Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (14 page)

Brigit stopped and turned her head to look back at him. “What is it?”

Arrested again by those gleaming eyes, Elisha wet his lips and lost his voice.

She turned full to face him. “Well?”

“I am a barber,” he said, foolish again, but what could be lost? He settled the pick and leaned one elbow on top, making every effort to relax. “So let me cut your hair.”

A
cross the miles between them,
Brigit stared, those luminous eyes searching his face for he knew not what. Just when he thought he must collapse beneath the weight of that stare, her face cleared, and she nodded slowly. “Yes, very well. I’ve no hurry.”

Blinking at her, Elisha hesitated a moment, then leaned his pick against the cistern and approached her, cautiously, as if she might start up and flee. Indeed, the pulse leapt at her throat as he neared her, her eyes still roving. “I have shears in my trunk, and combs. Won’t be a minute.” His heart threatening to explode, he passed her by and entered the little door to his steeple. Quickly, he found the things he needed, threw on his fresh tunic, and emerged again into the sunlight to find her gone.

Dazed, he drooped. Betrothed though she was—no, even if she were already wed—he must know her, he must find out how she came by those eyes and the face of an angel he watched burn. For a moment, in the sun, he thought he might have imagined her, or at least, transformed an ordinary woman on an ordinary errand into his angel. Then he heard laughter behind him and turned.

Brigit popped her head out of the church door. “Well, then, I’m waiting!”

“In there?”

“Are you always so bright?” she asked, with a twinkle in her eyes.

Elisha replied, “I always seem dimmer by daylight.” He gripped the shears and cocked his head in the direction of the hospital. “Wouldn’t you rather have others about?”

With a cool smile, Brigit vanished into the church, her voice trailing over her shoulder. “I’m not afraid of you. What are you afraid of?”

She was a whore; she had to be—no proper woman would speak so to a stranger. Vaguely deflated, Elisha followed, and found her seated on the mossy altar, swinging her bare feet above the flowers that carpeted the ruin. Her cast-off shoes lay to one side, along with the shawl she had held about her shoulders. The altar stood on a low rise which must once have been a platform of stone. A few stone benches stood around the walls, but the nave of the church held only flowers and fallen roofing, forming mounds for the delight of rabbits and weeds alike. At the far end, the arch of the main entrance stood empty, the hinges rusted into the air, lacking their doors. Two rows of columns marched along the sides, helping to support the high ribs of stone which soared overhead. The style of the church was new; light and lofty in comparison to the churches he knew. Back in London, they had torn down the older church to build just such a place, but of cathedral proportions. Fifty years later, only half-done, the place looked empty and forlorn. This church must only just have been built by the time it was abandoned. If things had gone badly with the fire in Brigit’s village, their own church might have ended up like this.

Following his gaze, Brigit said, “The old lord deeded this land to the church, and they built their monastery here in my grandparents’ time. But the place had a reputation for healing disease. Victims came from miles around to pray here.”

When her voice died away, Elisha saw her staring up where the roof should be.

“There was an epidemic. Two or three survived, not enough to carry on, and the monastery was dissolved, the church deconsecrated.”

The pale arch of her throat drew him nearer, watching it quiver as she spoke and breathed, the blouse she wore draping just barely upon her shoulders, the remaining long hair drifting down her back, caressing it like familiar hands. Lowering her chin, she smiled out the distant doorway. “It’s beautiful here. Like a church for the sky and the flowers.”

“Beautiful,” he murmured. When the gaze swiveled around toward him, he looked away and came around behind her, dropping the shears on the altar beside her. He plied his comb through the softness of her hair, gently untangling the long ends.

“It doesn’t bother you,” she asked. “Me sitting here?”

Everything about her drove him to distraction, so that he must watch his hands every moment lest they take undue advantage. “It’s a good height.” But perhaps she wanted him to take advantage, perhaps that was why she’d brought him here.

Annoyed, she said, “I mean on the altar. This is—or at least, it was—a church of the Lord.”

“I was a barber to the street of brothels, my lady. Not much offends me.”

She made a curious little noise but did not press him.

When he’d combed out the fine hair, he came to stand in front of her, avoiding her eyes, surveying the damage of the fire. He took a bit of hair at either shoulder, measuring what remained against what had been. Well, he would do what he could. She was lucky to have her eyebrows. Elisha glanced down. Yes, she had her eyebrows, slightly singed, raised now so she could peer up at him without moving her head.

He retreated again, this time to the side to start trimming. “You seem quite well-recovered, my lady,” he remarked.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Most women would have had more of a fright, catching on fire like that. I haven’t seen—” He broke off, shying away from the image of the angel in flames.

“What?” she asked lightly. “You’ve not seen flaming hair, or witchfire?”

“Neither,” he lied, and she twitched so that he had to pull away the shears before he trimmed more than he should. “Stay still. Actually, the fire seemed right ordinary to me. As for the witch—” He broke off again. He longed to question her, discover if she knew of the burned witch of two decades past, but dared not scare her off with too much talk of witches.

“What about the witch?” She prodded a bit of moss, twisting a sprig of it between her fingers.

“He seemed ordinary as well. But I have little experience.”

“Ordinary? But how can a witch be ordinary? Shouldn’t he have claws and a hump and horrible fangs?” Her voice had sunk low despite the energy it conveyed, and he paused a moment in his snipping.

“As I say, I have little experience.” But the image of the angel flashed again before him, the bright wings sweeping out, raising a riot of sparks into the air.

“Haven’t you ever seen a witch, even one? Or perhaps heard tell of them?”

Snip, snip. “Of course there are stories. The carter I rode out with claimed his cousin was turned black by one, and one of the whores told me a witch cursed her to become pregnant.”

Brigit laughed, but the sound was brittle. She started to turn her head to see him, but he placed a hand quickly on top of her head to still her. “Please, I don’t want to make this worse than it is.”

“Sorry.” For a moment she sat silent beneath his attention, then asked, “But have you not once laid eyes on one, for yourself?”

“Apart from two nights ago?” Why was she pressing him? Tension gripped his shoulders, and, for the first time in his life, he had difficulty steadying his hands. She spoke as if she wanted information from him, just as much as he from her. Could she be spying? Following up on something the physician said about him?

“That was no witch you saw,” she said, “just a man in the wrong place.”

“I thought as much.” Her confirmation of his conviction drained some of his tension. Snip, snip, snip. The scorched ends of her red-gold hair fell away, settling onto the toes of his boots and draping over the green grass below. His hands withdrew the shears resting briefly against his lips with a chill of metal before he lowered them. What harm could come of his admission? “Yes, I saw one. A woman, years ago. The last witch executed outside the city.”

Strangely subdued, Brigit asked, “What was she like?”

“I don’t know, I only saw her from a distance.” He longed for a moment to see Brigit’s face, but could not move, his eyes finding the form of the angel in clouds beyond the over-arching stone. “She was beautiful.”

“They said she cast a glamour on the crowd, so they could not see her true nature.” Brigit’s voice caught, and she shivered.

“Perhaps it was so.”

“Do you believe it?”

“I was a boy, and it was a long time ago.”
I had to be cleansed
, he wanted to say,
I had to be beaten until I believed what they told me, and not what my eyes could swear. I saw an angel,
he wanted to say. The compulsion to speak burned within him, the longing to reveal this most secret memory, the thing never spoken to another soul.
An angel touched my face, and I could not be the same.

His throat ached with the need to speak, but his stubborn teeth refused, and he shoved the thought away. “I’m done,” he told her, his voice harsh.

Brigit jerked as if he had slapped her and sprang down from the altar, fumbling with her shoes and shawl. “Thank you.”

She was going. She would leave, and he would never see her again, and he wouldn’t even know why. Cursing himself, Elisha rounded the altar. “I don’t have a mirror, I’m sorry,” he said, forcing his voice to be gentle, trying not to reveal the nervous awareness that jittered inside.

“I’m sure it’s fine. If not, my father’s maidservant can fix it.”

Nodding, Elisha picked up his comb, running a finger along the teeth of bone.

Still not facing him, Brigit patted her hair, the burnt parts cut away and evened out to meet the longer section. “Imagine, I didn’t come down looking for a barber, but for a doctor.” At this, she turned, her bright, blank expression once more in place as she held out a hand. “Thank you, barber.”

He bent over the offered hand, not brushing it with his lips. Whoever she might be, it was clear that her position was far above his own—he hadn’t earned the privilege of a kiss.

“And thanks for rescuing me the other night, as well. If there’s ever anything…” she broke off and turned sharply away.

Say something,
he urged himself,
do something so she doesn’t walk away.
“Actually,” he blurted, “There is something.”

She froze, the shawl pulled taut about her shoulders.

Uninvited, he blundered on, “That night, in the hunt for the witch, I lost my cloak. The one I’d put around you. If anyone’s found it, or if you hear of anything, I would appreciate having it back.”

She nodded again, her new short hair sliding over her shoulders.

Before he could come up with another way to cling to the sight of her, a voice from without broke the stillness. “Barber!” someone roared. “Barber! Where’ve you got to?”

Clenching his teeth, Elisha turned to face the physician as he stormed through the little door.

“Ah, this is where I find you. Praying, are you? You’d better be—” Suddenly, his face froze as he spotted their audience: Brigit, looking back at him, plainly astonished. “My apologies, my lady, I did not know you were still present.”

She curtseyed her acknowledgement. “The barber offered to cut my hair.”

“Ah, yes, well, that’s good, then.” He looked from one to the other, his hands in fists at his sides.

Bowing, Elisha said, “Sorry, my lord, I’m through here, let me just put my shears away.”

“Through?” thundered the physician, recalling his fury. “The surgeons tell me you’ve not been cauterizing the amputees. What do you mean by that? These men could die by your neglect!”

Shutting his eyes, Elisha cursed himself yet again. He found the binding of arteries to be just as effective and much less painful. But he should’ve known that these doctors would expect the orthodox treatment. His own training would carry no weight compared with the words of the long-dead physicians of old. “I’ve bound them tight, my lord, and meant to—”

“Meant to? What have your intentions to do with the lives of His Majesty’s soldiers?”

In the pause after the shout, Elisha heard a little, strangled noise. Still half-bowed, he glanced behind and caught sight of Brigit’s face, stark pale, her rosy lips parted, her eyebrows creeping up her forehead. He frowned.

“You’re a medical man,” she bleated, bringing a hand to her mouth as if she had spoken some wrong.

“So he claims,” the physician said. “After today, we shall have to see about that. He barely deserves the title, never mind the honor of working on His Majesty’s men. Get on, you scoundrel, get you to the hospital, and perhaps my skill can yet save them from your malpractice.”

Thus browbeaten, Elisha made for the door, but he paused to glance again behind him. Brigit had not moved, nor had the stunned expression left her face. With a slight gesture, he bowed his head to her, but she stared on, as if it were not even he she saw. He let himself out, leaving the physician behind with the lady, hoping the rest of the world still made sense.