Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  “This one is Maestro Danek’s, but he won’t be there until evening, of course.” Ariane started to walk by.

  “May we look in any case? I am curious about how the lecturers arrange their classes and materials,” Elisha explained, a plausible reason if he were seeking to be hired as Maestra Christina had suggested.

  With a shrug, she opened the door on a room with long tables and benches, the walls decorated with a series of hideous paintings: lepers with thick faces and stumpy hands and feet; Saint Roche with his open sores; scabious faces, rough and red; limbs distorted by one ailment or another; views inside of infected mouths; an enormous eye blotched with darkness. It made him think of his patient who bore so many different signs. Not of a single disease, but of several? How could a boy so young have been afflicted with and survived all of that? He stepped further into the room, studying the diagrams.

  “Maestro Danek knows more about disease than anyone else at the school,” Ariane said. “He is so devoted to his work that he insists on lecturing only in the evening, giving his greater focus to his patients and to his research. I had little interest in the field when I arrived here, but he has inspired me to consider a specialization.” Her cheeks flushed and she slid back into the corridor, drawing the door shut behind them. “Benedict did not approve. He felt the work was unseemly.”

  “For a woman?”

  She smiled faintly. “For anyone. Disease is the sign of God’s disfavor, after all. Should we be trying to fight God’s will in sickening these people?”

  “You don’t agree?”

  “Not all of the sufferers have led unholy lives. Even the priests will send people to us for treatment. After all, if we cure them, then that, too, was God’s will, was it not?”

  The next room reeked of urine, and Ariane wrinkled her nose. “They must be doing a practicum today with Maestro Elazar.” She pinched her nostrils together and opened the door, letting Elisha see the room where students clustered around a broad table covered with clear glass bottles in varying shades of yellow. A chart covered one wall showing an array of such bottles from clear to greenish, red, and even purple, with suggested diagnoses written under each. Maestro Elazar wore a black cap, and something in his features reminded Elisha of his own mentor, Mordecai.

  “I know it is vital to examine the urine,” Ariane said, her voice distorted by her pinched nostrils, “but it is better on cold days when the smell does not travel so far.”

  They departed in a hurry. “What can you tell me about Maestro Fidelis?” Elisha asked.

  “He is a coward. When the first rumors of a pestilence began to reach us, he took to his chamber and hasn’t come out. His specialty is complaints of the mind in any case. He works closely with Maestro Lucius on the astrological implications of the patient’s birth and time of complaint, then recommends bleedings, poultices and simples.” She pointed him toward a door on the outer wall. “That’s his classroom, but there’s nothing to see. Sometimes, Maestro Garamus, the surgeon, performs a trepanation there, if Maestro Fidelis orders it.”

  “So he still sees patients?”

  “Oh, he doesn’t see them, but he is still prescribing, based on all of those other signs.” She waved her fingers. “You took on the patient in bed twelve? He was Maestro Fidelis’s patient when we first took him in. Whatever the Maestro learned of his nightmares gave him nightmares of his own.” Ariane shook her head.

  “You don’t think much of him.”

  “A doctor terrified by the visions of a mad child can hardly be counted on to deliver good care. Here we come to Maestra Christina’s theater. She is beginning a new anatomy today, the last of the season before it gets too warm.”

  As Ariane moved into the chamber, Elisha thought she and the tall, pale Benedict would have made a handsome couple, and Benedict would have been led by her just as he was by Lucius.

  “Careful, there—careful!” Christina lunged across the room to hold open a door at the back as two brawny fellows wrestled with a cloth-covered corpse on a litter. They jostled the dead man as they bumped through the doorframe. The chill of death reached Elisha, reached out for him, almost, the dark shade lingering from a recent passing. It seeped through him, even at such a distance, with an intimacy that made him feel queasy.

  “She is the school’s anatomist?” he managed to say. “I did not realize.”

  “It is one of several reasons for the controversy about her teaching here. Every few months, it seems, the Church changes its dictates about the use of corpses in anatomy. Maestra Christina must be ready at any moment to perform the work, or to teach from illustrations instead.”

  Christina noticed them, waving them closer to the long table at the center of her students, several of whom already looked a bit more pale. The men lifted the shrouded body onto the table and removed the litter, stomping back out through the other door and shutting it behind them. “Welcome, Elisha. I’ve asked them to bring us one of the plague victims this morning, so we might learn more about the progress of the disease through the study of the dead. Anyone who does not support this examination is invited to leave now.” Her stern gaze swept the dozen students, clad as she was in a long apron, sleeves rolled back and bound with ties. A few glanced toward the door with longing, but no one departed. “Very well, then. Christopher, what should we do first?”

  “Prepare our tools?”

  “Very good. It helps to have your tools close by.” She gestured toward a smaller table with an array of knives and saws. “Next?”

  “Uncover the body?” Christopher leaned back from the table, his fingers twisted together behind him.

  “Second year students,” Ariane whispered, with a hint of amusement.

  “Go on, then.”

  Christopher reached forward, stretching his arm as far as it would go to take a pinch of the fabric near the corpse’s feet and gently tug the shroud toward him.

  “Oh, for goodness sake. We shall be here all day. Roger, how about you?”

  Roger, a heavy, dark-haired youth, stepped up and grasped the shroud with both hands to peel it back. The wet sound set Elisha’s teeth on edge. Christopher’s eyes rolled back and he tumbled to the floor while other students gasped and some covered their mouths. The corpse glistened with the red striations of bare muscles, yellow globs of fat clinging here and there, white ligaments and cartilage visible around the joints.

  “Is it common practice to skin the cadavers, Maestra?” Roger inquired, inspecting the body before him.

  Christina wet her lips and swallowed hard, her eyes flaring at the sight, then contracting as she retained control. “The face, quickly.”

  Roger moved up toward the head, blocking Elisha’s view of the body, but not of Christina’s own face as she gasped and her eyes flew wide again, staring straight at him. One of the students shrieked, staggering back from the table, and fainted, clearing a space. On the anatomist’s table, stripped bare of dignity and clothes and skin itself lay Maestro Lucius, his eyes vacant, mouth gaping over a gash that carved through his neck nearly to the bone.

  Chapter 16

  Elisha clamped a hand over his mouth as the bile rose from his churning stomach.

  Roger crossed himself quickly. “Shall I cover him, Maestra?”

  “We need to finish a gross examination at the least,” she said, wiping trembling hands on her apron. “Pray attend me, Roger. Giovanni, please find Maestro Teodor and tell him what has happened. Ariane, perhaps you can revive the students who have collapsed and see to their treatment if necessary.”

  Ariane brought her gaze back to Elisha. “Yes, Maestra.” She marshalled two of the other students, those who looked most pale, to carry Christopher out into the corridor and follow with the other student.

  “Maestro Lucius’s students should be told,” someone else offered, and Christina gave a nod of assent, sending him out on the task.

 
“Ariane and I went to his classroom this morning.” Elisha closed the last few steps to the table and steeled himself to examine the body. “His senior student told us they usually had breakfast together, but that Lucius wasn’t in his chamber. He thought Lucius went out last night to aid with the riot.”

  “And did he?”

  “Not while Danek and I were present, certainly, and the gates were closed after we came back in.”

  Lucius retained the skin of his hands and feet, his ankles showing ligature marks. Someone bound him before he died. His cause of death gaped across his throat for anyone to see—one swift, powerful blow from what Elisha could tell, the edges smooth of any notching caused by multiple attempts. The knife had been very sharp. A few slender cuts at his chest showed where the flensing blade dug a little too deep, but only a little. The process had been brutally efficient. And somewhere, a necromancer had a new trophy. Had Silvio done this, before Elisha killed him on the street? Surely, Elisha would have sensed the familiar dead among Silvio’s talismans. Count Vertuollo appeared the night before at the dining hall, witness to Lucius and Elisha’s fraught history, and that had been before Lucius had allowed Elisha access to the library with its secret volume. The calculating and precise master of Rome might well have done it. Where? How? The why of it was all too clear as Maestro Teodor strode into the room.

  “Doctor—your rival lies dead. I command you to tell me what has happened.”

  “I wish I knew, Maestro. I attended the riot victims, as you know. I visited my patient, stopped in at the library to confirm some information, then went to bed. I woke this morning to meet with Ariane and see the rest of the faculty. We had already convinced Lucius to allow me access to the library as I said.”

  “Convinced? Coerced, perhaps? Given his low opinion of you, he was hardly likely to grant access so readily, and if it were appropriate for him to do so, I should have been consulted first. With the testimony we’ve heard from the Roman gentleman, and this latest discovery, it seems his concerns were fully justified.” Teodor’s eyes bored into him, his presence hard and cold. “I have sent to the castle for aid in arresting you, Doctor—if I should even call you that.”

  Four solidly built men, groundskeepers, Elisha guessed, waited at Teodor’s back, fidgeting uncertainly, one of them holding an ax, the others armed with knives at their belts and nothing more. If he wanted to escape, they were no match for him, and they seemed to know it. He alone carried the scars of battle. They dodged his gaze.

  Elisha tried to speak calmly, to win them over as he had before. “Lucius plotted to kill the king of England, and he killed Benedict de Fleur in the hopes of framing him for his own treachery—Ariane has letters from Benedict suggesting he was afraid and suspicious of Lucius. Yes, I hated him, but I had nothing to do with his death. I came here seeking a cure for the plague, just like the rest of you. I suspect one of my enemies slew him, hoping to cast the blame on me.”

  “Come, gentlemen,” Teodor insisted. “We need to take him into custody and secure his person.”

  “You don’t need to do anything—I have no desire to leave.” Elisha spread his hands, pleading. “I haven’t learned what I came for. Why should I ruin my chances here by killing someone?”

  “I cannot claim insight into villainy. Perhaps Maestro Fidelis could do so. In the meantime, come with us.” Teodor gestured him out into the corridor.

  Stewing inside, but unwilling to push the director too far, Elisha followed, two of the makeshift guards in front of him and two behind with Maestro Teodor. As they exited into the sunlight, Elisha heard a familiar wail and his head rose, not sure if he should be disappointed or relieved at this return to his accustomed behavior. “Maestro, that is my patient. May I please go to him?”

  “We cannot have you at liberty in this school.” Teodor folded his arms, but he winced a little at the sound.

  “Neither has my patient any liberty, Maestro.” Elisha put out his hands, wrists close together. “Bind me in chains if you must, but please let me attend him. It’ll be better for all of us.”

  Their eyes met, and Teodor’s calculating gaze softened. “You are a doctor, aren’t you. Very well. Giuseppe, run and fetch a set of the restraints we use on the mad. Meet us in the upper ward.” He tipped his head, indicating that they should keep moving while one of the men trotted off in another direction.

  As they mounted the stairs, they met the ward sister on her way down, scowling fiercely. She stopped short when she saw him. “Maestro, your patient is in need—and is aggravating everyone else in the hospital. I can understand that you would not have me gag a child, but really—”

  “I’m coming.” Elisha pushed between his guards and pounded up the stairs. If he had only a few minutes of freedom, he’d best use them carefully. He ran along the aisle and dropped to his knees at the child’s bedside. When he reached out, the child, initially calming at the sight of him, jerked back and began to shriek all the louder, scrambling onto the headboard. Elisha put up his hands for peace. “Don’t, please don’t.” He anticipated the child would twist himself about again, wrenching his arms and bloodying his heels—but the blood he used for contact yesterday had vanished in the course of sleep and cleaning. Except where it stained the wall above the patient’s head. Elisha slapped his palm to the wall and searched for contact. There! Tenuous, but more clear as he focused on it.

  “I’m here, please, please, you must calm down.”

  The boy’s cries fell into a series of jagged, whimpering breaths.

  “You can only hear me if I can touch you in some way. Your blood is on the wall, and that gives me contact, as if I were touching you. Do you understand?” He searched the boy’s haunted eyes. The boy glanced up and back. Was that a tiny nod?

  “A demon thing.”

  “A demon thing, or a witch’s thing.” He took a long breath and forced himself to be gentle. “We call ourselves the magi, and you are one of us.” He could hear the echo of Brigit’s voice as he spoke, telling him the same thing when he had discovered his own magic.

  The boy’s bound hands twisted together, over and over, his fingers itching at his skin, though Elisha could see no sign of rash or bite. “Is that why?”

  “I don’t understand,” Elisha replied. “Do you mean, why you are scared?”

  “Why I am mad, why they do this to me, why he did it.”

  Elisha caught his breath. He set aside his own worries, ignoring the men who stomped up to wait at the foot of the bed, ignoring the jangle of chains. “Your father, is that who you mean?”

  But the boy could not ignore the others. He cried out and struggled, pushing himself into a tiny ball at the top of his bed.

  “Please talk to me—I haven’t much time.”

  “But you can see the boy is better when he’s here. I can’t say why, perhaps they’ve got the same madness inside, Maestro,” the nun was saying, her scowling demeanor transformed as she pleaded. “We must find a way to keep the peace of this hospital.”

  “Doctor, come. Come away.”

  Elisha’s head slumped against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. The cold power of the Valley burned at his chest and thrummed in his ears, and if he used even a trace of magic here and now, he doomed them both.

  “They hate you, too.”

  “They fear me, just as they fear you.” He blinked his eyes open, the boy staring back at him along the wall.

  “Give us your hands, Doctor. You have so far cooperated with us. If you maintain that attitude, things will go better for you,” Teodor said.

  “They are right to fear you,” the boy said, his inner voice grown very soft indeed.

  “Yes, they are, but not for the reasons they believe.” Elisha pushed off from the wall and rose, meeting Teodor half-way along the bedside.

  Maestro Teodor held out a set of padded manacles with a longer chain dangling at one side, meant to
lock to a wall in some stinking cave. “I hereby arrest you in the name of Queen Giovanna of Naples, and of her agents, for the murder of Maestro Lucius, a physician of this school.” He locked the manacles about Elisha’s wrists, checking that they were neither too tight nor too loose.

  “Please find Friar Gilles, the monk who accompanied me here. He’s volunteering at the church, with the plague victims, and he can support my story.”

  Holding the free end of the chain in his hand, Teodor regarded Elisha. “I had the duty of checking on the survivors of the riot this morning. You did some fine work for those people. Stitching and bone-setting in the dark. It could not have been easy.”

  “Thank you, Maestro.”

  “Lucius told us that he beat you for insubordination, but I find it hard to imagine, given that you do not fight my authority now, that you were so contentious at that time.”

  A thousand things had changed since then, and Elisha most of all. “Lucius demanded obedience because he could not command respect.”

  “You could.” Teodor tipped his head. “Pity. Under other circumstances, I expect you would have made a fine addition to our faculty.”

  The shackles weighed down his hands, but Elisha found a smile. “Maestro, I appreciate the compliment. If your good will can extend so far, then would you ask Maestro Danek to see me during my captivity?”

  Behind him, the boy’s rough breathing and whimpers broke into a low, sustained wail.

  “Should we resume the bleedings, Maestro?” the nun asked. “If the English doctor is to be relieved of his duty? We need to keep that boy under control.”