The Scourge (Kindle Serial)

by Roberto Calas

  Tristan looks nervously toward the abbey walls as we reach the willow. We are less than a hundred paces from the army of plaguers. The afflicted have yet to notice our presence, but I know they will, given time.

  I dismount by the tree, drawing one of the torches Sister Margaret gave us. Tristan dismounts and I tell him to unsaddle his horse. He understands. Tethering the horses here would be tantamount to executing them. Better they should run free and have a chance. I hope we can find new horses when we return.

  When the beasts are stripped, we smack them hard and send them running southward. I watch the golden mare race across the pasture, away from me, and feel an odd sense of dread.

  Creeping ivy blankets the bank where it rolls into the river. I strike sparks until the torch catches fire, then wade into the water up to my hips. The vines upon the bank are torn and twisted here. The rusted iron gate lies open, crushing the ivy beneath its weight.

  The prior. He must have fled with his men. My heart pounds at the thought that Elizabeth might have passed through here, too. What if she’s not in the city? What if I never find her? I steady my breathing.

  Tristan steps into the river behind me, holding both cannons. “In Sussex our secret tunnels are a bit more secret, don’t you think?”

  “You only leave a secret entrance open when you don’t plan on returning.” I wonder why the prior would have fled. The answers I come up with churn my stomach.

  “I find that when secret entrances are left open, all manner of things find their way in.” There’s concern in Tristan’s voice, and it’s not for himself. He puts a hand on my shoulder and squeezes. He is preparing me for the worst.

  Oh, Elizabeth. Please, please let her be safe.

  I wonder whom I am offering the prayer to. Is it God? Yes, I suppose it is. In spite of everything, or perhaps because of everything, I believe he still listens. I believe he helps those who help themselves. And I believe he will show me the way to my wife.

  There, before Prior John’s tunnel, I strike a bargain with God: if he leads me to my beautiful Elizabeth, then never again will I question him.

  Hallelujah. Amen.

  We don our helms and I slosh forward and stoop into the tunnel. My heart batters the walls of my chest. The torchlight reveals a cramped tunnel of stone and rotting timbers. I have to hunch low to walk the passage. Tristan climbs in behind me and his torch creates secondary shadows. There is no sound but the splash of our footsteps and the echoes of dripping water. The tunnel smells of mold and dank earth, but there is a trace of something else. Something unpleasant.

  Tristan hides our cannons in a niche just inside the gate. There’s not enough room in the tunnel to fire them and we won’t need them once we are in the abbey. I hope.

  The tunnel is too small for swords as well, so I draw Morgan’s hunting knife. It comforts me to have something of Morgan’s with me. As if he is here with us.

  We walk a hundred paces before I see the first bodies. I call them bodies, although they are more a loose collection of bones, mangled flesh, and shredded robes. They were monks once. Tristan turns away from them, holding the back of his gauntlet against his helm, where his nose would be. I study the bones.

  “Teeth marks,” I say. Tristan glances at the bodies, then forward into the darkness. He licks at his lips. “You scared of getting caught in here?” I ask.

  “No,” he replies. “I was thinking of the many people who will make the pilgrimage to this tunnel to visit the tomb of Sir Tristan of Rye.”

  “You can go back,” I say. “I was thinking someone should catch our horses and keep them safe for our journey home.”

  He draws his knife. “Good thinking. You go back and guard the horses. I’ll return with Elizabeth.”

  I smile privately in my great helm. He will stay with me until the end.

  We press on.

  It is a long tunnel Prior John has built. Long and dark. Full of cobwebs and rats and strange echoes. The ground we walk upon is by turns mud and calf-deep water.

  I try to convince myself that I don’t hear anything up ahead, but I do. I try to convince myself that it is not growling, but it is.

  Tristan clears his throat and breathes deeply behind me. The steel of my helm feels cold against my cheek. Silhouettes become visible after fifty more paces. They cluster in a place where the tunnel widens into a small chamber. There are many of them. Twenty-five or thirty, perhaps. They shuffle and twitch and roam the chamber, staring upward toward a trap door in the ceiling, fifteen feet above. Their movements are a mockery of human grace.

  I turn to Tristan and my torch is an orange sun against the steel of his breastplate.

  “Last chance to guard the horses,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “This is merely another blessing from God,” he whispers, but I can hear the trepidation in his voice. His visor is fixed on the shapes before us, his breath swift and loud. I turn back to the creatures and feel Tristan’s hand on my shoulder. “You’re supposed to…you know. Hallelujah.”

  One of the shapes turns to us and snarls. The rest of them turn — a few at a time — as the first figure lurches toward us. The foremost plaguer wears a bloodstained apron. I wonder briefly if the blood was there before or after he became afflicted. The thought vanishes from my mind when he lurches farther into the light of my torch. Half the flesh is torn from his face, from forehead to chin, and dangles in a grimy lump near his throat. He seems part skeleton, and he comes for us with open mouth. I have a flash of the poor groomsman torn apart at the willow near Danbury, then put the image out of my mind. The others plaguers follow behind, a mob of blood and clawing hands. Dozens of them. Groaning and snarling and closing the distance between us. I wish I had a shield.

  I slash at the butcher’s throat with my knife and cry out “Hallelujah!” My mind half formulates a plan to lure the plaguers outside and shut the gate. But I know it will never work. It is too difficult to walk in this tunnel. I hold the torch out toward the advancing mob and they slow at the flames.

  Thank you, Sister Margaret.

  I nod to Tristan and we advance together into the small chamber. We swing our torches. We hold our knives high in the air. And we meet the wall of biting flesh with a crash and the war cry of “Hallelujah!”

  I feel Tristan’s back against mine as the plaguers close upon us in a crush of cold bodies. We stab at eyes, slash at throats and kick to make room for ourselves.

  We are two burning torches struggling madly against a ring of writhing darkness.

  We are the flame of humanity, and we send them back to hell.

  The demons lurch forward to their death. Their faces are unnatural. Mouths unhinged too far. Black eyes open too wide. Fingers too long.

  And numbers too great.

  Many of them are still standing when we drop our torches and leap for the rungs that lead to the abbey above. Tristan is behind me. He lost his fear in the battle frenzy and laughs as we clamber up the wooden boards. But his laughter stops abruptly.

  “Edward?”

  I grunt inquisitively.

  “Ed!”

  “What is it?”

  “They can climb!”

  I glance down. Tristan kicks at the nearest one, a woman with tiny blue bows in her matted hair and dried blood smeared across her mouth.

  “We can climb quicker,” I say, and we do.

  But I reach the top and the wooden door above me is locked.

  Tristan stops just beneath me. I can see the afflicted getting closer to him. They are silhouetted in the torchlight from below; skinny reaching things that hiss and jerk and grasp.

  “I’d like to leave the tunnel, Ed.” His voice is tinged with panic. He kicks at the woman again. She rolls her head from side to side and the blood on her mouth makes it seem as though she has an impossibly wide smile.

  I pound on the wooden door. Again and again and again. I scream. Tristan screams too and I’m not sure if he’s trying to be heard or just crying out in terror. I ba
ng on the door with the butt of my knife. So close. Two inches of wood separate me from Elizabeth. Two inches of English oak.

  Tristan cries out again and this time I know it is fear. The woman has his foot in her hand. Her reddened mouth clamps on the ankle of his boot.

  I brace myself against the rungs and drive my shoulders into the door. It moves. I do it again. Then again. The door shifts, and suddenly it is no longer there. Light streams into the shaft from above, heavenly light, the light of salvation.

  I pull myself up and take Tristan’s hand. The creature below holds his foot with unnatural strength. I fight her for Tristan. It seems like a long struggle, but Tristan kicks at her with his other foot. Once, twice, and I hear the third kick break bones in her face. She lets go.

  We sprawl onto the wooden floor and I distantly take note of a man in monk robes. Tristan slams the door down on the woman’s hands. She screams so loudly and with such a high pitch that it hurts my ears. Tristan stamps on the fingers that protrude from under the door. He roars and stamps again and again even though I’m sure the fingers are no longer attached to the hand.

  The man in the monk’s robes clears his throat. Tristan and I turn to look at him, breathing hard, our tabards painted in blood and filth. The monk fidgets with his hands and speaks.

  “You shouldn’t use that entrance.”

  We are in a small, bare room within the prior’s house. A massive steel crucifix above a carved desk is the only decoration. The monk says he is Brother Phillip and tells us he is the only monk left at St. Edmund’s Bury. He is a short man, and his eyebrows twitch oddly when he speaks. I ask if he knows my wife, the Lady Elizabeth Dallingridge.

  “There were many ladies here, Sir Edward,” he says.

  “Where are they now?” I ask. “Where are they?” My body is flowing with battle frenzy and the realization that I have reached my destination. The realization that I could shout Elizabeth’s name and she might hear it.

  “There was a disturbance.” He won’t meet my gaze as he speaks. “A disturbance among the townspeople.”

  “That’s a little more than a disturbance, Brother Phillip.” Tristan points out the window toward the curtain walls.

  “There was a disturbance among the townspeople,” Brother Phillip repeats. “They caused this. It is their fault.”

  “Where are the noblewomen who were here?” I fight the urge to shake the monk. “Where is my wife?”

  “It was the townspeople,” he says again. “They have been so violent. So angry. Our abbey is here by the grace of God. We answer only to Him, not to burghers or farmers.”

  I lose the fight and shake the monk so hard that his teeth click. This abbey is the most powerful in all of England, and the monks and priors live like kings on the backs of the populace. I have no time or patience for one of their ilk. “Where is my wife!”

  The monk’s eyebrows twitch more and his face grows paler. “I…I…”

  Tristan pulls the monk from my hands. “Sir Edward has had a long journey, Brother Phillip.” His words are soothing but I can see the tension in his posture. “Lady Elizabeth, his wife, was staying with her aunt in the town. She is tall and slender and fair of hair. Have you seen her?”

  The monk stares at the rushes on the floor as he smoothes his robes. “Many lords and ladies sought safety in the abbey when the plague began. But the townsfolk rose up. Not the plagued townsfolk. The regular ones. It was a riot. They rolled barrels down the hill and shattered the Great Gate. They murdered prior John. Murdered him!”

  This checks my anger. Prior John dead? Perhaps the drooling gudgeons are smarter than the prior thought.

  “They took his head off!”

  “What happened to the lords and ladies?” Tristan demands. “What happened to them?”

  Brother Phillip shakes his head. “The townspeople blamed us for the plague. Us. Can you imagine? We had nothing to do with it. They have not a shred of evidence. It is ludicrous. Absolutely ridiculous.”

  “So the townspeople rioted again,” Tristan says. “They breached the Great Gate and killed the prior?”

  “They killed the prior and eight monks,” Brother Phillip says. “The monks that survived fled to safety through Prior John’s tunnel.”

  “They fled,” Tristan says. “Let’s leave it at that, shall we?”

  I recall the gnawed bones and monk robes in the tunnel, but only distantly. I can feel the rage coming over me. The red flames that overcame me in Hadleigh. “Did anyone go with the monks? Any of the lords and ladies?”

  “Some did,” Brother Phillip says, and the despair is like a frost across my body. “They fled when Prior John was caught. The townspeople…they ripped the prior apart. They staked his head to the Great Gate!”

  “Yes, yes,” Tristan says. “For all that is holy, what happened to the other lords and ladies? The ones that didn’t go into the tunnel?”

  The monk points southward. “The dormitories. Many of the lords and ladies barricaded themselves in the dormitories.”

  I am out of the room before Tristan can take a breath to respond. “And they are still there?” I hear Tristan say.

  “I fear they are,” Brother Phillip says.

  Something about his tone stops me with my hand on the latch to the outer door. I walk back to the room with the trap door in it.

  “You fear they are?” I ask. The monk takes a step back under my glare. “Why do you fear it?”

  Brother Phillip looks to Tristan as I advance on him. “I…they…”

  The red flames rise. My hand is around his throat. He is against the wall. I don’t remember how we got into this position. All I see is his twitching face and the terror upon it. “Tell me everything right now! Right now! Tell me everything, or I will throw you into that tunnel!”

  His face turns white and I think he is about to faint. I slap him and his eyes flutter open. He speaks quietly. “The plague. The plague got among them.”

  My scalp tightens at his words. The world tilts. “What?” I scream it into his face.

  “Well, the…a man…a lord was afflicted. And he…he gave them the plague.”

  “All of them? He gave all of them the plague?”

  “I…I should think so. Well, I can’t imagine any of them weren’t afflicted.”

  I shake him again, press my hand against his forehead and bring my face close enoughto his to feel his twitching brows against my forehead. “And why is that?”

  “Because…” He glances toward the door and I know he wants to flee. “Because they were…locked in the great hall with him.”

  Tristan stands beside me, probably to keep me from squeezing the life out of Brother Phillip. “How do you know this?” Tristan asks.

  “I…I just know.”

  “How!” My hand tightens on his throat. “How do you know?”

  “We…we heard them!” he shouts. “We heard them calling.”

  “And you…you did nothing?”

  “There was plague in the room!” he shouts. “There was plague inside! We had to lock them…grghh!”

  His words are cut off as my hand squeezes his throat. I am lost in the red fires of fury. “So while my wife was screaming for help, you were barring the door so they couldn’t get out? Is that what you are telling me? Is that what St. Benedict teaches?”

  Through the haze of red I feel the monk’s fists pound my arm. His eyes are closed. He makes choking sounds. Tristan uses both his hands to pry me off. Brother Phillip falls coughing to the floor. Tristan shoves me backward.

  “You’ll kill him, Ed!”

  “He deserves it!” I shout back. “He deserves it!”

  “You’ll kill him, Ed,” Tristan repeats. His voice is calm, soothing. I turn and run toward the door, calling back: “Have him take you to the relic.”

  “You…can’t,” Brother Phillip says between gasps. “You can’t open…dormitories.”

  I dash out of the prior’s house, past the garderobe and the chapel to the north, and
arc around to the dormitories. They are clustered against a mass of buildings just beside the enormous abbey cathedral.

  She is not there. She will not be in there.

  A great beam of wood has been affixed to the dormitory doors with blackened metal brackets. I heft at the beam. Try to pry it loose. Slam my shoulder against the door. Nothing.

  Dear God, let me in!

  I search desperately for something to batter at the beam. Something. Anything. Inspiration strikes. I run back to the prior’s house. Tristan and the monk are gone. I rip the giant steel crucifix from the wall and haul it back to the dormitory.

  She fled to safety. She never came to the abbey.

  It takes five blows with the crucifix to knock one of the metal brackets from the door. One end of the beam falls to the ground. I grab hold of it and pull back and forth. I fall backward when the second bracket breaks free and have a moment to think about what I am doing. The first thumps ring out from the other side of the door.

  She is not in there. She is safe.

  The door shudders. I stand and draw my sword. Maybe I can find a shield somewhere in the abbey. And just as I have that thought, the great wooden doors burst open. Lords and ladies spill out of the room, but there is no nobility left in them. They are bloody, growling things. Grasping, biting things. Ugly things. And I kill them. I slash and jab and kick and rend and puncture. A rage is upon me like none I have ever known. Blood covers every inch of me. I am the Angel of Death. I am vengeance. I am the Holy Hand of God. And I kill them all.

  I kill them all, save one.

  Chapter 42

  Tristan is out of words.

  All he can do is put a hand on my shoulder as I tie Elizabeth’s wrists with a length of rope. She snarls and her teeth crash against my breastplate as I tie the other end of the rope to a torch bracket in the great cathedral of St. Edmund’s Bury. Sunlight streams through the stained glass windows, leaving splashes of color at our feet.

  I have been a fool.

  I have turned away from God so many times that I have forgotten where to find him. He is here. He is before me. Elizabeth is God’s reminder. This is what my wickedness has wrought.