At his back rode the ominous presence of the black-robed inquisitor, and the stolid sense of the duke himself. Citizens dodged ahead of them or emerged from their barricaded homes to blink up at him. While many would have seen the former kings in this fashion—at a distance, on horseback—many had known Elisha for decades, personally. He rode to his new place supported by members of all three estates of life: those who worked, those who fought, and even those who prayed. What would his enemies think? What if some of these, the archbishop even, were his enemies? But why would a mancer, and one in such a position, proclaim Elisha king? Of course he had been wrong about the archbishop—perhaps only desperate to deny the crown he was offered, the crown that belonged to Thomas and his heirs. Save that all of Thomas’s heirs were dead.
They came up to the barbican, the first defense of the Tower, and the yeomen stood aside, gaping. From below, in the shadowed well at the base of the gate, came a chorus of roars. Elisha’s flinch made his horse snort and dance.
“The royal menagerie, Your Majesty,” said the archbishop serenely. “The emblems of your kingdom welcome you home.”
Rather, Elisha thought, the lions smelled blood. He shivered.
Turning down the path and over the drawbridge, they passed beneath the portcullises of the Tower and into the outer defense where Elisha slid down, shaky, and allowed himself to be escorted to the king’s chambers, a range of rooms above the thick wall, painted with diamonds of red and blue, lit by huge silver crowns hung from the ceiling upon chains. Thomas’s rooms. Thomas’s bed. Elisha brushed his fingertips over the blankets.
“Servants shall bring up a bath for you, Your Majesty,” someone was saying, “and they are preparing a feast as best they can. The stores are somewhat less since we have been besieged.” An old man stood before him, tonsured head bowed, hands clasped. “John de Ufford, Your Majesty. Your Lord Chancellor, until you shall see fit to replace me.”
Elisha put out his hand, and, after a moment, the old man took it, giving a little bow. In the warm grip, surprisingly firm, Elisha felt his steadfastness, his intelligence, his curiosity. Satisfied, Elisha released him. “I’m sure you’ll serve me well, as you have my predecessor.” His throat felt dry, his words stale. The king’s presence haunted the place, as much as his first wife’s death lingered in the lodge they used to share.
“Lord Richard DeVere, the Lord Chamberlain has, alas, been prematurely executed for his failure to safeguard your predecessor. If it please Your Majesty, I shall assume his duties over the household until it can be determined whether his heir is fit to rise to the position.”
Executed, because his king had vanished. Elisha felt hollow.
“We’ll give you a moment, then, Your Majesty.” Ufford bowed himself out of Elisha’s presence and shut the door, though whispering could be heard outside for a few minutes, followed by the patter of feet, all the men he now commanded hurrying about their business.
Once they were gone Elisha stalked the rooms, servants springing out of his way, darting glances as if they wondered at the sudden distance between themselves and him. Like the lodge, the bedchamber, solar, and small chapel contained little of a personal nature. A few books and writing things, crucifixes of ivory, Christ staring down at Elisha, no doubt surprised to find a barber claimed as one of his successors. Elisha rubbed at his palm, wiping away the blood that remained from the day’s work, and felt a sudden kinship for God the Son, a weary, tortured man, proclaimed a king. Elisha’s own mocking would come later, he had no doubt. In the meantime, he had to uphold the trust too many placed in him, and acquit Thomas’s job as best he could. He slipped out the talisman, Thomas’s hair, and pressed it between both hands as he returned to the chapel. If any witnessed this, let them believe that he prayed. Let him believe such a prayer might be answered. Closing his eyes, Elisha gave his being to the search.
Centering himself, drawing back the tendrils of his awareness, Elisha focused them to a single purpose, that of finding Thomas. First, he must conceive some notion of where to look; he would exhaust himself in searching every house and tree, even assuming his power could reach so far. He envisioned one prison after another, from the nearby gloom of Newgate, to the dank cell in the bowels of this very tower, where he had awaited his own execution. Even across whatever distance lay between them, he had contact through that lock of hair. A magus less sensitive could not put it to such use; so, for perhaps the first time, Elisha’s accursed sensitivity served him as he probed all the places a man might be held, and all the while he whispered Thomas’s name.
The shadow of his awareness flitted over landscapes of darkness and stone, in and out of every dungeon he could name and more which he only imagined. Briefly here and there, he touched the presence of other prisoners, even a few of the magi, though they did not rise to his touch, and he had no way to maintain the contact.
Elisha expanded his search to barns and stables, inns and outhouses, and finally shed all boundaries but the presence of Thomas himself. His senses stretched thin, a tenuous web spread all around him, as if he could attune himself to the world. All that reached him were echoes of himself, as if his cry bounced off distant mountains to carry back his growing fear.
In the learning of the magi, the Law of Contagion stated that two things once a whole, would always maintain a close kinship. Even if, Heaven forbid, Thomas were dead, that lock of hair should still search out his corpse for the connection it shared. Instead, Elisha found nothing.
The web of his awareness shriveled, and his presence retreated back to the physical, his miserable body hunched on the floor in a painted chamber.
A knock echoed, followed shortly by the door swinging open. The shuffling servants stopped short at the sight of him, and Elisha pushed himself up, wiping despair from his features, as they continued past, the first pair lugging a wooden tub, others following with buckets of steaming water to fill it. Still others set themselves to work at the huge fireplace, building up the coals, and Ufford reappeared at the end of the gathering, bowing, furrowing his white brows. “Do forgive me, Your Majesty, we ought to have seen to the bath right away.” He flipped open a ledger he carried under one arm. “Is there anything you require? Any special tasks, meals, persons? Have you brought a confessor of your own, or body servants?”
Elisha perched at the edge of the bed as activity swirled about him. Anything he required? He could barely conceive of what that might mean to a king. He required the true king’s return. In order to do that, he needed those around him he could trust. “Personal guard,” he murmured. “The men who accompanied me into the city.”
Ufford raised an eyebrow. “A mercenary troop?”
“Offer them permanent employment.”
“Very well, Your Majesty.” The quill scraped across the page, and Ufford looked up again. “Confessor?”
“Father Michael of Dunbury.”
“A village priest.”
“A devout man,” Elisha countered, and Ufford nodded mildly, making another note. “New king is a fool,” Elisha imagined him writing. “Duke and archbishop must be God-struck to take a barber for a king.”
The quill poised, but the servants had succeeded in filling the bath and stood aside.
“My word, man, you do look a fright!” The Earl of Blackmere swept in, followed by a few servants of his own.
“By the by, Your Majesty,” said Ufford, still in that mild tone, “there are some people who wish to see you.”
Blackmere’s servants set down a pair of chests and opened them to reveal piles of clothing in silk and velvet. “We are much the same size, you and I, and these might do until you get your own.” The earl started plucking things from the chests, arranging them on the counterpane. “Take off those things.”
Elisha shrugged out of his shirt, staring at the blood, then tossed it onto the fire. “Some, my lord? Who else?”
Then she stood at the
door, a dark veil draping her hair and down her shoulders, clad in a gown of green like the one in which he had first seen her. “It’s true then, you are alive.” Brigit pressed her hands to her lips, quivering with the effort of containing herself. “And more than alive!” She shook herself, nearly smiling, nearly weeping, and Elisha remembered lying in his grave, touched by the distant fall of her tears.
“I told you you were not ready for this,” murmured an older man who stepped up to take Brigit’s arm. “Come with me, my darling. Forgive us, Your Majesty.” He managed something like a bow, and Brigit was drawn away, looking flushed and frail.
Shaking off his surprise, Elisha realized he should have known she would be here, as soon as she learned what was happening. Likely, she was staying in town since Alaric’s funeral, looking for ways to ingratiate herself with the new monarch, or to establish some standing before she gave birth to the child she carried. Again, he thought of the grave. She had been the next to last person to see Morag alive, and Elisha could not simply dismiss her from his life. In two paces, he reached the door. “Come to the feast!” he called after them, and they paused, Brigit glanced back with a dazzling smile, as her companion glowered, pulling her closer with a protective arm. He urged her on before him down the stairs, but his bright eyes lingered on Elisha’s, his mouth grim. And there was something familiar in the set of his brow. Her father, the magus Rowena’s husband.
“We’ve lit the fire for you, Majesty,” said Ufford, and Elisha whirled, imagining the stake and the angel. Ufford drew back, fingers tightening around the book he carried.
“I need you all to go. Everyone. Please.”
With a snap of his fingers, Ufford summoned the attention of the servants, who glanced up uncertainly then gathered their buckets, resettled the drapes, replaced the poker, and filed out past Elisha with a series of little bobs and courtesies. “We shall be on the tower steps, Your Majesty.”
The earl gestured toward the clothes strewn all over the bed. “Your Majesty, I have—”
“Please, my lord,” Elisha said, leaning back against the nearest wall.
The earl bowed his head and ushered his own servants, shutting the door behind them. Elisha gazed at the bed with longing, covered now with expensive clothes. The bed was large enough to suit four patients at hospital. The bathtub steamed quietly near the fire, so Elisha shed the rest of his clothes and stepped in, his skin stinging at first with the heat.
He scrubbed the soot from his face and the ashes from his hair, letting Martin’s blood slough away. Oh, if Martin could see him now. And Brigit, returned to seek the throne through him, as of course she would. But how well did she know the mancers? And had the mancers set him here?
Elisha shut his eyes, pushing back the layers of fear and confusion. He was ready for none of this, yet somehow he must be. Beneath all else, he was weary to the bone, weary from casting, weary of dying. He rubbed his hands over his face, finding that some of the blood was his own, a thin cut caused by some broken glass in Martin’s house. Now he sat in Thomas’s house, at the heart of a nation about to burn. He once used his own blood to conceal Thomas’s presence, and he thought of the echoes of himself, as if his searching cry echoed from distant, unseen heights. Could Thomas be concealed from him again, by the same means? His heart quickened with the thought, even as his body relaxed into the warmth of the bath. He needed to make another attempt, but later, when he had regained his strength. With the last of his focus, he healed the slender cut.
Unfurling his senses to the boundaries of the rooms, Elisha let himself sleep.
Chapter 8
All too soon, the clank of changing guards and the rustle of servants outside woke him. Still, the little rest was better than none. Elisha scrubbed himself dry with a cloth and tried to work out the layers of clothing the earl had laid out for him. Hose and undergarments, a fine undertunic and a tunic even finer for the top, laces at his arms and chest, and soft slippers of red. He slid the lock of Thomas’s hair into a tight sleeve, taking one lace in his teeth to see if he couldn’t get it right. Then a knock, and the parade of servants returned, two of them scowling at him. He lowered his arm and held it out for their expert tugging and tying. “Thank you.”
“It’s what we’re here for, Your Majesty. We know our place,” muttered one of them, twisting a final loop into the bow, then stepping back.
Ufford arrived behind them. “I trust Your Majesty has had a good bath.” He eyed Elisha up and down and gave a faint nod of approval. Then he brought out a small wooden box and opened it to the body servants. They settled a heavy gold chain about Elisha’s shoulders. Heavy in more ways than one: Alaric had been wearing it when Elisha killed him. Elisha swallowed, the enameled golden cross that was its pendant rested over his brand, a weight upon his heart.
They emerged from chambers into a little party of guards, including Madoc and his men clad in Tower livery, red with golden lions. It was not Elisha’s livery, nor had he arms to display in such a fashion. Every step he sank deeper in deception. But he had not prevented this from happening, and someone had to keep the kingdom together long enough for Thomas’s return—and defeat the mancers already in their midst. Elisha imagined Thomas in those moments he seemed most regal, squared his shoulders, and breathed in majesty.
Madoc scratched his beard speculatively and gave a nod before he stiffened to proper attention.
“The seating order, Your Majesty.” Ufford kept to Elisha’s elbow as they crossed the yard. “The Duke of Dunbury at your right hand, with his lady wife. The earls of Gloucester and Blackmere beyond. To the left, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Father Osbert of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, then the Earl of Surrey.”
Elisha nodded. The evening grew damp, and ravens called from their crenellated perches as the party passed into the inner tower and upstairs to the hall; not large, but packed with tables, benches, gowns of every color, lords of every stature, to a man taller than Elisha himself.
“Make way!” called a yeoman, and the assembled nobles rose, bowing as Elisha passed by. A few stood straight as stone and stared at him. Mortimer—who had been close with the dead Alaric, and perhaps working against him—Elisha recognized among these. A very nest of vipers indeed. His every fiber urged him to bow, to lower his gaze from these nobles or risk a beating, but he lifted his chin and stared back. From this moment forth, for good or ill, he was the king the archbishop had claimed. Mortimer dodged the gaze as Elisha swept past to the seat reserved for him. Not quite a throne, thank God. Once he sat, the others, too, resumed their places. A bell rang out, and boys and maids appeared, carrying vast platters of meat, jugs of wine, loaves baked of the finest white flour wrapped in matching linen.
One of the boys filled Elisha’s plate; a mound of food rich with spices, beyond anything even the duke’s table had offered. And this, when the chancellor had apologized for the sorry state of their stores.
“A blessing upon the meal.” The archbishop rose, spreading his hands to encompass the hall. “We thank you, Lord, for revealing to us this day even a sliver of your great and most mysterious intention. We shall endeavor to serve your chosen monarch and to live as your Son would have us live. We honor the flesh and the blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, as we break bread together. Amen.”
“Amen,” Elisha murmured, along with the rest. Every eye, framed by the plucked brows, broad headdresses or velvet caps that marked their nobility, watched him.
He swallowed, trying to wet his throat. “At your pleasure, my lords and ladies,” he said, skewering a piece of beef on the tip of his knife and biting into it. Gravy ran down his fingers, and he licked it from his lips. Platters and knives clattered around him as he finished his morsel and wiped his hands on a cloth. He followed with a swallow of wine that warmed his tongue.
“Mind your palate, Elisha, there are two more courses after this,” Randall murmured at his elbow.
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Two more? “The chancellor said the feast was poor because of the siege.”
“For an occasion like this? It should be four.”
Elisha watched the duke break off a chunk of bread and use it to sop up the gravy. “Don’t stare, Your Majesty. It makes them doubt.”
Fighting a flush of embarrassment, Elisha turned back to his food, eating slowly, letting the boy change out his fingerbowl and cloth.
At his other side, the archbishop passed the time in discussing a new style of vestments his inferior churchman was considering. Arrayed before him, the nobles ate and talked, snippets of conversation rising up to him. By a judicious use of his awareness, Elisha focused here and there around the room
“—strange times, though. Have you heard about that inn at Chelmsford? Raining every day for a month! Landlord’s afraid to step out.” The lord chuckled, but the man to his right complained, “Here we are, hours away, and we’ve got drought! Maybe it is the end times coming, even the skies gone mad.”
A man in dark riding clothes entered from the stair and approached, bowing, bringing a page to lead him to the duke’s side.
“With permission?” Randall asked, and Elisha nodded, allowing his patron to slide out and have a whispered conversation with the fellow at the corner of the room. Elisha took the opportunity to lean across to Duchess Allyson, touching her hand.
Aloud, he said, “I do thank you, Your Grace, for your hospitality and your husband’s.” But to her skin, in the witches’ way, he told her, “For a moment, when he proclaimed me, I thought the archbishop could be a mancer.”
She nearly startled away from him, but managed to form a gracious smile, despite her shadowed eyes. “You are most welcome, Your Majesty,” she replied out loud, though her voice trembled. “He’s been prelate for more than a decade, and was Lord Chancellor before that, without a hint of scandal.”
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