Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle Read online

  “What have you done here, barber? Is this some revenge, or is it the house you wanted?” the captain snarled.

  As Elisha wet his lips, for once at a loss, Sister Lucretia bounded down the steps from the house, upsetting the heap of benches in her haste. “Elisha!” she cried, her face lit with a grin as wide as ever he’d seen. “Elisha, where’s Nathaniel?” She ran up, seizing his bloody hands in hers. “A miracle, Eli, she’s alive. Helena’s alive!”

  For a moment, this thought crowded out all others. He let out an involuntary shout of laughter, tossing back his head. “Thank God!” His hair, flying loose from its band, shook down over his shoulders in a tumble of black waves. She lived—his work was not all in vain. For that moment, he reveled in the success of his terrible surgery, sweeping away the tragedy that followed.

  “I went to cover her, as you said, and to bathe her as best I could. The water must’ve startled her awake, Eli.” As Lucretia’s words rushed out, tears sparkled in her eyes. “She breathed, and opened up her eyes. ‘Sister,’ she said to me, ‘is my husband by?’ Oh, the Lord has surely been with us today.”

  Elisha’s joy fled as quickly as it had come, the truth of his brother’s death made real with Helena’s revival. As Lucretia gazed up into his face, her smile grew slim and vanished. “Eli?”

  From the house, a tremulous voice called, “Nathan? Where’s the baby, Nathan?”

  Lucretia glanced back over her shoulder, then again to Elisha, her grip tightening.

  For another endless, fleeting moment, Elisha felt himself cast back to the day of his brother’s birth, his father tossing him in the air to catch him again, his tiny brother cradled against his mother’s breast. Then his chin lowered to his chest, his eyes burning with tears. Shaking, tearing his hands from Lucretia’s comfort, he sank to all fours, his hair hiding his face as he wept. His throat ached and he wished his heart would burst inside his shuddering chest. He curled into himself, racked with sobs, his fingers digging into the dirt of the yard. Blood and earth mingled. Dust to dust.

  Nathaniel, sitting in the workshop, filing or polishing, awaiting the midwife’s word. But the news she brought was the worst, not only the child but the wife as well. He had come to the door—the sound that Elisha thought he’d heard. What had Elisha said in his shock? If he’d only got me sooner…?

  Then Nathaniel, taking up the razor and basin and, retreating to the solitude of his shop, bereft of all that he loved, believing it was his own fault, setting the razor to his throat. For nothing. Helena lived! Helena lay recovering, calling out for a man who could never answer.

  “If Nathaniel’s the blond, then he lies within,” the captain said gruffly. “With his throat cut.”

  “No, it can’t be.” Lucretia’s habit rustled as she moved to the door, then quickly back. “What’s happened?”

  “Ask your barber, if you will, Sister.”

  “But he’s been with me and with Helena. He saved her life today.”

  “Aye, is it so? ‘I killed them all,’ s’what he said not a few moments ago, in these young men’s hearing.”

  A soft, warm hand lay upon Elisha’s back. “He has killed no one, my lord. What has happened I cannot say, except that he acted to save the life of his sister. Perhaps the midwife can say more.”

  An agitated cry rang from the little house. “Nathan! I cannot rise, Love, you must come to me.”

  Helena’s voice struck him like a blow, and he flinched. How would he ever face her? Lucretia’s comforting hand lifted.

  “Go to the lady, Sister, we’ll clear up all else,” said the captain.

  “What shall be done with him?”

  “He’s for prison, unless we find otherwise. And for death, if the truth is plain. Pray for him if you will.”

  Not answering, Lucretia knelt down in a crisp movement of her woolen garments. She encircled Elisha with both arms, his forehead tucked into her slender shoulder. “You’ve done nothing but God’s work, Eli,” she whispered. “I’ll see it’s known.”

  At last, he found courage to speak. “Helena needs comfort, Sister.”

  “No more, nor less than you do,” she replied, “and you are no less deserving.”

  He strangled a disbelieving laugh. If they slew him in the street, it would be more than he deserved.

  “Go on, Sister.” A new hand grasped his arm, drawing them apart.

  They rose together, Elisha pushing back his hair, leaving a trace of blood along his cheek, Helena’s or Nathaniel’s, or that of their unborn child mingled on his skin, anointing him with shame. Nonetheless, Lucretia smiled gently. “May the Lord be with you, Elisha. I’ll come when I may.”

  “Helena,” he said.

  “I know.” Gathering up the skirts of her habit, Lucretia returned to their little house, calling out, “Lie back, Helena, I’m here with you.”

  Elisha stood silent while they bound his arms and led him in their midst toward the quarterhouse. What could he say to them? For his brother’s sake, he’d twisted the truth already, destroying what evidence he could, implicating himself with no thought at all. If his brother’s death was not to be judged suicide, then someone would be blamed—should be blamed, for the deeds that drove Nathaniel away and for the death that could be laid at Elisha’s feet as surely as if he himself had drawn the blade. His brother died because of him.

  Once inside the dim quarterhouse, they replaced the rope at his wrists with a chain affixed to a granite stone in the foundation. From a short distance, the captain eyed him. “Tell me all, Barber.”

  Nodding, Elisha wearily recounted the day from Nathaniel’s finding him in the draper’s house to the hospital, and their mad ride home. He told it all in what detail he could, straight until he’d left Helena’s side. There, the narrative broke off, and he said no more. He was responsible to be sure, but he could not bring himself to claim the death so directly, and he would not, would never, reveal his brother’s shame.

  “You’ve left out your brother’s death. How came he to be lying in the dirt, his life’s blood pooled about him?”

  “I can say nothing of that, my lord.”

  “Oh? In faith, I think you can. Unless you’ll tell me you’ve forgotten a murder, and your own basin close by.”

  Elisha leaned back against the wall. Exhausted, he prayed for it to be done, for night to fall upon this day. “Then let the evidence tell all, I will not deny it.”

  The captain’s eyes narrowed, and he chewed on his long mustache. “It seems as if that should be a confession, yet I misdoubt it.”

  Head cocked to one side, he regarded the captain. Elisha would not have thought the man bright enough to go even that far. He’d met him before, of course, but never for more than a few words touching on some theft or injury.

  From long experience, Elisha knew that a single lie could be caught out, but in the absence of anything—lie or truth—people tended to draw the worst conclusion. “Doubt it if you will, sir, I have nothing more to say.”

  Still chewing on his mustache, the captain stared back then gave a slight nod. “Then I’ll go interview the corpse.” With a click of his heels, he turned and left. The guard brought him a basin to wash off the blood that already made his face and hands itch. Even scrubbing with both chained hands, he could not remove it all.

  Sitting against the wall, his legs stretched out before him, Elisha drifted in and out of sleep, or at least, of some blessed absence of thought and remembrance. Damp earth and blood overlaid the reek of previous inmates, turning his brief hunger to nausea. In the street beyond the windowless wall, women laughed as they shopped the market, wagons creaked to and fro, a minstrel stopped awhile and set out his hat, grinding out tunes on a hurdy gurdy that sounded as if several cats were fighting inside it. A lone guard paced the hall bounded by the iron grill, pausing to peer in at Elisha before he passed back out to the chamber at the front of the building. Some time later, he paced again. Some time after that, he returned to light a torch in the hall.<
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  Into the dim light, the captain returned, with Lucretia trailing after him, her face haunted. He fitted a key to the lock at the grate and let them in, studying the scene as the nun ran to Elisha’s side.

  “Are you well? They’ve not hurt you?”

  Glancing over her shoulder toward the hovering captain, Elisha said, “No, of course not. I’ve been waiting, that’s all.”

  “I’ve found someone who’ll help you, Eli.” She gave him a meager smile, her eyes worried. “Not that you’ll like it.” She looked back toward the door.

  With a gesture, the captain summoned in a third figure, tall and lean, wearing long, dark robes. Yards of cloth gathered at his shoulders, draping down his arms in elegant folds to form cuffs each wide enough to clothe a child. A round rim at his temples gave way to a tumble of velvet and silk—the height in fashionable headgear. In fact, four whole families might be kept warm in the cloth this man flaunted. The drapers must be thriving by his custom alone.

  Rising to give the smallest possible bow, his clothes crisp with dried blood, Elisha remarked to Lucretia, “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. This man has no cause to help me.”

  Ducking to enter the cell, the physician Doctor Lucius smiled, his head tilted to one side to better dangle the length of his hat. “Oh, my dear barber, do not sell yourself so short. Why, dozens of your former patients have sought us out.” With an elegant hand, he indicated himself and the captain. “They plead that we must be lenient with you. I must have been approached by a hundred of whores alone.” He smiled benevolently at Sister Lucretia, who tucked her hands into her sleeves and lifted her chin as he continued to address Elisha. “Holy Rood, you are covered in filth.” His refined nose wrinkled his disgust.

  Gritting his teeth, Elisha held his tongue.

  “I have viewed the scene and investigated the evidence and the deceased, poor man. The difficulty is, you see, that the evidence tells two stories. In one, you have turned your hand against your own kin. In the other…well, I believe you know what the other tale might be.”

  “I stand accused of my brother’s murder, sir, that I know.”

  “I’ve not charged you with anything,” the captain said quickly.

  “Why should you obfuscate a legal matter in this fashion? That is what I have asked myself.” The physician waved his finger in the air. “Ah, but if your brother inflicted his own wound, he is denied his place in paradise. Ergo, you have muddied the water, so to speak, that we may not clearly determine and declare it that your brother is a suicide and damned for all eternity.”

  Rubbing at the chain around his wrist, Elisha evaded the man’s cool gaze.

  “Why would you sacrifice yourself for a God you show so little faith in? And for a man you’d not spoken to in two years, I am given to understand.” He trod slowly across the brick floor to stand before Elisha. “It must be hard not to speak to a man who lives under your very roof. Especially when you are coveting his wife—”

  Elisha’s head jerked up. “Don’t speak of things you do not understand.”

  “Well, the gospels of our Lord mean nothing to you, why should I expect His commandments to fare any better? Tell me, Barber, is there, in fact, anything you do believe in?”

  Leveling his furious gaze, Elisha held up both hands, chained, blood still edging his nails, and yet steady as ever. “These,” he replied.

  “Ah. Hubris. I should have sought for no other antecedent to a fall such as yours.” With a prim smile, the physician went on, “Then let us lay aside the issue of your brother, slain in his own workshop, by your own razor. No, let us examine the matter of the child.”

  The idea sickened him—the less said of it, the better. “I don’t see what there is to discuss.”

  “Perhaps the sister should…?” Doctor Lucius gestured toward the door, but Elisha shook his head.

  “She was there, through it all.”

  “Ah. To continue, where was I? Oh, yes, ignoring the manner of your brother’s death and turning to that of his child. By all accounts, you mutilated and dismembered an innocent. I was given to understand you term yourself a barber, not a butcher.”

  “The baby was already dead. By the time Nate came for me, it was dead. You should ask the midwife how long, and when she planned to tell the mother.” The thought left him quivering with anger. Afraid of losing her fee, that woman had kept this terrible secret, even to the point of birth. A stillborn child, delivered by her, was better than one lost by other means. He’d kept his conclusions to himself as they’d raced for home, rather than add to Helena’s anguish. Despair might well have tipped the balance of her own struggle.

  “The midwife says the baby died during the birth,” Doctor Lucius said, “when it became caught. Perhaps the delay when you took them from the hospital—”

  “Then she’s a liar. If she believed that, you’d never have given the order that you did.”

  Arching one silver eyebrow, the physician inquired, “Speaking of which, why did you not follow my advice?”

  Elisha’s mouth set into a hard line, every muscle in his body taut. In his lengthy schooling, the physician might have read a thousand books and studied a thousand cases and never touched a living patient, much less cut her quaking flesh. The physician had a few inches on him, but Elisha could have knocked him down like a scarecrow. “You know why.”

  “Because you impugn my wisdom at every turn, even to abducting a woman from the hospital I oversee. That is the only explanation I can find for you, a barber, to ignore the mandate not only of myself, but of the great physicians since the time of Hippocrates himself.”

  “That’s a load of horse shit.” He turned away, and found the captain and Lucretia exchanging a confused look.

  “Maybe one of you’d better explain to me,” the captain suggested, his fists planted on his hips. “Or is this part of the famous duel between doctors and barbers?”

  “Legends to the contrary,” Elisha began, “there’s only one reason to cut open a woman to get at her child, and that’s to lay them down in separate graves. Not in living memory has a woman survived such an operation.” Elisha thrust his finger at the physician. “And the only reason he would advise it is that the life of one whore means nothing to him.”

  “Oh, come now, Barber, are you saying that even these miraculous hands of yours could not turn the operation to good effect? And without such barbarity?” The physician let out a little cackle. “One might imagine you a witch, carving up a child for the rites of the full moon. Willfully shedding its innocent blood to serve your evil ends.”

  Elisha lunged forward with a clanking of chains, stopping short as Lucius instinctively scrambled to escape him, white suddenly glinting in the doctor’s cold eyes.

  While the physician slapped his hat away from his face, and the captain looked back and forth between them, Elisha declared, “Murderer I may be, but witch I am none, and you shall find no evidence to support it.”

  Lucius flicked dust from his sleeves, concentrating on them while his breath still gasped a little. “If you continue to be hostile toward me, then I may rescind the offer I was to make. But perhaps your life is not worthy of my attention after all, no matter what your repugnant friends beseech of me.”

  “Now you’re getting to the point, sir,” Elisha shot back. “So tell me what you want and have done; I don’t think any here believes you have my interests in mind.”

  “Elisha, please,” Lucretia said beside him. “If you come before the peers, how shall they judge you but guilty? Please hear him out.”

  Folding his arms with a rattle of chain, Elisha nodded. If they judged him guilty, it would be the physician’s testimony that swayed them. The chattering churl had him, and the smug little smile that played about his lips showed he knew it only too well.

  Chapter 4

  “I am glad you’ve chosen to be reasonable, if only for a short while,” the physician said. “Without further ado, my presence is requested at the front, to advise t
he king and his generals as to the proper treatment of battlefield injuries. There are new weapons brought to bear against us, and new procedures must be developed to cure the wounds.”

  A physician, concerned with the healing of wounds? Usually, they studied the urine and astrological charts of their wealthy patients and diagnosed illness without ever touching them. They didn’t get involved with anything bloody. Elisha tried to be patient.

  “I intend to bring several of my associates and assistants, and I am willing to include even you among that number. When I have my own university, there shall be sufficient educated doctors and surgeons. In the meantime, there are enough gross wounds of the sort you are best suited for, and where even your skill may serve. Through such service you might avoid the noose, by my grace and that of God.”

  “Your grace?” Elisha echoed. “You want to use me for the bloody work while you stand and blather about these new procedures with your associates. You’re commanded to serve, and you’re afraid to get your hands dirty.”

  “Why should I, when there are such as you? If you are ready to hack an infant to bits, then surely a few amputations can’t turn your stomach. If you are ready to face your brother’s death with no remorse, then the loss of a thousand foot soldiers won’t deter you.”

  Elisha flicked his gaze away. “You turn my stomach.”

  “So you will turn down a position in my own retinue for what? Which story shall I tell the peers—the one which earns your death or your brother’s damnation?”

  He flinched. It was a devil’s bargain either way. In the aftermath of his brother’s death, he longed for death to escape the burden of guilt, but could not bring himself to give up life so readily.

  “Which would the widow prefer to hear, do you think?”

  Elisha wet his lips. “There will be rumors spread already.”

  “Rumors only. Rumors die with no fuel to fire them. Let each decide what he wills, and no affection lost between the widow and her friends.” Gathering his courage, the physician stepped a little nearer. “Or consider that your skill may indeed be worthy, that your hands may serve a higher cause, away upon the battlefield.”