Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (26 page)

“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.

F
rom 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.”

“I see that now, kind sir,” Brigit began, but the physician was already shaking his head, giving Elisha a black look.

“And he should know better than to answer such a summons. Alone, in the night, with you, my lady? My goodness, anything might have happened!”

Elisha leapt to the aid of his defender, swallowing his annoyance with them both. “I should have come for you, my lord physician, rather than tend her myself.”

“But there’s no harm done, is there? I feel better now for having spoken with him,” Brigit continued.

“You are an innocent, my lady, and not expected to imagine the worst of
any man, even such a one as this,” the physician said, narrowing his gaze as if he were aiming an arrow at Elisha’s heart.

Elisha stepped away from them, his foot striking the chill water of his channel. Brigit caught his movement, and her face went still as she edged a toe into the water.

The moment he felt her presence in the water around him, Elisha said, “
Brigit, your defending me is only making things worse.
”

“
Nonsense. He likes me, he’ll listen
.”

“
Likes you? He’s as desperate for you as I am, and that won’t make him sympathetic to my part.
”

“This barber,” the physician said, his smile warming a little as he looked down on Brigit, “is a particularly poor example of the breed.
Mea culpa
—I brought him here myself, saving him from the gallows, in fact, as a comfort to these common soldiers. The more fool I. Now it’s my duty to see that he conforms to military discipline.”