Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) (28 page)

“Saving our lives?” Tristan laughs. “We had the gate up already. He’s one of those men who runs forward after the battle and puts his foot on the carcass.”

The man turns back to Tristan. “It would have been your carcass.” His thumb brushes the dagger’s grip. “Still might.”

“I can see why you’re dead. I’d have killed you too.” Tristan unstraps his great helm and tosses it into the wagon bed, at the man’s feet. “Still might.”

I stand with a groan. “Yes, why don’t the two of you kill each other and save the demons the trouble? Don’t you think we have enough enemies without picking fights with each other?” I spit over the side of the cart and fix both of them with a stare. “Is this what we’ve become?”

Tristan shrugs. “I was like this already.”

“All I need to know is why you’re sick,” the man says. “You’re sweating too heavy for just that fight, and you can barely hold your feet. If you ain’t plagued, then why the fever?”

I show him my wrist. “Because doctors are useless.”

He studies the wound. “That weren’t a bite?”

“No.” I point to him with my chin. “Now, tell me about your death.”

Chapter 42

He tells us that his name is Praeteritus. My Latin was never good, but I think it means “forgotten,” and I am certain it is not his real name. I am also certain that someone gave him the name, because he is not the sort of man who would know Latin. His accent and phrasing mark him as Suffolk peasantry, so deeply rooted in farms that I can almost smell the loam on his breath.

“What sort of ridiculous name is Praeteritus?” Tristan says. “Sounds like a monk sneezing. You look more like a Ralf.”

“What was it that killed you?” I ask.

“The plague,” Praeteritus says, then he shakes his head when I try to speak. “Not this plague. The other one. The Black Death. There are still pockets of it left around, you know.”

“If that one was black,” Tristan says, “then what color is this one, Ralf?”

“Red,” I reply.

I was a child during the Black Death. The disease spared me and most of my family, but it withered England. It crept through every corner of my kingdom, spreading rot and boils, and killing so many that entire villages ceased to exist. Bodies were rolled into great pits and buried in lye, or set aflame like some Old Testament offering. My father told me it was the worst thing that ever happened to England.

But this sickness is far worse. Entire villages still disappear, but neither lye nor flame will give proper rest to the victims of the Red Plague. This plague does not wither England; it rips the kingdom into a thousand bloody pieces and swallows them all.

“I got sick from the Black Death five years ago,” Praeteritus says. “And it killed me.”

The old plague still creeps through the land, still claims victims, but not very often.

“I realize you serf stock aren’t given much in the way of learning, Ralf,” Tristan says, “but I think you missed an important lesson about the results of death.”

Praeteritus darts a lethal glance at Tristan. “You mean the idea that dead people oughta stay dead?”

Tristan opens his mouth, then closes it. “Probably not the most important lesson these days.”

Praeteritus is a smart chicken.

“How are you alive?” I ask.

“God sent me back.”

Figures in the distance lurch toward us. I am almost relieved to see ordinary plaguers.

“God?” Belisencia touches the cross at her neck. “Why would He send you back?”

“I used to think I was His arrow. That He sent me back to punish bad people. To give them the ‘wages of sin.’”

I give Tristan a glance. If this man has the third plague, he will be a danger to all of us. Tristan’s shoulders tense.

“Wages of sin?” Belisencia says. “You mean…kill them?” She takes the smallest of steps backward.

Praeteritus nods. “I used to kill men for the Bishop of Ely, before this new plague got started.”

“The Bishop of Ely?” Belisencia says. “You killed for a man of God?”

Praeteritus smiles. “All men are men of God. Bishops just profit from the relationship.”

“Do you still think you are God’s arrowhead?” I tap the pommel of my sword with a thumb as subtly as I can so I can draw it in an instant if needed.

He looks at the lepers that have huddled about twenty paces away. “I ain’t certain of anything anymore.”

I study the lepers as well and remember the white-robed figures that watched us in Caistor St. Edmund.

“Well, you are clearly not dead anymore,” Belisencia says. “You should not say that you are.”

“You’re wrong, m’lady,” he says. “I will always be dead. The priest gave me the rites. Put the oil on my body.”

“But you were alive,” I say.

“I ain’t certain if I died or not. All I know is that the Church said I was dead. The odd thing about the Church is they have a ceremony for when you die, but they ain’t got one for when you come back. And priests are too stubborn to admit they’re wrong. So they just pretend you don’t exist. Once you’re dead to the Church, you don’t never come back.”

I have heard of such things. Men and women declared dead, anointed and given last rites, then rising from their beds. They are shunned as abominations. The lucky ones are merely driven from their homes and villages.

“You poor man,” Belisencia says.

The plaguers continue toward us. Some of them wear mail. It is time to move on. The island fortress is two miles and a bag of walnuts away.

“We should continue this conversation somewhere else.” I nod toward the lepers. “Are they with you?”

“They are,” Praeteritus replies. “They live in Caistor St. Edmund for now, with three hundred other lepers. And I am their king.”

“Ralf the Leper King.” Tristan sits on the driver’s box and takes the reins.

I open my mouth to invite the lepers into the cart but hesitate. These men followed us from Caistor St. Edmund to save us from the demons, but they are lepers. Blighted men and women. They are the unclean. Unloved by God. Damned and confined to the shadows by the magnitude of their sins. So reviled that the church declares them dead and strips them of their possessions. I understand why Praeteritus has found kinship among them: they, too, are the living dead.

“Where are your horses?” I ask. “Are they nearby?”

“Our wagon is two miles east, on the south side of the river,” Praeteritus replies. “There are rafts there, on the Wensum, to allow crossings.”

Tristan and Belisencia look back at me without expression and I do not acknowledge them.

“Tell them to climb in,” I say. “We’ll take you to the rafts.”

Belisencia stares at me with wide eyes. I know she will not enjoy traveling two miles while squeezed into a cart with lepers, but it will be good for her. A trial to teach her humility and tolerance.

“Edward,” she whispers. “They’re lepers!”

I nod. “Hallelujah.”

I think about my own sins and wonder that I am not a leper already. Perhaps bringing them onto the cart will afflict me with their disease. Three months spent avoiding this new plague only to contract leprosy. But if humanity is to live, then we must show ourselves to be human.

Praeteritus calls the lepers over. The three men approach slowly. One rings a bell, another rattles a clapper.

“Unclean!” they shout as they approach.

“Stop that,” Praeteritus shouts. “I told you, you don’t have to do that no more.”

Two of them have only stumps for hands. I reach out and take one of the stumps, fighting revulsion, and help the man up.

“Don’t pull too hard,” Tristan says.

“That’s not funny, Tristan,” Belisencia says.

“My apologies,” he says. “Are they all on board?” He glances back, brows furrowed. “Maybe I should rephrase that.”

“You are a horrible man,” Belisencia says, but she edges away from a second leper that Praeteritus helps up. Blood has soaked though his filthy white robe in blotches.

I reach a hand out to the third, but Praeteritus shakes his head. “Not him. He stays here.”

The leper makes no attempt to board the wagon.

“You cannot leave him to be…to be…” Belisencia glances at the approaching plaguers.

“He won’t be eaten,” Praeteritus replies. “Plaguers don’t eat lepers.”

“And what about you?” I ask. “You were bitten.”

“Plaguers don’t eat lepers, and survivors of the Black Death can’t get this one.”

“You’ve been bitten before?” I ask.

“More than I care to remember,” he replies.

The only way all five of us can fit in the cart is if we stand. The arrangement is not ideal. I do not think I can stay on my feet for very long. The fever is not as bad as the one I had when we visited Paul the Doctor, but it is worsening.

We take hold of whatever section of the cart is nearest us as Tristan snaps the reins. The horses strain against the added weight, but once the wagon creaks forward they have no trouble trotting away from the city of Norwich. The metal strips chime and the leper with the blood spots rings a bell in response.

“Unclean!” he shouts.

“You don’t have to do that no more,” Praeteritus says.

Belisencia swallows with effort and smiles at the leper. “Yes,” she says. “Your past failures do not put you beyond redemption. Pray to Christ and he may forgive your sins and make you worthy once more.”

“That man’s disease is no more his fault than this Red Plague,” Tristan says. “People get sick. It doesn’t mean they have failed or that God is punishing them.”

“How do you know?” Belisencia asks. “Leprosy spreads through wanton, impure sexual habits and through immoral character. That is known. Why is it that you think you know more than everyone else? Why must you deny all common knowledge? Don’t be such a baboon.”

“If God gave him leprosy,” Tristan says, “then God also gave the plague to the nuns of your convent.”

“And how do you know that it was not Lucifer who gave them the plague?”

“Because it wasn’t,” I say. “John of Gaunt gave them the plague. Let’s stop talking and watch for plaguers.”

The metals chime on the wagon. I have lost count of how many chimes there have been. I draw a walnut from the sack and toss it onto the cart floor. Praeteritus looks at me curiously but says nothing.

The leper we leave behind pulls one of the bandages from his face, and even from fifty paces away I see that his chin is badly swollen on one side. Things begin to make sense to me. The keystone falls into place.

I point to the leper in the distance. “Is he plagued?”

Praeteritus rubs one of his hands slowly against the other. “The plague affects lepers different,” he says. “Some of them can’t get the affliction. But the ones that can…well, it affects them different. They become…” He shrugs and points toward the city. “They become those.”

The leper turns away from us and walks slowly toward Norwich. “There were five leper hospitals round Norwich before the plague came on. And more than four hundred lepers outside the city. When the townsfolk ran off or got ate, the lepers took the city as their own.”

“What about the plaguers?” Belisencia asks.

“Like I said. Plaguers don’t eat them. Norwich became a leper city. A place where everyone was the same. Where no one was cursed, and no one was spit on.”

“Sounds lovely,” Tristan says. “A leper Eden.”

“But the serpent found them, didn’t it?” I say.

“Just because the plaguers don’t eat lepers don’t mean they can’t hurt them,” Praeteritus says. “Most of the afflicted left the city. I guess not even plaguers want to be near lepers. But a few plaguers stayed. And if backed into a corner, the afflicted will even bite lepers. I don’t know what happened. But plague spread in Norwich again. The city got overrun.”

“I thought you said not all lepers can become afflicted,” Belisencia says.

“They can’t. But even if only half the lepers in Norwich could plague, that’s still more than two hundred afflicted lepers running through the streets. The unafflicted lepers fled. And they have been looking for a home ever since.” He stares at the white-robed men standing in the cart. “A band of soldiers found the wandering lot of them and got to killing them. They said the plague was caused by lepers. I been told it was a bloodbath. Fifty dead. Lots more wounded. The survivors made it to Caistor, where I found them. But there’s not much there. Just a ruined Roman city. They want a home. Something safe. I promised I would find them one.”

“The bloated ones in the city,” Belisencia says. “Why don’t they leave? They wouldn’t follow us past the gates.”

Praeteritus looks back toward the city, then gazes at one of the three lepers in the cart. “I don’t know. I think they remember a little. They know it’s home. The world was hell for them. But in Norwich, they weren’t damned no more. It was their Promised Land. God forgave them.” He shrugs but there is something painful in the gesture. I do not think the lepers are the only ones seeking God’s forgiveness. Perhaps these poor broken men are Praeteritus’s penance. He turns back to Belisencia. “Why would you leave Eden?”

The cart rattles over a rabbit hole as I think on his words.

“So the things in Norwich are plagued lepers,” Belisencia whispers.

Praeteritus nods.

“And they’re not demons,” I say.

Praeteritus watches the man walk through the gates and into Norwich. “Depends on who you ask.”

The wagon chimes and the leper rings his bell once more. “Unclean!” he shouts.

“You don’t have to do that no more,” Praeteritus says.

“Unclean!” the leper cries. “Unclean!”

We leave Praeteritus and his subjects at the bank of the Wensum, where two rafts of reed have been drawn up on the mud. I call to him as he drags one of the rafts into the river.

“Praeteritus, did you come here to save us, or to bring that afflicted leper to Norwich?”

He picks at grass wedged into the raft reeds. “There always got to be one answer to everything?” He tugs the raft into the river current and helps one of his lepers onto it, hands the man a long wooden pole.

“Good-bye, Leper King,” Tristan shouts.

“Good-bye, baboon,” Praeteritus replies.

We continue our eastward journey, through golden fields of cowslips and flat expanses of wild grasses and forgotten furlongs. I lie on my back while Belisencia and Tristan fret about my condition.