‘Ulric’s sake, your grace,’ Beck cried. ‘The woman’s going to die anyway. You can’t jeopardise yourself like this!’
Mandred stared at his guard, at the frightened cast of Mirella’s features. ‘This time mine will be the only life I risk,’ he said, thinking back to that fateful ride when he’d led brave men into the plague’s domain. ‘Take Lady Mirella back to the Middenpalaz.’
‘Where will you go?’ Mirella demanded, tears forming in her eyes.
The prince looked down at Sofia’s wasted frame. ‘There’s an alchemist who has taken over the old hospice of Shallya. He’s reputed to be something of a wonder worker. I’ll take her there.’
Beck stepped forwards, blocking the prince’s way. ‘I can’t let you risk yourself. Give me the girl. I’ll take her.’
Mandred shook his head. ‘This is my burden,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been a loyal knight. Do as you are ordered.’
Reluctantly, Beck stepped aside. Along with Mirella and the major domo, he watched Mandred walk away, eighty pounds of plague swaddled in his royal arms.
Mandred could think only of the draconian quarantine measures his father had undertaken the last time plague had threatened Middenheim. Great and small, Graf Gunthar had spared none who bore the marks of the Black Plague on their skin. He’d banished all those who’d even come in contact with the disease from the Ulricsberg, condemning them to the squalor of Warrenburg. Virtually the whole of the Shallyan sect had perished because of that edict. They’d refused to abandon the plague-stricken refugees and so had decamped en masse for the shanty town at the foot of the mountain. Most had died there, victims of the plague or marauding beastmen. The few survivors had remained in their little wooden chapel down below, resolute in their determination to stay where they felt most needed.
Graf Gunthar’s cruelty had been the salvation of Middenheim, Mandred knew that. An ugly truth was a truth all the same. Because it was truth, he knew how his father would react if he were to learn the plague had returned. There was nothing he wouldn’t do to spare the city, to honour what he felt to be a sacred trust between ruler and ruled.
No, Mandred corrected himself, guilt gnawing at his belly. There was one thing that would make his father forsake that trust. The graf wouldn’t sacrifice his own son, no matter who was at risk.
The stone walls of the hospice seemed to exert a preternatural chill, an atmosphere of desolation. The humble folk of Middenheim shunned the place: nobles complaining that it was in disrepair, peasants claiming that when her priestesses deserted the hospice, Shallya’s beneficence departed with them.
Mandred prayed that such wasn’t the case. Forgetting the dignity of his position, he bent on one knee and begged the goddess to intercede on Sofia’s behalf. The alchemist, a silver-haired Nordlander named Neist, ignored the prince’s lack of decorum as he examined the sick woman. It wasn’t long before he rose from beside the pallet and replaced his tools in the little leather bag he carried. Mandred sprang to his feet as the alchemist started to leave the tiny cell.
‘Where are you going?’ Mandred demanded, his fist tightening about the capelet fringing the alchemist’s cloak. ‘You have to make her well!’
Neist favoured the prince with a tired, indulgent smile. ‘It’s the Black Plague,’ he explained, not quite managing to keep his tone from possessing a patronising quality.
‘I know what it is,’ Mandred retorted, tightening his hold. ‘Make her better.’
The alchemist laughed, a bitter and cheerless sound. ‘If I knew how to do that I’d be the richest man in the Empire!’ He held his hands out for the prince to inspect. Mandred automatically released the man, recoiling when he saw the pox-scars all along Neist’s skin.
‘It caught me six years ago in Wolfenburg,’ Neist said. ‘I don’t know how I survived when so many didn’t, but I know it wasn’t anything of my doing.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Mandred asked, despair almost choking his voice. The alchemist beckoned to the prince, motioning him to withdraw into the corridor. Glancing one last time at Sofia’s bed, staring into her wide, fearful eyes, Mandred forced himself to follow Neist.
The alchemist closed the door when the prince had withdrawn. Sighing, Neist removed a piece of chalk and scratched a crude cross on the panel. ‘I’m sure,’ he said, gesturing with his arm to the rest of the long hallway. Both sides were lined with similar doors. Once this place had acted as a dormitory for the priestesses and their servants. Now it provided a refuge for Neist’s patients. As the alchemist pointed, Mandred found his attention riveted by a detail he’d been too distraught to notice when he was bringing Sofia here. Dozens of the doors were marked with the white crosses that indicated plague.
‘I’ve had ample opportunity,’ the alchemist declared. ‘First in Wolfenburg, then in Talabheim, then in Nuln.’ He wiped his scarred hand across his brow. ‘It seems if you somehow live through it, the plague can’t touch you again. A horrible feeling, to watch a city dying around you, knowing you’ll be the only one left.’
Horror was coursing through Mandred’s veins. ‘When?’ he managed to ask.
‘Three weeks ago, the first ones came. Two little boys.’ The alchemist shook his fist. ‘They died. Then there were more. They died too. I had to burn them in the old garden. Couldn’t risk dumping them over the Cliff of Sighs, Morr forgive me.’
‘How many?’ Mandred pressed, feeling his fear swell with each heartbeat.
Neist scratched at his beard. ‘Nearly a hundred now. I’m not surprised they haven’t noticed in the Middenpalaz, though.’ He jabbed a thumb at the door to Sofia’s cell. ‘She’s the first Von to catch it. The rest have just been peasants.’
Almost at once, Neist regretted his choice of words. More than most nobles, he knew Prince Mandred’s reputation for helping his people regardless of class. ‘I apologise, your grace,’ he said. ‘That was an unjust thing for me to say. I saw the city of Carroburg put to the torch by nobles afraid of the plague. That isn’t an easy memory to forget.’
‘Manling quack!’ a gruff voice bellowed through the hall. ‘A beardless grave for all your clan!’
The alchemist flinched when he heard the cry. Mandred followed Neist as he hurried down the corridor. ‘That was a dwarf? I understood they couldn’t catch the plague.’
Neist didn’t look at the prince as he answered, too busy rummaging in his bag for a slim bottle of blue glass. ‘Kurgaz Smallhammer’s affliction is quite different, I assure you.’ Another bitter laugh as he hurried on. ‘It is quite an honour for a human to be allowed to treat a dwarf. Though in hindsight I think a seasick troll would have made a more pleasant patient.’
Altdorf
Brauzeit, 1114
A brisk autumn breeze wafted through the narrow streets of Altdorf, bearing upon it the infamous stink from the riverfront slums that had caused Emperor Siegfried to curse the city as ‘the Great Reek’ and remove his throne to Nuln. Emperor Boris had returned the throne to Altdorf, but that hadn’t changed the odour that crawled up from the river, slinking into the manses and palaces of the Empire’s great and good.
Walking along the cobblestone lanes winding between the half-timbered residences of the nobility that clustered around the Imperial Palace, Adolf Kreyssig dipped his hand beneath the folds of the heavy cloak he wore, fishing the silver pomander from his pocket and inhaling its perfumed vapours. It was more than a concession to discomfort — one of the prevailing theories about the origins of the Black Plague had it emerging from noxious odours. A pomander stuffed with cinnamon was, supposedly, a sure-fire preventative. Kreyssig scowled at the pomander as he tucked it back into his pocket. The fact that only the wealthy could afford cinnamon might have had more to do with the prescription than any medicinal value. Physicians were a special kind of thief, stealing more with a gloomy word than any cutpurse could with a knife.