Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  At the end of the grand building the corridor opened up into a chapel with a towering image of Jesus healing the sick, the blind, and the infirm. For a moment, Elisha wondered if Christ, too, had been a magus. Blasphemy, for certain. They crossed the broad space, moving through sunlight stained red, green and blue from the tall glass windows. A finely carved door led from the chapel into a corridor somewhat better maintained.

  “Faculty chambers. For private patients, consulting, studying. That.” Leon flapped a hand at the various doors with their carved scrollwork and inlays. Another broad hall opened off of this as well, with a handful of velvet chairs, somewhat threadbare, facing a series of upholstered benches and small desks. “Examination hall.” Leon yawned broadly.

  “Look, if you need to rest, I understand. There’s no need—”

  “No.” Leon straightened, quickening abruptly. He pushed himself a few steps ahead, but the distance could not conceal his muttering from Elisha’s keen awareness: “Not a child. Not a weakling. Not a miracle.” Leon pushed open another door, this one into the two-story building that fronted the outer yard and spanned the school’s entrance gate. Here, he climbed a set of stairs, hauling himself up with one hand on the metal rail that bent around each corner until they reached the upper story where a door stood open and a clerk sat at a tall desk immediately opposite. Elisha recognized the gawky gate warden who had tried to send them away earlier. The fellow jabbed his quill into his ink pot.

  “Good afternoon, Leon. Come in if you’d like. And the foreigner Maestro Lucius told us about.” He steepled his hands. “I don’t suppose you’ll get permission to come here after today. But you can stand there and admire.” He spread his hands grandly to take in the vast space full of books.

  Leather-bound books, ranging in size from as small as Elisha’s palm, to the size of a small table lay stacked in ranks upon the shelves, many of them chained to the shelves for extra security. Bins held scrolls, some fresh and pale, others yellow with age, still others wrapped in linen or silk that shone in the light of the huge windows that cut the inner wall. More books lay open or closed on the scattered lecterns, some with students leaning over them. A few tables closer to the door held students on benches, ink pots set beside them, painstakingly copying words and diagrams from the volumes of knowledge. Had Mordecai surgeon ever been here? By God, he would have been in Heaven. Elisha swallowed hard. He was, in fact, in Heaven, whatever the Jews might conceive that to be.

  From that doorway, Elisha beheld more knowledge than he had ever before had access to, more knowledge than he had imagined might be collected in any one place. Galen, John of Arderne, God knew how many others. Wisdom of the Jews? Perhaps. Herbal guides to every plant any healer, midwife or apothecary had ever applied. Diagrams of astrological connections and wound charts showing how to treat any conceivable injury. Treatises on trepanation, on cataract surgery, on pleurisy and apoplexy, conditions of the heart, the lung, the liver. Anything Elisha might ever have wished to know about his art might be here, inside this room. This was exactly why he had come, in search of the knowledge that might cure the mancers’ plague.

  In teaching him to read, Mordecai had given him the key to all of this knowledge, and, just as surely, Lucius Physician had denied him the lot.

  Chapter 10

  Turned away from the library, Elisha decided to focus for now on the Salernitan mancer he had sensed earlier, the man who must be behind this plague. Had he used the knowledge of that library to generate the magic? In a place devoted to healing, the law of opposites suggested that disease must not be far away, but how had the mancer managed contact with so many, and make that contact spread so fast?

  Leon deposited him back at his chamber after the tour, accepting with weary resignation his gratitude and his advice to get some rest. As the young man departed, Elisha considered how aggravating it must be to be surrounded by doctors at every moment, every one of them full of good advice or longing for information. When they met again, Elisha vowed, he would focus on Leon’s present, instead of on his past.

  “And how was the tour, then?” Friar Gilles perched in the window casement with a platter of cheese. The beds now had fresh blankets and a few bundles and carafes occupied the mantel.

  “Very useful. There is a mancer here, and a few magi, at least, one of whom has made contact.” Elisha snagged a piece of cheese and found it sharp and hard.

  “I met a novice from the Abbey church down at market—and a rather slow market it was, too. He was all too eager to gossip about the goings on. Did you know Queen Giovanna of Naples, who claims this entire coastline, has fled to Avignon to shelter with the Pope? Apparently, she’s murdered her husband, or so they say. She’s the one who sold Avignon to the Holy Father to begin with, perhaps to try to influence his opinion regarding the crime.” Gilles offered a bright smile. “But His Holiness is beyond such earthly concerns, I am sure. In any event, she’ll be brought to trial soon. The husband’s brother is King Louis of Hungary. He besieged Naples not long ago, but the rumors of plague have driven him off, so that’s one good thing, eh?”

  One good thing, but the pressure of the Valley had been growing over Elisha since their arrival. The plague so far had been worse near Venice, but he could feel it coming here as well, like the descent of a storm creating a terrible stillness in the air. So the governing queen was a murderess—“Naples? Really.” A voice from long past echoed in Elisha’s memory. Prince Alaric had spoken those words, needling his mancer supporters with the fact that they had not yet taken Naples, brave in the face of their much greater power. Was the queen their pawn, or did they manipulate King Louis, who tried to conquer her city?

  The bells of the nearby church called Elisha off his chair to the hospital, where Maestra Christina, an image of irritation, stood at the door. “Let’s go.”

  Elisha unfurled his awareness. “Leon survived the plague. Are there others?”

  “Not many. None yet through our interventions.” She grimaced.

  Along the inner yard, the hospital felt like fear, pain, despair. Someone there pulsed with streaks of hot magic, a magus, in great distress, but Christina turned away toward the grand outer buildings. Elisha thought to steer her back again toward the ailing magus, then the chill absence of the mancer touched his awareness, and he followed along. First, cure the greater ill.

  “We have a few private chambers at the front, mostly for consultations and wealthy patients. Let’s see who we have, shall we?” She strode down the spacious corridor, eying the doors.

  “How about that one?” Elisha pointed to the door behind which a mancer lurked. The jittery strength of the Valley had returned, sending sweat to his palms, making his heart race. He crafted himself a projection of calm and serious intent, imagining himself as a consulting physician, cool, detached, not magical.

  Christina regarded him briefly, then rapped on the door and led him inside. “Good afternoon, my lady, I trust your treatment goes well?”

  A large woman reclined on a bed stuffed with pillows, one arm extended and the scent of blood pooling in the air along with the blood that oozed from her arm into a pewter bowl. A barber sat on a stool attending the cut, watching the flow, steadying her arm with a short rod propped on the ground.

  “Yes, very well. Maestro Lucius checked in on me a moment ago, and he is very pleased with my progress.” She smiled graciously, wide blue eyes blinking at them as if they stood in the sun.

  “What’s the diagnosis?” Elisha asked, but his attention focused on the barber. A humble man, not unlike himself some time ago, the barber kept his fingers on the wrist of the patient, monitoring her pulse as he watched the blood accumulate. He did not turn around—simply following the physician’s orders. In spite of the man’s practiced air, a chill flickered at the edges of his presence. A mancer-barber. Elisha almost laughed. His profession had so long been reviled as exactly that: bloody and craven. What Elisha
was so often taken for, this man truly was.

  “Suffers from severe courses, maestro. Humor too moist. Maestro Lucius recommended bleeding twice a month at slack and full moons, given she’s born under Cancer.” The barber shifted a little as if he had been sitting too long and glanced over his shoulder at them. “New here?” Broad lips dominated his plain face, a visage so ordinary it betrayed nothing of its evil.

  “Visiting,” Elisha said.

  “Can use the extra hands. I’m Silvio. You let me know, you call for any bleedings—I’m your man.” He plucked a wad of cloth from a satchel at his feet and pressed it against the small cut at the woman’s elbow and raised her hand as he stood, binding the wound with a tight wrapping. “There you are, my lady.”

  Christina bowed her head slightly in deference to the woman’s nobility and swept from the room. “Because of course a woman who bleeds too much should be bled again,” she muttered. Then, noticing Elisha beside her, she said, “Lady Grazia’s family give generously to support the hospital. We do our best by her.”

  “If you don’t trust Lucius, why is he allowed to practice?”

  “You see that we are stretched thin as it is; even before the advent of this new pestilence, the school has been on a decline. Lucius will tell you it is because it allows such decadence as female doctors. He is not the only one to think so, and the others were pleased to accept his return.”

  “The other masters?”

  She gave a nod. “The council of seven. One of whom is dead. Here is a more interesting case.” She rapped on another door, which was answered by a maidservant. They entered the darkened room and quickly became involved in the case of a lord’s son taken to convulsions but without sign of the usual causes. Seeing the young man’s stricken face, Elisha set aside his other concerns for the moment and proceeded with an examination and inquiry that took well over an hour. They emerged in conversation, Elisha wondering if the young man’s taste in unusual foods might be at root while Christina peppered him with questions about his own experience with head trauma—both direct and in his patients. He shortly found himself seated on bench while she ran her fingers over the scars of his trepanation, parting his hair to get a better understanding.

  “And that resulted in the change in your opposite eye? Interesting. I’ve not heard of such a result before, but it is worth searching our case studies. I’ll set one of my students on the task.”

  Lucius swept around the corner, flanked by two students of his own. “I insist that you call the council, Maestra.” He stared at her fingers as she withdrew them from Elisha’s scalp.

  “I take it they are not responding to your demands?”

  He drew himself up, using his height to stare down at them both. Elisha merely folded his arms and remained seated, flaunting his refusal to be bothered with Lucius at all, though his hands itched to strike the man’s imperious face. Lucius said, “While Maestro Antonio has agreed to the meeting, Maestro Fidelis merely offers to send notes via a runner. There are days I am convinced he is not in his right mind, and if he did not occasionally speak, I should imagine he is not even in his room.”

  “And Maestro Danek?”

  “Is amenable to anything, so long as it happens after curfew. I am certain the staff was never so eccentric as this during my previous administration.”

  “Indeed the entire school has suffered without you.” She kept her own hands unnaturally still, as if she, too, forced herself to inaction.

  “Maestro Teodor is the only man among the council worthy of the title, and he is fully invested in consultation with the Pope’s physician, as is only fitting, even if the man is a mere surgeon without proper credentials. It is my fervent hope that Teodor’s influence shall elevate the man such that his mean intellect is more suited to provide consultations worthy of the Holy Father himself.” Lucius flicked his glance down toward Elisha as he addressed Maestra Christina. “I do hope you have not been allowing your new creature to aggravate the recovery conditions of any of my patients. Or indeed, any patients in this hospital.”

  “The only person he seems to be aggravating is you. Let’s go.” Christina swept away down the corridor, and Elisha followed after with little grace. So much for mastering himself while Lucius was around: it was all he could do not to strangle the man. “I’m afraid we shall have to join the masters for supper tonight, Elisha; much as I would prefer not to be subject to that odious man, I would like to hear what the papal physician has learned in his visit. Although I suppose you may prefer to dine in your chamber. A student can bring your meal.”

  “The less I am in evidence, the more chance he has to turn people against me. I like to think I can sway them if they meet me face to face.”

  “Indeed.” They passed through a thick door into an arched outdoor passage where a breeze rifled their clothing before they entered the next ward. The familiar smells of vomit, urine, blood, and sickness assailed Elisha right away, as if he had returned to the hospital in London, or even to the battlefield, but there blood tended to dominate. Fear and despair permeated the hall as well. Beds lay along both sides, each broad surface occupied by two or three people who writhed and moaned with their conditions. Clumps of herbs and dried flowers hung from the ceiling and decked the floor. Tall windows pierced the walls, giving light and promoting the exchange of tainted air for fresh, if they were open. It seemed a better standard of care than the London hospital, at least.

  “Here, we allow the senior students to lead in diagnosis and treatment, under our guidance, of course.” She motioned him forward with her hand, pointing toward a cluster of students around one of the beds. A lanky long-bearded fellow in faculty robes leaned both hands on the foot of the bed, watching and listening as one student examined the patient.

  “What do you find, Bastien?” The teacher demanded, leaning in.

  “Well, these patches of bad skin—”

  “Lesions,” supplied another student quietly.

  “These lesions aren’t black, really, not like the victims of pestilence, but they’re not normal skin?” He raised his face hopefully.

  “Fever?” barked the teacher, and the student, Bastien, put out his hand hesitantly. “No! You don’t need to touch her for this. Look at her. Pale, not flushed, dry, not sweaty. So.” He slapped his hand on the wood. “Skin lesions, particularly on the face, no fever nor sweating. What other questions should we ask?”

  The student who had spoken up about the lesions stepped nearer the bed. “Have you had any change in sensation?”

  The patient dropped her gaze, her hands burrowing into the sheet before her. “Maybe, it’s hard to tell.”

  “Numbness?”

  Slouching more into the sheets, the patient whispered, “Can’t you help me?”

  Elisha took half a step nearer but stopped himself. This was not his patient, nor was this the time to intrude on another doctor’s work, especially not if the students were meant to practice diagnosis.

  “You, there, give us a hand,” the student said, gesturing toward an older woman who was fixing up the next bed. The woman walked over, bobbing a courtesy.

  The patient’s fear intensified, her hands wrapping tighter into the sheet, her head dropping forward so that her hair swung over her face. “Help me, please, doctors. I don’t want to be—like this.”

  “Nobody wants to be sick, dear,” said the old woman. “What do you want of me, Doctor?”

  “I need to see her hands. Can you assist her to hold her hand steady?”

  “It’s not important, numbness, is it? I mean, it could be anything,” said the patient.

  Elisha intertwined his own fingers together at his back lest he intervene without cause. His shoulders tightened.

  “They’re just trying to help,” said the old woman as she gripped the girl’s elbow and tugged her arm, then pulled at the sheet with her other hand until the girl’s own
hand lay revealed, her fingers knobbed and the dark lesions even more obvious along her arm.

  “Is it the pestilence?” the teacher asked. “See for yourselves. No fever, no chills, the lesions aren’t swollen, are they? Nor are they just at the throat and arms. What are they?” He shot out his finger toward the new lead student. “What is your diagnosis?”

  The student wet his lips, stepping back. “Leprosy.”

  As one, the old woman and the students spread away from the bed, bumping into each other and the surrounding beds. Two students stumbled into Elisha, forcing him back in their own haste to escape the patient’s tainted air.

  “Leprosy. Get her out of here. She should never have been allowed past the gate, never mind into the wards. Go, get out! We don’t need that kind of filth.” The teacher swept his arm to guide the students away from the bed while a pair of sturdy men came up, setting down the reeking waste buckets they were carrying.

  “Do you need us, Maestro?”

  “This girl—remove her from the grounds.”

  “No, please! It’s the pestilence, I’m sure of it.” She waved a hand at her face. “See? I’m feeling hotter already. I know the fever’s coming on.”

  The men grabbed hold of her arms as she protested, and dragged her toward the nearest door, as she continued to plead and struggle.

  “Go to the church,” the teacher called after her. “Perhaps they will take pity on your sins and send you to a lazar house. But you’ve no business mixing with healthy people!”

  The door slammed behind them, and Elisha flinched at the finality of the sound. To the old woman, the teacher said, “Bundle up this bedding and have it burned. Don’t put anyone in this bed for at least two days.”