Elisha Magus (25 page)

E
lisha emerged into
the sun and stood a moment, captured by the view. The lodge stood atop a fold of land with a spread of apple trees leading down the slope to a broad stream and a long pool at the bottom. Beyond this, patches of forest, downs, and fens rippled out in deep green, yellow, lavender, and brown. And there, at the horizon, he caught glimpses of the sea. No wonder the princesses had loved it here and that Thomas had returned to this, his last refuge. Where would Elisha go, when he escaped whatever punishment must be set for him? He had given up his home in London to his brother’s widow, and he would give up his place at Dunbury for this mad scheme to succeed. He needed to search for the mancers, to learn what they were doing; he had no doubt they would act against Thomas. Whatever it was they wanted, a just king was not high upon their list.

He turned away, crossing the path to the barn where he found a small shovel. The downs would have been a good place to conceal the talisman, even the barrow where Brigit had kept it, except he felt sure she would be looking again soon. She would be seeking the truth of Alaric’s death, and she was familiar enough with the talisman that she might discover it, even without marking it with her blood. Likewise, his own blood wouldn’t serve. He had neither time nor liberty to find the best way to hide it forever. Elisha stretched his senses through the earth, searching. He stopped too soon, when he felt Thomas’s approach. Stepping from the shadowed barn, Elisha felt too visible in the sunlight, carrying a shovel and the vessel of the child’s head.

Thomas, too, stopped, rounding the corner of the house from the back where a stone wall rose. “Lady Rosalynn is in the kitchen, presiding over supper, I believe, but it won’t be ready for some time. She is … kind. Also commanding, when she wants to be.”

“I hope she has not overstepped her place,” Elisha said.

Coming closer, Thomas shook his head. His hair and beard were damp, freshly washed. “I meant to consider the options dispassionately, but I did not think through what those options might be. The barons wanted me to marry after only a few months of mourning. Two years is a bit long.”

“I guessed what she had in mind. You must be pleased …” But Elisha trailed off at Thomas’s expression.

“Pleased?”

Elisha felt suddenly awkward, revealing what he had noticed, but he took a breath and said, “At the ball, when you watched us dancing … afterward, I could sense your attraction. I thought you would be pleased to know that Rosalynn returned the feeling.”

“You could sense something like that?” Thomas looked wary, accompanied by a tremor of worry and something else. Bemusement?

“I meant nothing by it, Majesty. You were disguised, I was curious. I’m sorry.” Elisha swallowed. Clearly, he had got something wrong. “You’ll need to learn to guard your feelings more closely, Your Majesty. I’m not the only magus who can sense them.”

“I see.” Then Thomas gave a little smile. “I’m sure Lady Rosalynn will make an excellent wife and queen. Don’t be concerned on that account.” He spread his hands, still wrapped in their bandages.

“May I, Your Majesty?” Elisha gestured toward his hands, and Thomas held out the left to be unwrapped and inspected.

“I’d almost forgotten your more ordinary talents,” Thomas murmured, the two of them looking at the brand, healing on his palm.

The warmth of Thomas’s proximity jarred against his regal speech, as if he were putting back on the raiment of kingship. “I should have healed them last night, Your Majesty.” Elisha glanced up. “I still could.”

Thomas shook his head. “You need your strength. I’m not the only one who lost blood last night.”

“They’re healing well, Majesty. You may wish to keep them covered a few days longer.” Elisha released him.

“I gave you the right to my name, Elisha. I wish you would accept it.”

“It’s hard for me to know how to act. On the great chain of being, a barber is the lowest link, a king …” he shrugged.

“It is difficult, but we shall make the best of it. Were you looking for something?” He stepped back, indicating the shovel.

With a sigh, Elisha told him the truth. “A graveyard.” He carried the jar cradled in the crook of his elbow.

Thomas touched his arm. “In a few hours we must be enemies before the world. Until then, would you please let me be your friend?”

Beyond them, away from the sparkling sea, rose a thick stand of forest right up to the back of the barn, tangled with vines, the trees raised to be straight and tall, towering above. “If you knew the truth, you would not ask my friendship.”

“Elisha, I know what’s in the jar—the necromancers told me. What could you say to explain it that would be worse than anything I might imagine?”

The forest seemed to sway with memories and sadness, oak trees shaking their leaves in the shadows. “My brother’s child was stillborn, or would have been. The midwife kept it secret for reasons of her own.” He took a deep breath. “Nathaniel and I had quarreled, years before, so they did not ask for my help until she was in labor, and it was going badly. The only way to save the mother was to—” His jaw ached, and he forced himself to relax. “—to cut the baby. I don’t know what madness was on me, but I thought I might bring it back to life, so I kept the head.”

Thomas wore fine leather boots now, that was good. A king should not go unshod.

“There’s more,” Thomas prompted, but gently, his voice drifting over Elisha’s bowed head.

Elisha’s fist tightened on the shovel. “My brother thought his wife and child had both died.” He came to the part of the story he had never told, the part that some suspected, but he never dared confirm. In a whisper, he said, “He killed himself. I took the blame for his murder, rather than have him buried outside the church. It’s why I was sent to battle, expected to die.” The hard weight of the jar pressed close to his chest. By the front door, the guards were talking. In the kitchen, Rosalynn’s voice rose over whoever followed her bidding. Birds chattered in the trees and rushed from limb to limb upon the wind.

“Come with me.” Thomas lightly touched Elisha’s arm and walked toward the woods. Numbly, Elisha followed. He could sense the drift of Thomas’s compassion, but he pushed it away, drawing back his awareness as they walked a narrow path behind the walled structure at the back of the lodge. Grapevines trailed over the top of the wall, snagging at his shirt. They continued past the wall and a short distance into the forest. The trees opened suddenly to a tiny church of stone, its peak barely the height of the wall they had left behind, smaller even than the barrow where he and Thomas hid from the soldiers. Even Elisha must stoop to enter the open arch. Alongside the chapel, two stones lay flat on the earth, carved with words and numbers.

“Alfleda was my second child.” Thomas’s voice was low, but even. “The first was stillborn. The two younger boys were carried off by a fever when Alfleda was four. She alone survived.”

Elisha shut his eyes against the magnitude of such grief. His king carried the deaths of four children, and the wife who had borne them.

“It was deemed better to bury them here than to take them to London and risk spreading the sickness.” Thomas paused, and there was a shift of weight and mood. “I did not bring you here for your pity, Elisha. It is consecrated ground. Will it serve?”

He found the king watching him, frowning slightly, and Elisha found his voice. “It will. Thank you.”

Thomas waited while Elisha dug a little hole, not too near the princes. He wasn’t sure how much magic could linger once he had gone, but he worked a deflection on the jar, then sent his senses into the earth. The princes were longer dead, their presences muted, but noticeable. His nephew was in the best of company. Elisha covered over the jar, giving the little grave a scatter of old leaves.

In a clear voice over his head, Thomas recited, “
Pater Noster qui est in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen
.”

“Amen,” Elisha echoed.

The forest and the church as well echoed the holy words, and Elisha wondered if the Lord might deign to listen to the prayers of a king, even on behalf of a sinner like himself.

After a moment, Thomas said, “If we buried you alive, would you survive?”

Elisha wiped the dirt from his hands, considering. “I think so. I know a woman who can survive beneath the earth. I’ve witnessed her doing it. But it’s an uncommon punishment.”

“You’d prefer to be drawn and quartered?”

“Duchess Allyson thinks we can arrange for my escape before the execution.”

“I pray to God you can, Elisha, but if something were to go wrong, I’d hate to know it too late.”

Elisha nearly laughed. “Me, too.”

“It’s hard to say what influence I’ll have on the trial, but I’ll do what I can.” Thomas shifted his weight, glancing at Elisha sidelong. “I was looking for you, when you came out of the barn. They weren’t sure where you’d gone.”

Taking the shovel, Elisha rose. “What’s your will?”

Thomas ran a hand over his unruly beard. “I find myself in need of a barber.” He reached in the front of his jerkin and took out a pair of shears and a folded razor, but his sharp eyes searched Elisha’s face uncertainly.

Elisha shivered, studying the familiar objects.

“I need to be a king tomorrow,” Thomas said, “and you’re the best barber for miles around.”

“And likely the only one,” Elisha muttered. He had not held a razor since his brother had used one as the instrument of his death. He had known two kings and killed them both. A strong argument in its own right. Elisha shook his head. “I don’t know, Thomas.”

“You’re afraid of killing me, yet I’m the one who will be killing you. You trusted me with the truth, Elisha. Now let me prove my trust in you.”

Curiously, the determination in Thomas’s sharp gaze made him more like his father than Elisha had ever noticed before. If King Hugh’s iron will had been harnessed for justice rather than arbitrary judgment, Elisha might not have had to kill him. As for killing Alaric, he would not have given up his ambitions so easily. Rather, those events would have passed without Elisha’s knowledge: A king would die, his elder son accused of the crime, the younger prince taking command, and on the streets where Elisha lived and worked, he would have been none the wiser. The succession would have been a matter for gossip and hope—likely vain—that taxes wouldn’t rise with the new king’s accession. The rise of one prince instead of another would not be a cause for personal investment certainly not for sacrifice. Was Elisha better off before he knew the affairs of kings?

“I’ll need a basin,” he said, taking the tools into his hand, “a comb, and better light or I’m liable to cut your ear off.”

Thomas brightened, lifting the shovel from Elisha’s grip. “Have you seen the garden? This way.”

At the back of the lodge, Thomas pointed Elisha toward an arch into the stone enclosure he had noticed earlier. “Won’t be a moment.”

Elisha ducked the arch and stepped through.

Inside, the place was a festival of color. A thousand flowers danced in the breeze, and on the cherry trees lining the back wall. The flowers took all shapes, long stems of open cups and delicate sprays of whiteness. Trailing vines of tiny purple blooms obscured the pathways while climbing roses scented the breeze. It looked as if this place alone, of all the house, thrived, even in its owners’ absence. Owners who had so cared for it that it continued to blossom, sending forth flowers few had ever seen.

Elisha breathed in the fragrant air and held the breath, the blooms suffusing his blood. He had never seen so many flowers. Few villagers he knew had the resources to tend flower gardens, but contented themselves with those of the field, small, pale, hardy things compared with these. It reminded him of the ball where he first met Thomas, a room full of court ladies, bowing and flirting, brushing his arms as he walked further in to stand at the center, turning in wonder.

His gaze picked out the niches in the walls, bronze statues and marble offering secret glints among the brightness. Benches fitted the corners, covered with leaves and overgrown with all sorts of beauty.

“The princess garden,” Thomas said, his face softened as he crossed the space between them, carrying a bowl of water in his hands. “Anna made this place. She was so happy to have a daughter to share it with.”

“They must have loved it.” Elisha set the bowl on one end of a bench gesturing for Thomas to sit.

The king produce a comb and handed it over. “Morag, the necromancer. Somehow, he …” Thomas trailed off, his face once more grim.

“I’ll find him, Your Majesty.” With deft strokes, he combed out the king’s wet hair. “Shut your eyes.” The comb and shears felt a bit awkward in his scarred hands, after months of wielding his surgical instruments instead, but he glided them over the king’s skin, carefully trimming the fringe over his forehead back into fashion, a trickle of brown hair tumbling down. “After the trial, I’ll search for him. The duke seems to think we’ve little to fear, now that their candidate for the crown is gone.”