Relics bp-1

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  He still had hold of my arm, and must have felt my flesh shrink at the mention of Sir Hugh.

  'Don't be afraid, now,' he said gently. You'll be safe. Once we're over the wall, we'll disappear.'

  Why are you telling me all this, about His Holiness and gold?'

  'Because I've heard the name of Deacon Jean de Nointot before. He was cosy with Legate Otto. It seems that Otto was cultivating allies within the diocese, and de Nointot's loyalties were to Rome.' 'So what?'

  'So it's an open secret that Otto has been promising advancement to those who take the Pope's side against the bishops – not just here, but all over the kingdom. De Nointot is – was – young and ambitious. He was a viper in the Bishop's bosom.'

  The thought of the Bishop's bosom made me chuckle despite myself.

  You're laughing. Excellent. But what I'm telling you isn't so far-fetched. De Nointot is out of the palace's way, his blood is on the hands of a young nobody – sorry, Patch, but do you disagree? – and the Bishop has a witness, to wit, his own Steward. Quite a pretty story, with all its ends tied up tight.' 'But the hand, Will – what about the hand?'

  'Motive, you thickhead. They catch you soaked in gore, with the hand on you. No need for questions.' 'But why me?'

  You told me yourself – he was looking for greedy people last night.' 'But I wasn't greedy.'

  'Absolutely. You were trustworthy. A lamb, not a wolf. No room for two wolves in Kervezey's plan.'

  We walked in silence after that. My feet felt like two stones, and my heart made a third. I could find no argument against Will's theory. I was a dupe, and a scapegoat. All the thoughts I'd had in the palace, about power and favour, and how I'd been singled out for advancement, came back to me, and I almost moaned aloud at the horror of it all, but most of all at my own stupidity. I had let pride blind me and make me ignore my instincts about Sir Hugh. And after all, how could I have put myself in the hands of such a man? I was in no manner worldly, but I was not a babe in arms. And now Will had been caught in the smoke of my damnation.

  He was by no means a perfect cleric, or a model student, but his wit was the sharpest I had ever encountered, and he soaked up learning without any effort at all. Granted, he was addicted to nocturnal escapades of one sort or another, and no stranger to the bawdy-houses I had so recently dashed past on Long Reach. He had precious few illusions about anything, but I had always thought he would find quick advancement in the Church – a bishop by thirty, as we would sometimes joke. Now he was slinking away from all that, at the side of someone the whole country would soon know of as the foulest murderer of the age. I paused and grabbed his sleeve.

  You've done nothing, brother,' I said. 'No one need ever find out you met me tonight. Let me give you back your habit – and then please leave me. I will not be responsible for your destruction as well as my own.'

  But Will only laughed again, a little hollowly. You haven't been listening, Patch. This is about popes and bishops, but mostly about money. We're gnats. We don't count at all. I'm your best friend: if Kervezey doesn't know it yet, which I'm sure he does, he'll know it by tomorrow. My life in the Church is over, and probably my life on this earth if I stay here. It's not your fault. You just used the Crozier's back door when you should have used the front.' 'But you would have been a bishop by thirty!' I burst out.

  'Haven't you noticed that I've been less than diligent of late, even by my standards? I have been fighting with myself. My faith never was very strong – I'm sure you knew that – and now I fear it has completely left me. I'm a sinner; it's in my bones. And I hate this bloodless life, brother – hate it. I was no more born to this than to lord it over bales of wool like my God-bothering dad.' You mean you'll break your vows?' Aye.'

  'And do what? Christ, Will, they'll cut your ears off just for that, let alone for helping me.'

  'I'm heading north. Perhaps I'll tap my dad for some money on the way – perhaps not. But I've been planning for a while, and the plan is to seek my fortune. I'll find a free company to join, and then away to France and the wars.'

  'Jesus Christ!' My voice rose, and my companion cautioned me with a look. A soldier? You? You're a cleric, brother. What in hell's name do you know of soldiering?'

  'More than you.' That at least was true. Will loved to fight, had spent his childhood scrapping and brawling through the streets of Morpeth and was a well-known hellion here in the city.

  You won't be finding dozy drovers and fat watchmen over in France, you know,' I went on. 'They'll chop you to bits quicker than a lamb at Easter.'

  'Better than the death-in-life I've been leading.' He paused. 'I could never be a priest. I might have made a scholar. But the Cathedral School is finished anyway, Patch.' What do you mean, finished?'

  'The Masters are packing up. They're moving to Oxford. Have you really not heard any of this? Magister Jens, all of them. There's a real school starting up there.'

  'That's just gossip.' I knew about it, of course. Scholars were drifting together all over Christendom. Our teachers had told us of the new places of learning at Paris and Bologna, and the same thing was rumoured to be happening at Oxford. And we were just a school, constrained by the Church and firmly under the Bishop's thumb. He could make it comfortable for teachers and students as long as it suited him, but schools like ours came and went according to the whims of the mighty. I had dreamed of going on to Paris, or Bologna, or even Oxford. That dream was dead now. But if Will was right, perhaps our days in Balecester had been numbered anyway. 'It feels as if it's all falling to pieces behind us,' I muttered.

  'Perhaps we were the only things holding it up,' Will agreed. After that, there didn't seem to be anything else to say.

  But now the city walls were in sight, rising up to block our way. Ox Lane ended just ahead, and there was no gate. Fortunately for us it had been years since Balecester had been threatened by war, and the walls were neglected. They were high, but sheds, lean-tos and the odd house had been built against them, they were crumbling in places, and there weren't enough Watch-men to patrol their whole length. I had often wandered this way, and I knew that it would be simple to get up to the parapet. The other side was more of a problem: a sheer drop four times the height of a man. But the shanty-town that spread out from the city on the south had crept up to the walls, and there were plenty of refuse piles and rotten roofs to break a fall.

  We ran the last few yards, more from bravado than anything else – there were still no signs of a hunt behind us. In the moonlight the wall's dilapidation was obvious: the Roman bricks that made up its lower courses were crumbling and the mortar was gone, the dressed stone from the Conqueror's time was no longer smooth and straight, and vertical cracks shot up every few feet where the foundations were sinking. I steered Will to the left.

  'There's a woodpile along here somewhere,' I told him, and sure enough, a big stack of split logs appeared around a curve, stacked against a buttress. We threw ourselves at the wood, scrambled up without much difficulty, and found that the slope of the buttress made a convenient ramp to the top of the wall. Up on the parapet, the crenellations stretched away toothily on each side. We crept along, keeping our heads down, peering over every few feet to find a soft landing place. 'See anything?' said Will.

  'All I can see is the easy way to a broken neck,' I muttered in reply. Then I caught sight of something far off along the wall to the east. 'Lights, man! On the wall!' Will had seen them too.

  And now there were sounds from behind us. Feet on cobblestones. Torches flickered at the distant end of Ox Lane. They seemed to drift slowly in our direction.

  We scuttled along the battlements like a pair of rats, bobbing up to look for a place to jump, ducking down and running. We both sensed that we could be seen against the moon-washed sky, and the mob in Ox Lane was near enough for us to hear voices. Or perhaps it was other hunters in other streets. There seemed to be nothing near the foot of the wall on the outside: maybe the city had been pulling down houses, or one of the fires
that seethed through the squatters' shacks had cleared away the rotting shelters that usually huddled right up to the bricks. We would have to jump now, and take our chances. I hunkered down to let Will catch up with me, but as I leaned against the chilly stone my nose caught a whiff of something unpleasant. I peeped over, and there below me rose a dark mass, rising up to the height of a tall man against the wall and spreading out on all sides. Will appeared at my side. 'Look there, man,' I croaked. 'Dunghill.'

  Will peered in his turn. When he turned back, he was grinning. 'Just look at that great big pile of shit,' he said. I stared at him for a second, and then we were both cramped with laughter, trying to stifle it with hands stuffed into mouths, pounding each other and the stone battlement. We laughed as only those who have a choice between the gallows and a long fall into ripe shit can laugh. Then we jumped.

  It felt like a long way down. I noticed air hissing past my ears, and a griping tingle of expectation in my feet. Then I landed, and sank to my knees in soft, warm, sucking matter. An instant later, Will arrived beside me. The stench was unbearable down here. We were imbedded in a monstrous heap of dung, kitchen rubbish, offal from butchered animals -the mound was like a towering carbuncle on the face of the shanty town, filled to bursting with all the poisons and fetor of that filthy place. From the miasma that rose around us, I gathered that human as well as pig, cow and horse-shit had a place here. My legs were becoming unpleasantly warm – hot, even – and I tried to drag myself out. It felt like quicksand below me, drawing me down into the pile, and I braced myself for another try. Will was cursing and struggling. I felt hot slime ooze between my toes. Something was trying to wiggle between my sandal and the sole of my foot. I yelped, and threw myself forward. My hand struck something sharp. Now I was hanging forward over the pile. For a second I thought I was still trapped, and then the weight of my body dragged me downwards and out, and the front of the mound gave away. Will and I tumbled head-first down the slope, clods of horror bouncing around us, until a thick wall of brambles and last year's nettle stalks caught us at the bottom. I found I was still clutching something: a pig's jaw. I flung it away. Will reared to his feet, and I followed.

  'Patch, oh Patch,' he rasped, and hawked mightily. 'I think I kissed a dead cat.'

  'That must be what Purgatory feels like,' I said. 'But the Devil himself would leave us alone in this state.'

  We were in a dark, stinking bower formed by the skeleton of a large apple tree which had fallen onto the roof of a dilapidated shanty. Years of live and dead briars, goose-grass, nettles and bindweed had grown up and died back, forming a dismal, snarled wall. We pushed our way through as best we could, squeezing ourselves along the crumbling side of the shanty where the thick lattice of dead apple boughs was thinnest. Will was through and I had almost fought clear when footfalls sounded high above us on the wall, and then the gabble of angry, frustrated men. I froze. A torch appeared between two battlements, then another and another, the guttering orange light skittering down the dunghill towards me. I pressed myself into the rotten wood, and the light fluttered past me. I was in the deep shadow of the apple's trunk, just out of reach of the trembling, searching fingers of torchlight. 'Move on, Jack. That's a neckbreaker, down there.'

  'Didn't I fucking tell you? He'll have got down onto one of them tannery roofs further along.'

  The light went out as suddenly as it had appeared. I waited until the hunters' voices were a faint snarl in the distance, then pushed through to join Will on the other side. His eyes were very wide and white in the gloom.

  That lot are off to the tanneries,' he said, pulling pieces of bramble from his arms. 'If we skirt along to the right for a bit, we'll get to the river upstream of town. That puts the whole city between us and them.'

  'They chased me down Silver Street,' I agreed. 'Maybe Sir Hugh believes I made for the water-meadows.'

  'So we'll follow the river upstream. It will lead us to the Fosse Way. Watling Street cuts across it and will take you to London. I'll go with you as far as the crossroads, then go north. Coming?'

  I shrugged. You'll be safer there, at least,' Will pointed out. 'Hide in the crowds. Then find a ship and go abroad: Flanders, perhaps. Yes, indeed, Flanders!' His voice held a little warmth now. 'My father has business partners there. They will help you. A plan, Patch, a plan! Trala!' And he slapped me lightly across the shoulders.

  'Save yourself, Will,' I told him. What would I do in Flanders?' At that moment, as the dunghill stench crept around me with the memory of how I had shrunk, like vermin, from the torchlight, I felt myself at the end. 'I'll give myself up. Perhaps the courts will believe my story – it is, after all, the truth. Anyway, they'll hang me quick, and Sir Hugh will be cheated of his fun.'

  You are no coward, Petroc,' he snapped back. 'So move yourself. Now!'

  There were shadows all around us, darkness that gave forth the stink of death and decay. Death was behind – death was surely all around. But ahead? 'I don't speak Flemish,' I muttered.

  'Don't worry. I'll teach you all the necessary profanities,' said my friend, and headed off into the night. I followed: there was nowhere else to go.

  We were in some sort of street, lined with low huts which, judging by the lumpy shapes picked out by the moonlight, were built of cob or perhaps just mud. There was no one about, and no lights showed in the dwellings around us. The mud beneath us was thick with rubbish and shit: animal and human, judging by the smell. We had started off at a quick walk, but soon we were running, trying to keep from the puddles and little streams that seemed to criss-cross our path. Once we surprised a herd of pigs that were sleeping in the middle of the street. Will saw them first and swerved, but I had no choice and leaped, the fear of landing on an enraged hog driving, for an instant, every other fear from my mind. We left their resentful squeals behind, and soon enough the huts thinned, and we were among fields. The moon shone on the rows of winter vegetables and the first green shoots of spring, and the air grew sweeter. Ahead I could make out a line of trees, great spreading shapes that must be the willows lining the river's banks.

  The street, such as it had been, had narrowed to a track between the raised fields. I remembered how the land had a slow roll here, some gentle dips and ridges, unlike the water-meadows downstream, which were as flat as a counter-pane. It was friendly country. My breathing began to slow a little. We slowed to a trot, then a walk. By and by the track dipped and we saw the river before us. A few paces from the bank another track crossed ours and we took it, heading upstream.

  'There's a road up ahead about three miles,' said Will. 'It'll take us to the Fosse.'

  I did not like the idea of the Fosse Way. The great road, built by the Romans many ages past and still the main route from west to east, would be crammed with traffic of all kinds. We would have to travel by night, of course, unless we cobbled together some sort of disguise. But I did not feel capable of deceiving anyone. Again my thoughts turned to surrender, but the night air smelled sweetly of cow-parsley and wild garlic and I said to myself: 'Not yet, not yet.'

  The first hint of morning showed on the horizon as we reached the road Will had described. It was a wide, well-surfaced trackway, hedged on both sides. We came upon it through a gap in the hedge and scrambled up onto it over a wall of neatly cut stones. I glanced down and noticed a number, XI, carved sharply into one block, clear in the last light of the sinking moon. So the Romans had built this road too. What odd people they must have been, numbering and ordering the world. But their neat lives had been no more immune to chaos than mine.

  A fox ambled away from us up the way, and we followed. The moon fell abruptly behind the thick wall of oaks that had replaced the hedge to left and right. It was suddenly very dark, but there was a faint glow overhead. We walked fast in grim silence until the sky had lightened to the colour of ash, that strange time the instant before dawn when everything is dead and cold, and the magic that conjures a new day out of the void of night seems to have failed. We were visible
now. I saw that Will's face was drawn and set. A few paces on, and he paused and pointed. 'See there. That's the Fosse.'

  I looked, and saw a break in the tree line, perhaps half a mile distant. Beyond, the land opened out, and I saw patches of fields and woods. In places a faint dark streak was visible against the rolling land: the great road. It seemed dreadfully exposed.

  We'll get to the end of the trees, and see who's abroad,' said Will. 'But they will be scouring all the roads, man,' I said.

  'This far from the city any men will be on horseback,' said Will. 'There won't be many of them, and we'll hear them coming. We'll stay out of sight today, though – but wouldn't you like a bite to eat?'

  In truth I had not considered hunger. My stomach felt like a cobblestone in my chest, and the thought of swallowing food made me queasy. Will, however, was made of even stronger stuff than I had imagined, for he began to ramble on about breakfasts. Salt pork and smoked fish, small-beer and hot bread appeared in the air before me as he spoke, and despite myself I smacked my lips. My belly rumbled and came to life. Soon we were both cackling like schoolboys, rubbing our guts as ever more furious gurglings rang out in the lane. It was time for the birds to awaken, and it was easy enough to believe it was our hungry bellies that had roused them from their nests. I wondered, for a moment, whether the past night had not been a foul dream, and I was now awake.

  I was about to suggest that we jump into the river to wash away the grisly reek of the dung-heap when all of a sudden I stopped dead. Something was amiss. It was as if we had stepped through an invisible door into a silent room. The birds, pouring out their songs in front and behind us, were silent on each side. The river had looped back on itself and to our right the lane touched upon the outside edge of a deep, lazy curve of water. To the left, a line of old oaks and may trees stretched ahead to where the land opened up and the lane met the Fosse Way, a few hundred yards off. Will looked about him, all laughter vanished from his face. I dropped to one knee, following some deep-hidden instinct. Then the sky filled with beating wings and the may trees burst open and flung a great horse out into the lane. With the horrible clarity of deep nightmare, Sir Hugh de Kervezey's pale face seemed to float above the gigantic, plunging beast. I felt no glimmer of surprise. As in the nightmare that returns again and again in the same form, so I felt not fright but a horrible resignation.