Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  “Do you know the stories of your namesake?” the rabbi asked abruptly. “His bones, even, bring healing, according to the Torah. He was destined to perform twice as many miracles as his mentor. Twice as many!”

  The Biblical Elisha’s mentor was the confusingly named Elijah. Elisha’s own mentor was a Jewish surgeon, also a magus. Twice as many miracles. No doubt Mordecai knew that, but saw no need to mention it. Mordecai was not a man for destiny. What would he make of this, Elisha’s strange fulfillment of a Jewish legend? Someday, they would sit together in the solar in their manor on the Isle of Wight and tell each other all that had passed during their separation. “I know that Elisha healed a river, and that he kept a lamp full of oil.”

  “Trifles! There are wonder workers who have been able to breathe life into a man when he lies as if dead,” the rabbi said, his pen poised. “Enough—you know better than I what you can do. I shall tell them of your mantle, that’s fitting. And the pin, if you may keep it. Goldsmith?”

  “Of course.” Isaac’s shadowed eyes closed, and he stifled a yawn. “I should go.”

  “I will write those things in the letters, as well as a little about you, so they will know whom to seek, or who shall be seeking them.” A hint of his former gruffness returned, and he added, “I will not tell them what Jacob said. There’s no need to say such things, but the fact you are revealed, this tells me the danger my people are facing.”

  “The danger we all face,” Elisha said, “if the mancers succeed.”

  “You made him a believer,” Isaac observed.

  “Aye.” Elisha took another swallow of wine, letting it warm him from the inside out.

  “But you are not.”

  Elisha waved a hand over his body, his ruined shirt and scuffed boots, his scarred chest and the secrets he carried close to his heart. “I live with this—with all of it. I never hoped for it, never studied for it. You want me to be holy, but I don’t know how. All I can do—” He broke off, Mordecai’s voice echoing through the rivers of memory, then he spoke the remembered words aloud. “All I can do is to soldier on in my own battle, until I fall beneath the enemy.” Or rise again in a way I cannot foresee. His own voice, so naïve, followed Mordecai’s musing with the arrogance of his youth—had it been only a few short months ago?

  “Tell us about the enemy,” the rabbi demanded as he wrote. “What do we face?”

  Taking a deep breath, Elisha settled himself in his chair, and the goldsmith took a place alongside, not without a glance at the door. Outside, dawn rose slowly as Elisha told them what he could—all that he knew of the mancers, how they traveled, whom they killed and how, and how they wielded the power of their crimes. Sometimes, the scratching of the pen stopped, the rabbi’s head bent as he listened, then he nodded and jabbed the pen into fresh ink, writing all the more fiercely. Around them, the household roused, the scent of a cook fire wafting down the corridor, the sound of footfalls overhead, and Elisha fell silent.

  “So they wish for Charles to be emperor.” The rabbi sighed, ran his fingers through his beard. “We don’t know what to hope for. Archbishop Baldwin of Trier, Charles’s uncle, seems a good man, willing to protect us.”

  Isaac slammed his fist against the arm of his chair. “No, not always.” For a moment, they stared at each other. The old tension returned to the room.

  “Be that as it may,” Elisha said, “the archbishop already suspected or worried about Charles’s retinue. It’s worth maintaining that alliance as long as possible.”

  “Through him, to the pope, eh?” the rabbi said. “Your church is so powerful it’s a bit hard to see how even influencing a dozen monarchs could bring about the madness these mancers desire.”

  Elisha blinked at that. The rabbi’s point was not one Elisha had considered before, but in truth, the mighty Church reigned over all, over every nation where the Christian faith held sway. If the mancers truly worked toward chaos and terror on the scale Elisha imagined, then even if they controlled many of the nations, even if they manufactured wars between peoples, they could not rule the world without also bringing down the church itself. How would they go about it? A band of mancers, like the one in England which had tried to bring down Thomas, could dominate a single crown, certainly, but no single band could dominate every parish, bishopric, and see. Planting tainted relics—their own talismans—in individual churches would give them a pathway to terror, to be sure, but still on a local level. Even by working together, they would be hard-pressed to assault enough of those spiritual domains to bring the Church into their power. What kind of attack could be employed against the Church itself, the root of the shared faith that made Christendom so powerful?

  The mancers he overheard in the forest spoke of being ready for Rome: that must be the key to their joint assault upon the Church. The thought of that made Elisha’s mouth go dry. Warning Ludwig could not be enough. Defending any single realm could do no more than delay the mancers. It was not merely their plot against the crowns that he must pursue, but their plot against the cross. More than the breaking of any one kingdom—after all, kings and even emperors came and went by succession, revolution or invasion—the collapse of the Church itself would destroy the world forever. What could possibly shatter the faith of millions? Elisha did not know, but he had no doubt the mancers would do it. He had to get to Rome and break the mancers’ plot before it could break the world.

  Aloud, he said, “The power of the Church is great, indeed, but the mancers are planning to subvert it. I don’t yet know what they plan, but the pope has close ties to the king of France, who’s already under mancer control, and Charles is under their sway as well. The Church may not know there is evil afoot until it’s too late.”

  “Because the evil pretends to be righteous,” Isaac said. “I should go.” He stalked toward the door, ripples of buried pain flickering through his agitated presence.

  Elisha rose and followed. At the door, he set his hand on the goldsmith’s shoulder, their eyes nearly on a level, the goldsmith’s self-loathing laid bared in his haunted face.

  “You are not evil,” Elisha murmured.

  “You don’t know that.” Isaac traced the door with his eyes, his hand gripping the latch, his knuckles white.

  “Look at me, Isaac. I’ve killed a dozen people since I came to your country. For the things I’ve done in my own land, my soul is damned a hundred times over. If I can still strive for the good, then so can you.”

  “But you’re—what you are. I have turned my back on ha-Shem. Turned my back on God. Even the gentiles trust my faith only because they have need of my skill.”

  “It’s the same with me. I’m a threat even to those I would save.”

  Isaac winced, his arm tensing beneath Elisha’s grip. “They came in the night,” he said. “They woke up the household, made us go out into the street.” His throat worked, and the fractured images of a child’s memory touched Elisha’s mind—parents, a sister, two brothers. “There had been some trouble—I don’t know what, but Jews were blamed. We had to stay inside, to stay quiet and hope they passed us by—but they came. They demanded that my parents should convert, and killed them when they refused. They gave the baby to somebody’s wife to raise him as a Christian.” Isaac’s voice broke, his eyes closed, brows drawn up in anguish. “One of them took my sister aside. I never saw her again, but I heard her screams. My brother fought back when they took the baby. They cut him down.” Isaac’s short breaths echoed in the space between them.

  “But you survived.”

  A single, shaky nod. “I called out when they came to me, when my brother’s blood ran down my face. ‘Christ and all his saints defend me!’ I cried it over and over. I heard it in the market, or from the maids—I don’t know why it came to me then, except I did not want to die.”

  Any devout Christian would say the prayer came true, that the boy’s conversion at such a moment could
only be the strength of God’s intervention. But the horror of the night flowed through Isaac’s skin, the desperation of his cry, the terror he felt every time he bent a knee in church and feared that Christ would know his heart was still a Jew’s. Elisha sent comfort through his contact. If he might dream of a thousand years in the palm of God, then let at least a few of those be given to Isaac, to cradle the child that still hid behind his eyes. “You did what you had to do, to live.”

  The goldsmith drew a long breath and expelled it before his eyes flickered open, blinking away the memories. Then he tipped his head, and a wave of relief spread through the contact. “Or what I had to do to be here, now. To do what I could for you. God be with you.”

  “And also with you,” Elisha answered as the converso let himself out into the quiet street, hurrying away before he could be seen in a neighborhood of Jews.

  The rabbi’s servants fed him well, clothed him in fresh garments appropriate to the chill, and even helped to stitch his collection of relics and talismans into various secret places in the fabric. The rabbi handed over a new letter, the sort of bland but significant introduction Elisha had believed that Jacob had written, one that would open doors otherwise closed to a Christian. Other letters went out by the servants’ hands, traveling ahead of Elisha to the surrounding towns and cities, to anywhere someone might be able to help, to the places the rabbi knew, where the flagellants had been or where his wife and servants heard rumors of evil. Elisha walked alone no longer. He was gathering allies, people who would stand with him against the threat he feared that only he could see. The spiritual significance they assigned to him had opened up this chance. He must discharge his duty to Thomas’s kin by marriage, then hurry on to Rome. He stepped down from the rabbi’s door and made his way to meet the emperor, armed with knowledge, armored with hope.

  Chapter 17

  At the riverside, the usual bustle of merchants and tradesmen gave way to a crowd of imperial functionaries—soldiers, servants, porters, ladies-in-waiting. Given the assault after yesterday’s audience, and Harald’s arrival to witness its aftermath, Elisha could not be certain what he faced. As he approached, he deflected his presence with a variety of talismans, making himself invisible to other magi and mancers alike. Hooded and cloaked, Bardolph lurked in the imperial retinue, flashes of tension streaking his own deflected presence. Elisha had rattled him. Good. Unfortunately, also mutual. The scars from his arrow wounds felt lumpy and caught the fabric of his new clothes.

  Pulling up his hood, Elisha projected eagerness, curiosity, hoping he might be mistaken for a student from the university. He angled away from Bardolph’s position, but Gretchen, clad in a traveling cloak, stood by the plank up to the imperial barge, her features pale—a magus, and a sensitive. He needed to get aboard, to stay close to Ludwig, but how to dodge the watchers? On the foreshore of the river, a dozen men stood ready with poles to push the boat off the shore and into the river’s flow. A few ropes already led to oxen on the other side to pull the barge along.

  On board, a pavilion took up the center of the vessel, pennants flicking, posts bound by guy lines to various pegs such that the boatmen grumbled and tripped, and a few of them had taken to the outside, clinging to the edge of the deck while they slid their feet along a ridge that stuck out to provide a bumper against docks or other boats.

  The pavilion sidewall nearest the shore had been tied back, showing cushions and seats but no sign of the empress. Then a horn sounded up the street, and faces turned in that direction, expectant, as the crowds parted for the empress, riding a fine gray palfrey and accompanied by a few more guards.

  Catching his breath, Elisha edged closer to the river, grabbed one of the knobs on the deck of the barge and pulled himself up to the bumper, absorbing the bounce of the boat. He worked his way around the back, over the river, only to meet another man coming his way. “Damned ropes,” Elisha muttered, hoping his accent would be taken for only that of another part of Germany.

  The sailor grunted at him, and Elisha climbed on deck behind the pavilion, where he busied himself checking the lashing of a few chests as if he’d come with the imperial party. The barge swayed, dipping a bit toward shore as more people boarded, and he sat heavily. Women’s voices spoke within, solicitous of the empress’s well-being, and the cold tone of a physician warned her against a surfeit of ginger.

  “Where is my Englishman?” Margaret inquired.

  “You’ve heard the stories, Your Majesty,” answered one of the ladies. “Under the circumstances, I expect he is closeted with any number of priests.”

  “He is not blessed, Your Majesty, believe me,” said Gretchen stiffly.

  Her mistress replied, “Do not let a personal quarrel stand between you and the servants of the Lord.” After a moment, Margaret continued, “In short, do not take my husband for an example in your dealings with the Church.” A few ladies tittered.

  “You are feeling better,” said the first lady. “But I do fear that your Englishman, for one reason and another, will not be coming. It may simply be that he wishes to remain close to the palace and to his Majesty.”

  At that, Elisha’s heart sank. He’d been expecting Ludwig to come, but of course, the emperor had a hundred other worries—taking his wife to a salt bath couldn’t rate very highly compared with avoiding war with his rival. He rose and moved back toward the side of the barge, preparing to return the way he had come. The empress might favor him, but if he were a hundred miles from her husband, then he would be of little use in preventing the danger to come.

  With a scraping of wood and a shout from the captain, the barge rocked and pushed toward the water. Elisha stumbled and fell, his foot splashing into the river below, soaking him to the knee.

  “—as dangerous as all that.” A voice, in the water. A magus.

  “Even if he’s not, we owe it to the Unicorn to keep an eye out, and so we shall.”

  “Thank you all. My daughter’s safely off now, but her betrothed must remain. There are few enough of us as it is, we’ve got to preserve marriages of the blood.”

  “He must be hiding someplace in town. We’ll find him and get word to you at once.”

  His deflection intact, Elisha hoped they had taken his startled intrusion for that of any desolati, and pulled his foot back to the bumper as a sailor reached down to steady him. “What’s happened to you, man?”

  “Lost my footing during the launch.” He caught the strong grasp and let himself be pulled back on deck, glad to be leaving Heidelberg behind. A stranger’s word would count for naught with the magi hereabouts—and any word they carried to the Unicorn would go straight to Bardolph. For good or ill, he’d joined the empress’s crew now. “Thanks,” he told the sailor, who had already turned back to his work.

  At the riverside, where the oxen pulled their barge, a few dozen guards rode along as well, while the ladies took their ease upon the water. Elisha reached for attunement, keeping his touch light. He searched first for any sign of death. A bundle of shades at the near corner of the pavilion distracted him, but there was no life associated with them—not talismans, then—at least, not those carried by a mancer. Probably the empress’s portable altar or reliquary. He caught the tingle of raised awareness not far beyond, recognizing Gretchen’s presence, a fierce energy, pride, a hint of fear alongside desire. She missed Bardolph. In a rustle of skirts, she slid around the corner, staring along the short side of the pavilion directly at him.

  Elisha met her gaze, then gave a slight bow. “Come, Fraulein, we should talk.”

  “Talk? With you? What are you?” She swallowed, lifting a hand to the talisman amulet she wore, the other hand resting on a sheathed dagger at her side. She darted a glance toward the water, but she could not reach it easily to send her message.

  Stepping around a line toward her, Elisha kept his hands low and visible. “You do not know me, Fraulein, not at all. And you do not know your
leman as well as you think.”

  She drew the dagger, causing a murmur from the two sailors at the stern, and one of them rose. “Now, Fraulein,” the sailor began.

  “Do you want them to hear your business, Fraulein?” Elisha’s empty hands were more dangerous than her little knife could ever be, but the sailors could not know it. “Your mistress seems pleased to have my aid, Fraulein. I should be pleased to continue to give it.”

  A new, softer worry slid through her presence. “Come, then, and tell me your lies.” She retreated toward the stern, perching on a long crate and tipping her head to indicate that he should join her, but she did not put away the dagger.

  Elisha sat, folding his hands, elbows propped on his legs, and pitched his voice very low. “Did he tell you why he planned the ambush?”

  “You’re his enemy—I knew it from your appearance in the meadow. Your heart was full of murder, of hatred for him, and—” But she stopped, and set her jaw.

  “And?” he prompted, but she stared at the striped wall of the pavilion. “And concern for you,” he supplied. “I didn’t come there because I hate him, but because I feared for you. You must have felt it. There was a drop of blood in the queen’s chamber that led me to follow. How were you injured?”

  “There was a pin in the cloak, and it stuck me when Bardolph took it—” Her cheeks colored as she broke off.

  There had been no pin in the cloak, not until he received the one from Isaac. “He appeared from nowhere and told you to let someone else take it to your mistress. Then he took you to the meadow. How did you get there?”

  Her eyes narrowed as she glanced aside at Elisha. “Why ask me? You did it, too.”

  Elisha shook his head. “I followed you, through contact with your blood. But he had contact already with that place, through someone else’s blood or bone.”

  Gretchen laughed. “We go there all the time. Not usually that way, of course.”