Nun-Napped!

Suddenly, Agnes felt herself get harshly carried off over the grass, away from the fallen bucket and the faint glint of the window candle. Only woodland stretched before her eyes now. Only trees and shadows, as far as the eye could see.

Whoever had seized her dragged her until they reached the first clearing. The one by the brook. Her muffled screams could reach no one there.

Yet, she screamed anyway.

”Now, now, little sister. You’ve been keeping a big secret,” Edgar’s voice came from somewhere deep in all that thick leather.

Agnes twisted and pleaded unintelligibly.

“I don’t intend to do you harm,” he said then. “But my patience is at an end… We gave you every opportunity. For weeks now. It’s all my fault, really. I let Cedric’s passivity lead us. I let Lorenzo’s skepticism placate my despair. I trusted… But I cannot keep losing, little sister. I cannot keep dying with every life that is snuffed out before my eyes.”

Agnes stopped struggling.

”Please,” he said then, face lowered. “You will tell me the missing ingredient. Straightaway.”

Agnes’s panicked eyes then blinked, and eventually settled into calm, as Edgar’s profile dropped another fraction in the darkness.

His hand still covered her mouth, but his grip around her loosened slightly.

Agnes looked up at him, and her exhale sent a little sweet breath over his hand.

She then mumbled a complex phrase.

”Huh?”

She mumbled it again.

Edgar released her mouth.

”Thwup!” Agnes spat out. “Blech. Your glove tastes terrible.”

”Why would you bite someone wearing a glove?” Edgar asked her.

”I know your vocation is difficult,” she said. “More than difficult. It’s harrowing. And you risk everything for it. Every day.”

“I don’t need your pity, girl. I know what you all think of me.”

“What I think of you, drunk Plague Doctor Edgar,” said Agnes “ is that I am… in awe of you.”

Edgar said nothing at first.

”Then…help us.”

Agnes sighed.

“So that’s it,” she said. “You want to know the missing ingredient of the blue vial? That’s all you require?”

Edgar nodded and spoke softly.

”It is all I ask.”

Agnes looked at him and sighed again.

“Then, I will tell you,” she said. “Even though it’s a secret. No, not secret, sacred.”

“I will guard it with my life,” Edgar vowed, a hand over his own heart.

”Hm. You won’t tell a soul.”

“Not one.”

“Swear it!”

”On my life.”

“And you’ll let me go?”

“I’ll take you back to the sisters myself.”

Agnes paused to consider it.

“Very well. Come close.”

Edgar did.

”No, closer.”

He obeyed.

She then moved to whisper softly into his ear.

“The sacred ingredient of the miraculous blue vial is…”

Edgar paid close attention as she moved even closer to the ear portion of his mask.

”MY FARTS!” Agnes shouted straight into his ear.

”Why you little…!”

But then Agnes began to scream and thrash between his hands.

“Help! HELP! This brute has captured a woman of the cloth! HEEELP! AAAAAAAAaaaaaaah…!”

Edgar continued to fight to regain control of the wild kicking, biting, growling creature between his arms, when a deep, authoritative voice roared.

”You will release her.”

The command came from thirty paces north. Mail dull under a dark cloak. A sword already drawn.

The Knight Templar.

Edgar turned, with a wiggling Agnes still pinned to his chest, her teeth still gnawing on his gloved wrist.

The two masks then regarded one another. One of leather and glass. The other, made of solid metal. One wielding a sword. The other, a tiny, wiggling nun.

“I…have no quarrel with you, Templar,” Edgar said. “This is none of your concern.”

”Quarrel?” the knight asked. “I see you are confident. If not suicidal.”

”Edgar! What are you doing?!” Cedric shouted as he and Lorenzo arrived shortly.

“Let her go, Edgar,” Lorenzo commanded hoarsely.

“Stay back! Both of you!” Edgar shouted, resuming a tight grip on Agnes.

“You know this man?” Ignatius asked the doctors. “Persuade him, or I vow you will lose a friend tonight.”

”Now, let’s all keep calm…” Cedric moved between both sides with both hands outstretched. “This can be resolved without blood being drawn.”

”Any more than what has been and continued to be spilled, while she keeps her cure to herself?” Edgar reproached.

The knight looked up. Lorenzo noticed.

“A cure?” Ignatius asked.

”You must be blind drunk because you’re not making any sense, Edgar,” Lorenzo said, trying to downplay the assertion. “What can a child such as her know of medicine?”

”Stop pretending this is a child!” Edgar said, not cooperating. “The nunnery, the tavern, that vial…no, there’s more to this girl. She’s keeping it from us, don’t you see? And, yes, I am drunk.”

Meanwhile, Agnes continued to mumble unintelligibly under Edgar’s thick glove.

“Unhand the girl,” Ignatius took one step forward.

”Disgraced knights make no demands here,” Edgar said then.

“You’re right,“ Ignatius said. “I am done asking.”

The knight’s charge did not wai, and the ensuing melee became a tangle of black leather hoods, insults, dull mail, and thrashing limbs, with Agnes caught in the middle. Cedric tried to intercept blows between sword and staff, while Lorenzo navigated the whirlwind, trying to pry Agnes from Edgar’s grip.

Masks struck masks, shoulders struck backs. Boots slipped on wet earth. Someone’s fist found an abdomen. One staff cracked.

“Stop it! You goons are crushing me!” Agnes shouted from beneath it all. “And you all smell awful!”

But, soon, compressed by the violence and all those heavy bodies, little Agnes's vision narrowed to a tunnel.

”Mother…I can’t… breathe…”

The world shrank to a single pinpoint, then the small child crumpled to the forest floor.

Somewhere, the black stag stopped grazing and looked up.

And ran off.

Amidst the manly grunts of violence and curses, there rang out a horrific scream.