“Thank you.” Teodor accepted the document and unfolded it to scan the lines.
Guy, regarded Elisha with a frank stare from across the table. “I have heard that you are a surgeon, is this not so? And yet you are in service to the king?” A smile transformed his thick features. “And so am I, but to the Holy Father himself.” He pushed back his chair and extended his hand. “There are few enough of us worthy of such service, I am well-pleased to meet another. I am Guy de Chauliac.”
Elisha accepted his grasp and his well-wishes. The man’s presence rang with his medical authority and knowledge, his annoyance with the learned physicians around him, and an echo of loss, perhaps anticipating his crossing the water back to France. Not a mancer then, though someone close to the Pope must be. Even discounting the Pope’s religious prominence, he held thousands of acres of land, commanded thousands of soldiers, servants and tenants, and through his priests and monks, held sway over hundreds of thousands of parishioners. This position, coupled with his God-given authority, made the Pope the most powerful man in Europe. In order for the mancers to overthrow all nations, they must overthrow the Church as well, and some of their agents must be close to the Pope, to guide and manipulate him—unless the Pope himself was a mancer, a thought that chilled and worried Elisha as he drew back his hand. “Well met, Guy. But I have no wish to disturb your limited time among your colleagues. I can dine in my room.”
“Nonsense,” said Christina, just as Antonio said, “Do go away, I’m hungry!”
Someone knocked loudly and pushed open the outer door. “Forgive me, masters, an urgent visitor from Rome.” The servant bowed and stepped aside to reveal Count Vertuollo, elegant in his mourning garb.
Vertuollo pressed his hands together. “And here I have found him, the villain who slew my son.”
Chapter 12
“Now I’ll never get my supper,” Antonio wailed. He drained his goblet and signaled for a refill.
Elisha forced himself to maintain a calm demeanor, concealing the sweat that broke out on his palms and the tension that rushed to his shoulders at the sight of Vertuollo.
“You are suddenly surrounded by accusers, Doctor,” Teodor observed. He pushed back from the table and rose stiffly. “And who might you be, my lord?”
“My name means nothing without a son to carry it on.” Vertuollo spread his hands low as if letting go, the air of humility spread over his noble features.
Once again the damnable count got the better of him. Elisha seized back the initiative. “May I present Count Vertuollo of Rome, a man greatly respected, not least of all by myself,” Elisha said as graciously as he might, the cold of the count’s presence sending shivers over his flesh. “Alas, the count’s son assaulted me with intent toward my murder. The politics of Rome are tangled and violent as you must know.”
“Because the Pope must return there,” Antonio declared, pointing at Guy with his goblet. “You must tell him so.” He nodded his wobbly head.
“Oh, do be quiet,” Christina cut in.
“You do not deny this fresh murder, then?” Lucius pounced forward. “How many others have died at your hands?”
Ignoring Lucius, Elisha continued, “Had I any other choice, the count’s son would be alive today.” Trapped between them, Elisha declared, “I have never murdered another man, though I have killed in my own defense and that of others.” Elisha stood, slipped the cape from his shoulders, yanked off the layers of his tunics. He turned on his heel to display his bare back to the gathered physicians, facing Vertuollo across a very short distance indeed. The count swept his glance over Elisha’s scarred chest, then their eyes locked.
“Here you see, doctors.” Elisha reached back to brush his fingers along a lump of scar tissue fresher than the others. “With neither warning nor challenge, the count’s son stabbed me from behind, an upward cut between the ribs, toward my heart.”
“May I?” Guy asked as footsteps approached, then his diagnostic fingers traced over the scar, and Elisha could feel the thrust of the knife up through his lung. “It seems broad enough that the knife must have gone very deep. How did you survive?”
“By the grace of God. And quick intervention.”
“You have more scars than many a battle-veteran, Doctor. These look like lash marks.” Guy’s fingers fluttered across his spine, tracing the pattern. “You were standing at the time.”
Lucius announced, “I had the duty of punishing him as my underling, for his continued insubordination. As you can see, it had no effect upon his intransigence, and now this noble gentleman comes to bear witness to even greater crimes.”
Vertuollo’s eyes narrowed, his gaze lingering on the scar that branded Elisha’s chest. His examination made Elisha feel colder. Elisha’s wrists ached, a reminder of being bound, face to the pole, as Lucius cracked the lash against him. “Tell them why you beat me, Maestro Lucius. What insubordination had I committed?”
“You refused my direct order to tend an injured knight upon the battlefield.”
A gasp echoed from several places behind him, and Guy’s touch went hostile as it withdrew. The count’s faint smile hinted at victory.
“Tell them why,” Elisha insisted.
Lucius hesitated, and Elisha lowered his hands, looking back over his shoulder. “Tell them, Lucius. What was I doing when I refused you? What did I say when I did so?” His heart pounded with remembered fury, with the urge to fight back at the moment he was taken from the field.
“You were tending another patient, as I recall.”
“Who was I tending, Lucius? And what was his injury?”
“None of this has any bearing upon your crime against my son,” Vertuollo pointed out, his voice low.
“Which he has said was self-defense, and presented the wound to support his claim, my lord. Allow us to finish one inquiry before we begin the next,” Teodor said calmly. “We are physicians—we must have all the information before we can make an accurate diagnosis of this man’s character.”
“Tell us, Maestro Lucius, who was the doctor’s other patient? And what was the patient’s condition?” Christina took up the questioning, her hands propped on the back of a chair, clinging there.
Lucius puffed himself up. “He looked like a common foot soldier, a person hardly in need of our skilled—”
“Prince Alaric, the younger son of King Hugh of England, disguised as a messenger to carry his father’s word to their allies,” Elisha supplied, and Lucius’s eyes grew brighter, his lips compressed. “With a gash at his throat. If it was not stitched immediately, he’d’ve bled out in moments. I’m sure a learned physician like you, Lucius, would recognize that danger.”
Lucius shot out his hand, jabbing in Elisha’s direction. “Even you didn’t know it was the prince!”
“Because it wasn’t important—whoever he was, without my help, he was a dead man. And you told me to leave him in a ditch to die.” Elisha snatched up his tunics and yanked them on over his head. “I saved a man’s life that day, doctors. Would any one among you have done any less?” He swept them with his gaze, letting it linger on Lucius before he faced Vertuollo. “You claim me for a murderer—” He nearly addressed Vertuollo as ‘my brother’ in their odd accustomed way. “—my lord. I say bring your witnesses. Bring your proof. If you came merely to ruin my reputation among my colleagues, as you can see, I already have Lucius for that.”
“And he has failed,” Christina said. She moved up beside him, and Maestro Teodor gave a solemn nod.
“We are men of science and knowledge. We cannot accept mere accusation and rumor. We shall be pleased to hear your evidence, or to accept the investigation of the agents of her majesty Giovanna, Queen of Naples, to whom we are pleased to owe our allegiance. In the meantime, I can offer you the hospitality of one of our master suites, if you—”
“Queen Giovanna is herself accused of murder, is s
he not?” Vertuollo’s face furrowed with grief. “It pains me to see an establishment of learning such as this one sullied with such alliances.” With an elegant curl of his hand, the count bowed deeply and straightened. “I leave you to your supper then. You dine tonight with Judas.” He strode away from the door into the darkness, majestic in his shadows and his pain.
After a moment, the Valley rippled with cold, and Elisha knew that he was gone. The fur of his cloak draped the nearest chair and Elisha gathered it back into his arms. “Thank you for your invitation, but I’ll eat in my room.”
“Elisha, there’s no need,” Christina began, but he glanced back at her.
“Please, Maestra.” Given the state of his nerves and his stomach he wasn’t sure he’d be able to choke down even a bite.
“I’ll have someone bring you a tray,” she finished.
To Guy, he said, “It was a pleasure to meet you, Doctor. I’m sorry to have spoiled your supper. Masters.” He bowed his head, and departed, placing his feet carefully to stop his knees wobbling. From all appearances, he had won that battle, confronting two enemies at once, yet the seeds of doubt would take root in the hearts of the masters. Even Christina would be hard-pressed to defend him if anything more went wrong.
The walk across the yard in the evening’s chill helped to settle his agitation. Shortly after he arrived at his chamber a fine meal arrived, and Gilles was only too pleased to partake, while telling Elisha all the gossip he had been hearing, chatter that distracted Elisha however briefly from his own concerns. Was Vertuollo merely displaying his ability to track Elisha anywhere, or had his intrusion into Salerno come for another reason? What had he learned from it?
After blowing out their candles, both men lay on their beds, Elisha on his back thinking over all the people he had met: the young leper girl cast out of the hospital as she had likely been cast out of many places before; Leon, who survived the plague and never spoke of it; the patient in bed 12 who went mad and recognized a mancer when the man drew near—or was that assumption merely Elisha’s own prejudice? Many a person, especially a child, would be afraid of the barber come to bleed his vitality away in the name of health. How many adults with knives had hovered over that boy, claiming to be there to help? The boy who reminded him of his brother, and of himself.
He rolled onto his side, pushing that thought away. He came here to learn about the plague. The first step was to gain access to the library, to all the knowledge it might contain, but Lucius’s acolyte held sway there. Maestro Danek had an interest in diseases, but focused on preparing medical simples to treat them. The mancer-barber Silvio lurked in the corners of Elisha’s thoughts as well. He shut his eyes, cradled by the mattress, and drew back much of his awareness, trying to dull the throbbing sense of the Valley hovering. It felt like a recent wound, sealed over, but suppurating beneath the skin, silently festering. In the hospital, someone died, and Elisha’s eyes snapped open.
In his bed on the opposite side of the chamber, Gilles slapped himself and grumbled softly.
“What’s the trouble, Brother?” Elisha asked softly.
“These accursed fleas. I tried to be so careful choosing our bedding, but my blanket’s infested, that’s plain to see. How are they not bothering you?”
Elisha focused on his blanket in the gloom of the pale moonlight. A few shiny black dots popped here and there. They approached his hand where it rested outside the bedding, then paid it no mind, as if his kinship with death made him an unappealing target. When was the last time he had been bitten by a flea? Not since the battle of Dunbury, anyhow. Something to be grateful for in the morass of his magical talent. “We can prepare some herbs in the morning that should help.”
“I don’t think any of my saints will defend me against fleabites, more’s the pity.” Ropes groaned and squeaked as Gilles rolled around in his bed and finally went still again. After a little longer, his snoring began, a series of soft catches and gurgles, and finally full-blown sawing.
Elisha reached for a little magic to draw his mind down deep and allow for rest, then he sensed an agitated presence, and rose quickly, before the steps could reach their door. He popped the door open, surprising the nun on the other side, her fist raised to knock. “Hush, don’t wake the friar,” he told her. “It’s about my patient?”
“I’m surprised you cannot hear him from here, doctor. We moved the other patients off that floor, since you won’t let him be gagged, but the patients on other wards still need their rest.”
He pulled the door shut behind him and hurried after her across the darkened square. Indeed, as they entered the hospital arch, a muffled cry reached him, along with an undertone of annoyed shouts and pleading. The nun held up her lantern, displaying a series of long scratches across her opposite arm. “I was only trying to shift his blanket, to keep him warm, and he lashed out quick as you think.”
Two lanterns stood at either end of the long ward on the floor below, and a pair of students moved among the patients, trying to keep them comfortable, darting glances at Elisha and the ward sister as they moved toward the stairs. On the abandoned ward above, his patient huddled at the far end of the bed, his back pressed to the wall, jerking at his restraints, his eyes glinting.
“I’m your new doctor. My name’s Elisha, what’s yours?”
“It’s no good, he doesn’t speak.”
Indeed, the boy’s wailing erupted even louder, and he kicked against the bed as if he could shove himself through the wall at his back.
Afraid of doctors, then. An excellent start. Elisha sat down on the foot of the bed. “Do we know what language he does speak, if he were to speak?”
The nun sighed and shook her head. “I’ve just told you, he doesn’t.”
“What does he respond to, then?”
“Nothing. Just look at him.” She waved a hand at the feral child.
“Not true. Earlier, you said he calmed down at the smell of soup. Can you bring some more? He must be hungry by now.”
With a prodigious sigh, she moved away down the aisle. Elisha sat cross-legged, regarding his patient who had broken off from wailing to gasp a series of hitching breaths before he began again. He addressed him first in English, then Italian, German, and the little French he knew. The boy showed no change at all, his eyes rolling and his thin chest struggling to get enough breath to scream. He had kicked his blanket all the way down, and Elisha re-arranged the wrinkles as he considered what to try next, short of forcing contact. A few flakes of dried blood from the boy’s heels scattered from the blanket. Elisha dabbed a few of them onto his finger, feeling the heat and the terror of the child in front of him.
He addressed the child again, this time in the way of the witches. “My name’s Elisha, what’s yours?”
The boy caught his breath, shoving hard against the wall, staring at Elisha, his eyes wide and green and shimmering with tears.
“You heard that, I can tell.” Talking like this, from one soul to another, required no translation.
He shook his head wildly, his tangled hair slapping his face and the wall. “Don’t talk in me!”
That stung. For a long moment, Elisha sat silent, regarding his patient. How was he to help the boy at all if he had no way to communicate? The swarm of emotions that assailed him when he spoke in the witches’ way suggested the boy had experience with it—and that his experience was, like so much of his young life, not pleasant, not a discovery or a thrilling secret, but an invasion. Elisha calmed his own reaction. He maintained contact through the blood, but this time spoke aloud, letting the contact carry his meaning. “The nun’s bringing you some soup—just soup, I promise. If you’d like, I’ll try it first, just to show you it’s safe to eat.”
“Nothing is safe.” A furtive, inadvertent reply, but Elisha’s recognition must have shown.
What would it have meant to Elisha in the confusion and frustration of h
is own childhood, to have someone who knew even a little of what he was going through? “I don’t believe you are mad,” Elisha said aloud, then added, silently, “You’re like me.”
“Like them.” And as if that was the thought most terrifying of all, the boy screamed so that his terror echoed off the walls all around.
“People have different skills. It’s not a skill that makes you evil, it’s what you do with it.” Elisha told him, again using his voice first, getting the child used to his presence and to someone speaking calmly, then he offered more. “Some people like us are evil. They make everything dangerous.”
The boy panted, then swallowed hard, but Elisha doubted he had enough moisture left in him even to wet his own throat. Elisha rose from the bed and scouted the corners of the room until he found a stand of washing things with an empty basin. Pouring a few inches of water into the heavy ceramic basin, Elisha returned.
“Dangerous,” the boy echoed, his voice still distant and small.
“I’m here to try to make things safe, to make things better for you.” Elisha held out the basin. “I’d like to put this near you, so you can drink.” Even as he moved to set it down, the boy flailed his legs and the basin flew up, splashing Elisha from head to toe. Thankfully, the basin itself landed on the bed without breaking.
The boy’s presence flooded with terror, overwhelming any sense of warmth or conscious thought as he writhed against the wall. He howled and shook his head, keeping his eyes on Elisha. When Elisha raised his hand to wipe the water from his face, the child fell abruptly silent, cowering. Elisha lowered his hand and let the water drip—Lord knew, he’d been drenched with worse than that.
Projecting calm, Elisha retrieved the basin, and returned to the pitcher. He refilled the basin and walked slowly back. “You must be thirsty.”
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