“See!” Thomas cried, pointing. “See how he trembles at the very thought of it! Pain, hanging, cutting—all of that, he can withstand, for he has suffered such punishments before, but this is a thing no sane man can face.”
Every eye in the courtroom was on Elisha, then the king.
“It’s hardly customary, Your Majesty,” remarked the other bishop, a tall man with a long face.
“True, true,” the elder bishop replied, “but the king has spoken eloquently of his reason, and the prisoner does appear, at last, to have the fear of God upon him. If it is deemed vital to display his remains, he may always be exhumed at a later date.”
“So you would submit to this whim? And what would the lords?”
“It’s a travesty,” snapped the Earl of Blackmere. “From beginning to brutal end, and you all know it.” He surged from his seat with a swirl of his brocaded cloak, his left arm still held close and stiff.
At his side, Duke Randall said, “Phillip, please sit. You know it’ll get no better.” He gestured toward the vacated chair. “If it will satisfy the debt you think you owe, then His Majesty may see fit to make you jailor, that the prisoner’s stay here be as brief and merciful as may be.”
The Earl hesitated, dropping his gaze when he caught Elisha’s eye. His shoulders slumped with a flutter of silk, and he sat again, heavily, taking back his arm from the duke’s gentle grasp.
Duke Randall and Thomas exchanged a brief glance, and the duke spread his hands in apology. “Indeed, Your Majesty has spoken well. I harbor no objection.”
“He survived the hanging and came back for his revenge, didn’t he?” one of the other lords pointed out. “He can’t get out of this—not if we pile enough rocks on top.” A few in the back row shared a grim laugh. “No, Your Majesty, we’re with you.”
“Thank you, my lord Gloucester, and all of you, on behalf of my family.” With all the grace of royalty, Thomas settled into his chair.
“Do you think it possible, Your Majesty,” said Mortimer, leaning forward from his place at the back, “that he was involved with your brother’s death?”
“His grudge against my father appears to have been personal.” Thomas regarded him solemnly. “Much as I wish for justice, my lord Mortimer, I doubt the truth of my brother’s death will ever be known.”
Mortimer gave a nod, but a rumble of frustration echoed around the room until Thomas held up his palm for silence. “Please, my lords. We would all like to be certain what happened to Alaric, but the evidence is scant. Royal verderers and the soldiers of Dunbury shall finish their clearing of the New Forest, and no brigand will dare return—that shall have to suffice. Let us not delay our proceeding any longer than we must. Let our justice be swift that our enemies may fear and do us no wrong.”
Gloucester gave a cheer to that, but settled down. The herald stamped the end of his staff against the floor. “Let the king’s justice be pronounced and spread throughout the land!” This gave way to a louder cheer, and two yeoman caught Elisha’s elbows to pull him away. Again, the Earl of Blackmere sprang to his feet, looking to the king, who gave a nod that sent him jogging from his place to push through the doors with Elisha’s captors.
“Hear me now, the lot of you! There’s to be no beatings, no torture, none of that.”
“Yes, my lord,” said the yeoman warder with a short grin, a clove clasped between his teeth, but he gave Elisha a dark look. “None of that, my lord.”
“Phillip!” Duke Randall called, and the earl stopped, uncertain, and allowed them to go on without him.
As they walked, the corridors narrowed and darkened. The air grew damp, and they finally deposited Elisha in a small, stone chamber, a single slab of stone to serve him for bed, bench, and table. He suffered a moment’s hope when they unlocked the chain at his wrists, but this was only to transfer him to a longer chain fixed to a ring on the wall. One man held the single torch while the warder shoved Elisha to his knees, then took a grip of his hair—still short from his last execution—and tipped Elisha’s face toward the floor.
“Hold still, or don’t—’s up to you.” The warder pulled something from his belt and opened it not far from Elisha’s face: a razor. He imagined the warder slitting his throat, pre-empting the execution and all that they had planned. Elisha’s body went rigid, but he stretched out his senses, the one skill left him without any talisman. If he were indeed indivisi, he would need none. As it was, he hardly needed attunement to show him the warder’s disgust, but there was no murderous intent. The razor sheared along his scalp, leaving a chill, black hair scattering before him, sprinkling the ground around his lowered head.
“Do you know what it’s like to be buried alive?” said the warder conversationally. “My da was the village sexton. He had the opening of tombs from time to time.”
The blade snicked Elisha’s skin, and he winced, drawing a chuckle from the warder. “Get a fair number of people as weren’t so dead as we thought. They scrape their hands to bits, trying to get out.” He bent Elisha’s ear to draw the razor along one side of his head. “They break their noses and their cheeks. They batter their brains right out of their skulls, what with the dark and the knowing what’s coming. Imagine being trapped in there, the space getting closer and closer. They scream their throats bloody, but there’s nobody to hear, is there?”
Elisha’s own throat felt dry and tight, the space growing smaller with each word, quietly and precisely delivered as a nail.
“How long does a person live in the narrow box, you suppose? Couple hours, maybe? In a crypt, they last for days. Some of them get so thirsty, they start drinking their own piss. They bite off their own fingers and eat their own flesh. Was a pregnant girl once, died and laid out in the family tomb. We come back months later to lay down her brother, and we find her on the floor, her winding clothes ripped, her baby in her arms and both of them dead, huddled together like, their skin just hanging over their oozing guts.”
When he had finished shaving, he nudged Elisha’s chin back up again, admiring his handiwork. “But at least they weren’t alone.”
He met Elisha’s gaze with a grin. “Now you look the proper killer.” With his boot, he scraped the fallen locks together and kicked them into the stinking recess in one corner.
“Clear out.” The warder commanded on a breath of clove, and they all trickled away, the iron grate clanging shut behind them, secured with a giant bolt. Elisha sank down on his heels, watching the light recede down the corridor until he was left in the dark, the cold biting his knees, the smell assaulting his nostrils, alone but for the echoes of those who had been there before him, and the lingering sound of the warder’s voice.
Somewhere high above him, Thomas met with his barons, every conversation and handclasp cementing his crown. Or so Elisha made himself believe, for without that belief, all that happened would have no meaning. The image of a dead woman clinging to a dead baby hovered in his vision, haunting the darker recesses. He would not die alone, in the dark. He must believe that, too.
He had just begun to appraise his surroundings, the new chains that held him, and the grubby stones that entrapped him, when he turned to the sound of heavy treads and found a new light arriving. “Did they not even leave you the torch? I’ll have a word.” The Earl of Blackmere surveyed him with something like sadness. “The king’s got to avenge his father, I suppose, but I do wish it’d been someone else.” He wrinkled his nose.
Elisha rose and bowed. “It’s kind of you to say so, my lord.”
“Kind, nothing. Practical, more like. There’s too few good medical men these days.” Blackmere stepped closer to the grate. “There’s a visitor who’s asked to see you,” he said, almost apologetically. “By law, you’re not to have any, except the confessor who’ll be by tomorrow, but, well, there it is. I am in charge, after all.” He straightened and pushed his torch into a brace on the wall. “I’ll send him,” he said as he vanished into the gloom.
Him? Even before the visi
tor arrived, Elisha felt sure he’d guessed, and his anger grew when Martin Draper slipped back his hood and clutched the bars.
“Get out!” Elisha shouted. “You can’t be here. Did anyone see you?”
Jolted, Martin jerked away, his sharp eyes darting. “No, Elisha, no. I’m not such a fool as that.”
“By God, Martin, you should be denouncing me in every parlor down the merchant’s row.”
“If I denounced you too much, I’d only paint a worse picture for myself. Don’t be cross, Elisha.” He put his hand through the bars, and Elisha glowered at it, noticing that the usual array of jewels had been left behind. The Master of the Draper’s Guild had even deigned to wear homespun wools to conceal himself. His eyebrows pinched together, and he beckoned with that hand.
With a snort of irritation, Elisha clasped it, his chain clattering. “You have to get out of here, Martin,” he warned. “You can’t afford to be associated with me.”
“Oh, tush,” Martin replied, his inner voice clear and firm. “I’ve got to get you out of here, if I could think of a way. I even dared appeal to the magi, and I haven’t spoken to most of them in years.”
“Don’t do that.” Elisha quailed at the thought. If Martin drummed up a rescue attempt, the whole thing would fall in a shambles around his ears. Elisha had never imagined how their plan would affect his old friends.
“I tried to get a talisman I could smuggle to you, but the market in saints is off this season, and I know how you feel about hanged man’s rope, besides which they searched me on the way in.”
His agitation buzzing to the surface, Elisha fumed, “Don’t try anything, Martin. The crime is mine.”
“But you did it for the highest of reasons, Elisha! I thought Duke Randall, at least, understood that.”
“Please don’t blame the duke.” Elisha shook his head. “Every man must play at politics in this bloody kingdom.”
Martin raised a hand and touched Elisha’s scalp, his finger a trace of regret on Elisha’s skin. “This is even worse than your last haircut, Eli.”
Turning his head away, Elisha broke the contact. “Please go.”
“Something’s going on here, Eli, I can see it, even if you won’t own up to it. I thought Thomas was supposed to be the weak one, too merciful to be a good leader, but he won’t even give you a decent trial.”
“I don’t want one,” he snapped back, the pain on Martin’s face telling him all that he refused to feel. “Why drag this out? Why not get it done and over?”
“Why do you want to die?” Martin asked, his voice childlike, as if the answer mattered more than he would admit.
Elisha stared at him through the bars, and chose the truth. “Because I would like to be wrong about who I am.”
Furrowing his brow, Martin protested, “I don’t understand you, Elisha.”
“I know.” With a sigh, Elisha softened. “Isn’t that why you love me?”
Martin gave a rueful smile. “You know me too well.”
“I do,” he said, “and that is why you have to go. Now.” He came up and set his hands on the bars.
Briefly, Martin clasped his hands over Elisha’s. His dark eyes blinked back tears, then he pushed himself up on his toes and kissed him, a fleeting warmth and a breath of wine. Dropping back, shaking, Martin flipped the hood over his head and hurried away.
Letting his forehead rest on the grate, Elisha took a breath and let it out slow. He wet his lips, tasting a hint of orange and a touch of love. Come back, he wanted to say. Don’t leave me with all of your regrets. Worse yet would be Elisha’s betrayal of their friendship, if this were not his last night on earth. “Oh, God,” he groaned to Martin’s absence. In that moment, he understood polarity better than he ever had before: this absence was too thick with presence, too full of lost potential to ever seem empty.
Then he thought of Brigit. Wherever she was, in the shock of loss and mourning her prince, she would have heard the king’s decree. Would she come to see him die? When he had been about to hang, he saw so clearly her face in the rain, peeking from under her cloak, giving him the secret smile that made him believe in her; she would save him, he was convinced. Instead, she failed him, as she had failed him ever since.
Disgusted with himself, Elisha pushed away from the bars and slumped on the stone slab. Despair seeped up through the stones. The pain of men who had been tortured, and the grief of those about to die, remained trapped here, compounded year after year in the two centuries or more since the castle had been raised. He was tempted to wallow in other men’s griefs, to let himself go in favor of this emotional storm and not have to feel his own. Instead, he drew himself inside, deep and deep until he could not feel a thing, and he stayed that way until the worried Earl had him shaken from his apparent stupor and left him with his supper.
What was the point of eating? Shrugging the question aside, Elisha dug in. If Thomas and the duke wanted him well-treated, then they had chosen the best man for the job in the Earl of Blackmere. Rather than the usual prison fare, whatever that might be, the plate held a mound of parsnips in some sort of glaze with half a chicken similarly prepared. Elisha washed the meal down with the contents of a wooden bottle, which turned out to be a light mead. If all prisoners were so well-fed, more peasants would turn criminal.
When he was done, Elisha slipped back into that trance of un-being, conserving his strength for whatever would come in the morning.
Chapter 33
The day brought first a bowl of fresh berries—compliments of his keeper—and a half-loaf of filling bread. Restless with confinement and waiting, Elisha devoured it and returned to pacing. It seemed as if he had awaited this day for twenty years, ever since watching Rowena die had set him on his course. As if he had known at the back of his mind that there could be no other fate. Yesterday, he had tried to keep his hopes high, to regain that confidence he used to have—the arrogance that got him through as much trouble as it had gotten him into. Now, he tried simply to keep from screaming. His control ebbed away in nervousness until the cell once more echoed with the laments of those long dead.
On the other hand, this inadvertent awareness told him someone was approaching, and before long, he could hear shuffling steps, accompanied by others more sure. An elderly priest made his way down the hall, lurching against the wall with every second step, keeping himself on track. Beside him, a veiled nun provided escort and guidance, encouraging him with her quiet voice.
Joy surged up in Elisha as he came to greet them, a sloppy grin threatening to take over his face.
“Kneel,” the priest commanded in a gravelly voice, his eyes focused somewhere to Elisha’s left.
“Aye, Father.” Elisha did as he was told, as Sister Lucretia set down a folding stool for her ward, then knelt beside him.
“Father Jerome has come to hear your confession,” the nun announced, crossing herself. “He’s deaf as a stone and as good as blind,” she confessed in her turn, with a wavering smile. “I know you’re not much for the Church.”
“Just seeing you again does my soul good,” he told her.
Eagerly, she reached through the bars to clasp his hands. “Oh, Eli, to find you again, only to find you here. How I have prayed for you, for God to find it in His Heart to forgive you.”
Bringing the warmth of her hands close to his face, Elisha shut his eyes and breathed in her friendship, drawing her compassion from the contact they shared. Years before, Lucretia had been a young prostitute, desperately ill, and Elisha’s intervention had saved her life. She had left the brothel in favor of the convent, believing that he had been the answer to a prayer. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I don’t think the Lord has time for me, but thanks for trying.”
“Don’t say that, Elisha. Even if you have not been faithful to the Lord, still there’s no harm in asking for His aid, especially today.” Fear shot through her, but she quelled it again with her faith.
“How’s Helena? How is she taking this?”
&nbs
p; Lucretia lowered her gaze, clinging a little more strongly to his hands. “She’s upset. It’s brought it all back for her, and of course, people will talk. I besought her to come see you, if they’d allow it since she is family, but …” she let out a breath.
“Helena may have forgiven me, but I’m still a reminder that her husband is gone, and why. Will you tell her I’m sorry? I don’t mean to dredge up all the pain for her.” That sense of guilt which always hovered near Helena in his mind settled again over his shoulders, muffling the pleasure he took in seeing Lucretia.
“Have you anything else to confess?” Father Jerome demanded, swiveling his head to focus on some other unoccupied space.
Elisha stiffened at the question. It seemed not to be random, as if the old man had seen his guilt even through clouded eyes.
“It’s the stories of witchcraft that have her most dismayed, Eli.” She frowned at their hands. “Her sister has been telling her that you, well, you … I do not know how to say this, or even if I should.”
Quietly, he voiced what she could not bring herself to say. “Her sister thinks I had more to do with the baby’s death?”
A quick nod. “She’s claimed you had some need for infant’s blood, and that’s the real reason you fled. If you had been innocent, she says, wouldn’t you have stayed to succor the widow.”
“I had no choice! Aside from the fact that the widow cursed me to my face.” He beat his forehead against the bars. He shouldn’t have brought it up. He should have left Lucretia’s visit untainted by these memories, for his own sake in preserving some guard against the growing fear.
She rested her forehead against his. After a moment of the quiet rhythm of her breathing, and the priest’s shifting around on his seat, she said, “If you wish to confess, I will go off, for a while.”
He felt the tingle of her curiosity in her skin. She had faith, she wanted to believe him innocent, but she had doubt as well. “No,” he whispered, “not now.”
Elisha Magus Page 27
