Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  Gripping her shoulder, Elisha murmured into her ear, “Katherine, what have you done?”

  “Nothing!” she protested against his skin, turning her face, her eyes squeezing shut. “Nothing . . . lately. They want her sick. They want Ludwig trapped by worry for her, and for the baby. Like you, they thought he would stay with her. It was she herself who convinced him to come later, to meet with Charles first.”

  “What have you done?” he repeated inside of her, the tension rushing his body.

  “Herbs, and touches. I spoiled some of the treatments—but I stopped. I couldn’t bear it, as the baby came closer to due, to think I might be the death of a child. I couldn’t do it anymore. I threw away the ruined things. Someone must have given her something else, something new and awful.”

  “This is what you repented in the church, what you feared someone would overhear.” She expected punishment, but not from the Lord.

  “I know I am weak, Elisha. I did stop, I swear it. Please don’t hate me—don’t abandon me, or my children.”

  As open as she was in that moment, she did not miss the flash of his regret, and she grew still, then turned to face him, placing her hand upon his chest. “Elisha. What do you know?”

  “I do not know, Katherine, but I fear. The night that I turned hunter, I followed Bardolph to a place of slaughter, a stone in the forest.”

  “I know the place. It’s where—where I did the one.”

  “They had a girl there, a victim.” He lay his hand upon her cheek, refining his memory, muting the horror, imagining the girl, her height and build, her flowing locks, the touch of her blood.

  She buried her face against his chest and screamed, hands in fists at her mouth, the sound resonating through his ribs, echoing in his scars. Elisha wrapped her in his arms, his face pressed against her hair, clinging to her through the rocking of her grief. Her tears burned with her shame. She feared to kill the child of another, expecting they might kill her. Instead, they turned her dread against her, slaying her own child.

  The mancers—Eben—had sent Katherine to seduce him, with the understanding that she could save the lives of her children. But they already knew that he knew the truth. They sent a broken tool, one they could no longer control, and they knew it. She believed she was to distract him, but the truth was more subtle. A trap, baited with this wounded woman and her children—assuming the boys still lived—set with the flagellant commander to direct his strength against Elisha. But where and how would the trap be sprung? Tears: water and salt. Like the baths that flowed from a place where magic could not penetrate. The salt mine church of Saint Raphael, a destination where the flagellants would follow their master, seeking to enhance their punishment: salt upon their wounds. Good Lord.

  Knowing what he faced, he could step off this path and dodge the trap completely. But Katherine’s sobbing echoed through his bones. Could he leave without knowing if her other children were alive or dead? Could he leave the empress to carry her baby into mancer hands? The mancers knew his answer; they counted on it. Bardolph had finally convinced them that Elisha was not simply a rogue necromancer, and his failure to kill Katherine had confirmed it. The barber could be brought down by his compassion. It was the flaw he could not overcome. Elisha closed his stinging eyes against the night.

  He need not enter the trap unarmed or unaware. His knowledge gave him an advantage; it had to. He remembered Isaac’s words, that God’s righteous might be so frozen by their compassion that they must shelter for a thousand years in the palm of the Lord. The Lord’s hands had never seemed to him to be that comforting. As Mordecai once told him, the Lord created every man blessed and cursed in equal measure, in Elisha’s case, by precisely the same thing: his blessed, cursed compassion.

  Around them, people snored softly, and someone in a far corner by the door entertained a quietly giggling companion. Katherine’s sobbing shuddered to a silent despair. As he lay with her, Elisha hated her for what she might have done to the empress and the baby, admired her for trying to defy the mancers, pitied her for what she had lost, feared with her for what remained at stake, and realized that he had halfway come to love her.

  After a time, he released her, tucked his cape around her, and assured her he would return. She remained lost in grief, and gave him no reply. He returned to the empress’s chamber where Emerick slumped in a seat by the door, snoring, and startled awake at Elisha’s approach, squinting at him in the light of a single candle. “Don’t you need a lantern, man, or do those witching eyes let you see in the dark?”

  They rather did, though not in the way the doctor meant. His witching awareness, not his eyes, allowed him to move with certainty, even in low light, as long as he knew where he was going. Curiously, in Elisha’s divided vision, the young doctor carried no shades at all, as if he’d never lost a patient. Just as likely, he’d simply never gotten close enough to any of them for their deaths to mark him in that way. Elisha kept his voice low. “We must clean out the empress’s herbals, Doctor. The margravine suspects them to be tainted.”

  Emerick matched his tone. “Tainted? Surely not!”

  “For a week, her Majesty had no adverse symptoms. Today, again she does. What’s changed?”

  “She moved from the barge to horseback—that alone might account for it.” Then Emerick considered more deeply. “Also, she dismissed her personal physician. I was only meant to be von Stubben’s assistant.” Then his eyes flared, and he pushed abruptly up from his seat. “He left his supplies in the medical chest. I took the opportunity over nuncheon to check his stock and combine it with the royal chest if it contained the same herbs. Holy Rood, if I’ve done something—”

  Elisha touched him lightly. “Let’s be certain before we place any blame.”

  Emerick nodded and led the way quietly into the empress’s chamber. Three ladies lay on pallets on the floor, with small lanterns burning to either side of the large bed—likely the lord’s bed when he was at home. On a trestle table in the far corner, next to the portable altar Elisha sensed earlier, sat the medical chest. The two men lifted it carefully and carried it back to the corridor, shutting the door before spreading the contents on the floor. Emerick’s long fingers swiftly picked out a dozen bottles and packets. He sniffed each one, then tapped his finger to his tongue and took a little sample of each to taste. He recoiled from a packet of sage and handed it over, shaking his head. “Good for stomach ailments indeed—this will create them.” Then he frowned and slipped back into the chamber, returning with a small vial. “A cordial to encourage a strong child. We used to have a great jug of it, but the margravine spilt it a week ago and never ordered a replacement. I found this in von Stubben’s things and offered it for her Majesty’s use.” His shoulders slumped. “She took a draught this afternoon when we paused to water the horses.”

  “Don’t waste time in regret, Doctor. From here on, we must be vigilant.”

  The young man pulled up his lanky frame and gave a nod. “Indeed, Doctor. The upstart must have paid off von Stubben for his interference. I pray the poison is not too deep.”

  “I think not. She’s been in good health while we traveled, until now. They did not want to kill her, or even the baby, just to leave her weak, unable to aid her husband, and requiring him to spend his worry on her in turn. I wonder why she took against von Stubben, though, if you’ve had no sign he was betraying her.”

  “You think that I do not trust the minds of women, but von Stubben was much, much worse.” Emerick gave a rueful smile. “It seems that both her Majesty and the margravine have brighter insight than my own, in spite of all my education. I shall endeavor to improve myself in that regard.”

  “What more can be asked of any man?” Elisha replied.

  Feeling Katherine’s approach, Elisha turned as she came along the corridor, still wrapped in his cloak, her eyes shadowed and red from weeping. Emerick startled at the sight of her,
then frowned at Elisha, as if he were to blame for her state.

  “How fares the empress, doctors?”

  “Sleeping soundly, Margravine,” Emerick replied. “And yourself?”

  “I have had . . . bad news. News that encourages me to move on quickly toward my home.” Her grave eyes lifted to Elisha’s face.

  “We’ll see what the day shall bring, Margravine—if her Majesty is well enough to continue. If not, I’m sure she will allow you to press on. I know that you are dear to her,” said Emerick.

  She smiled faintly, slipped the cloak from her shoulders and returned it to Elisha before gliding into the empress’s room and shutting the door behind her.

  “A fine woman of wealth and courtesy.” Emerick sighed. “You are truly blessed.”

  “Good night, Doctor.” Elisha’s cloak, still warm with Katherine’s presence, weighed down his arms as he returned to the hall below. By dawn, servants stirred and roamed the crowded chamber, preparing the fire. One of the first men Elisha saw was the mancer guard, yawning and stretching from a place by the hearth, the flickering shades of his victims clinging to his form. Elisha wanted to simply cross the room and administer the touch of death, but he refrained—this was the man who sent word to the others of their progress; the longer they believed Katherine ignorant of her daughter’s fate, the safer her sons remained.

  Breakfast found the empress much improved—if dismayed by the appearance of her dear friend Katherine—and resolved to ride quickly for the baths where the margravine could manage whatever dread affair had so darkened her mood. Empress Margaret, too, cast Elisha a doubtful look, and he did his best to be solicitous toward both women. By the time they left the manor, Katherine realized that Elisha was being blamed for her black spirits and made an effort to revive and show him favor, requesting his assistance to mount up.

  In the touch of his hands upon her waist, she said, “I must find them. You’ll help me, won’t you? Please.” Her face smiled down on him, her presence trembled with concern.

  “I suspect they are in the mines, perhaps as bait to draw me in.”

  She squeezed his fingers as he released her. “But that would mean—” and a rush of fear that made the horse stamp beneath her.

  “They sent you to bring me to them, Katherine, with your cunning or with your pain.” He took her horse’s head, soothing it with his hands. “Take care, Margravine.”

  She took up her reins, staring down at him. “The way ahead is rougher than it once was.”

  “Courage,” he murmured.

  Again, they spoke of her home as they rode, but this time she shared so many details about the mines and their operation that any other listeners quickly grew bored—and convinced that Elisha was desperate to gain her rich holdings: why else should he care about miners’ slides or brine pits or the use of cow’s blood to strip the impurities from salt?

  When he spoke with the empress at nuncheon, inquiring about her health and offering some advice, he read in her frank looks the question of his intentions toward Katherine. No doubt, a widow of such wealth required royal permission to marry. Empress Margaret might be kindly disposed to him, in spite of her husband’s enmity, but enough to give him her friend in marriage? And how, after all of this, was he to tell them he did not want her?

  The mountains loomed all around them now, glowering darkly as they turned along the slopes into the town of Bad Stollhein. Katherine’s trepidation grew by the moment, and she seized Elisha’s hand when they dismounted, even in front of her gathered servants and retainers. “How shall we ever find them? There are bound to be new chambers and passages—and I haven’t been in the mine for years.”

  “We need someone we can trust who knows them more recently.” He led her forward, trying to look natural as if she merely asked his arm to take her from her horse after the long ride. “There’s a man who works as a foreman, a Jew—his mother sent me some information.”

  “Daniel Stoyan? And you would trust him?” She cast him a dubious glance.

  His presence chilled, and her frown deepened. “You are margravine here. At the least you can find out what’s been dug in the mine in your absence. I wouldn’t doubt him merely because he is a Jew. If he proves trustworthy, he might have suggestions about where prisoners might be kept. The enemy I fear is the flagellant, the mancer who surrounds himself with living talismans, but if we can separate him from his adherents, he won’t be able to use the power of their pain.”

  “I will learn what I can.” She released him to move forward into the welcoming embraces of retainers and bows of her servants as she directed them to the empress’s comfort.

  The empress herself looked pale and drawn, her face in sharp contrast to her purple robes. “Doctors, pray attend me.” Elisha and Emerick moved to her side as swiftly as the crowd of horses allowed. “I should like to descend to the baths immediately.”

  “It might be wise to rest from your exertions, Your Majesty,” Emerick offered, delicately taking her wrist to count her pulse.

  “If the bath serves to relax her Majesty, I see no reason why she shouldn’t go now,” Elisha said.

  “Agnes and Jocelyn.” The empress set back her shoulders as the ladies curtsied. “We shall go to the baths for a time before dining.”

  “Very well, Your Majesty. I’ll see to your things.” Agnes bobbed another curtsy, then slipped between the porters to take charge of a pair of them hoisting a chest and urge them into the smaller procession that split off toward a vast domed structure built against the side of the mountain. It gleamed with gold and torchlight that could not hold off the black foreboding of the forested slopes. Beyond them—far beyond—lay Rome, and Elisha still had no idea how he could get there.

  A few guardsmen immediately started ahead, with the mancer in the front, crying, “Achtung! Clear the baths for her Royal Majesty!”

  By this hour, few bathers remained in any case, and these readily emerged, servants hurrying with their robes and towels, bowing to the empress as she swept inside with her dozen companions. While the empress made ready in a separate room, Elisha and Emerick walked down an echoing hall to the heated pool. It occupied a domed chamber, torchlight reflecting in ripples on the brine then back again to form bands of light across the ceiling. The moist salty air tingled Elisha’s nostrils and eyes. Beyond the pool with its stone dome rose a wall of salt, rosy-hued and veined like alabaster. Hollows on the walls held candles behind a thin layer of carved salt, casting a pinkish glow at the far side.

  “Glows like a maiden’s blush,” Emerick murmured, staring about.

  Elisha found a long bench with pegs above and hung his cloak, then shed his heavy jerkin as well, his inner tunic already clinging with sweat. Damp black curls draped his forehead, and he pushed back his hair—nearly long enough now to need a tie—his fingers running along the cross-shaped scar. Between the moisture, the heat, the scent of salt and minerals, and the forlorn echo of dripping water, Elisha’s senses filled with the place so it took a moment to know what was missing. He caught the drift of Emerick’s presence nearby. And beyond, was nothing. No matter how he stretched his awareness, focusing on the empress or even the mancer-guard who watched the door, Elisha could not feel them. Six months ago, he knew no other senses than this—and now, the lack of his magical extension worried him, as if he’d been amputated of a limb he had not known was there.

  His left eye caught glimmers of a few shades here, but even these were faint, hard to distinguish from the flickers of the torchlight except that he could make them vanish by shutting his eye. His power was not gone but diminished, subdued by the properties of salt.

  “Climate warm and moist, clearly. I should recommend a diet this evening of cool and dry ingredients to provide some balance to your humors.” Emerick’s voice rang strangely around the chamber beneath the dome. He pushed back his velvet sleeves and wiped a cloth over his brow.

>   Kneeling on the damp floor by the broad stairs, Elisha dipped a hand into the murky water. It tasted of iron and salt, strong but not dangerous.

  “Well, doctors? My mistress awaits.” The lovely voice of Lady Agnes filled the room, overriding the drip and splash as she modulated her tone, transforming her query into a trill of music that echoed as if she were become a chorus. She smiled, and in the ruddy gloom, her homely features softened.

  “Marvelous,” said Emerick, then gave himself a little shake. “Indeed, my lady, I believe she may enter. It is warm, and we shall wish to monitor both herself and the infant to be sure she does not become overheated.”

  “How are you to monitor that in a bath, good sir? Unless you propose to do something unseemly.” Agnes’s eyes flared.

  “No, assuredly not.” He waved his hands. “If the empress will be comfortable on the stairs, or perhaps in this smaller area, I may maintain a count of her pulses, and take occasional reference to the infant as well.”

  “Assuredly not,” the empress replied, entering at a stately pace, Lady Jocelyn carrying the train of her robe. “It is my will to drift. At the far side of the pool, the salt is stronger.”

  “Drift, Your Majesty? Is one of your ladies prepared to accompany you and to be sure about the pulses? This is not something to be trifled with.”

  “The English doctor shall accompany me.” She stared at Elisha. “He shall need to strip to his hose and trews, but we shall be in full view of my retainers.”

  In spite of the heat, Elisha’s mouth went dry, but her stare brooked no refusal, and a twitch of her eyebrows suggested she had some serious intent. After a moment, he nodded and removed his belt and tunic, laying them aside on the bench, tucking his packet of letters inside. He still carried Thomas’s ring and a few hidden talismans if he needed them.

  “So many scars.” Agnes’s ethereal voice, even at a murmur, echoed around him.