Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (23 page)

The third plague has found me.

It is difficult to see tears in a driving rain, but I slip the great helm over my head anyway, sealing my grief within its metal walls. I fasten the strap without taking my eyes from the crooked gravestone that lies only a caber toss away.

“Go,” I say, but no one notices. “Go! Leave me!”

“Edward.” Tristan places a hand on my shoulder, his mailed gauntlet grating against my pauldron.

I shrug the hand off and push him backward, roughly. “Leave me! Go away! Go!”

“There is still ho—”

“
Get away from me
!” I do not want to hear the word that Tristan was about to speak. Not when the only link to the alchemist is a crudely carved, half-buried granite slab. Tristan’s jaw tightens. He stares at me, a bead of water dangling from the tip of his nose. He nods, dislodging the droplet. “I’ll be in the tavern.” He trudges back toward the village. Belisencia embraces me and follows, the old woman not far behind.

I fall to my knees, bring my hands to the great helm and cry. Violent sobs shake my body. I pound the wet earth with my gauntlets, the rattle of plates like the jangling keys of a jailer—a jailer standing just out of reach, laughing, laughing, laughing. I reach into the pouch at my belt and draw out Elizabeth’s glove. It is soaked from the river and stained with silt and mud. I can no longer recognize it as Elizabeth’s. I hold it in both hands and let the grief ravage me.

“Was he your son?”

I stifle the sobs and straighten my back, tuck the glove back into my pouch, and look behind me. Rainwater blots my visor slits. I have to shake my head to get a clear view. It is the blond boy who followed us from the church.

“Get home, child,” I say, my voice gravelly.

“He were always kindly to me, your son,” he says.

“
Was
always.” I think of Zhuri when I correct the child. The Moor and Tristan used to correct everyone’s English. “And he wasn’t my son.”

Elizabeth and I never had children. The Wardieu women were not known for their fertility and I was in France too often to give it a proper effort.

The boy looks at me with narrowed eyes. “A carpenter we had in the village tried to bugger a boy named Thomas, once.”

It takes me a moment to realize his implication. “I wasn’t buggering the simpleton. Does your mother know you talk like that?”

“I ain’t got no mother,” he replies. “So I think she don’t know. If he weren’t your son and you weren’t…wasn’t buggering him, then why are you so sad?”

“
Weren’t
buggering him,” I say. “You were right the first time.”

He squints at me. “Right about him being your son, or about you buggering him?”

“Neither,” I say. “You said
wasn’t
bugg…Oh, never mind. Go home.”

“He was nice to me. I cried when he died, too.” He walks back toward the village.

I watch him for a few heartbeats, then call out, “Did he ever talk about the island?”

He stops and looks over his shoulder at me. “Island?”

“Yes. I understand he worked for an alch…a man who lives on an island fortress.” The boy stares at me and I wave him away. “Never mind. Go home. Get dry and warm.”

“He couldn’t go there no more,” the boy says. “He couldn’t work for that man no more.”

My heart quickens. I take three cautious steps toward the child. “Did he ever tell you where it was? Did he talk to you about the island? About the man who lived in the fortress?”

The boy studies me for a long time, the rain flattening his blond hair into spikes that fall past his eyes. “He didn’t like to talk about that.”

“What did he like to talk about?” I ask.

The boy shrugs again. “Mostly he just talked about some stupid cure for the plague.”

Chapter 33

The boy tells me his name is Theodore. I walk with him into the village and join the others at a table inside the The Six Bells, a tavern on the Essex side of the Stour. It is a low-ceilinged, smoky, great-hearthed place with dozens of worn-out horse bridles dangling from the thick, black beams. Men sit at tables and stare at us with unveiled enmity. They do not approach us; perhaps the two hand cannons at our side have something to do with that.

Conversations are whispered, punctuated by the sound of wooden mugs against wooden tables. I recognize the bearded man who revealed that the village had run out of virgins. He sees me staring and looks down into his mug.

I trade the silver cross around my neck for four bowls of a pottage stew, three mugs of warm cider, a tankard of murrey for the boy, and four plates of smoked herring.

Theodore tells us that the simpleton’s name was Stephen. Pilgrims brought the man to the village after finding him wandering near the Norfolk border. For some reason that Theodore is unaware of, the simpleton told the monks that he lived in Bure. But no one in the village had ever seen Stephen before. The simpleton took to living in the forest, until a man named Humfrey took pity on him and gave him employment as a shepherd. Humfrey fed Stephen and allowed him to sleep in his barn.

“And Stephen spoke of a cure?” The spoon trembles in my hand. I cannot tell if it is from the thrill of hope or from the fever that rises once more inside me. “Did he say it existed?”

“Yes, m’lord,” Theodore replies. “He had some of it with him. In his wagon. But I don’t think it were a proper cure. He said he were going to sell it and get horses for his wagon and go back to Bure. That’s funny, ain’t it? Because he
was
in Bure. But he kept telling me he wanted to
go
to Bure. I always tried to explain it to him, but he got confused and sometimes he got cross.”

Tristan draws a phial from his shoulder sack. “Did the cure look like this?”

The boy smiles, his eyes wide. “Yes! That’s it. You have it too?”

“Don’t mind that,” I say. The simpleton gave Isabella, the witch, racks and racks full of plague, claiming it was the cure. But Isabella was certain that he had mistakenly brought the wrong phials to her. “Could there be another Bure somewhere?”

Theodore shrugs and slurps at his stew.

“We need a map,” I say. “I’ll wager that there is an island called Bure somewhere, and that’s where the simpleton came from.” I feel a smile creep across my face and can do nothing to stop it. “We have a name. We can find the fortress now. We can find the alchemist.”

“Alchemy is a sin,” Theodore says absently, tipping the bowl to drink the broth.

“Everything’s a sin,” Tristan replies. “Haven’t you heard? Except, apparently, breasts. Hallelujah.”

“Don’t you poison him with your wicked ideas,” Belisencia says.

“He’s already poisoned,” Tristan says. “He was born a sinner. Weren’t you, Theodore?”

“You mean that Adam and Eve stuff?” Theodore asks.

“Don’t listen to him,” Belisencia replies. “Be righteous and faithful and you will be saved.”

Tristan turns back to me. “Perhaps we should talk to a ship’s captain. A captain would know where this island is for certain.”

“We could go back to Hedingham,” Belisencia offers. “The de Vere family has a library in their castle. We might find maps that show where this island is.”

“How do you know so much about Suffolk?” Tristan asks.

“I think there’s a library in the Lutons’ Manor at Long Melford,” I say. “It’s closer than Hedingham Castle.” I think of Abigail and sigh. “Although we’d have to fight through plaguers to get at it.”

Theodore wipes at his mouth. “Sounds like heaps of work,” he says. “I could just show you how to get to the fortress if you like.”

Theodore leads us through the rain to the west side of the village, where a whitewashed barn stands on a hill. A thatched farmhouse sits a dozen paces away from it. The blond child tugs at the barn doors, then puts his shoulders to each one and shoves until they are wide open. He gestures inside. An old wagon sits in the dark barn.

“Not much of a fortress,” Tristan says.

“It’s not a fortress,” Theodore replies. “It’s a wagon.”

“I always mix those two up.” Tristan points to the cart and repeats the word “wagon” over and over again to himself. He draws something from his shoulder sack. “Get down off there and I’ll give you a slice of anvil.”

Theodore laughs. “That’s bread.”

“Bread?” Tristan looks at raveled loaf and shakes his head. “It all makes sense now. Edward, remind me to apologize to the blacksmith when we return to Sussex.”

Theodore laughs again and Tristan laughs with him. Belisencia smiles. She looks at Tristan with an expression I am certain she does not realize she wears.

“Why are you showing us a wagon, Theodore?” The food has given me strength. Perhaps I will conquer this wound after all.

“Because it were Stephen’s,” he replies. “And you can’t find the fortress without it.” He climbs onto the wagon and pats two enormous sacks that lie in the bed. “These are walnuts,” he calls, giggling. “That’s how he found his way back to the fortress whenever he left. But he couldn’t go there no more.”

“Walnuts?” Belisencia asks.

The boy jumps down with a thump and runs to one of the back wheels of the cart. He bounces his thumbnail against a piece of metal jutting from the frame of the wagon just above the wheel. It rings like a tiny bell. “He used to have to get food and things for his master. So he traveled. But he was a baboon. Couldn’t find his way back to the fortress. He weren’t…wasn’t good with remembering stuff. But he could count.” He points to another piece of metal protruding from the rim of the wheel itself. “Every time the wheel spins, the metals hit and they ding. And every ten dings, he tosses a walnut out of the bag. When the bag is empty, he knows he has to turn, and he’s only three miles from the fortress.”

I think about this, but there is a lot of information the boy has left out. I force myself to remain calm. “That makes no sense, Theodore. How would he know how many walnuts to put in the bag?”

Theodore raises his hands and twists them in childlike bafflement. “I don’t know. He said he always went to the gate on the east side of Norwich and started pulling the nuts out of the bag from there. He only needed one bag, but he said he always brought a spare.” The boy holds up a flat piece of wood with two curved lines painted into it. “This told him how far to turn the cart when the walnuts ran out. His wagon tracks had to look like this in the grass so that he didn’t turn too much, or not enough. He was the cleverest baboon I’ve ever seen.”

“Theodore,” Belisencia says. “You shouldn’t call people that.”

Theodore looks at her, his lip drawn up. “It’s a sin to call people clever?”

“I did warn you,” Tristan says. “
Everything
is a sin.”

“Stop it, Tristan,” Belisencia snaps.

“So no matter where the baboon went,” I say, “he would return through Norwich?”

“That’s what he said.”

“A genius among baboons,” Tristan says.

Belisencia shakes her head. “Baboon? You two shouldn’t be allowed near children.”

“Hallelujah,” Tristan replies.

I look at the cart in the barn. It will slow us down, make us easy prey. But I do not see a better solution.

Tristan pokes at one of the large sacks and grins.

“In these times of madness, only nuts will save us.”

Chapter 34

It is twenty-five miles to Norwich, and another ten to reach the coast. If we could ride swiftly, with little rest, the trip would take a long day. But two of our horses are hitched to the wagon and Tristan rides the third. Barring any delays, it will take us nearly two days to reach Norwich. Two more days for Elizabeth and Morgan. Do they have two days left? The despair saps my strength, rakes my soul like dragon claws.

Our trip would be swifter if I knew the destination. But Stephen the Simpleton did not know how to return to the island. Stephen the Simpleton had to travel to Norwich every time he wanted to find the fortress. Stephen the Simpleton needed a bell, a bag, and a piece of wood to make his way home. I sigh and glance back at the two sacks in the bed of the wagon. My eternal salvation now depends on walnuts.

God is testing me
.
This is simply a trial I must endure.

“Norwich should be lovely at this time,” Tristan says. “With the dogwoods in bloom and the fires of hell bathing the buildings in that warm tangerine glow.”

The wagon wheel chimes every time it makes a full spin. We have gone scarcely a mile and already it is driving me mad.

“It is a wonderful city,” Belisencia says. “Norwich has the most beautiful cathedral I have ever seen.”

“Perhaps the demons inside will sing us a tortured hymn,” Tristan replies. “Have we thought this through, Edward? Are we going to ride our singing wagon into the largest city in East Anglia? You saw how much plague there was at St. Edmund’s Bury. What do you think Norwich will be like?”

“If you have a better plan, I am anxious to hear it,” I reply.

“I think
a
plan would be a good start,” he says. “We’re just going to roll up to the gates and ride eastward?”

“That’s exactly what we’re going to do,” I say. “We’re going to ride eastward until the walnuts run out.” I pick up the painted panel of wood. “And then we’re going to turn south so that our wagon wheel tracks look like…” I glance at the panel. The curving lines point to the left now. I flip the panel and they point to the right.

“Oh my,” Tristan says.

I run a hand over my eyes. The wood clatters as I toss it into the wagon bed.

Hallelujah
.

We follow the Stour northward, the relentless chime of metal strips on the wagon wheel attesting to our brisk pace. I know the sound cannot be as loud as it seems, but I cannot help imagining that every plaguer and mad king in England will hear the chime echoing across the heathland. That our approach is announced for miles by the simpleton’s singing wagon.

“I do not mind the sound,” Belisencia says. “It makes me feel safe.”

Tristan scoffs. “Safe? That sound will kill us all.”

Belisencia shrugs. “In the North, when someone dies, they hire a bell ringer to walk at the front of the funeral procession. They say the bell frightens away evil spirits.”