Relics bp-1

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Before I had even come within a hundred paces of the ship, Pavlos hailed me and ran out from the shadows under the hull. He reached me in a state of clear agitation, and I knew that it was not on my account. He grabbed my shoulders and shook me gently. Where…' He swallowed. Where have you been?' 'Up there.' I waved behind me.

  'And did you see anything – anyone "up there"?' Pavlos was a tall man, with dark curly hair that he kept shorn so that it hung a little above his shoulders. He cut a fine figure, and his bright green eyes and broken nose lent him the air of a fierce warrior, which was indeed the truth of the matter. But now he was sweating and trembling like a blown horse. He had run towards me as soon as I had jumped down onto the beach. I had planned to taunt him a little with the secret he could not know we shared, but now I did not have the heart.

  'She is safe, and watches us from up there.' I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. Pavlos grabbed my hand and brought his face close to mine.

  ‘Who?' He breathed, the sour stench of failing gums too close for comfort.

  'Anna, of course. The Princess Anna.' I grasped his hand in turn. 'She is unhurt.'

  To my horror, Pavlos dropped to his knees and began crossing himself like a madman, in the backwards fashion of his religion. I made sure that no one else planned to join us, and knelt down myself.

  'Be calm, Pavlos,' I whispered. 'She has come to no great harm. There was a man-'

  ‘A man?' Pavlos's head jerked up as if pulled by an invisible string. 'M'efayen ta jiyerya!' A stream of Greek curses followed, more plaintive than angry.

  '-But I rescued her,' I broke in, impatient. 'Nothing happened. She has pulled a muscle in her leg, I think. But she does not wish to come back to the ship in daylight – she fears the men.'

  'Fear? That one fears nothing,' said Pavlos. He seemed to be recovering. Rubbing his jaw, he stood up. 'She ran away from me before dawn. I managed to get her off the ship without anyone seeing, and she bolted, laughing. Laughing! I have heard nothing but that laughter since.' He spat. 'The Captain is in an ill humour about this, I can assure you.'

  'Did you all think you could keep her hidden for the whole voyage?' I shook my head in disbelief. 'She would have faded away to nothing in that pit.'

  'By all the saints and their pox-rotten mothers, Petroc! Do I not know that? She is a princess-royal of Byzantium! I have taken oaths to lay down my life for her kind. The man I served in Epiros, the Despot, is her cousin. None of us wished to confine her, but what else could be done? The crew would never allow a woman aboard – there are some among them, and you know who they are – who would use her like a common whore of the bath-houses before they pitched her over the side.' A new thought seemed suddenly to bite him like a gadfly. You did not… lay hands upon her?'

  Yes, indeed!' This was too much. 'I had my hands all over her! I all but carried her down a fucking mountain, after, after I saved her life-'

  'Peace, Petroc! Peace. Forgive me. The girl was in my care, and I failed her. I am overwrought. I owe you a debt of thanks, not vulgar suspicion. But now, if you please, take me to her.'

  So we clambered back up the hill, Pavlos striding far ahead of me in his haste. Anna waited for us behind her rock. She lay on her belly, covered by her cloak, with only a slender crescent of her pale face showing beneath the cowl. At our approach she sat up, the cloth falling from her hair, which sent forth a bluish glint in the sunlight. She watched us for a moment, then grinned broadly and clapped her hands. 'My rescuers! Brave Pavlos, and my knight of Devonshire.'

  Pavlos hurried to her and, to my astonishment – but what, today, was not astonishing? – knelt before her and took one of her bare feet in his hand.

  'Vassileia,' he moaned. He writhed like a fish in air, gasping what I took to be the most abject apologies in his tongue, until Anna tapped him on the head with a finger, like a baker testing a loaf of bread.

  'Get up, Pavlos,' she said in Occitan. 'I ran away from you, if you remember. I am very sorry, my dear guardsman.'

  "Why, Vassileia? How could you do such a thing?' The poor man was wringing his hands now.

  'I wanted to stretch my limbs, to breathe fresh air. I wanted to be alone! I have not stirred from that… that charnel house for a lifetime. You saw me, Pavlos. I could hardly stand upright! And when I felt my legs begin to work again, I had to use them. So of course I ran.'

  'And the lunatic? Petroc told me, dear Highness. Did he…?'

  'I was wandering about up there, picking heather flowers-' and here she darted me a look, swift as quicksilver, '-simply gathering flowers, and he crept up behind me. I thought I'd had it, I can tell you! God, how he stank. He gave me a good pinching and pawing, I screamed, and then my brave Petroc drove him away, bloody and weeping.' She clapped her hands joyfully once more, like a little girl at play. I blushed at the look of admiration that Pavlos turned upon me. 'I don't know about weeping,' I muttered.

  'Nonsense! You bold warriors, always so very modest. Drove him away, I say, drove him off to die,' Anna insisted, her face all but twitching with mischief. I held up both hands, hoping to change the subject. 'And your leg, how does it feel?' I asked.

  'It is serviceable,' she replied. 'Sore when I lean upon it. It will be stiff tomorrow.'

  We must get you back to the Cormaran,' broke in Pavlos. The Captain is in a mighty rage – although I believe his anger is a disguise for concern. But…' 'I will not go back while the sun shines,' Anna snapped. 'But, Vassileia…' 'I will not, I say!' 'Aghia Panayia… Come, Vassileia, you must.'

  'Here I stay,' Anna repeated, kicking her feet into the grass so that she indeed appeared rooted in place.

  'I will stay here while you warn de Montalhac,' I ventured. 'It is not far to the ship.' I threw a warning look at Anna, who had turned her stubborn glare on me. 'If all is well, we shall come in at nightfall, on any signal you choose.'

  'Did you hurt him to death, Petroc?' Pavlos turned to me. I shrugged, feeling horrible.

  'No!' I said. 'I only kicked his ballocks for him. But he was holding aloft a great boulder, and he dropped it on his own shoulder. I heard it break, like piece of kindling.' 'Exactly where was it?'

  I showed him on my own shoulder. 'I think the stone carried away his ear, too,' I added. He wanted to know how much blood I had seen. For a minute he paced in a tight circle, staring at us through narrowed eyes. Finally he stopped, and dragged his hands across his face.

  'So be it,' he sighed. You will stay here. I do not think your lunatic will be back, and it seems unlikely that there are more of his like about. But, Petroc, I shall bring you something more useful than that,' and he waved a finger at Thorn. 'Can you use a bow?' I nodded – it was true, I had been a fair shot at the abbey, shooting at the butts set up by the river for sport and preparation, for it was not unknown for the monks to go forth armed to drive folk off abbey land. 'Good,' said Pavlos doubtfully. 'I will arrange a signal with the Captain. But if you see one hair of a stranger's head, you will shoot to kill, then run for your lives. Do you swear it?' 'I swear it,' I agreed.

  'I swear nothing,' said Anna stiffly. 'But I will do as Petroc advises me, as he has guided me well thus far.' And she stared at Pavlos down her fine, narrow nose.

  'Thanks be to God,' said the Greek, fervently, and crossed himself once more. 'I shall return with all speed.'

  And he turned and all but ran down the hill. I felt Anna at my side, and heard her laughter, the same laughter that had disturbed my morning bath.

  'Pavlos is a good man,' she said finally, 'but he does fuss over me like an old hen. He has the habits of a palace guard, you see – he can no more break them than… than I can resist making sport of him. I have the habits of the palace too.'

  Where is your palace – your home?' I asked her, hearing the sadness in her voice.

  'In Nicea, which is in Asia Minor, in that part we call Anatolia,' she replied. She looked at me quizzically. 'Do you know where that is?'

  'It is on the eastern shore of the Mare Mediterrane
um,' I said, 'above the lands of Outremer, and east of Byzantium.'

  Well, well! A scholar! My Devonshire boy, you are deeper than the Sea of Darkness,' she said. You did not come by such map-learning amongst that band of cutthroats, I think.'

  'No, you are right,' I said, still watching the small figure of Pavlos as it hurried across the beach. Now he had reached the ship, and disappeared behind the hull. 'But, my lady, very little aboard the Cormaran is what it seems – like bundles of whalebone, for instance,' I added.

  She snorted disparagingly – a most unladylike sound – and, taking my hand, drew me down to the heather. She sat back and crossed her legs like a tailor. Feeling awkward, I knelt before her, as if at prayer.

  You at least are not who you seem to be,' she said. You are too gentle. Oh, I know…' and she held up a hand as if to silence my protest. "You are fearless, I have the proof of it. But you do not seem like one of them… like a pirate, for that is what they are, isn't that true?' 'They are traders,' I mumbled.

  'Oh, rubbish! That de Montalhac is a rogue through and through – a wolf. But a gentleman,' she admitted.

  'And more,' I said. 'They are all… most of them are good men. They saved my life, and took me in like a long-lost brother.'

  'Lord! That ship is manned by a veritable guild of life-savers! And from what did they save yours?'

  'From a man…' I began reluctantly. 'From being hanged for a thing I had no part in.' I hung my head, still sickened at the memory of it all.

  'Peace, Petroc. I have a mocking tongue, but a loving heart. Listen. It is but a little past noon, and we shall be sitting on this great dry mountain for hours to come. As I have fallen amongst traders', and she reached out one leg and prodded me in the thigh with a dirty toe, 'I will trade you my history for yours. And I wager that you get the better bargain, although we shall see. So, is it yes? Do you agree?'

  I considered. I had no great wish to pick over my dark time. The long sea-voyage had healed much, though I could sense Sir Hugh somewhere in the background, lurking like unclean smoke. But looking at this girl, who regarded me so coolly from under those arching brows, and past her at the strange shore upon which we had been thrown together, I realised that I longed to tell my story to someone – all of it, not just the fragments I had let fall in conversation aboard the Cormaran. Only the Captain knew it all, and confiding in the Captain was like consigning a secret to a deep, black pool in which countless other sorrows lay sleeping. 'Well, where should I begin?' I asked. At the beginning, of course,' said she. So I told her everything, from my boyhood on the moors, to the abbey, to gloomy Balecester and all the blood that had flowed there, to Dartmouth and, finally, to this place, this little rock in the ocean. I found I could tell of Will's murder, although my hands began to tremble, and I was glad when Pavlos interrupted me, loping up to drop a longbow and quiver of good, goose-fletched arrows beside me. I saw him appraise the situation, hands on hips, measuring in his mind the distance between his Vassileia and my common self. Apparently satisfied, he left us in peace. Then my tale flowed untrammelled to its ending on this island, hearing Anna's laugh on the wind. When I had finished, I looked up, for I had been gazing at my feet as I spoke, caught up despite myself in the tale I had not wished to drag forth. Anna was staring at me, hugging herself as if to ward off a chill, although the sun was scorching us. Her eyes were red.

  'How great is the misery of this world,' she murmured. 'And how little it seems that the Almighty cares for his creations.'

  I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. She had touched upon the darkest shadow within me; the empty niche that had once held my faith. I wondered if that secret were written on my skin like leprosy, but then Anna grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  'I have wronged you, Petroc,' she said. 'I took you for yet another pirate, although, granted, with a gentle demeanour. But it seems that we are more alike than I thought, you and I. We are both clerics, for a start…' And she laughed, mirthlessly. 'Clerics?' I was startled.

  'Renegade clerics, to be sure,' she agreed. 'Both plucked from the hfe that fate intended for us and cast adrift. Don't I look like a nun? I assure you that I am one.'

  I nodded, confused. 'But be of good cheer, Your Holiness!' she continued. 'Now you must hear my tale, and a good one it is, to all who have not lived it for themselves. I too will start at the very beginning, very far away from your sweet land of Devon.'

  'How do you know of Devon?' I burst out, my curiosity smothering good manners.

  'From the palace guards, the Varangians. There are many English lads among them, and always have been. And that is how I speak your tongue.'

  'I had a suspicion you did not learn it from a nun,' I ventured. She snorted.

  'No, indeed not. But you interrupted. Do you know anything of Byzantium?'

  I shook my head. 'Very little, apart from where it is and the nature of – forgive me – its Schismatic faith.'

  She clicked her tongue in disapproval. 'But do you know how the crusade of the Franks was seduced by the blind serpent Doge Dandolo and took our city from us?' Her breast was heaving, and she had flushed dark pink. I noticed with a disquieting thrill how the glow crept down her neck and beneath her cloak.

  'But, peace on us both,' she sighed, and seemed to compose herself with great effort. She swallowed and began again.

  'Give me an arrow,' she demanded. She used the point to scratch a map into a patch of granite dust between us.

  'This is Greece,' she said, 'And here Anatolia and the Holy Land. Here is Serbia and the lands of the Bulgars. All this-' and she waved a wide circle over the map, '-was the Empire of Byzantium, and the city is here.' She jabbed the arrow point-down into the ground. The Franks took all this,' she went on, scratching away at most of Greece and some of Anatolia, 'and the city itself. And Venice helped herself to our islands.' The arrow was waving alarmingly close to my feet now.

  The Romans set up an Empire in exile here, at Nicea.' She stabbed again, this time at a spot in Anatolia, near to her left knee. 'Do you follow? Now.' The arrow flickered. 'The Despot of Epiros, the Roman prince whose house Pavlos served, held out here, in the west of Greece. I was born in Nicea, here, for I was cheated by the Franks out of my birthright, which was to be born in the Palace of Constantine.' She waved the arrow at me. The sun glinted nastily from the tip. Then she lowered it.

  'I am sorry, Petroc – truly I am. How could you be to blame? But you will find me ill-disposed towards Franks of any sort, I am afraid. With you as the exception… and the Captain, and Gilles. There is something most un-Frankish about those men.'

  'There you are right,' I said. Then, catching her eye, I risked all. Will you get to it, then?'

  'As you wish,' she said, looking daggers at me. Then she grinned, and I saw once more where she had lost a tooth.

  You will be spared the full horror,' she said. She pointed behind me with the arrow, then stuck it in the ground between us. 'The Captain is here. But I will not cheat you out of my tale, for I had yours in good faith. So, quickly then. As I said, I was born in Nicea. I am the third child of the Emperor's brother – the Emperor John Doukas Vatatzes. As is the fate of royal girls, I was destined to be… to find an expedient husband. I was only three years old when the King of Norway, Haakon, whom his subjects called The Old, decided that I would make a fine match for his second son. I was betrothed to a surrogate, and as I grew older I hardly thought about my husband – whom I knew only from his image on a medal: a handsome boy ten years my elder – until my thirteenth year when the Norse ambassador came for me.

  'The journey… I am sure you can imagine it. And when I came to Trondheim castle, a great mossy kennel, I found that my handsome princeling had died of the pox six months before and now, waste not want not, I would marry the next son in line, Stefan, a pallid, holy worm. He had been intended for the Church and the finest bishopric in Norway, and I had spoiled everything. Oh Christ, Petroc, there is so much to tell, yet there is no time.'

  H
er eyes were beginning to redden, so without thinking I took her hand. She squeezed it gratefully. 'So I was married to this… this cold, slimy…' 'Toad?' I suggested, helpfully.

  'No! Toads are wise, they carry a jewel in their heads. My husband… he hated me. He would not share our bed. He lay on the stone floor and prayed and cursed me by turns, and when at last I tried to reason with him he struck me on the ear and left. I never saw him again. Good. But the ladies of the court found my blood on the bed-linen the next day, and they declared the marriage consummated. Then…' she looked up, and now I could hear footsteps crunching through the heather.

  When it was clear I was not with child, they exiled me,' she said, 'to a nunnery in Greenland. Worse than death – and that was why. But I escaped. I made friends with the Bishop, and… Anyway, he has a thread of kindness in him, and he is an exile too, of course. He told me of the Seigneur de Montalhac, and after I had survived another winter your ship arrived. The Captain agreed to carry me to Venice, where many of my people dwell in exile. Then I slipped from the nunnery, met Pavlos, who kissed my feet! Dear God! They bundled me up in a load of whalebone – most uncomfortable -and here I am.'

  We were holding hands, our fingers wound tighdy together so that the hot sand scratched. She looked into my eyes.

  'Two dead children, fallen off the edge of the world,' she murmured, and bit her lip. I saw that she was about to cry.

  'I would say that you are a woman and a princess, and very much alive,' I said. 'And for a poor drowned monk, I feel quite cheerful as well.'

  And so we sat, hand in hand, until the Captain and Pavlos strode up between the boulders. I slid a seemly distance from Anna and picked up the bow, hoping that I looked diligent and dangerous. I could tell by the way the skin between her eyebrows puckered that I was convincing no one. We were both choking down laughter by the time the two men came up to us. 'No demons to report,' I told them.