gates. I stare down at the banners and spot one with three roosters upon it.
“Gerald’s with Richard, now,” I say.
“I wonder if he makes Richard call him King Gerald,” Tristan says.
“I wonder how long they’ll stay outside.” I try to keep my voice from trembling. “Once that gate opens, it will be a massacre.”
“I didn’t think he would really do it,” Morgan says. “Richard has brought an army here to kill your wife. He’s mad. Completely insane. Can’t those soldiers with him see that?”
I let out my breath in a quivering stream. “Men will follow anyone.”
A part of me admires King Richard. His anger in me is misplaced, but if I thought a man had killed my wife, I would stop at nothing to exact vengeance. I know the Lord tells us that vengeance is wrong. But if infidels violated a church, I would crush them. And if anyone harmed my angel, there would be nothing left of them to bury.
“Not all of Richard’s men are outside the gate.” Tristan points to a cluster of knights standing at the corner of Northgate Street. Their armor glints dully in the morning light. The colors of their surcoats seem too bright on this gray day.
One of them points, and shouts something that I cannot make out. They run toward the back of the endless column of plaguers. A knight with a pheasant crest on his helm throws a canvas sack over a plaguer woman and pounds the back of her head with his gauntlet. Another knight ties a rope around her waist, to secure the sack, while the others protect him with spears and pole axes. There is no need for protection. The plaguer army does not even look at the men as they haul the afflicted woman away.
We run along the battlements to keep the knights in view. I watch as they drag the woman along the cobblestones, down Northgate Street, to a wagon. A dozen canvas-draped figures thrash in the bed. Two of the knights lift the plagued woman and hurl her into the wagon. They do it with such force that her body bounces off the back wall and rolls to a stop among the other bodies. The woman’s muffled cries reach us, two hundred yards away.
The Old Testament stirs inside me again.
They are searching for Elizabeth. I pull at my sword slowly, my arm trembling. Tristan stops my elbow before the sword is completely free of the sheath.
“That wasn’t her,” he says.
“They’ll keep searching, Tristan,” I reply. “And eventually, it will be her. She might be in the wagon already.”
“They are doing you a favor,” Morgan replies.
I glance at him.
“Let them search,” he continues. “If they find her, then our work is done.”
I point to the town gate. “Morgan, there are four thousand men out there, waiting for that gate to open. They will storm into the town and hack those plaguers into tiny chunks. Every last one.”
“No,” he replies. “They won’t. Richard hasn’t entered the city because his army is distracting the plaguers.”
Tristan laughs. “Morgan, you’re brilliant.”
I steady my breathing and gaze toward the East Gate. The plaguers are not attacking the four knights because the scent of four thousand men outside the gates is overpowering. If the knights are quick and careful, the plaguers will scarcely be aware of them.
“And when I say brilliant,” Tristan adds. “I mean that you occasionally say something that isn’t completely foolish.”
“Richard wants to see her die,” I say. “He wants to know he has killed her.”
Morgan nods. “Those knights can pick out every woman that looks like Elizabeth, and bring all of them to Richard. But it will take hours. Days maybe.”
“And they don’t have days,” I add. “Henry will be here late this afternoon.”
Tristan grins, looking like a child who has hidden a frog in his sister’s bed. “But Richard doesn’t know that.”
I think about King Richard at Framlingham, slaughtering plaguers for the crowd. Raising his sword for their approval, and not receiving it.
I am a crowned heartache, Edward. I am a dead prince’s shadow.
“Richard will negotiate with Henry,” I mumble. “He will give Henry whatever he wants. He might be insane, but he needs to be loved. If he fights and loses, his shame will be eternal.”
I think of the joust, his hands yanking the reins toward me. The collision of horses, and his words to me when we crashed to the earth.
I win.
“He can’t allow himself to lose. He’ll give Henry back the Lancaster titles. And if he has found Elizabeth, he will turn her over. Because he can exact his vengeance upon us later. When no army threatens him.”
I would not do the same. If a man killed my wife, I would not delay my vengeance. But Richard is King, and kings must marry their kingdom before they can love a wife.
“So there’s nothing to worry about,” Morgan says.
“No.” My hand is white upon my sword’s grip. “Nothing to worry about.” I gaze out at Richard’s army. “But we must make certain that Henry and Richard don’t battle.” I point down to the square. “And we need to watch those knights. If they find Elizabeth, all of our problems are solved.”
“Yes,” Tristan says. “All of our problems. Except for the minor matter of King Richard stripping us of our lands, torturing us for days, and burning us in public. But yes. I agree. All problems solved.”
It takes seven hours for Henry Bolingbroke’s army to reach the outskirts of St. Edmund’s Bury. Tristan spots them an hour after midday, from one of the soaring towers that rise above the abbey church. I send Morgan and the Genoese out to meet him. If Gerald’s men still guard the gates, nine men should be plenty to get past them.
“Scout out the gate, first,” I call to them. “If there are too many men, come back, you understand?” Morgan nods. It is a small risk, but I need Henry to know that Richard’s army outnumbers his own, and that the king’s forces are camped to the east.
I stay behind, on the battlements, and watch Mustow Street. A new batch of knights works the afflicted horde. The original knights were relieved during the day, but the cart has not moved. It brims with plaguer women. Sometimes, one of the afflicted will fall out of the wagon bed, and two men will swing the woman back and forth before hurling her back.
It is possible that Elizabeth lies at the bottom of that wagon. But none of the women they have captured under my watch is my wife. The knights ran out of canvas earlier in the day, so they use tapestries and curtains and rugs to catch their prey.
I watch for an hour before footfalls sound on the steps of the Abbey Gate. Tristan and Morgan emerge from the tiny door onto the battlements and say nothing. They simply smile and exchange glances.
“Good news?” I turn back to the square. The knights w
rap a tapestry around a woman whose hair is more red than blonde.
“Very good news,” Tristan replies. “Henry has been gathering forces on his march. He has three thousand men with him, now. And that’s not the best of the news.”
I lean against a crenel and cross my arms. They look at one another and their smiles grow.
“Are you planning on telling me?” I say.
A voice calls, echoing, from the spiral staircase. “Planning to tell me.” Zhuri steps onto the battlements and grins. “And yes, we are.” He reaches through the doorway and helps the girl, Josalyn, onto the battlements. She stares out across the town, eyes wide. I doubt she has ever been up this high. She turns and looks toward the towering abbey church.
“So tall,” she says.
“They build them tall,” I reply, “to serve as an example. So that monks remember not to slouch, but to walk erect before God.”
“And they do,” Tristan says. “They also walk erect before the whores of Rye, if the rumors are true.”
I flash Tristan a glare and turn to the girl. “Do you have something to tell me?”
She curtsies, holds out a glass phial.
I stare for a long moment before taking it. “Is this . . .?” I look from the girl, to Zhuri, to the phial. “Is this . . .?”
“She succeeded,” Zhuri says. “She replicated the cure. We have done it, Edward!”
Carefully—remembering past disasters—I set the phial aside. My hands tremble. I sweep the girl into my arms and whirl her in a circle, laughing. “I’m . . . I’m astonished! And . . . and overjoyed! I . . . I just . . . how many have you cured?”
The others stop laughing. Josalyn goes stiff in my arms.
“We . . . haven’t actually tried to cure anyone,” Zhuri says. “Henry wouldn’t let us try.”
I release the alchemist. “So how in the Nine Hells do you know it works?”
Josalyn shrugs. “We don’t, my lord. But I followed the instructions precisely. The medium we produced looks identical to the one you left with me. If those instructions were correct, then this cure will work.”
Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) Page 29