Elisha Rex (6 page)

Unfurling his senses to the boundaries of the rooms, Elisha let himself sleep.

A
ll too soon,
the clank of changing guards and the rustle of servants outside woke him. Still, the little rest was better than none. Elisha scrubbed himself dry with a cloth and tried to work out the layers of clothing the earl had laid out for him. Hose and undergarments, a fine undertunic and a tunic even finer for the top, laces at his arms and chest, and soft slippers of red. He slid the lock of Thomas's hair into a tight sleeve, taking one lace in his teeth to see if he couldn't get it right. Then a knock, and the parade of servants returned, two of them scowling at him. He lowered his arm and held it out for their expert tugging and tying. “Thank you.”

“It's what we're here for, Your Majesty. We know our place,” muttered one of them, twisting a final loop into the bow, then stepping back.

Ufford arrived behind them. “I trust Your Majesty has had a good bath.” He eyed Elisha up and down and gave a faint nod of approval. Then he brought out a small wooden box and opened it to the body servants. They settled a heavy gold chain about Elisha's shoulders. Heavy in more ways than one: Alaric had been wearing it when Elisha killed him. Elisha swallowed, the enameled golden cross that was its pendant rested over his brand, a weight upon his heart.

They emerged from chambers into a little party of guards, including Madoc and his men clad in Tower livery, red with golden lions. It was not Elisha's livery, nor had he arms to display in such a fashion. Every step he sank deeper in deception. But he had not prevented this from happening, and someone had to keep the kingdom together long enough for Thomas's return—and defeat the mancers already in their midst. Elisha imagined Thomas in those moments he seemed most regal, squared his shoulders, and breathed in majesty.

Madoc scratched his beard speculatively and gave a nod before he stiffened to proper attention.

“The seating order, Your Majesty.” Ufford kept to Elisha's elbow as they crossed the yard. “The Duke of Dunbury at your right hand, with his lady wife. The earls of Gloucester and Blackmere beyond. To the left, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, Father Osbert of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, then the Earl of Surrey.”

Elisha nodded. The evening grew damp, and ravens called from their crenellated perches as the party passed into the inner tower and upstairs to the hall; not large, but packed with tables, benches, gowns of every color, lords of every stature, to a man taller than Elisha himself.

“Make way!” called a yeoman, and the assembled nobles rose, bowing as Elisha passed by. A few stood straight as stone and stared at him. Mortimer—who had been close with the dead Alaric, and perhaps working against him—Elisha recognized among these. A very nest of vipers indeed. His every fiber urged him to bow, to lower his gaze from these nobles or risk a beating, but he lifted his chin and stared back. From this moment forth, for good or ill, he was the king the archbishop had claimed. Mortimer dodged the gaze as Elisha swept past to the seat reserved for him. Not quite a throne, thank God. Once he sat, the others, too, resumed their places. A bell rang out, and boys and maids appeared, carrying vast platters of meat, jugs of wine, loaves baked of the finest white flour wrapped in matching linen.

One of the boys filled Elisha's plate; a mound of food rich with spices, beyond anything even the duke's table had offered. And this, when the chancellor had apologized for the sorry state of their stores.

“A blessing upon the meal.” The archbishop rose, spreading his hands to encompass the hall. “We thank you, Lord, for revealing to us this day even a sliver of your great and most mysterious intention. We shall endeavor to serve your chosen monarch and to live as your Son would have us live. We honor the flesh and the blood of Our Lord, Jesus Christ, as we break bread together. Amen.”

“Amen,” Elisha murmured, along with the rest. Every eye, framed by the plucked brows, broad headdresses or velvet caps that marked their nobility, watched him.

He swallowed, trying to wet his throat. “At your pleasure, my lords and ladies,” he said, skewering a piece of beef on the tip of his knife and biting into it. Gravy ran down his fingers, and he licked it from his lips. Platters and knives clattered around him as he finished his morsel and wiped his hands on a cloth. He followed with a swallow of wine that warmed his tongue.

“Mind your palate, Elisha, there are two more courses after this,” Randall murmured at his elbow.

Two more? “The chancellor said the feast was poor because of the siege.”

“For an occasion like this? It should be four.”

Elisha watched the duke break off a chunk of bread and use it to sop up the gravy. “Don't stare, Your Majesty. It makes them doubt.”

Fighting a flush of embarrassment, Elisha turned back to his food, eating slowly, letting the boy change out his fingerbowl and cloth.

At his other side, the archbishop passed the time in discussing a new style of vestments his inferior churchman was considering. Arrayed before him, the nobles ate and talked, snippets of conversation rising up to him. By a judicious use of his awareness, Elisha focused here and there around the room

“—strange times, though. Have you heard about that inn at Chelmsford? Raining every day for a month! Landlord's afraid to step out.” The lord chuckled, but the man to his right complained, “Here we are, hours away, and we've got drought! Maybe it is the end times coming, even the skies gone mad.”

A man in dark riding clothes entered from the stair and approached, bowing, bringing a page to lead him to the duke's side.

“With permission?” Randall asked, and Elisha nodded, allowing his patron to slide out and have a whispered conversation with the fellow at the corner of the room. Elisha took the opportunity to lean across to Duchess Allyson, touching her hand.

Aloud, he said, “I do thank you, Your Grace, for your hospitality and your husband's.” But to her skin, in the witches' way, he told her,
“For a moment, when he proclaimed me, I thought the archbishop could be a mancer.”

She nearly startled away from him, but managed to form a gracious smile, despite her shadowed eyes. “You are most welcome, Your Majesty,” she replied out loud, though her voice trembled.
“He's been prelate for more than a decade, and was Lord Chancellor before that, without a hint of scandal.”

“They've been working a long time in secret.”
He searched her face and said what he needed her, and all of them, to hear: “I hope you know, Your Grace, that I harbored no plans to take the place of the king, your son by marriage. If God has placed me on this path, I hope He will direct it for the best.” The words felt strange. Still, the reflex arose from years of training: to pray, to cross himself, to call out to God in a moment of need. He had been a boy the last time he placed his trust in God, before he had seen an angel die.

“And take this cup from you, Your Majesty?” boomed the archbishop.

Breaking contact with Allyson, Elisha faced the man. “I was not born, nor raised to this, but I will do the best that I'm able.”

“Tell us, Your Majesty, if you would, when did the stigmata first grace your hands?” The prelate drew back, gesturing with his own hands, a flash of jewels and gold-woven cuffs. He never seemed to spill the gravy. Concern wrinkled the corners of his eyes, and wonder turned a smile at his lips—his every gesture and expression limned with longing.

A dedicated and venerable churchman, or a secret enemy? Elisha took a long draught from his goblet and set it down gently, his fingers lingering on the cool, chased silver of the base. The scar stood out pale against the sun-darkened skin of his hand—darker, he suddenly saw, than that of any noble present, who prided themselves on their pale flesh. Elisha leaned back and faced the archbishop, laying his hands upon the table, spreading his awareness in the prelate's direction. “I struggled with a devil in the darkness. He would have taken my soul, Your Grace. The devil pierced my hands—” He held them up, the room quieting outward from his table as the nobles became aware of what was happening. “I was sore beset that night, Your Grace, but slipped his blade. When next we met, it was the devil who died, atop my grave.”

Breath seemed arrested in the room, though several crossed themselves. The archbishop still wore his little smile, still revealing nothing, his presence muted, but plain, a litany of Latin, a sense of grandeur, as if the man were full of his position.

Father Osbert, the inquisitor, spoke at last, “An interesting tale, Your Majesty. One I should like to hear in more detail, at some time, if you should be willing.” He gave a bow of his head. A dark wing of hair, streaked with silver, slid forward. “His Holiness the Pope would be most intrigued.”

“Charge your goblets, all!” Blackmere rose, holding aloft his goblet. “To his Majesty! May he vanquish every devil!” A few chuckles, a few cheers, the sloshing of wine in silver. Blackmere lifted the goblet to Elisha and cried, “Huzzah!”

To God's ears. Elisha smiled, accepting the blessing, and noticed Brigit's keen interest, the tingling sense of her presence far out among the crowd, reaching back toward him.

T
hree days later,
Elisha stood straight, his arms out, as four servants hovered around him with borrowed garb while Ufford and Allyson looked on, murmuring to one another. This time, the Earl of Blackmere had fussed about in his belongings to find his absolute best, a raiment of brocades stiff with gold work and silks so fine they caught on Elisha's rough fingers as he held them up.

“Ah!” The earl rose again, a shirt of deepest blue held out before him. “Try this.”

Dubiously, Elisha accepted it, once more holding a shirt in front of his chest, concealing his scars. Three days of searching the city and interrogating the leaders of the peasant revolt had revealed nothing of the proper king. The mayor, reinstated, drew up plans of the damaged areas as his men drew from the wreckage both the living and the dead. Thomas was not among them, and now Elisha stood poised to make good on the archbishop's intentions: This afternoon, they would crown him king.

“Yes, that one,” Allyson declared. “It does well with your eyes.”

“Good.” He started to pull it on, only to have the servants pounce on him, slipping it over head and shoulders. Lacing ran from his elbows to his wrists, but the servants left it loose, loosening the neckline to be sure he would be properly anointed when the time came. With the scar over his heart thus revealed, despite his clothing, Elisha felt more vulnerable than when he had been bare-chested.

“Where's the coat? Yes, the Cathay brocade. Excellent. We shall make a king of you yet, Elisha Barber,” the earl crowed.

“If we must,” Elisha murmured.

The Cathay brocade hung loose around Elisha's hips, and one servant immediately set-to with needle and thread, taking in the extra fabric while Elisha tried not to sway.

Duke Randall appeared at the open door, smiling for the first time since Elisha's return, though even this looked tremulous. “Good tidings.”

A momentary light filled his wife's weary face, but his smile fled; so it was not the news they awaited so eagerly. “A few more of the barons have come around. They're not with you completely, but they are at least grateful for the peasants' docility. Tomorrow, we'll meet with a few of them and start mediating the peasant disputes.”

“There's work to be done re-building the damage inside the city, Your Majesty,” Ufford put in, “The mayor has been asking. Shall I make arrangements for builders?”

“Aye,” said Elisha, “I'll trust you.”

The Lord Chancellor merely inclined his head, but he seemed more at ease, now, resuming his role even with such a peculiar king.

“The bombards have arrived from Dunbury, a bit late for the siege, of course,” Randall said. “I had been thinking, given our French concerns, that we might install them at the Tower.”

“I wish we could haul them to the shore and blast the French before they ever get here,” Elisha said. “A lot fewer dead that way.”

“We'd have to know where they are landing, and when.” With a nod, Randall stepped aside to give his wife a swift kiss on the cheek, then he gestured toward Elisha. “This looks good.”

“Sufficiently regal, do you think?” the earl inquired, as he moved to join them, his head cocked to one side.

“Quite,” Randall remarked. “And it's a good thing, for the procession has arrived.”

Ufford raised his brows at this, then trotted back down the stairs of the earl's in-town chambers with the duke close behind.

A tremor crept up Elisha's back. Feasting and fine clothes were one thing, but coronation itself was quite another. Any man might play at king in the privacy of a few chambers, even with the archbishop's claims and the rumor of miracles spreading out from London faster than the fire that had scorched its heart. But to take the oath, in the Cathedral, before God and all the barons. . . Still, he could not persuade them to wait, not while the French lurked and there was no sign of the proper king.

Allyson drew herself up and approached, taking Elisha's hands in hers. Through the contact, she told him,
“Thank you, Elisha. I know this is not your wish, but it lifts his burden. More than that, the project gives him a new focus, rather than dwelling on our loss
.
It nearly shattered him.”

“Don't give up yet, my lady. The lost may still be found.”

“How, Elisha, if all of our searching cannot reveal them?”
Her voice within him echoed with the sadness he saw in her shadowed eyes.

“That I cannot say.”
No matter how he wished it different. Last night, the two of them stayed together in the king's chamber, sending their secret senses out, finding a hundred echoes of Elisha's presence, and none of Thomas or Rosalynn.

“I wake up nights imagining the things I will do to them if they hurt my daughter—and that is all that keeps me from the edge of madness
.”

“If they have hurt her,”
Elisha replied,
“I'll help you.”

They shared a brief, grim smile, then he broke the contact. “We shouldn't keep the audience waiting too long.”

“I still say we ought to have undertaken the procession from Westminster—it'll be a bit of a ride from here to there,” Blackmere muttered as they descended to the street. “And there are proprieties to be maintained.”

Elisha took a deep breath. “I'm sure my reign, God let it be brief, will be full of impropriety. We might as well begin it that way.”

The servants stepped up to drape Elisha's shoulders with a full cape of velvet and ermine. Little tails of black-tipped fur waved in Elisha's face as the duke opened the door. The man who would be king stifled a sneeze as a wayward tail tickled his nose.

A cheer rose from the street, carried in waves to either side like the fierce wind of a bombard's blast. Elisha braced himself.

The earl and the duke strode outside, joining a gauntlet of other barons, most of them unfamiliar—Mortimer, Gloucester, and the loudest of the doubters had been relegated to the back of the procession. A long red cloth pointed the way between the ranks of nobles, to Elisha's own horse, another gift from Thomas, and likely the least of the mounts in the royal stable. Nonetheless, the mare looked grand in her new finery. She was the only mount Elisha trusted to carry him, and he smiled at the sight of her.

As if the smile shot sunlight into the dour day, the cheering grew yet louder. The barons, clutching various ceremonial spears and crosses, glanced behind them to where the townsfolk and peasants gathered, while the cluster of clergy set to meet him formed a mass of dark robes and pale faces set off by the glitter of the golden things they carried. A group of former soldiers—many of them men that Elisha had tended at the battlefield—set up a holler of their own, waving their arms. Raucous laughter permeated the party of soldiers, and Elisha suspected that some of these had begun to celebrate last night—if not before.

Close by, Randall murmured, “Come, Elisha. We can't wait all day.”

“Aye.” Elisha squared his shoulders and descended the steps onto the broad red cloth. The omnipresent servants helped him to mount, turning to assist the rest of the barons to their horses as well. Some of the spears jingled with silver bells on the morning breeze and banners snapped to attention all around.

The abbot and his monks set out at a stately pace accompanied by chants Elisha caught intermittently. After them rode a large man, armored head to toe, and bearing a huge sword across his lap. The king's champion, who would defend against all comers, any man who dared deny the rightful king his place. Elisha guided his horse in behind, but not too close, half-afraid the fellow would turn his blade against Elisha himself. The usurper.

He managed to keep his smile most of the way to the gate, but the slow pace of the procession became grueling before they'd even passed from the shadow of the wall. To the right rose the spire of St. Bartholomew and the last of his smile fled among the graves where his brother lay. By the time they reached the cathedral, his brief excitement left him wearier than ever, and his day had only just begun. Servants guided his cape lest he become entangled in it as Elisha slid down from the horse with little grace and let his clothes be resettled for his entrance along another span of crimson wool. The solemn procession turned noisy as spears bumped pillars and boots clattered into the broad space of Westminster. When they neared the altar, the clergymen parted, leaving Elisha alone before the archbishop. His presence struck Elisha with a force nearly physical as he bowed to kiss the man's ring. The first time he touched the archbishop, he thought he sensed the strange negation of a mancer. There was no hint of that now.

“Have you made the proper observances before the Lord, my prince?” the archbishop inquired.

“I have, Your Grace.”

“And is your conscience cleansed before the Lord, my prince?”

Elisha stared into the blank face above him, his throat dry. Anticipating lightning, or at least thunder, he lied, his voice falling in the hush of the Lord's house. Surely, if God had any power in this world, He would apply it now. “It is, Your Grace.” But nothing happened to disrupt the ceremony, and Elisha realized he'd been half-hoping that something would.

“Then rise and take your place.”

As he had been tutored, Elisha straightened and crossed to the stone pulpit, ascending to the throne placed there for him. Gilded from its feet to the peak at its back, the chair bore a painting of Edward the Confessor, there to witness the crowning of his descendants. Elisha turned his back on the stern saint and sank into the chair with a relief he prayed did not show. Under the heavy cape, he shivered.

From the packed pews, barons glared up at him—or was it the flickering light which painted their faces with such hostility? No, for Duke Randall and his lady gazed proudly at their pupil, and Brigit, standing a few rows behind, glowed in spite of her father's gloomy air.

Facing each corner of the vast church, the archbishop called out for the people's acclaim to accept this new king. In his turn, Elisha faced them as well.

He descended on cue, other hands removing his cloak and coat as he lay down before the altar. The cushions provided ample comfort against the hard stone floor, and his mind drifted with the Latin liturgy spoken above him. He shifted, staring at the distant arches, trying to stay awake if not interested, and felt a jab of pain. Biting down on any response, Elisha still drew the archbishop's glittering gaze.

When the man looked away again, his sermon carrying on, Elisha crept a hand up and found a needle still protruding from the seam of one cushion where a hasty seamstress must have forgotten it in the rush to prepare the grand event. A bit of blood damped his shirt from the needle's scratch, and he hoped it wouldn't show. Given the uses of blood he now knew, he couldn't afford to leave even a few drops lying about. He worked the needle free and stuck it into the cloth of his own sleeve, then froze, trying to assume the proper posture as the archbishop gazed down at him.He'd gotten the needle at least, though he could do nothing about the cushion itself.

At last, he rose to his knees, hands spread as the split sleeves fell back from his arms.

The archbishop towered over him, a pot of sacred oil in his hand. More Latin embroidered the air as he dipped one finger and pressed it against Elisha's inner elbow on the left, then on the right.

Elisha flinched, his flesh recalling the thin burn of a brand placed just there.

The archbishop's eyebrows sank over his dark gaze, his lips pinching off the Latin words. His finger jabbed again, smearing oil, warm from his touch, upon the brand at Elisha's chest; one eyebrow edged upward as his finger inadvertently traced the scar of Thomas's blade. How had it been for his king, kneeling here, receiving the blessings he was born to? How would Thomas react when he knew Elisha had been there after him?

With a sharp breath, Elisha glared and the hand retreated, the archbishop's lips curling slightly upward, turning his words from a blessing to a taunt as he moved in a slow circle to Elisha's back, dabbing the oil between his shoulder blades. It felt too much like blood. It dribbled and the archbishop wiped it away. Elisha's next breath caught as the archbishop completed his circle to stand before him once again.

Lips forming the endless stream of language, like a spell for his Lord, the archbishop drew the cross on Elisha's forehead with oil that oozed down along his nose, causing an unbearable flutter in his left eye.

Schooling himself to stillness, Elisha let it go, sacred oil anointing his nose and trailing down to follow the hard line of his lips until the dart of his tongue stopped its progress. Only that uneasy conscience made him so susceptible, imagining that the oil worked its way along his scars, the reminders of his sins, and seeped through his flesh to find out the truth of his heart.

The archbishop withdrew a few paces into the telling quiet of the vast cathedral. Outside someone cheered, and the sounds finally reached within, Elisha's supporters calling out their acclaim, giving the silences between all the more power. Such acclamation was a historical precedent of kingship, Ufford had explained. At the coronation of the Conqueror, the acclaim of the masses had been so loud the new king's soldiers took it for a riot and dozens were killed.