The Vault of bones bp-2

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  'Good morrow, young Patch’ he said thickly. 'I suppose it is the morrow? I believe you had a better slumber than me.' 'I did not see… How long have you been there, sir?'

  'Since Isaac put you out with his finest sleeping draught. And that was a little after sunset yesterday’ 'Isaac took a little of his own medicine’ I said absently.

  'And well he might’ said the Captain, standing up and stretching. 'He had not left your side for nearly two days and nights. We thought we were losing you, boy. Your life was smouldering like wet peat, and Isaac tended you without pause.' 'When I awoke then, I could remember nothing’ I whispered. 'But now… everything is pain.' You nearly died’ said the Captain.

  Would that I had!' I cried. 'I understand nothing, and yet she is dead, which I seem to know, and I… I am alive? Dear God, how has it come to this?'

  'Pain is to be expected. But Isaac told me that your pain might be beyond the reach of his skills. Indeed we both wondered whether your body was sick at all, for it seemed that, even though you were hurt from your fall, you grew far more sick than your injury merited. Isaac wondered if you had lost your will to live.' 'I wish to die.' 'Indeed. But you still live…'

  I sat down heavily on the bed. 'I can see Anna turning away from me, and a door closing. Then nothing until I woke last night. Yet I know she is dead.'

  Well, you seem to have lost a full three weeks of your life’ said the Captain. Then he attempted a grin. 'Good riddance, ‘I’d say. They were unalloyed misery for you, lad. You had been sunk in a deathly gloom since we left London’ Then the grin vanished as he dropped his head into his hands and rubbed his eyes cheerlessly.

  I did not reply, but lay down and turned my face to the wall. I hardly cared that the Captain was still talking, indeed his voice faded away into a thin, distant hiss, for I had been engulfed by a swift, searing tide of pain. It was the returning memory of all that I had forgotten, and it travelled like cold fire along every nerve, every vein, every bone in my body. I shook as if with the ague, and tears dropped from my eyes and soaked into the sheets. Perhaps I might die now, I thought feebly. Please, let this be death.

  But it was not death, at least not mine. As one feels a knife-thrust first as simply a dull blow, the pain coming along with the realisation that there is a blade in one's flesh, so I was first stunned by the remembering of my loss, then pinned and writhing, the blade of memory twisting in my heart. I closed my streaming eyes, and through the tears, as if in a scrying glass, I saw it all. I came to my senses later. The room was empty, and the day was fading outside. Sparrows were chatting on the windowsill. I raised my face from the wet bolster, to find something there that shone warm in the dimming light. I reached for it.

  It was Anna’s locket, a square of filigreed gold that enclosed a tiny panel of ivory, upon which some careful hand in the time of Constantine had placed the image of Saint George spearing his dragon. It was cold to the touch, of course. I had never felt it so, for its rightful place had always been the freckled hollow where her breasts began to rise. I opened it. Inside, like a tiny window on to the blackness beyond the stars, lay the plait of Anna's hair. I lifted it to my face and inhaled the scent that still clung, strong as life, to the dead strands: gillieflowers, Anna’s own smell.

  Time does not stand still, nor does it run backwards. But for an instant I felt her fingers again, warm on my cheek, and heard her slow, deep laugh, so full of delight and passion. Then the sparrows commenced some little war over a crumb, and I was alone again but for the ethereal breath of gillieflowers.

  The next day I awoke half-fogged with pain and confusion, and could not even lift my head. Isaac attended me with his bitter draughts, but they did nothing, for it seemed I was filled up with bitter already, as if my blood had turned to wormwood. Muttering about the balance of my humours, he retired to consult his books, for I was not feverish, merely clubbed with malaise, and my mind, infected with the same bitter gall, wandered through the cold, stinking mists of London in search of Anna that I might close her staring eye.

  So I lay, my room dark, while visitors came and went like wraiths, their voices nothing but faint hissing in my ears. I was racked by nervous pains and stabbings, but I could not move, for I was rendered immobile by an invisible pall, heavy as chain mail, that pinned me to the sheets. I do not know how long this state of affairs continued, but candles had been lit, so the day must have slipped away when I opened my eyes to find a grey face staring down at me. Grey skin, grey eyes. Thick, beetling eyebrows the colour of pewter. A black hood pulled tight under a grey stubbled chin.

  'Are you with us, boy?' The voice was strong, gravelly. The man spoke in English, but he was not an Englishman. Who are you?' I said. Why can't you all leave me alone?'

  'Feeling sorry for yourself, my lad. Good. Oh, very good, indeed. Self-pity is the strongest of all the emotions save love, and even then… Can you move your limbs at all?' I tried. I could, feebly, like a beetle on its back. The paralysis is passing off. Close your eyes. What do you see?' 'Nothing.' 'Nothing at all?' 'No. Darkness.' 'Darkness is not nothing.'

  I opened my eyes again. My visitor was peering at one of Isaac's physic bottles. He sniffed it, and grimaced, a clown's mask of distaste. I laughed. At once the man's eyes fixed themselves to mine and held me there. 'Who are you, Master?' I asked once again.

  'Michael Scotus,' he told me. Of course: he was a Scot, although his tongue was much laced with the lilts of other, warmer places.

  'Who summoned you?' I wanted to know. 'Isaac? Do you know Isaac?'

  'I did not know your worthy Jew before today,' he replied. 'Although we have much in common, for we both studied our art in Toledo, and we have passed a fine afternoon in discourse while you lingered in your shadows. You have been in excellent hands. I was, I daresay, not needed at all.' Then…'

  'I am here at the bidding of His Holiness the Pope. His Eminence heard of your indisposition, and wondered if my humble talents might be of some service to you.'

  The pope? What cares… I mean to say, I am exceedingly grateful. But…' I struggled to sit up and succeeded in propping myself against the bolsters and the wall. Michael Scotus was regarding me.

  'You occupy a small but important corner of a surprisingly small world, lad.' He laid a long, long-nailed finger alongside his nose. 'So: you are well. Isaac has cured you. You are young, your body is strong. If you were going to die of your fall, you would have done so by now. So. What ails you then, lad?'

  'I grieve’ I blurted out. I did not know this odd doctor, if doctor he was, but something about him made words leap from my mouth.

  'Grief. You have lost someone’ I nodded, praying he would ask no more. ‘Whom did you lose?’ 'My love’ I muttered. 'My lady love’

  'How do you feel?' His eyes seemed to reach into my head and force the words out of me.

  'If I could vomit up my soul, and have it drop into the palm of my hand like a golden coin, and then pitch it into the deepest, blackest well that has ever been, I would not feel so bereft:’ I said.

  'It dizzies you, then’ He seemed to be pondering, though what was so complicated about my state I failed to see.

  'Listen to me, sir’ I began. 'My woman – her name was Anna – is dead. She was barely one and twenty. She was kicked in the head by a horse and died of an apoplexy’ 'And could you have saved her?'

  I took a deep breath. 'It was fate. If I had been quicker, perhaps the horse would have kicked me instead. An instant more, an instant less, and the hooves would have missed her. I… it is not that I could have saved her, sir; it is that I was not..’ 'She died alone?'

  'No, no, sir. I was with her. Many of us… It was beyond the art of man to heal her wound. Her skull.. ‘ I broke off, wincing. 'And so you saw her die?' 'I did’ 'And it was dreadful’

  'She had not found, ah…' I choked back a sob. 'Repose. She was, my friend – whoever you are – ruined. As perfect a creature that ever blessed this world, mangled by a horse, by a fucking dray horse in a shi
t-splattered London alley. And I cannot see her as she was in life, but only as she lay, all cold and stiff, her face stove in, her eye – oh, Christ! You speak of being dizzied? Her eye will not close, sir! I cannot close her eye!'

  The doctor leaned forward and laid his hands on my shoulder. His gaze was scalding. 'Look into that eye. What do you see?' 'No! I cannot!' 'Look!'

  I shuddered and kicked as a white orb, slick and silken as a pearl, swelled and grew dull like some ghastly night-sown fungus, an earthball pregnant with spores of death; then it was the winter moon, then a great cloud, seething and mounting up over sea and land, roiling. I managed to shriek feebly, like a coney in a snare, then Michael Scot was holding a basin for me as I puked myself raw.

  'There, there. It is over. You are done. Good lad, good lad.'

  I gulped and gagged, then found my breath. The chain-mail quilt seemed to have left me. You are not sick, lad: you are haunted.'

  'Haunted? Do you mean that Anna…' I tried to shake the thought from my head. In my land, folk believed that those who died badly could not let their loved ones be, but harried and hunted them to death. People, healthy, young people, sickened and faded and died for no reason. I had seen it happen. As a novice monk I had sung my first mass over a ghost-struck corpse. But I did not feel her near me. I felt nothing. 'She might possess me?'

  'No! Dear God, no. Why, do you believe she does? That would be altogether too simple, I think. No, you are possessed by a great melancholy – ach, half a lifetime spent studying in the finest schools in Christendom, to bring you that diagnosis!'

  I laughed despite myself, which set off another bout of retching, which in turn brought Isaac clattering into the room.

  'Good Master Michael! What are you about?' he cried, seizing my wrist and feeling for my pulse.

  'Good Doctor Isaac, I have made my diagnosis – lad, what did I say ails you?'

  'Melancholy, apparently,' I replied, submitting to a barrage of prods and probings from Isaac's anxious fingers. Truth to tell, I was indeed feeling considerably better.

  Well, well, well,' Isaac answered, seriously. Who would have thought it?' Then he straightened up and turned to Michael. 'He is prone to it,' he told him. 'There was a bad episode – not as bad as this, mind – two or so years ago.'

  'And you treated it how?' the Scotsman replied, deferentially. Then to my surprise the two men turned away and began to mutter excitedly in what I realised was Arabic. The only word I understood was Aristotle, who both mentioned again and again, although what that obscure old Greek had to do with my affliction I could not imagine. Feeling bold as only a man with a brimming basin of vomit sloshing in his lap can, I called out to them that this was no philosophy school.

  'Ah, Patch. The good Michael here was discussing a theory of Aristotle concerning black bile, and I was countering with the teachings of the great ben Maimon, whom you know as Maimonides. Do you like the music of lutes, dear friend?' 'I do not know. I have never really thought about it. Why?'

  'Ibn Sina – your Averroes – prescribes the music of stringed instruments for your particular sickness’ Michael Scot put in. 'Shall I send some musicians?' 'I pray you, do not!' I insisted.

  'He is much recovered’ mused Isaac. 'What exactly did you do?'

  'I merely applied that which is set out in the Poetics of Aristode and developed by Averroes. To whit, I challenged the dark humour by holding up a mirror to it’ 'And only that? Extraordinary’

  'It is a beginning. I believe I may accomplish a complete cure, but I will require some time to prepare. Master Petroc, I will see you again’ And without another word he embraced Isaac, turned to regard me for another piercing instant, and stalked from the room. I had not noticed until that moment that he was tall, and though he must have been all of sixty years if not more, he did not stoop, and moved like a man half his age.

  'Is that it? Who was that very odd fellow?' I demanded of Isaac as soon as the door had closed.

  'Michael Scotus’ he spread his arms wide, palms open to heaven. 'A prodigy, and a gift from… I know not where.' You know him, then?' 'His fame is, one might say, legendary’ said Isaac with a touch of professional hauteur. 'Nevertheless…'

  'No, no, you are right. Famous to those such as myself. He was still spoken of at Toledo, although he had been gone two decades or more when I was a student. Strange, though. I believed he had died’ 'Plainly not’

  'Quite so. But there were reports… quite definite ones. The pope – this one, Gregory whatever he is – recommended him for Archbishop of Canterbury, but the English would not have him. Tis said he returned to his homeland and died of disappointment’

  Why wouldn't they have him?' I enquired, feeling strong enough at last to move the reeking basin on to the night stand.

  ‘Um. Well, the ignorant often… our profession is ill-understood by the mass of humanity, my friend. Our services are needed but feared, for – so it seems to them – we hold sway over life and death. Would that it were so,' he added, pouring me another draught of some noxious, syrupy physic. 'But in the case of our worthy Scot, whose talents and interests stretched much, much further than the healing of the sick, the ignorant painted him with their most foul slur. Not so incredible, perhaps: he spent many years at the court of the Emperor Frederick, who is so repellent to the pious amongst your people. But this was a man, Petroc, who knew the greatest minds of his age, who understood Ibn Sina, Ibn'Rushd, Maimon, whose intellect reached back deep into the pagan ages to discourse with Aristotle…'

  'But what was the charge?' I rasped, my throat flayed by whatever I had just swallowed.

  'Sorcery. What else?' he answered, picking up the basin and leaving me to my thoughts, which, suddenly unencumbered by the crushing weight of melancholia, were circling and cawing like gulls about a herring boat. Whatever Michael Scot had done to me – and I could not recall him having done anything at all, save make me puke -I began to recover, for in truth there was barely anything the matter with my body, and my strange doctor had, I thought, somehow released my natural energies so that the vitality of youth, and the impatience, began to flow once more. So in a day I had left my room, and before another three days had passed I was pacing about the rooms that the Captain had taken for us, and which seemed to occupy an entire floor of some ancient and labyrinthine building. Most of the crew had stayed with the ship, but Horst the Swabian, Zianni the Venetian and a couple of others had come to help with city business. My wanderings had begun to annoy my companions, I would guess, for I was pestering Zianni one afternoon when he snapped his fingers under my nose.

  'Listen, my invalid, you are more irritating than a bot-fly. Why do you not go outside?'

  I… I do not know this city,' I stammered, taken aback. Indeed, why had I not left the building? 'I was waiting for Isaac to give me a clean bill of health, I suppose.' 'Right, then, I shall see to it that he does, immediately.'

  Isaac did indeed pronounce me free of his care that very afternoon, and did so with a smile in which I detected a hint of relief. He sent me to see the Captain, whom I found in his room, talking with Gilles, who had just returned from a couple of days with the Cormaran, which lay at Ostia.

  'What cheer, lad?' he asked brightly. I hunched my shoulders. 'None at all, but I am up,' I said. 'Have you told Gilles of your strange physician?'

  'I have not,' I said, and gave him the story. It left him exchanging looks of frank puzzlement with the Captain. 'The Michael Scotus?' said Gilles at last. 'He is dead.'

  'So Isaac told me. Was he a revenant, Patch? Did he carry a whiff of the grave?' 'Not at all. He was as lively as a foal.'

  'But terrifying, surely?' Gilles pressed. 'His reputation is – Good Christ, I have known of him since first I learned to read!'

  'Not terrifying, but very intent, I would say. I felt as if he peered right inside me. In fact…'

  The Captain interrupted, fortunately, and saved me from reliving the horrible vision the grey man had stirred up in my mind's eye. 'Sent by Pop
e Gregory himself. Is that not curious? I did not think we merited such favour.'

  'Nor did I. Curious that His Holiness even knows we are here – but he is a customer, so no doubt he has been expecting us.'

  'Indeed, I did send word of our arrival to the Lateran Palace,' said the Captain, looking unconvinced. 'If indeed old Gregory is even there. And of course we do have some… some items that will interest him. But to send his own physician…'

  'He loves us, it is plain,' said Gilles. 'But in point of fact, Scotus is not the pope's physician. That is a fellow by the name of… oh, I forget. A Cypriot, very fat. And so far as I know, Scotus was the emperor's man, his tutor, I believe, and of course his necromancer, if you believe the chatter of the mob. Nonsense, of course, but… No, I have it. He died five years ago, in Edinburgh.'

  'Another Michael Scotus, maybe?' I ventured. 'But Isaac thought he was the real article. And how could he be a necromancer if the pope marked him as Archbishop of Canterbury?'

  'Necromancer or not, he has mended our Patch,' said the Captain, and squeezed my shoulder.

  Later, after we had dined on hotly spiced ox-tails, various strange but delightfully chewy entrails and an assortment of bitter greens washed down with a pale, somewhat thin wine, the Captain wiped the gravy from his beard.

  'Now then, Gilles. It is high time we introduced our young friend to the city of Rome.' My last clear recollections were of the grey, muddy streets of London, so stepping out into the warm afternoon light of Rome was perhaps the greatest shock I had yet received since waking from my long slumber, and from the numb revenant's existence I had led since Anna's death. For almost my whole life, Rome had been like a lodestone to my thoughts. The greatest city on earth, where Peter and Paul and countless other martyrs had met their glorious deaths. Seat of the Holy Father, and the place where Caesar had walked, and Nero, Cicero, Virgil… And my journey here had been like a miracle. I had been borne here, unconscious and unknowing, and my awakening had been a sort of resurrection. These and a cloud of other portentous thoughts were whirling around my head as I waited for a servant in sober livery to unlatch the huge, studded street door. Then it swung open, and we strode out into the city.