Elisha Magus (28 page)

“Why do you want to die?” Martin asked, his voice childlike, as if the answer mattered more than he would admit.

Elisha stared at him through the bars, and chose the truth. “Because I would like to be wrong about who I am.”

Furrowing his brow, Martin protested, “I don’t understand you, Elisha.”

“I know.” With a sigh, Elisha softened. “Isn’t that why you love me?”

Martin gave a rueful smile. “You know me too well.”

“I do,” he said, “and that is why you have to go. Now.” He came up and set his hands on the bars.

Briefly, Martin clasped his hands over Elisha’s. His dark eyes blinked back tears, then he pushed himself up on his toes and kissed him, a fleeting warmth and a breath of wine. Dropping back, shaking, Martin flipped the hood over his head and hurried away.

Letting his forehead rest on the grate, Elisha took a breath and let it out slow. He wet his lips, tasting a hint of orange and a touch of love. Come back, he wanted to say. Don’t leave me with all of your regrets. Worse yet would be Elisha’s betrayal of their friendship, if this were not his last night on earth. “Oh, God,” he groaned to Martin’s absence. In that moment, he understood polarity better than he ever had before: this absence was too thick with presence, too full of lost potential to ever seem empty.

Then he thought of Brigit. Wherever she was, in the shock of loss and mourning her prince, she would have heard the king’s decree. Would she come to see him die? When he had been about to hang, he saw so clearly her face in the rain, peeking from under her cloak, giving him the secret smile that made him believe in her; she would save him, he was convinced. Instead, she failed him, as she had failed him ever since.

Disgusted with himself, Elisha pushed away from the bars and slumped on the stone slab. Despair seeped up through the stones. The pain of men who had been tortured, and the grief of those about to die, remained trapped here, compounded year after year in the two centuries or more since the castle had been raised. He was tempted to wallow in other men’s griefs, to let himself go in favor of this emotional storm and not have to feel his own. Instead, he drew himself inside, deep and deep until he could not feel a thing, and he stayed that way until the worried Earl had him shaken from his apparent stupor and left him with his supper.

What was the point of eating? Shrugging the question aside, Elisha dug in. If Thomas and the duke wanted him well-treated, then they had chosen the best man for the job in the Earl of Blackmere. Rather than the usual prison fare, whatever that might be, the plate held a mound of parsnips in some sort of glaze with half a chicken similarly prepared. Elisha washed the meal down with the contents of a wooden bottle, which turned out to be a light mead. If all prisoners were so well-fed, more peasants would turn criminal.

When he was done, Elisha slipped back into that trance of un-being, conserving his strength for whatever would come in the morning.

T
he day brought
first a bowl of fresh berries—compliments of his keeper—and a half-loaf of filling bread. Restless with confinement and waiting, Elisha devoured it and returned to pacing. It seemed as if he had awaited this day for twenty years, ever since watching Rowena die had set him on his course. As if he had known at the back of his mind that there could be no other fate. Yesterday, he had tried to keep his hopes high, to regain that confidence he used to have—the arrogance that got him through as much trouble as it had gotten him into. Now, he tried simply to keep from screaming. His control ebbed away in nervousness until the cell once more echoed with the laments of those long dead.

On the other hand, this inadvertent awareness told him someone was approaching, and before long, he could hear shuffling steps, accompanied by others more sure. An elderly priest made his way down the hall, lurching against the wall with every second step, keeping himself on track. Beside him, a veiled nun provided escort and guidance, encouraging him with her quiet voice.

Joy surged up in Elisha as he came to greet them, a sloppy grin threatening to take over his face.

“Kneel,” the priest commanded in a gravelly voice, his eyes focused somewhere to Elisha’s left.

“Aye, Father.” Elisha did as he was told, as Sister Lucretia set down a folding stool for her ward, then knelt beside him.

“Father Jerome has come to hear your confession,” the nun announced, crossing herself. “He’s deaf as a stone and as good as blind,” she confessed in her turn, with a wavering smile. “I know you’re not much for the Church.”

“Just seeing you again does my soul good,” he told her.

Eagerly, she reached through the bars to clasp his hands. “Oh, Eli, to find you again, only to find you here. How I have prayed for you, for God to find it in His Heart to forgive you.”

Bringing the warmth of her hands close to his face, Elisha shut his eyes and breathed in her friendship, drawing her compassion from the contact they shared. Years before, Lucretia had been a young prostitute, desperately ill, and Elisha’s intervention had saved her life. She had left the brothel in favor of the convent, believing that he had been the answer to a prayer. “Thank you,” he murmured. “I don’t think the Lord has time for me, but thanks for trying.”

“Don’t say that, Elisha. Even if you have not been faithful to the Lord, still there’s no harm in asking for His aid, especially today.” Fear shot through her, but she quelled it again with her faith.

“How’s Helena? How is she taking this?”

Lucretia lowered her gaze, clinging a little more strongly to his hands. “She’s upset. It’s brought it all back for her, and of course, people will talk. I besought her to come see you, if they’d allow it since she is family, but …” she let out a breath.

“Helena may have forgiven me, but I’m still a reminder that her husband is gone, and why. Will you tell her I’m sorry? I don’t mean to dredge up all the pain for her.” That sense of guilt which always hovered near Helena in his mind settled again over his shoulders, muffling the pleasure he took in seeing Lucretia.

“Have you anything else to confess?” Father Jerome demanded, swiveling his head to focus on some other unoccupied space.

Elisha stiffened at the question. It seemed not to be random, as if the old man had seen his guilt even through clouded eyes.

“It’s the stories of witchcraft that have her most dismayed, Eli.” She frowned at their hands. “Her sister has been telling her that you, well, you … I do not know how to say this, or even if I should.”

Quietly, he voiced what she could not bring herself to say. “Her sister thinks I had more to do with the baby’s death?”

A quick nod. “She’s claimed you had some need for infant’s blood, and that’s the real reason you fled. If you had been innocent, she says, wouldn’t you have stayed to succor the widow.”

“I had no choice! Aside from the fact that the widow cursed me to my face.” He beat his forehead against the bars. He shouldn’t have brought it up. He should have left Lucretia’s visit untainted by these memories, for his own sake in preserving some guard against the growing fear.

She rested her forehead against his. After a moment of the quiet rhythm of her breathing, and the priest’s shifting around on his seat, she said, “If you wish to confess, I will go off, for a while.”

He felt the tingle of her curiosity in her skin. She had faith, she wanted to believe him innocent, but she had doubt as well. “No,” he whispered, “not now.”

“You are, aren’t you?” she murmured, drawing away, her eyes roving across his face. “If you were not, you should have protested more.”

“It isn’t what you think, Lucy.” He shook his head, wanting to explain it all and afraid to at the same time. He wanted to assure her he was no servant of evil, and yet how could he be sure? How could a man who drew strength from the dead claim to be in the service of God?

With a muffled cry, she released his hands, wriggling her arms back to her own side of the grate as she stared at him. Struggling with her heavy habit, she pulled herself to her feet.

“Please, Sister,” he cried and bit down on his lip to stop the quaver in his voice. “Please, I need your prayers now more than ever.”

She wavered, one hand on the silver cross at her neck. “Yes, I can see that you would,” she said faintly. “I will not lecture you—you attended mass often enough to understand your sins. Is Helena’s sister right about you? When did the Devil find you?” In the echo of her voice, he heard the question she did not ask: had she herself been so wrong?

Pulling himself up on the bars, he swallowed the tang of blood. “Sister, I have never been in league with the Devil, and the Church was all I knew of witches until weeks after I left here. We don’t kill infants.”

“No,” she said, blinking. “Apparently you kill kings. I cannot reconcile this with the man that you were, Elisha.”

Elisha grasped what hope he could. “Do you still work at the hospital?”

She nodded once.

“You use the medicines and treatments that you can, and you heal some, and some of them die. Some of them die no matter what you do. What if God gave you a way to heal them? Wouldn’t you try it?”

Lucretia stepped a little further back. “You are trying to entrap me, aren’t you? I’ve heard of moments like this.”

“No, I am entreating you. You know me, Lucy, you know who I am and what I stand for. There’s nothing to reconcile because I am still here, I’m still the man I always was.”

Flicking a tear from her cheek, she said, “It isn’t me you need to convince.” Then she slipped a hand under the priest’s arm and dragged him up. “Come, Father, we’re done here.”

“What, what?” he asked. “You’ve got to speak up.” As she drew him into motion, he turned back over his shoulder and made a cross in the air. “Te absolvo,” he muttered. “Te absolvo.”

Absolved and abandoned, Elisha sank to the floor holding back tears. She was right, of course she was. He wanted to live, and yet no man could, not without unnatural power. He was meant to face a slow, terrifying death. And no one had come to give him the means to escape it. If he died, if he let go of his magic, could he face the judgment of God and of history?

Men came for him and led him down the dark corridor to stand blinking in the sunlight. The earl looked away, rocking on his heels as the cart was brought around. A phalanx of armed men glittered in the light of day, but Elisha hardly saw them. His mind turned over on itself. If he died, Thomas would blame himself. If he lived, he could never see any of his friends again. If he died, he was no servant of evil. If he lived—Was Allyson evil? Or Martin, who dared to love men instead of women and must, therefore, be more evil than the others? What about Brigit and her mother, desperate to save their people and willing to use any means? Were not ordinary princes taken by that same ambition?

They prodded him into the cart, his bound arms held before him. But if a soul as loving as Lucretia’s could not allow for magic, then could it not be he who was deceived? The oxcart lurched into motion, and he swayed, but did not fall.

People lined the streets, jeering. Something smacked against his head and oozed down—an egg. Elisha almost laughed. Once, he had thrown an egg at King Hugh, a diversion to chase him away. Now it seemed his every deed would return to haunt him. Fitting, on this, the day he should die.

Rotten vegetables exploded on the cart and on his body, wetting him with the stink of decay.

Something brushed his hand, something piercingly hot in the chill of his turmoil. A man in a monk’s robe and broad-brimmed hat walked alongside, a thick Bible in his hands. His lips moved, and Elisha caught the chant of Latin verses.
“You need to concentrate in order to go through with this,
” said Mordecai’s voice inside his head. He did not look up.

Clamping his jaw, Elisha shook with fear and confusion. “
I can’t—I don’t know how any more.”

“
You can,
” he said, his voice sharp and urgent. “
Listen to me, Elisha, listen. There is a torrent of emotion pouring from you.
” His fingers dug into the wooden covers of his book. “
What has happened to you?
”

Gathering his wits, Elisha framed the moment in the cell with Lucretia, the loss of one of his dearest friends. His hand brushed Mordecai’s raised fist wrapped around the book. In that contact, he projected his conflicts. He had no time to polish the sending, to make it more bearable, and he saw Mordecai reel with the shock of it.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped to the air.

“
Then hear your own words, Elisha. Why are we here? Why are there magi at all? Ha shem created the heavens and the earth and all the creatures who live here. We are a part of His work, Elisha. Some men are kings, and some are healers, and some of us are magic.
”

Mordecai jerked his head up, the Latin litany faltering as they approached the gate. “
There is no time.”
The hat twitched aside as Mordecai met Elisha’s eyes. Mordecai’s stricken face begged for understanding, but he shoved the hat back into place. “
The talisman will be under your right hand. The headboard of the coffin is loosely nailed, you should be able to pull it in. There’s a bundle of clothes at the Red Lion Inn, in the crook of the stable eaves.
” His shoulders hunched, and he clutched the book to his chest. “
You must not give up, Elisha, you’re almost free
!”

But the cart bounced around the corner, forcing Mordecai back into the crowd as the crossroads came into view, and no words could have won Elisha back from the terror that swept through his heart.

He should have expected to be buried at a crossroads, the traditional place for suicides, murderers, witches. The crowd left an open yard around the area, broader in one patch where the king sat tall upon a wooden throne, his courtiers arrayed around him so that Elisha could not see his face as they approached. Clergymen of all ranks interspersed among them, prepared to defend their immortal souls and to be sure that God’s justice, as well as the king’s, should be served. On the packed earth, a coffin lay open atop a pair of ropes, ready to lower it down into the gaping pit. A man in an executioner’s mask stood by, weighing a hammer in his gloved hands. A mound of dirt towered beside him, two men leaned on their shovels, waiting, and one of them was Morag.