Relics bp-1

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  'But that was not all that the good Bishop requested of me. He has his cathedral, but it is lacking in a crucial respect -there is no important relic. A cathedral needs relics, as you know, like a fire needs wood: something for the faithful to warm their hands against. In Gardar they have a few wisps of cloth from the habit of some nun no one has heard of, and an old nail from St Andrew's cross that no one believes in – quite rightly so, as it probably came from some unlucky fishing boat. The Bishop wanted a relic, and so he entrusted the search to me. For that is my trade, my true calling. I deal in relics. I sell them to any man, woman, abbot, bishop, king or queen who can pay for them. I find relics. When I cannot buy them, I steal them. What cannot be stolen, I make myself. The Bishop of Gardar is paying me much of what lies in the cathedral's muniments room for a true relic of the oldest ages of man, although instead of a saint's heart he will be enshrining part of a woman who worshipped animal-headed demons and had as much inkling of divine grace as the shores of Greenland have of date-palms. He will never know – how can a holy relic be verified? The spices of Egypt provide the requisite odour of sanctity, the thing is as old as the hills, and he has my word on the matter. And besides, I know he has paid for the other trifle – and other less pretty ones – with the hard-won pennies of these pitiful Greenlanders, so he will be very, very careful not to annoy me. As far as my usual business goes, this will be an easy transaction.

  Think of the hand of St Euphemia that you bore in so much terror. A poor old shrivelled thing it was, was it not, inside its precious glove? But you believed, Petroc, and for all I know you believe still. I can tell you this: it was a human hand, all right, but St Euphemia? Perhaps. I know that a corpse lying around in a damp place like Balecester will moulder and rot, and I'd lay my fortune that Euphemia herself has been dust for a thousand years. The precious claw was bought or made – I said human, but I would not have been surprised to find the paw of an ape. Credulity and greed will blind most men – that is the truth that keeps the Cormaran afloat. I can show you much, my good friend, but I fear it will tear the guts from your faith and trample them into the mud. It was easy for me – I never had any faith, at least not in the way you understand it. But for you… think for a while.'

  I paused. There was one more question to be answered, and I hardly dared ask it. But ask I must.

  'Captain,' I began hesitantly, "You, Gilles and the others from… from Provence: forgive me, but are you what I would call Cathars?'

  To my immense relief he smiled, the weariest smile I had ever seen. 'There is nothing to forgive, my boy. We are indeed cathari – Cathars. Was it such a hard guess?'

  'No,' I said, and he chuckled. 'Then we are not as mysterious as we suppose ourselves to be,' he said. We are credenti – believers, the least of our kind, but there are few of us now indeed, and perhaps…' he shook his head. "You do not fear us, at least, and I do not think you even judge us.' 'I do not,' I interrupted. 'That is good. And what do you think?'

  'I can guess what became of the grapes you tended as a boy,' I said quietly. 'News reached us even down in Devon, and so I heard of the war against your people from my friend Adric. For the Cathars, I am sure you know what nonsense they teach boys: cat-worship and blasphemy. I have also heard that you believe the Devil created the earth, and that Christ is a ghost, and that you swear no oaths, for there is no one above you save God himself.' I paused. 'In my present mood, and at this point where I find myself, I am no friend to my Church, and when I look for faith I find myself as empty as a new-dug grave. I mean that I can find no fault in your people's beliefs.'

  The Captain gazed at me for a long silent moment.*You are… indeed you are the very first man I have heard such words from. I know the turmoil of your soul, and I will not press you further. But I will say one more thing, and then we are done with this matter: if you would know more – and there is much to learn – we will be glad to teach you. I believe you will know when the time is right.'

  He reached for a mutton-bone, took a small bite and tossed it into the hearth. The deep glow from the flame-caressed embers had lent his profile a sombre, brooding edge, and his grey eyes held splinters of fire. He ran his thumb along the lip of his wine-cup again and again.

  'Master,' I said, feeling as I did so the sensation of falling, so strongly that I reached out and grabbed the table's edge, 'you have given answers to all my questions, and I have given none to yours. Here is my answer: I will join you. My head is glad, but my heart is empty. If you will have a soul that is beyond care and a spirit that has lost its footing in the darkness, I will serve you. My love of Mother Church has curdled, and I see only rottenness where I once saw salvation. If you can use someone like me, I am yours.' So saying, I took a great gulp of the wine, and met the Captain's level gaze.

  'Done,' said de Montalhac, and grasped my hand. 'I have the better bargain, Master Petroc of Auneford. Your heart is not empty: it is full and strong, and your soul is but dull and sooty with the smoke of false ritual. It will shine once more. You are one of us now. You are right: my people do not swear oaths, so you come with us of your own free will, and you may leave when and where you wish.'

  We drank again, and slowly the night's edges softened once more until we were nothing but two friends enjoying wine, warmth and each other's company. But I was not the same as I had been before. My faith was gone: I knew it for a certainty.

  Chapter Twelve

  W

  e left Greenland two days later. I had not seen much of the Captain, as I was busy about the ship and he was away in town conducting business – and I will admit that, now I had a clear notion of what that business was, I dwelt upon his affairs with a much enlivened interest.

  I was on deck on the afternoon of the day that followed our strange night at the inn, lashing water barrels in place. The Captain swept up the gangplank, vexation clearly written on his face. He went straight to his cabin and slammed the door behind him, and I heard his voice and that of Gilles raised in some heated debate. Then all of a sudden there was laughter, and the Captain swept out again, this time with a big grin. He trotted back down the plank and off into the sorry huddle of Gardar.

  Late the next day, as the sun – which had honoured us with a watery light since noon – was going down behind the mountainous promontory in the west, there was a sudden hubbub on the wharf. I was sitting in the forecastle, mending rope. Peering over the side, I saw a gang of the crew, led by the Captain and Pavlos, struggling with three long bundles, each around six feet long, knobbled and bulky and wrapped in black tarred canvas. The cloth looked slippery, or perhaps the bundles were very heavy, for the men were having a difficult time keeping a grip. I skipped down the ladder and called out to offer my help, but Pavlos waved me away. Finally, grunting and cursing in the most livid tones, the men hoisted each bundle onto their shoulders and bore them on board. They were manhandled down into the hold, where more muffled oaths told me that, in the cramped space below decks, the burdens were even more awkward. At last Pavlos emerged, dusty and bleeding slightly from a banged temple. What the devil was all that?' I asked him.

  He spat and rubbed his wound. 'Jesus, Mary Madonna and every one of the fucking saints. Whalebone! A wonderful idea, wouldn't you say? Enough whalebone to build a sister-fucking elephant. Or a bastard whale.' He stamped away and vanished into the Captain's cabin.

  I couldn't help laughing as I went back to my frayed rope. A whalebone elephant, perhaps. Or a hundred, a thousand fornicating dolls, one for every bishop in Christendom. Ha! I spat in my turn, feeling uncommonly happy to be alive.

  We cast off before dawn the next day. Our return from Gardar is not a memory I often dwell upon. Almost from the minute we left the pathetic harbour at the edge of the world we were forging through an endless expanse of clear green waves that towered on all sides. Sometimes, when the wind came less fiercely, they loomed like smooth hills, so that I imagined we were in a kind of watery downland, the chalk hills of England turned to liquid on some de
vil's whim. But when the gales blew – and they blew, day in, day out, for two weeks – the hills became mountains that reared above us, their sharp peaks and ridges trembling like monstrous green flames, spume flying from them like smoke.

  I was on deck now as often as any crewman – indeed I was a sailor now for all intents and purposes. It had happened on the crossing from Iceland: although no one had ordered me to work, I fell into it naturally, and soon I was mending sail and hauling ropes alongside the rest of them. At first my soft scholar's hands rebelled and I spent two or three days with them salved and bound while the salt-inflamed blisters dried. But soon my fingers and palms grew tough and hide-like, a transformation that I found obscurely pleasing. Before sleep I would feel each callous with a kind of modest pride. I suppose they were a symbol of my greater transformation, although then I thought only that they reminded me of when I worked alongside my father, building stone walls and wrestling sheep at shearing-time. The long passage of time between then and now, my long sleep, as it seemed, at the abbey and then in Balecester, was starting to fade a little, like a well-remembered dream.

  Another transformation had taken place. It had been months since I had even thought about the language we all used aboard. It was the lingua franca, a traders' simple tongue, bastard child of Occitan and the many dialects spoken by the folk of Italy and Spain with scraps borrowed from Arabic, Greek, Ladino and a hundred other languages of the world. I had limped along for the first month on a smattering of French, ancient Greek, Latin of course, and a few shards of German. But without really knowing how, I had learned the lingua franca, and at the same time I found I had begun to know Occitan, the native tongue of the Captain, Gilles and perhaps a quarter of the crew. I grew to love its gentleness and poetry, so much at odds with the harsh, matter-of-fact life aboard a ship sailing the deep ocean.

  But I had but little time for poetry as the Cormaran creaked and lurched through the cold ocean. Sleep was impossible when the weather was evil, as it so often was, and when things were calmer, my exhaustion dropped me into a slumber that was only a little less deep and dark than death itself. When we left Iceland I had moved from my cosy berth in the bow, feeling that it set me apart, something I dearly wished to avoid. And now that nook was hidden behind a wall of sailcloth, home to the great bundles of whalebone, and furs that must be kept from the damp, Pavlos explained. The days passed in a fever of morbid anticipation, and the night watches were worse. With every jump over a wave-crest or swoop into the deep troughs between, the planking would groan like a thousand souls in purgatory, and I was certain the hull would burst apart and send us plummeting down through the green water. For me, the misery was made worse by Fafner's desertion. I rarely saw him now: he had found himself a cosy cave amongst the whalebone and fur, I supposed, for that was where his great tail would be vanishing those few times I caught sight of him.

  We were avoiding Iceland this time. The danger from the King's revenue men was too great. Nizam had plotted a course that would drop us down the face of the world in a slow curve until we landed on the top of Ireland. A slow curve it sounded in his descriptions, but our progress, as marked obsessively on the Captain's charts (parchments that he gave more reverence to than any holy text I had ever encountered), seemed more like the weavings of a drunken spider: short leaps in one direction, crazy crabbing zigzags in another, but all the while, undeniably, edging us towards the south and east. We were bound for Dublin, and it seemed we were in some hurry to get there.

  At last we caught a screeching gale from the west, and for endless days we flew on a broad reach, every man on deck for an eternity, working with frost-numbed hands. And then one day I felt a rope slacken in my grasp, and we all paused and looked aloft. The sail had relaxed, so slightly that I could have imagined it. A petrel whizzed past the crow's nest. Then the ship bucked again and the moment was past.

  But the next morning I woke – suddenly, with no transition between sleep and absolute wakefulness, as I had begun to do lately – to see a washed-out blue sky above, some harmless-seeming clouds and a white bird. The wind had gone; we were tacking across a fresh southerly breeze, and soon the bird was joined by others, a wheeling, screeching party of gulls. Not petrels or the solitary albatrosses that had tracked us through the empty seas, but big seagulls like the ones that would swarm over the newly ploughed fields back home. The men began to smile and talk a little more easily, and in truth we had all been a little subdued of late. The relentless diet of puffin had taken its toll, and something else was weakening us. My mouth had swollen and my tongue with it. Eating was a chore, and if a piece of dry meat should slip between my teeth there would be agony and blood in worrying amounts. My legs were always stiff and they were becoming speckled with dark spots. Many of the others were spitting blood and complaining of swollen joints. Horst had lost two back teeth, and Zianni nearly choked on one of his that dropped out as he slept. And our breaths all had the same sour, tomb-like reek. 'It is the scorbutus,' said Isaac, but he could offer no cure. We must wait for dry land and another food than this cursed puffin,' he said, and we had to believe him. But indeed we could smell land in the warm breeze: wet earth, a ghost of something green. The ship seemed to wake from a long fever dream.

  We were three days from Ireland. Our mad spider's course had brought us back to the Scottish isles, and that day we passed St Kilda, a tiny hermit's perch where countless gulls wheeled like bees around a hive. Nizam was aiming us at the North Channel, and Dublin – and some measure of civilization – had begun to occupy a large part of my waking mind. Streets, bustle, inns, beer! We talked of little else. Women, too, although that subject I tried to avoid as discreetly as I could. Will had often talked of the city whores he had enjoyed – to him such fleshly transactions were as natural as breathing. But the whores had scared me with their leering faces and heaving, sweat-streaked bosoms. There lay mortal sin, and of course I was also somewhat timid by nature.

  Oddly, though, the only naked female bodies I had seen were in church, the painted ones in the hell that covered the west wall of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, a holy place much frequented by Balecester students. Here, women complete with round, turnip-like breasts, little bellies and black stains between their thighs were herded by serpentine devils who fondled them lewdly and prodded their heavy buttocks with eel spears. I had often lain awake in my mean little room in Ox Lane with those pale figures writhing before me, my own flesh rebelling from my control. I would try to focus on the devils, to imagine their spears stabbing at my own flesh, but those breasts and the dark patches below the bellies that sagged ever so gently… I would have to get out of bed and pray, kneeling until the hard floor hurt me enough to drive the foul visions away. Sometimes I would have to leave my room and wander the streets until dawn, saying my rosary and muttering to myself like, I daresay, a simpleton. It was on such a night that I had found the way onto the city walls.

  Now, I supposed, I was no longer bound by the Church and its strictures, and the lewd and often frankly bizarre tales that seemingly every crewman now found time to share with me seemed, if anything, a little more terrifying because of the knowledge that I could now have such adventures of my own, should I so choose. Meanwhile my dreams grew lurid: patchworks of flesh, scraps and fragments of the day's talk. It was on the second morning past St Kilda that I awoke from the dream of a painful tangle of limbs (an Egyptian gypsy and her snake, courtesy of Zianni, had befriended Elia's Finnish twin sisters and an obese but talented Genoese, as described by Horst), to find that we were putting in to land. A long beach of white sand lay ahead, lying like spilled milk below crag-topped moors.

  It was one of the Western Isles, lonely and uninhabited save for the wild sheep that grazed it, abandoned by settlers in time out of mind. There was a spring of sweet water above the beach, and we would fill our barrels here. Fresh water, and fresh mutton! The Cormaran preferred secrecy wherever possible, given the nature of its business. When we put into a populated harbour the traff
ic was one way: we brought our business to the land, and not the other way around. When it came to provisions and repairs, the Captain chose small, friendly villages or, even better, the privacy of a deserted shore. We were almost out of water, and although we had enough to bring us to Dublin, Gilles explained to me that the sharp and insatiable curiosity of the traders of that town was something to be deflected at all costs. And Guthlaf the carpenter was keen to repair a sprung plank and right some other ills inflicted by our dash across the Sea of Darkness.

  The tide was half out, and Nizam ran the ship up into a shallow gulley carved out by the stream that ran down off the moors. It would hold the Cormaran while Guthlaf went about his work and let us float off again at high water. In an hour we were high and dry, and I was swarming over the side with the rest of the crew. It was high summer, I realised with a shock as my feet sank into the warm, wet sand. I could smell the heather, and knew that the moorland would be alive with bees storing up their wealth for the dead times. So, after I had helped fill the butts at a place where the stream poured over a granite lip and down onto the sand, and rolled them back to the ship, and spent a gentle hour gathering sea kale with Abu (how wonderful the thick, green stems felt to the touch, and even more wonderful was the sharp juice that stung my destroyed gums), I slipped away and, turning my back on the sea, set off to follow the stream up the hill towards the lowering crags. It led at first through a field of scattered boulders. The orange and grey lichens that clung to the rock were the same ones that grew in Devon, I noticed. The stream picked a narrow way through two great tumbled slabs, and beyond them lay a small, deep, sedge-rimmed pool fed at one end by a little waterfall that gurgled over a ledge thickly padded with moss. It reminded me of a pool I used to bathe in on the Red Brook near my home, and so without thinking I shed my clothes and slipped into the water.