“Oh, holy hell!” I turn my mare and ride back toward him, but the dead have returned. Six or seven of the afflicted fall upon him. One of the plaguers bites off part of his cheek and the man screams again. Perhaps it is the same scream that has not yet ended. A woman in the tree shrieks “Thomas!” and I imagine she is addressing the clod with the impeccable timing, the one being torn to pieces.
I ride toward Thomas, but my mare rears. A woman with thin wisps of white hair hisses and spits blood at us. I turn my horse and cleave open her face. She cries out, then hisses again with such force that a mist of blood reddens my mare. I drive my blade deep into the woman’s skull and silence her. Two more of the afflicted take her place.
Thomas hasn’t stopped screaming. Plaguers pull at him. One of his arms rips slowly from his shoulder socket with a series of pops and a volcanic spray of blood. He shrieks and reaches toward me with his remaining arm. A plaguer bites at the skin of the man’s upper lip and tears away a swath of flesh. Another demon rips with black fingers at the opposite side of his face. Thomas cries out again. Much of the skin of his face is gone, so it looks like a skull screaming at me. His lidless eyes look into mine as a plaguer with oozing boils on its face tears the man’s stomach open. I slash at the monsters before me, trying to reach Thomas to end his misery. I want his screams to stop. Why didn’t the fool jump when I was beneath him? But there are too many around him.
As the afflicted converge on Thomas, I turn away and trot my horse to the opposite side of the tree. Morgan and Tristan do the same. Plaguers stumble past us, maddened by the scent of blood. A young man in a blue tunic hunches upon one of the tree’s larger boughs. I reach up and help him climb into the saddle behind me.
The first of the massive group of plaguers on the slope reach the hilltop and shamble toward us. It is time to go.
A woman sits on the back of Morgan’s horse. Tristan tries to coax someone out of the branches, but there is no time.
“Morgan, Tristan! Let’s go! Let’s go!” I shout to be heard over Thomas’s never-ending screams. Morgan tries to ride off but his horse balks when it sees the approaching crush of plaguers. I reflect, for an instant, that a warhorse would be useful here, and tighten my grip on St. Giles’s sword. The woman behind Morgan clings tightly and sobs as the living dead close in upon them and cut me off. The plaguers surround his horse. Morgan thrusts his wooden cross out toward the nearest plaguers. And they recoil from the crucifix.
Three of them back away and Morgan rides past them. I spin my horse to get a better look. My eyes are so wide that the air stings at them. “Morgan…” I trail off.
Morgan rubs the cross. “God’s almighty power.” He glances back toward Tristan, but Tristan is still trying to pull someone down from the willow. More and more plaguers crest the hill.
“Tristan, we’re leaving!” I put Morgan’s miracle out of my mind, kick heels into my mare. Morgan and I ride from the willow, with the young man behind me and the woman behind him. We brush past thrusting hands and gallop down the slope, down toward the Roman road. But when I glance back toward the hilltop I yank hard on the reins and wheel my horse around. “Tristan!”
But Tristan is beyond my help. He never left the willow. The dead surround him.
I watch as he slashes and stabs with the bridle knife that I gave him in Rayleigh. There are too many to fight, and even more crest the hill as I watch. Tristan’s horse falls to its knees and the plaguers surge forward. Their hands clutch and yank.
“Tristan!” Spittle arcs from my mouth as I shout. I gallop toward the tree again, but a mass of the plaguers breaks off from the main group and drives me back. “Tristan!”
He is a lighthouse among the afflicted, slashing and stabbing and kicking from his horse’s saddle. He glances down the hill toward me.
And then he disappears among the dead.
Chapter 22
I ride a few yards farther from the willow to make some distance between me and the approaching plaguers, then turn back again. “Tristan!”
The man behind me speaks. “There is nothing more you can do for him. Go. Get out of here now!”
“You can walk if you like.” There is venom in my voice. The young man stops talking. I look back toward the willow, but Tristan is uphill from me. I can’t make out what is happening. I can see only the mass of plaguers grabbing and biting at his horse.
My heart feels like it has turned to lead. I stare, remembering the time Tristan buried himself in bodies after the Battle of Nájera so that he could scare the pages scouring the dead for coins.
I remember him bursting into Thomas Riley’s tent with one eye closed, screaming and holding Geoffrey Milton’s tomato-smeared false eye in his hand.
I remember him emerging from the Thames on my horse, grinning like a fool and pulling us from the jaws of death.
And I mourn. It might as well be me tearing Tristan into pieces. I brought him on this quest. I put him in this danger. I think about Thomas, the man in the riding boots, and in my mind I see the flesh torn from his face, hear his shoulder snapping. I look downard and dig my nails into my palms.
“Look!” The man behind me points toward the willow.
I lift my gaze. Tristan’s head rises above the throng and my leadened heart hammers in my chest. He reaches upward and grabs hold of a branch.
I watch as Tristan pulls himself from the saddle and wraps his legs around the limb while the afflicted swipe at him. I watch as he flattens himself against the bottom of the branch. And I laugh as he gives two fingers to the mass of plaguers that reach for him and rip apart his horse. I must have kept my eyes open for too long, because I feel them tearing up. I wipe at them and laugh again.
Tristan is alive.
“Stay in the tree!” I scream it as loudly as I can manage. Tristan rolls himself up onto the bough and sits. He can’t see me, so he leans low to look through the downy branches and blows me a kiss. “Stay in the tree, you idiot!” I try not to smile as I shout to him. “We’ll come back for you. You’ll be safe in the tree!”
He holds up a thumb and I think he nods. And before I can respond, God smites the earth.
That’s what it sounds like. An explosion so unearthly that for a moment I am certain God has come down to earth to finish the job he started with this plague. The sound echoes across the hills so that I can’t tell where it came from. Plaguers near the willow fly into the air like daisies chopped by a sickle. One of them is split into pieces and each of the pieces flies in a different direction. Something skims off the grass with a resonant thud, then slams high into the willow branches.
There is silence. Even the plaguers stop moving.
“What in bloody hell was that?” The young man behind me pants as he speaks. A few cheers sound from somewhere off to my right and I spot a handful of men in the distance, gathered on another hill. When I see what they are gathered around, I understand what has happened.
They have a canon.
I heard guns many times in France, but I never expected to hear the thunder of them here in England. I wonder who these men are that fired the canon. Such a weapon requires a skilled crew to operate.
I back away from the advancing plaguers, and Morgan rides to my side. The woman is still behind him. “That was something!” he says.
I nod. “A gun crew. Where on earth did they get that canon?”
Morgan shrugs.
“From the old keep,” the woman behind Morgan says, tears running down her cheeks. “They named the gun the Right Hand of the Lord.”
Morgan glances back at her and smiles. “Thy right hand, oh Lord, is become glorious in power.”
She wipes at her eyes with a finger and smiles timidly back at Morgan, then finishes the verse: “Thy right hand, oh Lord, hath dashed in pieces the enemy.”
I look at the woman. Tufts of black hair poke out from beneath a linen coif. She has plump lips and high cheekbones and an exotic tilt to her eyes. She is pretty, and Morgan can’t take his eyes off
her.
Until three clamorous pops ring out from the willow. Wood creaks as if the world’s largest oak door is slowly swinging open, and the top third of the willow topples with a chorus of cracks. Tristan and a woman in the tree have to scramble to avoid being struck. The base of the broken shard remains in the tree, joined to the trunk by pale, twisted strands of wood. But the shaggy tip crashes slowly to the ground, viny branches trembling and whipping and whispering on the way down.
“Oh heavens, no.” Morgan runs a hand through his hair.
I look at the fallen treetop and shake my head. “The right hand of the Lord missed.”
A deathly silence settles over us as the first of the afflicted crawl along the new bridge and into the willow tree.
Episode 4:
Historical Note
I firmly believe that humans have an innate appreciation for history. When we walk through a medieval castle or ancient ruins, I think there is something inside each of us that is awed by the thought of the people who once dwelled there. Of bridging the centuries and making contact with those that came before us.
For many Christians, that awe is multiplied when those that came before are recognized as saints or martyrs. Saints straddle the line between earth and heaven, and, for the devout, it is a religious experience to touch something that once belonged to them. In the medieval age, religion had a much stronger reach into people’s lives, so it is not surprising that so much importance was placed upon holy artifacts.
Relics were considered so important that no church altar could be consecrated unless it contained a holy artifact — a practice that, to an extent, still survives today in the Catholic Church. Relics were so sought after that it was common for thieves to visit other countries so they could break into churches and monasteries and steal the artifacts therein. These holy relics were taken to the thieves’ country and paraded in public like stolen university mascots.
Like anything in the world that has a perceived value, many relics were forgeries. John Calvin, the father of Calvinism, once quipped that if all the alleged pieces of the True Cross were put together, you could build a ship with them.
But relics help Christians sustain their faith and devotion to the church, much as old castles and ruins sustain historians. Religious artifacts and the gorgeous reliquaries that contain them are a rich part of medieval history, and both historians and Christians venerate them, if sometimes for different reasons.
Episode 5
Chapter 23
The toppled willow crest groans as the afflicted swarm onto it. They clamber on hands and knees like drunken ants, edging ever closer to the heart of the tree where Tristan and three others huddle. One of the plaguers loses his balance and drops into the surging sea of bodies that washes against the willow.
“It’s like a plague of locusts,” Morgan says. “Like from the Old Testament.”
The woman behind him sniffs and quotes more scripture. “In appearance, the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth.”
I do not remember that verse from the Bible, but it sends a chill through me. The Old Testament is a frightening book, full of magic and cruelty and angry gods.
I’m not sure the plaguers are agile enough to reach Tristan or the others, but I don’t want to give them the time to try. I look back toward the gun crew. They are coaxing four oxen back toward the wheeled cannon, presumably to secure them to the cart again.
“Why don’t they fire again?” Morgan asks.
“Because they have to reload,” I say. “A good crew can fire only four or five times a day.” The men around the cannon can’t seem to get the cattle to move in the same direction. One of the crewmen stumbles and is almost trampled by an ox. I wonder how these men fired the gun at all.
A plaguer has reached the willow center. It is a man in a brown overcoat. I can see him moving through the gaps in the branches. A woman in the tree screams. I crouch in my saddle until I get a good look though the branches. The plaguer reaches toward the woman. Tristan slides on his arse across a branch and drops down beside her and kicks the plaguer in the shoulder three times. The man in the overcoat tumbles from the bough, his body crashing against a tree limb on the way down. He thumps onto the grass, then stands unsteadily and walks back toward the fallen treetop.
“What do we do?” Morgan asks.
“Something biblical.” I turn my mare toward the gun crew. “Something from the Old Testament.”
There are seven men around the cannon. One of them wears ancient armor and waves stiffly as we approach. He raises the visor on his beaked hounskull, revealing long white whiskers and a gaunt, seamed face.
“Sent a few of them ghouls to hell, didn’t we?” He points to a stocky young man beside him. “Joseph said we should aim right at them, but Joseph ain’t never fired a gun before. You have to account for the distance.”
The woman behind Morgan slides gently from the saddle and hugs the old man tightly. My passenger, the young man, drops to the ground and is welcomed by the men of the gun crew.
“You’ve fired a cannon before?” I ask the old man.
“Aye,” he says. “I was at Calais. My crew fired twenty-two shots at the city wall.”
He pumps his fist again and again, saying “Boom!” with each thrust. I am concerned that he plans to do this twenty-two times, so I interrupt. “A wonderful mess you must have made of that wall.” I smile. I need his help.
Joseph points to the broken tree and addresses the old man. “You may have done well in Calais, Robert, but you made a mess over there.”
“He couldn’t have known the shot would bounce like that,” I say. “Anyway, I don’t think plaguers can climb very well. Just the same, we should get those people out of the tree quickly.”
“You see this gun?” Robert says. “I fired one just like it in Calais, for King Edward.”
Morgan and I glance at one another. I hear snickers from the rest of the gun crew. Joseph looks embarrassed.
Matilda hugs the old man again. “You told them that already, Robert.”
“Sent twenty-two shots at the city walls.”
I extend my right hand before he can start pumping his fist again, and we shake.
Joseph tells me that the old man’s name is Robert Bailey and that they live in a nearby town called Danbury. They are all servants to a knight named Thomas St. Clere. The young man I rescued from the tree is Sir Thomas’s son, and Matilda is the knight’s niece. Matilda’s sister, Cecilia, is still in the willow. As is Cecilia’s eight-year-old son, and their cousin, Lilly. George, the man with the riding boots, was a stableman. My stomach churns as I think of George’s fleshless scream.
For some reason a large group of these young nobles decided to flee Danbury and make for the south. They didn’t make it far.
Robert tries to tell me about Calais again but I don’t have time to humor him. I hold up a hand and explain my idea to him and to Joseph and the gun crew. They listen quietly and when I get to the end, Robert shakes his head.
“Sir Thomas ain’t gonna like that. Ain’t gonna like that at all.”
“Robert, there are — ”
The old man raises a hand to silence me in the same way that I silenced him. “I didn’t say we wouldn’t help, now did I?” He winks.
The New Testament says that Jesus Christ was murdered for our benefit. That his death washed away our sins and saved us from eternal hell. But before the Lamb of God allowed himself to be sacrificed, priests had to find other ways to keep the demons at bay. The most common way was by killing regular lambs. What we borrowed from the devil, we paid for with the blood of sheep and chickens and goats. Until the cost of our sins became too great, and God’s son had to cover the debt.
I look to the endless swarm of demons beneath the willow tree and I understand that mankind’s sins have finally exceeded even the Son of God’s value. We are in debt once again. And he
ll has come to collect.
We drive the oxen to the base of the rolling hill that holds the willow. I heft a bearded ax that I borrowed from the gun crew and I walk to the last ox. The animal’s back leg is deformed from birth or injury. I stroke the beast’s nose as four men take hold of the creature’s yoke. The ax handle feels slick in my hands. Morgan looks anxious, so I humor him. “You have words? Something they used to say?”
Morgan flips through his Bible and shakes his head. “I don’t truly know. Leviticus talks about this sort of thing, but I don’t know if there are any rules.”
Matilda provides another verse from the Bible: “And he gave unto Adam and to Eve commandments that they should worship the Lord their God and should offer the firstlings of their flocks as an offering unto the Lord.”
“Did you memorize the bloody thing?” I ask.
Another cry rings out from the willow.
“Someone’s screaming,” Robert says. He points with a shaking finger. “Up there, in that tree.”
I raise the ax but Morgan stops me.
“Wait!” Sir Morgan’s eyes race back and forth along a page. He whispers and squints as he reads the Latin text. “Don’t kill that one. It says here they have to be without defect.”
“There are people up there.” Robert points to the willow. His voice rings with amazement. “People in that tree.”
“I’m killing all four, Morgan. Tell God he doesn’t have to accept this one if He doesn’t want to.” I think about Sir Morgan’s miracle. The way the plaguers fell away from him when he thrust that cross at them. For a moment I wonder if I should spare this one. But I think about the sins I have committed on this journey, about the monstrous debt I have accrued. I wonder if four oxen are enough. I take a deep breath.
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