Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  Only a few months ago he had been the student to Brigit’s secret tutoring. Sorcery he learned from Brigit, before moving on to desire, deceit, betrayal, and a hundred other lessons painful to recall. Lessons he seemed to have taken too well to heart.

  When the prisoner’s arms gave way, his neck at first arching, then allowing his head to loll to the side, Elisha lay his fingers gently at the man’s throat, confirming that his heart beat still, and withdrew them promptly, noting Father Uccello’s twinge at even that careful touch, but noting it as a symptom, with no need for his own response.

  “The trouble is, he’s been racked before,” said the Colonna man.

  “We started with his fingers, and the ear, and that gave no result,” the magistrate pointed out.

  “He may simply no longer possess the power of speech, in which case, there can be no confession. Perhaps you should try with the boot?”

  “Mmm.” The official swept his glance over their victim, and gave a Roman shrug. “I think you are right about the rack.” He waved his hand to the torturer, who released the windlass, letting the malformed body contract as much as it was able, then grabbed one broken hand, pulling it closer to unclasp the manacle.

  Elisha placed his hand on the torturer’s muscular arm. “I’ll do it.” The torturer twitched at the chill touch of his hand, but let him take over.

  To his patient, Elisha said, “I must touch you, Father. Please forgive me.” With minimal contact, Elisha moved to each limb in turn and freed the catches, sliding the manacles from the ruined flesh with precision.

  Without healing, and without feeling the pain that must throb in the prisoner’s body, Elisha gently brought the priest’s arms down to rest across his body, his battered hands cradled on his own yielding flesh. Then Elisha swept off his cloak, and draped it like a blanket over the trembling man. Father Uccello’s eye barely opened, his lips parted, but he did not say a word. The golden pin of the sacrificial ram gleamed in the torchlight.

  “Father Uccello never shall yield,” said the Orsini man. “He is famous for his fortitude.”

  “What do you suggest, then? He should be freed? He should merely lie in prison while our retainers have swung from the scaffold?” The Colonna man waved his crimson arms.

  While they argued, Elisha found a clean basin of water and a rag. He soaked the cloth, then brought it back, laying the corner in Father Uccello’s mouth so that he could suck a few drops of moisture.

  “Bene! Hang him now!” The Orsini man shouted.

  “Now? But there is no crowd to witness his perfidy.”

  The tribune’s official watched Elisha move about the prisoner, taking each tiny action to ease his flesh, if he could not ease the priest’s spirit. Rinaldo, who had spent much of the time pacing some way off, approached and murmured with the magistrate, gesturing to Father Uccello’s covered form.

  Straightening, rubbing his back, Elisha pierced his armor just enough to apply his magical senses to listening.

  “—appease the Colonna,” Rinaldo was saying, “we must hang him. The tribune will understand this when he returns. If we wait and announce the execution, the citizens who attend will see what has been done in the name of justice. They may not understand, especially without the tribune to explain.”

  The two men stared down at the tortured man, then the magistrate nodded. “I do not believe we must continue this trial any longer. Four brothers of the San Paolo abbey testified that Uccello Orsini was the last to see the dead man alive, and who but another cleric would know to search for his relics?” He stood firmly and announced, “I find Uccello Orsini guilty as charged, sentenced to be hanged, sentence to be carried out immediately.” To the torturer, he said, “Have you a rope?”

  “Si, Signore. Already waiting.” Tossing aside Elisha’s cloak, the torturer bent to gather up the prisoner. “On your feet!”

  Father Uccello’s chest rose and fell with a short, sharp breath, his cheeks hinting at his ironic smile.

  Once more, Elisha intercepted the torturer. “Lead the way. I will bring him.”

  “Get him up, then.” The torturer stepped back, pointedly waiting.

  Still, Elisha took a moment to replace his cloak about his shoulders, pushing it back to keep his arms free. He knelt at the side of the bloody table, meeting the gaze of that single eye. He reached out and gathered Father Uccello in his arms. “You wished me never to touch you,” he murmured, “and yet someone must. Maybe you would prefer their brutality, but I cannot abide it.”

  As if these words broke open the seal of memory, Uccello’s awareness drifted back, and Elisha’s acute focus on his patient, along with the close contact, carried the memory into Elisha’s flesh more vividly than anything but a witch’s sending had ever done. In the vision they shared, Uccello lay again upon the rack, his flesh stronger, younger—just as shattered—while voices rose around him.

  “This gains us nothing.” Emperor Ludwig, his dour face framed by hair more black than gray, loomed into Uccello’s half-sight. “He won’t support us, not me, nor my pope. And he’s only one.”

  “As you say—he is only one. Others might,” an urbane voice answering, with a different accent. Not German, not Italian. Uccello turned his head weakly. “He should not see me,” the man barked. “I should not even have come here.”

  “Von Stubben, hold him,” Ludwig snapped.

  The doctor caught the priest’s jaw and forced him to look the other way, his good eye pressed against his imprisoned arm, but not before Elisha glimpsed the stranger who had spoken, a man with a florid face and liver-spotted tonsure, clad in the robe of a bishop.

  “Too many kings still oppose us, and we cannot dominate the Church this way, with a foreign pope and a campaign of torture,” Ludwig continued. “Why did I ever listen to you?”

  “Because we gave you ascendance over your rivals,” said the other man, very carefully. “Because without us, you are merely the Duke of Bavaria, and barely that. If the other rulers will not accede, then we will replace them with those more tractable, and we will find another way to bring the Church to heel.”

  “You never will, Renart. I haven’t, none of my predecessors have.”

  “None of your predecessors had the Chosen to support him.” A cold, hard voice. Renart the mancer, the master of France.

  Ludwig gave an exasperated sigh. “If you would topple the Church, you’ll need more than a pope—you’ll need a miracle of Biblical proportions,” he added with a harsh chuckle.

  The words reminded Elisha of the rabbi of Heidelberg, pointing out the power of the Church, suggesting how great an effort would be required to overcome it.

  “Your Majesty,” von Stubben ventured. “Shall I bring back the torturer or the executioner to finish him?” His hand still pressed Uccello’s face down, just as he had, more recently, smothered a baby with that very hand. His other hand roved over the priest’s scarred eye socket, tracing the bone, pressing at the center, pressing again, harder. “I should welcome the chance to open up a scar like this, for a better understanding of the healing of such a wound.” He clutched the priest’s head in his hands with a hideous greed.

  Elisha burned with Uccello’s silent fear, but at least he knew that the foul doctor was dead. Harald had killed von Stubben too kindly.

  “No—let him go. Let him serve as an example of imperial power every day he lives and breathes. There’s an army approaching, and I must withdraw. Thank you for coming, Renart, but I’m afraid we’re done here.” Footfalls pounded away, receding as Ludwig departed.

  Other footfalls drew nearer, and Uccello’s battered body tensed. “Biblical proportions,” Renart muttered softly.

  “Your Grace?” von Stubben said. “What is your will?”

  “You heard the emperor,” said Renart. “Let him live.”

  “I heard him, Your Grace, but I know whom I serve.”
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  “Good man, von Stubben. See you keep it that way.” Renart’s hand, stinging with cold, settled on Uccello’s bound ankle. “Another man, I might have to cut out his tongue, but you,” Renart’s voice sank low, into the flesh, “you won’t say a word, will you? You know how to keep silent.”

  His fingers traced along Uccello’s leg, up and up, feeling the pulse jump at the inner thigh. “Oh, but you would be so delicious to take.”

  Uccello’s memory gave the words a sexual cast, his stomach roiling with terror, but Elisha knew better. Renart’s hand followed the line from the priest’s belly, taut with fear, to his sternum, to his throat, to the tip of his chin, the line Renart’s flensing blade would follow if he sliced open the priest and peeled off his skin. Where the mancer’s fingers moved, the priest’s flesh flared with cold as if he had, indeed, cut deep. The mancer’s presence swelled with a sick pleasure at Uccello’s response.

  No wonder the priest fought against sorcery. No wonder he fled Elisha’s touch. As he carried the priest up the stairs in procession, Elisha’s armor sank away, warming his arms, allowing Father Uccello to feel the beat of his heart, using his strength to banish memory.

  “You are a very devil of compassion,” said Father Uccello, in words that Elisha knew only through the contact they shared. The priest channeled the last of his strength into his neck, refusing himself the comfort of resting his head against Elisha’s shoulder.

  Long rays of sun stretched their shadows upward, Elisha’s form tall and dark, the priest’s dangling feet drawing downward, the Pieta in silhouette—except Mary bore her son down from the cross, while Elisha carried Father Uccello to his death. They mounted the steps to the gallows, a scant few workers ceasing their tasks to turn and see, the mancer workman among them, gazing with hunger. Elisha stopped at the edge, and carefully let down Father Uccello’s legs, his feet settling on the wood, though Elisha still supported the his weight as the executioner prepared the rope.

  Brilliant sun gleamed in Elisha’s eyes as he waited, embracing the man his own silence condemned to death. Tears burned, but he did not let them fall, though his blinking increased, and he tried to blame it on the sun. The priest’s heart beat steadily—his legendary fortitude maintaining him—but his presence fragmented into spirals of fear, pain, weakness, worry, everything he worked so hard to keep from revealing with his keen wit and powerful faith. Elisha wished the priest had been a magus: he would have given much for such an ally.

  Wood creaked as the executioner approached. He dropped the noose over the priest’s head, tightening it against his throat. Elisha’s heart raced. At his own execution, he had been convinced of rescue, not resigned to death by his own virtue.

  “Shhhhh,” breathed Father Uccello, and Elisha met his eye. Golden hazel, damp with pain, the priest blinked back at him, then he bowed his head to Elisha’s shoulder. With his final words, the priest released resentment, even letting go the fear that Elisha’s compassion was merely a temptation of the Devil.

  In a voice that echoed through Elisha, flesh and bone, Father Uccello said, “Te absolvo.”

  Chapter 38

  For a moment, he clutched Father Uccello against him, but the executioner nudged Elisha’s arm, and he had to let go and step away.

  Knees buckling as if he moved to prayer, the priest sank gracefully from the platform. Rope creaked, bone cracked. No cheers, no applause, only the voice of Father Pierre, murmuring prayers.

  Elisha stood rigid, his back to the open square, waiting. The Valley swirled open beside him, more brilliant than the glowing sunset. Father Uccello’s shade roiled outward, shedding darkness, shedding fear and pain and worry, such a singular glow that Elisha gasped as he felt it rush through him. No sense of betrayal clung to the dead man—that burden was Elisha’s alone—then all sense of Father Uccello vanished into the wild Valley, and Elisha could breathe again. Count Vertuollo’s blood marking on the pavement below shivered in Elisha’s awareness, but he would gain no power from this death. Doubtless he expected Elisha to claim it for his own.

  Immediately, the Orsini man demanded the priest’s body be cut down so they could take it for burial. The executioner, used to keeping the corpses on the beam until their example was made plain, refused, and another argument began. Ignoring them both, Elisha laid his cape upon the scaffold and reached out to the swinging corpse, catching it in a one-armed embrace, cold against his own cold breast. Now, Father Uccello had no choice but to submit to his touch. Still, Elisha handled him gently, cutting the rope high up before he laid the priest upon his cape. He removed the noose, but kept it close. The cape itself, stained with blood and tears, resonated with death and would be a fine talisman. Elisha wished he could set it aside after putting it to such service, but he might need its strength one day.

  The executioner noticed what he was doing and pounded back up the stairs to shout at him in Italian, but Elisha reached to shut the priest’s single eye and wrapped the body with regal fur.

  “Dottore,” said the sonorous voice of Father Pierre, and Elisha glanced at him, the priest’s face level with his own for he still knelt upon the platform. In his accented Latin, the young priest asked, “Is this a part of your penance?”

  Father Uccello had given him none: but his absolution in the face of Elisha’s unrepentant guilt was penance enough. “Yes, Father.”

  The young man’s dark eyes rested on him, then he gave a slight nod. “I will smooth the way.”

  “I thought you were with the Colonna.”

  His handsome face furrowed, and he shook his head. “I am with His Holiness, the Pope. The Colonna cannot dictate to us, not really. And Lord Colonna has already ridden out, which shall make things easier.”

  “Thank you.”

  Pierre inclined his head and moved on, stilling the virulence of the executioner’s words with a lift of his hand. Young, he might be, but he had the maturity of grace.

  “Here—” Rinaldo appeared on the platform, carrying a swath of white cloth and knelt at Elisha’s side. “This is better.”

  Together, they wrapped the body of Father Uccello in the white shroud, while Rinaldo muttered explanations. “The tribune regrets this, you know. We delayed as long as possible to make our inquiries. He had no alternative, faced with such a murder. And with the need to show his strength, he could not bend the law, even for a member of his council like Father Uccello—no, especially not for a member of council.” His hands worked too fast, brusque as if he tried to distract himself with extra movement. “Did Father Pierre say that the Lord Colonna has gone out?”

  “He did.” Elisha hardly needed his magical senses to note Rinaldo’s agitation in asking, or his excitement at hearing the Colonna leader had left the city.

  “Perhaps now we shall have some peace and be able to forward our plans. At least you may visit the churches, eh?” A brief flash of teeth in imitation of a smile.

  “I think Father Pierre will smooth the way there, as well.”

  “He is . . . a man of influence,” said Rinaldo ominously. “Given his parentage . . .” a shrug, then, noticing Elisha’s stare, he continued, “Rumor is that ‘Holy Father’ is more than a title to Father Pierre. Before the Pope took the name of Clement VI, he, too, was called Pierre Roger.”

  Elisha replaced his cape on his shoulders, tucking the hanging rope carefully at his back to burn it later. If Father Pierre were indeed the pope’s bastard, he wore it well; such a rumor could give a man infamy rather than influence.

  Father Pierre moved away into the city while the Orsini retainers brought up a few horses and loaded Father Uccello’s body on one of them. Elisha and Rinaldo watched the silent procession depart through the broad gates into a city grown dangerously quiet as well. Was Rome itself the target? Would springing a hundred mancers through tainted relics to terrorize the pilgrims be enough? Certes, that would subvert the very meaning of the relics, transforming
prayers from saintly to demonic intercession.

  “May we visit San Giovanni after supper?” Elisha asked, eager to finish his mission in Rome, the more so since he had shared that chilling vision with Father Uccello.

  “It is across the city, Dottore. Why not remain another night and ride there in the morning?”

  “I have spent weeks here already, without making my report to Queen Margaret. Besides, Lord Colonna thinks he controls San Giovanni, doesn’t he? With him away, it might be easier to see it now.”

  “Very well, Dottore. Let us finish our visits and return you to your queen.”

  After supper, they rode swiftly through the streets to San Giovanni where an altar boy was convinced to fetch the archpriest, in spite of the glowering presence of four armed soldiers at the entrance. If Father Pierre thought it strange they came so soon, he said nothing, but conducted them gracefully through his domain.

  Like the others, the Church of San Giovanni showed its age, as decrepit and rat-infested as the rest—the skittering of claws preceded their torchlight as they made a circuit of the church. Ahead, as if they herded the rats toward Hell, something gleamed whenever the torchlight passed between columns. When they had visited several side altars, and Elisha left his mark on two of them, they emerged from the gloom to the glory of the main altar, a marble table rising up from the scuffed paving and topped by a canopy of silver. Torchlight glittered from its rich embellishments: stones and enamels and images of saints. Dazzled, Elisha stared up at it until Father Pierre, smiling at his reaction, urged him forward, and he stepped up beneath the gleaming dome.

  “Is it not glorious in celebration of the Lord?” The priest spread his hands. “We are blessed indeed that it has escaped both fire and thievery.”