The Vault of bones bp-2

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Chapter Eight

  When I awoke the next day and made to rise, I found that while I slept I had been bludgeoned by a great fatigue which clung to my limbs like leaden chain mail. I felt as if I had walked a hundred miles, and I had neither the strength nor the will to get out of bed. My landlady, a widow endowed with a kindlier heart than most boarding-house owners, decided that I had caught a cold, and took it upon herself to keep me fed after Isaac the physician had called around that first day and found me fretting and foul of temper. So I lay, looking at the cracks in the ceiling, drinking the widow's excellent soup, which tasted no better than Tiber water to me, and trying to predict the movements of the little sticky-footed lizards who roamed the walls in search of flies. Finally Isaac thought to bring me something to read, to whit, extracts from Pliny the Elder and the same map that we had pored over that day back at the Palazzo Frangipani. Tliny is for your amusement, but he will teach you about the country you will be riding through’ he told me. 'But this – and he waved the map – 'is work. The Cormaran is leaving Ostia tomorrow, and you should think of leaving for Venice as soon as you have got your strength back.' 'Has Baldwin returned?' I asked, weakly. 'He was not there this morning’ said Isaac. 'But he may be now. Why don't you see for yourself?' I sat up. In truth I did not feel particularly ill, but my strength, as Isaac had noticed, had ebbed a little more than my sickness merited. I thought it was the lingering effect of my fall, but Isaac shook his head and tutted. You are still pining, my friend’ he said gently. 'I am not! I am ill’ I protested.

  'Nonsense’ he said, kindly. 'I can see it in your eyes’ I snorted. 'No, no’ he went on. 'I can tell if it is the body or the soul which suffers. In your case it is the latter, far more than the former’

  I muttered churlishly but, as ever, he had struck home. I had been following the cracks in the ceiling, as I have said, but every one of them had become a road that led to Anna, wherever she might be. I could think of her a little these days, and they were happy thoughts, at least until the spectre of her ruined eye rose, as it always did, like a moon whose light turned everything in my heart to ice. Now I remembered her as she had been in London, in the inn where we had lodged. I had never tired of exploring that face, although I knew it better than the landscape of my home. So that last morning I had no need to search it so carefully, but had I known I was taking my final leave I would have taken note of every tiny hair, every freckle.

  Lying there in Rome I found I could remember no single word she had spoken that day. Instead, my somewhat fevered mind returned again and again to the fine dark down that, in certain lights, could be found on her upper lip. I travelled up the single wrinkle that lay between her eyebrows, and along the two frown lines upon her forehead, and dwelt for long hours in the place where the gold wire of a jewelled pendant pierced her earlobe.

  Now, on the fourth day of this agonised lethargy, I lay and made this journey again and again, but by then I was barely ill, in truth, and my lassitude was more of an indulgence than an affliction. Ill thoughts prey upon idle minds, and Horst's words came back to me. Why had such a dangerous animal been ridden down one of London's busiest streets? And what of the rider? He had never come forward, and the coroner's men had not found him. But these thoughts were unbearable. That would mean that Anna had been murdered. Was that what Horst had been trying to tell me? Of course – and he believed it too, it was plain. But it made no sense, for who would wish such a thing, and plan it so neatly? Neat it had been, but crude and bloody, not like something planned. So I began to brood and fret, and at last I began to toss and turn and finally to pace about the room, which tired me so that I returned to bed, to begin the miserable process over again. I had paid the landlady's little nephew to keep a watch for Baldwin, and to run and tell me should he arrive, but no word had come. The day became a fevered round of pacings and a kind of stunned lassitude, until night fell and I finally, gratefully, began to grow weary enough to sleep. I was beginning the feathery drift down into oblivion when a sharp rapping came at my door. I thought I had dreamed it, for it had the quality of those strange sounds that jolt one awake but come from within one's own head. But the rapping came again, insistent, commanding. Puzzled, I reasoned that it must be the landlady, for all my friends had left the city by now, but the raps, when they came again, were so commanding that, unnerved, I snatched up Thorn. Pulling my cloak around me I lurched up to open the door a crack, and peered out. I was met by the grey gaze of Michael Scotus.

  'Hello, lad. Did I not say I would see you again? Get dressed. Come with me.' To where? Good Master Scotus, what hour is it?'

  ‘You are sick. I have come to heal you for good and all. Physicians keep odd hours, and this is one of those. Come.'

  Never in my right mind would I have gone out into the streets of Rome with a stranger in the dead of night, but as before, the words of Michael Scot brooked no refusal. I found myself pulling on clothes, and tying up my boots. ‘You will not need your knife’ said the Scot.

  And I left it under my pillow, and followed him out, meek as a calf. He led me up my street, while I cursed silently for giving up my weapon so easily. I was about to plead sickness or some other more transparent excuse when I heard a snort and, turning a corner, saw a knot of men waiting, dressed in black cloaks like Michael Scot, and grasping halberds. My heart clenched like a fist but my companion shushed me peremptorily. 'Our escort’ he said. 'Vatican guards. And here: our mounts.'

  The guards stepped aside to reveal two mules. Their coats glinted like pewter in the light of the young moon. Mules are the least sinister of creatures, and these two, the colour of spiderwebs and thistledown, held so little threat that I almost laughed with relief.

  'Come away’ said the Scot. We have a distance to go, and the night will soon be waning.'

  He climbed nimbly on to one of the mules, again belying his threescore and more years, and I mounted the other. It was odd being astride such a small beast after a week of Iblis, but I was soon bouncing along behind Michael Scot, who without another word had kicked his mule into a quick trot. Strange to say, I felt none of the fevered torpor that had dogged me all that day. The guards fell in around us and began to jog silently, keeping pace with us, although we were not slow. Their boots seemed muffled, for they made hardly any sound. Soon we had crossed the Tiber and were clip-clopping through the quiet streets on the other side. We passed through the Campo dei Fiori, threaded through some alleyways and emerged under the sudden bulk of the Capitoline Hill. This we skirted, keeping it to our right. Then we were in the valley that lies, a confusion of ancient ruins and newer but no less ruinous slums, between the Capitoline and the Quirinal, and there, in the distance, squatting and monstrous, the Coliseum. Feeling an unbidden stab of dread I turned to my companion. The moon shone full in his face and made of it a mask.

  What are we about, and… where exactly are we going, sir?' I asked, trying not to sound querulous and, I realised, not succeeding.

  Why, there, of course’ he said, casually. 'Have you never visited the Coliseum at night?'

  'No, and nor does any sane man!' I blurted. What folly is this, sir? It is no place for the living – every Roman knows it!'

  'Are you a Roman? No, and neither am I. As for the why of it, here I shall complete your cure.'

  'But am I not cured of… of what afflicted me before?' I squeaked, for my illness was so far behind me that I barely recalled it. ‘I have a mere cold now.'

  'Hardly. The flesh fares well, my good lad, but the soul, I perceive, yet has need of medicine. That is what we seek tonight.'

  His Scottish brogue seemed a little thicker, somehow, and strangely I found it calming, for my heart, which had started to knock with anxiety, fell back into its quieter rhythm. Nevertheless I shot a look around me at our escort. But all had pulled up their cowls and their faces were hidden in shadow. The hooves of our mules clacked emptily against the stones of the street. We might have been a procession of the dead. In the daytime the Coli
seum is a brutish place. Its stones bask in the sunshine with a kind of stolid self-satisfaction, and it dwarfs with ease the sightseers who dare to poke about in its cat-haunted mazes. On my wanderings I had learned that, only a few years before, the place had been a fortress until an earthquake had driven out the occupiers, and left it at the mercy of stone-thieves who picked away at the marble to burn in their lime-kilns. But as all men knew, it had been built in pagan times as a temple to all the old gods of Rome, and when Mother Church had ended their rule on earth they lingered on here as demonic shades, lappers of blood, who were known to issue forth and spread plague and misfortune through the city. They took the shape of beasts, and there were many who had seen them emerge from the great arches led by a phantom bull, mighty in size and red as blood, bellowing forth fire and smoke.

  Nowadays the Romans themselves keep away from the stones, although they will picnic in its shade and make assignations – although, unlike any other ruin or alleyway, couples do not rut in its cool halls and caves, for the place has an atmosphere, an air as heavy as its vast round mass, that does not tempt one to linger there. It is the pilgrims from the northern lands who enter, rivalling the pigeons with their chatter, and who clamber over the walls and through the galleries, weaving excited, fatuous speculations as to past glories and horrors. But even they are oppressed by the place, and eventually seek ever more desperately for the way out, and one sees them regrouping – pale and over-sated, like guests at an over-rich meal at which the meat has spoiled – out in the sunshine, while the Romans regard them with superior contempt.

  At night, though, it might be a different place altogether. While the merciless Roman sun makes the mighty circle of arches seem heavy with slothful menace, the moon, if it is bright, turns it into a many-eyed phantom. If in the daytime it squats, at night it appears to hover and shimmer, and if in the sun it is unquestionably the work of men who exercised all their brutal skill to draw it out of the base earth, at night it is unearthly, its myriad arches and windows giving it the mottled, silvery aspect of the moons face. Tonight there was not a living soul anywhere to be seen or heard as we rode out on to the dead grass of the field which surrounds it. We skirted the building, riding through the moon-shadow and out again into light, until at a signal from Michael we halted and dismounted. Our escort gathered up our reins and tied the mules up to a slender marble column that stood nearby. Then Michael took my upper arm gently but firmly and nodded his head once, solemnly. I saw that in his other hand he held a long, slender staff of dark wood that was finished in such a way that it did not catch the light. He inclined it very slightly, pointing towards an archway in which an immense door of studded wood hung askew off its hinges. It was very black beyond the door, as black as Michael's staff, which now led us onward under the mighty keystone of the entrance.

  'Do you know Bede's words on this place?' Michael asked. His voice came from next to my ear. He was leading me through the thick darkness, through which I could see nothing, although his footfalls sounded as sure as if he were strolling about in broad daylight. In truth I had read the venerable monk's writings on Rome, but at that moment I was too full of confusion to recall them, for I had given myself over to the trust of this man whom I did not know in any real sense, and of whom I knew only the vaguest and most unpromising rumours. Nevertheless here I was, being drawn through the belly of this most cursed of all buildings in this whole haunted city, and I was not at all certain how I had allowed this to happen, and why I was not tempted, even now, to escape. So I shook my head, knowing that the gesture was invisible.

  ‘I cannot remember’ I breathed, suddenly terrified lest my words disturb whatever horrible legions might be hiding in the almost palpable dark.

  “Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma” Michael intoned. “Quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma. Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus?"

  "While the Coliseum stands, Rome stands’" I said, remembering words I had read long ago, in the light of a spring morning in Devon, when my life still stretched before me, secure in the promise of its safety and blissful uneventfulness.

  'Very good’ said Michael, approvingly. "When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; when Rome falls the world shall fall." I take that to mean that this place is the very centre of the world – where all roads converge: all roads, the seen and the unseen’ With those words we stepped out into the moonlight once more.

  We were on the lip of a vast pit which, with the play of the silver light over a confusion of trees and ruins, appeared to be full of boiling quicksilver. I could make out no order, for there seemed to be newer buildings here and there, and even the crooked belltower of a little church that lurched at a dangerous angle. I let out a small squeak of breath, more of relief than anything else, for I was still in a place, a location on the face of the earth, although as Michael had guided me through the darkness I had felt the growing fear that I was being led to no-place, a way station on the unseen roads of which he had spoken. But I had no time to gather myself, for my escort was beckoning. He had begun to pick his way through a sloping maze of truncated walls and roofless passages down towards the centre of the Coliseum, which seemed to be a sort of oval field of flat earth or grass on which had been built a rough cluster of sheds or huts, most of which had burned down or collapsed. There were trees growing there too: olives, a stunted pine and the spiny billows of gorse. I followed, keeping my gaze fixed uneasily on Michael's staff, which he held up in front of him, a line of blackness, as if the door to an even more absolute night were opened just a hair's breadth. There was an urgent scrabbling to my right and I started and turned to see a cat clambering up a mound of scree. Another was already there, regarding me with slit-eyed contempt, and I realised that if I had thought this place was deserted I was mistaken, for there were cats everywhere. At first I was relieved to find only cats and not flame-mouthed bulls and demons, but before I had even reached the level ground where Michael now stood waiting my fancy had begun to work upon me, for the gaze of a cat is powerful, and when that power is multiplied a thousandfold it becomes something quite frightful.

  I strode quickly to where Michael awaited me, trying to appear brisk and not terrified. He had found the very centre of the oval field. I looked about me: now I was in the midst of the seething cauldron, and the black rim, sometimes perfectly regular, sometimes jagged, sometimes adorned with crude battlements, framed an oval window of sky.

  At the centre of all things,' Michael said, startling me. His voice was low and calm – priest-like, in fact. It was hard for me to picture him as the priest I knew him to be. But what manner of priest would seek out such a place as this?

  'Do you see how we are in a kind of bowl?' he asked. 'And have you seen how the water in a trough, when the bung is removed, forms a spinning vortex as it drains, or how a child's marble, dropped into a dish, will circle around, spiralling ever downwards until it finds the still centre? So it is here, at the world's heart. All things that travel the invisible roads of the earth and of the heavens, can be brought to rest here. We have only to call them.'

  'Call what?' I asked, feeling as if a tiny clawed hand, cold as ice, had just settled on my belly and was seeking a way inside.

  Whom, lad: whom’ said the man who had almost been Archbishop of Canterbury.

  He bid me wait there while he vanished into a nearby hovel. Emerging with a bundle of firewood – it was tied, and did not look like a chance find – he placed it carefully, turning to the four points of the compass and adjusting it according to some hidden purpose. Then he drew me back and, with the end of his staff, drew a circle in the sandy earth around the sticks. Turning his face to the sky, he muttered something at the stars and drew four symbols that I did not recognise into the earth at the cardinal points. They seemed a little like Arabic letters but also like sinuous little pictures of something indiscernible. Then he stooped over the wood. There was a loud sigh, as sleepers make when they are in the throes of a dream, and fire blossomed under his hands.
He stepped back, and flames flew up higher than his head, sparks hurtling towards the moon.

  'Stand here’ he told me, taking my shoulders and positioning me, as if I were a mannequin, in front of one of his symbols – and indeed, from the moment I had been awakened by Michael's knocking I had been no more in command of myself than a puppet. I believe I was facing west. 'Now look into the flames. Look!'

  Wordlessly I obeyed, for I had no choice. The wood was burning fiercely, and gave off a rich and sharp smell. Michael Scot muttered something and waved a hand at the fire, which crackled into a storm of violet sparks. Then there was a roiling of oily black smoke, and when this cleared I was staring into a sheet of pure, golden flame. It was as if I were a child again, newly woken in summer and opening the door on a perfect days morning. There was utter calm. I felt myself sway, and then Michael's hand was across my shoulders, steadying me. Then something disturbed the golden peace: at first it seemed as if the smoke had returned, for an ugly stain had formed amongst the flames, but as I watched it resolved itself into an image.

  Have you ever seen a piece of amber in which the corpse of some insect, an ant or a fly, hangs suspended? One looks as if through a hole in time at the creature whose tiny limbs are still but seemingly not dead, for there is no corruption. It is not a picture but a real thing, held just out of reach and magnified by the lens of its glassy tomb. Thus did I look into the flames and see, hanging a little way from the searing bed of embers, a swirl of black hair, billowing as if in water. I gasped, and felt – or imagined that I felt – Michael Scot's hand taking hold of the back of my skull, for I tried to turn my head and could not. And I very much wanted to turn away, for I knew what I would see next.