Elisha Daemon

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Oh, he was right here the whole time—just silent for once.” She turned about, then turned again, hands falling to her sides. Her face drained of color, lips parted, but she could not say all that she might, not in public like this. “Sir, do forgive me. He fell silent, as a result of my speaking to him, I thought. He was right here beside me, at least until you fell.” She knotted her fingers together, visibly restraining herself from touching him.

  Harald released Elisha’s arm. “I’ll find your ward and bring him to the blockhouse. What’s his name?” He spoke with the brusque efficiency of any soldier, though his eyes hinted at his sympathy.

  “Jude. He’s Hungarian—he doesn’t understand most other languages. He might have gone after the other doctor.”

  With a sharp nod to the guard commander, Harald sprinted through the crowd.

  Elisha nearly dropped all over again. He’d been such a fool, thinking Jude was ready for even such a tiny mission. The boy would never survive on his own in a strange city, not with tensions already so high and his clear scars of sickness. But the other soldiers closed around him, nudging him onward, back to his prison. Alone.

  Chapter 27

  Elisha sat, legs outstretched on his narrow bed, leaning his head back against the wall. He conjured up the cold and divorced himself from the agony of the flesh to concentrate on searching for Jude. Letting his awareness stretch, he sought any sign of the boy, and found nothing. A few other chill mancers echoed here and there, their presence made visible by the swirls of death they siphoned from the misery all around them, like stones against the rising tide of the plague. Trouble was, when he had worked with Jude these past days, they focused on deflection, on concealing his presence and avoiding the notice of all those he feared, those who might still wish to use him, or to kill him. Now, that very teaching worked against him, for Elisha could not locate him with magic, though he searched for hours, spreading himself thin, drawing the attention of every mancer in Avignon, and perhaps beyond. It didn’t matter; they already knew he had come and had responded by trying to prolong his prison sentence.

  Withdrawing back into his aching body, he let his head rap gently on the wall as if he could beat some sense into himself. Foolish, not to take Jude’s reactions into account, the powerful combination of his devotion to Elisha along with his fear for him. Even just leaving him behind in the cell would have been preferable to losing him completely. Surely, if someone had abducted him, Elisha would have known even through his agony. At the very least, Jude’s shrieking would have alerted the crowd. That suggested he had left on his own, his choice, as Elisha had been at pains to point out, whether in pursuit of Elisha’s commission, or simply in horror at the ordeal Jude was forced to witness, an ordeal for which he felt responsible. Elisha’s hands throbbed with every beat of his heart.

  A rap sounded on the door, then the key rattled and the door swung open. Elisha rolled his head to get a better view, and sat up straighter as Harald entered, carrying a tray of bread, raisins and soup. Two other guards stood just outside.

  “Sir, I am allowed to give you a report on the search for your ward.” Harald set down the tray on the table between the heads of the beds, the room so narrow that their shoulders nearly brushed. As he touched the items, as if to assure himself everything was there, he slid a thin salted blade from his sleeve to rest beneath the lip of the tray, then turned to Elisha, hands held behind him. His hawkish face looked pinched and pale, lips compressed. Finally he said, “He did follow Guy de Chauliac for some distance, but no one seems to know where he went after that. I have searched the public areas of the city, and made inquiries at those places most likely frequented by children, including churches, poor houses, and gardens. As of yet, I have not located him. All members of the guard have been informed and will be on the alert, but given your ward’s proclivities, I don’t expect they will be able to apprehend him. Our best hope is that someone will see him, and we will at least know where he has gone to ground.”

  “And that he’s safe,” Elisha murmured. And alive. He sagged.

  “You should eat, sir. You’ll need to keep up your strength.”

  “How?” Elisha held up his bandaged hands, the thick cloth inhibiting movement. He could barely bring together his thumb and forefinger.

  For a moment, Harald’s face froze, and Elisha knew he shouldn’t have said it. The situation was strain enough on both of them without his frustration spilling over to his friend. The moment passed, and Harald said, “Also, sir, there is a visitor who wishes to see you. The inquisitor has given his permission. If it suits you to admit him, a guard will remain present to ensure that nothing untoward occurs. I am detailed to remain, but I can send one of the officers if—”

  “It’s fine,” Elisha cut in. “You’ve done your best to find Jude, and he won’t make it easy on you, I know that. Who’s the visitor?”

  “A poet,” said Harald, his lips nearly smiling. He crossed to the door and spoke with the guards outside. After a moment, he returned, taking up a post by the foot of Elisha’s bed as the laureled Colonna man entered, his dark sleeves fluttering, his head bowed as if the laurel weighed too much for him just now.

  With a sigh, he sank onto the opposite bed and helped himself to a few of Elisha’s raisins. “Thank you for seeing me, sir, under such difficult circumstances. But lately all circumstances are difficult, are they not?” His Latin had a particular inflection that reminded Elisha of Rome. That and the laurel wreath triggered his memory, and Elisha turned on the bed, sliding his feet to the floor.

  “Are you Petrarch? The friend of Cola di Rienzi?”

  “Aye, ’tis true.” The poet sighed, drooping all the more. “Though that once-august name now conjures only more pain.” He set a hand to his heart, then flicked a gaze at Elisha’s own hands, bandaged and curled carefully to guard against further injury, and he let go of the guise. “That is what brings me to you, sir. I heard you had been in Rome during the final hours of Cola’s great republic, and I wished to hear of it from you, if you will speak.”

  Elisha set his fingers around the wide base of the flask of wine and managed to lift it for a sip. “You wear Colonna livery.”

  “Indeed I do, for I am currently in service to Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, that great figure you saw at the trial, a noble lord and a fine prince of the church.” He added a twirl of his hand to indicate his employer’s lofty status. “Then you are aware of the difficulties suffered by that family during the recent problems in Rome. We sought only to return Rome to her rightful place in the court of the world, to bring the Eternal City back to its glory, and to bring the Holy Father home to the city of Peter.” His eyes gazed into the distance as if picturing that miraculous sight. “Alas, in this, we have not yet succeeded, in spite of the aid of both Heaven and Earth. The Holy Father did give his support for the barons to reclaim the city in the face of Cola’s . . .” His brow furrowed as he considered.

  “Madness,” Elisha supplied. He pinched a slice of thick bread and took a bite, watching Petrarch’s reaction to the word. The poet’s eyes flared, and he sucked in a breath that swelled his chest for a lecture, only to deflate again a moment later, with a nod of his head. His presentation, from his reactions to his words to his clothes, felt slightly absurd, as if he were eternally on stage, performing the role of “poet.”

  “Then you were there,” Petrarch said drily. “His letters to me grew ever more bold, and it became clear that the great escapade was doomed to failure. I went again to the Holy Father, although I feared he would no longer give me his ear after my schemes had so far come to naught.”

  Listening keenly, Elisha laid out the pieces. Petrarch had supported Cola in his reclamation of Rome, an attempt to bring the chaotic city to peace prior to the Jubilee Year for which Petrarch himself had campaigned. The glory of Rome, an event planned to be the glory of the mancers as well, as they terrorized the thousands who would come
there. With Elisha’s destruction of the churches there, would the Jubilee Year even be held? But neither Petrarch, who proposed it, nor his Colonna master, was a mancer. How were they linked to the mancers’ plot? “It was your proposal to hold a Jubilee Year early, was it not? As part of the revival of Rome?”

  “Indeed. I am somewhat known for my eloquence.” He brushed the laurel wreath with his fingertips. “But the proposal was of divine origin, sir—none is more surprised than I that, given such exact instruction, the Heavenly Host then allowed the city itself to be cast to ruin and the Holy Father thus dissuaded from his plan to visit.”

  The Heavenly Host. Elisha tried to parse this thicket of fancy language. “You had a vision from Heaven to suggest the Jubilee?”

  Petrarch darted his glance toward Harald who stood at ease, as if bored by the talk, head tipped back, perhaps trying to avoid falling asleep on his feet. Only someone who knew him as well as Elisha did might recognize disguise in the posture. The poet leaned forward, inviting Elisha to meet him in the middle, their heads so close Elisha could feel the other man’s breath and see the grief that edged his eyes. “Sir, I was visited by an angel. In the very church of Saint Agricol not five blocks from where we sit.” He crossed himself furtively.

  Elisha echoed his gesture, acknowledging the holiness of what he said—and hoping to draw him out even more. “An angel. I have seen one, too, but not since I was a child. What was it like?”

  “He was more beautiful than any mortal. Glowing with the glory of the Lord.” His fingers spread and swirled, his gestures restricted by his desire for privacy. “With a fall of hair near as bright as my Laura’s.” His eyes brimmed with tears.

  Elisha set his fingertips on the other man’s knee in sympathy. “Laura must have been very beautiful.”

  Nodding eagerly, Petrarch said, “Laura was worthy of a thousand poems, sir. Had you arrived only a few weeks earlier, you might have seen her to judge for yourself. And yet, to be in her presence was to find yourself devoid of judgement, lost in her smile and her eyes.”

  “I am sorry to have missed that chance. Was it the plague?”

  “A plague indeed.” Petrarch shook his head, and wiped away his tears. “When shall I again write of her grace, and what words could capture the depth of my sorrow?”

  Something in the poet’s declarations struck Elisha as staged, already composed for the benefit of an audience, and he wondered how many times Petrarch had used the same phrases. “I’m sure there are no words.”

  “None.” His breath seeped out in waves of sadness, unfeigned, in any case.

  After a moment, Elisha said, “You were speaking to me of your angel.”

  “His presence overwhelmed me, nearly placing me in terror at his greatness, and he spoke to me in a perfect Roman dialect, a master of the languages of man, no doubt.”

  Through the contact, Elisha caught the vision as Petrarch spoke of it. A beautiful, bright and pale man, with a long fall of hair, appearing in a church and speaking the language of Rome. Lord Vertuollo, the count’s son, the family resemblance clear in Petrarch’s memory. “He asked your aid in planning a Jubilee Year and convincing the Pope to attend?”

  Petrarch brightened. “I wondered why he did not address His Holiness directly, but I think the angel wanted to gather the strength of man as well as of Heaven. A shame his heavenly favor extended only so far, in spite of his visits.”

  “I saw my angel only once,” Elisha told him. “How many times were you favored?”

  “Oh, that’s not what I mean.” Petrarch gave a roll of his hand. “He came three times to entreat my aid, and also to offer a boon, a gift to me in the darkness to come. He gifted me a relic so great it could defend the bearer against all earthly ailment.”

  Elisha adopted a tone of conspiratorial sympathy. “But it didn’t work—Laura still died.”

  The poet blinked. “It worked perfectly. I gave it to my brother. The other monks of his abbey have succumbed one by one to the pestilence, but he remains, vigilant in his aid of them.”

  Brothers should depend upon each other, as Elisha had told Jude, but this seemed a step too far. Feeling thick as a board, Elisha said, “The angel gave you a talisman against plague, and you gave it to your brother instead of your wife.”

  “Laura was never my wife, sir! Oh, no. Laura was my muse, the light of my life, and the beacon to my soul.” He leaned back, gazing skyward with a lift of his hand. “And so she remains, in the perfection of her youth, now that she has passed on to Heaven.”

  The poet had loved her, that much was clear in his every line and aching look, yet Petrarch chose to let her die rather than to let her fade into old age and mere humanity.

  Elisha thought he had never heard a thing so revolting. His own brother died by suicide. If Elisha had the chance to save him, or to save his love, what would he have done? Which love was the stronger, which the more worthy? His brother’s life bled away into the soil of his workshop, that soil Elisha used to wear in a vial around his neck, invoking the terrible power of that death to draw him home to England—to the one he loved. Was his choice any better? Who was he to disdain another man’s use of the dead? “I should like to visit that chapel where the angel came,” he said. “To offer my devotions in such a blessed place.” And to identify the relic that made it possible for a mancer to arrive.

  Petrarch smiled. “When you are free to do so, sir, I should be well-pleased to escort you there.” Outside, bells rang the hour, and the poet jumped up. “Ah, I see I have strayed too long, and not even asked you what I should. I shall come again, if it please you, to hear the tragic tale of the death of Rome.” He thrust out his hand, then snatched it back and bowed instead. “Thank you for your ear and for your sympathy. I pray to the Lord that he shall grant your innocence.” So saying, he swept away into the hall.

  Harald tossed back a glance, raising an eyebrow, and Elisha gave a shrug. Would Harald make the connection to the mancers in this strange tale of angels? “The church of Saint Agricol, sir? I will see if the inquisitor will allow it early. He may well grant such a visit as sign of your contrition.” Flashing his fierce grin, Harald bowed and was gone, the cell door slamming behind him.

  Chapter 28

  Elisha slept fitfully, dreaming that he chased Jude through a tangle of streets lined with the corpses of the dead, then that Jude was among them, buried in a heap of bodies Elisha must dig through to find him. When he cleared the mound, he fell into a cave below and found himself surrounded by mancers, including Brigit and Katherine both, blood dripping from their hands as they reached for him. He woke sweating, as if the fever of the plague returned, his hands throbbing. Mancers pretending to be angels to lure desolati to their cause. Mancers trying to bend the Church to their will, the last great institution that could survive through the downfall of kings and the dead in the streets. Was the Pope already with them? Danek’s attempt to infect him suggested otherwise, but how could Elisha find out? If an accused sorcerer asked for an audience could it conceivably be granted?

  Elisha moved the salted blade under his pillow and hoped it might cut these nightmares, but he found no more rest, losing himself instead in the submersion of his thoughts and emotions, a level of awareness that allowed him to imagine he slept. When he finally abandoned his bed, he slid the blade into his boot, a hollow hardness along his ankle.

  When the poet came back the next day at lunch, Elisha interrupted the poet’s ramblings to tell Petrarch what he wanted to know about Cola’s downfall and the state of Rome. He steered the conversation back to the vision of the angel, but learned nothing more, nor did his probing about the Pope himself reveal anything new.

  “Some whisper that the Holy Father is too greatly enamored of the earthly wealth of his position, but it seems to me only his due,” the poet declaimed. Elisha, having seen no more of the palace than its courtroom—better appointed than those of the E
nglish king or the Holy Roman Emperor Ludwig—could not yet judge on that account.

  “Many fear that he is too closely bound with King Phillip,” Elisha said. “I think that may be the greater concern.”

  “Well, they must be neighbors. Without the gift of this land to the Holy See, there is also the question of the Pope being vassal to a king, by virtue of the land he holds. I deem that a matter for lesser minds. The Holy Father answers to a higher lord than a simple crown.” He waved off the entire consideration, and asked instead for a description of Elisha’s own angel, which Elisha delivered, neglecting to mention that his angel was the mother of the “queen” they revered for her pale beauty and fragile state. The last thing he needed was to start a rumor that Brigit herself was divinely born.

  In the midst of this conversation, Harald knocked at the door, rousing the guard who stood in the room, and admitted himself. “Forgive the interruption, sirs, but I have news.”

  “Have you found Jude?”

  Harald’s face fell. “Alas, no.” His eyes pleaded for Elisha’s faith. “But the inquisitor has granted his permission for a visit to the church of Saint Agricol, for the betterment of your soul.” At another time, this might have been a jest between them, but the loss of Jude still weighed on both men, and Elisha merely nodded.

  “Excellent! I have a few more minutes, only, but allow me to bring you there and show you the place, then perhaps these men can escort you back?” Petrarch bounced up, jostling the laurel wreath upon his head, and the soldiers parted to let them through. A half-dozen men joined ranks to bring them to the church, which lay a few blocks away. Aside from the ringing of church bells, the city loomed near-silent around them, many houses shuttered and barricaded while others lay open, with unbarred doors that suggested the hasty departure of the occupants. While in Rome the streets echoed with weeping, with rage, or with the too-gay celebration of lives too short, Avignon brooded over the dead, resigned to the mounting losses, emotions restrained, perhaps by the nearness of the Holy Father who oversaw the world on behalf of the unresponsive Lord.