Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (20 page)

Tristan steps forward and scoops it up.

“Leave it Tristan!” Morgan shouts. “Leave it alone!”

Tristan clears his throat and reads out loud: “‘Ezekiel 23:20.’” His eyes grow wide and he chuckles before reading the next line. “‘There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emissions were like those of horses.’” He laughs and holds the book up so we can all see it. “So sayeth the Lord!”

“That is filth,” Morgan replies.

“But it’s God’s filth,” Tristan replies. “Are you saying the Bible is filthy?”

“No. I’m saying that dead monk was a lewd, disgusting and debauched sinner. He collected the filthiest verses for his own sordid pleasures.”

“Have you no respect for the dead?” Tristan says. “Such a cruel bastard you can be.”

 “Calm yourselves,” I say.

But Tristan clears his throat and reads another line. “‘So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.’” He raises one brow. “I had no idea the Bible was like this. It’s no wonder you read it so much, Morgan.”

Morgan snatches the book. “I’m going to burn this stack of excrement.”

“How dare you keep the Word of God from me?” Tristan says.

“God has better Words than these.”

Tristan lunges for the book, but Morgan holds it out of his reach. Zhuri and Pantaleon chuckle, and I cannot help smiling. Elizabeth will be cured. Morgan is back. And my heart sings again.

“You just want the book for yourself!” Tristan shouts.

“Shut your cave!” Morgan shouts. “If you want to read the Bib—”

“
Mashalla
!” Zhuri’s shout silences both of them. The Moor kicks violently. A rat strikes the wall with a squeal. “That dirty creature bit my boot.”

“Hungry, dirty creatures,” Tristan says.

Two more rats scamper toward us. Their oily fur glistens in the flickering light. Zhuri hops onto one of the chairs, and Tristan laughs.

“Laugh if you want,” Zhuri says. “Rats spread disease.”

More of the creatures patter out from under a great stack of collapsed shelves.. A half dozen pairs of eyes, glinting red in the smoldering flame. Their fur bristles in oily spikes. Large rats. Big as shoes.

Morgan kicks one. “They must be starving to come at us like this.”

I drive the point of my sword through one, pinning it to the floor with a thud. The rat squeals and thrashes. “Let’s find another building. One without vermin.”

Pantaleon walks to the fallen shelves from where the rats come. “I will to look here,” he says. “For only the moment. I find for more books.”

Tristan stomps, making another rat-shaped stain on the floor. “Maybe we should sleep on the chairs, eh Zhuri?”

“Leave it, Pantaleon,” I lift my sword and stab the rat again, but the creature continues to writhe under my blade. Tough animal.

“It is just one moment.” Pantaleon tugs at one of the shelves, recoils and makes a face. “I am seeing books. But such many dirty creatures here. Such many.”

A thought occurs to me.

I raise the sword again. The rat drags itself toward my feet, its jaws snapping. I slash at the creature, cutting it in half. The jaws continue to snap. The forelegs claw at the wooden planks.

“Pantaleon,” I call.

The rat drags itself forward toward my foot.

“Pantaleon!” My shout rings dully in the cramped scriptorium.

The stack of shelves topples with a crash and a billow of rats scurry from beneath the fallen planks. They swarm onto and around the Italian, crashing like an ocean wave, the flood of them carrying past him and toward us. So many of them. Pantaleon stumbles back and falls onto one leg, then springs to his feet again as more rats leap onto his armor. He howls and crashes toward us, slapping rats off his legs. He rocks madly as he steps on the scurrying creatures, their twisted squeals filling the air.

“They’re plagued!” I bellow. “They’re bloody plagued! Flee for your lives!”

Zhuri leaps so quickly that the chair he was standing on falls backward with a clatter, the tools and board jangling to the floor. Tristan accidentally slams his shoulder against the narrow doorway before stumbling out, sideways. Zhuri and Morgan plunge out after him.

I kick at rats as more and more of them pool around my feet. “
Pantaleon
!”

The Italian brushes past me screaming. He holds a leather-bound book under his arm and a rat in his hand. I shove him through the doorway and follow, feeling the scrape of claws on my boots. I brush at the vermin convulsively, panic sending fire through my limbs. Morgan yanks the door shut and leans back to hold it in place. He stamps his feet furiously at any of the creatures that comes close. Pantaleon drops the thick tome. He jerks and twists, kicks one calf against the other to knock a rat free. Tristan and Zhuri run in circles, stomping on the plagued vermin.

The Italian seems to remember that he still holds a rat in his gloved hand. He screams, a high pitched wail, and hurls the rat. The animal bounces off the ground, into the air, and scurries forward as soon as it strikes the earth again.

“
Madre di Dio
!” The Italian shuffles backward, but the rat leaps at him. I did not know rats could leap so far. It lands on his foot and scuttles up the long leather boot, winding around his leg. He runs, high-stepping and slapping at his legs. “
Farlo fuori
!” he shouts. “
Farlo . . .
Get it . . . get it from me! Get it from me!”

Zhuri and Morgan chase after him kicking lightly at his legs.

The donkey brays and flees as a rat approaches it. I take a great running kick that sends the rat into the wall of the scriptorium, leaving a red splotch on the stone.

One of Morgan’s blows finally connects with the rat on Pantaleon’s leg. The animal tumbles away, but charges the Italian again when it hits the ground.

“Get it!” Morgan shouts.

“Kill it!” Zhuri cries. “Stomp on it, Tristan, stomp on it!”

Tristan makes an attempt to stomp on the animal, but his heel glances off the oily fur. Morgan lunges forward and catches the rat’s rump with his heel. The creature screeches but tries to staggers forward again, pinned by the tail. Pantaleon leaps into the air and stomps with both feet, crushing the rat and releasing a spatter of black blood in all directions.

A silence falls upon us as we search the grounds for more rats and breathe heavily. We look at one another, eyes wide, shoulders rising and falling.

Tristan laughs.

He doubles over, hands on his thighs, and his laughter rings out across the priory.

 “This is funny thing to you?” Pantaleon’s shout drowns out Tristan’s mirth. “If the dirty creature had to bite me, it would give to me sickness!
And this is funny thing to you
?”

Tristan raises one hand in conciliation, but does not stop laughing. “Sorry . . . sorry,” he takes great gasping breaths, then straightens and shakes his hands in feigned panic. “Get it from me! Get it from me!” He breaks down again, wiping at his eyes.

Pantaleon glares for a long moment, then smiles weakly. Shrugs. “Is funny a little. The animal, it does not stop at me!” He chuckles. “It come again and again!”

Zhuri chortles. “How was that, Edward?” He dons a terrified expression and mimics my accent. “
They’re bloody plagued
!
Flee for your lives
!” He laughs and Morgan, still holding the door, laughs too.

I slash two handed at a rat scampering toward me. “And who knocked over half the scriptorium trying to get out, Zhuri?” I snap.

Zhuri hoots and falls back against one of the walls, wipes at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “The rat . . . the rat was on Pantaleon’s
pantalones
!”

Tristan, doubled over, gasps as he laughs. “Stop . . . stop . . . I can’t breathe . . .”

The laughter creeps into me as well. I drop to a knee and shake my head and join them. It has been a hard day, and it feels good to jest. We laugh and laugh like bloody fools, the peals of it ringing out into the darkness.

Elizabeth will be healed. I know she will. I have no doubts. And Richard’s men have stopped pursuing us. All is well.

But my humor suddenly turns to something else.

I lurch to my feet and stare northward, toward Framlingham. Richard is no longer pursuing us. And I suddenly realize why.

He does not have to pursue us. Because he, like Gerald, knows where we are going. But unlike Gerald, Richard has an army. An army that can defeat the ring of plaguers surrounding the monastery.

Richard is going to kill Elizabeth.

The laughter of my companions rings around me like mockery.

Chapter 24

The priory church is devoted to Saint Mary the Virgin, which does not surprise me. Mother Mary has followed me on my journey—so much so that sometimes I feel like a character from one of the Greek plays Elizabeth likes to read. The ones where gods move humans like chess pieces. Mary is not a god, but I feel her hand wherever I go.

 We seal ourselves into a small room built against the church walls, just outside the nave. It is the prior’s chamber, I believe, and it is free of rats, so we pull the donkey inside and bar the door. Whoever left the supplies for Pantaleon only thought to give us four strips of dried venison and a cut-up loaf of bread. We eat all of it, and Zhuri shakes the bread bag over his mouth to catch the last of the crumbs.

Morgan applies his nightly coat of the pungent Malta fungus and is snoring on the floor in an instant. The others fall into the steady breathing of sleep not long after. I lie awake for a time, my body humming with exhaustion. I think about King Richard. Night makes certainty of my fears, and I almost rise and begin walking toward St. Edmund’s Bury on my own. But a night’s march when I am exhausted will leave me easy prey for the endless predators of Suffolk.

Richard will need time to ready his soldiers. And his men will need a night of rest. I calm myself with those thoughts and drift into a troubled sleep.

We rise when the first patches of sunlight creep under the door. My first thoughts are a jumble of dreams and regrets. Of Elizabeth and guilt. I should have been with her in St. Edmund’s Bury when the plague struck. I stayed behind, in Bodiam, to work on my castle.

My castle.

What use is a fortification when there is nothing for me to defend? My Elizabeth was in East Anglia, and I was building in Sussex. The ache of it is as strong as it was the day I found her plagued.

St. Edmund’s Bury lies to the west, but I want to put some distance between us and Framlingham Castle before continuing our journey. We walk south instead, among sodden fields, each sloshing step taking me one pace farther from Elizabeth. I remind myself that I cannot take any steps at all if Richard finds me, because the flesh will be stripped from my legs. And if Richard is sallying forth with his army, it will take him a long time to reach St. Edmund’s Bury. Armies are slow, cumbersome things, dragging behind supplies and camp followers.

We reach a small river after a mile. I think it is the River Ore, although Morgan believes it to be the River Deben. Both rivers run mostly north to south and lie between us and St. Edmund’s Bury. We will have to cross one of them at some point, so I decide to ford here, where the water is shallow. Tristan and Pantaleon have to pull together to get the stubborn donkey into the water.

Once across, we head south again, along the gently rolling mounds that East Anglians call hills.

“Why so gloomy, Ed?” Tristan asks. “We have a cure, Richard has stopped chasing us, and the sun is out. Can you fathom it? The
sun
is
out
.”

I walk a few steps before replying. “Richard is very likely marshaling an army right now. Preparing to march on St. Edmund’s Bury.”

“Why would he do that?” Morgan has a dagger out, and a whetstone he borrowed from Pantaleon.

“Because he thinks I killed his wife,” I reply. “And so he will kill mine.”

No one speaks for a time. A magpie chitters in the distance.

“That is absurd,” Zhuri says. “He would not risk thousands of his men to kill one woman. Only a madman would . . .” He trails off and clears his throat. “We should find horses.”

The soft grassy swells roll downward into a shallow valley. Naked wood catches the sunlight. A palisade of freshly cut stakes rings an entire village. Someone has been busy.

There is only one break that I can see in those walls, and a gatehouse of logs guards it. Two men stand on the tower of the gatehouse, daylight flashing from steel helms.

“I’ll wager there are horses in there,” Tristan says.

I glance over my shoulder, then back at the fortified village. “Framlingham can’t be more than five miles away. Richard’s men have probably alerted them.”

“If Richard is going to St. Edmund’s Bury, why would he bother alerting a village five miles to the south?”

It does not matter whether Richard has alerted them or not. We need horses. And if there are horses anywhere nearby, they will be in this village.