Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle

by E. C. Ambrose

  Elisha focused on the seed in his hand, near-invisible in the gloom. He remembered all he knew, or thought he knew, envisioning the tough, shiny hull as the shell of an egg, the tender meat inside as white and yolk, and at their center: What? A secret, a mystery, a miracle he could marvel at but never quite discover. To crack the egg, to crush the seed destroyed their power. Almost, he thought he should apologize, but the seed was gone.

  An egg lay cupped in his tingling palm, dully reflecting moonlight from its expectant shell.

  Chapter 21

  Brigit called his discovery the Doctrine of Mystery. She clapped her hands and danced in the river like a little girl when she saw the egg. She even let him kiss her, swift as the rushing current, under the bridge, before she danced away again.

  “You found another talisman, then?” the river asked.

  Shaking his head, Elisha laughed at himself. “No,” he said. “I thought of one, but I had not gone for it.”

  Downstream, Brigit basked in the sunlight. “You must have had something. What did you bring with you?”

  “Only my clothes, which are nothing to speak of. Oh—and my pouch. That’s just a few medical things, a sort of emergency kit.”

  “Nothing special or sentimental?”

  And he remembered the cloth, that long and narrow strip of mystery given him by Martin Draper, a man who cared much more for him than he should. By daylight the silk gleamed purple, the color of kings, but the gold threads worked into it formed birds, not lions. The piece of cloth had some significance, but he was damned if he knew what it was. “Maybe,” was all he said.

  Every day, they found each other in the water, and Elisha learned to recognize her presence, and that of the other magi. Sometimes these others chimed in with their own lessons, helping him concentrate, helping attune himself to his surroundings, to the possibilities which seemed now to hover in the air around him. Elisha believed he would recognize Sage if he felt that touch, but it did not come, neither by day when Brigit or Willowbark or even Slippery Elm gave him their advice, nor by night when he came alone, and he gave up waiting.

  The encampment grew tense with the long siege. Sorties issued from the duke’s castle, taunted the king’s army and retreated, causing just enough havoc that the army couldn’t merely sit and wait. Meanwhile, many soldiers kept busy building new ladders and siege towers to prepare an assault. So several days passed with fewer casualties, giving Elisha ample time to practice his eggs and seeds. At first, it seemed he must recall his list of similarities over and over, and discover the mystery anew before he felt that tingle of power. Heat transferred from him to the seed, then it grew heavy and full in a breathless moment. Any distraction and the seed stubbornly remained. He never made so many eggs that he could not pass them off as findings, or purchases from some farmer of vague description who happened to be a friend of Brigit’s. Applied to those cauterized by Matthew Surgeon or scalded with the physician’s hot oil cure, the ointment kept the burn to a minimum and helped them heal that much faster.

  Some six days after Elisha’s first casting, the siege engines were ready, and the blast of horns called all again to battle.

  The bombards, silent for several days, blasted many of the new towers, sending shards of wood through limbs and smashing bones. When a handcart brought the first victims, Elisha and Ruari shared a grim look. Where before they might see a handful of men who had survived such a blast, with the army’s steady advance, they now faced dozens, screaming for attention or for death.

  Mordecai and his assistants handled the officers and even captains who were not of noble blood, but this did little to ease the barber’s burden. He and Ruari got down to work. Many required careful setting of compound fractures, amputation of crushed limbs, or deep cuts to pry out the long daggers of wood impaling them. Rather than divide as they generally did, Elisha worked alongside Ruari, doing the cutting while Ruari held the patient, or steadying a wounded limb for Ruari’s careful labor. He couldn’t hum for fear of missing anything Ruari or the patient needed to tell him, so the screaming and the sound of the saw through bone burrowed inside his skull. He kept his teeth clenched wishing, for the moment, that his sensitivity had never re-awakened. Whoever he might be, Sage was surely wise enough to avoid such work where raw emotions tore at the soul every moment. Defending the border of life and death, as Brigit had said.

  A few of the king’s company grudgingly toted the fallen into the hospital and the dead out of it, the pile in the yard growing much too fast for Elisha’s comfort. Most of the corpses were men they’d not even seen yet, men who succumbed to their injuries even as they lay within reach of help.

  This day, Brigit and the physicians holed up in Lucius’s little cottage. A musician joined them, his desperate fiddling a vain attempt to block the noise. Elisha caught snatches of music once in a while, when the tide of the wounded slowed.

  Long after he should have eaten, Lisbet tugged Elisha into the courtyard for a quick meal. On his return—urging her to escort Ruari likewise—he saw clouds gathering over the castle. The counter attack would be that much harder in mud.

  As they worked, they moved steadily further from the monastery, leaving their patients where they lay and going on to the next. Elisha’s arms ached from wielding the saw and immobilizing men so that arrows could be plucked. Even his callused fingers showed the jab of the needle too quickly used.

  Ruari winced every time he moved, exhaustion etching circles under his dark eyes, drawing down his merry cheeks.

  Then a horn blew long over the battlefield. Clouds darkened the sunset, and at last the day was done.

  Distant cheers rose up from the battlefield, and Elisha looked up, his stiff neck creaking. A few of the siege towers yet stood, somewhat nearer to the castle than they had been. He made a disgusted sound at the back of his throat, and Ruari looked up.

  “Here,” Elisha said, gesturing over the field. “All these men wasted to gain such little ground.”

  Following the sweep of Elisha’s arm, Ruari sighed. “It’s sure that Jesus weeps tonight.” Then his head bowed to his chest, and his shoulders quaked.

  Elisha dropped down beside him, resting his fingers on Ruari’s arm. “What is it?”

  The tearful face turned up to his. “This lot,” he pointed to the man they’d just finished and those still scattered around them. A few moaned, a few lay with eyes wide open, taking in the sky for the last time. “This lot are my company. I grew up with these lads.”

  “Why did you not say earlier?”

  Ruari’s shoulders gave an eloquent roll. “I see you bent over another, and another, every minute fighting for somebody’s life. How can I say, leave off that man, this’s my mate? Sweet Lord, Elisha, we are all just so many corpses.”

  “No,” Elisha said, tightening his grip. “No, Ruari, you can’t give in to that—” He bit off his words. Instead he pulled the soldier’s head against his chest and held him, his own face turned to the heavens, his breath scorching in his throat.

  Ruari struggled with his sobs, finally pulling away and dragging a hand over his eyes.

  “Is that Ruari, the carpenter’s lad?” called a rough voice.

  Startled, both turned to stare at a stocky, dark soldier gripping his bloody shoulder with his opposite hand.

  “Sully!” Ruari cried, leaping over the man in between. “Sully, old mate, you lived!”

  “Aye, so far. Don’t tell me ye’ve gone soft on us, boy.” He flashed a grin with more spaces than teeth.

  “No, sir,” Ruari protested. “Not on your life. This here’s Elisha Barber. He’s come to save your lives.” As he spoke, his eyes yet shone with tears and something else: a pride so fierce that Elisha turned away, blinking back tears of his own.

  Night was half over before their work was done and the two stumbled back to their room arm in arm lest they give in to the temptation to fall and sleep where they lay.

  Swaying up the stairs to the room they shared, Ruari fell in
a heap upon his cloak and started to snore in the next instant.

  With a fond smile, Elisha followed, ducked to his own place beneath the stairs, and paused. Something felt wrong.

  He cocked his head to listen—no, it was not anything he heard, nor any strange scent in the air. Since his awakening to magic those several nights ago, this happened more and more frequently, as if he had some other, unknown sense. It had not yet amounted to anything. Elisha shrugged it off, flopping onto his blankets, his head pillowed on the small bundle of his spare clothing.

  That sense of wrongness tickled him still, and he sat up again, peering into the darkness, trying to place it. It bothered him more when he lay back down, and he rolled onto his stomach, facing the small trunk he had brought with him. With an idle hand, he turned the latch and lifted the lid. Clouds drifted over the moon, providing curious patches of light in which to see.

  At a glance, it all looked well enough, and he started to shut the lid, then raised it up again, leaning on an elbow. Ranks of gleaming instruments rested inside, brought out when needed, returned there when he had cleaned and sharpened them. A pair of long-nosed pincers lay with the smaller ones, and Elisha tapped the handles with his finger. These he reserved for difficult shot wounds. He had a long probe with a crooked tip that always went along with them. He had taken to storing the two tools together, rather than poke through them all to get what he needed, but the probe lay at the opposite end, among some similar instruments.

  Carefully, Elisha lifted the leather pad that separated the layers, the tools clinking together as he set them aside. Underneath, his packets and vials stood in their usual neat rows, but again that sense of wrongness urged him on, and he lifted out a few. They were all out of order. He couldn’t read the labels, of course, but drew a leaf or other symbol on each to tell them apart, then ordered them according to use.

  Rifling quickly through the small collection, he found nothing missing and narrowed his eyes. A common thief would have taken these—a few of the spices and oils fetched a good price. No, whoever had searched his things wanted something special. Suddenly, Brigit’s face flashed before his eyes, her fascination with the sealed pot, her way of asking about it while trying to seem merely curious.

  Anger flared to life, and was quickly quenched again. Dropping the herbals back in, then replacing the instruments on top, Elisha shut the chest and jerked off his boots, the more softly to move about.

  Barefoot, he padded over to the hospital and up the stairs just inside the infirmary doors. Mordecai’s second assistant drowsed in a chair, heedless of his passing. One of the whores looked up from where she lay alongside a fat captain and smiled a little into the flickering lamplight.

  Elisha kept on down the hall. At this end, part of the roof had fallen in, and the rooms were unusable. He had not been to Brigit’s room, but had an idea where it lay. An indefinable sense of her led him onward, and he knocked softly at the door. “Brigit,” he whispered against the gap in the frame.

  Almost immediately, the floor creaked within, and then the door popped open, Brigit’s startled face confronting him. “What are you doing here? You can’t come like this, it’s not safe.”

  He shot her a look as he pushed past her. “Then shut the door.”

  “Elisha,” she hissed, “You can’t stay.”

  “I don’t want to stay, I want to ask why you’ve gone through my things.”

  Shutting the door with a swift movement, Brigit placed her back to it. “I’ve done nothing of the kind,” she said, crossing her arms tight beneath her breasts.

  “Who else would want anything I have?”

  “Anyone might—surely your instruments are worth something, and herbs or oils are always in demand.”

  “But nothing was taken.”

  She scowled. “Then why are you here?”

  “Because something was missing—something I took away myself. Something only you knew about.”

  “I told you, I didn’t do it. I thought you trusted me, Elisha.” She took a few steps forward, her arms loosening, her voice taking on a tone of hurt, which almost hid the hint of fear that seemed to rise from her like mist.

  “If you’ve done nothing,” he demanded, his voice rising a little, then dropping back to a whisper, “then what are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing, Elisha, truly. But you need to go. If I am afraid of something, it’s that you will be heard. It’s not a safe subject, and this is not a safe place.”

  He spread his hands. “But it’s your own bedroom.” He turned a slow circle, letting his eyes linger on her trunk, her satchel. Could she have found where it had been buried? Surely he would sense it now.

  “Elisha.” A note of urgency edged his name. “Please go, Elisha, we can talk in the morning. It’s nearly midnight.”

  Someone tapped on the door, and they both stiffened. “Fire and flood,” Brigit breathed.

  “Who is it?” Elisha mouthed.

  “A magus who won’t wish to be known.”

  He opened his mouth to ask, but she shook her head, pointing toward the window behind him.

  “Go, go!” her lips urged.

  Catching the sense of her fear, if not all the reasons for it, Elisha turned to the window. He stepped first to the bed, freezing when the tapping came again on the door, a little louder this time.

  Holding aside the curtain, Elisha pulled himself up to the window frame. Even as he got his legs through, the old wood cracked and broke.

  Ripping down the curtain as he fell, Elisha bit his tongue, trying to turn, to land sideways. Turn he did, taking the blow hard on his left hip and shoulder as he splashed into his own canal.

  Somebody shrieked, and Elisha scrambled to his knees. From the deeper darkness by the cistern, a woman suddenly appeared, shaking down her skirts. Then another figure sat up beside her, and a slow smile spread over the face. Matthew, the surgeon’s assistant grinned across the distance.

  “Scaling the walls on our own, are we?”

  “I tripped, that’s all, my lord,” Elisha answered, standing up, shaking the water from his arm.

  “He fell from that window,” the prostitute supplied. Elisha tried to look indignant—as if it were she who lied—but his face felt like a mask.

  Matthew, too, got to his feet, straightening his tunic and brushing off the grass. He tilted his head to see the window she meant, and the smile grew. “Go and tell the physician he’s wanted.”

  As the prostitute hurried to do his bidding, Elisha contemplated running away, but what would be accomplished except to make himself look more guilty—and perhaps drag Brigit into a dangerous mess. Instead, he crossed his arms beneath Matthew’s watchful eyes and leaned against the wall.

  In a moment, the physician joined them, with Benedict at his back. “So,” Lucius intoned, “I understand you have been visiting.”

  “No, sir, merely tripping over my own ditch on my way to see a patient.”

  “How careless,” the physician said, with a prim little smile.

  “I saw him,” the prostitute piped up, wriggling against Matthew’s side.

  He shrugged away from her. “It’s true, sir, he was trying to climb inside when he fell.”

  At this, Elisha jerked away from the wall. “That’s a lie.” Matthew had seen a chance to curry favor with the king’s physician, even if it cost Elisha a terrible price.

  “I believe that’s Lady Brigit’s room; I wonder what he wants from her that can’t be asked in the daylight,” Matthew drawled.

  By now, the night watchmen had arrived, and heads poked through the windows.

  Brigit appeared at her own window. “What’s going on?”

  By all the saints and martyrs, could this get any worse? Before anyone else could answer, Elisha called out, “I tripped, nothing more. Sorry if I disturbed anyone.” He could hear the rising tone of his own voice, the fear that sped his heart, and hoped he sounded annoyed rather than desperate.

  “And he accuses me of lying.�
� In a few strides, Matthew snatched up a broken piece of wood, holding his trophy aloft for all to see. “From her window.”

  “It broke earlier,” Brigit said. Her vantage point would not reveal the coldness in the physician’s face.

  “Matthew, you’ve been here longer than we have. What is the punishment for the second offense?”

  Tapping the wood against his palm, Matthew supplied, “Branding, sir.”

  “Sir, I swear to you I was not climbing the wall, I simply fell into my own ditch.” Which was all true, as far as it went. Elisha’s mind raced, but he could find no way out. His own statements made it hard for Brigit to defend him, had she been so inclined after his accusations, and these others had no reason to believe him, not if the jealous glare on the physician’s face meant what Elisha thought it must. Any word Brigit spoke sent him nearer to Matthew’s irons.

  “Branding,” the physician mused. “Excellent. Benedict, why don’t you assist Matthew here. Oh, and gag him, would you? There’s no need waking everyone.” He turned on his heel to walk away.

  Chapter 22

  From her window, Brigit called out, “Wait, wait!” She disappeared and shortly emerged through the side door, knotting the sash of her robe. Elisha clenched his fists, willing her to stay away, as if the talent she claimed he possessed could be used in such a manner.

  Lucius stood straight as a whipping post, waiting, but his sharply arched eyebrows twisted downward in displeasure. At the sound of her step, he swung around. “Yes, my lady, what have you to add?”

  “I called this man to my room,” she said. “I felt unwell, and I hesitated to trouble yourself, my lord physician.”

  For a moment, Elisha dared hope this ruse would deflect the physician’s ire, but Lucius gasped and placed a hand upon her arm. “My dear lady, you should not be consulting with a—a barber! Not for anything! You must know that we are at your disposal.”