Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (32 page)

“Speak up,” the king snapped.

“I cannot deny it,” Elisha repeated, finding his voice.

A sword suddenly jabbed at his chin, and Elisha flinched away, forced to look up to the king’s impassive face. “You are a mere barber, and little expected to understand the ways of your betters, but my title, at the least, you should understand.”

Elisha wet his lips. “Yes, Your Majesty, please forgive me.”

Slowly, the sword withdrew.

The blue eyes narrowed. “Forgive you? Against your other crimes, that one pales to insignificance. What did you discuss with the duke?”

“I was bandaging a lord on the field,” Elisha began, adding “Your Majesty,” quickly, “when the duke’s party arrived. We spoke of the man’s wound.” The blood seemed to be draining to his cold feet as he knelt there, knowing that nothing he said, neither truth, nor lie, would be of any use.

“What lord?”

“The Earl of Blackmere, they said, Your Majesty.”

“Ah.” The single syllable carried both illumination and disgust. “The Earl of Blackmere, the duke’s loyal man—the enemy, Barber, if you failed to notice. Though how you could fail to notice such a peacock in a field of hawks is beyond me.”

Elisha wasted a moment trying to conjure up a picture of a peacock. “Your
Majesty, until this battle, I have never left the city. I did not have even the heraldic descriptions your soldiers must know.”

The king let out an exaggerated sigh. “So you claim ignorance.”

Noticing the stillness of the king’s left foot, Elisha held his tongue.

“To continue,” the king said as he began to pace a short track in front of his prisoner, “you doctored the duke’s best man, and the duke’s party found you there—leaving aside the question of how you came to be so far afield at the time of the hold—and he talked to you about the earl’s wound, he seemed about to let you go, then they took a shot at you with one of my guns.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Why didn’t he cut your throat right away?”

Elisha hesitated and chose the truth. “He was grateful about the earl, Your Majesty.”

“I imagine that he was. What did you say about the earl’s wound?”

“That he should not be moved for fear the bolt would…” Elisha’s mouth went dry, and he trailed off. The king’s heels stood before him now, with silver spurs shimmering by the light of braziers, twitching as the king listened. “That the bolt would puncture the heart or lungs, Your Majesty.”

“Did you save his life, do you think?”

Miserably, Elisha wet his lips, tasting the blood that lingered still. The truth became another weapon to use against him, another blackened mouth ready to blast him with fire, and he could do nothing to stop it.

“Answer me, Barber. Did you save his life?”

“Yes,” Elisha whispered. “Yes, Your Majesty, I think I did.”

“Ah.” The king suddenly took two long steps forward. “Who are you?” he demanded of one of the bystanders.

Elisha risked a glance to see the king standing toe to toe with Matthew, who shrank before him.

“Matthew Drake of Gilbertston, Your Majesty. I am Mordecai Surgeon’s first assistant.”

“What are you doing here when I called for your master?”

“It’s the Sabbath, Your Majesty, I’m not sure where he is—where he is at worship, that is. Your man brought me in his stead.”

“The surgeon’s a Jew?” the king asked, turning away without an answer. “I
thought my father had expelled the lot of them. Should’ve known they’d be creeping back in.” He rounded again on Elisha.

“Some of the best surgeons are Jews, Your Majesty,” Matthew supplied, in a voice more timid than Elisha had ever heard from him.

“And the best barbers, what are they?” the king asked, his voice with an edge of humor.

“I am not sure I take your meaning, Your Majesty,” the physician ventured, sharing raised eyebrows with Matthew.

“Men who know when to put their tools away.” He grinned, a sharp expression to match the sharp eyes. “Fetch my throne and my crown. And Surgeon—”

“Yes, Your Majesty?” Matthew said, springing a half-step forward.

“Have you ever assisted an interrogation before?” He kept his icy gaze on Elisha as he spoke, his gaze like the slightest touch of Death.

“On occasion, Your Majesty. My master has little taste for such work himself.” Matthew stood straighter, his voice and bright eyes betraying his excitement at winning the king’s attention.

“Fetch what you need.” He twiddled his fingers over his shoulder, and Matthew hurried out. Matthew, who did not hesitate to scald their own men, would hold back nothing if granted the king’s justice upon a traitor. More so, given the antipathy between them.

“But Your Majesty, I don’t know anything!” Elisha protested. “I have met the duke only once, and we spoke of exactly what I told you.”

The king settled himself in the throne two of his men carried inside. A servant stepped up to place a gleaming crown upon his head. “A week ago, you saved the life of my messenger,” he said abruptly.

Startled, Elisha frowned, glancing to the physician—who stood strangely detached, not even betraying the glee he must feel at Elisha’s downfall. Shouldn’t this act count in his favor? If so, why was the king looking ever more fierce? “Yes, Your Majesty.”

At this, the king smiled again, tilting his head as if sizing Elisha for a noose. “And how did you know he was my messenger?”

“The message was found, Your Majesty,” Elisha replied slowly, “when I brought him to the hospital for treatment.” His knees and bare feet leached the heat from his body into the cold earth below.

“It was found.” The king waved a hand, and someone brought him a goblet from which he took a long swallow. “By you?”

Wetting his lips, Elisha hesitated. Ruari and Brigit had both seen the message, and knew the mark upon it. The messenger knew all this, but apparently he hadn’t spoken of it. Neither could Elisha bring himself to lift the burden of guilt by casting doubt on either of them. His stomach clenched, Robert’s cut to his stomach stinging like an accusation.

At that moment, Matthew popped back through the door. He approached one of the braziers to Elisha’s right and placed a few long, slender irons into it, unrolling on the floor a leather bundle full of tools not unlike Elisha’s own. Elisha’s muscles felt rigid as he recalled how each tool was held—how it felt in the hand and how it moved against the flesh. He knew intimately the incisive thrust of the lancet, the bite of the saw into bone, the smell of burning flesh.

“Did the ground shake while you were on the field today, Barber?” the king said, distracted by the sight of Matthew laying out his tools.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Elisha said as Matthew rearranged the irons, adding to them a long blade. “It looked as if part of a hill collapsed.” The brand upon his chest ached as if in warning of what was to come.

“Why did that happen?” the king mused, stroking his beard.

“I don’t know, Your Majesty.”

“Could it be that my men tunneled underneath it? That they were nearly to the castle foundation, nearly ready to spring the trap, when the duke’s largest bombard, notably absent from the fighting, blew a hole in just the wrong place?”

Elisha bit off a breath, the questions suddenly coming together in his mind. “Is that what happened?” he said, his voice shaky, “Your Majesty?”

Matthew pulled an iron from the fire and tested it by singeing a few of his own arm hairs, then thrust it back in with a satisfied smirk.

Goosebumps tingled on Elisha’s skin, his fingers trembling a little. “I don’t know about it, Your Majesty. I only saw the outside of the message, and that it bore the royal seal. I swear to God I know nothing about it.” The king’s left toe went still; with a nod, Matthew rose from his place by the brazier. Elisha’s heart pounded. Death he expected. Summary execution, most likely—but the king was not done with him. “Please, Your Majesty, today was the first time I’ve laid eyes on the duke or any of his men.”

“How shall we start, Surgeon?” the king inquired graciously.

“Well, Your Majesty, he has a particular revulsion for burning.”

With a graceful turn of his hand, he said, “Proceed.”

As Matthew drew out one of his irons, two of the guards stepped forward.

“His hands, if you please,” Matthew said.

The belt finally tugged free of his wrists. One guard pulled Elisha’s right arm out in front of him, twisting it palm up to expose the more sensitive skin, while the other wrenched his left elbow behind his back. Pain shot through him, his back stinging with the thousand pinprick burns of gunpowder overlaid upon the welts. His flesh was a palimpsest of pain about to be overwritten with hot irons.

“I don’t know anything!” Elisha cried, in a last bid for the king’s ear. Then heat tingled his wrist, and a fingertip of fire jabbed into his flesh. He screamed.

“Who do you know who works for the duke?” the king asked, his voice pleasant.

“No one, Your Majesty, I swear—” A few inches up from the first, another spot of agony flared into him.

“How did the duke intercept my message?”

Panting, Elisha managed to get out, “I don’t know.” A third crimson burst of pain. He bucked against his captors, succeeded only in getting his left arm pressed between his shoulder blades, a subtle twist introduced in his wrist. “By God I wish I knew,” he sobbed.

“Your ignorance appalls me, Barber.” The king took a long swallow of his wine. “Did you mark me for the bombard shot that day?”

The change of tack bewildered Elisha, and he wondered if he’d gone pain-mad so soon. “What?”

At the king’s nod, iron bit his arm yet again, searing into the skin and muscle close to his elbow. His arm jerked against his will but the guard pulled it taut again.

“How about the roots that found their way into my supper? Roots you watched that herbalist woman examine.”

Had Brigit tried to poison the king? He couldn’t imagine it. Shaking his head, Elisha stifled a yelp at the fresh wound.

“Then you claim to know nothing of these various attempts on my person?”

“Nothing, Your Majesty,” he gasped. “Please.” Burnt skin sizzled. Elisha slumped, his shoulders shaking from the strain.

“What did you and the duke speak of today?”

“I’ve told you,” Elisha whimpered, clamping shut his jaw as the iron descended to the smooth flesh of his inner arm.

“Can he really be so in the dark?” the king pondered.

“Indubitably, Your Majesty,” the physician remarked. “He is only here fleeing criminal charges.”

“Indeed? Well, that may explain it. I find it hard to believe any honest man—even a peasant—would refuse loyalty to his rightful monarch.”

Elisha’s chin rested on his chest, jogged by quick breaths. Tears stung his eyes, but he refused to let them fall. Ruari couldn’t read, no more than himself, and Brigit—well, she could be a traitor, though he didn’t think she’d had the message long enough, and Ruari would have little reason to protect her if he knew she read it. But the seal had been broken when Ruari found it. Elisha tried to piece these clues together into a story that might save him. Slowly, he raised his head. “The seal was already broken, Your Majesty.”

“Oh? Have you decided to cooperate, then?”

Shaking his head vaguely, Elisha said, “When we—when I found it, the seal was already broken. In his fall, I thought, Your Majesty.”

“So you are saying someone else may already have read it, is that what you think?”

“Perhaps the messenger—” Elisha broke off.

Even the burns along his arm chilled with the change in the air as the king rose again to his full height and glared down at Elisha. “The messenger.”

Staring sidelong up at him, Elisha swayed a little with his pain and exhaustion, but he did not say a word. His outstretched arm trembled with foreboding.

With a tight smile, the king said, “The messenger is my son, Barber. Prince Alaric himself carried my message that day. The only man about me I can trust these days—I received word that he has delivered his message in spite of his injury. I thought you might have recognized him, and that perhaps
you deserved my thanks for tending him. It seems you were merely acting in defiance of orders once again.” He stared hard at Elisha’s face. “Or that you marked him for my messenger, and took your best chance to spy out my commands. You learned the location of the sappers’ mine and slipped the information to your master. If you had known him for my son, he would be dead, just as you’ve been trying to kill me.”

He flicked his fingers, starting his men in a flurry of motion. Two carried off the portable throne while another held back the curtain. The spurs glittered like twin stars. “Give him another, Surgeon. And string him up at dawn. Don’t bother to wake me.”

W
hen the king had gone,
Matthew caught Elisha’s hand in his own, gripping his fingers as he delivered his parting shot to the center of Elisha’s palm, a curl of steam rising from the burn. Elisha’s fingers jerked, and his hand went ominously numb—the hand that made his livelihood, that made his life, lay twitching, as if it were no longer his.

Elisha screamed for the last time, not just for the pain, but for the knowledge that death would come for him. He had done all he could to forestall it, but he had lost that battle for his own life, and with it, any hope of his salvation: his penance was through.