Elisha Rex (15 page)

Pernel's finger ticked up the coastline, describing whatever he knew or guessed about each place, and Elisha's head sank to rest upon his knuckles. He heard the names, pictured the places, sometimes using details of other places he had been, and each time, he found nothing. Surely Mordecai would applaud the effort, given how much knowledge he gained, but eventually Elisha sagged, the lock of hair pressed beneath one palm, flat to the table, his cheek pillowed on his hand. He opened his eyes, gazing sideways across the map, the indications of rivers and the names of towns swimming together in a tangle of black and red, crosses stabbing like knives so that his palms twitched in remembrance, and he wanted to weep.

Pernel coughed and took a swallow from a flagon of ale, but his voice still sounded hoarse. “That's the lot of what I know, Your Majesty. Might be, I could find you someone from the area”—another cough—“and we can get a map further north, maybe Scotland.”

Elisha stared at the landscape of the table top, the pocked texture of parchment, the looming shapes of the flagons and spoons that held down the map, the drawn features of the manservant rising over all, swaying slightly. “I don't know what to do,” he whispered.

“Church?” Pernel croaked. With a shake of his head, he took another swallow. “Your Majesty?”

“Rest, I think.” He sighed and shut his eyes again. “Mortimer will be here to break the fast. I need Randall as well—that's Dunbury. Tell him to bring his map. Ufford, too.” He tapped his fingers on the table.

“Yes, Majesty.”

“And you get some rest as well.”

Pernel bowed. “Yes, Majesty.”

Silent, the servant helped him to his bed.

 • • • 

When Elisha woke in the morning, dragging his eyes open, he found Father Michael preparing to celebrate the Mass in the chantry attached to the royal chambers. He groaned and let the servants bring out his clothes. At first, Elisha knelt resentful on the floor as Father Michael lit candles and prayed, a rapid patter of Latin filling the little room, braiding together the smoke and incense. He had no part except to witness, and since homily was reserved for feast days, his mind could wander then focus on the day ahead. By the time the priest finished, elevating the host, then packing away the golden chalice and monstrance which had held the holy wafer, Elisha felt weary, but curiously alert.

The faces of his guests mirrored his own exhaustion, all pretense and posturing abandoned, as Randall outlined their plan, the four of them at table while a half-dozen men stood guard around the room. As Mortimer listened, he chewed more slowly. Finally, he set down his knife, cradled his bandaged arm, and looked up.

“You cannot tell me all of this and let me leave the room, Your Majesty.”

Randall replied, “No, we cannot.”

Elisha clenched his jaw, catching the dart of Randall's warning glance.

“If you aid us now,” Randall said, “you will be executed as swiftly as time allows, with your family allowed to maintain your lands and titles. We do not have patience for games, we do not have time to negotiate. Ample witnesses will state they heard you call out to the man who opened the lion's gate last night. You believed he would protect you, leaving the king at risk. You planned to kill the king, as part of a plot to enable a French invasion.” Randall thumped his hands upon the table.

Elisha began, “Surely, we can offer leniency, in exchange—”

“In exchange for treachery, Your Majesty?” Randall's round face set hard. “You can't think like a doctor any more. You must think like a king.”

Quietly, Mortimer asked, “And if I am silent? We still have laws against torture, do we not?”

“If you say nothing, you shall be treated like the traitor that you are: executed in the high square, in a manner befitting the severity of your crime,” Randall said. “Your family will be stripped of privileges, lands, and titles. Your name will be blackened, and your quarters hung in the four corners of the realm.”

At the back of his head, Elisha ran through the litany of punishments for treason, the same he himself had faced not so long ago. “How can I do this?”

“How can you not?” Randall snapped back. “Listen to me. This kingdom is at risk—have you forgotten? In a matter of days or weeks, we shall be overrun. It was you who wished to avert war. If we suffer a traitor to live, Eli—Your Majesty, we shall have no end of traitors and no end of wars. You, of all people, cannot afford to look weak.”

Elisha gripped the table. He knew nothing of how to be king, of the things that kings must do. “It was you who said I could have been king by right of arms—a second conqueror. It was instead, my hands that brought me here.” He lay his palms down on the table, the scars displayed. “Those who believe in me don't do so for my strength, Your Grace.”

To his left across the table, Mortimer stared into his goblet, fingering a small gold cross at his throat. “Three lights,” he said. “The French are to send a few scouting vessels. A lookout in the Saltwood tower will see three lights shining from the water. Then we are to light three lights in reply, at Saltwood, at St. Leonard's, and at Lympne. My steward and a few men at arms know about the lights. No one else, I swear.”

His breath hitched in his throat, and Elisha wanted to lay a hand over his, to reassure him. But what comfort could there be? Mortimer, the proud companion of princes, shrank in his clothes in the face of what would be. He raised his eyes then, lined with fear, and whispered to Elisha, “You are a merciful man, Your Majesty. You returned to stop the lion. You won't punish my family, will you? I have two daughters not yet married.”

“And their father is a traitor,” Ufford cut in.

Mortimer flinched, and Elisha put out his hand to forestall any further attack. His presence resonated with a crackle of his guilt, his anger, as if his ribs were the too-small cage that must contain a lion. “Write out what we need to know, Mortimer—the names, any instructions your followers have—and transfer your keys to the Lord Chancellor. Ufford, see that he's given ink and quills. Let him write his family.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” said Ufford, his white brows knitting together.

“We must make all haste for Hythe,” said Randall. “Once the execution is carried out.”

“Tomorrow?” Ufford suggested. Mortimer dropped his head to his hands, then gave a little cry, wrapping his hand to his wounded shoulder.

Elisha looked away, to the entrance of his little chantry where morning sun glowed red, green, blue, gold through the stained glass window. What he told Randall about his believers was true—and if he must choose between being a martial king, and a merciful one, then he knew what he must do. Elisha reached out, laying his hand over Mortimer's, gently, letting his touch warm with the need for healing. He laced their fingers together, making contact, reminding the flesh what it was to be whole as his own shoulder twinged with mirrored pain for a moment, so that both men gasped. Then Elisha rose and walked away from Mortimer's wonder as the soldiers came up to take him. Food held no interest for Elisha, nor did talk of war, and he missed the simplicity of the battlefield, where his only task was to live long enough to help as many wounded as he could. The country needed Thomas. It needed its king.

They spent the day in hurried preparations, gathering the relatively small force that would accompany them, sending messages by trusted hands, witnessing to Mortimer's confession: evidence, at last, that should convince the barons.

 • • • 

In the cold light of the following dawn, Elisha joined the procession to the field beyond the White Tower where a notched block waited for a neck to fill it. The archbishop and Father Michael both hovered near the prisoner, no doubt speaking words of comfort along with prayers for the dying. A burly, hooded man stood by with an ax, waiting his moment, and Elisha's own throat ached, the scar of his hanging feeling rough against the high, velvet collar that stroked the underside of his chin.

At last, the yeoman brought Mortimer to kneel at the block, and he cried out, his lean face made the more pale by the white garment he wore. “Your Majesty!” he called, his face already wet with tears, and Elisha flinched. This is what he had done to Thomas, all unwitting, on the day of his own burial.

“Please, Your Majesty.” Mortimer pushed back against the yeoman's hands, beard quivering.

“No need to torture yourself, Your Majesty,” Randall said.

Elisha sucked in a breath, then approached and squatted before the traitor. “What is it?”

Head bowed, Mortimer whispered, “Would you do for me, Lord, as you did for the lion?”

Inwardly, Elisha reeled. For a moment, he searched the gloomy sky. One way and another, Elisha was the death of this man. “Lay down your head.”

Tears streamed from Mortimer's eyes, and he stifled a sob, his mouth curling as he tried to hold back his fear, but his head lowered, jerkily to rest upon the block, his chin fitting the curve, his shoulders shaking.

The block itself, stained with old blood, curled with shades that rose to Elisha's command. Mortimer twitched when Elisha lay his hand upon the traitor's back. A tremor of gratitude cracked the dread that darkened Mortimer's presence. “Peace,” Elisha whispered, and he summoned death, binding its cold with the comfort and release of Martin's passing. Between one shuddering breath and the next, Mortimer's heart failed, and his chest rose no more.

The archbishop's gold miter framed his too-still face, but Father Michael softly prayed beside him.

Elisha stepped away and motioned for the ax, though he himself was executioner. As he had sworn that he would never be.

F
our days later,
with the sound of the axe that took Mortimer's head still ringing in his dreams, the king's party reached Hythe, a small town near the seaside. Elisha dismounted alongside St. Leonard's church, a tall, gray Norman building that dominated the town from its steep slope overlooking the harbor. Lord Robert took Saltwood, with a small troop of men, while Randall rode on to Lympne, the locations where a show of force might be necessary. Sundrop, his spirits buoyed by the knowledge that Farus was dead, rode to join the bombards on their promontory. The nearer he could drive the ships, the more likely the plan would be successful. Even before they rode, the rain magus stretched out his power toward the coast of France, dissipating the clouds, and pulling them aside, creating a calm, clear passage for the French ships. The clouds hung at a distance ready to sweep in when he chose and drive the ships to their death. Perhaps the rocks alone would be enough to wreck the claims of France.

As his horse was led away, Elisha looked up at the porch before the church. Why did the death of Mortimer—traitor to his country as well as to Elisha himself—weigh so heavily, while he allowed a thousand soldiers to sail to their doom? He would never see their faces nor hear their voices; he knew them only by the badges the crows had stolen, and the ruin they would wreak upon his land.

“Key,” said Madoc gruffly, holding the lantern beside him, and the local priest sighed loudly before he mounted the stair to unlock the door. When it creaked open, Madoc stomped up beside the priest while a few men lingered to guard the entrance. Beneath the peaked roof of the porch, three sundials sheltered from the lowering day. Elisha frowned up at the useless dials.

“We had the church lifted back in King Henry's day, so that we could hold the procession of St. Leonard without leaving holy ground,” the priest remarked, climbing a second set of stairs. “The Mass-dials were hidden. There has been talk of locating a new Mass-dial outside, but the spirit has not yet moved us to do so.”

Elisha came into the shadows, only to stop short again, gasping and steadying himself with a hand to the stone. A narrow passage opened to either side—the processional the priest referred to. And it was lined with bones.

A thousand deaths overlapped and undulated like a nest of eels. Their chilly touch came at him from all sides save above. The long bones of legs formed neat piles on one side, thick stacks higher than his head, with the occasional skull set in among them. Thousands of ribs curved together, the raw materials from which to build a man. Surely there were not enough skulls—but even as he formed the thought, he felt them ranked together on shelves elsewhere in the church, their dark eye sockets a pattern of black pits, regular and terrible. Ahead, Madoc crossed himself and muttered in Welsh.

The priest stared down at them. “We are justly famed for our ossuary. If you wish the tour, I shall—”

“No,” they both said at once, and Elisha pushed himself up the stairs, tripping and arresting his fall upon the inner door. He had attributed the gathering gloom of his heart to Mortimer's death alone, not knowing the place they must enter. Hoping to regain his balance, Elisha reached for attunement, letting himself know the place where they must wait.

“It's unholy,” Madoc rumbled, his hand fixed upon the hilt of his sword.

Elisha nodded, gathering himself to follow the priest inside. “The tower is there, Your Majesty. If there is anything else that you require, my home is across the lane.”

A stained glass window showed St. Leonard before his holy hermitage. The patron saint of prisoners. Elisha's skin tingled with the presence of the dead and now with this coincidence: Did the prisoners he sought pray for St. Leonard's intercession? The power of the place seeped in through his awareness, the displaced dead woven in a thicket around the heart of the church. Madoc made a circuit of the nave, lighting a few candles that could not glow bright enough to reach the vaulted ceiling. It smelled of wax and bones and Sunday incense, and the salty thrum of the ocean a few steps away.

At last, they mounted the narrow stair into the tower, circling round and round, their shoulders brushing the wall. They came to the cramped bell chamber, where thick beams supported enormous bronze bells, and clambered along to the ladder which brought them up, at last, to the rooftop, to breathe deep of the ocean air. To their backs and to both sides, the dark crescent of the town stretched out, with a few patches of light at windows or moving through the streets. Ahead, the ocean rolled, catching highlights from the moon.

“Wish we knew how long we'd have to wait,” Madoc said, setting the lantern by the narrow spire he leaned against.

“It might not even be tonight, but if they've been waiting fair weather, they'll have it now.” Elisha leaned on the wall before him, gazing out to sea, the wind ruffling his hair.

“Not sure I like this witchery.”

Elisha's head sank.

“Most o' the men don't know what's up, just we've got wind o' the French plan.”

“If you can't reconcile yourself to this, Madoc, I'll find another guard to wait with me.”

“Naw, Your Majesty.” Madoc pushed off, his scabbard rapping the stone as he came to join Elisha at the overlook. “Me mum's given me a blessing against witchcraft.” He glanced sidelong, his beard and eyebrows casting spiky shadows up to his face and forehead. “Dunno but that your type is a bit of a blessing in itself, eh?”

Elisha laughed. “It's a blessing that brings its own curse.”

“Yon archbishop claimed you as holy.” He wagged his head this way and that. “Could see my way clear to think it, seeing as you heal with a touch—a proper king, eh?”

“I need contact. To work magic, any magus needs contact.”

“Certes? Not with a look, then?”

“If the magus is especially sensitive, the contact might be distant, a bit of hair, a spot of blood.”

“But yon rain-master, that boy thinks he can call up the storm?”

“He loves the rain so much he can feel it in the air, even from a distance. Most aren't that sensitive.”

“You are sensitive, eh? But not to rain.”

The last edges of pink sunset rippled along small waves, then merged into darkness. “Aye,” Elisha echoed, “but not to rain.”

Madoc regarded him for a long while, apparently unwilling to press for more. At last, he gave a grunt, then one hand slid beneath his leather jerkin. Probably touching the cross, to ward off Elisha's presence. Madoc's own presence felt solid, warm, emanating a calm almost priest-like, the reason why he so appreciated the stolid captain as his guard. Madoc's dogged center, unruffled by all that happened, gave order to the uncertainties that swirled around Elisha.

“Take it in turns?” Madoc suggested. “I'll give a nudge.”

Elisha nodded, settling to the floor to wait. He might have gone to Saltwood, demanding entry and a good bed, while some other stood watch in the tower, but, like Mortimer's execution, this felt too important for him to remain in comfort. For now, he was king, and these deaths belonged to him. The layered strength of the bones below him echoed within his own skeleton. Would it be possible to claim the deaths of the sailors? Could their slaughter buoy him up? But the thousand bones of the strangers in the ossuary provided less power than the immediate deaths of the crows he knew, or his subtle touch upon Mortimer's back followed by the sudden, sharpness of the ax as it struck off the traitor's head. Sickened by the rush of that moment, Elisha had turned the seductive strength aside, like a man fending off an overeager hound. It called to him as he slept, edged with the golden, shrieking horror of the mancers' passage, that mysterious place where they bent the world to their desire, as if Mortimer waited there to guide him deeper.

He shuddered and woke, the weight of Madoc's cloak kicked off as he stirred. The glow of the single candle lit Madoc's back and the square roof of the tower, just a bit wider than his own height. Good thing Robert hadn't been assigned to this post—he'd not be able to lie down from one thick wall to the other. Stone spikes rose up from each corner, pointing toward the stars.

Elisha rose and stretched, his back aching. “You did not wake me.”

“Would've in a moment,” Madoc told him without turning, his hands grasping the edge of the wall.

“You see something?” Elisha joined him as Madoc gave a nod.

“Boats?” The guard straightened, squinting out to sea.

Squinting with him, Elisha stretched his awareness in that direction. A strange, sharp spike of pain punched back from the water, and he recoiled but forced himself to push beyond it, to the horizon. He sensed a patch of darkness shifting with the sea, more solid than the sky—a ship, with a tiny light upon its bow that rose and fell with the waves. As they watched, a second light joined the first, then, a moment later, a third, rising and falling together. Elisha's heart hammered, his breath catching. Dear God—it came!

“The lantern,” he said, turning, but Madoc had already taken it up, opening the side and nudging the candle out of the way to slide in an oil pan and wick, then another, tilting each wick to light them against the first, until the lantern's glow leapt up several times brighter. He reached to hang it upon an iron hook, their view obscured by the sudden glow.

To the north and behind them, another light flared into the night at the tower of Saltwood under Lord Robert's care, and to the other side, a third, small at first, then growing. Lympne, and Randall. Shielding his eyes from the glare of their lantern, Elisha leaned back toward the ocean. They could descend now, their work done, while the scout vessel returned to its commander, to summon the ships to die.

“Couple more hours yet, 'til dawn. But not much.” Madoc's grin gleamed. “Be nice to see them bombards turned against somebody who's earned it.”

Not the words Elisha would have chosen. He swallowed, again stretching his awareness, searching for the ships that hid beyond the horizon, a few thousand eager men, restless to be fighting, just like Madoc and his men back at Dunbury. It was not their battle, not really, but they knew loyalty and duty. They went where the lords directed, and they stood ever-ready to die. He sought the hearts of those distant sailors. He wanted to apologize.

Instead, that spike of pain once more cracked his awareness, like lightning in the darkness. Down below, a single small boat scraped the sand, and pain radiated from it like ripples from a sinking stone. Someone stepped out to walk up the shingle, pausing, then continuing on toward the foot of the church. A fearful voice cried out further up the road, and he heard the clatter of steps as his men went to investigate, but they moved away from the presence he sensed, as if they did not notice it at all.

Elisha sent his awareness down to the stone, down, gathering the strength of Death from the bones below, racing toward the lonely steps that moved up the street—an agonized, echoing presence, familiar, yet changed. A second, slight presence followed after in her wake. Almost, she had passed by the church before Elisha resolved the sense of what he felt: a woman he knew, shadowed by the death of someone close to her. Then he was bounding down the steps. Rosalynn! By God, his prayers were answered.

She walked by, oblivious, the thousand piled dead concealing him from her own magical senses.

“What's wrong?” Madoc cried out, then thundered down behind him. “Majesty?”

Outside, the walker froze.

Elisha threw open the first door, but Madoc caught his arm. “Majesty, wait for the guards.”

The floorboards creaked, Elisha stiffened, and the heat of living flesh seared through his web of awareness. It carried the tang of fear and the wail of a hurt even he could not fathom. And more, it carried a name, a presence so distinct and familiar that Elisha would be held no longer.

Breaking Madoc's grip, Elisha flung open the outer door. “Rosie!”

“Yer Majesty! Elisha, wait,” Madoc growled in the darkness, but Elisha was down the steps and half out the door. “Blast ye, Barber, something's wrong. Didn't you hear that shout?”

“Rosalynn, I'm here,” Elisha cried, shrugging off the shield of Death that concealed him.

Madoc smashed into his back, tumbling them both and knocking the wind from Elisha's chest.

“Get. . . off,” Elisha panted. “The queen.”

“If that's the queen, then I'm the bloody bishop. Something's drawn off the guards, Majesty. Don't go out there.”

Elisha fought Madoc's grappling hands. Rosalynn's pain and terror spun through his own emotions, and the echo in her presence was suddenly plain: she had lost the baby. Thomas's baby. His scalp pricked with the dread that came over her as she listened to the violent sounds of Madoc struggling with him on the ground. Through the contact, Elisha snapped a warning, flesh to flesh, encouraging Madoc to let him go.