“Too many children are dying for me to think it God’s will,” Elisha replied, “and they have died in too many places for me to believe it is a miasma.”
“Maestra Christina, I must insist—”
The speaker came nearer, and Elisha extended his senses to the stranger’s agitated presence to find it familiar, not a stranger at all, but who?
“That leaves celestial conjunction,” she snapped just as he was about to turn away toward the newcomer.
“An evil in the stars visited upon us down below? Is that the kind of thing you teach here?”
Her eyes sparkled, a new smile returning. “Not I, but some do, don’t they Maestro Lucius?” She switched to Latin, raising her eyes to the breathless fellow who had joined them.
Lucius? For a moment, the name froze Elisha where he stood. He had known a Lucius, a physician back in England who betrayed King Hugh in hopes of winning himself a medical school for London. But he couldn’t have come here, could he? Would he?
“Who are these people that they should distract you from your duties, and from concern for your fellow physicians?”
“They have come to consult about the pestilence, both to aid us and to seek our knowledge. That seems worthy of some distraction.” She gestured toward Elisha and Gilles, and he had no choice but to turn or to be woefully rude to a woman who seemed ready to accept him.
Lucius Physician stood before him, towering as ever, his pale hair blowing about, the sleeves of his robe cut with so much fabric they buffeted him in the breeze. “Good God!” Lucius shouted. “A distraction? This man is a murderer!”
Chapter 9
“No more so than you are, Lucius.” Elisha’s experience serving the physician back in England urged him to bow, but he refused. Last time he had seen the physician, Lucius held a crossbow and his assistant, Benedict, lay dying from the bolts. “Or have you forgotten Benedict so readily?”
Lucius went a little pale, his eyes round and dancing as if he suddenly recalled the magic Elisha used to try to defend the fallen youth. “You do not know what you are talking about, Barber. And I fail to see, Maestra Christina, how a barber can be of any use to us. We shall hardly require amputations for the afflicted.” He raked his gaze over Elisha’s golden pin and fur-lined cloak and the continental-style trim of his beard, then his gaze narrowed. “How did you even survive the battle or escape justice for your black sorcery. Who have you murdered lately to steal the status you so boldly come flaunting?”
Lucius’s convoluted style nearly outstripped Elisha’s imperfect Latin, but Maestra Christina drew herself up. “This man ably responded to my every query of his medical knowledge, Maestro, so to answer the first charge, I find that he is likely as capable of meeting the demands of the hospital as any student here. As for the second charge, that of murder, the topic has only just now come up. But perhaps you can remind me again what became of your assistant, Benedict de Fleur. I believe you claimed he had taken service with a noble of your own country?”
“He took service with the grave, Maestra.” Elisha took a breath to get his anger back in control. “Lucius shot him to cover for his own treason, then fled the country. It was I who tried to save Benedict’s life.”
By now, the students and faculty crossing the yard had paused, many of them drawn closer to the brewing storm, books and medical tools clutched to their chests. One of the students hurried off, catching the arm of a young woman and pulling her forward, pointing and whispering.
Lucius puffed out his chest. “These allegations are preposterous. This man merely resents my lofty position and superior skill, as he has always done. There is no reason we should suffer such a charlatan to enter our establishment—his presence will sully the entire school.”
Christina spoke more softly. “It can hardly have escaped your notice that half the faculty have not returned this season, Lucius. Half. And the students are fleeing with them. If it continues there will be no school nor hospital, save for the patients who lay there dying.”
“Nonsense. While the pestilence has had a minor impact upon our environs, its reach will be greatest among the merchants, allied as they are with the Jews, and in regions without recourse to medical expertise. Doubt me as you will, Maestra, but do not allow this craven access to our wisdom, our works, or our patients.” He thrust his finger into the air. “You have no authority to unilaterally appoint a new member of faculty or even an assistant to the hospital. For that, we require the council to convene.”
“Very well then, convene them! If you can drag Maestro Antonio from his cups and Maestro Fidelis from his chamber, if you are even willing to brave the ward of Maestro Danek.” She flung wide her arms, embracing the entire yard. “Then do it. In the meantime, there are students to be taught and patients to be seen. Come, doctor.” She swiveled on her heel and slammed open the door at her back.
“And this is why I have so strongly advised against the admission of women as faculty or students,” Lucius drawled, preening as if he’d just won an argument. “They rarely have the strength of character to maintain a rational debate, but simply disintegrate into emotion. It is in the nature of the fairer sex, not merely an attribute of my esteemed colleague.”
Christina’s spine stiffened, her hand pressed against the door, but she glanced back at Elisha. “Doctor! With me.”
Elisha realized that, in Lucius’s presence, he had immediately assumed that the word “doctor” referred to someone else. He waved Gilles ahead of him through the door, keeping his eye on Lucius in his final pose of triumph. In English, he said, “Whatever you say, Lucius, and whatever you do, you and I both know the truth. Treason and murder lie heavy on the soul.” Elisha himself knew it as well as any. “Good day.” He ducked into the arch and shut the door behind them.
The moment he joined her, Christina swept down a long corridor lined with doors on both sides. “At the very least, he does not lie when he says that he knows you.”
“No, Maestra. We have had dealings back in England, none of them pleasant.” It took an effort to keep his shoulders square and his gaze direct, as it should be when he spoke with his peers.
She gave a snort. “I cannot imagine anyone having had pleasant dealings with him. I was a bit surprised when Benedict agreed to go with him to England, especially given that he had to leave Ariane behind—we rather expected a marriage of those two. But then, Benedict was ambitious without much impetus of his own, if you see what I mean. I am sure Lucius’s offer seemed like a great step forward. Here we are.” She opened a door at the end of the corridor, at a greater distance from the others, and walked inside, opening the shuttered window to reveal another, smaller yard beyond. The chamber contained two beds with thick mattresses folded on top of their rope framing. A broad table stood between, with a bench and a couple of chairs before the fireplace. “The chest contains some linens, unless you have brought your own. You shall want to provide your own blankets in any case.”
Christina turned, her back to the wall and arms folded. She looked determined, if still flustered by Lucius and his accusations. “Meals are served in the refectory in the next yard, and the hospital occupies the western range of buildings.”
“Thank you, Maestra.” Elisha set down his sacks on the table, and Gilles did likewise, though he did not let go of his cargo of relics. “What do you need of me?” Elisha asked.
She regarded him steadily. “What do I need of you? I cannot even begin to say what is needed. But at Terce you shall accompany me on my hospital visit and show me if your skill is true and your hand is worthy.” Her glance flicked away. “These rooms are for our senior students. Young Benedict had one before Lucius swept him away as his assistant.”
“Lucius is an ass who cares more for the stars than for his patients.”
Christina gave a hiccup of laughter and stifled it with her hand. “Be that as it may, doctor, you do not strike me as univers
ity educated.”
“There is a great gulf between education and knowledge. In England, Lucius poured boiling oil on my amputees to see if that healed them faster. It only gave them more pain.”
“And what was your treatment?”
“A poultice of rose oil and egg. Egg to seal the wound against infection, rose oil for the healthful properties.” He spread his hands, half a shrug.
“Then you are a barber.”
“He is so much more, lady,” Gilles blurted. “He is a healer, both for himself and for others. To call him merely a barber is to deny what a man might become—” Then he broke off, swallowing his words as he tread too near the secrets they must keep. “Forgive me, lady.”
“You are passionate on the subject of your—if not ‘master,’ then what?” She studied Gilles more closely.
“Teacher, lady.”
She laughed more brightly. “Are you then a medical student yourself?”
“No, lady, not medical. If you spare some coin, Elisha, I can go to market for our blankets and whatever else we need.” He put out his hand, and Elisha dropped a few coins into his palm.
“There is no shame in being a barber,” Elisha said, but the persistent slumping of his shoulders and the struggle to lift his gaze from the feet of his betters suggested otherwise. Good God, he had been cast back to the worst days of his service, a peasant once more, before he knew the power of magic or the gratitude of kings.
Gilles gave a short bow and slipped from the room, leaving them alone, the door open into the empty corridor.
“It does explain your understanding of anal fistula, and your evasion on the question of Galen, but not your rejection of both theriac and weapons ointment, two substances most barbers would not do without. Or is that where your sorcery comes in?” Her eyes twinkled with merriment, and Elisha did his best to match her amusement.
“A good doctor is a bit of a wizard, don’t you think?”
“I’ll send over a student to show you around. Elisha, is it? Well met.” She tipped her head to him and swept away again, leaving him alone and shaky.
To see Lucius again, after all that had happened, nearly made him forget himself, forget who he had become in his instinctive retreat to who he used to be. It seemed a lifetime ago, though it was just short of a year. His old rank returned so quickly, as if his body remembered what it was to be reviled, representing an ill breed, poorly trained, poorly equipped, the healer of last resort to a patient who could afford no better. Ashamed? No, he had never been ashamed of his duty, even when he knew no better himself. Yet the belief persisted, like the miasma of sickness that hovered even now over the world. Claiming the title of “barber” reduced him back into a dogsbody, to be sneered at and ordered about by other men so much greater than himself. When he crossed the channel to the Lowlands, he claimed himself a doctor, and so he had been accepted by everyone from Friar Gilles to the Empress Margaret herself. He pretended at the time that his study with Mordecai had elevated his education, while his experiences had elevated his knowledge. But perhaps Lucius was right in more than Elisha wanted to believe. Perhaps it had been envy that prompted his claiming a title he had not earned, and arrogance that led him to believe he deserved it.
“Pardon me,” said a whispery voice, accompanied by a soft rapping on the open door. “Maestra Christina sent me. Are you ready now?”
At the door stood a willowy person whose gender was not readily clear. Male, Elisha thought after a moment, but slight of build with hair of middling length and poorly kept, cheeks pale enough that they made his lips appear more pink. “I’m ready,” Elisha said. “Who are you?”
“Leon.” Leon stretched a thin hand in invitation, and Elisha joined him in the corridor.
“You’re a student here?” Leon looked a bit younger than the others, but Elisha guessed that poor nutrition had affected his appearance to a great degree. He extended his senses, working for attunement and for understanding of this curious person.
“No.” Leon raised his hands to either side. “Student rooms. Empty by day, except when studying.” A slender smile spread his lips. “So: mostly empty.”
He glided out the door into the inner yard. “Classrooms—” A gesture uphill. “Refectory—” to the front, and “Hospital,” down the hill. “Hospital along the wall into the outer yard as well. Mostly full.”
Leon’s presence shimmered with waves of heat and cold, flickering not with the bound dead of a mancer or of a soldier, but rather as if he were shedding death as he walked.
From a cluster of students waiting to enter a classroom, Elisha sensed the quiet pulse of a magus. He could not identify the individual from the group, but glanced over them all to remember. Another, darker void moved through the hospital, the chill deflection habitual of the mancer. Elisha’s skin tingled as he crafted a projection of his own, concealing his magical knowledge beneath his medical skill.
“Hardest first,” Leon said, walking at a languorous pace to a set of steps leading down to a door beneath ground level. He knocked, waited, knocked again, but still as softly as if he’d rather not be heard.
“Enter!” called a voice from within. Leon pushed back the door and held it open, his unfocused gaze aimed somewhere across the yard as he stifled a yawn.
“Sorry. Still tired.” He leaned against the door, his thin form sagging.
“Hello?” Elisha peered into the gloomy space. It smelled of decaying flesh and of roses, perhaps the second odor in an attempt to cover the first.
“Did Christina send you? Nothing yet—how’s the library search?” A stocky man on a tall stool hunched over a table at the far end of the chamber. Between, more tables held a variety of plants, fresh and dried, bodies of fishes, snakes and lizards, and the occasional bird, likewise dried. Incisions marred the bodies, revealing skeletons or missing parts where bits of flesh or organs had been taken for medical uses.
The man leaned back, stretched himself, arching his back, then raising his arms with a groan as he glanced toward the door. A pair of hooded lanterns provided the only light at that end, so the preparation tables between became murky landscapes of feathers, scales and limbs, emerging again into full color only as Elisha approached.
“Oh, no, I don’t know you at all.” The fellow rose, his features indistinguishable in the dim light. “Maestro Danek.” His Latin held a curious inflection Elisha hadn’t heard before, not Dutch, German, English, French or any variety of Italian. “You are?”
“Elisha. I’m a surgeon.” Elisha put out his hand. “I’ve just arrived from service with her Majesty, Queen Margaret of Bavaria.”
“Ah, the emperor’s widow. Pity.” Danek shook the offered hand firmly, projecting health and vitality, then revealing a flash of crooked teeth in his grin as they recognized each other through the contact. “Well met. Doctor.” A magus, and one who meant what he said, if a little nervously. “I’ll look forward to spending more time. Is that Leon giving you any trouble?”
Leon slumped against the door, sun illuminating his thin features.
“Trouble? No, not at all. He’s a bit off, but I can’t quite diagnose it.”
“He’s a survivor. The pestilence. His mum wants him for a priest now, but we faculty all got together and asked him to stay, paying her a few pennies to keep him here for the duration of his recovery, at least. He’s a chance to learn more.”
“A survivor?” Elisha stared at the young man. That would explain his weakness and malnutrition, not to mention his vacant disposition. It must have taken so much for him to overcome the disease that was already killing so many. Danek matched his own spike of interest. Curious, given how much Danek must already know about Leon.
“Doesn’t like to come in here, does he? It reminds him of the treatments, or maybe of the thought of dying, but it’s just a preparations room, isn’t it? I keep trying to talk with him, but he refuses. See if
you can lure him with you another time, and maybe we can put our skills together to learn something from his survival, eh?” Danek shook his hand again. In the way of the magi, he sent, “Welcome. Anything I can do, you let me know.” Another grin, then he sank back down to his stool and prodded the animal before him with a scalpel. “Can’t hardly find the liver in this fellow. I need to get them in fresher, that’s all.”
“Until later.” Grateful to have found an ally who shared at least part of his secret, Elisha gave him a wave, which was absently returned, then he joined Leon at the door. The young man grunted with exertion as he hauled the door shut.
“Most faculty have chambers in the big yard,” Leon said, slouching back up the steps.
Elisha fell in beside him, close enough that their arms sometimes brushed, offering him contact. “Maestro Danek tells me you survived the plague?”
“Yes.” Leon turned abruptly between two buildings into a tiled passage. The odor of death stopped Elisha’s throat as Leon said, “Charnel house, for them that aren’t claimed.” He turned again and plodded back into the yard, then silently brought Elisha down a corridor of classrooms with high ceilings and tapestries of every saint associated with healing: Luke the Apostle, said to be a doctor; the twin Saints Cosmas and Damian, who had transplanted a leg from one man to another—of a different skin color; Lazarus, who rose from the dead; Saint Roch with his sores; and a fresh work depicting Saint Aleydis whose suffering from leprosy was said to give solace to other sufferers. She lay in bed, her piteous face covered with the scars and scabs of her disease, raising her bandaged hands up to the Lord with a beatific smile.
Two hundred years ago, the workmanship and grandeur of the space must have been exquisite, next only to the cathedral in its splendor, but now the carved wooden beams showed labyrinths of worm holes, and fresh wooden props shored up some of the weaker ones. Paint sloughed in flakes from the murals and broken tiles marked the floor, with some of them missing altogether. As Emerick had told him, the university had been the greatest in its day, and now struggled on in faded glory, haunted by the ghost of what it had been.
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