Job, from the Old Testament, followed the road of perseverance. But I believe every man must find his own road to salvation. They wave His wrath like a whip whenever you stray from the path they have chosen for you. In my experience, monks are quick to threaten God’s Fury. “I am stealing from you.” I stare at him until he takes a step back. “I am not stealing from the church,” I say. “You imperil your very soul, Sir Edward!” “You are stealing from the church!” Brother Phillip is the last remaining monk in the monastery of St. For I will have saved the woman I adore and earned eternal salvation in her eyes.

And I, too, will smile as the flames lick my flesh. I must look to alchemy, even if it means burning in the very fires of hell. But after two days of prayer I understand that neither God nor the saints will heal the woman I love. It is difficult for me to see the difference between a tincture and a corpse’s bath water. Some weeks later those same monks dunked a saint’s body into a vat of wine in the hopes of creating a cure for the same plague. The monks who burned him told the lingering crowd that prayer is the only true and righteous weapon against illness. A haunting smile that has bewildered me to this day. I remember him smiling just before the flames seared his flesh. When I was a child, I watched a man burn at the stake for mixing tinctures to cure the Black Plague. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.įor Rina and Nick, who once had nothing, and so give me everything. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious.

The Scourge by Roberto Calas