The Scourge, Book I
Excerpt from Chapter 1
At first, the priests and bishops called it a scourge from God.
They preached that only the impure needed to fear it. That the holy hand of the Father was purging the wicked from the earth.
But the holy hand of the Father started purging priests and bishops too. They call it a plague now.
I have never seen plague bring a man back from the dead. I have never heard of a plague that keeps a man alive after he has been cut in half.
Nor do I know of any sickness, in England or upon the Continent, that gives its victims a taste for living flesh. But I am a simple knight.
If the archbishop of Canterbury tells me it is a plague, then I shall do all I can to ease the suffering of those afflicted.
Four women with this plague lurch toward us. There is no white to their eyes, only black. Blood stains their clothing. The closest, a lady dressed in the finery of a gentlewoman, snarls like a starving wolf. I recognize her. She is wife to John Broke, steward to John of Gaunt. I have no love for John Broke, but no one deserves the fate that she has suffered. Blood covers her mouth, neck, and chest. The four women look like demons risen from hell, but I know they cannot be, because Archbishop Hartley says it is a plague. I draw thirty-six inches of medicine from the sheath at my side. The two knights beside me do the same. We line up shoulder to shoulder, shields high.
Be healed, sisters. Be healed.
We tie ropes to the bodies and drag the women to the base of the hill. Sir Tristan returns with bundles of straw. He wears only mail and a breastplate. The rest of his armor dangles from his horse’s saddle like a peddler’s pots and pans. He dumps the straw onto the bodies, and Sir Morgan adds logs and branches. The green wood screams and pops as the women’s bodies burn. We kneel and pray beside the fire. I have been told that demons smell of brimstone when they burn, so I sniff at the pyre. I smell only dead, burning women and the smoke of beech wood.
“What is it?” Sir Morgan asks.
“They aren’t demons,” I reply.
“Of course they aren’t.” Sir Morgan scowls. “They are afflicted by plague.”
“So it is said.”
Sir Morgan stares into the fire. Bits of straw are caught in his beard.
“At least they are in heaven now.”
Sir Tristan stares upward, where the ashes of the four women dance on the wind. “They’re in the sky,” he says. “That’s as close to heaven as they’ll get.”
“Don’t start, Tristan.” I set my gaze on him and leave it there.
“You are a heathen, Tristan,” Sir Morgan says. “And the flames that burn you will be far hotter than these.”
“Yes.” Tristan stands and brushes the straw from his legs. “Because they’ll use more wood in my pyre. We should ride again, Sir Edward.
We don’t want to get caught in the open when night falls.”
“We’ll ride soon enough, Tristan,” I say. “Morgan, how much — ”
“For filth’s sake!” Sir Tristan calls out. “It’s back again.”
We run to the horses for our helmets. I grab my great helm by the unicorn crest and slip it over my head. The five of us stare upward at the circling shape. Sir Morgan sighs loudly in his bascinet helm. The falcon flies erratically toward us. It dips and banks, climbs and plummets, seemingly at random. Then it swoops.
We hold up our shields and duck low as the bird shrieks. Sir Tristan laughs as it flutters against Sir Morgan’s shield. Its eyes are completely black and rimmed with bright red. I could kill it from where I stand, but I don’t. Sir Morgan taps it with his shield, and it flutters back into the sky, screeching roughly.
The sound is like no falcon call I have heard. As if instead of breathing out, it is inhaling its cry. It flies through the blue smoke of the burning women and struggles back into the sky and away.
“He looked better,” Morgan says. “Didn’t you think he looked better, Edward?”
I don’t reply. The bishops and priests say it is a plague, so I act as if it is a plague. But Morgan, he believes the bishops and priests. He believes it is a plague. And he has faith that his favorite falcon may someday recover.
Excerpt from Chapter 6
There are two guards outside Lord James’s chamber. An unpleasant odor seeps from beneath the door. Like rancid meat. The sergeantpauses and looks into my eyes.
“Lord James has had some tragedy, m’lord. He’s…well, he’s been affected a bit by all of this.”
“We’ve all been affected,” Sir Tristan says.
“Aye, Sir,” the sergeant says. “But…” He shrugs and raps on the oak door.
A voice calls from inside the room. “Pass!”
The sergeant opens the door and gestures for us to enter. I give him a stern look for not announcing us, then forget all about courtesy. The chamber is lined with the afflicted. Nearly a dozen of them — men, women, and children with the plague, their eyes an infinite void. They are bound with manacles and leg-irons and chained to the stone walls.
I stop so suddenly that Sir Tristan runs into me.
Lord James sits at a carved wooden desk. One of the afflicted, a woman, has freed itself. She leaps at Lord James from behind. I cry out and draw my sword. Lord James jumps up from his desk with a scream that echoes in the room. The woman takes hold of him, but Lord James’s scream was a reaction to me, not her. He pushes the woman back gently, raises his hands toward me and cries out, “No! Put your sword away!”
I shoulder the woman to the ground and stand between her and the earl. Sir Tristan and Sir Morgan take position at my flanks as the door guards burst into the room. Lord James brushes past us and helps the plaguer to her feet. She was once a noblewoman, I think. Her linen dress might once have been regal. The woman leans toward the earl, moaning, hands grabbing for him. The earl pushes the woman backward gently and tsks. “You’ve eaten already, Catherine. I am not food, my love.”
One of the guards asks Lord James if he is alright, and the earl nods and waves them away. I sheathe my sword. Tristan and Morgan do the same. We exchange glances. Sir Tristan rolls his index finger in a circle around his ear, then points to Lord James. I scowl at Tristan. The earl binds the woman’s hands with a silk cord and ties the other end to a ring on the wall. I look at the woman’s hands as he ties the knots. Long fingers, like my Elizabeth’s. The woman moans, then hisses and tugs at her bonds, but the cord holds her in place. I look into her open mouth.
“You’ve taken her teeth out,” I say.
“I had her teeth taken out,” Lord James replies. He studies her. “It changed the shape of her face.”
“She can’t afflict you if she can’t bite,” Tristan says, nodding his approval.
“Oh, she can still sicken.” Lord James washes his hands in a bowl on a corner table. The woman’s blood is on them. “Just have to be careful.”
“Are you starting a collection, my lord?” Sir Tristan gestures toward the others chained to the walls. It’s an irreverent comment. Tristan is usually more careful in the presence of titled gentry, but I know he thinks the earl has gone mad.
Lord James looks to the mass of writhing, groaning bodies chained to the walls. Some of them are missing limbs. Some have chunks cut out from their heads. The wounds on these are so clean that I imagine a surgeon must have made them. One of the men is missing the entire top of his skull. There seem to be small crosses sticking into parts of his exposed brain. I stare at them all. I have never been able to study the afflicted like this.
Lord James takes an aspergillum from an engraved silver bucket and splashes a plagued child with what I assume is holy water. The earl makes the sign of the cross in front of the boy, who wears an embroidered vest stained with blood. The child hisses and snaps at the earl’s finger with a toothless mouth. Lord James patiently splashes the child again and makes the sign of the cross. “Faith will heal them,” Lord James says. “Faith and patience.”
“I’m not certain of that, my lord,” I say.
Lord James splashes the child a little more forcefully, the holy water spattering the boy’s face. The earl dips the aspergillum into the bucket again and splashes again. The boy flinches at the cold water but doesn’t stop biting. Lord James splashes the child over and over again, each swing more forceful, the earl’s face tightening with each stroke until he is scowling. “Faith!” he shouts into the boy’s face. “Faith and patience! Faith and patience!” The last sentence is shouted so loudly that the guards peer into the room. Lord James doesn’t notice. He grabs the bucket and dumps the holy water over the child’s blond curls with a growl, then tries spattering the boy with what is left on the aspergillum but clips the child in the jaw with it instead. The boy cries out with pain, then continues to snap his teeth. Lord James strokes the child’s chin where he struck it. He leans in close and whispers, as the boy shakes away the water dumped over him, “Faith and patience, little one.”
“My lord,” I say, but am unsure of what to add.
Sir Morgan draws a small Bible from a leather pouch at his side and approaches the child. “Praise the Lord, oh my soul,” he reads, “and forget not all his benefits who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion.”
“I have tried scripture,” Lord James says. “I have tried exorcism. I had a dozen priests chanting over these poor people. But none of it has yet worked.”
I notice a bare-chested man among the afflicted. He bears a burn in the shape of a crucifix upon his left breast. I let out a long sigh.
“My lord, I need a boat to cross the Thames, and some men to cover us while we climb the northern banks.”
Lord James walks past me as if I hadn’t spoken. He caresses the face of the woman tied to the iron ring. She snaps at his hand with her toothless jaws and snarls at him. “Don’t judge her by how she looks now,” he says. “She was ravishing once.”
“Was that your wife, my lord?”
“That is my wife, Sir Edward. And I will pray until God lifts this terrible affliction from her.”
“My wife is in Saint Edmund’s Bury,” I say. “The plague may not have gotten to her.”
Lord James steeples his hands in front of his wife and closes his eyes. “There is nothing but plague in the North. Your wife is like mine now.”
“Perhaps she is not.”
“I am sorry for your loss, Sir Edward.”
“Then lend me a boat and five crossbowmen,” I say. “Give me the chance to pray for my wife as you now pray for yours.”
Lord James opens his eyes and looks at me. “Travel north of the Thames is forbidden. God has destroyed the North, like Sodom and
Gomorrah. And he has forbidden us from traveling there.”
“My wife is there,” I say.
“Perhaps your wife is a pillar of salt,” Lord James says, and he laughs.
I hear the madness in that laugh.
“I need a boat and some crossbowmen, my lord.”
“I will give you a boat and soldiers,” he says, “if you agree to let my surgeons take out your teeth.”
Sir Tristan snorts. “You can have Sir Morgan’s teeth.”
Sir Morgan glares. I would smile if my Elizabeth wasn’t a hundred miles away.
“There is a cathedral in Saint Edmund’s Bury,” I say to Lord James. “And in that cathedral is the thighbone of St. Luke.”
Lord James opens his mouth then shuts it. “St. Luke the healer?”
“The very same.”
The earl looks at the afflicted along his walls. He looks at his wife and runs a hand along her cheek as she snaps and strains against the silk cord. “You would return with this relic? Give it to me?”
“Yes, m’lord.”
He turns to look at me, and there is a guarded hope in his eyes. “How can I be certain that you will honor your word, Sir Edward? That you will return with the relic?”
I stare into the earl’s eyes and shrug slowly. “Faith, my lord.” I look at his wife, bound and snarling by the wall. “Faith and patience.”