Free Nostrum (The Scourge, Book 2) by Roberto Calas Page A

most of his face into the animal’s ravaged stomach. Another tears strips from its flanks. Tristan and I draw our knives and bring miséricorde to all three.
    We unhook saddles and harnesses from the partitions and ready the horses. I turn to Belisencia and offer my hand to help her onto a pale gelding. She steps into the stirrup and pivots, so that both her legs are on one side of the saddle.
    Tristan snorts. “Are you going for a tour of the orchards? Or perhaps sauntering to the fishpond for a bit of air?”
    I hold out a hand to silence Tristan. “We may have to ride swiftly, my lady,” I say. “Neither of us will be able to guide your horse.”
    She glances at the gelding, then back at me. “But I am not dressed to ride astride.”
    “The dead rise to feed on the living and entire villages cram into churches seeking safety,” I say. “I think modesty is a luxury of the past.”
    “Modesty is what separates us from animals,” she replies. But she pivots and lowers her legs to either side of the horse. The robe slips upward to her thighs. Tristan grins and his gaze sweeps along the curve of her leg.
    Belisencia tugs at the robes but they will not fall any lower. She glares at Tristan. “Anyone who looks at a woman’s body with lust has committed adultery with her.”
    “Truly?” Tristan’s grin is devilish. “Did you enjoy it?”
    She clears her throat and tugs at the robes again. “I think I mixed up the verse.”
    I toss her a saddle blanket. “Everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart,” I say. Father Aubrey loves that verse. Perhaps because he spends so much time committing adultery, in his heart, with all the girls of the village. “What sort of a nun are you?”
    She unfolds the blanket and drapes it so that it covers her legs. “The kind that saved your lives. Shall we head out?”
    “We are bound for Hedingham,” I say. “And you?”
    “Somewhere safe,” she says, kicking her horse forward. “Without demons.”
    Tristan holds his hands up and sighs with exasperation. “You gave her a blanket? Now we have nothing to look at on the long journey.”
    “Modesty, Tristan,” I say. “It’s what separates us from animals.”
    The moon is bright but we ride slowly. I have a new respect for horses. They are the gold coins of this new country and I will not risk them needlessly. We ride west until I spot the carriage wheels. I stand in my saddle and check each of the Frenchmen. Most are dead. One wheezes and opens his eyes, giving me a start. I hold up my knife and speak to him.
    “ Miséricorde .”
    His face crumples, but there are no tears left in him. He nods his head over and over again and I slit his throat.
    “I’m sorry,” I say as his life dribbles out. “ Mea maxima culpa .”
    I look at the wound on my wrist and wonder if someone will have to give me the same mercy soon.
    We turn southwest, toward Hedingham and the nunnery where we left Morgan of Hastings. Belisencia will be safe there, and I have recovered Saint Luke’s thigh from Alexander’s church, so the nuns will be happy.
    Tristan turns to me when we are a safe distance from Edwardstone.
    “So, riding a cow?” he asks.
    “Leave it,” I say.
    “Tell me about the pink reins. Were they a pale pink or more of a foxglove pink?”
    “At the monastery in St. Edmund’s Bury,” I say, “how did you get out of the tunnel?”
    “Raw meat,” he says. “Threw a dead goat down the pit, then ran.”
    “How’d you get the goat past Brother Phillip?”
    Tristan laughs. “I had to pry the monk off my leg. He told me I was eternally damned for starving a monk.”
    We laugh. It feels good to laugh. But the wound on my wrist and the thought of Elizabeth quell the laughter swiftly.
    Tristan rubs at his lower lip and becomes pensive. “I overestimated the plaguers’ interest in the dead goat, though. You remember that dead deer on the road to Hadleigh?”
    I nod. We tied the