Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (19 page)

“You are an insolent wretch,” Benedict called after him. “We won’t suffer it much longer, mark my words.”

“Maeve!” Elisha cried, taking her arms and swinging her around. “What’ve you got for me?”

“Eight with arrows, five shot,” she grumbled, slapping away his hands. “Four dead this morning, plus that broken leg.”

This deflated Elisha somewhat. “Who are the dead?”

“An amputee and three two gunshots—two cautery, one hot oil.”

“God’s Wounds,” Elisha cursed. “Was the amputee one of Ruari’s?”

“Would I know? You’ve got Lisbet at such a pace, she’s checked her men already. As much for the quality of stitches as for their lives.”

“She’s a good stitcher. I assume she learned as much from you,” he tried, donning his leather apron to prepare for the labor ahead.

Maeve snorted. “Don’t you butter me up, you. Not right, a girl like her having such congress with common soldiers. She’ll be as bloody as a barber.” Her cheeks flushed. “Sorry.”

“She’s saving lives, Maeve. What higher work can there be?”

Irritated, she waved him away. “Go on with you, I’ve got bandages to wash.” She filled up a large pot from the brimming barrel. As she backed away with it, Henry, the lesser surgeon, ducked through the flap and hesitated, shifting on his feet as he eyed the barrel. In his hands, he held a broad basin of various herbs.

Noticing the young man, Elisha walked up. “Rather not carry that thing to the courtyard, I guess?”

Shorter by at least a foot, the assistant surgeon still managed to bristle. “Well, Barber, since you’ve modified the hospital, it seems just we should all benefit.” He brushed past and set about filling his basin. He returned a moment later carefully balancing the full basin.

Elisha muttered, “A word of thanks wouldn’t go awry.”

The man didn’t answer, even as Elisha held aside the curtain for his passage.

At last, Elisha turned to his work. He pulled a long probe from his instruments and chased the round balls of lead—which had battered so many of the men—through blood and sinew. He had a deeper knowledge now about these weapons and the wounds they left behind. As he carefully shifted the probe, plucking free another fragment of lead, he wondered if there wasn’t some affinity he could use here, as Brigit had said, to magically remove the metal. Nothing came to mind, but he would think on it as he worked.

Shortly after the late meal, a large party rode through, accompanied by many trumpeters, and the officers got up a feeble cheer from beyond the curtain.

Ruari trotted out to see what was happening and returned with a report. “The king’s ridden out to survey the damage from this side of the bombard range. Got some new tactics to work out, I guess.”

“What’s he look like, the king?” Elisha asked, resuming the binding of one of Benedict’s torture victims. He wished he could get his hands on more eggs, but the tower pigeons had run out, and he had found few others in the surrounding buildings.

“Tall fellow, thick beard and all, with these sharp blue eyes. A bit like yours, now I think of it. Very grand, I’d say. You’ve not seen him?”

“And not likely to, unless he comes to the hospital.”

“God forbid!” Ruari cried, crossing himself. “The king’s been a bit close lately, I hear. Rumor is there’s a plot against him, and he’s not trusting even of men he’s had for years. Even met one o’ the royal messengers stomping about ’cause he’s been relieved of duty. King’s had his younger son, Prince Alaric, talking to the nobles hereabouts, making sure this battle don’t make for civil war.”

“God forbid,” Elisha echoed. All they needed was a bigger war. King Hugh’s dubious succession was meant to be settled before Elisha was born, yet the echoes lasted even now. “But how do you know so much about it?”

“Lisbet’s brother is a gunner on the king’s bombard crew,” Ruari said. “They hear things.” He shrugged and looked away.

Daylight faded outside and the horn would soon be sounded for the hold. Thankfully, the bombards had gone silent as the day wore on, and some speculated that they’d run short of shot. How many rocks of appropriate size could they have piled up in there?

Elisha started to assemble the tools they would need for treating that evening’s patients when suddenly a blast shook the building, rattling his instruments and thrumming in the water barrel. Ruari made the sign of the cross and looked to the ceiling. For a moment, it seemed they all held their breaths. No stone had felt so close before.

Elisha let himself relax and gathered the fallen tools. “I’m off to the vestry for sutures.”

“Aye, Elisha.”

Dusting off his hands, Elisha crossed through the infirmary and up the stairs. Even as he reached the church door, a knight galloped up and flung himself down
from his horse. “Doctors! Surgeons! Come quick, it’s the king!” He braced his hands on his knees, wheezing.

Mordecai and Matthew hurried up the stairs to him. “What is it, man?”

“That blast struck as the king surveyed the field. Several in his party down.”

Mordecai pushed his assistant in the direction of the physician’s cottage. “And be quick! Barber, get your tools!” Elisha doubled back, racing for his leather bundle, and returned to find the physician and his men milling in the yard. With a glance toward the surgeon, he set out for the field. If they waited for horses, they might be too late.

He set a good pace with his long strides, heading for the banners of the king. The blast had shattered a huge tree, sending splinters all around, but apparently missing most of the men. The group was in an uproar, gathered about the king where he sat, his crown askew. From his brief glimpse, Elisha saw the man wasn’t bleeding, nor were any of his limbs out of joint, and he allowed himself to relax as the others came up, riding furiously. The physician Lucius pushed everyone back, bellowing for Mordecai and Benedict. Falling aside with the onlookers, Elisha stumbled on a root.

When he tried to free himself, he found a hand wrapped around his boot. A young man lay in a shaded hollow, his face and clothes dirty, his other hand clapped to his throat. “Barber,” he hissed.

Dropping to one knee beside him, Elisha said, “I’m with you. It’s your neck?”

A slight nod. His eyes flashed wildly one way and another, as if searching for something, or someone. “King,” he breathed.

“Looked fine—the physician’s with him.”

Another slight nod.

Gently, Elisha removed the protective hand, releasing a gush of blood from a tear as long as his finger. “No shot?”

A vague movement in the negative.

“Be still, I’ll take care of you,” Elisha murmured. He replaced the hand, pressing it firmly to give him the idea. Carefully, he rolled him onto his side away from the blast site, then straddled the man’s torso.

He drew from his pouch a needle already threaded, and pinched the edges of the wound together. It should be probed, cleaned at the least, but the boy had
been losing blood. Something struck him oddly about the boy’s hand which yet clenched his leg, but he pushed the thought aside as he began stitching.

“Barber! Where’s the bastard got to?” Lucius shouted. “Barber! There’s a knight with a serious cut over here.”

Praying they wouldn’t find him until he was done, Elisha kept at the work. “Don’t worry,” he told his patient, “I’ll not leave until I’ve done it. It’s a simple wound, just in the wrong place. Only a few more stitches.”

The single worried eye showed white despite these words, and Elisha began softly crooning another of his mother’s songs.

“Barber, get over here!” Matthew’s sharp voice rang out, and he could hear someone approaching.

“Just a minute—five more stitches.” His fingers worked steadily, the hand on the wound inching along, the needle pulling and dipping in a regular rhythm.

“Barber.” Matthew grabbed his arm.

Roughly, Elisha pulled away. “One stitch.”

“Get up, we need you over here.”

Growling behind his teeth, Elisha looked back to his patient, whose ragged breath seemed to have nearly stopped at Matthew’s words. “One stitch,” Elisha repeated, placing it with care, keeping the young man’s eye.

Again Matthew grabbed him, but Elisha shook him off to take the smooth young hand and press it firmly back over the wound. “Keep it covered, I’ll come back for you.” That frightened eye blinked back a tear, and Elisha smiled even as Matthew pulled him off balance and directed him toward the banners.

“This’ll cost you dear, Barber,” the physician thundered when he saw them. He straightened from his examination of a knight who groaned and rubbed his head.

“What are their injuries, sir, what would you have me do?”

“Do? Do? Why, we’ve already done your job!” He gestured toward Mordecai, seated with his back to them as he finished stitching a cut over the brow of one of the lords, who shot Elisha a nasty glance.

“He was stitching a foot soldier, sir,” Matthew supplied.

Exhaustion and anger weighed upon Elisha, and he struggled to keep silent, his teeth clamped together.

At this, Mordecai looked over his shoulder, his watery gaze infinitely weary. “None of your concern, Matthew.”

“None of my—? But the king himself went down, the physician was calling for aid, and this”—he flapped a hand at Elisha—“wasted time over a peasant.”

Wasted time
—saving a man’s life, the job he had been brought here to do, was born for, in fact, while the physician summoned him to save a knight’s vanity. Elisha clenched his fists. With a phrase, Matthew dismissed the foot soldier’s worth, Elisha’s work, the very heart of what they were all meant to do.

“He is a peasant himself,” Lucius pointed out, “Why expect him to rise above his nature? No, rather, with such creatures obedience must be beaten in as with a recalcitrant dog who comes not to its master’s hand.”

“You are no master of mine,” Elisha snarled.

“For our purposes today, I fear you are mistaken. I have the charge of you and the punishment.”

“What, will you flog me for disobedience? You, who will not even put a hand out to save a man beneath your station?” Elisha spat at the physician’s feet, his still-clean satin shoes peeping out beneath a brocaded robe. “He would have bled to death if not for me.”

“Take him to the post,” the physician said, not turning his livid features from Elisha as he summoned a few of the milling royal guards. “You’re in control here, Mordecai.”

The surgeon nodded vaguely, his head downcast as if searching the ground.

Two men caught Elisha’s arms, and Matthew turned to follow, but Mordecai drew a long breath and raised his head as if it weighed too much for him. “Stay, Matthew. Get these men to the infirmary.”

“Yes, sir,” Matthew grumbled, the fervor dying a bit from his cheeks.

“Well, Barber,” Lucius said as he mounted his waiting horse, “Now you shall see what righteous fury is capable of.”

A
s the guards hauled him off,
with the physician following on his tall white horse, Elisha tried to calm his anger and keep his footing. Righteous fury, indeed—the few short moments he spent stitching the foot soldier cost their precious nobility nothing. And in any case, they’d rather be tended by their high-born fellows. He should have kept his mouth shut, of course, and practiced groveling. But then, he’d never been good at that. Maybe he’d just grown sick to death of being ill-used. These doctors saw a man’s clothes before his humanity, deciding who should be healed and who left to rot based on accidents of birth rather than severity of the wound.

The guards fetched up on the outskirts of the vast encampment, where a post about eight feet high cast its shadow in his direction like a beckoning finger. Once the blond of greenwood, the post had taken on the dull red hue of dried blood, and Elisha had his first moment’s pause.

“Take your shirt off,” one of the guards ordered, “or it’ll be in shreds.”

Dully, Elisha complied, removing his apron and shirt to have the garments snatched from his hands and tossed aside as his arms were grabbed again.

A spike held a short chain to the top of the post, with a metal cuff dangling at either end. To these, they fastened his wrists, his face toward the wood. The strain in his arms became quickly uncomfortable; a prelude to what would come.

From the tents and fires, soldiers rose, making their muttering way over to see what was on. Pointing and nodding, they formed little knots, and he noticed money changing hands.

Tucking his head beneath his right arm, Elisha tried to ignore them. Then the physician crossed into view.

“All secure, are we?” he inquired. Benedict trailed after him, looking slightly ill. Carefully, the physician unbuttoned the twenty or more silver buttons of his robe and folded it with the embroidery to the inside to protect it. Laying this over Benedict’s waiting arms, he untied the ribbons at his cuffs and pushed back his sleeves, retying them above the elbows. These preparations made, he gave Elisha a cold smile. “This has been a long time coming in your case. I don’t expect it will teach you wisdom, but it may encourage you to obey more promptly.”

One of the guards stepped up with a coiled length of braided leather. Lucius took it in both hands, and snapped out the curl, inspecting it.