Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  “They’ve been working a long time in secret.” He searched her face and said what he needed her, and all of them, to hear: “I hope you know, Your Grace, that I harbored no plans to take the place of the king, your son by marriage. If God has placed me on this path, I hope He will direct it for the best.” The words felt strange. Still, the reflex arose from years of training: to pray, to cross himself, to call out to God in a moment of need. He had been a boy the last time he placed his trust in God, before he had seen an angel die.

  “And take this cup from you, Your Majesty?” boomed the archbishop.

  Breaking contact with Allyson, Elisha faced the man. “I was not born, nor raised to this, but I will do the best that I’m able.”

  “Tell us, Your Majesty, if you would, when did the stigmata first grace your hands?” The prelate drew back, gesturing with his own hands, a flash of jewels and gold-woven cuffs. He never seemed to spill the gravy. Concern wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and wonder turned a smile at his lips—his every gesture and expression limned with longing.

  A dedicated and venerable churchman, or a secret enemy? Elisha took a long draught from his goblet and set it down gently, his fingers lingering on the cool, chased silver of the base. The scar stood out pale against the sun-darkened skin of his hand—darker, he suddenly saw, than that of any noble present, who prided themselves on their pale flesh. Elisha leaned back and faced the archbishop, laying his hands upon the table, spreading his awareness in the prelate’s direction. “I struggled with a devil in the darkness. He would have taken my soul, Your Grace. The devil pierced my hands—” He held them up, the room quieting outward from his table as the nobles became aware of what was happening. “I was sore beset that night, Your Grace, but slipped his blade. When next we met, it was the devil who died, atop my grave.”

  Breath seemed arrested in the room, though several crossed themselves. The archbishop still wore his little smile, still revealing nothing, his presence muted, but plain, a litany of Latin, a sense of grandeur, as if the man were full of his position.

  Father Osbert, the inquisitor, spoke at last, “An interesting tale, Your Majesty. One I should like to hear in more detail, at some time, if you should be willing.” He gave a bow of his head. A dark wing of hair, streaked with silver, slid forward. “His Holiness the Pope would be most intrigued.”

  “Charge your goblets, all!” Blackmere rose, holding aloft his goblet. “To his Majesty! May he vanquish every devil!” A few chuckles, a few cheers, the sloshing of wine in silver. Blackmere lifted the goblet to Elisha and cried, “Huzzah!”

  To God’s ears. Elisha smiled, accepting the blessing, and noticed Brigit’s keen interest, the tingling sense of her presence far out among the crowd, reaching back toward him.

  Chapter 9

  Three days later, Elisha stood straight, his arms out, as four servants hovered around him with borrowed garb while Ufford and Allyson looked on, murmuring to one another. This time, the Earl of Blackmere had fussed about in his belongings to find his absolute best, a raiment of brocades stiff with gold work and silks so fine they caught on Elisha’s rough fingers as he held them up.

  “Ah!” The earl rose again, a shirt of deepest blue held out before him. “Try this.”

  Dubiously, Elisha accepted it, once more holding a shirt in front of his chest, concealing his scars. Three days of searching the city and interrogating the leaders of the peasant revolt had revealed nothing of the proper king. The mayor, reinstated, drew up plans of the damaged areas as his men drew from the wreckage both the living and the dead. Thomas was not among them, and now Elisha stood poised to make good on the archbishop’s intentions: This afternoon, they would crown him king.

  “Yes, that one,” Allyson declared. “It does well with your eyes.”

  “Good.” He started to pull it on, only to have the servants pounce on him, slipping it over head and shoulders. Lacing ran from his elbows to his wrists, but the servants left it loose, loosening the neckline to be sure he would be properly anointed when the time came. With the scar over his heart thus revealed, despite his clothing, Elisha felt more vulnerable than when he had been bare-chested.

  “Where’s the coat? Yes, the Cathay brocade. Excellent. We shall make a king of you yet, Elisha Barber,” the earl crowed.

  “If we must,” Elisha murmured.

  The Cathay brocade hung loose around Elisha’s hips, and one servant immediately set-to with needle and thread, taking in the extra fabric while Elisha tried not to sway.

  Duke Randall appeared at the open door, smiling for the first time since Elisha’s return, though even this looked tremulous. “Good tidings.”

  A momentary light filled his wife’s weary face, but his smile fled; so it was not the news they awaited so eagerly. “A few more of the barons have come around. They’re not with you completely, but they are at least grateful for the peasants’ docility. Tomorrow, we’ll meet with a few of them and start mediating the peasant disputes.”

  “There’s work to be done re-building the damage inside the city, Your Majesty,” Ufford put in, “The mayor has been asking. Shall I make arrangements for builders?”

  “Aye,” said Elisha, “I’ll trust you.”

  The Lord Chancellor merely inclined his head, but he seemed more at ease, now, resuming his role even with such a peculiar king.

  “The bombards have arrived from Dunbury, a bit late for the siege, of course,” Randall said. “I had been thinking, given our French concerns, that we might install them at the Tower.”

  “I wish we could haul them to the shore and blast the French before they ever get here,” Elisha said. “A lot fewer dead that way.”

  “We’d have to know where they are landing, and when.” With a nod, Randall stepped aside to give his wife a swift kiss on the cheek, then he gestured toward Elisha. “This looks good.”

  “Sufficiently regal, do you think?” the earl inquired, as he moved to join them, his head cocked to one side.

  “Quite,” Randall remarked. “And it’s a good thing, for the procession has arrived.”

  Ufford raised his brows at this, then trotted back down the stairs of the earl’s in-town chambers with the duke close behind.

  A tremor crept up Elisha’s back. Feasting and fine clothes were one thing, but coronation itself was quite another. Any man might play at king in the privacy of a few chambers, even with the archbishop’s claims and the rumor of miracles spreading out from London faster than the fire that had scorched its heart. But to take the oath, in the Cathedral, before God and all the barons. . . Still, he could not persuade them to wait, not while the French lurked and there was no sign of the proper king.

  Allyson drew herself up and approached, taking Elisha’s hands in hers. Through the contact, she told him, “Thank you, Elisha. I know this is not your wish, but it lifts his burden. More than that, the project gives him a new focus, rather than dwelling on our loss. It nearly shattered him.”

  “Don’t give up yet, my lady. The lost may still be found.”

  “How, Elisha, if all of our searching cannot reveal them?” Her voice within him echoed with the sadness he saw in her shadowed eyes.

  “That I cannot say.” No matter how he wished it different. Last night, the two of them stayed together in the king’s chamber, sending their secret senses out, finding a hundred echoes of Elisha’s presence, and none of Thomas or Rosalynn.

  “I wake up nights imagining the things I will do to them if they hurt my daughter—and that is all that keeps me from the edge of madness.”

  “If they have hurt her,” Elisha replied, “I’ll help you.”

  They shared a brief, grim smile, then he broke the contact. “We shouldn’t keep the audience waiting too long.”

  “I still say we ought to have undertaken the procession from Westminster—it’ll be a bit of a ride from here to there,” Blackmere muttered as
they descended to the street. “And there are proprieties to be maintained.”

  Elisha took a deep breath. “I’m sure my reign, God let it be brief, will be full of impropriety. We might as well begin it that way.”

  The servants stepped up to drape Elisha’s shoulders with a full cape of velvet and ermine. Little tails of black-tipped fur waved in Elisha’s face as the duke opened the door. The man who would be king stifled a sneeze as a wayward tail tickled his nose.

  A cheer rose from the street, carried in waves to either side like the fierce wind of a bombard’s blast. Elisha braced himself.

  The earl and the duke strode outside, joining a gauntlet of other barons, most of them unfamiliar—Mortimer, Gloucester, and the loudest of the doubters had been relegated to the back of the procession. A long red cloth pointed the way between the ranks of nobles, to Elisha’s own horse, another gift from Thomas, and likely the least of the mounts in the royal stable. Nonetheless, the mare looked grand in her new finery. She was the only mount Elisha trusted to carry him, and he smiled at the sight of her.

  As if the smile shot sunlight into the dour day, the cheering grew yet louder. The barons, clutching various ceremonial spears and crosses, glanced behind them to where the townsfolk and peasants gathered, while the cluster of clergy set to meet him formed a mass of dark robes and pale faces set off by the glitter of the golden things they carried. A group of former soldiers—many of them men that Elisha had tended at the battlefield—set up a holler of their own, waving their arms. Raucous laughter permeated the party of soldiers, and Elisha suspected that some of these had begun to celebrate last night—if not before.

  Close by, Randall murmured, “Come, Elisha. We can’t wait all day.”

  “Aye.” Elisha squared his shoulders and descended the steps onto the broad red cloth. The omnipresent servants helped him to mount, turning to assist the rest of the barons to their horses as well. Some of the spears jingled with silver bells on the morning breeze and banners snapped to attention all around.

  The abbot and his monks set out at a stately pace accompanied by chants Elisha caught intermittently. After them rode a large man, armored head to toe, and bearing a huge sword across his lap. The king’s champion, who would defend against all comers, any man who dared deny the rightful king his place. Elisha guided his horse in behind, but not too close, half-afraid the fellow would turn his blade against Elisha himself. The usurper.

  He managed to keep his smile most of the way to the gate, but the slow pace of the procession became grueling before they’d even passed from the shadow of the wall. To the right rose the spire of St. Bartholomew and the last of his smile fled among the graves where his brother lay. By the time they reached the cathedral, his brief excitement left him wearier than ever, and his day had only just begun. Servants guided his cape lest he become entangled in it as Elisha slid down from the horse with little grace and let his clothes be resettled for his entrance along another span of crimson wool. The solemn procession turned noisy as spears bumped pillars and boots clattered into the broad space of Westminster. When they neared the altar, the clergymen parted, leaving Elisha alone before the archbishop. His presence struck Elisha with a force nearly physical as he bowed to kiss the man’s ring. The first time he touched the archbishop, he thought he sensed the strange negation of a mancer. There was no hint of that now.

  “Have you made the proper observances before the Lord, my prince?” the archbishop inquired.

  “I have, Your Grace.”

  “And is your conscience cleansed before the Lord, my prince?”

  Elisha stared into the blank face above him, his throat dry. Anticipating lightning, or at least thunder, he lied, his voice falling in the hush of the Lord’s house. Surely, if God had any power in this world, He would apply it now. “It is, Your Grace.” But nothing happened to disrupt the ceremony, and Elisha realized he’d been half-hoping that something would.

  “Then rise and take your place.”

  As he had been tutored, Elisha straightened and crossed to the stone pulpit, ascending to the throne placed there for him. Gilded from its feet to the peak at its back, the chair bore a painting of Edward the Confessor, there to witness the crowning of his descendants. Elisha turned his back on the stern saint and sank into the chair with a relief he prayed did not show. Under the heavy cape, he shivered.

  From the packed pews, barons glared up at him—or was it the flickering light which painted their faces with such hostility? No, for Duke Randall and his lady gazed proudly at their pupil, and Brigit, standing a few rows behind, glowed in spite of her father’s gloomy air.

  Facing each corner of the vast church, the archbishop called out for the people’s acclaim to accept this new king. In his turn, Elisha faced them as well.

  He descended on cue, other hands removing his cloak and coat as he lay down before the altar. The cushions provided ample comfort against the hard stone floor, and his mind drifted with the Latin liturgy spoken above him. He shifted, staring at the distant arches, trying to stay awake if not interested, and felt a jab of pain. Biting down on any response, Elisha still drew the archbishop’s glittering gaze.

  When the man looked away again, his sermon carrying on, Elisha crept a hand up and found a needle still protruding from the seam of one cushion where a hasty seamstress must have forgotten it in the rush to prepare the grand event. A bit of blood damped his shirt from the needle’s scratch, and he hoped it wouldn’t show. Given the uses of blood he now knew, he couldn’t afford to leave even a few drops lying about. He worked the needle free and stuck it into the cloth of his own sleeve, then froze, trying to assume the proper posture as the archbishop gazed down at him.He’d gotten the needle at least, though he could do nothing about the cushion itself.

  At last, he rose to his knees, hands spread as the split sleeves fell back from his arms.

  The archbishop towered over him, a pot of sacred oil in his hand. More Latin embroidered the air as he dipped one finger and pressed it against Elisha’s inner elbow on the left, then on the right.

  Elisha flinched, his flesh recalling the thin burn of a brand placed just there.

  The archbishop’s eyebrows sank over his dark gaze, his lips pinching off the Latin words. His finger jabbed again, smearing oil, warm from his touch, upon the brand at Elisha’s chest; one eyebrow edged upward as his finger inadvertently traced the scar of Thomas’s blade. How had it been for his king, kneeling here, receiving the blessings he was born to? How would Thomas react when he knew Elisha had been there after him?

  With a sharp breath, Elisha glared and the hand retreated, the archbishop’s lips curling slightly upward, turning his words from a blessing to a taunt as he moved in a slow circle to Elisha’s back, dabbing the oil between his shoulder blades. It felt too much like blood. It dribbled and the archbishop wiped it away. Elisha’s next breath caught as the archbishop completed his circle to stand before him once again.

  Lips forming the endless stream of language, like a spell for his Lord, the archbishop drew the cross on Elisha’s forehead with oil that oozed down along his nose, causing an unbearable flutter in his left eye.

  Schooling himself to stillness, Elisha let it go, sacred oil anointing his nose and trailing down to follow the hard line of his lips until the dart of his tongue stopped its progress. Only that uneasy conscience made him so susceptible, imagining that the oil worked its way along his scars, the reminders of his sins, and seeped through his flesh to find out the truth of his heart.

  The archbishop withdrew a few paces into the telling quiet of the vast cathedral. Outside someone cheered, and the sounds finally reached within, Elisha’s supporters calling out their acclaim, giving the silences between all the more power. Such acclamation was a historical precedent of kingship, Ufford had explained. At the coronation of the Conqueror, the acclaim of the masses had been so loud the new king’s soldiers took it for a riot an
d dozens were killed.

  The rest of the ceremony became, in Elisha’s mind, a blur, cacophony alternating with silence when it seemed nobody knew whether they should cheer or weep. At the feast which followed, Elisha ate little, and nothing that had not already been sampled by a royal taster. Finally, his companions led him back up into the Tower, the stronghold of England’s kings, and the prison of her traitors. In himself, it now housed both.

  Chapter 10

  Elisha waved off the cheers and fawning at the steps to St. Thomas’s tower, where the king’s quarters awaited. A few guards, including Madoc and another of his men, stood by in the shadows to escort him up, and another figure, draped in a long cloak, moved a little nearer. Brigit. From the way the soldiers stared through or in another direction, she had cast herself a deflection, but he was too sensitive to her presence to be deceived. Already, the crown weighed him down, the oil sticking his silk shirt to his chest, and all he wanted was to be free of this finery. But he needed the chance to speak to her, without her father’s hovering or the new attention of the court. Elisha stared at her until she nodded in acknowledgement, then he turned away to mount the stairs. Walter and Pernel, the body servants he inherited along with the chamber, waited inside with the fire stoked high and two lanterns lit. They relieved him of the crown, the chain, the cloak—peeling away the layers of another man’s life—while Brigit quietly followed and waited by the bed. The movement of the servants’ hands over his clothing, deft and professional, took on a different meaning with Brigit watching. He felt her eyes upon him as the servants released the lacing at his wrists and helped him shrug out of the heavy brocade, its deeply dagged sleeves brushing the floor. Elisha palmed the blood-tipped needle and took the chance to drop it in the fire when he turned that way.

  “Thank you,” he told the servants when they finished. This time, they gave no reaction, though Pernel might have smiled a bit. Their indignance at being servants to a man with even less standing than themselves had somewhat relaxed over the last few days, much to Elisha’s relief.