Elisha Rex (8 page)

“Surely another would have recognized what I have, Your Majesty.” The archbishop returned his smile, or rather, his teeth did, though his eyes resisted. He looked down then at the scar on Elisha's upper hand. “You are a marked man, my liege. It was only a matter of time before you came to the notice of the Lord.”

“All I can say is, I'll do my best to uphold the honor I've been given.” Elisha released him. “Your Grace.”

“I have no doubt, Your Majesty. Fare you well with France.” Still smiling, he swept himself through the door.

E
lisha whirled to Pernel,
causing him to drop the armload of scrolls he had discovered. “He was Thomas's confessor, wasn't he? The king's confessor?”

“The archbishop, Majesty? Yes.”

“How often?”

The servant stared at him, and finally said, “Weekly, just about, Your Majesty. Monthly, at least.”

“Saints and martyrs,” Elisha murmured, knotting his fingers into his hair as he slumped against the table. And Thomas was a pious man—he would not have held back in his confession. How much did the archbishop already know? Likely he was one of the first to know about Rosalynn's pregnancy. Thomas needed an heir, or the kingdom remained unstable—and someone who wanted that instability would need to do something about it before that heir could be born. Even if he was no necromancer himself, the archbishop could have spread the word among the mancers. Would Thomas have mentioned their friendship? Of course—he would want absolution for the lies he told to try to save Elisha from the flames. Dear God.

Pernel cut him a glance and slowly gathered up the maps.

Would they kill Thomas now? Whatever their purpose, they weren't through with him yet. They used terror, pain, and murder to generate their power—witness Morag's position as a gravedigger. War with France? Why not! Why not take that a step further and set up Elisha as king, ruling the citizenry in opposition to the barons.

By supporting Elisha's elevation, the mancers forged a civil war steeped in personal betrayal, vengeance, and injustice. All England would become their cauldron. And when the French arrived, they would find a nation already on its knees.

“How's the king's confession any of your concern, Majesty?” Pernel grumbled under his breath, so softly that only Elisha's extended senses caught the sense of it as the servant dropped his pile of scrolls on the table.

“How much did King Thomas trust you?”

The servant straightened, hands trembling, his sandy head bowed. “I am pleased to say I had his Majesty's trust in everything, Your Majesty.” Pernel forced his hands to relax. “With absolute discretion. Ask anyone. Your Majesty.”

“Give me your hand.” Elisha held out his own, planting his feet, facing the man.

Pernel sucked a breath through his teeth, drawing his hands close. “You're not—that is, Your Majesty.” He blinked fiercely. “I heard stories about what happened after the fire.”

“You'll not be withered into an old man, I swear it.” Elisha displayed his palms, the scar tissue smooth at their centers.

“Fought the devil, you said.”

“And the devil has taken our king.”

Pernel's head shot up.

“Our king,” Elisha repeated softly, “and I'll be the first to admit it, to anyone I can trust.” Again, he offered his hand, praying that the risk would pay off, that he wouldn't have to prevent Pernel from speaking about anything that passed in this room. He suddenly realized what Thomas had meant in wanting Elisha exiled, not only for his own safety, but to avoid his witnessing the things a king might have to do to protect his kingdom.

The servant's hand edged out and finally touched Elisha's.

“Thomas trusted you for absolute discretion,” Elisha repeated, watching, keeping contact, and letting his awareness search the man.

Pernel stood proud, though his hand still trembled. “He did, Your Majesty.” Conviction filled his presence. He would serve Thomas with his life.

“Would you swear an oath with me, Pernel? To serve me as you served him, as I pray you will serve him again?”

Their eyes met, a killing offense for some nobles. “You don't trust the archbishop?” Pernel asked, wavering. “Majesty?”

“I do not.”

Pernel took a deep breath. “Walter's probably told him where to find you this morning. We had word to keep careful watch, that his grace was worried for your faith and thought you needed more guidance. We're to tell him . . . not private things, you understand? Things like this, or like nightmares.” Pernel dropped his gaze then. “Forgive me, Your Majesty.”

Elisha shook off his apology. “For the archbishop's benefit, in front of everyone, you go right on hating me for a usurping scoundrel. In the meantime, take those maps and find every stone fortress on the northeast coast, churches, too. Stone, with some kind of undercroft. It must be remote.” Elisha drew back his hand to rest his chin on his fist.

“You think the king's being held there, Your Majesty?”

And for the first time, Pernel mentioned them both in the same breath without a hint of irony at Elisha's stolen title. “I hope to God they're not moving him,” Elisha thought aloud.

“The nightmare!” Pernel scooped up his maps and faced Elisha, flushed. “You had a vision.”

It was near enough the truth, though Elisha shuddered to think of the rumors that would be spread through the servants' halls in the next few hours.

Outside, a bell rang for Prime: the Tower's inhabitants would be rising. Pernel smothered a yawn, but nodded. “But you should be at chambers, Your Majesty, to break the fast.”

Elisha nodded, taking up the best map of the Channel. “Fast indeed. We have a lot of work to do.”

Pernel grinned back at him as they descended to his chambers to start the day.

 • • • 

By the time the bell rang at midday and urged them to supper, Elisha slumped in a rich chair, in a great room, surrounded by arguing lords and barons, the map he had brought now covered with a dozen others, each a little different. His head ached with arguing. Where would the French land? How did anyone know they were coming at all? Why not let them in, at least the throne could be taken by someone with royal blood. Any reference to “royal blood” made Elisha long to leap up and flee to the archive to pore over the maps until he found Thomas and brought him home.

“If you believed that, Kent, why didn't you challenge the coronation?” Randall shouted.

Kent blanched, lips tightening, and flicked a glance at Elisha. “And argue with a miracle?” He crossed himself elegantly. “I don't know how to do that—none of us does. Even the chroniclers and archivists who stayed up these past three days to find a legal challenge dare not throw up the love of law against the word of the Archbishop, never mind the evidence of our own eyes. Men have been healed.” He rapped his knuckles on the table. “London yet stands, the peasants once more await our direction—quite nearly everything is right again.” He shook his head.

“Everything except the king,” Elisha said carefully.

“I'll ask you not to put words into my mouth, Your Majesty.” Kent, a tall man grown thick around the stomach, crossed himself again, as if merely applying the title to Elisha made him think of doing penance.

“You won't be charged with treason for doubting me. I'd have to charge myself for that. But the doubt must end. France is coming, and we're still in here, fighting with each other. Don't let your doubts hold you back from action.”

“But how do we know this, Majesty?” said Mortimer. “Rumors, only, but there are always rumors.”

Sweat slicked Randall's red face. “You were there at Dunbury when the French ambassadors approached Prince Alaric. Every word and deed was a threat. That gaudy reliquary they gave him was a threat. The kingdom's been a mess since before Hugh died—God rest him. If you were King Philip, wouldn't you press the advantage?”

“Some preparation is prudent, as always, Dunbury, but I won't levy men for this phantom war.” Mortimer leaned back, eyes half-closed. A murmur of assent passed the room. “Call up Parliament, Your Majesty, and let it come to debate. If the vote is for an army, then we'll raise our levies.”

“That could be months,” Randall snapped.

“And the season for war is nearly over,” said Gloucester. “Even the French would hesitate now.”

“William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in September.”

While they shouted at one another, servants moved among them, silent, laying out the tables with ale, bread, cheese, steaming plates of leeks and roasted fowls. Elisha's taster was already at work, filling him a plate, and taking a few bites of each item. He finally nodded to approve Elisha's reach for the bread, a hard thing to poison. Since his accession, every moment and action seemed freighted with hazards, but he took a quiet, guilty pleasure in eating the king's bread. Finely milled flour made it soft and white, while an oven kept under the watchful gaze of an entire staff ensured the crust was perfectly crisp, never over-cooked—nothing like the hard, dark loaves of his childhood, nor the mealy bread he could afford on his earnings as a barber. Once in a while, he had been lucky enough to have a good baker as a patient and to be paid in bread.

Weighing the loaf, Elisha looked down at his hands. The scars remained in part because Thomas's own hands had not yet healed from being branded for stealing food. “My Lord Chancellor?” He gestured Ufford closer. “If I want to pass a law to say that no man can be bodily punished for the theft of food, do I need the approval of the council?”

“No, Your Majesty. You can proclaim a writ,” Ufford said, but his mouth turned down.

“You don't approve.”

“The Bakers', Butchers' and Mercers' guilds will not approve if the punishment is lifted for theft, Your Majesty.”

Elisha envisioned rank upon rank of people standing between the throne and justice. “Labor, then. Anyone convicted of such a theft must do labor to the value of the theft.”

Ufford's eyebrows ticked upward. “It would be like hiring thieves, Your Majesty. Wherefore should they not keep stealing?”

Elisha frowned. “Triple the value of the theft?”

Ufford considered this a long moment. “They might accede to this.” He gave a little bow and turned away to the clerics who sat by, ink at the ready.

Washing down his bread with a swallow of ale, Elisha watched the great men of his council settle in to their meals, stabbing meat and tearing bread, glaring at each other or leaning close, muttering. The archbishop settled coolly at the opposite end of the room, delicately breaking morsels of bread to sop up his platter, disdaining the earthly fights. Elisha was king, and yet, to take any useful action, he needed them—their knights and levies, their support. Mordecai worshipped knowledge, building it into a bulwark to defend his sensitivity. But Elisha sat in knowledge now, certain the French were coming, and the knowledge availed him nothing.

Ufford returned to his side, finishing a morsel of food and delicately wiping down his fingers.

Elisha pushed back from the table, and his own stillness spread slowly across the room, men taking a few hasty bites, pushing back their plates, and gesturing for servants to take them away. They stared up the table, at him. “What will it take to convince you to prepare for war?” he asked.

“What it always does, in the absence of an actual invasion, Your Majesty: the support of parliament,” Kent replied.

“Then call them,” Elisha demanded. “Whatever members are not already here must be recalled. The Lord Chancellor said they had not gone far.”

Kent exchanged a glance with Gloucester. “I am sure that is true, Your Majesty,” he said carefully.

“What else, then? Why does the idea make you nervous?”

“I, Your Majesty? Certes, I am as happy to sit parliament as any other man.” He offered a tight smile.

Elisha pushed back from the table and beckoned to the baron. “Give me your hand, my lord Kent.” He held out his own.

Kent rose slowly and walked along behind the chairs, then bowed before Elisha but stiffly. “I do not see why—”

“I did not ask you to see, I asked you to give me your hand.” If they wanted a miracle king, by God he would give them one.

Sinking down to one knee, Kent placed his hand lightly over Elisha's, his breath caught and mustache twitching.

“Why should I not call parliament, my lord Kent? Am I not king, by the acclaim of both church and country?”

“Of course you should, Your Majesty, I have just said you should.” Kent's pale glance darted away, his touch humming with deception.

“Then why does my calling parliament make you nervous?” Elisha sent his own tension into his palm, flooding it with warmth. Lacking the affinity to make a fire or cast a glow over their hands, he focused on the gems that twinkled in his crown, the sunlight that bathed the chamber, and cast himself a dazzle that gleamed upon his head and shone from his eyes.

Kent stiffened, glancing up. “Because they are already here, Your Majesty. Not a formal summons, of course, merely a suggestion from one of their peers. Most of the barons are already installed in their London houses, or in temporary lodgings about the city.” He dodged Elisha's gaze. “I have done nothing improper, Your Majesty.”

“I should thank you for making my task easier, which is, after all, why I have a council to begin with.” He let the light die down, and Kent snatched back his hand. Turning to Ufford, Elisha said, “My Lord Chancellor, it seems the parliament is nearer than we thought.”