Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2)

by Roberto Calas

  “All he has to do is say he will treat Edward,” Tristan replies. “That’s your way out, Paul.”

  Walter fires his crossbow.

  I glance up but the bolt has buried itself in the wall.

  “The next one goes in your head!” Walter shouts to Tristan.

  “The next one will make me jump,” Tristan says, “and Paul will have another mouth. Tell him to treat Edward. Properly!”

  I toss the bread and knife onto the mattress and climb back into bed. I think of all the men I know who have died of battle wounds. For every two who died from rotting wounds, there was one who lived. One whose sickness healed. Battlefield surgeons had no time for astrology. They learned long ago that stars are fickle. That the gods of astrology do not care about the dying and the dead. It did not matter if the patients had been wounded when Venus was transitive or the moon full. The surgeons treated them in the same way. With moldy bread and cobwebs. With wine and leeches. And sometimes, the patients lived.

  The woman in the blue veil dances out of the room. The other dancers follow her path, like colorful echoes, and snake back outside. I watch the blonde woman spin and prance out the door. Listen to their song fade away.

  I will not die. Elizabeth’s life depends on me. I will cut off my own arm if I must, but I hope it will not come to that.

  “Walter, kill him!” Paul shouts. “Roger, for God’s sake, help me!”

  “I’ll slit his throat, I will!” Tristan holds his head at an angle, his eyes wide like a madman’s. “I’ll paint the floor red! By God, I’ll make this room taste like Paul!”

  I pat the bed until I feel the cold steel of the knife. I take it in my left hand and cut into my wound. It hurts like the devil’s pitchfork but I open the gash and let the pus run. I squeeze until I cannot take the pain anymore, allow myself a few breaths, then squeeze again.

  The shouting ceases slowly.

  Walter and Belisencia stop first, then Roger, and finally, it is only Tristan bellowing threats. I look up. They are staring at me. Tristan follows their gazes and falls silent. Paul still has a dagger blade at his throat. The crossbows are still aimed at Tristan. Belisencia’s hands are still in her hair. But they watch me.

  Paul shakes his head. “You shouldn’t be doing that,” he says. “You haven’t been trained.”

  “I need…wine,” I mutter. The room seems too bright. Voices seem to echo. Fire surges from my wrist to my shoulder.

  “Do you know what you are doing?” Paul asks.

  “No,” I say. “But…I’m a…clever chicken. I’ll do what I can.”

  “Please, Paul,” Belisencia says. “Can’t you treat him? We can pay you for any supplies, and for your time. Just…please don’t take his hand.”

  Paul scoffs. “Coin is worthless.”

  “We have food,” she says, “and the knights have swords.”

  “Yes,” Paul says, “and daggers. I don’t need weapons. I’m a doctor.”

  “Surely there is something we can trade?” she asks.

  Paul sweeps his eyes along her body again. “Now that you speak of it, there is something.”

  Belisencia takes a back step. “Wh-what?”

  “You are a handsome woman, Belisencia.”

  “Paul…” She shakes her head.

  “The next words you speak may be your last, Paul,” Tristan snarls.

  “A kiss,” Paul says.

  “No!” Belisencia shouts.

  “A kiss?” Tristan cocks his head to one side. “All you want is a kiss?”

  Paul holds one hand out toward Belisencia. “One kiss from you, my lady, and I will do what I can for Sir Edward.”

  “Paul, I’m a nun,” she says.

  Tristan looks at the ruins of the doctor’s mouth and smiles. “I think one kiss is entirely reasonable.”

  “No,” Belisencia says. “Tristan, stop it.”

  Tristan taps his ear. “My apologies, Bel, I am half-deaf and I can’t hear you.”

  Paul leans toward Tristan and shouts, “On the lips!”

  “Absolutely not!” Belisencia says.

  Tristan nods and takes the dagger from Paul’s throat. “Fine, but there will be no pruning in Edward’s treatment.”

  Paul nods, leans in close to Tristan and shouts, “A long kiss!”

  “Fine,” Tristan says, covering his nose. “But we need medicine and bandages to keep the wound clean on our travels.”

  Paul nods again, his gaze locked on Belisencia. “A long kiss on the lips and it is agreed!”

  “You think she’ll kiss Paul and everything will be right between us?” Walter snarls.

  “We could go back to pointing weapons,” Tristan replies.

  “I am not an ox to be bartered!” Belisencia shouts.

  “She kisses him, Paul heals your friend, and we never see you again,” Walter says.

  Tristan nods. Walter lowers his crossbow.

  “I don’t understand why everyone is talking to Tristan,” Belisencia says. “If anyone decides whom I will kiss, it is God, and God says nuns do not kiss men.”

  “I don’t remember anything in the Bible about nuns not kissing doctors,” Paul replies.

  “That’s because there is nothing in the Bible about nuns not kissing doctors,” Tristan says. “She should give you several kisses, really.”

  Belisencia gives him a look that could wither plants. She looks at Paul, her gaze settling on his twisted teeth. Paul smiles. His gums are rotted and so dark they are almost brown. She sighs and shakes her head softly, the black waves of her hair rocking.

  “If I kiss you,” she says, “you will heal Edward?”

  “With a kiss from you, I think I could heal the plague, my lady,” Paul says.

  She nods. “Heal him then. And I will kiss you.”

  Paul shakes his head. “I’m sorry my lady, kiss first.”

  Take while the patient is in pain.

  Belisencia sighs. “You won’t cut off his hand?”

  “I will not,” Paul says. He turns to me and smiles. “I’ll do all I can for you, Sir Edward.”

  I turn my head away. His breath smells like a bedpan that has not been changed in days. He turns back to Belisencia and she makes a face. She is more hesitant to kiss this fool than she was to accept Hugh the Baptist’s bite. But then, Hugh’s lips promised heaven. And Paul’s will be hell.

  Belisencia sits and takes a deep breath. Paul drifts toward her and turns his head; he makes faint sucking sounds as his tongue moistens his lips. I watch his profile as he forms the faintest of puckers with his lips. Belisencia wrinkles her nose and leans closer, touches her lips to Paul’s with a whimper.

  The leech puts one hand on the back of her head. He runs his tongue across her mouth. Belisencia wails from her throat and tries to break away, but Paul holds her to him. His tongue explores her lips, drives between them. She cries out again and breaks free.

  Tristan slaps the doctor in the side of the head. The blow sounds like a book falling on dirt.

  Paul rocks to one side and wraps both arms around his head. “Why did you hit me?”

  “Because something was wrong with your tongue,” Tristan replies. “Thank the stars my blow put it back in its place.”

  Belisencia wipes at her lips with her robe. She scowls at Paul. “You got what you wanted. Now heal him.”

  Paul shrugs. “I’ll do what I can. But he will most likely die anyway.” He looks at my wound, pinches the skin around it hard enough to bring tears to my eyes.

  I despise doctors.

  Chapter 21

  Paul cleans my wound with water and wine, then applies three leeches. I am not fond of the worms, but I feel nothing as they are attached. My surgeon at Bodiam told me the leeches have something in their saliva that keeps their bite from causing pain. Elizabeth was with me during the explanation, and she suggested that all knights should put leech saliva on their swords.

  She is a gentle soul, my Elizabeth. When she wakes, I must never tell her of t
he multitudes I have killed in my quest to find and save her. She would never sleep again.

  When the leeches are placed, Paul proclaims that I need rest, and everyone leaves the room. I lay in the bed, alone, for a long time. I think about the last bad wound I took, in Caen. The skirt of my armor had been torn off and a spear pierced the mail just below my backplate. Tristan says I was stabbed in the arse, but it was six inches too high for that. When I came limping home, Elizabeth told me I was never going back to France. But a year later, I was off again. I looked at her in our bed before I left, with her adoring terrier at her side, and told her I loved her in French. I thought it clever.

  “Je t’aime,” I said.

  She smiled, but it was the impish smile. “No,” she replied. “You are not tame. But someday, you will be. Someday you will tire of being away from me, and you will come home forever.” She stroked her little terrier and spoke to it. “We will tame him, won’t we, Monty?”

  That was six years ago, and since then I have made three more trips to France with Tristan and Robert Knolles. It is how I have made my fortune, and how we can afford our castle. But I am done now. When Elizabeth comes back to me, I will stay home forever.

  I fall asleep thinking about our castle. Elizabeth and I will make the strongest and most beautiful fortress in all of England. And we shall never leave its sheltering embrace. My dreams show me my castle as I will build it, rising from a moat in crenellated splendor. Four round towers and two square ones. No keep, for we shall live within the very walls. But in my dream those walls bleed. Bloody waterfalls that turn the moat crimson, spill over, and wash all of Bodiam with the stain of my sins.

  When I wake the bed sheets are soaked with my sweat and I am shivering. Paul hovers over me, examining the wound.

  “How long…have I been asleep?”

  “Two hours or so,” Paul says.

  Two hours? I was hoping to be at Hedingham by now. Two more hours of my angel’s life have passed.

  Walter stands by the door, holding his crossbow. Tristan stands next to Paul and looks at me with concern, but he smiles. Perhaps I look better.

  “How do you get thirty dancing men and women into a barn?” Tristan asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “With great difficulty,” Tristan says, laughing. “They really are an interesting mob. Walter tells me that they hate pointy shoes. Can you imagine that? Whatever makes them dance also makes them hate pointy shoes. And the color red.” He smiles distantly. “I didn’t believe him, so I took one of Belisencia’s pointy boots and showed it to the dancers. God’s teeth, Edward, you should have seen it! They do not like pointy shoes.” He grows sober and shakes his head wistfully. “Not one bit.”

  “Where…where is Belisencia?” I ask.

  Tristan shrugs. “She’s in the barn with Roger, trying to get the remains of her boot back.”

  “Shush,” Paul says. “I need to concentrate.” I turn away from the blast of foul air. Paul slides a metal file beneath the edges of a leech until the suction breaks and the worm releases its hold. He does this with each of the leeches. When the swollen leeches are back in their jar, he sets strips of wet, mold-ridden bread over the wound using linen bandages to hold the bread in place. I have seen surgeons do this before. Something in the mold eats the infection, although I do not know how or why. And I do not think the surgeons do, either.

  Paul turns to Tristan. “That is all I can do for him!” he shouts. He still thinks Tristan is hard of hearing. “As I said, the stars are against your friend! He will probably die in horrible pain!”

  “Are…are you supposed to say that in front of me?” I croak.

  Paul pats my arm. “False hope is no hope at all.”

  I despise doctors.

  Paul tells me that I must remain in bed for at least two days, if I live that long. But if I am to die, I will die riding toward Elizabeth’s cure. I stagger upright. The floorboards feel cold against my bare feet. “Tristan, my clothes.”

  “Edward, it pains me to say this, but perhaps Paul is right.”

  I nod to appease him, but he knows I won’t change my mind.

  I pick up my boots and perch on the bed to pull them on. Tristan sighs and helps me dress. Everything except my armor. He gathers my breastplate and cuisses and walks toward the door with them. “You can put your harness on when you feel better,” he says. “Its weight will only make you weaker now.”

  I know he is right, but I mutter a protest to stave off one of his smirks and deny him satisfaction.

  Belisencia waits for us outside, already on her horse, and wearing mismatched boots. Walter and Roger hold crossbows on their shoulders.

  “No offense intended,” Walter says, “but don’t come back. Ever.”

  Tristan has to boost me into my saddle. Children peer out from behind buildings to look at us. Belisencia waves to them and a few wave back.

  “The Bible says that children are a gift from God,” she says as we ride away from the praeceptoria.

  “That can’t be in the New Testament,” Tristan says. “Children are noisy, rude little people that act like drunkards and piss their pants. They are always getting into trouble and never listen to anything they are told. A gift worthy of the Old Testament God.”

  Belisencia looks thoughtful. “Noisy. Rude. Always in trouble. Never listen. Act like drunkards. Why does this sound so familiar to me?” She looks at Tristan and raises a brow.

  “Sister Belisencia,” Tristan replies, “how dare you suggest that Sir Edward is childish.”

  “Did Tristan tell you that he wet his pants once on the battlefield?” I say.

  “Edward!” Tristan shouts. “That was perspiration!”

  “He had to…pardon me, my lady…piss before the battle started but the horns sounded and he had no time. A French bastard hit him low on the breastplate with a mace and suddenly Tristan had a groin full of perspiration.” The jostling of the horse hurts my head, but I feel better. Perhaps the sleep helped.

  Belisencia laughs. “I had no idea groins perspired so much.”

  “Sweat accumulates there,” Tristan says. “Did Edward tell you that someone threw up in his great helm once?”

  “Tristan…” I do not like this story.

  “Edward didn’t know until he put the helmet on, but he was already running toward the city walls, so he couldn’t clean himself off. Fought the rest of the battle with chunks of rabbit stew dripping onto his neck.”

  “That is a total fabrication.” I say.

  We ride a hundred paces before I speak again.

  “It was chicken stew.”

  Hedingham is only five miles from Maplestead, which is a good thing because I do not think I can ride very far. Fire still courses through my arm, and my strength has not returned.

  A sprinkling of rain falls on us from the cloud-swept skies as we ride a muddy track heading westward. I call a halt a mile from the praeceptoria and slide down from my horse.

  Tristan dismounts and joins me.

  A dead fox lies among a patch of buttercups on the side of the old track. I kneel beside the corpse and unwrap the dressing that Paul made.

  Tristan kneels next to me. “Oh Lord,” he says, “we commend the soul of our friend, fox, into your arms. Forgive him his chicken-killing ways and accept him into your kingdom.”

  “Shut your mouth and help me collect maggots,” I say.

  “I didn’t realize you had a maggot collection, Ed,” he replies. “Not to cast judgment, but have you ever thought about wood carvings instead? Or maybe little ceramic statues?”

  I pick maggots from the fox’s flesh, feeling them flail in my fingers, and drop them into my helmet. The first time I saw a surgeon fill a man’s wound with maggots, it nearly made me sick. But I have seen such treatment many times now, and I know how useful these little creatures can be. Leeches and maggots. I thought my own personal path to salvation depended on chickens. But it is worms that will deliver me.

&n
bsp; Tristan shakes his head. “I’m sorry Ed, I can’t. Have I ever told you of my deep disgust for maggots?”

  “What are you two doing?” Belisencia walks toward us holding the reins of all three horses.

  “Edward is hungry,” Tristan says.

  Belisencia looks at the rotting fox and shudders. “Have you both gone mad?”

  Tristan grins. “In these times of madness, only maggots will save us.”

  When I have harvested two dozen of the maggots, I give Tristan the helmet and tell him to tilt it over my wound slowly, so that the maggots fall onto it a few at a time. He nods. I clench my teeth and open the cut with my fingers. Four maggots fall onto my wrist. One of them slips into the wound, another falls half in and half out but wriggles inside. The other two fall to the ground. Tristan tilts the helmet several times, until ten of the maggots have made a home of my wound. I smear the wet bread over the gash so that some of the mold settles inside.

  “That is the second most repulsive thing I have ever seen,” Belisencia says.

  “It is vile,” Tristan says. “But seeing you kiss that doctor was worse.”

  I wrap the moldy bread in the linen bandages and tuck them into my saddlebag. “What’s the first most repulsive?” I ask Belisencia.

  She sets her gaze on Tristan and crosses her arms.

  I chuckle and kick my horse forward. My fever does not seem as bad. Perhaps Paul’s treatment is working. I look skyward and pray to Saint Giles and Saint Luke for healing. I say a prayer to House Gemini, too, just in case.

  We ride again through the worsening rain, leaning low in our saddles. Our horses send up crowns of water with each plodding step. A few hours before sundown, I see something that makes me yank the reins hard enough to make my gelding nicker. We stop on the muddy track, the rain nattering off Tristan’s spaulders.

  “Edward,” Tristan says. “Where is Hedingham from here?”

  I point to the southwest with a trembling finger. “There,” I say.

  We stare silently. A column of black smoke rises from the direction in which I point.

  Chapter 22

  We ride swiftly toward the column of smoke. The lively pace makes my head throb and keeps me gasping for breath, but I note these things absently. My only thoughts are of my friends, Morgan and Zhuri, and of the nuns of Hedingham.