The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

Shifting around, Martin waved the others ahead toward the small hamlet, and the trio set off at a canter. Each knew his duty. Martin followed more slowly, studying and assessing all he passed. Isolated in this small upland valley, the village went by the name Highglen and was known locally for its pottery, forged from mud and clay gathered out of the hot springs that contributed to the mists cloaking the higher forests. It was said that the town’s method of kilning and the composition of the potter’s clay were tightly guarded secrets known only to the guild here.

And now they were lost forever.

The wagon trundled down the road, passing more fields: rye, oats, beans, and rows of vegetables. Some of the fields showed signs of recent harvesting, while others showed evidence of being set to torch.

Had the villagers grown to suspect the truth?

As the wagon continued down into the valley, lines of sheep pens appeared, fringed by tall hedges that half hid the horror within. Woolly mounds, the bloated bodies of hundreds of sheep dotted the overgrown meadows. Closer to the village, pigs and goats also appeared, sprawled and sunken-eyed, dead where they’d dropped. Off in a field, a large-boned ox had collapsed, still tethered to its plow.

As the wagon reached the village green, the town remained silent. No bark of dog greeted them, no crow of rooster, no bray of donkey. The church bell didn’t ring, and no one called out to the strangers entering the village.

A heavy silence pressed down over the place.

As they would discover, most of the dead still lay within their houses, too weak at the end to venture out. But one body sprawled facedown on the green, not far from the manor house’s stone steps. He lay like he might have just fallen, perhaps tripped down the steps and broken his neck. But even from the height of the wagon, Martin noted the gaunt stretch of skin over bone, the hollow eyes sunken into the skull, the thinness of limbs.

It was the same wasting as in the beasts of the field. It was as if the entire village had been under siege and had been starved out.

The clatter of hooves approached. Reginald pulled beside the wagon. “Granaries are all full,” he said, dusting off his palms on his pants. The tall, scarred man had overseen campaigns by King William in the north of France. “Found rats and mice in the bins, too.”

Martin glanced over to him.

“As dead as everything else. Just like that cursed island.”

“But now the wasting has reached our shores,” Martin muttered. “Entered our lands.”

It was the reason they’d all been sent here, why the village road was under guard, and why their group had been sworn to secrecy with binding oaths.

“Girard found you a good body,” Reginald said. “Fresher than most. A boy. He’s set ’im up in the smithy.” His heavy arm pointed to a wooden barn with a stacked-stone chimney.

Martin nodded and climbed out of the wagon. He had to know for sure, and there was only one way to find out. As royal coroner, this was his duty, to discern the truth from the dead. Though at the moment, he’d leave the bloodiest work to the French butcher.

Martin crossed to the smithy’s open door. Girard stood inside, hunched before the cold forge. The Frenchman had labored in King William’s army, where he’d sawed off limbs and done his best to keep the soldiers alive.

Girard had cleared a table in the center of the smithy and already had the boy stripped and tied to the table. Martin stared at the pale, emaciated figure. His own son was about the same age, but the manner of this death had aged the poor lad here, made him seem wizened well beyond his eight or nine years.

As Girard prepared his knives, Martin examined the boy more closely. He pinched the skin and noted the lack of fat beneath. He examined the cracked lips, the flaky patches of hair loss, the swollen ankles and feet; but mostly he ran his hands over the protuberant bones, as if trying to read a map with his fingers: ribs, jaw, eye socket, pelvis.

What had happened?

Martin knew any real answers lay much deeper.

Girard crossed to the table with a long silver blade in his hand. “Shall we get to work, monsieur?”

Martin nodded.

A quarter hour later, the boy’s corpse lay on the board like a gutted pig. The skin, splayed from groin to gullet, had been pulled and tacked to the wooden table. Intestines lay nestled and curled tight in the bloodied cavity, bloated and pink. From under the ribs, a brownish-yellow liver swelled outward, too large for one so small, for one so wasted to bone and gristle.

Girard reached into the belly of the boy. His hands vanished into the gelid depths.

On the far side, Martin touched his forehead and mouthed a silent prayer of forgiveness for this trespass. But it was too late for absolution from the boy. All the lad’s body could do was confirm their worst fears.

Girard hauled forth the boy’s stomach, rubbery and white, from which hung a swollen purple spleen. With a few slices of his knife, the Frenchman freed the section of gut and dropped it on the table. Another whispery slip of blade and the stomach was laid open. A rich green mix of undigested bread and grain spilled over the board, like some foul horn of plenty.

A fetid smell rolled out, ripe and potent. Martin covered his mouth and nose—not against the stench, but against the horrible certainty.

“Starved to death, that is plain,” Girard said. “But the boy starved with a full belly.”

Martin stepped back, his limbs going cold. Here was his proof. They would have to examine others to be certain. But the deaths here seemed to be the same as those on the island, a place marked in red ink as “wasted” in the Domesday Book.

Martin stared at the gutted boy. Here was the secret reason the survey had been undertaken to begin with. To search for this blight on their homeland, to stamp it out before it spread. The deaths were the same as on that lonely island. The deceased appeared to eat and eat, yet they still starved to death, finding no nourishment, only a continual wasting.

Needing air, Martin turned from the table and stepped out of shadows and into sunshine. He stared across at the rolling hills, green and fertile. A wind swept down and combed through the fields of barley and oats, wheat and rye. He pictured a man adrift in the ocean, dying of thirst, with water all around him but unable to drink.

This was no different.

Martin shivered in the wan sunlight, wanting to be as far away from this valley as possible, but a shout drew his attention to the right, toward the other end of the village green. A figure dressed all in black stood before an open door. For a moment, Martin feared it was Death himself, but then the figure waved, shattering the illusion. It was Abbot Orren, the final member of their group, the head of the Abbey of Kells in Ireland. He stood at the entrance to the village church.