Off to one side, a number of knights and nobles who remained in the city sat upon their horses, Count Vertuollo among them, drawing Elisha’s awareness. All other eyes were on the tribune, in his absurd ancient armor, bare-headed but for the crown of laurel. A few other mancers lurked among the crowd, supporting their master, or simply hoping for their own spoils. The warden lifted his head, shrugging back his cloak as if the afternoon grew too warm for such a thing. Something flashed white, and a dove—symbol of the Holy Spirit, and of the mad tribune—circled overhead.
As the dove soared, people pointed and shouted, calling out prayers, and their cheers grew deafening with sudden conviction. Through it all, an insidious glee crept among them, kindling excitement and the urge for battle. Count Vertuollo extended his influence through the webs of the dead that underlay the very earth of Rome, sending a suggestion that became compulsion as it matched the desires of those it touched. Blood-lust stirred the citizens. Cola’s speech had primed them for it, and the dove’s flight clinched their conviction, a sign that this desire was sent by God and no other to inflame their spirits for a holy victory. Only Elisha had seen Vertuollo release the dove.
Beyond the gate, one of the young Colonna lords kicked his horse, galloping through the arch, his sword raised to the sky as his horse reared and he called for battle, his face flushed with bravado. The crowd surged forward, cutting off the young man’s retreat even as those outside shouted for him to return.
Among the ravening mob surrounding him, the black presence of a mancer flickered with a half-dozen bound shades. Elisha felt again the jittery strength of the mancer he had slain and taken into himself. He wondered if the other mancers—no! Not other mancers. He was not one of them. He pushed off from the building, banishing the eagerness for battle that mounted within. He did not want to see the bloodshed, to feel the deaths about to happen here. He could draw off the deaths and deny their power to the mancers lurking in the crowd, but that would only make them angry; even Count Vertuollo encouraged his followers in such pursuits, taking strength where it would not be missed.
Swords clashed, clubs rose and fell, and the young lord in Colonna red screamed as his horse reared once more. Then the horse thundered away, its saddle bare, and Elisha clutched his chest as the Valley ripped open to suck down the soul. The fevered roar of the crowd and the terrible screams of the dead merged into a wall of sound towering up around him.
Elisha plunged into the crowd, angling for the place of first combat. Already, the citizens pushed hard, their few mounted knights galloping ahead, breaking the Colonna parade ranks like a spear point followed by the shaft of armed and angry men. Count Vertuollo was not among the cavalry—having done his part, the master retreated from the massacre that he helped create.
Projecting chill absence to ward off approach, Elisha moved across the stream of humanity, citizens side-stepping out of his way at his aura of menace, for all the world as if he were a mancer himself. His hands alone stayed warm, all of his compassion gathering there, all of his healing knowledge carried against his skin. Elisha was a doctor, even Vertuollo knew that, and he would play his part, walking that line between serving life and drawing strength from death.
The Colonna lord lay dead, mouth pooling with blood, half-stripped already by those eager to despoil those they saw as their oppressors. Nearby, a laborer reeled, his head bloodied, and Elisha snatched him, pulling him aside to bind the wound with a strip torn from his tunic. The fellow grinned his thanks and pulled away, snatching a stave from the ground and swinging it about him as he whooped a war cry. A small group in Colonna red cut through the crowds, horses snorting, working toward where their lord had fallen. One of the citizens took a shovel to a knight’s spine, and he arched back, tumbling from his horse. The Valley swirled open, and Elisha caught the flash of wicked glee in the shovel-wielder’s face, the corpse-tending mancer, like Morag, creating his own clients.
Bone cracked nearby and Elisha spun. A group of Colonna pages bore down on a wounded man, his arm clutched against his chest. Elisha grabbed the sword from a fallen guard, blocking a blow that would have killed, anchoring himself with the power of the dead all around him so that the page’s arm tremored with the rebound of his blow. Citizens filled the gap between and Elisha hauled his patient out of the way. A simple break, an easy matter to deaden the pain and twist the bone back in place, binding his arm to his chest with a strip, but this man’s presence sizzled with the lust for blood. He took Elisha’s borrowed sword in his off hand and leapt back again.
Appalled, Elisha watched him go, and watched him fall, blood spraying in an arc to stain the white column that marked the Colonna livery. As the body twisted away from the sword, his mouth gaped open and he screamed Elisha’s name.
Chapter 40
Elisha leaned as if to go to him, but the Valley, so near the surface here, already carried the shade away. Had he heard rightly? Surely not—the man could have no idea who Elisha was.
Shaking himself, Elisha edged back to the fringe of battle, thrusting his arm in low to drag out a youth in danger of trampling. This one, at least, had the sense to retreat when Elisha had bound the gash in his thigh.
Then it happened again: a woman with a cross bow staggered, shot through by an enemy archer, draping Elisha’s arm, staring up at him, her shade rushing through him as she whispered his name.
Recoiling, Elisha let the body fall; his hands shook.
A spear aimed at Elisha’s head parted his hair as he stumbled aside, then dodged another thrust. He scrambled out of the way, fetching up against the corner of a tower. Mordecai’s words echoed in his memory, advising him to wait at the hospital rather than go out to the battlefield, for it was easier to tell the living from the dead. At the San Lorenzo gate, they felt so eager for the fight that even those he rescued converted too easily from one to the other. If he stayed, he’d get himself wounded in service to those who’d rather die than abandon their cause. Better to wait behind lines and help those wise enough to seek out aid. If he retreated a block or two, he could set up a makeshift field hospital, ready at need.
He turned the corner, waves of citizens pressing forward and he the only one moving the wrong way. Another death howled behind him, and it howled the shape of his name.
Elisha froze, his eyes wide, as the breath caught in his throat. Again, the shriek of the wounded became the howling maelstrom of Death, and again, the beating sound called his name, an eerie, drawn-out wail that sucked at him, flaring through his talismans, stinging his skin and taunting his ears.
Fighting for breath now, Elisha shook himself. His fingertips scraped the stone of the house at his back and found purchase, clinging to the cracks as he mastered his senses, clamping down on his awareness, reeling in his presence and inverting it, projecting his absence, a deflection woven of the terror that gripped him and the numb pressure of Death that battered his pierced skull. His wrist throbbed.
The crowd still pressed forward, but they curved around him, squeezing together rather than brush the absence he made of himself. He launched himself away from the building, snugging his cape tighter, head down and shoulders hunched as he ran for the tribune’s palace. His breath came in clouds that fell in tingling shards upon the ground. The wrongness of the air pained his lungs.
A ghostly child ran into the street, tumbling beneath the hooves of an unseen horse as he came up, but when the shade ran again, its blank eyes met his, and its mouth formed his name. A shade fell from a tower above, twisting in the air and struck Elisha with a whisper of his name. At the next block, he dodged through an ancient battle—every shade he glimpsed froze in its repetitions of death as he passed, and every one of them called out his name. Never before had these ancient shades possessed any animation but to repeat their own deaths. What force drove them now?
He clamped his hands over his ears and staggered on, keeping his left eye closed against the dead, but still he f
elt them, and tears stung at his eyes. When he stumbled to the servants’ entrance, the startled guard there took one look and opened the gate, letting him fall inside. Elisha rocked on his knees, gasping for breath.
“Dottore!” One of the servants stood over him. “Are you well? What has happened?”
Elisha shook so badly he could not answer. His teeth chattered. He did not know what was happening, but who else knew so much about the dead? Had Count Vertuollo inflicted this upon him? Or was it some effect of the man whose death he swallowed? Had he grown too close to the Valley now to ever escape it? But this was not the chanting summons of his own impending death, no matter that it pained his skull, reminding him of the desperate surgery that one time saved his life. Thomas’s strong hands and stronger need had kept him in his body then; that, and the strength of Mordecai’s magic. The thought of his mentor seized Elisha’s skull with a pressure that made him cry out.
The servant grabbed his arm, tugging him away from the gate and supporting him as they gained the balcony. “I’ll bring help,” the servant told him, hurrying away again.
Elisha sank to the stone of the balcony, his fingers wrapping his right wrist, feeling for the stitches from the old surgery that linked him with his mentor. As if this memory were a talisman of death, the Valley swept open. The world vanished as knowledge swept over him, and his own screams were swallowed in the vastness of sound. Mordecai. With one voice, the dead called out for Elisha. With Mordecai’s voice.
Drenched already in despair, Elisha let the Valley take him, but this was no journey across the lands—it went within, cutting his spirit, his heart, his memory.
Trembling, he crouched in the maelstrom, lashed by the pain and fear of those who passed this way. Gone were the comfort of Biddy, the aching joy of Martin Draper, the surrender of old age, the righteousness of Father Uccello, the severed innocence of Margaret’s baby—even that sense of Brigit’s lost soul lingering in the Valley was overwhelmed.
Elisha raised his head and forced his eyes to open, his mind to open. The scars in his skull pulsed with knowledge. His eyes glazed with tears as he cradled his wrist. “Mordecai,” he whispered, and a shade rushed over him, cold and urgent, a jumble of images that reminded him of the French magus dying in his arms, struggling to order his thoughts and send the message Elisha must hear.
A familiar stone house, a refuge on the Isle of Wight, crossing water—a feat that took great strength, even for him. Three in the house, then four, then ten. The first intruder arrived with a movement that stung Elisha’s back like an arrow’s strike. Blood contact. Mordecai’s fractured memory cried out, his voice echoing Elisha’s own despair as if he feared for Elisha’s death, but despair twisted as the intruder spoke: not a mancer, a woman, soothing, interested, then outraged. Mordecai’s confusion welled, damped by caution. Sabetha, former nun, current nursemaid, came near to Mordecai, her contact suffused with surprise, wonder, guilt. Guilt? For a moment, he felt the brush of fur, the dark marten of his cloak, cleaned and repaired by Sabetha during his brief visit. She trimmed a scrap from the torn lining, and slipped it into her sleeve, a scrap of the luxury she longed for—not knowing the tiniest spot of his blood might provide a vital contact for his enemies.
Despair surged again, but Elisha forced himself to focus, pushing away the pulsing demands of the other dead, summoning Mordecai. The Valley roiled with the memory of the passing mancers, trails converging on the memory. Mordecai was sensitive, strong, capable, and utterly overwhelmed. Cursed blades tore his flesh. He learned enough from Elisha’s tales to deflect the fury of the gathered deaths, but a knife need not be talisman in order to kill a man, even a magus. Mordecai fought them from his panic: he had never had to face them before, had only Elisha’s advice to guide him. It wasn’t enough, it could never be. Mordecai fled for the fire.
Mordecai’s knowledge infused the moment, Jews in other times and other places, choosing the flame rather than be slain by their assailants. Mordecai poured his strength into fire, denying them his body, defying their rage. With meticulous need, he bound his memories. Even as the Valley opened to suck down his spirit, Mordecai wove it with his memories, suffusing it with himself so that Elisha could be warned, directing the strength of his dying to that end, sending his voice before him, to cry to Elisha’s heart.
But that was not all he did with the power of his own death. With all the anger he could muster, Mordecai set fire to that house, lest his own skin be stripped by Elisha’s enemies. He prayed for Sabetha’s escape, and for Brigit’s burning, for her to be consumed before the mancers found her. The flames hurt, searing Elisha and Mordecai both. As the spark of his own life vanished, Mordecai felt his failure. The intruders found Brigit to take her away.
Elisha forced his jaw to unclench. Brigit, like her mother, spoke in fire. Even in her terrible silence, her being longed for life. Just as Elisha once called through the rain and summoned Mordecai to save him, Brigit’s flesh called through fire. At its slightest touch, the mancers came, and Mordecai felt his loss in the swelling triumph of those who took her.
As the flames soared, devouring his body, Mordecai bound his memory into the Valley itself, pouring his strength into the warning it must deliver.
Mordecai spent the last of his power, the last of himself there might ever be, to quench the pain in his broken flesh and spare Elisha from experiencing the full horror of his death. It was that small mercy, so precisely Mordecai, that broke Elisha’s heart.
Chapter 41
Elisha came to himself, weeping, the heels of his hands pressed so hard against his eyes that he saw redness and stars, a private canopy of grief. He rocked against the stone parapet, his breath hot and ragged, tremors still shaking him.
“What’s happened?” a voice floated on the winter wind above him.
“I don’t know. I believe he was at the battle, helping the wounded.”
“Is he hurt? He’s bloody enough.”
“I don’t know,” the servant repeated.
“There’s no doctor to call; he’s it. Wait with him—perhaps the fit will pass and you can learn more.”
Cramped around his horror, Elisha could not imagine rising, marshaling his legs to somehow support him. The trembling stirred even his bones. Shivering waves of release emanated from the center of his being as Mordecai’s bound shade, its message delivered, dissolved into the Valley. Hollow and aching, Elisha crouched in the cold, tears soaking his ripped tunic, his wrist and skull—reminders of those healing skills they had shared with each other—no longer throbbing. Snow sifted from the evening sky, far too pure and beautiful. It clung all over him, his flesh still too cold to burn it off. He shifted to rise, but his trembling knees would not support him and he caught himself on the wall. Too many days of fear, of nightmares stalking him both night and day, to reach this terrible climax. Mordecai, dead.
Elisha reeled, clutching the stone. Brigit, taken, and his baby with her. What would the mancers do with such a prize? What could they not do? He must search until he found her, fight until he took her back, or slew her in the effort. Snowflakes speckled his hands and melted like the Virgin crying.
“Come inside, Dottore.” The servant brought him through the doors, slowly. They paced the corridor to his tiny room where he tumbled onto the bed.
He woke remembering Mordecai, after the first time Elisha took on the aspect of Death to stalk a battle. He had woken then, startling a serving girl, and it was Mordecai who came, summoned by their bond. “A poor nursemaid I make,” the surgeon had said. Elisha’s eyes burned, but he had no more tears.
He woke again to the sound of voices, the tribune and his captain standing over him. Elisha kept himself as if he slept.
“I fear we are done for here,” Cola murmured. “The dottore’s affliction seems the last sign. I thought that God was with us today. I think now . . . it was not God who urged that battle.”
“Don
’t speak so, Tribune,” Rinaldo answered, but his voice was low, the protest rote. “Go speak to the men, let them hear and see you. Perhaps then . . .” but the words trailed away.
“You have always been most loyal, Captain. You have my thanks.”
The door creaked and the tribune departed. Elisha let his eyes flutter open. “What happened at San Lorenzo?”
Rinaldo’s thin lips twisted into an ironic smile. “Another great victory.” He pulled up the vacant chair. “Most of the Colonna are dead.”
“Isn’t that what you wanted?”
“Peace is easier to make with the dead, it’s true. But their ghosts shall haunt the living. The citizens robbed a Colonna priest and left him dead and naked in the vineyards, a man who never had borne arms until yesterday. Janni della Colonna, the lord’s young son, was stripped and slain inside our gates. And Baron Stefano was overmastered with grief. They hacked his body as if they had him in a butcher’s shop. This was no battle, Dottore, it was a slaughter.”
Elisha nodded. He had witnessed Baron Colonna’s cruelty toward Father Uccello, and could not bring himself to mourn, but the slaying of boys and priests and the defiling of vineyards went beyond the needs of battle. In the few months he had lived in Rome, he saw the faces of its people move from righteous fervor to deadly fury. Count Vertuollo might have nudged that fury into such terrible bloodlust, but it was Cola who led them into the carnage, and they would not forgive him.
“Romans killing Romans. It was not meant to be like this.” Rinaldo gazed down at his knotted hands. “At the height of battle, our standard broke, as if God had left us to wallow there in Hell. I think it is not long before the last of the barons rally against us.” He took a deep breath. “In the morning, the tribune took us back there, to the puddle where Stefano died. In that bloody water, he made his son a knight of this victory.” He spat the last word, as if it were a curse, then he lifted his eyes at last. “You should go home, Dottore. There is no more to do here. You have seen the churches and touched the bones. Tell your queen . . .” He shook his head. “I don’t know what you should tell her. I pray by the Holy Year, that Rome shall again be safe for her. But God only knows if that shall be.” He pushed against his knees and rose.
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