Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Wait.” Elisha seized on this. “A mortal grudge? Indeed there has been.”

  The inquisitor frowned at the interruption. “Who, then?”

  “The Archbishop of Canterbury. He undermined my regency and sought to destabilize the kingdom in the face of a forthcoming invasion from France.”

  Father Osbert gave a long, slow blink, as if allowing that to sink in, and it occurred to Elisha that bringing up the failed French invasion might not aid his cause when the court, and the inquisitor himself, were French. “You are saying that the deceased—God rest his soul—was, in fact, your mortal enemy.”

  “Yes, exactly. He was a traitor to the crown of England, and as regent, it was my duty to oppose him.”

  Renart slapped his palms against his thighs, with a resounding smack, and Elisha wondered if he had enhanced his interruption with magic. “This is absurd!” Renart said. “Many of us knew Jonathan, the Archbishop, from his sojourns here as well as from his eloquent statements on behalf of the Church. The accused will do anything to deflect interest from his own sordid acts, even to casting aspersions at a man who was not only a stalwart of the church, but who has passed beyond the pale and cannot speak in his own defense. How can we judge the truth of what you say when the man you accuse is dead, and by your own hand?”

  The third man on the daïs, another cardinal, leaned forward then and spoke in a voice tinged with the sound of Rome. “In England, the native land of both the accused and the man he accuses likewise, his victim, there is indeed such a method.” He blinked dark eyes at Elisha. “Trial by Ordeal. If he would swear to the veracity of what he has said, then heat up the iron. If he can carry the iron for seven steps without suffering the corruption of the flesh, then God shall have given His witness.” The man smiled beatifically and crossed himself with simple grace, as if he had not just suggested that Elisha carry a red-hot bar of iron in his naked hands. The dreams of burning shimmered in Elisha’s mind.

  Chapter 26

  Renart came to his feet at once. “This is barbaric. The Holy Father’s predecessors have forbidden it and forbidden clergy from overseeing such a thing.”

  “We are merely seeking recourse to the man’s native justice, and to a method allowing the direct intervention of the Lord—should He deign to do so—in discerning the truth.” The other cardinal looked to Father Osbert.

  “Then let us go to the Holy Father and ask his council,” Renart suggested. “We can always delay the trial and simply retain the accused until such time as we are ready to proceed.”

  It felt strange to have his enemy arguing for a more lenient approach, but then, his enemy knew he could heal himself, and Elisha hesitated, wondering what course to follow when the mancer rejected the idea of torture.

  “Mmm. Perhaps that would be wise,” said the other cardinal. “The inquisition rarely moves so quickly as this in any case. Surely a few more months are worth being certain of our course.”

  A few months in prison, while the mancers carried forward their own plans? “No.” Elisha squared his shoulders. “Your Eminences, Father, I have no wish to languish in your prison while you search your conscience. I speak the truth, and I am not afraid to prove it, even if it must be by ordeal.” His mouth felt dry as he asked to be burned.

  “But think of the very evidence you brought from England, Father,” Renart said. “You first arrived there when this man had been buried face-down at a crossroads—clear sign that even the English king believed him to be both traitorous and sorcerous.”

  “Is this so, Father Osbert?” asked the other cardinal. “I have not heard all of your discoveries.”

  “He was buried, it is true, and the burial, according to those present, involved a great outpouring of protest and devotion from the common folk, only to be followed by what might best be described as fire and brimstone.” Father Osbert drummed his fingers. “The coffin was raised at the behest of the local Church, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, prelate of the nation, and found to be empty, Your Eminence, which some there took to be a sign more angelic than demonic. That very archbishop later proclaimed the accused to be of holy rather than malign influence, due in part to the stigmata he bears. And I myself witnessed his laying on of hands for members of a local congregation, though I cannot say that they were healed, for I was not familiar with their injuries, nor the extent of their recovery.”

  Cardinal Renart narrowed his eyes. “Yet you are still bringing him to trial, Father, that suggests you are not convinced of any divine status. Is it not more probable that the devil allowed his survival during that earlier trial, fomenting rebellion among the lesser classes, elevating him in the eyes of others in order to bring havoc down upon the church of England? His apparent return from such an ignominious execution won him the trust of the very man he later murdered.”

  “You say that he rose from the grave?” the surgeon, Guy, asked suddenly. “Did he seem to be more impervious to physical harm thereafter?”

  Osbert considered the question and consulted the thick manuscript at his side, the familiar book in which he scratched his notes during his sojourn in England. “Yes, I should say that might be so.”

  “Then it is also possible that he is a revenant, one who has risen from the dead, still animate, but no longer fully souled.” Guy regarded Elisha with sharp speculation. “It is a subject I have been researching to see if there might be any plausibility to the rumors of such individuals.”

  The other cardinal leaned forward, his silk robes crinkling. “But would the ordeal not also show this, any evidence of unholy or inhuman imperviousness to harm?”

  “Has the queen recalled anything of herself which might be of use to us?” Father Osbert gestured toward Brigit.

  The cardinal inquired, “What has the lady to do with this proceeding?”

  “She was there,” Guy explained, “but the events that followed seem to have taken her mind, at least for a time. She came to Avignon in pursuit of aid against this affliction, both in the form of medical expertise and spiritual guidance. Alas, she recalls nothing from England, not even that she, by rights, is its queen.”

  The cardinal gave a little sigh, his face softening as he crossed himself, his pity for the beautiful, vacant queen shining in his every movement. Brigit looked away, chin raised, as if modestly, yet bravely facing whatever she had lost, a figure of sympathy and virtue.

  For a long moment, the room held silent, waiting, until Osbert finally said, “Such an ordeal is not without precedent. In the interests of speeding this trial, especially with the other duties we all neglect for this proceeding, I will allow it. Bring a brazier. We shall carry out the ordeal in the yard.”

  Cardinal Renart bristled with frustration as he swept by, leading the procession out into the square. Two soldiers carried the brazier between them, a short iron rod already thrust into the coals, then the inquisitor and the other cardinal followed. The remaining soldiers closed ranks about Elisha and Jude, hurrying them along while the crowd gathered at their backs and pushed out the doors into the courtyard at the center of the palace. Curls of smoke and fingers of flame rose from the brazier around the iron rod, hypnotic and horrifying.

  “You are cold—you will not burn,” Jude said, squeezing Elisha’s hand.

  Elisha squeezed back, but he said, “I’ll have to burn a little, or they will believe the accusations are true.”

  “I’m killing you,” Jude said, a quick burst of sorrow that shot up Elisha’s arm like the stab of a needle.

  “I can’t die, remember? Whatever they do to me, it is their fault, not yours—their choice.”

  “Yours to keep me.”

  Elisha tried to frame an answer, but he saw Brigit walking with Guy, speaking together in low voices, apparently taking no notice of him at all. The other cardinal approached her, giving a little bend of the knee, a courtesy she accepted as her due. There in the sunlight,
she seemed to sparkle. Magic, but not of the sort that summoned the inquisition. He once knew her presence as well as his own, but just as he had changed when he refused the Valley during the surgery to repair his fractured skull, she had changed when she awoke after the birth of their child. If the inquisitor knew that Elisha himself had crushed her spirit so deeply, he would be for the stake without a doubt.

  Jude’s growing agitation pierced Elisha’s reverie, and he seized upon a distraction. “The other doctor, Guy de Chauliac. Your father gave him a talisman made from your hair. He meant it to be given to the Pope, so he would die of the pestilence.”

  Jude’s touch registered his sense of guilt, but Elisha rejected it. “That’s a lie, Jude. That’s what your father made you—from now on, it is your choice, remember? While all this crowd are distracted, can you get close to Guy? You should be able to sense if he still has the talisman. We need to find it, to prevent it staying close to the Pope.”

  Jude gave a serious nod, tracking the surgeon with his eyes.

  Katherine took up a position at right angles, appraising Brigit from a distance, then tipping her head to glance in Elisha’s direction. The murmuring crowd gathered into a ring around them, Elisha at one end, with the soldiers and the heat, Father Osbert and Cardinal Renart at the other. A man wearing a laurel wreath and a dark tunic overlaid with the columned livery of the Colonna barons of Rome stepped up to the other cardinal and whispered with him, nodding and taking council. When he joined the group, the fellow brought out a bound book and began making notes in it.

  Elisha recognized his desire for distraction, but he quelled it, forcing himself to concentrate on the ordeal to come. He must carry a hot bar of iron seven steps. Then his hands would be bandaged, and the inquisitor would check the burns in three days to determine if they were healing in accordance with God’s beneficence on an innocent man. When Lucius beat him, Elisha did not cry out, standing on his pride, nor did he then know how to heal. This time, he must show himself humble, God-fearing. He must be wounded, but not so badly that it could be construed as heavenly disfavor, nor so lightly that it would show him impervious.

  He sank to his knees, drawing Jude down with him, and let him go, pressing his palms together in prayer as he focused his awareness on his hands. When Elisha was imprisoned for killing his brother, Lucius came to him and expressed dismay over his lack of reverence for God. “Is there anything you do believe in?” the physician had demanded, and Elisha held up his own hands, skillful and strong. He could block the pain of the injury when he took the iron, but the idea of his hands being burned filled him with dread. His allies, Jude, Katherine, and Harald, could not intervene without risking everything.

  “Your brother is dead, too,” Jude said, their elbows brushing as they prayed together.

  “I still miss him.”

  “You think you killed him. That’s a lie.”

  Elisha leaned a little nearer, acknowledging the complicated, painful truth. “Brothers are meant to be there for each other, to be the one you can always depend on, and I failed him.”

  Tentative and a little clumsy, Jude sent him comfort. “Now you have a new one. The count is the finest brother a man could have.”

  The lie coiled with sly humor, quick as a ferret, reminding him that this moment was a tiny stitch in the tapestry of troubles that built around them. “He is certainly powerful enough.” Elisha felt a burst of affection for the child he had claimed. With Jude beside him, Elisha found his focus again, crafting his defense and burying his fear. When he had warded himself as much as he could without growing impervious, Elisha rose. “I am ready.”

  Jude whimpered softly, reaching after him, and Elisha touched his forehead. “Stay strong. I can do this, and so can you. Remember the charge I’ve given you—see if Guy has the talisman.”

  One of the soldiers hefted a pair of blacksmith’s tongs to lift the red-hot bar from the brazier; shimmering heat rose from its surface. Harald stared straight ahead, but his lips compressed into the slightest wince.

  Elisha held out his hands, his bare palms before him, the pale scars showing at their centers. A series of other marks, the brands of his torture, traced up his arm beneath his sleeve and Elisha remembered that moment, all too vividly—the shriveling hair, the piercing pain, the smell of his own burning flesh. Brigit’s mother, Rowena, burned at the stake for witchcraft on the order of Thomas’s father, King Hugh. None but Elisha tried to save her, and that smell would never leave him. His hands trembled, and he quelled a nervous laugh. After all that he had been through, facing a single bar of iron should be as nothing.

  The guard swiveled, balancing the burning thing a bit too far from himself. He fumbled it into Elisha’s hands, forcing him to lunge a bit and catch it. Elisha cried out when the hot iron struck his skin. It sizzled into him as he turned, the tremors in his hands spreading up his arms, the longing to preserve his own flesh at odds with his choice to claim the ordeal. He turned, shifting his hands to carry the weight and a bit of skin tore. This second cry brought a sustained echoing wail.

  Jude ran toward him, tears streaming, hands outstretched.

  “Stop him! Do not allow the ordeal to be disrupted!” Cardinal Renart commanded, but it was Katherine who sprang forward and grabbed Jude’s arm.

  “Come away, boy,” she said sternly, hauling him back a few steps, in spite of his shrieking. He slapped and clawed at her hands, and Elisha sensed the swirl of magic rising as she sought to master him, to strengthen her own resistance and reach the boy within the shield of his panic.

  Elisha could not afford the attention or the gratitude that welled in him. In spite of his wards, his own memories of agony broke his concentration, and the pain shot through him, the stench shocking him into memories of branding and cauterization, of a woman at the stake, and Mordecai accepting the flames to forge his own magic. The Valley moaned all around him then, whistling through his heart and thrumming in his ears, as if reminding him it was still waiting.

  Elisha lurched forward, one pace, two, three, a stumble that made him instinctively tighten his grip, but he bit down on his voice, lest it trigger Jude to greater hysterics. “Go, Jude, go. Remember your charge,” he chanted within himself, letting the boy’s distraction be a distraction to him as well. A few tears stung his eyes, and he shook them away, staggering the last few paces to drop to his knees at the feet of the clerics and let the bar fall from his grasp. The bar clattered to the ground taking bits of his flesh along with it, and the cardinals leapt back lest it burn them.

  Trembling, Elisha stared at the damage, trying to reclaim his focus and force back the pain. Blood seeped from his palms, outlining the shape of the bar, parallel burns marking both hands. Blackened flesh patched the centers, and Elisha realized his old scars, thickened and nerveless, had protected him there. He sent all his awareness to his hands, the pain intensifying as he did so, but enabling him to identify the worst of the burns and push back, healing just a little, just enough to save himself permanent damage. He hoped.

  Behind him, Katherine snapped at someone, “Do you have children, Father? I think not. So let me handle the boy.” In a softer voice, she said, “You cannot go to him, not yet, do you understand? You’re only making this harder.”

  Father Osbert stooped nearer, inspecting the burns for himself. “Master de Chauliac? Perhaps you can make an examination, for the sake of comparison.”

  Guy approached, and the two of them bent over his hands, the priest with his fall of gray hair around his tonsure, the doctor with his hairline receding to nearly the same degree. “The injuries appear both appropriate and relatively superficial. Interesting how the earlier scarring resisted the burn.” He indicated the pattern with a movement of his finger over Elisha’s palm.

  “Fascinating,” Brigit murmured at his side. Elisha flinched, but again, she took no notice of him. “I am learning so much from you, Doctor. I do so appreci
ate your taking me into your confidence.”

  “I am pleased to be a part of your ministry, my lady.” They backed off together, leaving Elisha queasy, but not quite sure why. Gretchen cast him a dark look, but turned to follow Brigit. For a moment, Elisha glimpsed Jude in the wake of the surgeon, following Elisha’s commission, his scarred face determined despite the tears that still coursed down his cheeks.

  A young man in the rough clothes of a laborer and the apron of a barber came to one knee and efficiently wrapped fresh, unbleached cloth about Elisha’s palms. “Be careful with these the next few days, sir. You’re not to remove the bandages or seek any other treatment—I’ll recognize my knots. Can’t give you anything for the pain or any poultice for the healing, but after three days, if there’s any trouble, we’ll be right there, eh?” He flashed a grin, then stepped away.

  “Three days. You shall remain in the blockhouse until then.” Father Osbert started to withdraw, and Elisha put out his bandaged hand.

  “Wait, Father—what about Father Pierre? May I see him?”

  “Of course you may, in three days, if you are found to be innocent.” The inquisitor gave a slight bow of dismissal and turned away.

  A firm hand gripped Elisha’s elbow and drew him to his feet. “Lord, Elisha, but that was awful,” said Harald with great focus, into the contact. Katherine must have been training him on how to focus his thoughts so they could communicate in secret while out on their missions. “Will you be all right?” He hardly needed to ask—his concern flared through the touch.

  “In a few days. Three, apparently.” Elisha sent his gratitude, letting himself, ever so briefly, be supported by another.

  “Is that truly a tactic they use in England? How barbaric,” Katherine remarked in German.

  Straightening, Elisha gave her a slight bow. “Thank you for tending to my ward, my lady.” Then he glanced around. Guy and his party were gone; Jude was nowhere in sight. Damn it, he should have been more careful about his commission—for Jude to find his own hair should have been the matter of a moment, he never meant for Jude to leave the yard. “Did anyone see where he went?”