He came to a break in the trees and looked down over a fortified town. It was partially obscured by the smoke of many fires, but he recognized it at once. Oh hell, he thought, it's just Castelgard. What was the big deal, forcing him to come here?
It was Gordon, of course, who was behind it. That bullshit line about how the academics were disappointed. It was Gordon. The son of a bitch had been running the technology, and now he thought he could run the company, as well. Gordon had sent him back, thinking he couldn't return.
But Doniger could return, and he would. He wasn't worried, because he carried a ceramic with him at all times. He kept it in a slot in the heel of his shoe. He pulled the shoe off, and looked at the slot. Yes, the white ceramic was there. But it was pushed deep in the slot, and it seemed to be stuck there. When he shook the shoe, it didn't drop out. He tried a twig, poking in the slot, but the twig bent.
Next he tried to pull the heel off the shoe, but he couldn't get enough leverage; the heel stayed on. What he needed was a metal tool of some kind, a wedge or a chisel. He could find one in the town, he felt sure.
He put the shoe back on, stripped off his jacket and tie, and walked down the slope. Looking at the town, he noticed some odd details. He was just above the east gate in the town wall, but the gate was wide open. And there were no soldiers along the walls. That was odd. Whatever year this was, it was obviously a time of peace - there were those times, between English invasions. But still, he'd have thought the gate would always be guarded. He looked at the fields and saw no one tending them. They seemed neglected, with large clumps of weeds.
What the hell? he thought.
He passed through the gate and walked into the town. He saw that the gate was unguarded because the soldier on guard lay dead on his back. Doniger leaned over to look at him. There were bright streaks of blood coming from around his eyes. He must have been struck on the head, he thought.
He turned to the town itself. The smoke, he now saw, was issuing from little pots that had been placed everywhere - on the ground, on walls, or on fence posts. And the town seemed to be deserted, empty in the bright, sunny day. He walked to the market, but nobody was there. He heard the sound of monks chanting; they were coming toward him. And he heard the drum.
He felt a chill.
A dozen monks, all dressed in black, rounded the corner in a kind of procession, chanting. Half of them were stripped to the waist, lashing themselves with leather whips studded with bits of metal. Their shoulders and backs were bleeding freely.
Flagellants.
That was what they were, flagellants. Doniger gave a low moan and backed away from the monks, who continued past him in stately fashion, ignoring him. He continued to step away, farther and farther, until his back touched something wooden.
He turned and saw a wooden horse cart, but there was no horse. He saw bundles of cloth piled high on the cart. Then he saw a child's foot protruding from one of the bundles. A woman's arm from another. The buzzing of flies was very loud. A cloud of flies, swarming over the bodies.
Doniger began to shiver.
The arm had odd blackish lumps on it.
The Black Death.
He knew now what year it was. It was 1348. The year the plague first struck Castelgard and killed a third of the population. And he knew how it spread - by the bites of fleas, by touch and by air. Just breathing the air could kill you. He knew that it could kill swiftly, that people just fell over in the street. One minute you were perfectly fine. Then the coughing began, the headache. An hour later you were dead.
He had been very close to the soldier by the gate. He had been close to the man's face.
Very close.
Doniger slumped down against a wall, feeling the numbness of terror creep over him.
As he sat there, he began to cough.
EPILOGUE
Rain slashed across the gray English landscape. The windshield wipers snicked back and forth. In the driver's seat, Edward Johnston leaned forward and squinted as he tried to see through the rain. Outside were low, dark green hills, demarcated by dark hedges, and everything blurred by the rain. The last farm had been a couple of miles back.
Johnston said, "Elsie, are you sure this is the road?"
"Absolutely," Elsie Kastner said, the map open on her lap. She traced the route with her finger. "Four miles beyond Cheatham Cross to Bishop's Vale, and one mile later, it should be up there, on the right."
She pointed to a sloping hill with scattered oak trees.
"I don't see anything," Chris said, from the back seat.
Kate said, "Is the air conditioner on? I'm hot." She was seven months pregnant, and always hot.
"Yes, it's on," Johnston said.
"All the way?"
Chris patted her knee reassuringly.
Johnston drove slowly, looking for a mileage marker at the side of the road. The rain diminished. They could see better. And then Elsie said, "There!"
On the top of the hill was a dark rectangle, with crumbling walls.
"That's it?"
"That's Eltham Castle," she said. "What's left of it."
Johnston pulled the car over to the side of the road, and cut the ignition. Elsie read from her guidebook. "First built on this site by John d'Elthaim in the eleventh century, with several later additions. Notably the ruined keep from the twelfth century, and a chapel in the English Gothic style, from the fourteenth. Unrelated to Eltham Castle in London, which is from a later period."
The rain lessened, now just scattered drops in the wind. Johnston opened the car door and got out, shrugging on his raincoat. Elsie got out on the passenger side, her documents encased in plastic. Chris ran around the car to open the door for Kate, and helped her out. They climbed over a low stone wall, and began climbing up toward the castle.
The ruin was more substantial than it had seemed from the road; high stone walls, dark with rain. There were no ceilings; the rooms were open to the sky. No one spoke as they walked through the ruins. They saw no signs, no antiquities markers, nothing at all to indicate what this place had been, or even its name. Finally Kate said, "Where is it?"
"The chapel? Over there."
Walking around a high wall, they saw the chapel, surprisingly complete, its roof rebuilt at some time in the past. The windows were merely open arches in the stone, without glass. There was no door.
Inside the chapel, the wind blew through cracks and windows. Water dripped from the ceiling. Johnston took out a large flashlight, and shone it on the walls.
Chris said, "How did you find out about this place, Elsie?"
"In the documents, of course," she said. "In the Troyes archives, there was a reference to a wealthy English brigand named Andrew d'Eltham who had paid a visit to the Monastery of Sainte-Mre in his later years. He brought his entire family from England, including his wife and grown sons. That started me searching."
"Here," Johnston said, shining his light on the floor.
They all walked over to see.
Broken tree branches and a layer of damp leaves covered the floor. Johnston was down on his hands and knees, brushing them away to expose weathered burial stones that had been set in the floor. Chris sucked in his breath when he saw the first one. It was a woman, dressed demurely in long robes, lying on her back. The carving was unmistakably the Lady Claire. Unlike many carvings, Claire was depicted with her eyes open, staring frankly at the viewer.
"Still beautiful," Kate said, standing with her back arched, her hand pressed into her side.
"Yes," Johnston said. "Still beautiful."
Now the second stone was cleared away. Lying next to Claire, they saw Andr Marek. He, too, had his eyes open. Marek looked older, and he had a crease on the side of his face that might have been from age, or might have been a scar.
Elsie said, "According to the documents, Andrew escorted Lady Claire back to England from France, and then married her. He didn't care about the rumors that Claire had murdered her previous husband. By all accounts he was deeply in love with his wife. They had five sons, and were inseparable all their lives.