Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Thank you.” Father Uccello inclined his head and joined a pair of men who walked toward a round barrel of a building topped by an angel that stood alongside the river.

  Rinaldo flashed that grin again, one without humor or joy, then led Elisha back to their horses.

  • • •

  The next day, although Rinaldo sent the soldiers for Uccello, he insisted the conditions were not good for travel and they must stay close to the palace, subjecting Elisha to another frustrating day in close quarters with the restless captain and a handful of men who had not accompanied the tribune on his latest escapade. The morning after, Rinaldo brought out a book of Petrarch’s poetry, expounding on the poet’s devotion to the cause of Rome, then regaled Elisha with readings, poems of love, and heartfelt tributes to the glories of the past.

  Elisha had already heard far too much when he decided to simply cut in to the next break as the captain searched for a page. “Look, do we need to wait for Father Uccello in order to visit the other churches?”

  Rinaldo gave a jerk as if Elisha had struck him. “No, no, it’s not that. San Giovanni belongs to the Colonna, and they do not care for you. As for the other, Santa Maria Maggiore has no archpriest just now—”

  “Doesn’t that mean you can simply get the key? Or are the streets still unsafe today?” He had been aware of shouting earlier, but no more than the usual riots.

  “You would not wish to go without the stories of the saints and all of the relics. There is only so much I can tell you.”

  “Didn’t Father Uccello return yesterday, when you sent the soldiers?” But the priest had not come to any of the communal meals. Was he that dismayed by Elisha’s sorcery?

  “Yes, of course, but he is indisposed.” Rinaldo gripped the poetry book against his chest. “But we could find another priest, perhaps. Shall I make inquiries?”

  Elisha pushed off the bench where he had sat through the poetry reading, extending his senses, concentrating on the agitated captain. “You’ve been with me all morning, since breakfast, how do you know Father Uccello is busy?”

  Rinaldo’s presence rang with righteousness, deception, and fear. “There is council business, of course, things he has not been addressing since he has been touring with you.”

  “Cola rode out on Thursday. He’s not even here to meet with the council.”

  Rinaldo lost all attempt at a smile. “There are many kinds of business.”

  With a swift hand, Elisha snatched away the book and seized Rinaldo’s shoulder. “What business?”

  Rinaldo ducked his head, a vein leaping at his throat. “There was a monk found dead after we visited San Paolo. He had a wife, and she says that some things were stolen, some relics which he always carried. A monk with a wife! Imagine it.” Rinaldo gave a high-pitched chuckle. “When the Holy Father returns—”

  Cold washed over Elisha, his skin prickling. He thought the mancers would shred the monk’s body for talismans: Instead, Vertuollo had it returned to the monastery. “Why haven’t we heard about this death before now?”

  “The body was not found right away, and of course, the monks must first speak with the Colonna, who are their patrons. It has taken some time before this matter came to the attention of the tribune. He must stand for justice, do you see? When he is asked by the Colonna to arrest an Orsini, well, he must be sure of the truth, and so far he has had no answers. Questions must be asked, they must be answered, but—” Rinaldo silenced himself before he said more.

  Il Silencio—“He’s arrested Father Uccello?”

  “We must be seen to be even-handed, do you see?” Rinaldo shoved against Elisha, breaking free of his grip. “We are blamed for persecuting the Colonna, and they say we would allow an Orsini to escape even murder—but it is not true!”

  “Where is he? Where are they holding him?”

  “Do not concern yourself with our justice, Dottore. You have no right to interfere.”

  “In the torture of an innocent man? Good Lord, it’s not a right, it’s a duty.”

  “How say you that he is innocent? He returned to the confessional while you and I went to visit the apostle’s tomb—he was seen by the other monks, and it was they who found the body, but only after our party had gone.” Rinaldo widened his eyes as he stared at Elisha. “This is how we know it was not you, Dottore. If Uccello had found the body, he would have reported it—unless he killed the man himself.”

  Elisha’s chest tightened. If he confessed to the killing, his mission was through, whether by his own arrest, or his identification by the mancers. And if he did not? Never had the struggle between body and soul, between world and spirit, felt so acute. “Where is he held?”

  “It is a matter for Rome, for the tribune.”

  “Father Uccello promised me a penance, and he has not given it.” Elisha stared down the other man, projecting his anger, if not the reason behind it. “If you don’t let me see him, you stand between my soul and its salvation.”

  Rinaldo searched his face and finally gave a nod. “Very well, Dottore, for the sake of your soul.”

  Chapter 37

  As they hurried through the palace corridors and outside, down to the prison in the depths of the hill, Elisha considered he should be grateful they had not simply hanged the priest out of hand. But then, if the priest were already dead, Elisha need not face his choice. That thought, rising unbidden, brought bile to the back of his throat as Rinaldo explained their way past the soldiers and inside.

  The walls echoed with layers of pain, and Elisha winced as he entered their shadow. Low voices emerged from the gloom beyond the pools of feeble light from the few windows, and they came into a tall room decked with chains and smelling of vomit and urine and blood, together the distinctive scent of men’s despair. Shades of those who died here lingered in manacles on the walls or on the machines of torture, their translucent forms caught in distorted postures that no undamaged body could attain. To one side, a half-dozen men clustered around a long, low table: a priest with a rich cassock, a man in Colonna livery and another in Orsini, a few men in the tribune’s tabards of blue, one of whom held a slate poised for writing. Chains wrapped from a windlass to a man’s feet, blood oozing beneath the shackles, the rest of him concealed by the crowd.

  “No, he’s not dead,” said one man in Italian, prodding the prisoner with a long needle. “A man cannot die on the rack, not really. The heart requires greater trauma to cease. You see? He shows pain.”

  “Wake him, then,” ordered the man with the slate. “The tribune needs the truth.”

  The slap of flesh on flesh resounded as Elisha pushed his way among them, catching the hand that struck the priest before it could land a second blow. Already, a trickle of blood marked Father Uccello’s lips, his head limply resting against his grotesquely stretched arm. His broken fingers curled against his bloody palms, and one ear had been cut from his head.

  “Ah,” said the man as he pulled his arm from Elisha’s grasp, “this must be the foreigner who claims he is a doctor.” Italian again, meaning that Elisha was not meant to understand him.

  By the long robe and kit of supplies the fellow carried, he was, indeed, a doctor himself. Elisha’s jaw clenched. The insult sent him straight back to the days of his barbering in London, when the physicians and surgeons sneered at him even as he did their dirty bidding. In English he said, quietly, “May your penis rot and drown you in your own piss.”

  The other doctor frowned at him. “What does he say? Who here speaks German?” but from the table of the rack came a single, sharp exhalation, the ghost of Father Uccello’s laugh.

  The priest’s face ran with sweat, his scarred eye toward the side where his tormentors clustered, forcing him to twist his neck if he would see them at all, but making the blood from his missing ear flow down into his eye and mouth.

  The others parted for Elisha as he circled th
e top of the rack, the torturer glowering at him through his hood, his hand on the windlass though he did not crank it.

  “Father.” Elisha lightly touched the priest’s cheek. The hazel eye fluttered open, but his face twitched away.

  “Please don’t touch me,” he breathed, and only Elisha’s magical awareness caught the words, so quiet, and so damning.

  Elisha withdrew his hand. By now, Rinaldo had joined them, bowing, apologizing, explaining about the penance owed. Elisha’s muscles drew ever tighter. Across the way, the young priest in his stiff, gold-embellished chasuble listened gravely, and said, in accented Italian, “Indeed, if the confession was interrupted, as you say, that could have some consequence for both men’s souls.”

  The torturer and the doctor shared a look as if to dismiss anything the priest might say, but the tribune’s magistrate gave a sigh. “It is the tribune’s great wish that the Holy Father shall return to Rome, that is why these things must be carried out with such care.”

  “We did not turn his body over to your justice so that his soul might be at risk,” said the young priest. He reached beneath his chasuble to produce a purple stole, likewise edged in gold. “We should allow the sacrament to be completed.”

  “But if the priest is a murderer, does that not bode ill for the soul of the foreigner?” asked a portly fellow who wore the badge of the Colonna.

  “He is no murderer, nor thief, but a man of God!” A tall man, brightly emblazoned with red and white Orsini stripes, loomed over the Colonna representative. “Your philandering monk earned the doom of the Lord for his iniquities—no doubt the relics missing were translated back to their saints to preserve them from such venial men.”

  “A theft has occurred and a man has died—”

  “While the tribune is away to make his righteous battle, I am the arbiter of justice,” the magistrate insisted.

  Elisha ignored their squabble, drawing inward, sinking to his knees by Father Uccello’s strained right arm. He clasped his own hands together to keep from strangling the mad combatants or clapping their heads together with the force they deserved. “Leave me to my confession—I beg of you,” Elisha said in German, his voice firm. The arguing men faltered, glancing his way as Rinaldo repeated the request in Italian.

  Colonna man clearly, understood his words without translation, bristling at the request, but the Orsini representative made a gracious bow of his head. “Dottore, come to San Pietro when this terrible business is done and help us to mourn for our lost cousin.”

  As if Father Uccello were already dead. If Elisha could help it, he would not die. And yet . . . Elisha’s eyes burned. He could stop it all right now, simply by claiming the murder and producing some stolen relics as evidence. He could condemn himself instead, cutting short his mission and damning the city of Rome and all the pilgrims who would come there to terror, torture and death.

  “Our churches are open to you, Dottore,” the Colonna man barked in German, “as to any representative of our noble emperor. Truly, you should have come to us immediately, for our longstanding friendships with the North.”

  Raising his hand in a gesture for silence, the young priest said, “Who receives entrance to San Giovanni is up to me, my lord.” He let his gaze trace Elisha’s face and figure, then reached out the purple stole and coiled it on Father Uccello’s skinny, bare chest. “But if your penance should demand it, then you may come.” He tucked his hands beneath the chasuble and retreated carefully, aiming a dark-eyed glance at each of the others until they accompanied him across the chamber. At the back of the group, Rinaldo herded them onward, leaving Elisha alone with the man he had condemned to die.

  “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” Elisha’s voice trembled as he spoke, and he squeezed his eyes shut. Over the tortured form of the priest, the warring families had given him just what he needed: access to the sealed churches. That knowledge rested like a blade that cut his heart with every beat. To earn the lives of thousands, of all of those pilgrims who would follow, Uccello would die. Perhaps that was the Christian way.

  Again, that short, sharp breath as if of laughter. “My son,” the priest whispered, “there has never been such a sinner as you.”

  Father Uccello’s eye blinked fiercely as a trickle of stinging sweat edged among his lashes. Elisha reached out to wipe it, but the priest said, “Please, don’t.”

  Once more, Elisha drew back his hand, slowly, pained by the effort to restrain his instinct.

  “A liar you are, but indeed a healer. No other man would be so willing to touch.” He took a slightly deeper breath, the purple cloth rising and hitching downward. “When they bind a man like this, they take from him the most intimate freedom. They chose when to touch, with what, how often, and how hard.”

  Images seared through Elisha’s memory: his own arms pinioned as a surgeon burned him repeatedly for answers he could not give; Katherine’s daughter, bound, slaughtered, and flayed; Thomas, finally freed from his chains, but struck with terror at Elisha’s touch. Since Elisha witnessed the death of his first witch, and the more so since he discovered the sorcery within himself, he had dedicated his hands to healing, and now the priest denied him.

  Father Uccello sighed, “None but my mother ever touched me in the name of love.”

  “Father,” Elisha began, but what could he say? The one thing that must be said—that Elisha himself was guilty—must not be spoken.

  “You wish a penance from me? You would reform yourself, witch? But I have not the strength nor freedom to burn away the devil’s mark.” He tried to wet his cracked lips, to no avail. “It was my mother who burned it from me, and gave me up to God, so the Devil would not find me. I wish to God that I could do the same for you.”

  The old scar stretched against the priest’s lean face. Elisha swallowed hard. “Your eye?”

  “Was once as blue as yours, witch.”

  “Yes, I am a witch,” Elisha whispered forcefully, “as was the monk who died. If he and his allies succeed, they will turn this city into one of the pits of Hell.”

  “And you and your allies would not?” A breath of a laugh.

  “Magic is not of the Devil, Father, it is of the flesh, born in a man like the color of his hair.”

  “Or the color of his eyes.” Father Uccello’s remaining eye flashed open. “More lies. If what you say were true, then my life has been for naught.”

  Mutilated and made a priest by his mother’s superstition. Elisha’s own mother once believed much the same. Softly, Elisha answered, “Then believe that I am evil—it is near enough the truth. You could condemn me with a word.”

  “And break the Holy Sacrament? Is this the temptation your master sends for me? No, I will not do it—not even to cast out a witch.”

  “I can take away the pain,” Elisha said, aware that this, too, would seem a temptation, but he could not hold back.

  Father Uccello let out an angry snort. “Touch me not with your foul spells.” His eye slid shut, the purple stole rising and falling upon his fragile chest.

  Elisha bowed his head, his forehead resting on his knotted hands, and tried to think of some way out of this. The priest would die for Elisha’s secrets rather than to break the sacrament, and if Elisha revealed himself, his quest to stop the mancers would fail, for the sake of this one man. How many, then, would break and bleed and suffer? Elisha’s every muscle ached, paralyzed with the choice that he must make.

  Across the room, the voices of the tormentors rose a little louder, and Elisha raised his head at last. He pushed himself stiffly up and gathered the silken stole into his rough hands. If Father Uccello noticed the loss, he made no sign. The young priest of San Giovanni did, however, tipping his chin up in inquiry, and Elisha gave a nod, drawing them back. Over the rack, he said, “If a doctor must be present, let it be me.”

  With a mournful face, Rinaldo translated his words, and
the Italian doctor snorted, shaking his head. “Very well. I have living patients to attend to in any case.” He turned abruptly and left.

  The others resumed their places, the hooded torturer by the windlass, the tribune’s official with his tablet poised in case the priest should speak, the representatives of the warring houses glaring at each other with the buffer of the younger priest between. “I am Pierre Roger,” the young priest said in his accented Latin, “Archpriest of San Giovanni. I can see you are a merciful man. Father Uccello is blessed to have you to oversee his trial.”

  Trial? Is that what they called this? He wished he could be merciful, taking away Father Uccello’s pain, or even his wretched life, with a touch. “Thank you, Father,” he managed, barely restraining his anger, or his despair.

  The tribune’s man tapped his stylus on his slate, and spoke in a tone that verged on boredom. “So, Uccello Orsini, did you kill the monk, Brother Tigo?”

  When the priest said nothing, the official gave a slight nod. The torturer turned his windlass barely an inch, and the prisoner’s arms stretched with the crackling sound of torn cartilage.

  Elisha winced, stifling a cry on behalf of Il Silencio. If Elisha would face these next few hours, he must not feel. He drew up the strength of Death, the chill that rose within him, flesh and bone. In his old practice, when he operated on difficult cases, Elisha used to hum his mother’s songs, using the sound to focus his mind and distract himself from the pain that he must cause in surgery. Now, sorcery filled that need, smothering his feelings, detaching him from his surroundings. The first time he had done it, allowing Death to overwhelm him, he almost had not returned. Without Brigit’s touch, he might have lost himself to the dreadful silence of inhumanity. He refused to go so far again. Instead, he layered the cold carefully, building up his armor, letting himself be present, but absenting his emotions and the long years of reflexive compassion. He heard the official’s pointless questions, the creaking of chain, the tearing of muscle, without response. Count Vertuollo, the warden of the Valley, returned the monk’s corpse to the confessional for this, to frame Father Uccello and ensure that he would never reveal Elisha’s secrets. It was a gift, from one sensitive to another, and it sickened Elisha to accept.