Elisha Rex

by E. C. Ambrose

  Her father’s face twisted, but when he lifted a knuckle to rub his eye, Elisha realized he was close to weeping. “The marriage was her mother’s dream, you see?” he whispered. “And she not there to see it. Lord knows I never asked so much as for her to marry a prince.” His hand fell, slowly curling, fiddling with his buckle once more. “And then the fire broke out. Accidental, I’m told, although I shouldn’t wonder if some envious acquaintance had a hand in that.”

  “I thought you said it was a secret,” Elisha murmured.

  “It was meant to be,” Brigit returned, folding her arms, “but Father couldn’t help telling a few people, could he? ‘We’ll be back at court soon, our expulsion was all a terrible mistake, you see?’” She put on her father’s manner, then flung it aside. “Mother wanted to help our people, to craft a better nation by being close to the crown. But you undermined her every attempt.”

  Dropping his hands from his belt, the old man growled, “She should have been more careful. It was the death of her once they knew the truth.”

  She lifted her chin, that bare sweep of pale throat. “Elisha Rex is hardly likely to be the death of me.” For a long moment, she stood that way, then her brow arched a little, one eye glancing toward him again, but he said nothing.

  “You’re angry about Alaric,” she said with a brittle smile. “Of course you are. How many times must I tell you”—her next words echoed through his skin, as if she touched him, though she stood yards away—“I should have met you first.”

  From the first day they met, it was deception. Did that explain why her deflections worked so well? All he ever saw were her lies. “It’s time for you to go.”

  “You want to be a just king, Elisha, and I want to help you.”

  “You cannot work for justice if there is vengeance in your heart.”

  Her pose wavered, her face for a moment almost vulnerable, and he remembered she wept at his graveside, tears of genuine grief. She loved him in her way. A selfish love that watched him hang, that watched him buried, that would not hesitate to let him burn. “My mother’s death is only part of this. Think of the old women who are dunked and drowned. Think of yourself: you healed a hundred people in the yard on Sunday, Elisha, how many more could be healed if you could openly share and teach what you know?” Her hands clasped together, her presence wavering between desperation, hope, and fear. But of what?

  “How can I trust you?” He asked, but not aloud. The child they shared, like the healing he shared with Mordecai, formed a bridge between them.

  “If you don’t, if you turn me away, you will face your enemies alone.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  Brigit shook her head fiercely. “You face dangers beyond the French, beyond the barons.”

  “What makes you say that?” He spread his awareness as carefully as he could but touched only the barest edges of her emotions, as if they seeped out past her careful wards.

  “The nightmares,” she said simply, but the question discomfited her. “And the inquisition. Even if you defend the magi here, you cannot protect them from the Church. You really think the barons will approve a law to protect us? If you ally with me, we can both prosper.”

  “With you as my queen.”

  Her eyes flared, beautiful, green, flecked with gold, as if echoing the crown she longed for. “Yes, Elisha. What could we not be, together? For the good of our people.”

  Our people. At most, one in a hundred. What of the other ninety-nine, who had no magic? What of Thomas, and Randall, and Rosie? When he found the king, he would abdicate his throne, but Brigit would not leave it so lightly. “I cannot give you what you want.”

  “Will not, you mean.” The color fled her cheeks and throat, the tide of hope swept away from her presence. “I am not afraid to do what must be done. I will be queen, Elisha, with you, or without you.”

  The old knight, her father, reached out and opened the door, where the handful of servants lingered to either side, eyes quickly averted.

  “Your Majesty.” Pernel and Walter dropped into bows almost painfully low and rose without lifting their eyes. “Your Majesty, forgive us, we should have known. None should have passed us without your blessing. Please,” Pernel, always the more talkative, stammered his apology.

  Elisha stood still, hands folded at his back, muscles tight. “My guests are leaving.”

  “Come, child,” the old man said again, this time taking her arm, sliding his other arm about her shoulders. “Come away. We’ll go to church and pray forgiveness.” His chin trembled, his eyes watery, and she suffered his touch, but turned her head as they reached the door.

  “Fare you well . . . Your Majesty.” All sense of hope, desire, or regret washed away with her icy stare, then she turned her gaze forward, rejected her father’s arm, and stalked down the stairs into the darkness.

  “I have made an enemy today,” Elisha murmured.

  “Just a woman, Your Majesty, and not one with many ties at court,” Pernel offered.

  The two servants entered, shutting the door behind them. Walter drifted toward the table and found a little broom to sweep up the drift of soot that had flown out at the loss of Elisha’s bread. “Not to your liking, Your Majesty?”

  “She threw my bread in the fire. I’d like more.”

  “Aye, Majesty.” Walter bowed himself away backward toward the door.

  “I’m not going to punish you—either of you. But I am going to want you to stay close. Clearly the pages aren’t enough. If you need to go out, send up one of the door guards.” He pictured the expression on Brigit’s face. “Or two of them.”

  As Walter went to get bread, Pernel stared thoughtfully after him, then back to Elisha. “Your Majesty seems concerned.”

  “She’s more powerful than you know, and now she knows I’ve been looking at Scotland.” Brigit seemed to think the child would give her leverage if everyone believed it was Alaric’s. If she had suitable witnesses to the wedding, she might convince some of the nobles that her baby was the only remaining heir of the blood. He thought of Thomas’s lost daughter, slain by witches, as Brigit’s mother had been slain by men.

  “She is no friend of ours, Pernel. Remember that, no matter what she says or does.”

  The servant gave a short nod, but Elisha needed no special senses to know Pernel doubted the danger Brigit might present. Finally Elisha returned to his table, to the cooling soup. He reached to serve himself, but Pernel took up the ladle and spooned out a generous portion.

  The soup caressed his lips with a hint of grease and tasted of bay leaves. When he had finished, sopping up the last of the soup with hunks broken off a fresh loaf, Elisha pushed back. “We need the map. I’ve wasted too much time already.”

  In moments, the table was clear, the map replaced. “Walter, watch the door, if you please. Pernel, I need you to tell me everything you know about each of these places, in turn and slowly. I want to. . .” but how could he say what he planned, in terms that did not make him appear mad? Madder than he already seemed, at any rate. Elisha’s fingers knotted together. Thomas was lost, without a word, and the longer Elisha sat in the king’s chair and lay in his bed, the more their peril grew. Staring down at his joined hands and the scars that made him holy, Elisha knew what to say, though he grit his teeth before he spoke. “I’m going to pray about it, as you speak. To listen for guidance.”

  Pernel’s mouth made a little “o,” and he swallowed a few times before he spoke, pointing to one of the castle markings. “Kingstonhus at Greater Yarmouth. It’s a pace back from the sea. Stone, not too big. Stopped off there once, when his royal highness had business in Norwich.”

  As Pernel spoke, Elisha prepared himself, drawing the lock of Thomas’s hair from his sleeve to press it between his clasped hands. He shut his eyes and remembered all that he could of that short, sharp vision he shared with Thomas. The
smell of the ocean, the dank feel of the stone. He listened to the flow of Pernel’s words and hoped for . . . he laughed silently to himself. He was, of course, like any visionary, looking for a sign.

  Pernel’s finger ticked up the coastline, describing whatever he knew or guessed about each place, and Elisha’s head sank to rest upon his knuckles. He heard the names, pictured the places, sometimes using details of other places he had been, and each time, he found nothing. Surely Mordecai would applaud the effort, given how much knowledge he gained, but eventually Elisha sagged, the lock of hair pressed beneath one palm, flat to the table, his cheek pillowed on his hand. He opened his eyes, gazing sideways across the map, the indications of rivers and the names of towns swimming together in a tangle of black and red, crosses stabbing like knives so that his palms twitched in remembrance, and he wanted to weep.

  Pernel coughed and took a swallow from a flagon of ale, but his voice still sounded hoarse. “That’s the lot of what I know, Your Majesty. Might be, I could find you someone from the area”—another cough—“and we can get a map further north, maybe Scotland.”

  Elisha stared at the landscape of the table top, the pocked texture of parchment, the looming shapes of the flagons and spoons that held down the map, the drawn features of the manservant rising over all, swaying slightly. “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered.

  “Church?” Pernel croaked. With a shake of his head, he took another swallow. “Your Majesty?”

  “Rest, I think.” He sighed and shut his eyes again. “Mortimer will be here to break the fast. I need Randall as well—that’s Dunbury. Tell him to bring his map. Ufford, too.” He tapped his fingers on the table.

  “Yes, Majesty.”

  “And you get some rest as well.”

  Pernel bowed. “Yes, Majesty.”

  Silent, the servant helped him to his bed.

  • • •

  When Elisha woke in the morning, dragging his eyes open, he found Father Michael preparing to celebrate the Mass in the chantry attached to the royal chambers. He groaned and let the servants bring out his clothes. At first, Elisha knelt resentful on the floor as Father Michael lit candles and prayed, a rapid patter of Latin filling the little room, braiding together the smoke and incense. He had no part except to witness, and since homily was reserved for feast days, his mind could wander then focus on the day ahead. By the time the priest finished, elevating the host, then packing away the golden chalice and monstrance which had held the holy wafer, Elisha felt weary, but curiously alert.

  The faces of his guests mirrored his own exhaustion, all pretense and posturing abandoned, as Randall outlined their plan, the four of them at table while a half-dozen men stood guard around the room. As Mortimer listened, he chewed more slowly. Finally, he set down his knife, cradled his bandaged arm, and looked up.

  “You cannot tell me all of this and let me leave the room, Your Majesty.”

  Randall replied, “No, we cannot.”

  Elisha clenched his jaw, catching the dart of Randall’s warning glance.

  “If you aid us now,” Randall said, “you will be executed as swiftly as time allows, with your family allowed to maintain your lands and titles. We do not have patience for games, we do not have time to negotiate. Ample witnesses will state they heard you call out to the man who opened the lion’s gate last night. You believed he would protect you, leaving the king at risk. You planned to kill the king, as part of a plot to enable a French invasion.” Randall thumped his hands upon the table.

  Elisha began, “Surely, we can offer leniency, in exchange—”

  “In exchange for treachery, Your Majesty?” Randall’s round face set hard. “You can’t think like a doctor any more. You must think like a king.”

  Quietly, Mortimer asked, “And if I am silent? We still have laws against torture, do we not?”

  “If you say nothing, you shall be treated like the traitor that you are: executed in the high square, in a manner befitting the severity of your crime,” Randall said. “Your family will be stripped of privileges, lands, and titles. Your name will be blackened, and your quarters hung in the four corners of the realm.”

  At the back of his head, Elisha ran through the litany of punishments for treason, the same he himself had faced not so long ago. “How can I do this?”

  “How can you not?” Randall snapped back. “Listen to me. This kingdom is at risk—have you forgotten? In a matter of days or weeks, we shall be overrun. It was you who wished to avert war. If we suffer a traitor to live, Eli—Your Majesty, we shall have no end of traitors and no end of wars. You, of all people, cannot afford to look weak.”

  Elisha gripped the table. He knew nothing of how to be king, of the things that kings must do. “It was you who said I could have been king by right of arms—a second conqueror. It was instead, my hands that brought me here.” He lay his palms down on the table, the scars displayed. “Those who believe in me don’t do so for my strength, Your Grace.”

  To his left across the table, Mortimer stared into his goblet, fingering a small gold cross at his throat. “Three lights,” he said. “The French are to send a few scouting vessels. A lookout in the Saltwood tower will see three lights shining from the water. Then we are to light three lights in reply, at Saltwood, at St. Leonard’s, and at Lympne. My steward and a few men at arms know about the lights. No one else, I swear.”

  His breath hitched in his throat, and Elisha wanted to lay a hand over his, to reassure him. But what comfort could there be? Mortimer, the proud companion of princes, shrank in his clothes in the face of what would be. He raised his eyes then, lined with fear, and whispered to Elisha, “You are a merciful man, Your Majesty. You returned to stop the lion. You won’t punish my family, will you? I have two daughters not yet married.”

  “And their father is a traitor,” Ufford cut in.

  Mortimer flinched, and Elisha put out his hand to forestall any further attack. His presence resonated with a crackle of his guilt, his anger, as if his ribs were the too-small cage that must contain a lion. “Write out what we need to know, Mortimer—the names, any instructions your followers have—and transfer your keys to the Lord Chancellor. Ufford, see that he’s given ink and quills. Let him write his family.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” said Ufford, his white brows knitting together.

  “We must make all haste for Hythe,” said Randall. “Once the execution is carried out.”

  “Tomorrow?” Ufford suggested. Mortimer dropped his head to his hands, then gave a little cry, wrapping his hand to his wounded shoulder.

  Elisha looked away, to the entrance of his little chantry where morning sun glowed red, green, blue, gold through the stained glass window. What he told Randall about his believers was true—and if he must choose between being a martial king, and a merciful one, then he knew what he must do. Elisha reached out, laying his hand over Mortimer’s, gently, letting his touch warm with the need for healing. He laced their fingers together, making contact, reminding the flesh what it was to be whole as his own shoulder twinged with mirrored pain for a moment, so that both men gasped. Then Elisha rose and walked away from Mortimer’s wonder as the soldiers came up to take him. Food held no interest for Elisha, nor did talk of war, and he missed the simplicity of the battlefield, where his only task was to live long enough to help as many wounded as he could. The country needed Thomas. It needed its king.

  They spent the day in hurried preparations, gathering the relatively small force that would accompany them, sending messages by trusted hands, witnessing to Mortimer’s confession: evidence, at last, that should convince the barons.

  • • •

  In the cold light of the following dawn, Elisha joined the procession to the field beyond the White Tower where a notched block waited for a neck to fill it. The archbishop and Father Michael both hovered near the prisoner, no doubt speaking words of comfort along with
prayers for the dying. A burly, hooded man stood by with an ax, waiting his moment, and Elisha’s own throat ached, the scar of his hanging feeling rough against the high, velvet collar that stroked the underside of his chin.

  At last, the yeoman brought Mortimer to kneel at the block, and he cried out, his lean face made the more pale by the white garment he wore. “Your Majesty!” he called, his face already wet with tears, and Elisha flinched. This is what he had done to Thomas, all unwitting, on the day of his own burial.

  “Please, Your Majesty.” Mortimer pushed back against the yeoman’s hands, beard quivering.

  “No need to torture yourself, Your Majesty,” Randall said.

  Elisha sucked in a breath, then approached and squatted before the traitor. “What is it?”

  Head bowed, Mortimer whispered, “Would you do for me, Lord, as you did for the lion?”

  Inwardly, Elisha reeled. For a moment, he searched the gloomy sky. One way and another, Elisha was the death of this man. “Lay down your head.”

  Tears streamed from Mortimer’s eyes, and he stifled a sob, his mouth curling as he tried to hold back his fear, but his head lowered, jerkily to rest upon the block, his chin fitting the curve, his shoulders shaking.

  The block itself, stained with old blood, curled with shades that rose to Elisha’s command. Mortimer twitched when Elisha lay his hand upon the traitor’s back. A tremor of gratitude cracked the dread that darkened Mortimer’s presence. “Peace,” Elisha whispered, and he summoned death, binding its cold with the comfort and release of Martin’s passing. Between one shuddering breath and the next, Mortimer’s heart failed, and his chest rose no more.

  The archbishop’s gold miter framed his too-still face, but Father Michael softly prayed beside him.