“Aye,” but the assent came out on a sigh of frustration, and he dragged the door open, expending a bit of magic to encourage the door back to its proper fit.
Rinaldo stepped back, regarding him in the gloom of the lantern he held. “We shall go on to Napoli tomorrow, the tribune has decided.”
“Napoli?” Elisha shook his head dully. He had no idea where to go himself.
“To the south. Queen Giovanna of Napoli is an ally of the tribune, and he hopes her favor can restore him.”
To the south, where a spreading darkness loomed in Elisha’s awareness. “Why not go to the Pope?”
Rinaldo drew himself up as if physical effort were needed to keep so much control. “The Holy Father has rescinded his support. He may have granted his assistance to the barons at the end.”
“I’m sorry.” Elisha met the soldier’s gaze with the weariness of recognition: The tribune’s dream was a noble one, but his pursuit of it had gone badly awry.
“Will you accompany us? It will bring you close to Salerno. They have a fine medical school perhaps of interest? You shall not be able to pass the Alps until the spring, in any case.”
The home of the Salernitan Vertuollo had mentioned? “Perhaps.” It was as good a plan as any, though it left the task of Rome undone. He gathered the few things he had brought to the chapel, then stepped out to accompany Rinaldo.
His visit to Gretchen had probably revealed more to her than it had to him—she seemed to possess no relics nor talismans of any kind. The only thing she had of any interest was a beaded necklace, and that had shown no signs of mancer taint . . .
Elisha laughed lightly. For a time he had forgotten that a talisman need not be torn from an unwilling victim or forged of misery and death: It need only be personal, especially for a sensitive magus who could call upon its secret strength. When Gretchen’s hand flew to her throat, he took it as a sign of fear—but in fact, it was the natural gesture of a magus reassuring herself of her talisman, something she reached for whenever he mentioned Bardolph. “Rinaldo. If a man could go anywhere at all to purchase glass beads for his lady, where would he go?”
At that, Rinaldo gave a snort of surprise. “Venice, of course—where else?”
“Of anywhere in the world?”
“Venice—I tell you true. You have not been long in Italia, you do not know all the treasures she holds, and for glass, it would be Venice.”
“Then I’ll go to Venice.”
“To buy glass?” Rinaldo held up the lantern to guide Elisha inside the dormitory.
He shook his head. “To search for a lady.”
In the morning, beneath a wintry sky, he rode down again with Rinaldo and the tribune. He asked as many questions as he could about Venice, especially its churches, gathering knowledge to aid him in travelling there, and thanked them for the horse. He considered riding all the way to the Mediterranean Sea—if the mancers truly found a hiding place beyond the paths of death, he couldn’t use the Valley to pursue them—but riding all the way would take time he’d rather not spend. Instead, he rode for a couple of days, as far as Assisi, where he sold the horse and found shelter at a small inn. The ride also gave him a chance to rest before traveling the Valley again: he would need all of his skill to deflect Vertuollo’s notice the next time he passed that way. The battle and Mordecai’s death left him drained.
In the little private room he hired, Elisha spread his map again and considered all the Romans had told him about Venice. Cola and Rinaldo, excited by their new friend’s journey through their country, described the great churches and monuments of the powerful trading city, a city made of islands and canals, drowned by storms and visited by every merchant or majesty who could make his way there. Elisha laid out one by one the mancer relics he’d taken from those he had killed and used his awareness to search north, toward Venice. He visualized the great Basilica San Marco they had described to him, not quite believing the opulence they imputed, and felt a faint resonance beneath his hand as one of the bones found its match.
Elisha wrapped the other talismans with care and organized his few possessions. The journey must be fast, his contact with the mancer relics as brief as possible lest his passage be marked. Caution and urgency warred within, but urgency won this skirmish: he had no idea how long it would take Gretchen to return from England and find her way back to her husband’s side to tell him the truth about the baby. Every time he thought of her, his heart ached. Was it better for her to die in service to a cause she misunderstood, or to live just long enough to understand her mistake?
Centered, his awareness honed to a keen edge, linking himself with that distant place, Elisha slid through the Valley and emerged on the other side in a glorious dazzle of gold. The shiver of the Valley only just reached him as he sealed it once more. The passage had been so very easy. He knew the Valley of the Shadow, as intimately as once he knew the streets of London, as deeply as he knew his own heart. He remembered the expression of approval on Count Vertuollo’s face as he examined the mancer Elisha slew. Such clean and tidy horrors. Elisha felt he stood between a pair of distorting mirrors: Gretchen on the one side, a sensitive, a magus who genuinely believed she worked for the good and could not understand why Elisha did not; on the other side, Vertuollo, who called him ‘Brother,’ and remained astonished that Elisha was not more like him.
A few candles at the altar that held the tainted relic lit the side chapel where Elisha emerged from the Valley. Before him, the Basilica San Marco opened in magnificence. It was all that the churches in Rome might have been, all that Cola wished them to be again, carved, embellished, gilded, and brilliant—and crowded. People moved past the entry to the chapel where he stood, praying and grumbling.
He pushed out into the crowd, not shrinking from the brief contacts that helped him to interpret their dialect. It rang in his ears with echoes of both Germany and Rome.
“—the harbor! How does the doge expect us to survive?” snapped a woman in a crinkling gown of silk as she swept past with her companion. “It will be a long enough winter without anything new to wear. No Sicilian fever is worth such a bother.”
As underdressed as he had felt in the Flemish port where he first crossed the Channel, it was nothing to this. For a moment, he imagined his friend Martin Draper reveling in the vivid colors, the flowing skirts, the sleeves cut with intricate dagging, the twinkle of gems and the sheen of pearls, the occupants every bit as dazzling as the church itself. It was a cloth merchant’s paradise, and his chest ached at the thought that Martin could share not even the memory. He won free at last into a broad plaza that could have enveloped the entirety of Saint Paul’s back home in London. A towering campanile of brick stood to one side and the famed bronze horses stolen from Constantinople loomed overhead. How Cola crowed about that victory even though the Crusades were long past. Elisha kept his awareness spread about him, very like the ladies’ long trains, ready to give notice if any mancers approached.
A man carried a tray on a strap about his neck, calling out to the passersby and holding up flashing bracelets. As he approached, Elisha recognized the beads, brightly colored spheres of glass.
“Scusa!” Elisha waved the man over. “Can you direct me to the harbor?”
The vendor squinted at him and cocked his head. “Scusa?” he repeated in turn, but with that Venetian accent.
Elisha tried again, more slowly in his Roman dialect, and the vendor heaved a sigh that made his merchandise roll and click. “Signore, the harbor is closed. There is no point in going!”
“Closed? For how long?”
A shrug. “Who knows? The doge, he closes it, he opens it. He believes every rumor he hears.”
Shaking his head, Elisha tried again. “For how long has it been closed?”
“A month, maybe.”
“No ships,” Elisha sighed, more to himself than to the vendor. Another waste of t
ime.
“Just the one. Here, this is a beautiful piece! Surely, your wife never saw such a thing.” He held up a long string of beads winking in the patches of sunlight.
“One?” Elisha caught the end of the necklace, examining it, trying not to get too excited.
“One ship, ten days, maybe two weeks ago. It’s why they’re all so angry, Signore. If the doge can allow this one, why can he not allow the rest? Me, I don’t mind—if they want to shop, then they have to buy from me, that’s all.” He grinned, his breath reeking of rotten teeth. “You are a visitor, I’ll give you a good deal.”
He thought of Mordecai’s description of Kaffa, a rich trading port that must be something like this. “Do you know the cargo?” Elisha asked, then cursed his haste. “I’m waiting for a shipment to take home, and I hoped—”
The vendor exploded with laughter. “The harbor is closed, and you hope the only ship to land, maybe, perhaps, carries what you ordered? It would be a miracle.” He tugged his end of the necklace so the beads slid along Elisha’s fingers, then leaned in closer. “I have a cousin who works the docks, but he’s a drunk. Perhaps his information is no good.”
“My wife will want the matching bracelet.”
The grin spread. “Then you judge if this is a miracle. My cousin tells me that the cargo was but a litter carried by silent attendants.” Putting a finger to his lips he said, “It is a great mystery. Someone who wishes to travel in secret? Who knows, eh? One of the sailors told my cousin the passengers are very queer and quiet about it, but this sailor has taken a peek beneath the curtains before the lot of them headed north.” His chubby fingers picked among the beads and fished out a bracelet. “For you, Signore, only ten for both.”
Elisha opened his purse. “Ten seems very dear.”
“Your wife is not worth so much to you? Perhaps your mistress then?”
Elisha burst out laughing, shaking his head. Margaret’s fur cloak and Isaac’s golden pin gave entirely the wrong impression of his status. “Three, maybe.”
“You are cruel! And I am a poor glassmaker. I should go find other customers.” He tossed the items back into his tray and turned as if to go.
“You don’t know the meaning of cruelty until you’ve met my wife,” Elisha said, the words a jest, the reality not at all funny. Brigit was the closest he had ever been to marriage. Elisha shook his purse, and the vendor sighed dramatically.
“Five then, signore, but you drive a hard bargain.”
Sorting the coins, Elisha said, “So, what did your drunken cousin claim this mad sailor saw?”
The vendor rubbed two of the coins together, producing a low metallic susurrus. “A lady most fair, and asleep beyond rousing. A lady, pale and still like a saint, who never rose the length of that voyage.” He crossed himself and glanced at the heavens. “As if we need another saint!” They shared a chuckle over that, and he coiled the beads into Elisha’s palm.
For a moment, as the vendor strolled off, crying his wares, Elisha imagined Brigit’s pale throat and soft wrist adorned with the vivid beads of glass. Thomas’s small gold ring winked on his finger as he slipped the beads into his purse and pulled it closed. He came to seek a lady—and he’d almost found her.
Chapter 43
When Elisha approached the canal, he caused a stir among the boatmen who leapt up, pushing and blocking each other and calling out for his custom, but he strolled along the row, allowing his extended senses to suggest whom to trust. Toward the end, an older man sat with one hand dangling in the water, stirring up ripples from time to time, seeming disinterested in the entire process—except for the alert set of his head, his controlled breathing, and his deliberate contact with the water.
He glanced up as Elisha’s step hesitated, dark eyes meeting Elisha’s, then lowering with a tip of deference. “Hiring, signore?”
“Please. I’ve heard Venice is hard to navigate for visitors.”
“You’ve heard right.” The boatman straightened and took up his pole. “Where do you need to go?”
“North,” Elisha said.
The man raised his eyebrows, his worn face falling in rounds of loose flesh, then he nodded. He steadied the narrow boat with the pole on the outside, one foot on the bench, one still on the stone step. At last, he offered Elisha his hand to climb aboard.
Drawing back all sense of death, Elisha allowed the tingle of magic to warm his flesh and accepted the offered hand. “Well met,” he murmured through the contact.
“We’ll see,” the other man replied in kind.
Once Elisha was settled, the boatman pushed off, carefully poling his craft between the others and deftly turning it. A few shades touched the old man’s presence, but in the way of old men everywhere—he had seen his share of death, but had caused none.
“Where do you need to go?” he asked again once they were clear of the other boats and he had taken up a more traditional oar to bring them around the large island.
“I’m seeking a caravan that would have left the city a week or more ago. Travelers only, no trade goods, but they would have had a litter to carry an ill woman.”
The boatman’s presence thrummed with fear. “Strange cargo.”
Elisha kept his awareness spread, his presence undimmed. “Indeed. Someone told me she was a saint.”
“A saint!” The boatman snorted, shaking his head. “Not among such company.”
“Necromancers,” Elisha murmured. In England, the mancers had been merely a rumor until he uncovered their plots; in the chaos of Italy they were known and feared.
Another dark look from those circled eyes. “You’re not the first to ask about the caravan, foreigners all.”
“How many?”
“Of me? Half a dozen. The others have had more.”
And a number of mancers already in the retinue. Two dozen? Three? Elisha’s shoulders slumped.
“Never had so many in the city at once—Praise Mary and San Marco!—and praise the saints again that they didn’t stay.”
Elisha replied grimly, “I have to find them, to know what they’re doing.”
“Evil,” said the boatman. “But far from here.” He crossed himself.
“Not this time. They’re working together. Mancers from France, Italy, Germany—God knows where else.”
The fellow pursed his lips and looked away, squinting at the far shore, doubt radiating from him. “They’re like nobility. You don’t offend them, they don’t make trouble for you. Best just to keep out of their way.”
“You said yourself they were foreigners—whatever evil they’re making won’t stay away.”
The boat nosed out from the shadow of an island monastery into a chill wind, and Elisha bundled his cloak tighter. “You’ll need that.” The boatman tipped his head at the furry garment. “Bought boots, they did. Tall boots, and baby clothes.”
Baby clothes? But why clothe a child you meant to kill for a talisman? Unless they planned to use the child against the presumed father. The baby was a royal heir, as far as anyone else was concerned. Elisha’s jaw clenched. They had failed to take England through Prince Alaric, then through Brigit. With the royal heir in their grip, could they succeed? How would Thomas react when he learned Brigit was gone, and the baby with her? He could marry again and get new heirs, as Gretchen insisted, but not one so blessed with sorcerous potential as Brigit’s baby would be. For a moment, he imagined Gretchen herself, kind and determined, utterly believing the lies of her lover. What if a royal prince might be raised that way, fully trusting the mancers who surrounded him? Did the mancers follow Brigit’s own inspiration when she rode in to rescue Thomas from a captivity she had forced upon him? They could send an emissary with the baby: glad tidings, Your Majesty, for your child lives! Tainted by mancers’ care and ruled by mancers’ power. No longer satisfied with manipulating the kings of other lands, if Thomas could not be
bent to their will, they could forge a king of their own. We have made kings before, and unmade them. Jonathan’s words, his threat to Alaric on the night the prince would die.
“Where they go, I must follow,” Elisha said aloud.
“North, then. I know the road they took from here, so I can avoid it.” He shook his head again, the loose flesh waggling, and plied his craft among the islands to a thicket of docks on the distant shore. The boatman waved away Elisha’s payment. “You’re climbing the Alps in winter, fool, you’ll need that coin to pay a different ferry.” He indicated his eyelids, as if he placed coins there to pay the ferryman of death.
“At the least, you have my thanks.”
Still shaking his head, the boatman pushed off and turned away.
In the village that supplied the caravan center, Elisha used most of the coin to purchase a sturdy horse—not as fine as the beast he’d sold in Assisi, but strong enough for his need, and cheap because the hostler expected to make few sales this time of year.
He loaded its saddle with food for the journey. He couldn’t bring himself to sell the warm cloak, in spite of its rich and distinctive appearance, and purchased a second one instead, a threadbare castoff with a hood and hem to cover him head to toe, his lighter city boots exchanged for a rugged pair as tall as his knee. He wrapped strips of wool about his hands to keep them warmer. So equipped, he was ready for his search. He expected secrecy, the casting of deflections to guard the caravan; instead, the villages he rode spoke of nothing else. Who was the saint? How was she preserved in all of her beauty? Where did the monks and nuns of her procession take her, and why now? More than one villager had given up his or her home to follow the mad procession north, into the mountains in the dead of winter. Mad, indeed.
Elisha wove his own deflections, dodging the eyes of magic and projecting the anticipation he felt in the villagers all around him. As he rode steadily northward, the land and the wind both rising sharply, he encountered more and more travelers on a road that should be deserted at this time of year.
Elisha Mancer Page 37