Elisha Barber: Book One Of The Dark Apostle (2 page)

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 you 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.

Sinking down on the bed beside her, Elisha pulled the towel from his belt and tore it in three. “Give it here,” he told her.

Blinking, she glanced away toward the distant nun, then back.

“I’m a barber,” he said soothingly. “Give it here, it’ll be fine.”

Hesitantly, she held out her arm. The gash was long, but not too deep, cutting across the muscles of her forearm. This, at least, he knew exactly how to handle. With the first strip of cloth, he wiped around it. Then holding her hand between his knees, he pressed together the sides of the wound and wrapped it carefully, tucking the bandage end in when he was done. From his ever-present pouch
he slipped a packet of white powder and pressed it into her grasp. “Just a pinch for the pain—no more, you hear me?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Get out of here,” Elisha urged, drawing her up from the bed. “Go home.”

With a quick glance behind her, the girl darted away, holding her injured arm close once more. He stared a moment after her, wishing Helena could be so readily healed.

A hand thrust aside the curtain, admitting Sister Lucretia followed by a plump woman with her sleeves bound back from her arms. “Elisha,” she grunted. The midwife. Elisha’s heart sank yet further when he recognized her: matronly, barely competent, with a demeanor soothing to pregnant women. Her combination of piety and comfort would appeal to his brother almost as much as the fact that Elisha disapproved of her.

Following close, they returned to Helena’s side.

“Now, dear,” the midwife said, bending down to check the infant’s position. Only Elisha caught the flash of horror on her face. When she looked up again, her voice was still as calm as ever, though her hands quavered. “Now, dear, the physician recommends a cutting. We’ll lift the babe from your belly and stitch’t back up again, eh?”

Nodding desperately, Helena clung to her husband with both hands.

“We’ll be needing water then,” the midwife went on, “and a better knife than what I’ve brought.”

With a cold certainty, Elisha laid a hand on Helena’s taut belly, pressing the still form of the child she carried. Too still. He grabbed the midwife’s arm and pulled her aside, turning his face from his brother. “You’re going to cut her open?” he whispered urgently.

“The physician advises—”

“He knows who she is, and her circumstances?”

“Aye, Barber, he does,” the midwife snapped, tugging at his grip.

Elisha swore under his breath. “So he thinks to save the babe at her expense.”

The midwife dropped her gaze, her thin mouth set. “God willing, if I stitch her right up—”

Elisha didn’t listen to the rest. Under the best of circumstances, cutting
into the abdomen was risky—best left to the master surgeons, and even then more likely to kill than to cure.

He looked at Lucretia.

The nun nodded once. “And horses.”

The first good news he’d yet been offered. Elisha grinned. “Bless you.”

He lifted Nathaniel to his feet and pushed his barbering tools into his brother’s hands. Then, with a nod to the imperious ward sister, he caught up Helena in both arms and drew her to his chest. “There’s not a moment to spare.”

“But she said—!” Nathaniel began to protest, then he whirled, seizing the midwife’s hand. “Come with us.”

Elisha met the midwife’s eye, the fear in his brother’s voice still ringing in his ears. Grudgingly he said, “She’ll have need of you.”

She held up her hands in a gesture of despair. “Aye, Barber, I’m coming.”

“Then we have a life to save,” he said, turning away to escape the hospital, and its reeking beds of corpses both living and dead.

T
hey dashed from the hospital,
pursued by the furious ward sister. “Only the saints may intercede for her!” she cried, tugging at Elisha’s arm. “By God’s grace alone, and through His physicians shall she be saved.”

He snarled low in his throat, causing the nun to stumble and cross herself. He should have been there as soon as they thought she was pregnant, but his own arrogance had estranged them. He would welcome the saints if they could save her—and damn them all if they could not.