Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (31 page)

The duke removed his helmet, handed it back to one of his men, and ran a hand through his thinning brown hair. He puffed out a sigh and bent his knee, bringing himself down to Elisha’s level. “I see you’ve worked it out, Barber.”

In his voice, the name of Elisha’s profession did not come out as an insult the way lords generally applied it. Warily, he nodded.

“Do you know the man you doctored?”

Elisha slowly shook his head.

“Phillip, Earl of Blackmere. He only led the sortie because he was furious the king refused to parley. He thought he might shame him into it.” Duke
Randall settled his elbow on his upraised knee and dropped his chin into his hand. “Does that fool Hugh even know what he has in you?”

At this, Elisha frowned. He thought to speak, then thought better of it. Let the duke tell him what he would. Maybe by the time they returned to the subject at hand, he would know the right answers.

“Yes, Barber, I have been on a first-name basis with kings, and now I am a marked man. But before I die, I would know from you how you came by that piece of cloth.”

That mournful air, the way he brought himself down to look Elisha in the eye inspired a sort of trust Elisha was not familiar with. He risked his voice. “My lord—Your Grace—I don’t know that I should tell you.”

“Now you speak him fair, Barber,” the lord said, bringing up the edge of his sword.

“I cannot speak you fair, Your Grace, but I can speak you plain. Someone’s given me this bit of cloth. I don’t know where it’s from, and I don’t know what it means, and I don’t know what he meant in giving it to me.” Elisha gave a giddy laugh. “Perhaps he meant someone to kill me, Your Grace. You’ve already got my life in your hands. But regardless of what he meant, I’m damned if I’ll reveal him and give you his life as well.”

Duke Randall considered this, his round face wrinkling with thought. “The trouble is, Barber, that in order to take it, I’d have to be a free man. The only time of day I can even leave my house is during the hold, and only then as long as I trust Hugh to keep his word. But you have a commendable loyalty to this unnamed friend.” His face cleared as he glanced up to Robert at Elisha’s back and then to his other lieutenants. “The cloth is from my daughter’s wedding gown. I had it made up to her design and hired a man of the city to get it done. He swore to me to let no scrap escape him, lest her special gift be worn by whores or even the queen’s ladies in imitation. And here I find a piece of that self-same gown employed to bind my best friend’s wound. And by an honest barber.”

With the groan of a tired man, the duke rose to his feet and smiled down at Elisha. “Martin Draper is your friend’s name,” he said, “and he meant, if ever you came my way, that you should go free, and with my blessing. Clever man, our Martin. Let him go, Robert. For the life of the earl, if not for Martin’s sake, he deserves better than he’s had from us.”

Grumbling, Robert sheathed his sword and even gave Elisha a hand up to regain his unsteady feet.

Slightly dazed, Elisha glanced from one to the other of them. A few faces still looked suspicious, including the tall, fierce Robert and the gunner who scowled as he put up his weapon. But Duke Randall smiled. “Give Martin my best, would you, when you meet again? I doubt I’ll have that pleasure.”

“Don’t talk that way, Your Grace,” replied Lord Robert immediately.

“Once I believed this could all turn out well in the end. I thought Hugh’s rascal boy would recant, or Hugh himself would see reason, but I think now it is not to be. Go on,” he told Elisha, indicating the king’s encampment with a tilt of his head. Quietly, he replaced his helmet. “Don’t move him, you say?”

Elisha, already leaving, turned back. “Yes, Your Grace, unless you make him a litter. Better to have your surgeon do it here and avoid the danger.”

“Thank you, Barber. God be with you.”

Bowing his head, Elisha returned, “And with you, Your Grace,” and thought he had never wished something so true in his life, even as he turned his back. Across the field of the wounded, he saw parties of the king’s men approaching, some gathering the soldiers into carts while others in twos and threes took up the lords. Several of these stood still, staring in their direction. Quickly, Elisha called out, “Your Grace!”

“What is it?” Robert’s voice answered.

“I think I must ask you to kill me.”

“Sorry?” said Duke Randall’s soft, puzzled voice. “I’ve just set you free.”

“Aye, Your Grace, but the king’s men have seen us talking. If they think you’ve tried to kill me, I may yet live through this.”

“Ah, I see your point. Go on gunner—but leave out the lead.”

“Aye, Your Grace.” The gunner tipped his weapon and shook out the lead ball, then refilled it with black powder and stuffed in a bit of wadding, poking it down with a rod. For a moment, their eyes met over the open mouth of the bombardelle, and Elisha wondered how may of this man’s victims had died in his hospital. His stomach roiled. He knew too well the damage that thing could cause. He took a step back, shaky.

“Go on, then,” said the gunner, “might’s well run and make it look good.” He leveled the weapon in Elisha’s direction, bracing the wooden shaft at his foot, then lit a twist of cloth from a hooded lantern at his belt.

Elisha stumbled back another step, then he ran. He leapt a few bodies before the gun went off with a terrible boom and a puff of smoke. A blast of hot air slapped his back, stinging through his shirt, and he fell with an unfeigned scream, his ears throbbing with the sound of the blast. For a moment he lay gulping for breath, and he could see why even the bravest of men feared the shot. The black smoke swirled over him and dissipated, leaving its acrid stench.

Boots tramped nearby. Looking down as if to be sure the captive was dead, Robert winked and walked away.

Elisha soon discovered how hard it is to lie still for any length of time. He heard the duke’s men speaking softly amongst themselves, and the occasional ripping of grass as one of the restless horses chomped a meal while he waited. After a time, a surgeon came, muttered over the wounded Earl, and apparently followed Elisha’s repeated instructions. At last, the duke’s party moved on, ignoring Elisha just as they had since his “death.”

Moments later, booted feet tramped up around him. “That the man?” one asked.

“Aye, I think so. Long hair, covered in blood—seems about right.”

“Here,” said the first, “Bring over that lad.”

“The barber! Thank God you’ve found him,” fluted the youthful tone of the banner bearer. “Is he hurt? They’ve shot him!”

Even as he lay there, holding his breath, Elisha knew he was lost. Warm hands rolled him over and touched his throat. “Thank God,” the lad repeated fervently. “Just stunned, I guess. Won’t Madoc be glad to hear.”

“Go back to your company, boy, we’ll take him,” the man said gruffly.

“I should get him back to Madoc, if he’s all right,” the lad replied. “Sure and he’s been worried enough.”

“We’ll take him,” the man snapped, and one set of footfalls hurried away.

A boot prodded Elisha’s chest, sending a spasm of pain through the burn that radiated along his rib cage. Elisha gave an involuntary gasp, and the men around him laughed. He braced himself to play the role he had claimed, but his heart sank.

“Get up, you traitor. The king’ll have a word with you.”

Opening his eyes at last, Elisha asked, “Have they gone? Thank God.”

“Don’t give me that,” the soldier snapped. “We saw you talking to the duke.”

He should have asked Duke Randall to kill him for good rather than face whatever was to come. Firm hands dragged him to his feet, taking the knife and his belt with its pouch. For good measure, they stripped off his boots, searched and discarded them. Slipping away his pouch—no doubt to be used as evidence or sold for private gain—the guard pulled Elisha’s wrists together at his back and bound them tight with Elisha’s own leather belt. The skin of his chest strained at the brand, a pain that gripped him with every breath.

With a guard on each arm, Elisha trudged back toward camp. As they walked, heads looked up among the search parties to watch him pass. A man gathering fallen weapons into a cart called out to him. The rain still fell, softer now, but the world seemed empty of magic, and he had given up his talisman to save the earl. That bit of cloth had given him a slight reprieve as well as the chance to be executed for betraying his king, rather than for tending the wrong man. The banner bearer might believe the gunner had missed him, but the soldiers clearly were having none of it. At least, he might see Brigit one more time before he died.

Shaking back his hair, he raised his head and tried to keep his feet. What had been farmers’ fields were transformed by furrows of the dead, freshly turned. The acrid smell of powder hung in the damp air, along with the reek of perforated bowels. Here and there, soldiers staggered up and leaned together, making their way toward camp. The ruins of the siege towers hulked over all, deepening the darkness. A few men with a pike struggled to raise part of a trebuchet to free a man trapped underneath. Even as he passed, Elisha could see the rend in the man’s chest, pumping blood. His battle was over, but his friends still fought for him.

Ahead, a soldier crept toward them, dragging a crushed leg. “Please,” he groaned, reaching out.

Elisha’s hands strained against the binding, twisting and unable to get free. “A tourniquet,” he said. “Sir, if I can just—”

The guard jerked him off balance, towing him forward. “The cart’s coming, you be still,” he told the injured man.

With a sob, the man slumped to the mud, his fingers digging in.

“It won’t take a moment, sir,” Elisha said. The guard cuffed him hard, and he staggered a few steps, hauled along by the grip on his arm.

The coppery taste of blood stained Elisha’s tongue, the blow spinning him so that he could still see the wounded man left behind them. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. For a moment, in the shimmer of the rain, the man had his brother’s blond hair.

They reached the strip of earth where the farthest arrows of the duke’s archers had reached, and the battlefield was marred by blackened towers and scorched corpses. So many died that he might have saved, by magic or by the skill of his hand. So many lived who still needed him, clutching bloody wounds and arrow shafts, and he could do nothing but stumble on, his hands growing numb, arms aching with his thwarted need to help. “I’m sorry,” he told them, but there was none who could forgive him. The injured watched him pass with tears and pleading, the dead with vacant, staring eyes. One of the corpses wore a little tin cross.

E
lisha’s journey ended
at a gaily striped pavilion complete with an awning to hold back the absent sun. Once inside, they thrust him to his knees. The three guards seated themselves on campstools. One drummed his fingers on a small table with a heap of blankets tucked behind it. The only other furnishing was a rug.

For hours, Elisha waited as the tent grew darker and darker. When they first arrived, he would periodically try to stretch his legs, but his guards drew their swords, and so he stilled himself. He sat on the ground at the center, alternately wondering how his patients on the field were faring and studying the richly patterned rug. His family had had dirt floors, but the king could afford to throw down such a rug in a war camp.

On the way, Ruari had hailed him as they walked past the monastery to the bridge, but Elisha dared not acknowledge him, and he knew his silence would give his friends little comfort. Who knew where Brigit might be.

At last, the flap swept open, and a tall, fair man ducked underneath.

Instantly, the guards leapt to their feet and bowed.

Elisha, sore from his long wait, rose more slowly, but bowed the more deeply to make up for it. From the growl of the guard behind him, he realized his actions could as easily be taken for insolence.

The physician and the surgeon’s assistant, Matthew, stepped through a short time after, staying at the tent wall as the man who must be the king strode forward. Clad in a tabard of royal purple with a hound’s head emblazoned on a field of white, he had the thick beard and sharp blue eyes Ruari
had described, with a sharp nose as well, giving him rather the look of a falcon, ready to rip Elisha to shreds. The duke had called him “Hugh,” a name that sounded much too small and plain for such a man. Glaring at him, the king parted his lips and intoned one word. “Kneel.”

Elisha sank to the ground, his heart racing. In all his nearly thirty years, he had never been called before the lord who owned his village, nor even the burghers of the city. He had no idea how to speak to a king, and evidently had already gone wrong without saying a word. The throbbing from his chest spread into his muscles. Keeping his head down, Elisha watched the king’s highly polished boots, the left toe moving slowly up and down as if he kept time with distant, unheard music.

“You were seen speaking to the renegade duke, can you deny it?” the king demanded at last.

“No, Your Majesty, I cannot,” Elisha mumbled.