Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Chapter 4

  Elisha hesitated a moment longer, his head bowed over his friend, then he shifted his arm under Martin’s knees and slowly lifted him as he rose to his feet. “Ysabeau,” he called, and the lady ran to them, her eyes bright.

  Elisha wet his lips and said, “Mistress, he wants to go home.”

  Her hands flew to her face, holding in the panic. Her shoulders trembled, and her gaze flicked to the burning houses, tracing the frame of her home and business. Quickly, she nodded and flung herself away.

  “Thank you,” Martin whispered through the contact that flamed between them. He need not have spoken, even that way, for Elisha sensed the gratitude that flowed from him, a golden brilliance that warmed his hands and heart and throbbed in the brand upon his chest. Shaky, he took the first step.

  The fire devoured Martin’s house from the top down, catching hold of it during its spread, so that the street level had not yet been engulfed. As he ducked inside, the upper floors groaned, and flames spread through a gap from the shop next door.

  “I had so much to tell you,” he said aloud, his voice ringing in the hollow place against the growing roar of fire.

  “No time. Tell me the happy things.”

  Elisha laid him on the long countertop, the veneer already buckling with the heat. “There are none.”

  “You live; the king has failed.”

  “No—this was his plan, too. Thomas hated what he had to do.” Elisha pulled off his tunic and balled it into a pillow for Martin’s broken skull. The slender chest shivered with irregular breaths. Gently he settled his friend’s arms, his hand lingering on the scraped fingers, bereft of their rings. “Thomas. . . the king is my dear friend.”

  “Oh, my beloved barber,” Martin sighed. “You’re in love with the king.”

  “No!” Elisha protested, but he imagined the king’s face in profile, watching him from those eyes, and said again, very softly, “No.”

  At that, Martin laughed. The feeble sound issued in a series of fragile breaths, but it bubbled up through the contact and spilled over, filling Elisha’s spirit with a wave of joy. It wounded him more deeply than the pain: none would ever again hear Martin’s laughter. The touch grew faint, sapping Martin’s waning strength and Elisha winced, torn between the sound of joy and the knowledge of death.

  “Go,” sang Martin’s blood. “Go, Elisha, and find your king.”

  “I’ll miss you terribly.” Elisha’s trembling fingers stroked the blood from Martin’s lips.

  “Good,” Martin chuckled, and his chest rose with a sudden, deeper breath, a drawing in of the power all around him, the power that gathered on the moment of death. In the crackling flames, Elisha heard the chanting of eternity, seeking another victim, then, too, he heard the echo of Martin’s laughter and knew he had to go.

  Leaning close, Elisha kissed him.

  The brief pressure sparked a storm inside. In their shared vision, Martin lay whole again, his face restored to that seductive smile, the dark curls of his hair gleaming by firelight, his whole being alight with his laughter. Just for a moment, Elisha imagined he could save him, if only he might capture that vision and set it free again into the flesh. But all flesh must die.

  Martin’s power leapt in the air, stirred by the kiss he had longed for. “Go, go, go!”

  Fire snapped at Elisha’s legs, and he leapt away. Martin needed contact with the fire to work his casting—a contact Elisha could not bear to witness. The blood tingled on his palms and into his chest as Martin’s flesh met the flames. Ducking the door, Elisha ran into the street, screaming as fire consumed his friend, crying out to the Lord and whoever might hear. He let loose a tiny stream of death, cooling his skin until he shivered.

  A black tide welled up and struck him down, a frigid blast that tumbled him into the dirt. It swept through him, howling, knocking away his reason and compassion. In the heart of the darkness, a star gleamed. It flared into fullness, the brightness of it searing at Elisha’s mind as it smote back the night.

  Then the contact splintered and vanished. The blood on his hands felt neither hot nor cold; all trace of Martin’s presence was gone. Elisha huddled on his knees in a silence as vast and full as the ocean. His lungs failed him, but someone slammed a hand against his back, and he gasped a breath.

  “Don’t ye be hiring me for a bodyguard next time ye plan to go mad!” Madoc grumbled into Elisha’s ear as he bent beside him.

  “What happened to the fire?” called another voice.

  “Shut up!” shouted Madoc. “Let the man breathe!”

  “It was a miracle,” someone answered. “On yer knees, ye sinners all!”

  A sound of warning rumbled at the back of Madoc’s throat, and Elisha raised his head. Ysabeau and Helena, with the help of Madoc’s men, had managed to push back the crowd, and they all stood or knelt a little ways off, still staring at the buildings at Elisha’s back. The two women clung to each other, Ysabeau weeping against Helena’s shoulder, the baby wriggling between them until a pink hand waved free and caught hold of Ysabeau’s bedraggled hair. Tools, weapons, and bundles of stolen goods littered the space between, like a battlefield without the bodies. Those, he knew, lay at his back.

  “What did you see?” Elisha asked.

  “A woof, a pop, and the fire’s out,” Madoc answered gruffly. “Your work?”

  Elisha’s head shook.

  “Not a miracle, at least?”

  “If I could work miracles, Martin Draper would live.”

  Cocking his head to one side, Madoc rolled his eyes toward the heavens. “Sometimes, God’s best men have to die in order to do His work.”

  That kindled a fire altogether new in Elisha’s breast, and he straightened, wiping his hands on his ruined undershirt. “No,” he said, “they do not. Not like this.” He staggered to his feet, pushing away the offered hand. He faced the crowd, his fists balled at his sides. “Hear me now!” The strident voice startled even him, and the murmuring crowd fell silent.

  Elisha thrust his finger west. “I am walking back to Ludgate. When I get there, I’m throwing open that gate and the Duke of Dunbury is taking this city, do you hear me? Anyone who had a part in this—anyone, whether you bludgeoned a man to death or simply stole from him—every one of you had better get out right now, or, so help me God, I will find you. And I know how.” He searched the crowd and saw the faces pale. The murderers’ tainted hands traced patches of their skin, made dark by the slightest touch of death through Martin’s blood.

  “As for the rest of you,”—Elisha took a deep breath that stung from his lips all the way to his gut—“why did not you pick up a bucket? Why did you not raise a hand to save a man’s life? Why, for God’s sake—” He broke off, shaking his head. With a gesture as if he could throw them all aside, he said, “I lived for years among you. I always believed we were better than this.” He turned his back to them.

  Thames Street stood before him, the shops broken and empty, the houses black and gutted by fire. A dozen or so corpses lay on the ground, the bodies of private guards, a few city soldiers, a few residents so envied that they were killed for it. Little clusters of family members knelt around the dead, dazed or weeping. At the sight of them, Elisha remembered himself and spread his awareness. He moved like a ghost to the one fallen man yet living, a young guard with an even younger woman cradling his head, her hand pressed against his chest to stop the blood.

  She looked up at his approach. “A surgeon, please, sir!”

  He wanted to be comforting, the way he used to be, but he felt a weary bitterness as he dropped to his knees. “Let me examine him,” he told her.

  The girl hesitated, and Elisha reached out, slipping her hand aside and replacing it with his own. Stab-wounds pierced the young man’s chest and stomach, slicing the flesh, but stopping short of most vital organs. Elisha shut his eyes and hoped his wear
iness did not extend too deep. He found the hovering resonance of his talisman of Thomas’s hair and called it forth, using his own body as the guide to teach the young man how to heal. Working from the inside out, he sealed the flesh, joining vessel with vessel, nerve with nerve, and finally smoothed back the skin, leaving it faintly scarred, trembling beneath his touch, against the torn and bloody tunic.

  The guard’s eyes blinked open and he jerked upright, knocking Elisha back on his heels. Slapping at his side where a weapon should hang, he shouted, “Get off me! Get the brigade! The city’s aflame!”

  “Shane,” the girl sobbed. “Praise the Lord, Shane, you’re alive!”

  At those words, he froze, wary eyes turning toward her, to the street, back to Elisha. “Are you the surgeon?”

  “The barber,” Elisha corrected.

  Frowning, the guard searched out his wounds, finding the slash marks easily enough with his probing fingers, but finding no injuries beyond, and his eyes drew slowly back to Elisha’s face. “Thank you,” he whispered.

  With a one-shouldered shrug, Elisha rose and walked away. The healing left him shaky, as always, as if he needed another reason to be off-balance. If he kept to his plan, he could exit the city and recover alone with Martin’s memory. But the crowd still hovered, and he knew that was not to be.

  “Here, Barber!” Madoc cried out, waving his arm.

  Elisha managed to lift his head. “Aye?”

  “This one’s asking for you.” He pointed down to a bulky man seated on the ground, his features warped by graying flesh and too-gaunt cheeks. His sunken eyes lit upon Elisha and he blubbered something, with a frantic gesture of his unresponsive hands.

  Elisha recognized the man who’d held the rope, and his stomach clenched, repulsed as much by what the man had done as by how he, Elisha, had punished him for it. He whispered thanks to Martin for stopping him from something much more terrible, and set out toward his victim.

  Squatting before the newly-ugly citizen, Elisha murmured, “I’m sorry. No matter what you’ve done, I had no right.”

  Flailing his hand toward the sky, the man said, “G-g-god thruck me dow.”

  “No,” said Elisha. “God wasn’t here today.”

  The crumbled hand thrashed toward him then, fastening to his arm and jerking at it so that Elisha’s hand flapped. “H-h,” the man started, swallowed, and tried again. “Hands of God.”

  Pulling away, Elisha gritted his teeth. “You’re wrong.”

  “N-n-no!” The twisted face screwed itself up, and his other hand came up with a folded bit of parchment. Then, the lips curled into a recognizable grin. “Proof!” he announced clearly. “F-f-from t’ sky!” He waved the parchment in the direction of God, who had apparently delivered it into his lap.

  Elisha snatched the page from the waving hand and held it before his tired eyes. He made out his name, scrawled on the front.

  Coming up quietly, her arm still draped around Martin’s wife, Helena asked softly, “Would you want me to read it for you?”

  “No need,” he said, then sighed. “I don’t mean to be sharp with you.”

  “You had a terrible day,” she said, touching his arm. “We all have.”

  Elisha nodded, and slipped his finger along the opening, breaking the seal. He read the message a few times, struggling to make sense of it, despite its brevity. “Elisha Mancer,” it read, “Welcome home.”

  Four words that chilled him, hand and heart, so that the parchment trembled, and Helena put her hand to his, steadying him with a touch and a confused glance at the page. “Mancer?” she said. “What does that mean?”

  Elisha started to answer, then broke off, his throat parched in an instant when he turned over the page. There, he stared at the broken seal, a round of wax impressed by the king’s signet—the ring that must have been taken from Thomas’s own hand.

  Chapter 5

  Elisha traced the seal first with his eyes, then with one finger, the rough wax of the pattern catching on his calloused skin. He thought of Martin’s final claim, that Elisha was in love with the king, and his chest felt unbearably tight.

  “What is it, Elisha?” Helena asked. “I don’t understand.”

  His head jerked up. “Who gave you this?”

  The injured man gave a few twitches of his head. “G-g-g—”

  “Horseshit! More like to be the Devil.” He started to crumple the thing in his hand, then froze and kept it clenched, focusing his senses on the seal, trying to gain some knowledge of who had made it, and how they had come by Thomas’s ring. It showed him nothing but the same fearsome void Elisha felt when he had touched Morag, the mancer’s presence negated by the skin he wore, his very life denied by his intimacy with death. “Damn it!”

  “Elisha, please,” Helena scolded, her hand reaching to cover the infant’s ear.

  Ysabeau, tucked against Helena’s side, whispered, “It’s the king’s seal, is it?”

  Pierced through his numbness, Elisha darted a glance toward Martin’s widow. Light-brown hair straggled about her shoulders, framing a face not as lovely as Helena’s, but open. Her eyes, though red from smoke and tears, watched him keenly.

  “I have to go to the duke,” Elisha told them. “You should rest. Both of you.”

  Helena turned to her companion. “Let me bring you to church, mistress, or to my house, if you’d rather. It’s full of children, but all are welcome.”

  Ysabeau’s lips compressed, and she shook her head sharply. “My house was empty; Martin sent the boys to his sister’s estate in the country a few weeks ago. As if he expected something.” Again, she eyed Elisha. “I will be praying about this, you can be sure. First, I’d like to be there when the duke’s men ride through and when the murderers go out.” She pulled together the torn front of her gown and crossed her arms tightly.

  “Come then, if you will, mistress, but we move quickly,” Elisha said, already setting out.

  “Aye,” grumbled Madoc, “so quickly we sometimes outstrip our own bodyguard.”

  Elisha took long strides, and Martin’s wife, slightly taller than Elisha, and a good deal taller than her husband, easily kept pace at his side. He needed no magic to part the crowd this time, they fell away from him, those who had been marked by blood hiding their faces. The silence behind him dissolved, filling with the babble of a thousand witnesses who did not know what they had seen.

  “You were his barber?” Ysabeau asked after another turning.

  “Aye,” he answered. “Five years or more.”

  She snorted with amusement. “I wondered why he had his hair tended so often. I need wonder no longer.”

  “It wasn’t like that, mistress.”

  “It was for him.” She smiled a little. “We met at the assizes while he was studying mercantile law, and I attended the lectures disguised as a man, since women are not allowed to enroll.” Her smile broke into the laughter of remembrance. “He claimed he loved me right away, and he was dreadfully disappointed I turned out to be a woman. Then we both realized what a good match we might be. I think he still wishes—” The laughter faded as she took a sharp breath. “I mean, wished . . .” Her voice fell away.

  Tucking his cold hands under his arms, Elisha said, “I am sorry for your loss.” After they walked a few steps, he added, “And for mine.”

  “Do not say too much,” she began softly, “But say, if you can, that your carrying him home,” she took a breath, “that his being there somehow put out the fires?”

  Quietly he answered, “It did.”

  “Was it a miracle, then? That’s what some o’ them would have us think.” Madoc gave a bob of his head back over his shoulder.

  “It was what was needed to save this city,” Elisha said. “More than that doesn’t matter.”

  “You’ve earned enough veneration today to elevate you forever in the eyes of the
se people,” Ysabeau observed, and Madoc grunted agreement.

  Clutching the letter, Elisha tried to ignore the babble of the crowd that tracked their steps. “I punished them all, and I was tempted to do worse. That’s more the sinner than the saint.”

  “I think it was your restraint that bought their adoration,” said Ysabeau.

  “I don’t have time for adoration.” He put on a burst of speed as they neared the gate and shouted up to the guards, “Open! For God’s sake, open the gate!”

  “We don’t answer to you, even if you have returned from the grave!” one man called back.

  “Open the gate before I use your head for a battering ram!” Elisha replied.

  “Do it!” cried a voice behind him.

  “Aye, bring them in!”

  “Listen to the barber!”

  Then, with a maelstrom of shouting, the crowd broke around them, still avoiding Elisha himself, and a hundred hands were laid upon the bars and latches, a hundred more upon the chains that would draw open the gates. Madoc pushed by, shouting for attention, then counting off: “One! Two! Three! Heave!”

  The gates groaned open to a subdued cheer. Along the road some distance, the duke’s soldiers started up, running back to their camp with the news. The crowd lingered just inside the open space, perhaps unwilling to hand over the city they had taken, at least, not so easily.

  “Where are the killers?” Ysabeau faced the crowd.

  “Aye, where?” Others took up the cry and the search, catching hold of their neighbors to thrust them forward. Two dozen souls huddled before the angry crowd, and Ysabeau stalked forward. Three or four others came with her, widows and sons.

  “Get out!” She pointed toward the road. “Get out, or God shall scourge the earth of you.”

  A party of mounted men came down the road in procession, the duke among them, with a man in the gold and miter of the archbishop at his side. The wretches forced to flee the city parted to either side and hurried off.

  A few more cowering figures were dragged from the crowd, mostly men, a few women, and youths. One of these latter struggled free, sprinting toward Elisha. Two sturdy men got hold of him, but he broke away. “I would have saved him! Please, Barber!” He held out a hand stained dark as if still dripping with blood. Snarling, the larger man tripped him, but Elisha shoved the note into his belt and stepped up.