Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Ufford stopped in with a brief knock to take charge of the regalia. “It proceeded well from where I stood, Your Majesty.”

  “As well as may be,” Elisha replied. “Thanks for your help.”

  Closing the box over the chain, Ufford said, “I understand your confessor has arrived from Dunbury. He shall be installed just beyond the gatehouse. Parliament is not in session, of course, but most of the members are not far off, and the others are returning. It may be an opportune time if you should wish to call them.”

  Returning? Coming to denounce him, no doubt, but he gave a weary nod. “Thank you all. You may go.”

  Ufford bowed himself out, but the body servants shared a look, and Walter moved toward the adjacent chamber. Elisha stopped him with a gesture. “Out for the night, please.”

  “If you’re certain, Majesty.” Walter stood with bowed head, but eyes upturned, watching. Pernel bowed his lanky form and nudged Walter into following suit. They gathered their bound pallets from the corner. “We’ll be on the landing, then, Majesty.”

  Elisha hesitated, trying to think of an excuse to send them further, but this was the most privacy he could expect. Clad only in the white undertunic that reached his knees, Elisha watched them go, his gaze lingering on the door for a long moment before he turned to face the woman who awaited his attention.

  “You realize,” she said as she lowered her hood, “that you’ve just invited me to stay the night.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Servants on the landing.” She let the cloak fall away, revealing the long line of her neck, the pale edge of her chemise framing the swell of her breasts in a tightly laced gown. The gown fell loose and fashionable just beneath her breasts, a style that could conceal her pregnancy for another two months, easily. “Even by casting a deflection, I can hardly open the door and slip by them. But perhaps that’s what you wanted?” She drew her fingers along the thick coverlet of the royal bed and came to stand at its foot, the crimson bed curtains like fire and blood at her back.

  His throat felt dry, and he moved away to pour a goblet from the waiting jug of wine. “You came to me, Brigit—what do you want?”

  “As your look upon the stairs showed me, Elisha, I can’t deceive you.” She swayed forward, joining him at the trestle table, her fingers inviting him to pour another goblet. “You have what I want. I am humble enough to ask you to share it.” Her green eyes focused on him over the goblet, then she raised it before her. “Elisha, Dei gratia Rex Anglie.”

  The floor chilled his bare feet in spite of the huge hearth at his back, and he took a swallow.

  “The part about the laying on of hands, that was brilliant!” She beamed, settling onto the bench opposite, leaning a little forward. “I don’t think Hugh ever supported the claim. He just gave out little trinkets meant to carry his healing. But to convince the archbishop! A masterstroke.”

  Elisha gave a startled laugh, and made a show of kneeling to jab at the fire. She thought he had made his elevation happen. Was it better for him if she believed it? He withdrew his emotions to the skin, and deeper—she would expect as much, if she came close enough to touch him. “A holy man is always eager to find a miracle.”

  “To be honest, Elisha, I wouldn’t have thought you had this in you. Any of it. You never seemed eager for power.”

  “A man is a fool who doesn’t take what he’s offered.”

  She laughed, low and thrilling, and Elisha closed his eyes, still kneeling before the fire as at a pagan altar. Offering indeed. He let his awareness encompass her as she spoke. “My mother wanted a witch upon the throne, to change the course of England. We always imagined it would be me.”

  Elisha replaced the poker carefully and came to the table, sinking into the chair at its head. Firelight deepened her red-gold hair and put a blush upon her cheeks and throat, and he did not know what to say.

  Brigit frowned a little. “What are your plans, Elisha?”

  He laughed again, the combination of strain and wine and her nearness making him feel almost as giddy as if he had worked magic all day long. “Plans? I have none, but hopes in plenty. I hope I live to survive whatever barons come to challenge me. I hope that France takes just long enough in getting here that we can find a way to counter their attack. After that, I hope the barons don’t retaliate too strongly for the peasant revolts.” He ruffled his hands through his hair, wincing as his shoulder gave a hint of pain from the needle’s prick, then letting his hands fall back to the table.

  “Mmm.” She reached out her pale fingers, their nails smoothly rounded, and stroked the back of his hand, tracing the scar, then let her hand curve gently into his with a tantalizing warmth. “There’s so much to think on, love,” she murmured. “I never imagined.”

  Caution urged him to withdraw his hand, but the contact would reveal her just as well—probably more so. “I’d prefer your honesty.” If she had any.

  The purr left her voice, her grip tightening. “You’re not ready for this, Elisha. You don’t know what to do or how to do it. I’m not criticizing you—you’ve never been at court, you simply don’t know. You’ll look to Duke Dunbury and his lady—at least she’s a magus, but he’s always trying too hard to please the other barons. Ufford will give you all the advice you need about stately living and politics, but he’ll never understand where you’ve come from, what you’ve seen. And now you even have your own confessor?” She nearly laughed at that. “You want to live; I want that, too. I want our people to live peacefully and openly, Elisha, and your being here gives us that chance. Let me advise you, stay near you. Let us work together. I can bring the magi behind you; even without magic, we have influence in so many places. Gloucester and Mortimer are against you—we can deal with that. You need not rule in fear.” Her thumb stroked over his hand, radiating comfort.

  “How would you deal with it?” he asked carefully. “By killing them? That would have been Alaric’s way. Or was he no more than your path to the throne?”

  This time her face flushed from within—the emotions of pregnancy getting the better of her usual control. Elisha smiled inwardly, grateful for any advantage.

  “Don’t taunt me with his name, Elisha.” Tears sparked at the corners of her eyes, and she flicked them away with her fingertips. Through their contact, she replied, “Alaric was a schemer before I knew him. I never knew all of his plans.”

  True—their altercations in the New Forest had shown him that much. Elisha wet his lips, sending his trust even as he spoke, “Would Thomas have been next for you if he hadn’t remarried?”

  Brigit’s hand tensed in a tiny spasm, her eyes briefly hard. That question struck too close.

  “You’re trying to win freedom for our people,” Elisha said in the witches’ way, gently as with a nervous patient.

  “That’s right,” she snapped back. “I would do what it takes. With you declared traitor, then dead—” She shook off that thought.

  He went on carefully, “But I’m not. I’m alive, and then some.”

  “Earth and sky and fire, Elisha, you—” She shook her head again, but this time in wonder. “Every time I think you’ve fallen, that you’re beyond all aid, you rise. It’s no wonder they stand in awe.” She took his other hand then, her thumbs covering both scars. “Let me help you this time. You have the power, Elisha, all the power now. Let me guide you, as I did back at Dunbury.”

  With a shock of heat and remembrance she showed him their kiss in the ruined church, the lessons they shared in the stream, and that moment she opened her body to his, embracing him body and soul. Or so he had believed. Her sending shot into him, a thrust of urgency and desire, and Elisha flinched. Her thumbs covered his wounds, but called up, too, the memory of the knife that stabbed his hands together. Elisha turned the memory, pulling it back before she saw too much. He broke contact, his heart thundering as he sucked down a breath.

>   “What happened to you?” she whispered. Her hands clutched together, pleading, but her gaze, her lips, for just a moment, hardened against him.

  “You met a man at my graveside—the man who tried to kill me.”

  “He saved you before, from Alaric. It was the same man, wasn’t it? Some sort of magus.” She frowned then, concentrating, and Elisha’s doubts congealed, thickening in his stomach.

  “He didn’t tell you what he did?” Elisha probed. “What he is?”

  “Do you know?” She tried to keep her voice sympathetic, but her lust had shifted, searching now for power, the things that others knew and did not share.

  “He did this.” Elisha held up his hands.

  “I’m sorry,” she sighed.

  Elisha shrugged one shoulder. “I take it you didn’t talk long?”

  “With the gravedigger?” She almost looked affronted. “Rather repulsive, wasn’t he?”

  An evasion, not an answer. “More than you know,” Elisha replied. He wiped at the smear of oil by his left eye, and Brigit relaxed toward him again.

  “But you need rest, my king. Come, let me sing you to sleep.” She rose and held out her hand. After a moment, she spread the fingers and waved them. “Come, Elisha. You should have nothing to fear, not tonight.”

  He once said something similar to Thomas, before he even knew who he was, beyond the fear, the pain, the bone-weariness of hiding. Elisha, too, was hiding—especially from her. He took a deep breath, drawing back his senses, lacquering over the secrets of his heart as if he applied extra dressings to a wound, anticipating blood. Then he rose and took her hand to let her lead him. She allowed him close without moving, her breath stroking his face. “I burned the hanging rope, Elisha. It will never hurt you again.”

  And in her touch, he knew that was true.

  Brigit’s lips gave a rueful turn. “Don’t be so surprised, love. Have I truly been so cruel?”

  Elisha merely shook his head as they drifted toward the bed and sank into the mattress. She draped the coverlet over his shoulders and lay on top of the covers at his side, making no move to unlace her dress. Wiping away the last of the oil from his face with a soft cloth, Brigit sang softly, one of his mother’s songs, one he used to sing as he stitched up the soldiers in the make-shift hospital at Dunbury. She played him like an instrument—or thought she did—knowing seduction would avail her nothing. Some part of him wanted to give in to her new modesty, accepting her at her gentle word and chaste deed. But, even as his eyes slid shut, his head buoyed by Thomas’s pillow, his deeper heart knew better. If London was a nest of vipers, then tonight he lay by their queen. Or one who wished she was.

  Chapter 11

  His wrists, shoulders, and hips ached, his knees throbbed from crouching too long, and every breath was labored. The inside of his cheek pinched with pain, but he let the blood ooze over his lip, quietly, quietly. The tang of blood mingled with the aftertaste of porridge. His open eyes saw darkness, the cloth that kept him blind was snug, but not biting. Never that. And he finally knew why. What a fool he’d been, not to realize! He could almost feel Elisha’s hand upon his brow, tracing a line of blood. How would he know if it worked? How would he know if—

  Elisha lay still a moment, bewildered by thoughts and sensations that were not his own. A jolt of understanding slapped the sleep from his mind, but he squeezed his eyes shut, curling into himself, reaching back. The softness of the king’s bed overlaid the damp, hard floor, the scent of the dying fire and the woman beside him mingling at the back of his throat with the taste of blood, the lock of hair bound inside his cuff gone suddenly warm. Elisha flung himself into the tenuous contact, searching. East and south—little but water. West? North? The ache in his bent spine intensified. Elisha whimpered, stretching himself, but the impression was dark, distant, steeped with despair.

  “Elisha?” Brigit’s voice emerged from the darkness, her hand clutching his shoulder.

  He shook her off, the contact fracturing. No!

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Hush! Don’t touch me!” Elisha scrambled from the bed, pushing away Brigit’s fallen cloak to kneel on the floor. He pressed his wrists together, anything that might strengthen the affinity he had briefly shared. He returned to the dismal place of his dream. Distantly, he heard a cry, turning his darkened eyes. “Rosie?”

  “If he’s done eating, get him gagged,” ordered a thick voice in the dream, a rumble Elisha strained to hear.

  Someone touched his face, and he flinched, but the hand gripped his chin. “Shit, he’s bleeding.”

  “Oh, Hell—not bleeding! What’d he tell us? No fucking bleeding!”

  The hand squeezed tighter, fingers digging in, promising more violence. Lower, thicker, “You’ll regret that when hisself comes back.”

  Cloth shoved harshly in his mouth could not stop the bright sense of triumph that cut the darkness. “Wipe it up—every drop—shit—” Water dashed over his head—

  —and the contact was gone. Elisha gasped, rearing back, shaking out the aches of Thomas’s bondage. His eyes snapped open, and the king’s chamber slowly resolved around him, made ruddy by the dim glow of the dying coals.

  Brigit lay on the bed, staring down at him, brow furrowed. “Nightmare?”

  “Yes,” he said, but the word was a breath of exaltation. Thomas lived! Rosie, too. Somewhere to the north. They were fed, kept in darkness, bound, but alive.

  Brigit’s hand sank down to touch his cheek, and Elisha bestirred himself to offer the pain, the fear, the despair, rushing to conceal whose living nightmare he had suffered. It wasn’t enough, but it gave him a direction, and a sense of distance, a place to start looking. Thank God, they lived.

  “Majesty?” Walter’s soft voice outside the door, accompanied by a gentle tapping.

  Brigit’s hand stilled upon his cheek, seeking the memory of the angel’s touch her mother left him so long ago. Elisha leaned a little into the touch, letting her believe he was soothed by this, hiding his elation. Then the urge to smile left him. Thomas’s captors knew he had bled. Even if they never knew his effort worked to reach Elisha had worked, they knew Thomas had tried, and they said he would be punished. How they would hurt him without letting him bleed, Elisha dared not imagine.

  “You’d better go,” he breathed to Brigit.

  “Why?”

  “Please, just go.” He gathered her cloak to pass it up to her, and their eyes met. What would she expect? What could he give her now, to cover for the things she must not know? “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “You’re welcome, Your Majesty.” She leaned a little more and kissed him, light and swift, upon the cheek—a touch that tingled with dangerous curiosity and a hint of resentment—then swirled the cloak once more about her.

  “Majesty?” The knock repeated. “Heard a bang, we did.”

  Elisha pushed himself to his feet. “Come,” he called out.

  As Walter and Pernel entered, Brigit slipped out, her deflection already in place.

  “Are you well, Majesty?” Pernel inquired, while Walter moved to stoke up the fire.

  “I suffered a nightmare. I’m better now. How long until day?”

  “Not long, Majesty.”

  “Good, I’ve got work to do.” Elisha lifted the lid on the nearest chest of clothing, then waved a hand in Pernel’s direction. “Lanterns, please.”

  “Aye, Majesty.” The servant complied, holding the light while Elisha found day clothes—something without too much cloth or lacing. Seeing what he was up to, Pernel set down the lantern and sprang to it, helping Elisha dress. “What sort of work, Majesty?”

  “I need a map. We must have some.”

  Pernel chuffed. “Some, Your Majesty. It’s to do with the French, eh?”

  “That, too,” Elisha said, oddly pleased by his servant’s more casual question. Perhaps t
he darkness and the hour created an intimacy that made the man let down his guard against royal disfavor. “Attend me?”

  “Course, Majesty. They’ll be in the archive.” Pernel and Walter shared a look as they helped Elisha on with a mantle against the night’s chill. Then Pernel led the way down the stairs, a few guards joining quietly in the walk, out to the space between the walls and in again, toward the Tower itself, glowing in the last of the moonlight. Pernel’s small lantern reflected that glow. A yeoman warder stamped the butt of his pike on the stair, then saw their faces revealed by the torch above his head and stepped aside with a bow. “Majesty.”

  Elisha still found the address a bit disconcerting, but he accepted its power tonight to pass him inside the kingdom’s greatest fortress, with the freedom of all it contained. Knowledge. Mordecai stayed back on Wight, immersing himself in knowledge. Perhaps his teaching had been this effective: making Elisha realize the strength in knowledge before action. With his long strides adopting the king’s urgency, Pernel took the stairs two at a time until they reached a small chamber with a high ceiling and a rack of scrolls and volumes that nearly reached that height. “Here we are, Majesty. Maps, you say?” Pernel lit two more lanterns, filling the room with their glow, as they gazed up at the shelf. “Shall I wake the archivist?”

  Elisha shook his head. “Not yet—not now.” The two men approached their problem, sliding out this scroll then another, until they converged on the chest.

  “Francia!” crowed Pernel as he unrolled one of them onto the table. “Our lands or theirs, Your Majesty?”

  “Both, for now.” He unrolled a parchment and frowned at it, unsure what he was seeing. It looked like a tangle of thread with words bound in among the twisted lines. He found Londinium marked at its center and lifted it for a better look. “What do you know about the north country?”