Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Nowt but a head wound, there, I’m the one who—”

  “I’ll give ye a head wound,” the other replied, balling his bloody hand into a fist.

  While they were distracted, a boy hurried up, as fast as he could, dragging another by the arm behind him. “Sir! It’s Robbie, sir,” he pleaded. Glancing down, Elisha noted the lolling head, the sunken chest, and knew he could do nothing.

  “Give over, boy, let the fighting men go first.” The speaker caught up both children and thrust them behind.

  “Hold! Hold, all of you!” Elisha cried, throwing up his arms. The mob fell uneasily silent, shifting their eyes to those around them, as if expecting treachery. He searched the faces before him, weary, hurt, and frightened. If there had been a hundred of him, he might have reached them all. He looked to the surgeon and his assistants at the door beyond. Matthew, one of the assistants, met his gaze coolly, with the hint of a smile, then urged the man before him into the mob at Elisha’s door. Shoulders sinking, Elisha rubbed his face.

  “Here’s how it’ll be. Any of you who can stand and walk, who’s not bleeding so much he can’t stop it with his hand, get back. I’ll see to you, but you’ll have to wait.” A groan of frustration rose from the crowd.

  “It’s not fair!” the soldier with the wounded arm shouted, echoed by several around him.

  “Nothing is,” Elisha shot back. “But you’ll have to trust me sometime, why not start now?” He met their angry eyes without flinching, and a few clutched their wounds a little tighter, moving back out of the way. “Thank you. First, let me see anyone unconscious or not breathing. Can everyone hear me?”

  Triumphantly, the man before him pulled his companion along. Elisha stepped up, checking the man’s pulse. The bearer watched him, an angry grimace stuck upon his lips. Shifting his fingers on the cooling throat, Elisha wet his lips, but did not need to speak, for the bearer’s teeth set hard, and he turned away, still hauling his mate. Elisha saw them go, the mob parting silently before them.

  As he had suspected, most of the unconscious would never awake, and only the desperation of a battlefield friendship had brought them this far. “After these, I’ll take the heavy bleeders, then chest or stomach wounds of any kind, next anyone shot with an arrow or lead, then leg wounds, then the rest of you.”

  “Here, barber—now!” cried a desperate voice as Elisha dismissed the last of his initial group of patients. A pair of men came his way, bearing a third between them, blood seeping around a field dressing that looked like another man’s tunic. They lay their comrade down before him, and Elisha took in the gasping mouth, the pale face, the way the man’s body thrashed with each breath.

  “We’re at the top of the siege tower, see?” said one of the bearers, himself breathing heavily, “and they start with the guns, so close—” He broke off and crossed himself.

  “So he’s been shot?” Elisha prompted.

  The other bearer faced him then, and Elisha froze at the sight. The man’s face was burned, a spray of blackened flesh around an angry red furrow, one eye swollen shut. Blood trickled down his cheek. “Went right by me, it did, where I knelt, and into Tom afore he got his shield back up.”

  Elisha turned his gaze back to the patient. The bearer would be scarred for life, but he would live. As for the patient—cutting away the layers of fabric, Elisha cleared the wound. He wiped the area clean with a piece of toweling, seeing the burned flesh around the hole before it welled up again with blood: a tunnel angling under his ribs, with bits of torn fabric pointing the way. “Through the back?” Elisha asked, but the bearer hesitated, and Elisha wrapped one arm around the patient’s shuddering shoulders and turned him gently away. The man cried out, his heart thundering under Elisha’s touch. At the back, blood gushed from a raw, open crater larger than Elisha’s hand. Shards of bone and viscera specked the blood.

  The man’s chest went still, his head sagging against Elisha’s arm. His weight settled full on Elisha, as if in giving up the ghost, he gave over all the earthly self he left behind.

  Elisha bowed forward, mastered his breathing, and laid the man down. Dead. Even if this one had been the first patient of the night, no power on earth could repair such a wound. “I’m sorry,” he said as he moved away. The burnt, mutilated bearer stared at him with his good eye, blood seeping down his face instead of tears. Elisha thought of his brother’s blood overflowing the basin and trickling down. For a moment, the pain was like that wound, small at first glimpse, opening onto a pit of despair from which there could be no return.

  Around him, men were crying, shouting, calling for him, and Elisha turned away from death and memory, and lost himself as best he could in healing the living.

  For the next round, he opened his pouch, threading his needles to set to work, directing some of the healthier men to pinch their wounds shut. An hour of stitching returned some of his confidence, so that he could face the night with stronger resolve. Knowing the physician’s wishes for them, he put aside any who had been shot and were likely to last the next few hours. The shot wounds they had dealt with that morning were simple ones, not too different from arrow wounds. Those he saw now made the first batch look trivial. If the shot encountered no resistance, it often passed straight through, leaving a dreadful hole at the entry and a hideous crater at the exit, like the man who had died in his arms. If it struck bone, like as not both bone and ball would break, leaving little shards that must be removed. And the shot often carried bits of cloth or powder into the wound, bringing a risk of infection. The amputations, too, must wait until the crowd had thinned, and he could undertake them with a little peace. By the time the walking wounded had dispersed, the sun had long since gone.

  Stiffly, Elisha rose and replaced his needles. To the remaining men, he said, “Wait here, I’ll clear the way for you.” Blood slicked his fingers and screaming still echoed in his ears. As he walked to the doors, he wondered how many of these would be dead by the time he returned. There had to be a better way to manage the wounded, even among the few healers present. Passing Matthew, Elisha turned and asked, “Is it always done this way?”

  With a huff, Matthew replied, “It’s war, Barber, men are dying all day long, and you’ve the gall to complain.” He snorted and strode away.

  Shaking his head, Elisha resumed his pace, finding Mordecai before him.

  “Such a question,” the master surgeon said, without judgment.

  “I wondered why we didn’t go to them. Surely a few more would live, if we met them during the hold rather than let them be dragged all the way down here, that’s all,” Elisha snapped, the day’s frustrations overwhelming him. Then, recalling Matthew’s earlier words, he added, “Forgive me, sir, I shouldn’t question those with more experience.”

  Leveling that watery gaze, Mordecai said, “I have done. Battlefield, that is.” He pursed his lips, and let out a puff of air. “Harder to tell the living from the dead.” Stepping aside, he waved Elisha past him.

  Unsettled, Elisha pushed aside the curtain and stepped through. Once again, the room echoed with shouts and curses from all sides. In the center of the aisle, Maeve stood with her arm around Lisbet’s shoulders, watching. About a dozen men walked slowly amongst the soldiers. Every so often, they nudged one of the patients with the toe of a boot, then kicked a little harder. If the soldier didn’t answer, his abuser roughly grabbed him by wrist and ankle, and toted him out the back door, dumping him into the courtyard and returning. These sorters had dull eyes, their faces devoid of expression as they rooted out the dead.

  One after another, the gravediggers carried off his patients. Already, the back wall had been cleared. They kept at it until all the remaining men were cursing at them, eager to prove they lived.

  One of the gravediggers, a thick man with a hunched shoulder, gave Elisha a flat stare. He nodded slowly, then, as silently as they had worked, they filed out the back door, and began the grisly night’s work.

  Bile rose in Elisha’s throat, and he
shut his eyes, waiting for his sickness to pass.

  When he opened them, he saw Maeve and Lisbet helping some of the soldiers to new positions, rotating some to the few open spaces of the inner wall, others, over their feeble moans, to the area at the back. Going toward the inner wall, Elisha directed, “I’ll need a bit of room here, for a basin.”

  Maeve shrugged. “As ye wish.”

  Then he snatched at her arm, looking wildly around him. “Where’s William?”

  Frowning, she asked, “Who?”

  “William, the last man who got the physician’s cure. I spoke to him this afternoon.”

  Again, she shrugged, pausing to wipe sweat from her creased forehead. “In the yard, I’d guess.”

  Releasing her, Elisha searched her face. “The yard. With the dead, you mean.”

  “Aye, if he’s a dead man, that’s where he’d be.”

  “But he wasn’t. He was fine when I left here, he made a joke…” the words ran out as she sighed.

  “Best to avoid the names and faces, Barber. There’s no point knowing corpses.”

  Elisha tucked his trembling hands under his arms, and tried to pretend it was only the cold as he turned from her. In London he did not always know if his patients survived; he rarely had to face their absence, never mind seeing them hauled off by charnel men. He thought of the moment he might have chosen execution rather than come here, to this anteroom of Hell. It seemed he must not only work away his guilt, but his arrogance as well. Together, he and Maeve brought in the new arrivals, making them as comfortable as may be.

  As they worked, Lucius Physician popped his head around the curtain. “Barber!”

  Setting down a bucket of water, Elisha walked swiftly to the border. “How can I help you, my lord? We’ve yet much to do.”

  “No doubt, no doubt. How fare the men who received my solution today?”

  Elisha scowled, “Three dead, and two of the cauteries.”

  “Three? How strange. This method should be much more effective.” He rubbed his chin, assuming a thoughtful expression.

  Most people poured boiling oil on their enemies, not on their own men, Elisha thought, but he was alert enough to hold his tongue.

  Pulling himself up to aim a glare down his nose, the physician said, “Well, the fault most likely lies in your failure to apply the cure properly.”

  At this, Elisha nearly laughed, an inappropriate noise in a room full of tears. “Your Benedict wouldn’t allow me to do it, my lord, for that very reason.”

  The eyebrows arched upward. “Mmm. I shall adjust the formula. Please put aside the shot victims as I shall require them to be given the cure in the morning.”

  Biting back a sharp reply, Elisha said, “Very good, my lord. Shall I stack them in the yard?”

  Blinking, the physician said, “Wherever is appropriate,” with a dismissive flicking of his fingers.

  Elisha plied his needles and his saw well into the night, removing a hand here, splinting a leg there, humming all the while as if it could distract him. From beyond the curtain, he heard the shouts and moans of officers and knights, and Mordecai’s even voice directing his crew. For himself, having seen Lisbet go pale at the sight of the saw, Elisha asked Maeve’s assistance while her daughter hauled buckets and washed the stiffness out of bandages that might be re-used.

  By the time he stitched the last cut, Elisha’s arms and fingers ached. The tile floor rubbed his knees nearly raw so that he winced when he stood. Many of these men would never walk away, and certainly not with so little to complain of. Limping, he slipped through the curtain, past the snoring officers in their comfortable beds, even managing to ignore the distinctly different moans from one bed where the lovely whore opted to perform a cure of her own.

  Shaking, Elisha sagged beneath the stairs in his quiet room, chafing his arms and knees. He rolled the blankets around him, and shut his eyes. Before him in the darkness, he saw a parade of faces and heard the echo of the names he had not known.

  Chapter 10

  The next morning, Elisha dragged himself from beneath the stairs, and reached the hospital about the same time as the servers bringing porridge and bread to break the fast. Again, the surgeon’s assistant Matthew cauterized the shot wounds of a group of men while Benedict oversaw the pouring of hot oil onto the rest. This time, he deigned to allow Elisha to do the work, not because he thought him capable, as his stance made clear, but because the physician willed it so. Elisha took a long time over the task, careful not to burn any more than he had to. Those duties done, Elisha made a round of the men, checking on bandages and frowning over infections. By the time all this was through, the sun had risen high, and the bombards’ blasts faded to the back of his mind.

  Lisbet brought him the tools he had requested, gave him her brightest smile, and left saying she must continue the search for a barrel. Exhausted, Elisha merely nodded, then swung about to face his charges. “Any here with two arms, who can wield a chisel?” He waved the tool before them.

  For a time, nobody spoke, glancing one to the other as if to figure what he might be up to. Then, from the back wall, where men were placed to die, a stout man raised his hand. “Arthur Mason,” he said gruffly, his look daring any to object, “I can do it.”

  Looking him over, Elisha realized his right leg was missing from the hip. He glanced briefly around the room, then nodded. “Right, Arthur. Ruari, give me a hand. Maeve, fetch us a chair from the kitchen.”

  Together, Elisha and Ruari made a seat of their arms and carried the mason over beneath the window where a space had been cleared. Curious eyes watched the process, while some of the men continued to moan. Maeve set down the chair, and they placed Arthur on top.

  Tapping a stone below the window, about at the height of Arthur’s shoulder, Elisha said, “I need a hole through here. I think this mortar is—”

  “I know my trade,” the mason snapped, glaring from beneath wiry eyebrows.

  Noting the breadth of the man’s shoulders and the swell of muscle in his arms, Elisha did not doubt it. “Go to. Let Lisbet know if you need some other tools.”

  Arthur made a show of examining the chisel, hefting the hammer, and said, “She’ll do.” Cautiously at first, he started tapping around the chosen block. Then, finding a section of loose mortar, he set on it with vigor.

  Miraculously—unless something went wrong with one of his patients—Elisha had done all he could until the next hold. Satisfied, Elisha took up his pick. He had time for a project of his own. “I’ll be in the courtyard if I’m needed. Oh—Maeve? Is it possible to get some eggs?”

  “Ha!” she snorted. “Eggs? Had we chickens, then mayhap. As it is, we’re boiling the townsfolks’ stewbones, and them not too pleased for it.”

  Shouldering his pick, Elisha crossed to the far end, taking the door into the stairwell. To the right at the bottom of the stairs, another doorway opened onto the broad inner courtyard. A cloister followed one side, connecting the church with a dormitory. At the opposite corner, by the ruin of the main gate, stood a tall bell tower with a small cluster of men at the top, watching the progress of the distant battle. In its shadow Elisha saw a small cottage, well-maintained. As he studied the place, the physician emerged, stretching as if he’d only just gotten up. Simmering, Elisha turned away, toward the cistern at the center of the tiled court. Grass and weeds thrust up between the stones and rimmed the pool as well as the channel he had noticed the day before. As he suspected, this channel diverted water from the nearby river by way of a low arch at the main gate.

  Leaning the pick against the cistern wall, he stripped off his apron and shirt and studied his course. He dragged the point of the pick to mark a line across the tiles from the nearest edge of the culvert to the spot beneath the window where Arthur Mason worked on the inside.

  Arthur struck his chisel with evident enjoyment, while a few other men who were able clustered about, muttering and peering out the windows. With a nod to them, Elisha set about his own labor
, prying up the stones in the path he had laid out. Lounging in the shadow of the tower, Lucius regarded him with a vague smile, as if puzzling over the activity.

  Every so often, Elisha took a break and splashed water over his face and back. Though it was only April, the sun grew steadily hotter, and he was down to the hard labor, hacking through the roots and dirt, carving a path for the water to follow.

  When he’d gotten into the rhythm of the work, he started to sing one of the ballads his mother had favored.

  “Oh, there was a brook, and a very bonny brook,

  The rushes grow so gre-en, oh!

  There was a lass, and a very bonny lass,

  The like has ne’er been se-en, oh!”

  With an irritated exhalation, Lucius abandoned his place and stalked away.

  It was the first song that came to mind—and the last song his brother sang, at least in his hearing. He might have broken off when he remembered, but inside the hospital a few voices joined his own. He was not here for his grief but for his service, even if that service was a song. By the time they’d done a few verses, even those not familiar with the song had picked up the refrain. From the officer’s infirmary, the pretty whore stuck her head through the window.

  “Hey! Hey, you!”

  Elisha rested on his pick and turned. “Aye, madam?”

  Peevishly, she tossed her head. “Some of the lords want it quiet.”

  Another of the bombards shook the ground, and Elisha sighed. “Tell it to the enemy.”

  The whore disappeared, and a well-trimmed gray head replaced her. “What are you about, man? This is a churchyard!”

  “I’m cutting through a channel to get us all some water without having to fetch it in buckets, my lord.” He wiped his brow.

  “Then there’s no need for your caterwauling, is there?” the man barked in a voice accustomed to command.

  “Oh, let be, my lord,” a new voice purred, and a lady came through into the yard. She curtseyed low to the man in the window and smiled. “Surely the trouble saved will be worth a few songs?”