Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

The small hop she makes when she is truly happy. I can feel her sweet lips against mine. Her fingers curling around the hair that falls at my neck. The memory changes. Her fingers are in my hair, but we are at the monastery two days ago. She tears at my locks and howls, and I have to push at her face to keep those beautiful teeth away from my flesh.
    I open my eyes and sigh. Abigail cranes her neck back and stares at me as she chews. Saint Giles would go well on my crest. He watches over the insane, so perhaps I could change our family motto from Amor, honor, regnum —“love, honor, kingdom”—to In tempore insania, insania salvábit nos : “In these times of madness, only madness will save us.”
    I feel a sharp burning pain in my wrist. The wound and all it might imply had slipped from my mind. I snatch the gauntlet off. The wound throbs. It is red and swollen and angry. I close my eyes and take a breath, then look again. It looks terrible.
    Maybe the gauntlet sleeve scraped the cut in that wild escape .
     I slip the gauntlet back on and think of Elizabeth. I think of our coat of arms and the castle we are building at Bodiam. I think of anything except the throbbing gash that could end my journey. I have killed so many of these plaguers. Am I to become one? Will Tristan find me staggering toward him? I force myself to breathe normally. I don’t feel sick. I do not think I have the fever. It is simply a scratch.
    I recall the black marks on Elizabeth’s wrists and shake my head. Time is her enemy. Nothing must stop me. I am not plagued. I am not .
    I have no bridle, so we plod aimlessly toward the south until the darkness becomes a danger to Abigail and I am forced to dismount. We find a cluster of abandoned cottages near the River Stour: wattle and daub structures with rotting thatch on top and rotting bodies inside. We pick one with passable thatch and no bodies. I take off my armor and throw myself onto a straw mattress against the back wall.
    Abigail stares at me.
    “Well, we can’t both sleep on the mattress, silly cow.” She doesn’t stop staring, so I turn my back to her and toss for a while. I find a murky half slumber, a limbo between wake and sleep. My dreams are of eating flesh and being hunted. I drift out of my slumber for a time and, before falling asleep again, wonder if morning will bring the plague to my body.

Chapter 5
    I wake thinking of Elizabeth. It is a good sign. I am not certain I would think at all if I were plagued. The wound doesn’t look any better, but if it were plague, I would have turned by now. Would I not? I think of the villagers of Danbury, who we inadvertently afflicted. They drank from tainted phials. Those who drank more turned faster. Could my wound have been so slight that it will take days for me to plague? I have killed scores of plaguers and yet I do not know enough about this affliction to be sure. I feel pain in my head, but I am not sweating, nor sick to my stomach.
    I strap on my armor again and fashion a crude halter for Abigail. The cow stamps and backs away from me, but I am able to fit her with a crude bit whittled from a branch. It allows me to aim Abigail in the general direction I wish to go. And that direction is southwest, toward Hedingham and Chelmsford. I will visit with Morgan, then try to find Tristan. If I do not run across Tristan, I will begin my search for the alchemist and his island fortress on my own.
     I pass near the town of Sudbury. It is a wool town, prosperous and—before the plague—full of the Flemish. I understand that the Flemish were put in Sudbury by King Richard’s grandfather, Edward III. He settled them here to help revive England’s dismal cloth trade. Richard told me once that Edward “would not even wipe his arse with English cloth.” Fortunately, the Fleming transplant took root. Sudbury flourished in the cloth trade, and Edward could safely wipe his arse with English cloth. 
    I suppose it may still be full of the