Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (17 page)

“Are you not well, Edward?” Sister Margaret asks.

I take a breath and wipe at my eyes. “I had a wound that festered,” I say.

“Father in heaven!” Margaret says. “Let me see it.”

I show her my wrist. The tail of a maggot pokes out from the cut. Or perhaps it is the head. “It is healing,” I say.

“Yes,” Tristan says. “He received the kiss of life, didn’t he, Belisencia?”

“Maggots?” Sister Margaret shakes her head. “You should put moldy bread on it. And spider webs. I will have someone tend to you.”

We follow her toward the dormitories.

Tristan grows sober. He puts a hand on Zhuri’s shoulder as we walk. “How is Morgan?”

Zhuri does not speak at first, and when he finally does, he looks furtively at Sister Margaret’s back, then whispers, “You should go find the simpleton first thing in the morning. I was preparing to go before the plaguers found us. We must find that cure.”

I do not like Zhuri’s evasiveness. I stop walking. “Zhuri, tell us about Morgan.”

Zhuri takes a deep breath, rubs at his face. He will not meet my gaze. “He is not well, Edward.” Zhuri glances toward the hall that houses the nunnery’s wine cellar. “He is dying.”

Chapter 23

We walk down the stone steps leading to the wine cellar. The smell of old wood, earth, and lye brings back memories of that terrible day when we locked Morgan in a chamber of this cellar. My heart pounds as I descend the stairs. Morgan has a young daughter, Sara, in Hastings. And I am responsible for what happened to her father.

Mea maxima culpa
.

Screams ring out in the darkness. Savage screams with no humanity left in them. I hold a candle in front of me and breathe heavily from the exertion of descending the tall steps. The door to Morgan’s chamber is closed, but the casks that we barricaded it with are gone.

Zhuri brushes past me when we reach the bottom, holding his own candle. He opens the door and peers inside, then steps into the room. Light flares as he fires a lantern and I get my first look at Morgan since we left him. And what I see makes me fall to my knees.

Morgan is rotting.

They have tied him down onto a wooden platform lain over two rows of casks. Large swaths of his skin are black. Black like the rotted peels of Spanish bananas. Black like the scorched skeletons huddled outside the monastery. Broad patches of his beard have fallen out. The skin on his hands has been torn to bloody shreds, and a wound along the side of his chin reveals the white bones of his jaw among mangled red meat.

“Morgan…” I walk to his side. He growls and strains against the ropes. His eyes are so black and smooth that I see myself reflected in them. His chest rises and falls erratically. He tries to scream again but his strength fades halfway through and the cry ends with a groan.

“Why is he so bad?” I ask. “Why did this happen so quickly?”

“He was battering himself to pieces on the door,” Zhuri says, “so we tied him down. I do not know what is wrong. But I know he is dying. He gets weaker every day.”

I stare at Morgan, and I see Elizabeth, tied with padded silk to a mattress in St. Edmund’s Bury. Is her skin black like Morgan’s? Does she struggle for breath too? The room seems to sway. I feel sick.

The lantern gutters. Zhuri taps it and the flame grows stronger, but it gutters again. “It’s almost out of oil.”

“You said…” I am short of breath. Speaking is a struggle. “You said you know where the simpleton lives.”

“Yes,” Zhuri says. “Some pilgrims stopped here two days ago and spoke of an alchemist living in a fortress. They did not speak favorably of him.”

“They wouldn’t.” I recall the alchemist I saw burned at the stake when I was a child.
Prayer is the only true and righteous weapon against illness.
“I don’t want details, Zhuri. Just tell me where the simpleton is.”

“I would have spoken with him already, but the plaguers found us first. They surrounded the convent. We finally set fire to them this morning.” He shakes his head. “It was a horrible sight, Edward. It is the worst thing I have ever done.”

“Zhuri,” I look into his eyes, “where is the simpleton?”

“The pilgrims said he lived in a place called Bewer,” Zhuri says. “That’s what the simpleton told them. I searched the maps in the library for hours before I realized that he probably meant—”

“Bure,” I say and run for the stairs. I imagine Elizabeth’s long fingers shredded to the bone. Her slender chest rising and falling erratically. I take one last look at Morgan, tied to the casks. He, Tristan, Zhuri, and Belisencia are lit by the guttering orange glow of the lantern. The oil will run out soon.

“Where are you going?” Zhuri shouts. Tristan and Belisencia chase after me.

“To find the cure!” I call back. The steps are difficult to climb at a run. I grow fatigued as I reach the top and lean against the wall to catch my breath.

“Edward,” Tristan says, “you need to rest. It makes no sense to leave now. The sun will set in less than two hours and Bure is ten miles away.”

“I can travel ten miles in less than two hours,” I say.

“You won’t make five miles in your condition, Ed,” he replies.

“I’ll be fine.” I have to be. Morgan is dying. Elizabeth may be, too. The oil is running out.

“Edward.” Tristan shakes his head. “We can ride in the morning.”

I think of Morgan dying in the wine cellar. It is my fault. I was selfish. I should never have brought others with me on my errand. I look at Tristan; he would do anything I ask of him…except stay behind. “Very well,” I say. “We’ll leave in the morning.” I try to sound sincere.

We eat a simple meal of bread and leek stew in the great hall. Sister Margaret and three other nuns join us. I speak to Zhuri, recounting our adventures since leaving him. Tristan and Belisencia sit next to each other. Belisencia had a bath in the dormitory and two of the sisters combed out her hair. She wears new robes, too, and looks quite lovely. Tristan’s eyebrows disappeared beneath his hair when he saw her. The two of them laugh throughout the dinner, poke fun at one another, and their hands touch accidentally every so often. I do not know how they truly feel about each other, but seeing them laugh together makes me think of my Elizabeth. She always makes me laugh, my angel. I hope I will hear the chime of her laughter again, soon. When she wakes, I will never leave her side again.

Je suis apprivoisé
.

After the meal, Sister Margaret has a nun tend to my wound. The portly woman plucks the maggots from my wrist and tells me the creatures have done a good job. “The wound has been cleansed of dead flesh.”

She douses the injury with more wine and applies a salve that she says is made from bread mold and cobwebs. A proper remedy, just like the battlefield surgeons make. She wraps the wound with bandages and gives me a small bottle of the salve to take with me. “Clean the wound with wine and apply the salve every day,” she says before leaving. “With God’s help, you will defeat the festering illness.”

Sister Margaret loans Belisencia a novice’s room and has beds made up for Tristan and me in the dormitory. There are already three-dozen men from the village sleeping in the dormitory, most on the floor, so Tristan and I give up our beds and lay on blankets upon the rushes.

“How’s the wound?” Tristan asks.

“Better,” I reply. “I found a good doctor.”

“She didn’t mind that you were born under House Gemini?” Tristan chuckles.

“And her breath was better, too.” I try to sound cheerful, but Elizabeth haunts me tonight.

“Belisencia is coming with us,” Tristan says.

“Is she?” I ask. “She still wants to spread the word of Hugh the Baptist?”

“No,” he replies. “I don’t think she truly believes that anymore. I don’t think she knows what to believe.”

“Tristan, that plaguer, Hugh, he didn’t bite her.”

“I know,” he replies. “I’ve thought about it for a long time, Edward. And I can’t come up with any answers.”

I, too, have thought long and hard about the events in Hugh’s temple: the talking plaguer; his refusal to bite Belisencia; Matheus’s confusion. I, too, have no answers. Perhaps Matheus was right. Perhaps we are in purgatory.

Tristan’s breathing becomes deep and regular. I count to two hundred, holding Elizabeth’s glove to my nose as I do, then rise as quietly as I can. My head still hurts and I have trouble finding my balance in the darkness, but I make my way out of the dormitories. I creep quietly to the stables. A soldier sits on a stool and challenges me when I approach.

“I am Sir Edward of Bodiam,” I reply. “I need my armor.”

The soldier leads me to the last stall, where my armor and that of Tristan has been scoured of rust and hung on pegs. I grow winded as I strap on the various plates and have to ask the guard for help. It takes a long time to get the harness on. When I am done, I ask him for a lantern. He hesitates, then pulls one down from a peg on the next stall and gives it to me. I thank him and walk to the stall that holds my horse.

“Do you need help saddling him?”

It is not the guard speaking. I sigh.

Tristan and Belisencia sit on a bench just inside the door. They are in their bedclothes.

“No, Tristan,” I say. “I need the two of you to go back to sleep.”

“I think I
am
sleeping,” Tristan says. “This must be a bad dream. My friend Edward Dallingridge would never abandon me in a nunnery.” He thinks about what he said. “Although, I suppose there are worse places to be abandoned.”

“You cannot do this alone,” Belisencia says. “The Bible says, ‘Three are better than one. For if they fall, they fall together. But woe if one should fall alone.’”

I try to make sense of the quote. Tristan looks equally mystified.

“That’s not quite right, my lady,” the soldier says. “‘Two are better than one, for if one falls, the other will lift up his fellow. But woe to him who is alone when he falls and has not another to lift him up.’”

“Yes, that is what I meant,” she says.

“What kind of a nun are you?” the soldier asks.

“One who will lift up her friend when he falls,” she says.

“Morgan fell,” I say, “and I can’t lift him up. I don’t want the same fate for the two of you.”

“God has blessed Morgan with a trial,” Tristan says. “If He chooses to bless me, too, then that is His choice, not yours.”

“Hallelujah,” Belisencia says.

Tristan and I look at her, but she is serious. Tristan laughs and we say it together: “Hallelujah.”

I know it is selfish, but I am glad for their company. If I fall, Elizabeth and Morgan will need someone to lift me up again. I know now that Tristan and Belisencia will be there to do it. “Don’t try to leave us again, Ed,” Tristan says, “or I will tell everyone that you buggered a cow.”

I shrug. “Least it wasn’t a horse.”

We laugh. It feels good to laugh, even though the black mist of Elizabeth’s sickness coils in my stomach.

The soldier looks at me with horror. I shrug again. “She was a beauty, that cow. You’d have done the same.”

Tristan laughs loud and long. Even Belisencia chuckles.

“Off to bed with us,” I say.

“You won’t try to leave us again?” Belisencia asks. “That wasn’t a nice thing to do.”

“No, I won’t try to leave you again.” I nod and look into her eyes so she can see the gratitude that I cannot express. “
Mea maxima culpa
.”

We rise at first light and I go to Zhuri’s chamber to ask if he wants to come. He shakes his head. “I swore I would guard Morgan,” he says, “and that promise will keep me here until he is healed. I will continue to take care of him and check his health every day. I am glad you arrived when you did, or I would have had to leave him.”

Something moves next to him and I catch a glimpse of long brown hair. Zhuri clears his throat. “Besides, I like it here.”

“Until next time, Zhuri,” I say.

“Until next time, Sir Edward.”

I walk to the stables, where I meet Tristan and Belisencia.

“How is the wound?” Belisencia asks.

“Much improved,” I say, and it is. My head feels clearer. Walking no longer tires me, although I still feel weak. Tristan helps me into my armor and I help him into his. We tighten our sword belts, nod to one another, then mount. Or try to mount. After my third attempt, Tristan gives me a boost into the saddle.

“You could use a day or two of rest,” Tristan says.

“You could do with a day or two of shutting your mouth,” I reply.

“Hallelujah,” Belisencia says.

As we ride out of Hedingham, the panic returns to my soul. I must find the cure. It feels as if someone has punched a hole in Elizabeth’s sandglass. It feels as if her life is seeping away faster than ever.

Chapter 24

We ride eastward again, passing south of Maplestead. Tristan asks Belisencia if she wants to visit her husband, Paul, but she ignores him. Thick black clouds drift and swirl overhead, turning day to twilight. We keep a good pace, stopping only to water the horses.

Just past Pebmarsh we spot a pilgrim walking on his knees southward, probably toward Canterbury. I have seen this before. Pilgrims walk on their knees to atone for their sins. But I cannot imagine doing such a thing amidst this plague that has swept England. I have no doubt that he is afflicted by the other sickness: the third plague. Only a madman would walk on his knees through this England. He does not look at us and we leave him to his pilgrimage.

“Someone should give that man a horse,” Tristan says. We slow our pace to give our steeds some rest.

“I admire him,” Belisencia replies. “He is a devout, God-fearing man looking for a way to atone for his sins.”

“I’d prefer a God that I don’t have to fear,” Tristan says.

“Only sinners need to fear him,” she says. “And yes, that means you.”

“But aren’t we all sinners?” Tristan replies. “The Bible has us sinning before we are even born, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” she replies. “Because of Adam and Eve.”

I spot movement up ahead on the side of the road. A plaguer is eating a horse.

“Some mad strumpet eats a crab apple and the rest of us have to suffer forever? What sort of God does that?”