Emaculum (The Scourge Book 3) (41 page)

I let out my breath in a quivering stream. “Men will follow anyone.”

A part of me admires King Richard. His anger in me is misplaced, but if I thought a man had killed my wife, I would stop at nothing to exact vengeance. I know the Lord tells us that vengeance is wrong. But if infidels violated a church, I would crush them. And if anyone harmed my angel, there would be nothing left of them to bury.

 “Not all of Richard’s men are outside the gate.” Tristan points to a cluster of knights standing at the corner of Northgate Street. Their armor glints dully in the morning light. The colors of their surcoats seem too bright on this gray day.

One of them points, and shouts something that I cannot make out. They run toward the back of the endless column of plaguers. A knight with a pheasant crest on his helm throws a canvas sack over a plaguer woman and pounds the back of her head with his gauntlet. Another knight ties a rope around her waist, to secure the sack, while the others protect him with spears and pole axes. There is no need for protection. The plaguer army does not even look at the men as they haul the afflicted woman away.

We run along the battlements to keep the knights in view. I watch as they drag the woman along the cobblestones, down Northgate Street, to a wagon. A dozen canvas-draped figures thrash in the bed. Two of the knights lift the plagued woman and hurl her into the wagon. They do it with such force that her body bounces off the back wall and rolls to a stop among the other bodies. The woman’s muffled cries reach us, two hundred yards away.

The Old Testament stirs inside me again.

They are searching for Elizabeth. I pull at my sword slowly, my arm trembling. Tristan stops my elbow before the sword is completely free of the sheath.

“That wasn’t her,” he says.

“They’ll keep searching, Tristan,” I reply. “And eventually, it
will
be her. She might be in the wagon already.”

“They are doing you a favor,” Morgan replies.

I glance at him.

“Let them search,” he continues. “If they find her, then our work is done.”

I point to the town gate. “Morgan, there are four thousand men out there, waiting for that gate to open. They will storm into the town and hack those plaguers into tiny chunks. Every last one.”

“No,” he replies. “They won’t. Richard hasn’t entered the city because his army is distracting the plaguers.”

Tristan laughs. “Morgan, you’re brilliant.”

I steady my breathing and gaze toward the East Gate. The plaguers are not attacking the four knights because the scent of four thousand men outside the gates is overpowering. If the knights are quick and careful, the plaguers will scarcely be aware of them.

“And when I say brilliant,” Tristan adds. “I mean that you occasionally say something that isn’t completely foolish.”

“Richard wants to see her die,” I say. “He wants to know he has killed her.”

Morgan nods. “Those knights can pick out every woman that looks like Elizabeth, and bring all of them to Richard. But it will take hours. Days maybe.”

“And they don’t have days,” I add. “Henry will be here late this afternoon.”

Tristan grins, looking like a child who has hidden a frog in his sister’s bed. “But Richard doesn’t know that.”

I think about King Richard at Framlingham, slaughtering plaguers for the crowd. Raising his sword for their approval, and not receiving it.

I am a crowned heartache, Edward. I am a dead prince’s shadow
.

“Richard will negotiate with Henry,” I mumble. “He will give Henry whatever he wants. He might be insane, but he needs to be loved. If he fights and loses, his shame will be eternal.”

I think of the joust, his hands yanking the reins toward me. The collision of horses, and his words to me when we crashed to the earth.

I win
.

“He can’t allow himself to lose. He’ll give Henry back the Lancaster titles. And if he has found Elizabeth, he will turn her over. Because he can exact his vengeance upon us later. When no army threatens him.”

I would not do the same. If a man killed my wife, I would not delay my vengeance. But Richard is King, and kings must marry their kingdom before they can love a wife.

 “So there’s nothing to worry about,” Morgan says.

“No.” My hand is white upon my sword’s grip. “Nothing to worry about.” I gaze out at Richard’s army. “But we must make certain that Henry and Richard don’t battle.” I point down to the square. “And we need to watch those knights. If they find Elizabeth, all of our problems are solved.”

“Yes,” Tristan says. “All of our problems. Except for the
minor
matter of King Richard stripping us of our lands, torturing us for days, and burning us in public. But yes. I agree. All problems solved.”

It takes seven hours for Henry Bolingbroke’s army to reach the outskirts of St. Edmund’s Bury. Tristan spots them an hour after midday, from one of the soaring towers that rise above the abbey church. I send Morgan and the Genoese out to meet him. If Gerald’s men still guard the gates, nine men should be plenty to get past them.

“Scout out the gate, first,” I call to them. “If there are too many men, come back, you understand?” Morgan nods. It is a small risk, but I need Henry to know that Richard’s army outnumbers his own, and that the king’s forces are camped to the east.

I stay behind, on the battlements, and watch Mustow Street. A new batch of knights works the afflicted horde. The original knights were relieved during the day, but the cart has not moved. It brims with plaguer women. Sometimes, one of the afflicted will fall out of the wagon bed, and two men will swing the woman back and forth before hurling her back.

It is possible that Elizabeth lies at the bottom of that wagon. But none of the women they have captured under my watch is my wife. The knights ran out of canvas earlier in the day, so they use tapestries and curtains and rugs to catch their prey.

I watch for an hour before footfalls sound on the steps of the Abbey Gate. Tristan and Morgan emerge from the tiny door onto the battlements and say nothing. They simply smile and exchange glances.

“Good news?” I turn back to the square. The knights wrap a tapestry around a woman whose hair is more red than blonde.

“Very good news,” Tristan replies. “Henry has been gathering forces on his march. He has three thousand men with him, now. And that’s not the best of the news.”

I lean against a crenel and cross my arms. They look at one another and their smiles grow.

“Are you planning on telling me?” I say.

A voice calls, echoing, from the spiral staircase. “Planning
to tell
me.” Zhuri steps onto the battlements and grins. “And yes, we are.” He reaches through the doorway and helps the girl, Josalyn, onto the battlements. She stares out across the town, eyes wide. I doubt she has ever been up this high. She turns and looks toward the towering abbey church.

“So tall,” she says.

“They build them tall,” I reply, “to serve as an example. So that monks remember not to slouch, but to walk erect before God.”

“And they do,” Tristan says. “They also walk erect before the whores of Rye, if the rumors are true.”

I flash Tristan a glare and turn to the girl. “Do you have something to tell me?”

She curtsies, holds out a glass phial.

I stare for a long moment before taking it. “Is this . . .?” I look from the girl, to Zhuri, to the phial. “Is this . . .?”

“She succeeded,” Zhuri says. “She replicated the cure. We have done it, Edward!”

Carefully—remembering past disasters—I set the phial aside. My hands tremble. I sweep the girl into my arms and whirl her in a circle, laughing. “I’m . . . I’m astonished! And . . . and overjoyed! I . . . I just . . . how many have you cured?”

The others stop laughing. Josalyn goes stiff in my arms.

“We . . . haven’t actually tried to cure anyone,” Zhuri says. “Henry wouldn’t let us try.”

I release the alchemist. “So how in the Nine Hells do you know it works?”

Josalyn shrugs. “We don’t, my lord. But I followed the instructions precisely. The medium we produced looks identical to the one you left with me. If those instructions were correct, then this cure will work.”

I study the phial. “How many do you have?”

“Twenty seven,” she replies.

I clench the phial in my hand. “The Genoese locked up the afflicted who were wandering the monastery. There are thirty or thirty five of them in that little chapel by the fishponds. Morgan, take a few of the Italians with you and pull one of the plaguers out. But be careful.” I hand Zhuri the phial. “Cure someone. Then we can celebrate.”

I look at Tristan. “Where’s Henry now?”

“He and his army are a mile out. They’ll say ‘hello’ to Richard very soon.”

I look out to the east, but I do not see Henry’s army. I stare back down at Mustow Street. The knights are finding it difficult to find women at the back of the column. They have circled around and come out on Scurfe Lane, at the center of the long line of plaguers. I try to look past them, toward the gate, but the abbey walls block my view.

“Let’s hope Richard’s men aren’t itching for a fight.”

Chapter 51

Richard’s men are not itching for a fight.

I watch them desert his army in droves—scores at a time—when they first spot Henry’s forces. They run across the East Gate Bridge and disappear among the trees and pastures of West Suffolk.

Henry’s soldiers look formidable. He leads with his knights, six or seven hundred of them, mounted and spread in a single rank a quarter mile long. Armor glitters. Spear tips gleam. A dozen banners flutter among the line, catching the afternoon sun in bright flashes of color. Behind them march the footmen. Three thousand men in mail, or leather, or quilted gambesons. Henry has placed the soldiers that wear chain mail in the front, so that his army resembles a wave of steel. A shimmering millstone, come to grind Richard’s forces to powder.

King Richard has never been the best tactician. He could not have expected Henry to arrive at St. Edmund’s Bury, but that is no excuse for stranding your army on an island. His forces are trapped between three thousand plaguers and Henry’s advancing might. And his only escape is the East Gate Bridge. It would take half an hour to get his forces across the Lark. And entering the city would require an hours-long battle against the plaguers. He does not have that sort of time. So he musters his troops and lines them up in ranks on his island.

Henry’s soldiers march to the banks of the River Lark, blocking the East Gate bridge and sealing Richard’s tomb. A single horseman canters toward Henry’s army from the south. It is Morgan, dressed in the suit of mail he took at Rougham. I sent him out through the vineyard gate to tell Henry about Elizabeth, and to ask humbly that Richard include a pardon for us as part of the upcoming negotiations.

Slow hoof beats ring out from inside the town. I run back along the parapets and look out toward Northgate Street. Richard’s knights are leaving. The two draft horses draw the wagon of plaguer women along the cobblestones. I wonder if Elizabeth is among them. I think about summoning the Genoese and assaulting the knights, but I know I should not. When two armies meet, any hostility can trigger a war. And war will doom my Elizabeth.

I watch the knights rattle along the street, away from me. And I pray to the Virgin that Elizabeth is not on that cart.

Henry’s herald meets Richard’s on the East Gate Bridge. The men wear bright tabards, richly woven with their lord’s arms, and carry long scepters. I have been witness to the absurdity of heralds many times. They exhibit the ridiculous courtesy of men who know they will not die, should the armies meet in battle. Each tries to bow lower than the other. Each tries to speak with more elegance than the rest. It takes ages for heralds to simply introduce themselves to one another. But it is a tradition of war, and there is no man more traditional than a fighting man.

The heralds are not negotiating Henry’s terms. They are simply negotiating how Richard and Henry will negotiate. Such is the way of war.

The parlay ends, mercifully, after an hour. Trumpets sound and Henry marches his army a quarter mile away from the Lark. Morgan breaks away from Henry’s army and rides back toward the vineyard.

“Henry’s letting the King cross the bridge,” Tristan says. “Edward, why is he letting Richard cross the bridge?”

I grip the edge of a merlon tightly, feel the cool strength of the stones. “The king doesn’t want to negotiate while he’s trapped.”

Richard, in the masterful armor that he wore at Framlingham, leads his army across the East Gate Bridge. He wears a crowned bascinet instead of the jousting helm, and a thick red cloak cascades over his shoulders and down the back of his charger. When he is across, he leads his men south, toward the vineyard.

“Where’s he going?” Tristan asks.

I point to a pasture at the foot of the vineyard walls. “He’ll probably set his army there. It’s a sound location. A river and wall at their flanks.”

But I am wrong. The king’s forces march past the field.