Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle Read online

  ELISHA BARBER

  BOOK ONE OF

  The Dark Apostle

  E. C. AMBROSE

  Copyright © 2013 by E. C. Ambrose.

  All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-63614-5

  Jacket art by Cliff Nielsen.

  Jacket design by G-Force Design.

  Book designed by The Barbarienne’s Den.

  DAW Books Collector’s No. 1625.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  All characters in the book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Hardcover Printing, July 2013

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have begun without the instruction of two teachers. First, Jeanne Cavelos of the Odyssey Writing Workshop, who introduced me to the joys of research. Next, Dan Brown, through his workshop at the Seacoast Writers’ Group, who taught about tension.

  Thanks are due, as well, to the marvelous team at DAW Books, especially my editors, Josh, who saw what this book could be, and Betsy, who helped us to get it there. I owe Barbara Campbell for the introduction, and my agent, Cameron McClure, for making it stick.

  Luc Reid, founder of the Codex neo-pro online writers’ group, and many of the members thereof for their support and enthusiasm. In particular, medical research advisor D. T. Friedman, without whom the surgical scenes would be much less realistic.

  Others whose support came at just the right time include Cat Rambo and Sean Wallace, Ruth Nestvold, James Patrick Kelly, and the YMCA Goffstown climbers: Casey, Brendan, Daisy, Jonathan, Abby and Lauren, whose rapt attention I will never forget.

  Finally, my family, who endured hair-raising drives in England, visits to torture museums, weekends at conventions, and hours of vacant stares punctuated by random plot discoveries. You know what this book means to me, and I would not be here without you.

  “For the life of man is perishable and transitory,

  and the wickedness of man abounds in the world—woe is me!”

  —JEAN DE VENETTE

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 1

  “You sent her to the hospital?” Elisha whirled to face his brother, the razor still in his fist. “My God, man, what were you thinking?”

  “The midwife couldn’t help her, Elisha, and she’s in such awful pain, for the babe won’t come,” Nathaniel stammered, his pale hands clenched together. He ducked in the low door of the draper’s quarters, his fair hair brushing the carved oak of the lintel. “The neighbors carried her over while I came here.”

  “But the hospital? That place is deadly.” Elisha set his razor again at his customer’s chin, deftly shearing a narrow stretch of the full, and now unfashionable, beard. “What did she say?”

  “Not so fast, if you don’t mind. I care to keep my chin today, Barber,” the draper snapped.

  “Helena?” Nathaniel asked, his face a mask of anguish and confusion.

  “No, you fool, the midwife!” Elisha slapped the razor through the water basin and plied it again, forcing himself to slow down. Last thing he needed was to carve the ear off the master of the drapers’ guild.

  Sagging, his brother balanced himself against the wall, scrubbing at his sweaty face. “The babe’s turned, and wedged somehow. She thought the physicians—”

  At the mention of physicians, Elisha froze. The draper glowered up at him from his best leather chair, but his brother’s wife lay in the hospital, contracting God-knew-what illness added to her condition. For a moment, his conflicting duties trapped him—but Helena needed him, if it weren’t already too late. The draper could abide. Flinging down his razor, Elisha roughly dried his hands on his britches. “The physicians never enter the hospital if they can advise from afar. Nobody who can afford their services goes to the hospital.” He popped open the window frame nearest and flung out the dirty water.

  The draper rubbed a hand across his chin and jerked it back with a cry of dismay. “You’ve not finished the job, Barber. I’ve still got half a beard!”

  “Then you owe me half my fee,” Elisha told him. He snatched his towel from the man’s neck and spun on his heel, basin tucked under his arm. The razor he folded with a snap and gripped until his fingers hurt. “Why did you not come for me sooner?” he asked, dropping his voice to a murmur.

  Instantly, Nathaniel straightened, taking advantage of his superior height. “I think you know why.”

  For a moment, their eyes met, and Nathaniel swallowed but gave no ground to his elder brother. Elisha had caused the breach that lay between them. He had apologized, but Nathaniel’s presence here was as close as he would come to forgiveness.

  They had the same intense blue gaze, though Elisha’s own hair was near black and bound into a practical queue. Elisha straightened broad shoulders and flashed a furious grin. “Then let’s be off while your wife yet lives.”

  Nathaniel stumbled out the door as Elisha bore down upon him.

  “I’ll be to your order about this!” The draper squawked, pushing himself up. “You’ll not practice in this city again.”

  Rounding on the man, Elisha said, “I hope they’ll consider a woman’s life of more value than half a beard.”

  “A whore’s life,” the draper answered, then stepped back as Elisha held up the razor, still gripped in his fist. His mobile face registered his regret, but Elisha was in no mood to play the draper’s game.

  “Helena,” Elisha said in a low and terrible voice, “is a whore no longer, but you’ll be a bugger for the rest of your life, so I’ll ask you to keep your threats to yourself.”

  Pale, the man’s jaw dropped, his half-beard bisecting his lips.

  As he turned to follow his brother, Elisha thought it a fitting image, half a beard for a man with a double life. No, the order would hear of nothing from him for a variety of reasons.

  Anger was easy. It gave Elisha the distance he needed from those he must treat—and those who might die. Distance, too, from dangerous friends. Elisha would have to apologize at some point, but the draper would be a little more careful suggesting his attraction to his next barber. It woul
d be safer for them both.

  Elisha descended the narrow stairs at a run, jumping the last few to street level, emerging between the draper’s shop and the neighboring woolery. Nathaniel hovered anxiously in the street, turning away toward the hospital, but only after the relief showed plain upon his face.

  Elisha might have found that expression of relief touching at another time, a time when he was more certain of his skill. As it stood, he’d not dealt much with childbirth, though he’d had more experience with it than most barbers, in the course of his work as the favored surgeon of Codpiece Alley. And even there, many of the whores refused to accept the service of a man, or would take advice only but no examination. Curious, that they who spent their love at the whim of strangers should turn prudish when it came to the touch of an examiner’s hand. Most at least knew the herbs to take to avoid unwanted children, else they were cast out by their keepers to give birth in the streets—or, heaven forbid, in the hospital. Elisha’s fury flared again. His brother should have known better.

  They slogged along the twisting roads of the drapers’ quarter, dodging customers, wagons and horsemen, speaking not a word. Nathaniel stuck his shaking hands under his arms, as if he embraced himself in his wife’s absence. He still wore his leather tinsmith’s apron, the pockets bristling with tools and bits of metal. The midwife must’ve fetched him up from the workshop. What was he making that was so important he left his wife to birth in the hands of strangers? If Helena had been Elisha’s own wife—but, of course, she wasn’t. Not his wife, not his choice.

  As if he could hear his brother’s thoughts, Nathaniel suddenly said, “I couldn’t bear the screaming, nor the tears. I waited at the door, I did, but I couldn’t bear to hear her like that.”

  The buildings loomed over them, stepping out from the lower stories until the levels above bent together and cut the sky into jagged shapes. In some places rods and arches touched buildings on both sides of the street, holding apart the tilting houses like a man intervening in a tavern brawl. The graveled streets twined between, edged by ditches to catch rain and refuse. Straight ahead, the carriage of some fool lord had broken a wheel. Two matched horses whinnied and pulled in opposite directions while the grooms tried to sort them out, unhitching the pair and effectively blocking the road while their master shouted from the safety of the carriage. It was just a few years ago King Hugh commissioned carriages for his family. Now every noble who could afford it had to have one, cluttering up the London streets.

  With a yelp, Nathaniel stopped short, his shoulders quivering. Elisha grabbed his arm and jerked him forward again, taking to the sewage ditch that ran down the side and ducking beneath the tangled reins. “Pull yourself together, Nate, it’s your family at stake,” he muttered, not sure if he wanted to be heard.

  The hospital at last towered before them, a story of stone at street level, topped with two more of half-timbers spanned by crumbling plaster, with birds plucking out the insulating straw for nests, or in search of insects. It was founded by the old king at the turn of the century and already decrepit. Nowadays, the current king’s reputation hardly hewed to charity.

  “Which ward?” Elisha asked as they entered the place. Even the refuse he scraped off his boots didn’t smell so foul as the hall they faced. The scents of infection, vomit, and blood hung in the air, along with the groans, prayers, and weeping of the afflicted.

  “Three?” Nathaniel suggested.

  Tension gathering in his shoulders, Elisha focused a brief glare upon his brother, then pushed by him. “Sister!”

  A nun passing with a bucket turned at his call. “May I…? Oh.” Her wide brown eyes flooded with tears.

  “Is it Helena?” Nathaniel blurted, but Elisha held him back, recognizing in the woman before him an emaciated whore he had given a cure four winters back. She had sworn off the life—they all swear off it some time or another—but this oath had taken hold, and he smiled as she dropped the bucket to catch his bare forearm.

  “May the Lord bless you, Elisha, and keep you in His hand.”

  “Sister…” he paused, squeezed his eyes shut, and popped them open, “Lucretia?”

  She rewarded him with a nod.

  “Do you remember Helena? Was she brought in here?”

  “Helena? Gracious, no, I should hope not. Upstairs maybe. Follow!” Gathering up her skirts, Lucretia set a brisk pace for the stairs at the center of the ward.

  Averting his eyes from the whimpering or wailing occupants of the broad beds, Elisha followed. After a moment, he thought to look back and caught hold of Nathaniel’s arm once more as his brother staggered, his face gray. “Come on, Nate.”

  “Is it—?” He gasped for breath, recoiling from the stink. “Is it always like this?”

  “It’s worse in the summer,” Elisha replied grimly.

  Flicking him a glance, Nathaniel looked on the verge of tears himself. “I sent Helena here.”

  Since Nathaniel’s appearance at the draper’s, Elisha had felt disconcerted, allowing his brother’s agitation to affect him. He’d overreacted, treating Nathaniel with less affection than he would have shown a stranger. He held Nathaniel’s arm, lending him strength, as if he could communicate his apology through touch. “You’ve never been inside the place before. How could you know?”

  “By the cross, Elisha, I could have trusted your stories.”

  Aye, that he could. “What reason have you to trust me, Nate?” Elisha said lightly, despite the heaviness in his heart. A ward sister met them on the landing and pointed toward the far end of the hall. A curtain there separated the wards, and the trio pushed through, pausing briefly at each bed.

  Six beds lined the walls, each double width and filled with three or four women. Some of them writhed with unknown pains, moaning or cursing. At the sight of Lucretia, those who could, sat up, holding out beseeching arms.

  “Sister, some water, I beg you,” cried a crone with sallow flesh.

  A better dressed woman in a bed of her own shouted, “Damn you, I need fresh linens!”

  One piteous voice whispered, “Just a strip. I’ll bind the wound myself, Sister, if you’ll give me a bandage.” The girl held close a ragged hand, blood streaming from an unseen wound.

  Gritting his teeth, Elisha pressed his forearms over his ears, trying to block out their cries. If only he had time. “Helena!” he shouted over the din. “Helena! Where are you?”

  From the fourth bed someone screamed, “Eli!” the name dissolving into a sob of pain.

  They hurried over to the crowded bed, and Elisha dropped his barbering tools.

  Her thick golden hair tangled on the pillow, Helena lay at the outermost. She had flung off the dirty blankets, clutching her bloody gown in a stranglehold as she shrieked. Tears tracked down her face from eyes shut tight. “Nathan! Nathan,” she whimpered.

  “Here, darling, I’m here.” Nathaniel pushed by to grab her hand. “Oh, Love, I’m so sorry.”

  “Where’s the midwife?” Elisha demanded, pulling the blankets down all the way to reveal Helena’s perfect legs. He shut his eyes and shook himself.

  “Gone,” she panted, “physician.”

  Sister Lucretia shot him a look, her face as grim as his own.

  “Sister, we’ll need a cart to get the lady home,” he told her softly. He needed room to work, and peace, for his sake as well as hers.

  Nevertheless, Nathaniel heard him. “You can’t think of moving her, not in this condition.”

  Elisha stared down at his brother, the cacophony of pain beating at him from every side however he tried to ignore it. Beside Helena lay a thin woman, her eyes wide, her skin gray, her mouth stretched open in a final amazement. If Helena stayed here, he had no doubt she would soon look the same.

  From the corpse’s other side, a girl spoke up through blood-flecked lips. “Can you bring another blanket please? This woman’s gone awfully cold.”

  Through clenched teeth Elisha repeated, “A cart, at once. And the midwife, if yo
u find her.”

  Lucretia bobbed her head and nimbly hurried off as if she fled the pain around her. Elisha couldn’t fathom how she could stand to work there, surrounded every moment by suffering.

  Helena screamed again, and Nathaniel stroked the hair back from her sweaty face. “I’m here,” he murmured. “And Elisha’s come. We’ll help you.”

  Kneeling down by her feet, Elisha shoved back his sleeve, but the examination was unnecessary, for one of the babe’s feet could be seen. Jerking back, Elisha flung himself away from the bed. “What the hell were you thinking?” he shouted. Of all the births he’d assisted, this had to be the worst; that it was happening to his own brother’s wife was unconscionable. And he knew in his heart that he was to blame. She needed a surgeon’s skill and the speed of a racehorse. Skill he had, but speed he had no control over. Even if he ran for the tools he’d need and back again. Better to take her away…

  “Please, gentlemen, I’ll have to ask you to go,” said an older nun, bustling up to them as fast as her stout legs could take her. “I am the ward sister here, and you’ve no—”

  “This is her husband,” Elisha said shortly. “I’m his brother, a barber and a surgeon.”

  “Still and all,” she huffed, “we are doing what may be done for her. The physician has been sent for.”

  “Do you think he’ll come for her? For any of them?” He waved his arm over the beds.

  “The physician is understandably busy, but he is a Christian man.”

  At Helena’s shriek, Elisha cringed. He shoved past the nun and went back to the curtain, his hands balled into fists. The woman had no sense, or at least, no ears. Helena couldn’t afford the physician’s leisure. Still, he had to control himself, master his own heart before he’d be of any good to her. He started to review what he would need, to picture the tools and where to find them. Already, it was too late to turn the baby against the desperate pressure of the mother’s own womb.

  “Will the sister bring me a cloth?” asked a timid voice below him, and Elisha turned.

  The pale girl with the gashed arm still tried to stop the blood with her hand, watching him from dark and sunken eyes.