Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  Chapter 45

  Elisha crumpled to the floor, Brigit sprawled across his knees as he fought for breath, that horrible wail still filling his ears. Possibly only Vertuollo would ever have the power, the strength and the knowledge to bar the Valley against him. Elisha would have to kill him. He was damned if he knew how. Brigit’s crown of stars rocked gently near the altar and one of her slippers lay nearby.

  “Well, I do hope your wife knows something of childbirth?” Renart asked Bardolph in accented German.

  The force of Elisha’s conjuring left him panting and shivering, and Renart’s soft chuckle stung like salt against a wound.

  “Get away from her! Let her go, you monster.” Gretchen reached toward Elisha, conjuring a sharp heat to her fingertips. Elisha winced, his hand flying to his head, fingers resting in the divots where his skull still felt vulnerable to intrusion. His lungs burned, his left hand trembling and white with frost. Brigit lay with her head in his lap, her red-gold hair tossed about her. Her lips parted with a gasp, and her green eyes opened.

  “Brigit,” he breathed, the most sound he could make.

  She groaned softly, but her face showed no sign of recognition as her body clenched. Her eyes squeezed shut and slid open again, focusing through him, as if he weren’t there at all.

  Gretchen seized his shoulders with the force of her fury, but Elisha resisted. “Help me lift her.”

  “Get away,” she growled through his skin, but he could feel her holding back her power, afraid of hurting Brigit and the baby by forcing him.

  “Help me lift her.” Elisha tore his gaze from Brigit’s face to meet Gretchen’s fierce glare. “The baby’s coming.”

  “Holy Mary!” The woman hesitated, then shifted, taking Brigit’s legs while he raised her head and shoulders. “This is your fault, monster.”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” He smoothed back Brigit’s hair—still silky; Sabetha must have bathed her and washed out her hair. Dear God. Her pulse beat strongly beneath his probing touch.

  The braziers by the altar where they lay her warmed his face and hands, but fell short of heating the chill that built behind him. The door opened and three more mancers came through, muttering together. Bardolph and Renart pushed through, interposing themselves. Elisha dodged their touch, keeping the altar between him and them.

  “Do you know anything of childbirth?” Bardolph asked, catching Gretchen’s hand with a brief squeeze.

  “A little.” Dark eyes studied Elisha.

  “Just cut the bitch and take the baby,” said Renart. “We’ll have our symbol and a martyr in the bargain.” His hands hovered over Brigit’s taut, heaving abdomen, but Elisha knocked them away, a brief shock of power passing between them. The cold of the mancer’s presence shivered with streaks of eagerness.

  “You can’t just kill her, Renart,” said the stout nun. “A thousand pilgrims are out there waiting for this miracle.”

  “We’ll blame it on the dragon, Revelations, end times—isn’t that what you’ve been telling them?” Renart pushed back his sleeves and found a knife.

  “No.” Elisha dragged up what strength he had, focusing it into his hand, ready for the fight. If the mancers got their hands on the child, all was lost: Vertuollo would let them take the baby anywhere, and Elisha could not follow.

  “Leave her alone!” Gretchen’s heat flowed now, a shock in the room full of mancers. “Don’t touch her.”

  “You must control your wife, Bardolph.” Renart grabbed Brigit’s skirts and yanked them upward, baring her belly, letting the cloth tumble over her face.

  Elisha snatched the knife before it descended. The blade bit his hand and blood oozed from his palm. He bent his will to its destruction, but the blade had been tempered in torture, and his heart lurched.

  “You don’t know the queen, Renart,” Bardolph stammered at last, apparently becoming aware of the difficult place he’d made for himself. “If she wakes, she’s very powerful. At least, we have to try.”

  “Bardolph!” Gretchen cleared the layers of linen and golden cloth back from Brigit’s face, but left her legs free. “Of course we do.”

  “You need to initiate her, Bardolph. It should’ve been done months ago.” But Renart’s narrowed gaze remained on Elisha’s face, his strength pushing back, pain shooting up Elisha’s arm, doubled by the memories of torture the blade contained. “What better time than now? What better blood?”

  “Help me, Bardolph.” At the end of the altar, Gretchen bent Brigit’s knees, propping her feet, and set a trembling hand on the round belly.

  Elisha’s fist clenched around the blade, his arm trembling. “Would you let them cut her open?”

  Bardolph touched Renart’s wrist lightly. Though the touch was focused and direct, Elisha’s raw state left him open, his senses flung wide, and he felt the words as Bardolph spoke. “He knows her as we do not, Renart. If she dies now, even by your hand, he wins; her essence will go to him.”

  “He has already lost,” sent the other mancer, but he drew back, and Elisha released the blade. “Let him aid—if anything goes wrong, we’ll have him to blame.”

  “No,” Gretchen insisted. “He’s the one who made her like this.” She moved to block Elisha’s hand, and he sent her his urgency.

  “Fraulein, it is my child.”

  She thrust up her chin, then relented, but her power still pulsed just beneath the surface.

  “If you’re so worried, girl, take his talismans.” Renart examined his knife, edged with Elisha’s blood, and its gleaming blade reflected his smile.

  Heart and breathing still uneven, Elisha held out his arms as Gretchen searched him, her probing senses stroking over his skin. She took his medical kit and tossed it aside, along with all it contained. His jaw clenched as she found one after another of his hiding places. The relics of Rome, cold with death and sharp with pain, she found easily, discarding them into the brazier with a shudder of revulsion. His letters followed, Thomas’s, Jacob’s and the rabbi’s words curling into smoke, the nail trimmings of Saint Lucia went to the floor, Thomas’s ring she wriggled from his finger and set aside. All the while, Brigit groaned, a low, inhuman sound devoid of the emotion it should carry. All the while, Renart blew cold breaths along the blade of his knife, over Elisha’s blood. Elisha exchanged his own life for that of the child—once the birth was over, they’d have no more use for him.

  From Elisha’s boot, Gretchen pulled the little pouch containing Queen Margaret’s shard of the True Cross, then Brigit’s belly heaved, and she gave a sharper cry. Elisha flinched.

  With a cry of her own, Gretchen startled, overbalancing, and he knelt to give her a hand. “Hurry, Fraulein. There are lives at stake.”

  She jerked her arm away and reached for his throat, pulling the cord of his pendant over his head. Still on his knees, he lunged for the dangling vial, the vial of English earth, stained with his brother’s blood. She pulled it up, leaning toward the brazier, but Elisha said, “No. Please, Fraulein. Please don’t.”

  Renart held out his hand, and she dropped the vial into his grasp. He slid it into his sleeve and Elisha winced—the mancer had seized his only way home.

  “That’s all of them,” said Gretchen.

  Elisha swallowed his fears and moved along the altar.

  As if in a dance, Gretchen gave ground, and he followed, ending with the two of them shoulder to shoulder at Brigit’s side. Elisha lay down his palm, winced as the cut stung, and forced his hand to heal, though he trembled with the effort. Defending them against Vertuollo’s assault—even with Sabetha’s sacrifice—and then facing Renart had left him weak. Knowing that he could not conjure from the Valley left him shaky and exposed. Vertuollo had to be expelled, but first he must attend to Brigit and the child she carried. Again, he pressed his hands against her, feeling the shape of the baby, feeling the rush of relief to know it ha
d dropped, its head already in position. Brigit’s body lurched beneath his touch and she groaned.

  Gretchen gave a sob, her face nearly as pale as Brigit’s.

  “We’ll need warm water and cloths to clean and wrap the baby,” Elisha told her softly.

  “Water,” she repeated, too sharply, then shook herself, relaxing her hands.

  “We’ve holy water right here,” said one of the onlookers, holding up a large jug.

  “The Lord shall—” the nun began, but Renart cut her off.

  “You wanted a miracle—of course we’ll use the holy water.” He waved for the jug to be brought up, and leaned closer himself, his hair brushing Elisha’s as they examined Brigit.

  “Stay back and let us work,” Elisha said, his muscles already quivering with tension.

  “Yes, very well. Bardolph, you, too.” Renart gestured to the other, withdrawing a few short paces.

  Gretchen accepted the jug, cradling it against her and setting it down by her feet, steam already rising from the mouth of the jug as she channeled her nervous strength into the small sorcery of heating the water.

  Moving down beside her, his hands resting on Brigit’s knees, Elisha thought of his first lessons in witchcraft. It was hard to force the body to something unnatural, but easy to encourage it to what it was made for. Healing. Dying. Giving birth.

  He knelt, checking to confirm that Brigit’s body was ready for this. “Send her comfort, Fraulein, and encourage her to push.”

  “Are you sure?” Her hands fluttered over the other woman, not settling, but Elisha reached up and caught her wrist, guiding her hand down to rest on Brigit’s abdomen, just above the womb.

  “Yes, I’m sure.” For a moment, their eyes met. “Your body, too, knows life. Share that knowledge—rejoice in it—and it will help her to relax.”

  “What about Queen Margaret’s child?”

  He snatched back his hand, the reminder chilling him. “I wasn’t there in time to prevent that.” A trickle of blood started and he called for a cloth, but the mancers, the dealers in death, only briefly fell silent, glancing from one to another, then to Renart and Bardolph.

  “I suppose one of the peasants might offer something,” said Bardolph.

  With a growl, Elisha stripped off his own tunic to staunch the flow. Already, the baby’s head crested, the heat of its life and its urgent need warming his careful fingers.

  “Push!” Elisha cried.

  Gretchen and Brigit wailed as if with one voice, sweat and tears streaking Gretchen’s face. The moments stretched, the baby’s head appearing amidst the blood as Gretchen entwined her strength ever more closely to Brigit’s form, encouraging her from within. The room grew hot around them. Elisha braced Brigit’s feet, memories flashing through him. He had been a prisoner, bound and waiting to die, when she came and offered herself. No, not offered: She came and took what she wanted. Something like this had always been her plan: that Elisha’s death should make a talisman of his child’s birth. And they would never let him live. How would they kill him? Avalanche? That would smother him and force him to spend his strength fighting for breath and hope. Cut off his head? Or would he live long enough to work some spell against them? But what spell could he work without the Valley, and without killing the hundreds gathered outside?

  The mancers wanted this child as their symbol, a living talisman to bind those witnesses together, the thousands who would hear the tale from them, a miraculous birth they could manipulate to their own ends, a mancer-child baptized in its father’s blood. New life, born to the service of those who celebrated death, lifted from the hands of a dead man. The talismans of death were powerful indeed, reflecting the horror of the dying, giving strength to those who forged them. But in spite of his murders, his cold, his betrayals, he was no mancer, enslaved to slaughter. Even now, with the threats that hedged around him, his hands guiding a child into the world felt more natural than any action he had taken since he left England.

  Death and birth: two ends of the same strand. Opposites. No wonder Brigit’s body resisted passage into the Valley—even in her twilight state, her body held too much life to pass easily through that place of shadow. Brigit’s laughing voice echoed in his memory, his first lessons, the most basic laws that governed the use of the power he knew. Knowledge and Mystery, themselves representing the Doctrine of Opposites. “You defend the border of life and death, and your choice at any moment might tip the balance,” she had told him, the first night he had glimpsed the full power of Death. Elisha opened himself to the knowledge, to the mystery, to the pain that rang in Brigit’s body and the hope that blossomed in his own. With every strength he’d ever employed on behalf of a patient to fend off death, he gathered to himself the tools of life.

  Brigit gave a wet convulsion and the child slid into Elisha’s hands. Power flooded his body, a charge of light and wonder. Heat washed through him, springtime in the winter indeed. Elisha’s head shot up and he drew the rush, channeling that torrent through his flesh and blood—and his blood along the edge of Renart’s knife blazed with the sudden heat, shattering the mancer’s cold blade.

  “Now! Take him now!” Renart shouted, though his voice trembled with surprise.

  Bardolph leapt around the table, knife drawn, but Elisha’s spell was not yet spent.

  The blood that marked Brigit’s bare skin transformed her cry of pain into a gasp, a word, almost a name. The blood that fell upon the floor gave a heave and cracked the wood, and still the power swelled and rolled along the paths that he had chosen. The ground shook, and the Valley tore open at his heart as every relic in Rome marked by Elisha’s hair, gave a spasm of life’s power that death could not deny. The Valley swelled through him, connected to his every sign of life, rebounding against the will of the warden who tried to bar Elisha’s way. Vertuollo knew Death, but this was a tide beyond his reckoning.

  Count Vertuollo’s shriek of fury stunned Elisha’s ears with a blast of cold as the churches of Rome shuddered and broke. The warden had bound himself so tightly to his purpose that Elisha’s strength exploded against him and all that he held so close. The chamber pitched and rocked, a roiling clash of magic that shattered earth all the way to Rome itself, tearing free the tainted relics and crushing them to dust.

  At his side, Bardolph stumbled, his arm smacking the altar. Elisha fell back, clutching the child against him. His other hand found the floor to keep them from hitting too hard. The warmth of Thomas’s ring pressed into his palm. Bardolph charged down at him, bent upon his death.

  Gripping the ring, Elisha swung his arm up to block the mancer’s blade. Somewhere behind him, Gretchen shouted.

  For an instant, Bardolph was caught once more between them, hesitating, and Elisha seized the knife from his hand. A swift cut severed the umbilical cord, the hilt of the blade pressing the ring into his palm. Then, as the world cracked and broke around them, Elisha focused on Thomas. In a blaze of Life, he conjured himself and his baby away.

  Chapter 46

  Elisha stumbled on a familiar smooth-tiled floor lit by the glow of stained glass from peaked windows that framed a small altar. The king’s chapel in his quarters at the Tower. And the king himself knelt there, hands pressed together in prayer, eyes flashing open, then shut with a tiny shake of his head, then open again, bright blue and staring.

  Elisha stared back, his son cradled close in his arms, his heart thundering, a bloody knife still gripped in his hand. Suddenly aware of what a terrible picture he presented, Elisha shook free the blade, letting it clatter to the floor.

  With the sleeve of his tunic, he wiped the baby’s face, staring down into his deep eyes, the infant brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of the huge new world. The exhilaration of victory washed Elisha’s skin and he grinned for a moment, but the grin soon faded. He left a world in turmoil, innocents dying, mancers waiting to claim their lives. He could not simply lea
ve that place behind—nor could he return there with a child.

  “It’s you,” Thomas breathed at last, then he rose and clasped Elisha’s shoulders, the heat of his grip stunning after so many days of cold.

  “Thomas.” Elisha drew a shuddering breath.

  “Your Majesty?” Pernel’s voice preceded his entrance, starting to bow, then stopping completely.

  Giving the servant a brief smile, Elisha said, “The queen is delivered of a son.”

  “We’ll need blankets, water, and a doctor,” Thomas ordered, and Pernel managed another bow before he rushed from the chapel.

  Thomas cupped Elisha’s cheek with his hand. “When we heard about the Isle of Wight, and Mordecai—my God, Elisha, what else have I prayed for than that they did not find you, too.” His eyes searched Elisha’s face, then glanced down again to the baby, a smile lighting his features. “He’s beautiful. Brand new.”

  Elisha nodded quickly. “He’ll need a wet-nurse—ask Helena. If she can’t, she’ll know someone.”

  “You speak as if you are not staying?”

  Elisha shook his head. “I can’t—not yet. I’ll try to return as soon as I can. This,” his throat worked as he looked down at his son. “Not yet,” he said again, very softly.

  Thomas’s hands shifted, bringing them to lean over the baby, their heads resting gently together. “Then I will go on praying.”

  “I have to go,” Elisha murmured. “Brigit is waking.”

  “Dear God. Will you be all right?”

  “This gives me strength. As do you.” Elisha drew himself away from the king’s warmth. Thomas reached out for the child, but Elisha couldn’t move for a long moment. The baby’s heart thundered against his own breast. Life where, for so long, he had harbored only death.

  Gently, Thomas said, “He will have the finest of care.”

  Taking a deep breath, Elisha placed his child into the arms of his friend. He withdrew two paces, and retrieved Bardolph’s knife. He would need it where he was bound.