Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (37 page)

He sent his awareness further with a sense of creeping along the floor like a beetle, as if some hitherto unknown antennae could feel the vibration of Benedict’s presence in the air. Mordecai’s touch, and his conversation, had shown Elisha what it meant to be attuned, not in the physical, grounded way that Brigit seemed to imply, but on a different level. It began with the physical, with an uncanny knowledge of how Benedict stood and moved, almost as if they might inhabit one body. Knowledge—the sort that Mordecai carried in his books, that Elisha had learned from setting a thousand bones and treating ten thousand wounds.

From this new perspective, Benedict radiated tension. His fingers clutched the wooden spoon so hard that tiny slivers pricked beneath his nails, though he was unaware of them. Tension gathered in the muscles of his neck and shoulders, his posture rigid with the strain. His jaw tightened until it ached.

Of Benedict’s mind, Elisha could sense little. Vague washes of emotion drifted there, understood not through direct knowledge, but through how they influenced the pulse and breathing: a hint of fear, a twinge of pain from the bite Elisha had inflicted, and a pang of regret. The knowledge was intimate, fascinating, and exciting—and more than any man would want revealed about himself.

Elisha pulled back from that intimacy, tamping down his awareness, despite his curiosity. Somewhere upstairs, he heard footsteps, and felt a sudden draft of shock and fear, which blew away as quickly as it had come, leaving him chilled. He would have risen, but footsteps approached the door as well. Voices murmured, then the physician stepped into the kitchen, his presence catlike in anticipation.

Lucius glanced toward where Elisha lay, but Elisha was perfectly motionless, allowing the skill of attunement to reveal his surroundings. “Still sleeping,” the physician muttered, then joined his assistant, staring down at the concoction on the fire. “Ah, very good,” he said, then set his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “I need to speak with you, Benedict.”

“Of course, Sir, I’m nearly done here.” The voice shook a little, and the physician’s hand patted him in a manner intended to be soothing.

“Come along with me now. That will keep.”

Clunking the spoon against the pot, Benedict turned. “I thought you wanted me to—”

“Yes, yes, but the king’s guard, you know, they’ve been prowling about, so it seems wise we should speak now.”

Looking back as if he could see the guards, Benedict slowly withdrew the spoon and laid it on the table with curious precision. “As you wish, sir.”

Lucius used his comforting hand to gently propel Benedict toward the door by Elisha’s head.

“Must we go through the yard, sir, it makes me—”

“I have not made you my assistant in order to hear your complaints.”

It sounded as if Benedict were to have his ears laid back for some offense. Elisha almost smiled. In their wake, he remembered the fear he had sensed earlier. Pushing himself into a sitting position, Elisha waited. He felt stiff and weary, but not on the verge of death, as he had a few hours ago. Rising slowly, he shifted the blanket closer and hobbled over to the stairs. He shuffled up them, and down the hall, which he found empty. At each door, he paused and knocked, but had no answer. Two doors in a row stood open, opposite the one which was Brigit’s. His small chest stood on one of the beds, abandoned when Lisbet and her mother did their packing.

Frowning over it, Elisha considered what to do. He hadn’t the strength to move it, not far anyway, and it contained little worth protecting. Still. He dropped onto the rope webbing of the bed and flipped open the catches, pulling back the lid.

His one remaining shirt lay neatly folded on top, and Elisha slipped it over his head. He found a length of rope to use as a belt and emptied out a tied-leather bundle of herbs, replacing them with an abbreviated version of the emergency kit the guards had taken from him. At the bottom of the chest lay the little cloth pennant, but his tools had shifted in all the moving about, and a knife had torn through the painted hawk, leaving one wing nearly severed. Elisha plucked it free and held it on his palm, a miniature of the angel’s wing. He wondered for a moment if his own pennant-waving that day had inspired her, even as she waited for her death, to try this one last miracle. Her daughter’s betrayal tainted the memory, but he pushed it aside. Whatever Brigit had done to him—or not done, as the case may be—her mother’s touch meant something still.

Folding it gently, he placed the cloth wing into his packet and re-tied the leather thong, tucking it into his waist. Elisha replaced the lid of the chest and let it lie. Rising again, he continued down the hall. Above the infirmary, he found another door standing open, a scatter of pages blowing in a breeze from the window. This must be Mordecai’s room, but he wasn’t there.

Abandoning his blanket, Elisha gathered up the pages and placed them on the neatly made bed. He turned to go but frowned. The place felt hollow in a way that worried him. Perhaps it was only that sense of loss he found in the man himself, the echo of the secrets he still held. Downstairs, he stopped at the entrance to the infirmary, but found no sign of Mordecai there either.

Perhaps he, too, had sought the river. As he walked, Elisha realized he had not heard the bombards’ blast all day long, for surely that would have awakened him sooner. Indeed, a large number of knights gathered across the river by the king’s pavilion, talking and laughing, apparently at their ease.

Elisha glanced back, but could see nothing of the battlefield from here. Shrugging it off, he walked the few paces down and plunged his feet into the rushing water.

Silence.

But not silence, not really. A low moan shivered around his ankles, more a feeling than a voice, and Elisha looked upstream. At a bend beyond the monastery walls, he saw a figure emerge from the reeds and stride up, fastidiously lifting long robes, though they dripped with water. Lucius. But where was Benedict?

Elisha sprang up the bank and pushed himself into a run, his hands curled into fists.

He slithered down the rise where the physician had emerged and stumbled into the brush, fetching up against the massive roots of an upturned tree.

“Benedict?” he called out, trying to push his way past the reaching roots. “Benedict!” The sense of fear, the pressure of the physician’s hand—he should have put it together.

Bursting free from the entangling brush, Elisha found himself standing ankle-deep beside the downed tree, looking into the swirl of a pool sheltered by the looming of its branches. Something splashed like a dark, pointed fish. Benedict’s expensive boot.

“Don’t do it, Barber,” Lucius’s voice suddenly cracked behind him.

Spinning, already up to his waist in the water, Elisha stared.

The physician stood on the bank, his gaunt face twisted as he drew a small crossbow from the folds of his ridiculous sleeves and held it casually at his side. “It’s too late for him.”

But the river said differently. Even though it carried the chill of death, it carried too the submerged struggle for breath, a struggle Elisha knew all too well. He backed another pace into the river’s flood.

“Don’t, I tell you. It’s for your own good as well as mine. He’s the traitor, don’t you know. He wants to kill the king.”

“Then bring him before the guards,” Elisha shouted back.

“I’m just going to fetch them,” Lucius said, but he did not move.

Taking another step, Elisha drew a deep breath, even as the physician slid a bolt into place. As he shot, Elisha fell back into the water.

The bolt slid in after, as subtle as death, as swift as the river, and Elisha reached out with his mind. Contact. He caught it and forced it into the water, dissolving it into the flying current.

Another followed in a moment, Lucius turning to keep his prey within range, as Elisha swept toward the tree.

Elisha rolled and kicked, grabbing a branch near the entrapped figure of Benedict.

Fighting with the tree that held him, Benedict flailed. Blood streamed in the water around him.

Diving beside him, Elisha forced him down and dragged him back against the flow, one arm wrapped about his chest. Both popped to the surface, drawing a curse from the physician.

Lucius aimed another bolt, but Elisha splashed his hand through the air, bringing up a stream of water that consumed the weapon as it flew.

His mouth flapping, the physician drew back. He pointed a finger in Elisha’s direction, a finger that struck Elisha with more fear than had his bow. A gesture of knowledge and accusation.

Their eyes met across the distance, and the physician crossed himself quickly, pulling the bow close to his chest like a crucifix. Then he backed away, stumbling over his robes and falling.

Elisha hesitated, the water lapping around his knees, Benedict clutched
in his arms. If Elisha dropped Benedict, he might catch Lucius. What had Benedict done for him, that Elisha should risk the fire?

Caught up in the extra yards of fabric, Lucius floundered and pulled himself up.

“
Who’s there?”
came a sudden voice in the water.

“Oh, God, Benedict,” Elisha murmured, shifting his grip and hauling Benedict toward shore against the current. By the time they arrived, Lucius had already sped off to sound the alarm.

Flopping Benedict onto the shore, Elisha climbed up after him, his chest heaving, his feet cold. Too cold.

He turned Benedict’s face toward him, and the eyelids fluttered open. “Barber,” came the raspy voice.

His master’s bolt had taken him in the back, just to the left of his spine and Elisha felt a sick dread.

“You’ve got to live,” Elisha said urgently, even as his hand probed around the wound.

“Take…letter. To him, not me,” Benedict said, his hand fluttering at his waist. “Not me.”

Elisha found a slender waxed packet tucked in Benedict’s belt. “Lucius received it?”

A slight, stiff nod.

“Who’s it from? Benedict? I can’t read, Benedict.”

The fair head lolled to one side, but the eyes flickered open again, and the blue lips trembled. “Prince…Thomas. Build him a medical school.” Almost, he smiled. Lucius had talked about that school in the same breath that he’d lied to Elisha about coming to the hospital at the king’s invitation. On the contrary, apparently Prince Thomas, impatient for his crown, had lured the physician to assassinate his father the king, while he remained hundreds of miles away, above suspicion.

Cold seeped from Benedict, but Elisha pressed his hand to the wound. He willed it warm, but he did not know how to work that magic the surgeon practiced. “Please, Benedict, stay with me,” he muttered. Elisha’s own interrogation had revealed his innocence regarding the assassination attempts—so Lucius had got himself a new scapegoat.

Benedict expelled a gout of blood and the single word, “Sorry.”

The sound of tramping boots echoed from the monastery wall, and Elisha pulled Benedict up onto his shoulder, struggling through the brush back toward the bridge. His aches returned and redoubled, but he dared not stop. They emerged onto the grass, a troop of armored men hurrying up with the physician babbling after them.

“Get the surgeon!” Elisha shouted. “This man’s wounded.”

“So let him die.”

At the drawl of those evil words, Elisha turned. On the opposite bank stood the king, with a few of his company, and some distance off, two men in the colors of Duke Randall.

“Your Majesty,” he gasped, his raw throat closing over the words.

“I little expected to see you up and about so soon. Is this more of your magic?” the king inquired coolly. “Oh, yes, the esteemed physician has been telling us. I was told a miracle had saved you. Now it seems there is another explanation.”

“This man is nothing to do with it, Your Majesty. Let me bring him to the surgeon,” Elisha begged.

At this, the king let out a boom of laughter. “The witch wants to consult the Jew. But he’s here already.” He waved a lofty gesture toward the bridge.

There, among the tall, armed men, stood the slight figure of Mordecai, stripped of his cap and gown, thin shoulders stooped. Someone had wrapped his prayer shawl around his waist, and its tassels fluttered in the wicked breeze.

“C
ome here, Barber,
come to me,” the king beckoned.

Tearing his eyes from the bridge, Elisha lowered his burden to the ground. A glance confirmed what the chill in his back already knew: it was too late for Benedict. Elisha shot a glare at the physician. Slowly, he rose again, trying not to reveal his sudden weakness. If he was to become a trembling child after every casting, how could he ever put the magic to any use?

He walked a few strides into the river.

“Who’s there?
”

“
Bittersweet.
” Elisha crossed to the shallows below the bank where the king stood waiting.

Around him in the water echoed other voices, betraying their confusion.
“Briarrose,”
“Slippery Elm,”
“Arrowroot,” “Willowbark.
”

“But you were not alone
,” someone said, a brief touch of dismay.