Again, the boy flailed and tossed, though Elisha held onto the basin this time, and only received a gout of water that streamed down from his hair. The child collapsed, whimpering, as that terror rushed through him, spiked, this time, with confusion.
If he had not felt the boy’s terror as much as seen it in his face, Elisha might have been angry, but he felt, too, the child’s anticipation, the new tension that seized his limbs as he waited for an adult’s fury. Elisha started singing, very quietly, withdrawing his presence so the boy would have to be quiet in order to hear. He sang a lullaby, in English, for that was what he knew, but a lullaby did not require words to be understood. The boy’s shrieking sank low along with Elisha’s voice, as if they were singing counterpoint, a duet of fear and peace together. When the shrieking died away completely, leaving the boy’s mouth open, empty of his fear, at least for the moment, Elisha reached out again. He knelt down, offering the bowl.
“I will not hit you. I will not hurt you. If it is in my power to prevent it, I will not allow anyone else to do so. Do you understand? I know it’s hard for you to believe, even if I do not know why, but you can feel that I’m telling the truth.”
Surprise struck the boy’s presence and his lashes fluttered. A magus, yes, but utterly untested and untrained. The boy had no idea what he could do or what he might know.
Elisha almost smiled. “Here, I will tell you a lie, so you’ll know what that feels like. I hate singing.”
The boy flinched, but that tension did not leave him, and he made no move toward the basin Elisha set on the bed before him.
“All right then,” Elisha continued, encouraged that at least his voice in the child’s flesh no longer provoked terror. “I hate the king of England. I love to eat pigs’ feet. I hate dogs. I hate white bread. I hate you.”
Those green eyes wavered, searching Elisha’s face, his hands, the basin between them.
“All of those things are lies.” Regarding him steadily, Elisha went on, “Here are some things that are true. I want to help you. An angel touched me once, before she died, that’s why I became a healer. I love dogs.” He smiled, gently. “You don’t have to be afraid of me. Did you feel the difference? To me, it feels slippery, like eels.”
“I love doctors.” The words slithered through Elisha’s skin. “Priests are better. I love dogs, too. I’m not afraid of anything.”
Elisha laughed, still keeping his voice very low. “How can anyone not love dogs?”
“Are you a demon, too?”
“If I am,” Elisha told him, “then we are demons together.”
The boy reached as far as he could with one bound arm and tugged the basin across the linen. Elisha fought the urge to help him, afraid that any quick movement, anything too sharp would break the fragile peace. The boy leaned into the basin and drank his fill.
Chapter 13
The moment the nurse reappeared, their fragile rapport shattered, and it took all of Elisha’s patience to convince her to simply leave the bowl of soup and leave with him, giving the boy space to eat without feeling threatened by them. Still, this small success left him elated as he walked down the stairs. He spread his attunement over the quiet hospital, sensing the patients both sleeping and restless. With the boy’s silence, the tension ebbed from the night. He could ill afford the attention he must give to this one child, but the peace that the child’s successful treatment might bring to both patients and doctors alike could earn him the respect of the occupants—and open his path to the knowledge he needed to confront the plague. If he met the challenge Antonio had assigned him, Teodor and the others might override Lucius’s denial of the library and bring him into their confidence.
Throughout the hospital, too many patients still lay fevered and twitching. On the lowest level, a comforting presence moved among them, with the focused shifting of intellect and power he’d come to associate with a magus. Danek? He’d been told the man made his rounds after dark, after a long day’s work. Elisha pushed through the door into the long, dimly lit ward.
Danek stooped beside a bed, his fingers pinching the wrist of one of its occupants. Then he poured a draught from a small bottle and helped the patient to swallow. He glanced up at Elisha’s approach, his face in shadow, but his eyes glinting. “Welcome,” he murmured. He held up the bottle. “A sleeping draught. If we cannot ease the progression of some diseases, we might at least offer a respite. What keeps you up at this hour?”
“I’ve been assigned a patient. Ward three, bed twelve.” He wanted to reach out, to make contact and have the chance to speak freely. “Have you examined him?”
Danek chuckled softly, then rose from the bed. “I’ve heard he screams at the approach of any doctor. My presence there at night would hardly be appreciated.” He cocked his head then, looking up at the ceiling. “I did hear screaming a little while ago. Your doing?”
“I like to think the silence after was more my doing. The boy suffers from nightmares.”
“Perhaps we should get him some of this.” Danek waggled the little bottle.
Elisha put out his hand, but instead of taking it, he let his fingers rest on Danek’s. “He’s a magus, like us. I suspect he has a high degree of sensitivity.”
Danek twitched at Elisha’s touch, his fingers felt rough, like a workman’s. “Really? Well. I guessed at the first part. Pity. Something must have addled his mind at an early age. The sensitive are easily overwhelmed by circumstance. I shouldn’t wonder if more of them went mad.” He drew back his hand and dropped the bottle back into a satchel slung over his shoulder. “It’s expensive stuff, that. I don’t know how you’d administer it to a madman, in any case.”
Danek moved along the aisle, stooping again to listen to a patient’s breathing.
“I hoped you would help me to diagnose his illness.”
“What are the signs of active contagion?” Danek went to his next patient, removed a dry poultice, and tossed it toward the aisle for the cleaners before replacing it with a fresh one.
Elisha considered. No fever, no sign of recent eruptions of pustules or rash, though clearly he had suffered those in the past. His breathing was clear, and movement, though wild, appeared to be controlled—no fits or convulsions. Neither Christina nor the nuns had mentioned any significance to his urine or feces, though perhaps he got so little to eat or drink that his eliminations would be worthless for diagnostic purposes. “I am not sure there are any signs of active contagion.”
“Back to demonic possession then.” Danek’s grin gleamed faintly as he approached between the beds. Then he clapped Elisha on the shoulder. “We should be so lucky, eh? Don’t know about your experience gaining your skills, mine was anything but pleasant.”
Just for a moment, Elisha wanted to trust Danek with the truth of his skill. He carried it like a weight in his chest, the hard, cold presence of Death, but he kept his nature carefully shuttered behind the façade of medical interest and magical friendship.
The touch lifted, and Danek proceeded toward the far end of the ward. “You came to study the pestilence, though? Don’t let that boy distract you. Pitiful, certes, but just the one.” Danek shrugged, then blew out a breath. “This pestilence on the other hand. Have you had a chance to ask Leon about his experience?” They stepped into a room shelved high and stacked with all manner of hospital supplies. “I am very curious to know how he survived.”
“I haven’t. I assumed you and the other masters have learned what could be learned.”
Danek examined a shelf, leaning low beneath the pool of lamplight. “Not much, alas. I’d like to get a blood or urine sample for study, but, he’s reticent. And the library is little help either. The Pope’s man is gathering pages of notes and advice from every one of us, doing his duty, doubt it will matter. I’ll be surprised if he can even keep the Pope alive through all of this.”
“I pray you’re wrong about that.
Apparently, Guy will be leaving day after tomorrow to bring the Pope what he’s learned.” Was Danek aware of the mancers and their connection with the pestilence? Elisha so wanted to trust him, but they’d only just met. Best to be cautious. He glanced around, but even his awareness found no others within earshot. “Is it true the library contains books of magic?”
“Charms, incantations, and rituals. Nothing true. Half of it is Egyptian or Greek in any case. If you’d like anything in particular, I might be able to bring some things out for you.”
Nothing true. This made Elisha feel suddenly weary, and he suppressed a yawn. “A kind offer. I’ll think on it.”
“Do that. Meantime, I’ve got more patients.” Danek turned away, perusing the shelves and placing items in his satchel. “Good night.”
“Good night.” Elisha left him there, and walked back toward his own quarters. As he paused in the open air, taking a few deep breaths and seeking calm before trying to sleep, Elisha felt the pressure of the Valley, no longer simply to the south, but north and east as well. The only direction empty of encroaching death was the calm sea that lapped at the feet of the city, and the salt and the water itself would block his senses. He gazed up at the bulk of the library, its windows even now lit by flickering lamps. Guy, still seeking answers? Or some students working late into the night? Either way, he could not simply sneak inside, not tonight—even if he had the strength for a deflection. Guy would shortly be leaving, giving the faculty the freedom to focus on the accusations against Elisha himself. Vertuollo’s intrusion and the tension with Lucius left him feeling wrung out, grateful for the challenge of the child, his sole patient, and certainly one who’d keep him occupied with medical as well as magical concerns. What sickness could have caused the marks on his body—and how many were due as much to attempted cures as to sickness itself? Diagnose the child, hopefully cure him, and win the faculty’s trust. Elisha focused on that as he curled back into his bed and let Gilles’s snoring carry him off for a much-needed rest.
• • •
Gilles and Elisha broke bread in their room, Gilles already eager to return to the church and talk with the novices he’d met the day before. Elisha had only one patient and no privileges for the library or anything else. As he crossed the yard toward the hospital, he watched the students scurry toward classes or flock behind Maestro Antonio—looking a little green—for a hospital tour. Lucius strode from the refectory with a few of his acolytes in pursuit, but he paused to aim his finger at Elisha, who had no need to hear the words to know that accusations against him were spreading. Students who looked curious yesterday now dodged his gaze and shifted their steps to be past him. Excellent. What more would be done to damage his already tenuous reputation? By the sharp light of day, pinning his hopes on curing a hopeless child looked like a madness of his own. Leon sat on a bench at the edge of the yard, a book in his hands, though he did not look at it.
Elisha approached, half-expecting the young man to rise and move away as fast as his languorous pace would carry him, but Leon simply blinked at him and watched him approach. Perhaps he hadn’t the energy to flee like the rest. No. Elisha couldn’t afford to think that way, nor should he make assumptions about Leon’s fitness. “May I join you?”
Leon tipped his head toward the bench, and Elisha sat down. “Don’t like you any more, do they?”
“If they ever did. I am a curiosity—first for my English origins, and now for the rumors.”
Leon huffed a breath that might have been laughter. “A curiosity.” His hand brushed over the leather cover of the book in his lap.
“You’ve been here a few months, right? You must know a lot of people.”
The young man tipped his head again, squinting up at Elisha.
“I’m looking for someone. A student called Ariane. She—”
But Leon straightened in his seat, his interest quickened in a way that made him look more alive than he had a moment before. “Senior student. Good scholar.”
“I expect so. Can you introduce us, or at least, point her out to me?”
Leon’s eyes widened, and his cheeks grew a little more pink. “After nuncheon, best time. She makes rounds.” He pulled his book close against his chest, his presence humming with excitement.
“Meet you here?”
Leon bobbed his head. “Not for me, she wouldn’t. But you. You’re a curiosity.” He pronounced the word carefully. Leon pushed to his feet and, by his standards at any rate, hurried away.
The library and the professors were only one source of knowledge about the pestilence. Elisha, too, pushed up and walked swiftly toward the lower yard. At least the gatekeepers had the word to let him come and go as he pleased, so Elisha walked back up to the church, to its crypt filled with victims of the pestilence. As Danek had said, they might not yet have a cure, but they could still relieve the pain. Elisha pushed back his sleeves, and got to work, laying cool, damp compresses on the sufferers, more often than not, laying his own cold hands, submerging himself in the task at hand, the patients at need, studying their symptoms as he worked with them, looking for any signs he might have missed. When the noon bells rang overhead, echoing down through the depths as if in answer to those voices who called out to God, he sprinted back down to the university and arrived, breathless, at the appointed bench.
Leon stood this time, still clutching his book, staring into the distance. At his side sat a tall young woman with lustrous dark hair and red lips—her beauty unsurprising given the young man’s earlier reaction. She rose immediately, taking a half-step back, brushing against Leon’s side and making him blush all over again. She wore the long robes of any other student, sliding her hands into the opposite sleeves. “Leon said you wished to see me. It is no more than I have wished myself.” She drew a sharp breath, then pushed herself forward with a visible effort, and he recognized her from the day of his arrival. She had been at the heart of a cluster of students, at first approaching his confrontation with Lucius, then closing in around her, solicitous of her response. “You knew Lucius in England? And Benedict?”
“I did.”
“Benedict was to marry me.” She stopped before him. “He is dead, isn’t he. He would’ve written otherwise.”
“Aye, he’s dead. I’m sorry.”
She sniffed, pressing her hands together at her lips as if whispering a prayer. “I had a letter in the summer, but he’d written it in the spring. He was afraid, unhappy, but he hoped to come back soon, to come for me.”
Elisha realized the gift she had handed over, more than he had hoped for in asking to meet her. “Do you still have the letter?”
“Of course. I have saved them all, but I don’t think the council will expel Maestro Lucius, not without stronger evidence.”
“You’re right about that, but will you help me? Lucius is the only one who can allow me into the library—I’m trying to stop this plague, to stop the madness from spreading. With your letter, I might be able to scare him into cooperating.”
“Good. I’d like him to be the one scared this time.” She leaned a little forward, utterly focused. “Is it true he killed Benedict?”
Elisha nodded. “Lucius tried to talk Benedict into supporting his own treachery against the king. He left here at the request of Prince Alaric who hoped to overthrow his father. When Benedict resisted, Lucius shot him and left evidence to suggest it had been Benedict all along.” It had been Elisha’s first contact with Alaric’s scheming. “I’m so sorry.”
“Then he was brave, my Benedict.” Lovely in her grief though she held back her tears, she reached out to him, and he took her trembling hands atop his own. “Were you there when he died?”
“I tried to save him, to stop the bleeding. I—” The death haunted him, trapped in the rushing river’s stream, the young man pierced by the arrows of someone he trusted. No matter that Benedict himself had inflicted some of Elisha’s own
punishments, no one deserved to die that way. “I came too late, lady.”
She gripped his hands fiercely, then let him go. “I will gain you that library, sir. Come with me.” She lifted the hem of her robes to move faster. Leon trailed after, picking up his own pace, almost breaking into a run, but that would put him beside her, and he held back.
In her richly laid chambers, Ariane pulled out a wooden box, inlaid and polished to a high sheen. From this, she took a bundle of pages, and found the one she sought, clutching it in both hands, as precious to her as any talisman or saint’s bone. “Now to find his killer.”
“In his study,” Leon murmured. “Always, after lunch.”
“You are very observant, aren’t you. Perhaps you should study medicine,” Ariane remarked, not pausing to see the effect her words had upon him. After pursuing her for the afternoon, Leon would likely need a rest, but he showed no sign of flagging as she led the way upstairs and half-way around the yard.
A murmur of voices echoed beyond the door they had reached, and Ariane knocked. The gawky student librarian opened the door promptly, blurting, “Ariane!” then noticing the others. His expression shifted to supercilious in an instant, and he half-closed the door again. “Ariane, you are welcome here, but your companion must go away. Maestro Lucius is in fear of his very life. Haven’t you heard?”
“Because he is marked by the stain of murder,” Elisha put in. “Or haven’t you heard? Did you know Benedict le Fleur? Was he a friend of yours?”
“Of course. And none is prouder than I am to know he’s founded his own practice.”
Ariane stood her ground. “And why, then, would he not write to me? Why, then, has he not sent for me?”
The student looked flustered, staring down at her feet. “Maybe, he’s found someone else? And, gone off you?”
She drew a deep breath and blew it out through her rosy lips. The student’s shoulders shrank.
Lucius stalked up behind his gate-keeper, but stayed well back. “You again. I should have expected neither rest nor safety, while your intrusion at this school continues. How dare you push into my private—”
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