We leave the chalk hills and enter the Thames valley five miles southeast of Dartford. The towns are larger here, so we avoid them, keeping to the heath and forests. But at day’s end, when the world turns gray and hope seems to die, we can no longer avoid settlements. We have reached the Thames at last. And to cross that great river we must enter Dartford. I am anxious to get the river behind me and to ride fast and hard to St. Edmund’s Bury, but I must wait a bit longer.
I must wait, because Dartford is under siege.
A sea of human silhouettes sway upon the Dartford Bridge. Their movements appear unnatural, even from the crest of this hill overlooking the city. They are the afflicted. The returning dead. Mindless hunters, incapable of mercy or understanding. And they stand between me and my Elizabeth.
Never have I seen so many of the afflicted. I can’t move. All I can do is stare silently. The mass of them pushes against the portcullis of the southern gatehouse. I can hear their screams and imagine soldiers on the other side jabbing spears through the gate.
After a time, I goad my horse forward. As we wind our way down the hill, I hear louder cries and imagine vast cauldrons of boiling water spewing down on the afflicted.
Dartford flies the banners of St. George and of Lord James Fitzsimmons, earl of Sussex. I identify myself to the soldiers at the city gate. They usher us into the gatehouse with crossbows loaded and pointed our way. We have the pleasure of stripping bare again and are inspected like lost sheep returning home. We bear no wounds, so we are allowed in the city.
A sergeant wearing brigandine and a kettle helm puts himself at our service. He calls himself Philip Chandler. “There’s some plague in Dartford,” he says. “We ain’t fully clean, m’lord. But Lord James is rooting it out.”
“Are the afflicted crossing the Thames?” I ask.
“It’s too wide for ’em to wade. But I hear they broke through Oxford and crossed into Wessex. And we had plenty of plague in the South before that. We’ll like as not get flanked soon enough.”
I ask the sergeant to take us to Lord James. The soldier studies me, then nods curtly and leads us toward the new keep. We ride through a catatonic city. I see the same vacant look on every face. The people of Dartford walk slowly. Move deliberately. As if they are sleepwalking. As if they already have the plague.
There are two guards outside Lord James’s chamber. An unpleasant odor seeps from beneath the door. Like rancid meat. The sergeant pauses 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.”
Chapter 7
So now I must steal a holy relic from the cathedral at St. Edmund’s Bury. When I am done with this journey, I believe I will have broken each of the Ten Commandments. Several times.
The boat turns out to be an ancient barge scarcely big enough to carry our horses. It is narrow, with rotting planks, and sits low in the water. Four drunken sailors are at the oars. The barge is bad, but it is better than the crossbowmen they have provided. Four runty men in padded frocks. I can’t see their eyes beneath the kettle-helm rims, but I can see the fear in their postures. One of them trembles and sweats as we board the barge. The others take deep breaths and grip their crossbows tightly.
The barge is so small that Sir Tristan and Sir Morgan need to sit beneath my horse. Three of the crossbowmen squeeze in beneath Sir Tristan’s mare. I sit on the prow, with my legs dangling over the water. The last crossbowman does the same on the stern.
One of the oarsmen pushes us away from the docks, and the barge cuts into the fog-shrouded Thames. I take a breath and catch the scent of brine and dead fish. The night is cool and overcast but the three-quarter moon smoulders through the clouds.
The sailors get three strokes in before the first body bumps gently against the side. A man, dead and bloated. A rower shoves him away with his oar. A vagary of the river currents makes the dead man’s arm wave in the water.
“Morgan, there’s a rooster on the boat.” Sir Tristan points to the stern. Sir Morgan turns his head to look, and my horse’s cock brushes against his upper lip. Tristan and the three crossbowmen under his horse laugh as Morgan spits and rubs at his lip.
“Always the child,” Sir Morgan says. “Always the fool. Fools don’t get into heaven, Tristan. Fools rot in purgatory.”
“We’re all going to rot,” Tristan says. “There is only one heaven, and that is between a woman’s legs.”
We get closer to the far bank. I see the body of the man farther downstream. It is not the river currents making him move. He is moving on his own. I sit up to get a better look.
“You’re wrong, Tristan. Heaven exists. Our Lord and Savior died for our sins. All our sins. Even yours.”
“Perhaps he did,” Tristan says. “Perhaps I am wrong. I freely admit it. But what makes you so certain that you are right?”
“Because of the scriptures, Tristan. Because of the miracles and the saints and the martyrs. Because of the priests and because of the Holy Spirit. I can feel the Holy Spirit, Tristan, because I have faith. I pity you, because you will never know the joy of it.”
Another body washes against the barge. A man in a long tunic. I lean toward the upriver side to get a better look. The man’s ghastly hand takes hold of the rail. It shocks me to silence, so all I can do is point as the afflicted man tries to pull himself onboard. A rower cries out and smacks at the plaguer with an oar. I draw my dagger but I can’t get to the threat. One of the soldiers under Tristan’s horse fires a panicky shot that buries a bolt in the lurching man’s shoulder. The plaguer cries out but pulls his upper half into the boat. The horses clatter their hooves as he nears them. One of the crossbowmen, the one at the stern, throws up over the side of the rails.
A head peers over the prow of the boat and I almost fall overboard at the sight. It is a water-bloated woman, her color drained to a pallid white by the plague and the river. Her lips have been ripped open on one side, revealing skeletal jaws. One armpit rests on the boat’s railing, one shriveled claw reaches toward me. A gaudy ring of gold and ruby winds around her finger. It makes her flesh seem even paler. She shrieks. I raise my dagger and plunge it into her skull as she claws at my arm. She spasms and I hear a horse crying out behind me. Soldiers and oarsmen are screaming. The crossbowman at the stern is biting the flank of Tristan’s horse. The horse cries out again and would surely have reared if its bit were not chained down. It takes me a moment to realize that the crossbowman must have been afflicted before he came onboard.
A rower uses his oar to stab at the man with the bolt in his shoulder. More hands reach up from the dark waters to grab the boat. Sir Morgan crawls between the legs of my horse and knocks the feeding crossbowman away from Sir Tristan’s horse. The soldier falls backward, his helmet tumbling away, and in the lantern light I can see no whites in his eyes.
I hear the snap of the crossbows as I don my great helm. Sir Morgan and Sir Tristan pull theirs on as well. The boat rocks wildly and water splashes inside. One of the crossbowmen falls backward and tumbles into the river near me. I reach for him, but there are countless bodies writhing near him. He cries out once, then is swallowed by the Thames. I shout to him, but I know it is useless.
The horses roll their eyes and blow as they strain at the chains securing them to the boat. A bloated man with one eye tries to board near me, so I slash at his face, the anger at the crossbowman’s death lending me strength.
“Oh, Christ,” Tristan shouts. He is still beneath my horse, kicking at a withered man with no shirt who is pulling himself onto the barge. The man has been in the water a long time. So long that Tristan’s boot sloughs the man’s skin from his body. The flesh slides off the man’s chest like the crust of a half-dried mud puddle. The man screams, and Tristan’s second kick sends him back into the Thames.
Sir Morgan is on top of the afflicted crossbowman, stabbing with his dagger. The boat leans upriver. Dozens of the afflicted try to clamber aboard on that side. Gangly arms and bloated faces and soulless eyes. They reach for us, hissing, snarling. One pulls itself hand over hand along an oar. The two remaining crossbowmen try to wind their weapons under Tristan’s horse.
A pair of tiny hands clamp on to the prow. I hack at them quickly. I don’t want to see what is on the other end of those hands. An oarsman screams shrilly. I don’t have time to look, because the boat tilts toward the Thames. I drop my dagger and my nails scrape at the planks on the prow as I fall backward. I have one c
hance to glance over my shoulder as I stumble. There is a legion of them in the water, dragging the boat down. Their hands reach for me, their mouths open. I think of Elizabeth as the boat tips and I fall toward the afflicted in a tumble of horseflesh, armor, and screams.
Episode 1:
Historical Note
The novel you are reading is as historically accurate as I could make it. Edward Dallingridge (sometimes Dallyngrigg) was a real knight. As he mentions in the story, Sir Edward fought in France during the Hundred Years War, under the brutal Robert Knolles. Edward made his fortune in France and increased it with his marriage to Lady Elizabeth Wardieu (sometimes Wardeux). I don’t know how deep their love was, but you can see a carving of them at the castle that they built together. It is in Bodiam, Sussex, and is one of the finest, most picturesque castles in England. I imagine that two people who can build a castle of such beauty must have had a great capacity for love.
I am not aware of any connection between the Dallingridge family and Bury St. Edmunds (as St. Edmund’s Bury is now called). but I wanted Edward to travel somewhere of religious importance. Bury St. Edmunds was one of the most sacred cities in the world at that time. And that time is roughly 1385. I say roughly because I have taken some minor liberties with the timeline to make events work for this story.
Sir Tristan and Sir Morgan are figments of my imagination. John Broke and John of Gaunt were real people. There will be more about them in later episodes, including a reference to a real conflict between Edward and John of Gaunt.
All of the places the knights travel to actually exist. I tried, where I could, to use place names that were in use at the time. Meddestan is Maidstone. Aylesford is Aylsford. Alvilea is Aveley. The castles, priories and churches that the knights visit are real and many can still be visited. And I suggest you do, because they are beautiful remnants of England’s past.
The Scourge (Kindle Serial) Page 3
