by Bre Faucheux
“You have been very generous, Brother Clyn. Go rest now,” she said tying a knot around his wrist. He silently left the room and closed the door behind him.
“Don’t take so much next time, you will leave him weak,” she said to Jayden, nearly scolding him. He threw his cloak on the foot of her bedding.
“I took little more than you did. He will be recovered by morning. And with those long robes, who is to notice his wrist.”
She sighed and drew her cloak off laying it across the bed for extra comfort.
“Where are these aimless wanderings to lead us if we continue to stay in monasteries and shallow inns streamed with the ill?” said Jayden. He was growing irritated with their lack of lifestyle.
“I had the same thought,” she said.
“Might I suggest somewhere more populated? I desire to make one more trip into London before we wander elsewhere.”
“We may be able to find more willing takers for our cravings in the cities,” she agreed. “Although they may bear an even stronger stench of death if sickness has overtaken as many regions as those vermin said it had.”
“And what will you do there, mistress?”
“Accompany you,” she said blatantly. “I thought that was the entire idea of my coming with you.”
“I was under the impression you never wanted to see home again.”
“I don’t need to see my village, Jayden. I only wish to not be forced into seclusion,” she snapped. “Our initial plan of keeping to small towns has become a lesser way of living.”
“I thought we had agreed to move onward from everything we once knew.”
She studied him as her irritation grew. “You are the one who wants to go into London. Is that not your previous home?” His scoff at her only provoked her further. “Do you honestly believe that you are the only one frustrated by this? Every township we approach lays sick or dying. We are forced to take lodgings in places that are not lodgings, and we only travel by dim light or complete darkness. I desire something slightly livelier, same as you.”
“You mean that you desire something familiar. What do you expect to happen? To go home and find your brother there waiting for you?”
Madison had Jayden on the ground, his arm twisted behind him and groaning in pain before he knew she had moved. She could hear his skin scratching on the stone floor beneath him as he fell back into his room.
“I told you not to speak to me that way again. I am as infuriated by this as you. And do not dishonor my brother.” She let him go and shut the door between their two chambers so that she may have some privacy. She heard him lurch up and snap his shoulder back into place with a heavy grunt.
“And if you must know, I wish to know how this sickness has spread and where it originally came from,” she said.
“And what, dare I ask, would be the point of that,” he said, still trying to gain his composure. He sat on the bed causing it to give a loud creak from his size.
“I just wish to know. I need no further explanation. Now go to sleep.”
She drew her cloak over her body and lay down on the bedding. She saw no need to tell Jayden her true suspicions.
At least not yet.
***
“Awaken, mistress,” Jayden yelled. “Awaken this instant.”
Madison lifted her head gently from where she lay. On her stomach, she only saw Jayden’s waist as he quickly reached for his cloak draped over the cupboard at the foot of her bed. He threw it on violently, covering his face.
She leaned up quickly on her hands. “Pray tell, what are you doing?”
“We have to leave at once, lest someone find us here alone,” he said. He wasn’t in a state of panic just yet, but he was clearly disturbed.
“What do you mean alone? The others lay downstairs. The man led us here for privacy, which you have ruined now. Thank you, sir.”
“They may lie downstairs, but they no longer reside in their bodies, mistress.”
Jayden’s emotions were becoming clear to her. He was anxious. She sensed it coming from him as she grew more alert. Grabbing her shoes, she placed them on and rushed for the door, her cloak in hand.
“Explain yourself, Jayden. What has happened?”
He turned fast and was standing in front of her in an instant. His arms grasped her shoulders and pinned her backwards against the bed’s unstable frame behind them.
“They are gone, Madison. Gone, dead, they are completely gone from their bodies. Can you not smell their stench? The pestilence took them as it has the others.”
“It could not have taken all of them in one night,” she said urgently.
“But it has. Their spirits have left them, Madison.”
He had used her name twice. He only did so now when he strived to reach her urgently or gain her full attention.
“What?” For the first time in months, Madison felt a tension stronger than when she had been forced to leave Jamison for dead. The calm she had grown accustomed to was collapsing.
“If others find us here, they will believe it was us. No one knows of our presence. We must keep it that way. We must leave here at once,” he shouted.
He let her go and she reached for her knees, the truth of what was happening finally overpowering her. For a moment she felt shock course through her entire body before quickly recovering. She swiftly wrapped up in her cloak. Within seconds she was behind Jayden and the smell was growing fouler, as was the sound of silence. There was no breath in the air or the sound of flowing blood as the men lay still in a deep impenetrable slumber. There was only the stain of death. She knew it all too well.
Before she could descend the stone steps between floors, the smell became unbearable. She reached for the wall behind her but only found a window with drapery hanging. She grabbed for it to keep her balance. It inevitably flew open as she gripped it. The dawn’s morning light hit everything in the room for her to witness. There was blackness. The body before her was spotted in bits of black and the air was foul with sweat. Boils now overtook Brother Clyn’s once fragile features. The man who had shown her to her bedding and aided her in the night lay motionless on the floor. He had hardly the energy within him to leave the room before collapsing. Madison stared down at him. She was unable to move despite her insurmountable strength and speed. Her every sense failed her. The only thing she was keenly aware of was death. It was radiating from the very walls around her. Even though the bodies within the tower lay dead, the knowledge of their approaching death within the night left a stain within the frame of the walls.
Madison managed to compose herself and buried the knowledge of what lay before her as deep as she could. With all the speed she could devise, she ran down the few floors below her and outside the heavy wooden door. She tried to smell the grass and fresh dew upon its tier as she ran for the outside gate. But she could hardly smell anything other than the odor. She needed to escape it.
Jayden awaited her outside the stone wall and gateway just outside the monastery. He had already mounted his black horse. She climbed on hers quicker than the horse appreciated as it whined. Trudging it to move forward with haste, she set her sights only on the dirt road ahead. Jayden allowed her to lead and followed behind. She wondered for a moment if they would be better served to run rather than ride away as one may see them leaving. But she figured it wouldn’t matter by this time. The pestilence would take others in the nearing village just as quickly. And no one had seen them enter.
It wasn’t until they reached a comfortable distance away from the monastery that Jayden spoke.
“This was bad luck, that is all Madison. This would have happened with or without our presence. The pestilence takes people from life’s grasp as quickly as it pleases on a given day. We know this now,” he said forcefully. He still sensed her unease.
“For all we know, we brought it to them.”
“You must not think that way. If we did not bring it, then someone else would have. Their lives were lost to it before we came. And
their Brother said they already had a few upon their death.”
Madison couldn’t look at him, only at the ground. He stopped her horse from squirming with the grip of his hand on her arm. As tightly as he held her, she knew it would bruise. The knowledge that it would heal didn’t leave her less angered.
“Do not carry this with you, do you understand Madison? This was not us.”
Madison continued to look away. “We took what we needed from them,” she said, her voice growing louder. “We fed from one, and then lay to rest. Whether the pestilence was upon our clothes or our bodies, they met their death quicker than they should have. And how much did they lose? Was it days, weeks, months?” She was nearly screaming at him.
“It was not us. If this disease is as far spread as those thieves said it was, these men were meant to die long before we arrived,” he said.
“How are we to risk not infecting the innocent if our need for blood arrives?” she asked, trying to bring her voice down.
“We don’t. We have no control over it. We keep to our discretion and we chose to drink from those who go unnoticed.” he said.
“And how many more thieves or murderers do you suspect us to encounter?” she asked.
“Dredges of humanity are easier to find than you may think. This sickness may be our key to avoiding suspicion, rather than keeping to ourselves. If so many are dying daily, then we may go unnoticed. Our victims even less so.”
He took her arm gently and pushed her forward thus her horse should move. It began to trot forward as Madison softly patted its sides with her ankles. She didn’t wish to speak of it more anyhow. She was more focused on trying to forget what she had just seen.
18
A Couple Days Later
From the Welch shores to the outskirts of London
It was hardly an hour before their swim from Irish shores brought them to a new coastline, the one they had hoped to reach initially. They left their horses behind for local villagers and finally reached England. Days passed without seeing a single soul, leaving Jayden frustrated and Madison curious. She had never known such desolate areas could exist outside of the lands they had left only a few of weeks prior. They resembled everything she had seen across the seas, but in a different lighting. Tall and rocky mountains with lakes scattered about from region to region, and the scent of the trees greeted her before she ever saw them. The rains came nearly every day, making it greener than anything she had ever beheld. The landscape was so vastly different from anywhere else and yet exactly the same in nature.
As the days passed, they wondered through landscapes she never pictured she would have visited before this new life became of her. Often signs of life were near, but hardly found. Other times townships appeared, placed in areas she didn’t think people capable of inhabiting. Each village appeared more isolated and sicker than the previous. People’s waste was clearly marked outside villages as they approached, the scent often meeting her senses before anything else. Madison soon found her skill of perceptively listening for miles around to encounter signs of people a less than exciting task, for the presence of death or disease always followed. It was often accompanied by choking and coughing, or the cries of people having lost their loved ones.
The path leading to their intended destination was marked on the trade routes through the wilderness and long valleys. Jayden had decided it his duty to make a stop in London, persisting on its importance. She didn’t argue, but insisted that their visit be a short one.
Jamison had told her stories of the city and its filth, having journeyed there a few times over the years. He said it would not suit her taste for cleanliness. She knew many were not like her. It was often rare for someone to take such a keen interest in remaining untouched by dirt and mud that often lay around their small village by the sea. But he had always humored her, bringing in water from the sea from time to time and warming it over the fire for her to rinse cloth in so that they should remain as clean as possible. It was a quality she would need to forgo, he claimed, once they reached their future home across the ocean. He was uncertain of how others would take to her almost dainty insistence on remaining clean.
London, from the way Jamison had described, was where men went to die of every vermin the world could provide. But for all the disgust he had for London and those who occupied it, the outside appeared different from how Jamison had portrayed it. Its odor was enough to deter her desire to enter it. Its appearance however from just a short expanse off, was not what she had expected.
As they approached the entry of the city, a man appeared on the muddy road. He was draped in a long and thick brown cloth as the other man digging graves had been. Flies swam about the air and stuck to him as he walked. The cloak had been dipped in some kind of oil given how it hung from him. The material spattered side to side as he walked, the weight of the oil draping his long limbs. He emerged from the fog as though he were a ghost, only his long bird beaked mask gave away his true intentions. He pushed a cart along as a man from behind followed. He was dressed normally with only simple clothing. Others began to follow in quick succession. Some of the carts were covered with thin white dirtied material to hide their contents. Bodies lay upon the creaking wood without any mercy to onlookers who dared witness how many had been taken that particular day. A few of these men dressed in the same fashion attempted to dissuade them from entering the city, but their warnings were not heeded.
The graves were more humane than she had expected them to be. A long trench had been dug. Each body lay side by side, given their personal space to take to the earth. The occasional child was placed between long adult bodies, but the rows were perfectly formed.
She looked upon Jayden, searching for reassurance. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.
“Absolutely,” he said.
“Who is it you long to see here?”
“The man who funded our journey, the one who gave our voyeurs the rights to their ships,” he said. “He was an educated man. He desired that our men come back to him one day if able to share our findings of new land.”
“He is probably dead,” she said roughly.
“More than likely, but it is important never the less.”
“So you worked for this man?” she asked.
“It was his idea that I take the journey.”
Madison’s interest was peaked now.
“He knew I had grown tired and restless here,” he continued, “and he suggested that my skills would be made useful on the journey.”
“And what are you to tell him, once he realizes that we were successful in finding land and unsuccessful in keeping it?” she said dryly.
“That as crowded and awful as lands here may become, no one should ever be tempted to leave it.”
“And you think he will listen?” she said.
“If the actions of the Vam-pyr-ei-ak were of any consequence, then he should heed such a warning. Future generations however, I doubt will bear such memories as witness,” he said.
Turning to move onward, he took Madison’s hand and moved her to the outside of the road, keeping her away from the commotion. She showed her distaste for his decision to go forth once the scent of the city began to reach a near horrendous proportion.
“You think this vial, mistress? We have not yet entered,” he said grinning.
“And you are certain you want to?”
“Yes, I need to speak to this man.”
“He is a lord?” she asked.
“Of sorts.”
“Do you truly think he would be affected by the not knowing of our journey’s end?”
“I am only to tell him that lands as such exist, but they are not to be encountered. They are uninhabitable by man and our crew suffered for it,” he said firmly.
“I still think him better off not knowing,” she said.
“You are a stranger to not knowing, mistress. You have not the slightest idea what it is like to wait and not know of someone’s fate. You know y
our brother and your companions are dead. There is a closure in that for you. The not knowing is what truly kills people.”
With that he was silent and she with him. It was clear to her then, that London held more than just this man he sought after. It held memories. He had lost someone here.
She allowed Jayden to walk at her side in silence for the remainder of their trek into the city. It was the first time in over a day they had slowed to the average person’s pace of walking. She already missed the sound of the wind passing quickly as she ran. It was far better than listening to the cries of people in the streets letting go of their loved ones to be buried outside the city walls.
Jayden walked the mile down to the river Thames. At this point, Madison’s sense of smell was becoming so repulsed that she had a difficult time hiding it. She now understood why the thieves had worn cloth over their faces. Buildings towered over them taller than she had ever seen along the river’s edge. They were stacked on top of one another in such a way that didn’t appear stable in any form. Their originally white exterior was washed into a grey muddy color. The wooden timbers lining the edges and sides sagged with the weight of the humidity in the air.
There were a few small boats and medium sized ships every few yards lining the Thames, but trade had obviously dwindled as they were left to sway in the waters. She imagined that this area had once been full of people parading around to fetch their foods or other goods, but now the few that walked about only dared to do so by not going near anyone.
Madison lost herself in listening to the area for anything she could recognize. But this city was unlike the villages she had passed through. Its majesty was one of nothing but foulness compared to the beauty and grandeur of the land she had left in the northern territories. She pondered for a few moments if she had ultimately made the right choice in accompanying Jayden back to their previous world.
