Elisha Mancer

by E. C. Ambrose

  The next visit—a long ride along the river—brought them to a fortified monastery and basilica with a wall so long it encompassed a small village of its own. Passing the holy doors, complete with Rinaldo’s uninspired commentary and Father Uccello’s dour silence, they began a circuit of the vast church.

  At each altar, while Rinaldo prattled, Elisha prayed again, spreading his awareness with caution, especially when the priest hovered nearby. When he found one of the mancer-relics, he marked it with a few hairs and moved on. A chill edged his right shoulder, and Elisha drew back both his hands and his slender awareness, burying his inquiry beneath his mask of piety as the mancer-monk he had last seen at the execution walked by with a measured tread, like a jailor or a ticking clock.

  “If you wish to make confession here, Dottore, it will gain your admission to the tomb of the Apostle,” Father Uccello told Elisha in Latin when he finally rose from his knees. He gestured toward the older stone structure across from the eastern door, the subterranean chamber where the remains of the Apostle Paul were said to lie.

  Were there mancer-relics even in the apostle’s tomb? Elisha had only one way to access it to find out, though the idea of Confession made him hesitate.

  “When was the last time you confessed?” the priest prompted.

  “Easter,” Elisha told him. His brother had escorted his greatly pregnant wife, Helena, into Saint Bartholomew’s and Elisha followed after, watching for the tell-tale signs of labor, praying that his brother would speak to him, accepting his aid and his abject apology. Four days later, his brother was dead.

  The priest’s single eye bored into him. “Come, my son, even I can see the sins weigh heavily upon you.”

  And on that point, at least, Elisha had to agree.

  Chapter 33

  Father Uccello went off to speak with the resident priest and take a purple stole from his hands in spite of the other priest’s glare. Glancing at Elisha, with a nod toward the wooden confessional booth, Father Uccello made a show of draping the stole about his shoulders as he entered the other side. Even the confessionals of Rome were built on a grand scale, perhaps to impress the great lords when they came on pilgrimage.

  Rubbing his palms against the skirts of his tunic, Elisha entered the darkness of this cave within the church and knelt down, feeling his breath so chilled it should mist the air. He wet his lips and said, “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.” If he were to speak his every sin, there could be no end to his penance.

  “I understand you are a stranger here,” replied the priest in Latin, “but it is expected that you should confess in a tongue in which the priest is also fluent.”

  “Forgive me,” Elisha mumbled in the same language.

  “You spoke from memory, in the language of your home. English,” the priest said sternly. “I learned some of the language from William of Occam when the emperor was in residence, but I did not expect it from you.”

  Elisha’s fingers bound together in his lap. “I told the tribune I came from Bavaria. I did not say I was born there.”

  “What brought you to travel, then?”

  A grate of ornately carved wood separated them, so that Elisha could hear the other man’s voice and the occasional shift of his robes, but could make out only the vaguest outline of his form. He maintained his deflection, but it would not hold if he were pressed on issues where his feelings ran strong, and he did not know where the mancer-monk had gone. The wrong magic, the wrong projection, could get him killed.

  “You rebuke me with your silence,” said Father Uccello. “This is Confession, not the inquisition. Very well. Tell me your sins that I may absolve them.”

  “I have taken the Lord’s name in vain, several times,” Elisha told him, and he thought of his last confession, before the results of his arrogance caused his brother’s suicide. “I have succumbed to pride.” He closed his eyes, but his brother’s image waited there and he opened them again. “And to despair.”

  The priest sucked in a breath, and Elisha clamped down on his own emotions. “That is a grave sin, my son. If you wish to speak more of it, I will listen.” For a moment, they merely breathed, then Father Uccello said, “I wear the confessional stole, I will hold in confidence all that passes here.”

  Elisha gave an involuntary snort.

  Beyond the screen, the priest’s voice warmed. “Admittedly, it is likely the tribune will ask.”

  “You are in an awkward position, Father.”

  “More than you know,” the other answered. “Have you anything else to confess?”

  Staring at the screen, wishing he could ask the priest’s confession in turn, Elisha said, “And I have lied.”

  Father Uccello gave a single, short bark of laughter. “It is well you have come to the Eternal City, my son. If you undertake the pilgrimage, you will receive your indulgence—even if you do so under the auspices of your duty to the queen.”

  Could any pilgrimage lift the sins that still haunted his heart?

  To the east, a door slammed open and a voice bellowed, “Orsini!”

  Beyond the screen, Father Uccello’s silhouette pulled upright, worry piercing him.

  “Father?” Elisha whispered. “Would they violate the confessional?”

  “What would they not do?” the priest murmured.

  Footsteps pounded down the aisle, and the same voice barked, “Calm yourselves, Brothers, we’re not armed.”

  The door of the confessional flew open, and Elisha scrambled to his feet, summoning power that burned below his skin.

  The man outside—large, handsome and clad in crimson velvet embellished with a crowned column—squinted back at him. A fighting man, clearly, by the shades that clung to him, but no mancer. He slammed the door and stomped to the other side. Elisha pushed free of the confessional just in time to see the intruder slam open the other door and reach inside. With a swift movement, he pulled Father Uccello out, his hand clenched around the priest’s upper arm.

  “What are you doing in there? You are an Orsini in a Colonna stronghold,” the big man snapped. “You have no authority here.”

  “I am a priest in a church, my Lord.” Father Uccello floundered a moment to get his feet under him, his face white. “I have more authority than you.”

  The lord’s dark eyes widened and his nostrils flared. “You tell your keeper the Holy Father has had enough of him.” He pushed his face close to the priest’s, unable to intimidate by height alone. “I suggest you all vacate the palace and flee for your wretched lives.”

  “My Lord Colonna,” Rinaldo began, starting forward, but a little ring of Colonna retainers moved up to block him, and Rinaldo stiffened, his tribunal finery and rough features standing out among the forest of guards.

  The lord did not spare a glance for Rinaldo, but kept his stare focused on the priest he held. “Don’t think you can hide at the Basilica San Pietro. It, too, shall be ours.” With the last word, he drew his hand up and back.

  Father Uccello danced a moment on his toes, his mouth gaped in a silent scream. His shoulder popped, his arm suddenly too loose as his body pulled downward. The priest’s eyes gleamed with tears. Elisha sprang to his side, sliding his arm about the priest’s chest, taking his weight. He seized Colonna’s hand with his own, sending the strength of his fury and pulled it free.

  Colonna grunted and yanked back his hand, shaking it.

  Landing hard on his feet, Father Uccello stumbled from Elisha’s grasp, swaying, his good hand cradling his elbow. Still, he made no sound, but the moment had shattered his control, and his presence radiated pain and terror.

  “Who are you?” Colonna snapped—and Elisha realized they had been speaking in Italian, but he had understood it all. His days of near-captivity with the Romans had done him some good after all.

  In German, Elisha snapped back, “I came from the Imperial city to see if R
ome is free of bandits and tyrants. I see that it is not.”

  Colonna shook his head, waving one of his men forward. “What does he say? What is this man?”

  “My Lord,” said a monk, rather timidly, hands clasping and unclasping as he bent himself near double. A few other monks hid behind him. “If you have delivered your message, that is, San Paolo is meant to be holy, a refuge—”

  With a growl and a wave of his hand, Colonna turned away. His cloak swished around him, followed in its arc by his retinue of soldiers, who marched after him out of the Holy Doors.

  “Bold words, Dottore,” said Rinaldo. “I am pleased you support us—and so shall be the tribune.”

  Ignoring him, Elisha moved into the gloom beyond the confessional, searching the darkness. “Father Uccello?” He spread his senses, the barest suggestion of his presence, and immediately the pain throbbed in his own shoulder. Pivoting, Elisha dropped to one knee before the dark cave of the confessional. “Father.”

  “Don’t worry over him,” Rinaldo called from the far side. “It happens from time to time, and he takes care of it.”

  Elisha wished he could slap the soldier: Rinaldo could not feel another man’s pain. Instead, he schooled himself to calm, seeking the strength of healing. “Father, let me help you.”

  “Leave me,” the priest whispered.

  Elisha edged forward and made out his form, on his knees, leaning against the wall, still cradling his misshapen arm. Dislocated—more than once, from what Rinaldo said—and Colonna had known where to grab and how to wrench. Anger returned, but Elisha forced it away. “Please, Father—you don’t need to suffer like this.”

  After a shuddering breath, the priest murmured, “The Lord will provide.”

  “Certes,” Elisha said, “He provided you a doctor.”

  Again, that single, sharp laugh, breaking near a sob. “Come, Dottore,” he gasped. “Do your worst.”

  Elisha edged into the cramped space. With swift fingers, he loosened the priest’s garments, then carefully drew his robe away from his shoulder, guiding it down, taking over support of the injured arm. The confessional stole still draped the priest’s left arm, and Elisha glanced from it to Father Uccello’s face. “We are still in the confessional, are we not?”

  A hard swallow followed by a tiny nod.

  “Then you are bound not to reveal this.”

  The priest’s ruined eye faced him. With a careful shift of his head, a sliver of Father Uccello’s good eye became visible, fixed upon Elisha’s face.

  Mastering himself, Elisha drew upon his talismans of peace and joy, letting them swell in his compassion, and warmth spread through his hands. He shifted one hand beside the shoulder joint where the skin, muscle, and tendon strained, and sent his healing, suggesting wholeness, strength, peace. With a deliberate, practiced movement, Elisha took the priest’s arm and guided the bone back in place, ending with Father Uccello’s hand clasped against his own chest, Elisha’s left hand still sending its warmth into the damaged joint, and his own shoulder throbbing with the affinity as he worked to ease the tendons and encourage a deeper strength.

  The priest stirred and carefully took back his arm, bringing up the robe to cover his exposed back and shoulder as Elisha withdrew. Father Uccello’s every joint was weak, aching, and bands of scar tissue wrapped the priest’s wrists, his ankles, too, no doubt. Elisha could have relied on simple medical skill, but no mere manipulation of bone and muscle would soothe the fear that paralyzed the priest. The comfort he sent would help, but the injuries were too old for him to fully heal, and the effects of torture went deeper than the flesh. Someone had bound Father Uccello on the rack and stretched him till his shoulders wrenched from their sockets.

  “I feel . . . better.” Father Uccello’s eye squeezed shut, and he sighed. “Then you are a witch. God help me, so was I.”

  Startled, Elisha lay his hand gently on Father Uccello’s back, as if monitoring his breath, but he felt none of the resonance he expected from another magus, even now that the priest’s formidable armor had been breached. At that moment, the both of them open, too surprised to stay guarded with each other, Elisha sensed the spike of another man’s interest. The mancer-monk—and now he knew about Elisha’s healing.

  “Damn it!” Elisha pushed himself up and shed his deflection, stretching his awareness in all directions. Rinaldo stood off by the door, supervising the Colonna retreat. Three warm presences by the altar—monks. Another moving rapidly away, accompanied by the shivering chill of a familiar shade. Elisha groped in his pouch and found a silk-wrapped relic that went cold even as he touched it. The dark pull of the Valley spread beneath his fingers, the presence of the mancer-monk dissolving into it. No!

  With the relic clenched in his fist, Elisha pulled back. He seized the mancer’s presence and felt himself stretched as if he tried to steer a team of mad horses. At his back, the reliquary, too, hummed with its connection, and his hair quivered where he had marked the base. Drawing upon the other relic contained in the reliquary, doubling his contact with the fleeing mancer through the murder the man had shared, Elisha summoned the man to him.

  Giving a yelp, the monk fell against Elisha inside the confessional. For an instant, their eyes met, and Elisha’s hand went cold as the mancer conjured his power, but Elisha wrested it from him, clamping his palm over the other man’s mouth. “Do not interfere with my business. Surely you were warned.”

  “You’re not one of us, not at all. Who are you? What are you really?”

  For a moment, Elisha considered killing him outright. A monk, slain in a confessional, with a priest as witness. Damnation, indeed. He let his hand grow so cold that the monk’s face twitched and shivered. “I am the master of England. Do not make me your enemy.”

  “No, of course not.” His presence shivered as he reached for power enough to warm himself against Elisha’s icy threat.

  Elisha released him and the monk fled into the Valley, surely going to tell his master Elisha had lied.

  Father Uccello cowered in the corner of the confessional. “What happened? Who was that?” The priest clawed up the wall until he could stand in the cramped space, turning his good eye to see what was going on. Elisha’s heart thundered; he had to go after the monk, but he had to give the priest some answer.

  “One of the monks wanted to see if we were through with the confessional.”

  Father Uccello tucked his arm back into his sleeve, frowning down at it, surprised by its sudden ease of movement. Again, the priest turned his head. “Then where did he come from and where did he go? Not by the door.”

  Elisha set his hand gently on the priest’s chest, holding him back, hoping for his silence. “Please, Father,” Elisha murmured, as near to a prayer from his heart as he had given since he came to Rome. They stood face to face, the priest taking advantage of the several inches he had over Elisha to stare down at him in the narrow door.

  “Are you above a few more lies?” Then Father Uccello’s voice dropped so low it rumbled through Elisha’s bones. “Or will you kill me, too?”

  Chapter 34

  Elisha’s own joints felt weak, his muscles aching like iron strung along a frame too fragile to hold. “No one is dead, Father, not today.”

  “I felt the cold and heard the howling fiends of Hell, and then the man was gone. If not dead, then—”

  Carefully, Elisha reached out, and the priest flinched back, but could not retreat from Elisha’s hand moving toward his throat. Elisha took up the dangling end of the confessional stole and draped it back down the priest’s chest. “We are still in the confessional, Father.”

  “Sorcery.” Father Uccello’s mouth twisted as if he would vomit, and his chest shuddered. “Devil’s spawn.”

  So quickly the healing was forgotten—but the healing had been a mistake, unwanted by the patient, drawing unwanted attention to the healer. Curse his stu
pid instinct. “You said you used to be a witch, Father.”

  The priest escaped Elisha’s hand and the close atmosphere of the confessional to stumble into the church. He stripped the stole from his throat, the ends trembling in his outstretched fist. “There shall be penance, Dottore!” His gesture made the purple cloth bounce and snap through the air. Then he turned on his heel and stalked away, his stride more even than ever before.

  Elisha caught his breath. There seemed little purpose in leaping through the Valley right then in pursuit of the mancer. Either they would come for him, or he would make contact with them to reinforce the lies he needed them to believe. A liar, just as Father Uccello had said. He meant to fight the mancers, must he become one of them to do so?

  “Dottore?” Rinaldo’s voice echoed, and Elisha jumped.

  “Ah, forgive me.” The soldier smiled at him. “But you have earned your visit to the apostle’s tomb, in spite of the interruption of your confession. I gather you and the father have concluded it?”

  “For now,” Elisha said. He wanted nothing more than to leave. “But the father is still shaken from his confrontation. Perhaps we should return to the palace and come another day?”

  Rinaldo shook his head lightly. His manner with Elisha had relaxed since the Colonna intrusion. “Things shall not improve for our leaving the city walls, especially since you have supported the tribune against the Colonna. We should make a quick visit to the apostle’s tomb now and hurry home, in case we are not able to leave the city for a time.” He draped his arm across Elisha’s shoulders, escorting him, as a friend now, toward the tomb of the Apostle Paul.

  “Three openings lead in, two for the viewing, and one to pour drinks for the apostle.” Rinaldo chuckled at this, and Elisha managed a smile.

  Shivers of power and weakness alternated beneath his skin as they walked, leaving the dim area of the confessionals. Would it be more dangerous for the monk to tell his story to his leader, or for Father Uccello to tell his story to the tribune? Already, Cola distrusted him and set Rinaldo to spy upon him.