Elisha Rex (20 page)

F
or a long time,
Elisha lay still in the hollow carved to hold a man. The flickering shades of the dead moved through him, more distinct now than they had ever been before. Soldiers fought brief and silent battles against marauders from the north. They screamed and fell in anguish, only to rise up again and repeat the moment, an endless dance of dying captured by stone. Older shades walked among them, men cast up from the pounding sea, men in skirts of armor, women in deer hides or homespun woolens. One of these crossed from the broken gate to the well and cast herself in, over and over, an echo of her death. A steady stream of men and women struggled against invisible assailants to be flung upon the table where Elisha now lay. They sank through him with a slight chill, as if he had taken a deep breath of early spring, and each sacrifice long past imparted him a gasp of strength. Every twenty-five breaths or so, Rosalynn died again.

She plunged through him on the way to the stone and shivered him more closely than the others because he knew her. He knew the terror that strained her limbs and the awful betrayal that caught the pit of her stomach. He need not hear the words she cried, for he knew them already. She died screaming his name. Pleading for his mercy.

He could only pray that, as she sat among the angels in the Kingdom of Heaven, comforted at last, some one of them might tell her the truth and convince her of his innocence. As for himself, he had only to convince the king.

Thomas had lost another wife. Would he ever recover? The two women looked as different as spring and autumn, his first wife blonde and thin, the second round, dark, rosy. He had lost another child, too. Elisha squeezed his eyes shut. Thomas was strong, he had survived before—but then, he had not been made to hear the slaying, nor to believe his only friend was the killer.

The kingdom was more at risk than ever, the mancers had a new leader—one pregnant with a potential heir—and had orchestrated their efforts to ensure his friends would believe the worst of him. Elisha had no idea how he might counter the betrayal they believed of him. What could he say or do to show them the truth? The mancers were already winning, insinuating themselves into the kingdom and destroying it from the inside, like rats in a granary. They had set barons against barons, barons against peasants, and even, through the archbishop's role in proclaiming Elisha's anointed state, cast doubt upon the holy church itself. Defeating the French seemed the least possible victory. At every moment, his enemies grew stronger, his friends more endangered—he was damned if he knew how to prevent it, and damned all the more if he did not try.

Elisha had work to do. First up, learning as much as he could about his enemies. He jumped down from the table, scattering crows from the corpses. They protested in a racket, glaring at him, but he ran for the storehouse, the only building in the compound.

The regular stone of the walls showed a series of different shades, different lichens, suggesting it had been constructed and re-constructed over a period of years. A fragmentary arch stuck out from one long side, marking the ruin of a structure long-collapsed.

The cob horse snorted and stamped as he passed, giving a tug against its harness.

Inside the long, low structure, a few skips of coal stood by the door. The rest of the room held four beds with bedding, a few clothes, a table and benches, pots and pans, a chest containing ordinary flour, eggs, and some turnips. The lid thumped shut as Elisha dropped it and swung about. Nothing. A door at the back led to an open-air hearth with a huge pot on top, reeking of coal fire and old flesh. Elisha slammed the door and put his back to it, gagging. His brief glance had shown no hiding place for anything of worth. The chill awareness of death lingered there, but without any of the sting of dying—it was a rendering hearth for boiling flesh from bone, almost more terrible for its utter lack of secrecy. The dark hole of the mine still beckoned from the yard.

The shade of a miner looking the wrong way tumbled into the pit as Elisha came in for a closer inspection. The horse turned, prodding him with its nose and lipping his hair. He pushed it back, returning to the chest of supplies for the handful of turnips. One of these encouraged the animal to draw up the platform, and Elisha hurried over to climb aboard. When the horse finished chewing, it swung about, looking for more and gamely approached, the chain rattling and squealing, lowering Elisha into the darkness. Even before the pit swallowed him, the air chilled, and his skin tingled.

Black dust hovered in the air, stinging his eyes and making him cough. A circle of sunlight, cut by the brace of the lowering mechanism, illuminated the floor and part of the wall of Thomas's prison. Only Elisha's grave looked darker, and that had not reeked of rotting flesh. A jug of water and a pile of straw filled one arc of the round chamber. The rest held a series of shelves and hooks around a thick wooden table grooved and stained with blood. A butcher's block.

As neatly laid out as the ossuary at St. Leonard's, but without the reverence of purpose, the unholy reliquary held bones, bottles, ragged bundles. Taking a last deep breath, smothering his cough, Elisha drew nearer. Each shelf carried a single skull, or none at all, and an organized set of bones. The leather flasks smelled of blood. Hair, fingers, and toes dangled from bundled skins. His muscles tensed to run, to flee the pit with all haste, but he forced himself to stay, to search among the dozen or more dead gathered there. A few echoed his approach, as if he had known them in life, and now they recognized him in death as well. When he concentrated on a single individual, touching a skull with trembling fingers, he caught the flash of death, the struggle as the victim was carried to the table. Some were strangers to him and must have died elsewhere. On the shelf behind the block, Elisha found what he was seeking: Anna, Thomas's first wife. No bones—they must have skinned her after burial and could not transport the body, but they divided the skin into a few pieces, including the face that Morag had carried.

Elisha lay his gentle palm over Anna's remains and opened himself to her death. As with Rosalynn, he entered late into the scene, this time at Thomas's familiar hunting lodge. Anna faced a pair of leering men, already bloody, and swung a dagger that caught one of them across the collarbone. They advanced, forcing her back, and she stumbled at the top of the stairs. She screamed, crying for her daughter, begging.

Then she caught her breath, Alfleda's wail filling her ears. The third man up the stairs carried the body of a girl, blonde as her daughter, mutilated.

“Take off yer gown, child,” the man snarled.

“No! Leave her be!” Anna scrambled up, the dagger flashing, but the second man caught her, wrenching her arm so the dagger fell.

“Take off yer gown, or I'll kill yer mother.” He held a knife at Anna's throat.

They'd kill her anyhow, Anna knew. They wore no masks, nor treated her with the respect of a royal hostage. But they might preserve her child. She nodded faintly, and Alfleda, her face tracked with tears, nodded back with similar reserve. Carefully, she stripped off the silken gown, her grandfather's gift. Anna smiled encouragement.

Outside, in the darkness behind the lodge, the chapel bell clanged. Biddy, the old woman who lived at the chapel, must be sounding the alarm. For a moment, they all froze.

“Shit!” spat the leader. “Hurry up!” One of them snatched up the gown, Alfleda trying to hide her nakedness as he wrestled the dead girl he had carried into the princess's gown.

Then he dropped the body and grabbed Alfleda, slinging her over his shoulder. She screamed all the way down the stairs, then shouted, “Biddy!” and “No, Biddy!” and “Mamma!” in a rising wail as the knife hacked into Anna's throat.

Jolted, Elisha flung himself back to the present and drew back his shaking hand. Alfleda might have survived that night. What then? He resumed his search. The shelves held only three children, two of them boys, the third, an older girl—too old to be the king's daughter, and too complete. If they had harvested the princess, some remnant of her would be here, laid aside for later use.

Elisha retreated from the shelves, coughing, eyes watering, but with a surge of hope. Five of the mancers were dead, never to kill again. And, somewhere, Alfleda lived.

He clambered onto the platform and pitched a turnip out the hole over his head. The horse gave a whinny and a burst of speed, spilling him over at the top, breathless and grateful for air.

Other mancers must come here, as Morag had done, storing their grisly trophies. And the one he had not killed, the stout woman, could return at any moment. He thought of taking one of the relics of Anna, to show the other magi what had happened there, if they could see it so long after her passing. But the risk of being caught with such a thing was too great.

He cast a few sparks and the acrid interior of the coal pit caught fire with a whoosh, sending the victims to their final rest and depriving the mancers of their arsenal. Elisha withdrew his awareness, unbuckling the horse to lead it away, out of the unholy yard. He took a few minutes to carry the bodies of the mancers—and the victims they wore—back to the flaming pit to cast them in. That done, Elisha scrubbed himself clean at the well and replaced his tunic.

Elisha could travel in the mancers' way, but the only death he knew here was Rosalynn's, and that would lead him back to St. Leonard's in Hythe where her horrified father must have found her by now, alongside the archbishop. Madoc's tale might convince him for a while, but Randall would bring his daughter to his magus-wife and they would see the story they were meant to believe. Elisha prayed they would be gentle with Madoc, and that his friend would not insist on Elisha's innocence too stubbornly. If he had thought more deeply before destroying the mancers' talismans below, he might at least have used Anna's remains to transport himself back to the lodge, the site of her murder, to search for anything that might bring him to her daughter. His shoulders sagged as he watched smoke furling up from the hole. Still, he could not be sure he knew her death well enough to make contact across that distance. Rosalynn's skin and the place of her dying were fresh, still raw, still so close to life.

He packed a sack with the remaining turnips, a few bags of oats, and whatever other food was unspoiled, along with a few things he found in a smaller chest: fancy buttons and buckles, knives and rings. The possessions of their victims, who he did not think would begrudge him these few things, easily traded, if it helped him find the rest of the mancers and put a stop to them.

The horse watched with interest as he tied on the sack. He found no saddle and hoped the animal would be steered by the simple headstall of its harness, even without a bit. If not, he'd have to walk. The mare Thomas had given him showed her breeding in the fine shape of her head and long legs, while the cob before him had a lump on its forehead, a ragged tail and a grubby dun coat. When he stroked its neck, little puffs of loose hair and coal dust rose up around his hands. He spoke to it softly, explaining the urgency of his goal, using the sound of his voice to settle the horse and the warmth of his hands to build trust, the spell of kindness. Where was Cerberus, Thomas's dog? Waiting in the royal kennel, forlorn—that was a reunion Elisha would like to have seen. His throat ached, and he shook off the thought. Brigit would be busy solidifying her power and her hold over Thomas, but that distraction would only last for so long. And she would never be so busy that she lost track of Elisha. Even if he dare not come to London, to his king, she would be waiting for him to reveal himself, to be drawn back in to her plans. She should have killed him when she had the chance. Thomas might well have helped her.

Could he stand against Brigit in the growing power of her pregnancy, never mind her insidious troop of mancers? If he ever reached her again, how could he defeat her without becoming the monster his friends already believed him to be? Elisha rested his forehead on the horse's withers, his long sigh echoing the horse's contented breathing.

At last, he swung up to the horse's back. The gelding stamped a little, tossing its head, but settled again in a way that suggested it had been ridden before. Thank God. He turned the animal's head and nudged it south, picturing again the map Pernel made him. Would Pernel reveal his part in the search? And if he did, would it help Elisha's cause, or simply turn Thomas against his servants as well?

Elisha's stomach rumbled a little, now that the reek of death and smoke was behind them, and he pulled out a dried sausage to chew while he rode, thankful for the desolate country. Brigit and Thomas would likely ride for the nearest royal port, reclaiming the kingship and making all haste for London. In days, the kingdom would be searching for the queen's killer. How quickly would his supporters believe they had been betrayed by a false messiah, one who killed the man who had anointed him?