Relics bp-1

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  He straightened up and turned to face us, dagger carelessly dangled from loose fingers. Then he dropped it.

  'For fuck's sake!' he said, and pushed back the hood with both hands.

  'For…' he started to say again, but by that time I had him round the waist and was laughing and sobbing in turn. When at last I was able to speak, it was to Anna.

  'My love,' I said, Will has come back from the dead to save us: my dear friend Will.'

  Will and I stood there, beyond speech, deaf to the sounds of the world. Not so Anna, to whom my friend was nothing more than a name from a long tale. She bent down and retrieved Will's dagger, pushing the hilt briskly back into his palm. 'Put your weapons away, boys,' she snapped.

  I looked down at the corpse at my feet. Not much blood had flowed from his wound – the thrust had killed him outright -but the sight of one pale eye staring up beside a dark pool where its twin should be brought my own senses back. Will was staring at the other two corpses. I tottered over to the man I had killed. His lips were drawn back, and through a sheen of black blood his teeth glimmered yellow. I felt my gorge rise. Anna was looking around at the other two corpses. 'Drop that,' she ordered, pointing to the sword which dangled in my limp hand. Her own sword was already back in hiding beneath her cloak. 'There are three men dead, and we must not be here when they are discovered. Come now!' And she grabbed me by the elbows and shook hard.

  We'll drag this one into the doorway over there, next to his mate,' she said briskly. I didn't argue, and Will and I grabbed an ankle apiece. I could not help staring, a stupid grin on my face despite the horror all around, at my friend. Short minutes ago he had been as dead to me as the corpse we now hauled, skull bouncing on stone, over to where Benno lay. There was blood here, to be sure. We dumped the cudgel-man across Benno. I bent over the crumpled swordsman and pulled at Thorn. I had to put my foot on his chest and wrench the blade out. When I stood up again, Anna and Will were looking at the corpses as if they were cabbages on a market stand. 'If we hew at this fellow with the other's axe, it might seem as if they killed each other,' Will said, as if discussing a grammatical point in the Epistles. Anna was nodding thoughtfully. Then we heard footsteps and voices, and above us a rusty shutter was wrestled open.

  'Leave them!' I had found my voice. 'Hurry, for God's sake -we'll be seen.'

  She grabbed my hand. And you,' she said, turning to Will. 'Stay if you like or come with us to the river, but come now!'

  I turned to Will. He cocked his head towards the fast-approaching voices. Then his face broke into the wolfish grin I remembered so well.

  'The river? Let's run, then,' he said, and without another word took off down the street. Anna shoved her satchel at me. 'And there,' she hissed, pointing to where her absurd green hat lay next to the dead swordsman. I snatched it up and then we were chasing Will pell-mell along the cobbles. He ducked into another side street, still running, and we followed. Will knew his way through the maze of the city, and cut up and down three more alleys. Anna ran alongside me, her clothes hitched up around her knees. All too soon I felt my chest tighten and my limbs grow heavy. From Anna's tight grimace I knew she was flagging too. We had spent too long cramped aboard the Cormaran. Our limbs had all but withered on our bodies. I knew that, very soon, I would be able to run no further. Then Will ducked out of sight again, and following, we almost ran into him. He had stopped and was peering round a corner. Looking over his shoulder, I saw we had reached a broad street at the end of which, and very near, a gate rose against the lightening sky.

  'The Porte Saint Eloi,' whispered Will. 'It will be opening in a minute or so. We'll walk through nice and quietly. You two are the lord and lady, and I'm your bodyguard, just behind you with my head down. If they hail us, perhaps the lady-' and he nodded politely at Anna,'-should answer. And cover yourself up, Patch. You're a mite bloody.'

  I had no idea how far we had just run, but there were no sounds of pursuit. The bodies had surely been discovered by now, though, and it would be to the gates that the Watch would first send word. We had to slip through before that happened. I looked down at myself. Dimitri would curse me for sure when he saw what I had done to my tunic. I wrapped myself in my cloak, shuddering as the blood-dampened clothing pressed against my skin. I still had Anna's hat scrunched in my fist. I hid it away in the satchel. Anna did not look like one who had just run for her life through strange alleyways. Her cheeks were alive with colour, but when she dropped the hem of her robe and drew herself up I almost gasped at the way the princess emerged from the panting fugitive. She unclasped her hood and pushed it back. Gold mesh shone against black hair. I doubted, all of a sudden, that if anyone had witnessed the fight, they would believe that this regal creature could have been within a mile of such vulgar goings-on. I hoped I looked like enough of a gentleman to be her escort. I doubted it. And Will: Will was the perfect cutthroat. I studied him for a moment. He wore a hood with a long, trailing point that hung far down his back. His black surcoat was unadorned. He wore it over a long, leather cuirass the colour of old blood that hung down to his knees. Muddy high-boots were drawn over undyed wool hose.

  What do you say, Patch?' he asked, feeling my eyes upon him.

  I grabbed the front of his surcoat and shook it gently. You are a soldier,' I said, wondering.

  'I am,' he said. 'And a sergeant-at-arms, no less. My company is the black boar, under Sir Andrew Hardie.' 'I thought you were dead, Will!' I blurted.

  Well, I knew you must be.' He reached out and prodded me in the stomach. 'Real enough, though,' he said. When Kervezey… But let's wait. I am a stranger to your lady, and that must be remedied.' He turned to Anna, and made a perfect courtier's bow that sent his hood flopping down over his eyes.

  Anna looked at me over Will's back, her eyebrows high arches of bemused enquiry.

  Will,' I said, before he could open his mouth, 'This is Anna Doukaina Komnena, Princess Royal, niece of the Emperor John Doukas of Byzantium.'

  He straightened up with a jerk and looked from Anna to me and back again, his face a study in bemusement.

  'Oh, come on, Patch, I never…' he started, but a sound from the street behind us cut him off. There were shouts, a creaking and groaning, thuds.

  Anna peeped around the corner. 'The gates are open,' she said.

  'Right,' I said. They would hang us all three times over while we explained everything to each other. Anna, your cloak. Straighten your tunic. Can you see any blood on me? Good. Will, two paces behind, I think, don't you?'

  'Right you are,' said Will. 'Give me that bag, Patch. Chin up, and act the nobleman, for Jesus' sake.'

  I hooked my arm through Anna's and we stepped out into the wide street. It was decidedly lighter now, and the sky had cleared. The last stars were burning fiercely overhead, but a glow was creeping in from the east. I did raise my chin and tried to look regal. Beside me, Anna paced calmly. Her face was an utter blank. I could hear Will pad along behind us. The gate was close. It was set in a slender tower in the city's curtain wall, a minor entryway but still guarded, I saw, by three or four helmeted men armed with halberds. A trickle of folk were already seeping in, pushing carts or staggering under sacks and bales, traders hoping to steal a march on the competition. There seemed to be no one leaving. There were four guards, I saw, sleepy and leaning on their halberds. They paid little heed to the traders, but they noticed us. The tallest straightened and nudged his fellows. I heard our shoes scrape, tap, scrape on the stones. Perhaps we could fight our way through… but these men were armoured. I saw mail shirts and leggings. I chewed on the inside of my cheek and prayed that I looked lordly.

  As we reached the gate, the tallest guard, whom I took to be the sergeant, shouldered his halberd and stepped towards us.

  'Good morrow to you, my lord, my lady,' he said. 'It is an early morning to be setting off, to be sure.'

  'Early it is, but we are late,' I said, in the best French I could muster, looking at the soldier down my nose. I am decievin
g no one, I thought wildly to myself. And indeed the guard's look seemed to sharpen.

  Just as I thought his fingers were tightening on his pikestaff, Anna swept off her hood, revealing her hair in its golden prison. In the half-dawn her skin was very white.

  'Do they presume to bandy words with you, my lord?' she asked me, turning her head deliberately from the guards.

  'So it seems,' I said. Anna's gaze was drilling into me. I understood what was required.

  We have no time to waste with fools,' I barked. 'You will bow down before the Princess Doukaina Komnena, and keep your eyes on the ground where they belong as we pass by.'

  The sergeant stared, slack-jawed, at Anna. She did not flinch, but drew her right hand slowly from her cloak. For a horrible moment I thought she was drawing her sword. But instead she held out her hand to the man. On her third finger, huge and heavy, was a ring I had never seen before. The man gawped at it, and dropped to his knees with a crunch of chain-mail. The others, watching, followed suit.

  "Your pardon, Highness,' he mumbled. 'My men are good boys, and this is only the Porte Saint Eloi – we don't get…' The poor man was almost wringing his hands. We beg your forgiveness.'

  And so we passed through, killers, defilers of churches, fornicators and outlaws, as armed men grovelled in the dung. I felt their eyes on our backs as we paced on, turning to our right towards the grander turrets of the Porte de Cailhau. There was a wide open space before us, over which a few figures were moving. A little way ahead, tents had sprung up and men were milling about, lighting fires and coughing noisily. Beyond them the wharves began. I could barely keep my steps even as we strolled over the well-trodden marsh-grass, breathing in the soft air of morning and the salt of the Gironde. It seemed like a thousand years before we reached the clutch of tents and passed among them. Will was at my side at once.

  That was well done, my boy,' he said. I saw that he was as white as a sheet, but still grinning. 'It was lovely, the way those bastards got down in the stink.' We aren't safe yet,' I muttered.

  'From them we are,' he replied. 'They won't say a solitary word about this to anyone. They're town men. If the town got wind that they'd shamed a great lady and her retinue, there would be whippings all round. No, they'll keep mum.'

  'Not much of a retinue, though,' I said. 'They must have been suspicious of us on foot – Anna should have been aboard a snow-white palfrey at the very least.'

  And I on a mule, I suppose,' said Will. 'No, we fooled everyone. By the way, I forgot to tell you about the crossbowmen. Two at least, above the gate in the tower. I'll bet their eyes were out on stalks.' 'Crossbowmen?' Anna and I said together.

  "They clean slipped my mind,' Will said happily. Then his face grew serious. ‘Your Highness, you truly are… a princess?'

  She fixed Will with her most imperious stare, the one that could reduce Pavlos to tears. Then she smiled. 'I am. And you, if my guess is right, are a Northumbrian. Alnwick?' 'Morpeth,' stammered Will, aghast. 'How on earth…?' 'I am a princess,' she said, happily.

  Will was still gawping, so I linked arms with him as I had done so many times in another life. 'She is indeed a princess,' I explained, 'But she had English guards – what do you call them, Anna? Valerians?' 'Varangians, idiot,' she laughed.

  'Anyway, she speaks better English than… than you, certainly, you sheep-shagger.'

  'Christ!' muttered Will, awestruck. I had never seen him so amazed and, feeling a great surge of joy, I grabbed Anna with my other arm and, three abreast, we tripped through the dewy grass like milkmaids on their way to the fair.

  When we were beyond the tents and breathing a little more easily, Anna picked up her trailing hems and I pushed back my hood. The day was arriving, and the sun crept up behind us and flooded the river with gold. We were coming to a part of the wharf I recognised. There were the sea-steps where the long-boat had dropped us off yesterday. This was the spot where the bowman had run into Anna. A wave of nausea hit me suddenly, and I put my hand on Anna's shoulder. Beyond the nausea I felt a black cloud of guilt, of horror, crawling towards me. I looked out into the river. There was the Cormaran, radiant in the new light. And there, sitting on the sea-steps, were Pavlos and Elia, with the long-boat bobbing below them.

  Pavlos saw us first. He leaped to his feet, almost lost his footing on the slimy weed, and staggered up onto the wharf. His face looked like a skull, so dark were the hollows around his eyes, put there by worry and, I had no doubt, the work of the poppy. Never taking his eyes from Anna, he reeled towards us and threw himself to the ground at her feet. He seemed to be trying to kiss her shoes. Anna tried to pull them away.

  ' Vassileia’. Before the Panayia I beg you, forgive your servant Pavlos… I have abandoned you like a Judas! False friend and false servant! Holy mother and all the holy saints believe me, I…'

  'Come now, Pavlos,' said Anna, in the tone that I had come to think of as her Vassileia voice – regal and a trifle exasperated. 'Let us put it from our minds. You must have been tired, dear man. But I was in good hands, and quite safe. You are quite forgiven. Let us put it from our minds and never speak of it again.' And she patted him on the head. He looked up adoringly and only then did he notice Will.

  My friend was standing at my side, staring unconcernedly out to sea. He saw Pavlos jump to his feet and turned to face him with a look I had never seen before: blandly pleasant with an inner flickering of alertness, even menace. He gave Pavlos a curt nod. 'G'morrow,' he said.

  Pavlos narrowed his eyes. The same dangerous flicker played over his face. 'Who are you, then, my friend?' he asked.

  I hastily laid a hand on Will's shoulder, as if to claim him. 'Pavlos, it has been a night of horrors and wonders, but there has never been a wonder like this: my greatest friend in the world, whom I saw die, has returned to life. This is William of Morpeth, former scholar and cleric, now… what would you call yourself, Will?'

  'Hungry!' he said, and the spell was broken. The Greek smiled a little, then held out his hand. To my enormous relief Will took it and gave it a good warm shake. 'To answer Patch's question properly, I would call myself a soldier, which is what I take you for, friend Pavlos.' 'Returned from the dead? Is this so?' Pavlos asked. Will chuckled. The Greek was opening his satchel and offering Will a hunk of bread. I let out a deep sigh and looked about me. Elia peered sheepishly over the edge of the dock. Anna waved regally in his direction. It was rather dreadful to see his face light up. I walked carefully over to the sea-wall and sat down, dangling my legs over the edge. The memory of the swordsman's innards clenching and unclenching around my blade had come back to me unbidden, and for a moment I felt faint. What had I done? I looked at my hands and they were streaked and stained with red. My fingernails were black. I wanted to wash them, but the wall was too high, so I tucked them beneath my legs instead. The sharp brine-soaked air felt clean and reviving, and in a few moments I could look at the Cormaran in the distance without the urge to puke.

  You do not look well, my friend,' said Elia from the gig. I shook my head.

  My mind was starting to turn again, slowly, and I forced myself to think. There must be witnesses to the fight, although would the deaths of three murderous rogues cause any great upset? I must talk to the Captain, and soon, I decided, and stood up.

  'Pavlos,' I said, 'There is something you must know. Hardly an hour ago, the lady Anna and I were attacked by… three men, English archers. One of them was the fellow who had words with us last morning. They are dead. Anna – I mean the Vassileia – killed one, I another, Will the last. We ran, but we must, must have been seen. The gatemen did not suspect us and dared not obstruct the princess. But there will surely be a hue and cry. I think we should make our way back to the Cormaran now, if we can.'

  As I said my piece, Pavlos' eyes had widened, then narrowed. Now he looked me up and down, and I believe I saw something like admiration in his stare. 'Killed, you say,' he snapped. You know this?' Yes,' I nodded. "Where were they wounded? Tell me quick.' 'One
in the throat, one in the chest, one in the eye.' 'The chest-wound – he died?' "Yes… he died.' You are sure.' 'I am sure.' Why? Hard to be sure, with a chest-wound.'

  'Because,' I said through clenched teeth, the sickness rising once again from my stomach, 'I cut him all to pieces inside. I felt him die.' Pavlos nodded, all business. 'The eye – he was dead.' 'For certain,' said Will, cheerfully. You are sure?' Will shrugged. 'I stirred his brains around a bit.' 'Good lad. And the throat?' Pavlos cocked his head at Anna. 'Oh, yes,' said Anna.

  'I am sorry, Vassileia. But it is important that none of these creatures lived, even for a little while, to tell tales. And… Petroc said you killed him, this bowman?' It was plain he did not believe that such a thing might be possible.

  'She did, Pavlos. One thrust. And fought the other like a…' I paused. I had been about to say 'like a man', but that seemed, I thought, inadequate. She had fought like a flame, like an archangel with a fiery sword. 'She is a warrior,' I said instead. 'Truly.' 'Vassileia?' asked Pavlos.

  Anna shrugged. 'I was raised by our Varangians,' she said. You know that. They let me watch while they trained. I would join in. They thought I showed promise, I suppose, so they taught me.' 'I knew many Varangians,' said Pavlos, wistfully.

  'My fencing master was a Hereford man,' said Anna. 'Fourth son of a knight. The best swordsman in Greece – his name was John de Couville.' 'Eh!' gasped Pavlos, crossing himself. 'Kovils! He taught you? Po po po…' He ran a thumb back and forth across his mouth.

  The sun is getting high,' prompted Anna. Pavlos dragged his hand across his eyes, and looked up. He was smiling -faintly and with a certain lack of conviction, but smiling nonetheless.

  'Well, my Vassileia,' he said, 'perhaps some fencing lessons? If, that is, you are taking on new pupils.' He blinked like an owl in the daylight, and we blinked back at him in surprised relief. 'Meanwhile, back to the ship with us all, before difficult questions are asked.' He paused and turned to Will, then jerked his chin up and regarded him down the length of his lordly nose. And you. What shall we do with you, O risen one?'