The Vault of bones bp-2

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  That he was’ I agreed, thinking how fitting it was that tall, stern Horst, knight of Prussia, should leave this final impression.

  'He ate here, and stayed up late, for he appreciated our wine…' I nodded again. I'm sure he did, I thought. Just as I had enjoyed my own dinner in Spoleto, which ought to have been my last. As grief wrapped its tatters about me, I saw, in the merciless glare of hindsight, the trap that had been laid for us both. Chance, blind chance that I had escaped, and my friend had not. '… and took himself off to bed after midnight’ the man continued. 'He told us he thought a friend might join him that day or the next, so when the other gentleman arrived we thought nothing of it, and sent him up to your friend's room.' 'He was expecting me’ I put in. 'He left me a message in Spoleto, where I had planned to meet him. And there…' I stopped myself. 'No matter. Who was this other gentleman?' 'A Venetian’ he said, as I knew he would. 'How did you know that?'

  'Oh, by his voice – talked through his nose. And by his ridiculous, foppish dress’ said the innkeeper scornfully. 'Showing his knees, if you can believe it.' 'I can indeed’ I muttered.

  'And then there came a crashing and banging, which we tried to ignore, as we pride ourselves, sir, on our discretion. But then came laughter and then nothing, and we forgot about the noise until next morning, when the chambermaid found him.'

  'Found Horst…' I said, an image forming in my mind. I tried to drive it out, but it would not go.

  'Found your friend dead on the bed, all cut up. I have never seen the like. There was blood everywhere – oh, sir, I do beg your pardon’ he said quickly, and poured me more wine. 'In our business one does endure the occasional death on the premises, but from apoplexies or fevers. Never-' 'And the Venetian?' I broke in.

  'Vanished. Gone out the window, most likely. It would not have been hard.' 'And everything was gone? All Horst's belongings?'

  'His bag was emptied and there were clothes strewn all over. But we only found clothes. No other effects, no papers, no…' 'No money.'

  'Quite. And so we did not know what to do. The holy brothers minister to the dead in our city, and they were called. He will be lying in their house.' 'Oh, Christ’ I said, rubbing my hot but tearless eyes. 'He would have been buried in a nameless pit, would he not?'

  'And so thank the merciful Lord that his friend has come to save him from that’ said the innkeeper hurriedly.

  He took me up to the room, but I saw nothing but a bare bed-frame and clean flagstones that reeked of lye. The walls had been freshly whitewashed, and the place had nothing to tell me. I looked at Horst's clothes, but indeed that was all that had been left. In a daze, I picked out a tunic and some leggings, things that I remembered him wearing, to clothe his corpse for burial, and told the innkeeper to give the rest to the poor. Then he led me through the noise and life of market day to the monastery of the black monks who had taken care of my friend. A friendly, ruddy-faced brother – not at all what I had expected, in truth, for to work with the dead has always seemed to me a dark and lonely vocation – met us at the door and led us through white cloisters to a long room lined with marble-topped plinths, perhaps ten or twelve of them. All were empty save one, and on that one lay a long shape draped with a sheet of white linen.

  Horst was dead all right, although as one so often finds oneself doing when confronted with such an obvious fact, I found myself checking for signs of life. But his skin was waxen and his lips were already drawing back into the yellow grin of death. His throat had been cut, which must have been the fatal blow, but I supposed he must have fought his murderer, for he bore many other wounds: a long slash across his brow, and punctures next to his breast-bone and in his belly. His hands were also cut, and the bones were showing through the butchered skin of his palms.

  You are merchants?' the brother was asking. I nodded, swallowing down my rising gorge. 'So many robberies, I am afraid’ he said almost apologetically. "These are troubled times.'

  'Many robberies, good brother, but murders?' I asked. The monk stroked his tonsured scalp absently.

  'Murders, yes, of course. Those who love His Holiness are assassinated by the followers of the emperor, and, one has to admit, vice versa’

  'This is the emperor's city,' put in the innkeeper, with a certain pride.

  'As I said, troubled times,' the monk said diplomatically. 'But a killing like this, for the sake of robbery?' He scratched his head again. ‘I will admit, I was surprised.'

  'And yet you see many corpses,' I said, curious despite the confusion of my grief.

  'Such is the calling of this house,' he replied, bowing his head. It was a show of piety, but I thought that the monk was a practical more than a holy man, and a good one, at that. Yes, indeed we see the dead. I said these were troubled times, but, my son, look about you! I have seen every table in use, and more poor souls stretched out on the floor. Wars, and plague – the Lord sees fit to keep us busy. But, come to that, I have not often seen a thief go at his victim in this manner. He fought back, your friend: one can see from the hands.'

  I nodded, sickened. Well, there was nothing more to be done. I thanked the brother, paid for a handsome burial for poor Horst and left a donation for the house and, for the sake of appearances, bought a mass for Horst's soul, although I was sure the beneficiary would not have approved. Then, business being done, I turned back to the corpse. He had been my friend, this man. Nay, we had been companions. We had drunk together, worked side by side and shared our tales and hopes through long watches at sea. With what patience he had taught me, his clumsy, clay-footed friend, how to ride! And now I must remember him thus, laid out like meat upon a butcher's stall. For the sake of propriety I crossed myself, then, in the manner of the Cormaran, I bent to kiss his cold lips goodbye. And as I leaned down I saw, in the corner of his mouth, pasted to the grey skin by a dab of dried spittle, a scrap of parchment. I made to smooth his face and picked it off with my thumbnail, gave my kiss and walked out past carven skulls and murals of dancing bones.

  So I did not tarry in Foligno – not even long enough for lunch, for I could not have faced it – and set off instead up the Ravenna Road, up into the high mountains. Night found me bedding down in a verminous hostelry in some nameless hamlet, feeling alone and with a chill upon my soul, for I had planned to have Horst for company, and now I would never see him again. Then – and only then, by the light of a stinking tallow candle – could I bring myself to look at whatever I had taken from my friend's dead lips. It was not parchment, but paper, white paper, a piece no bigger than a fingernail, but on it there still remained a few strokes of ink, and though these had run, I could make out a 'c' and an V. An idea flared in my confused mind, and with a tremble of excitement I pulled out the Captain's letter to me. If truth be told, I could not say yea or nay that the characters matched, for Horst's were all but washed away. But they were similar enough to my eye to set my hand a-tremble. Horst had died in the act of destroying a letter from the Captain.

  And so I read my own letter again. There was the warning against Venetians, of which Horst must have been well aware. There again the order to join Gilles at Ancona. I rubbed my eyes in frustration, for I had not slept properly for two days and my head was pounding. What should I do? It seemed to me that the value of this commission was negated by Horst's death, and in that case I should hurry to Venice, to warn the Captain. But that would be to disobey his command. I wondered if Horst had kept his attacker from reading his letter, and what papers the Venetian had taken from his body. I thought about this as hard as I could, although my skull felt as though it were caught in the pincers of a huge crab.

  In his scribble to me Horst had said only that he had been sent to divert me to Ancona, whence he too was speeding. Would he have had papers from the Captain to Gilles? Most likely, and now the enemy, whoever he might be, must have them, for Horst could not have bolted the lot. But again, Horst's last meal: surely, in extremis, he would have sought to destroy the most important letter? I had to hope so.
Christ. Everything was turning to stink and ruin beneath my feet, treacherous as a Dartmoor quagmire. Two men dead in as many nights, and all for what? For the enrichment of a ridiculous boy-king? Or for… I thought of the list Michael Scotus had given me. Valueless, the Captain had called the things that were named there. And yet how many men had died since I had first heard them spoken of? Fulk and Gautier, Giovanni, and now Horst. I could place a value upon them.

  But Horst's murder had opened another wound, for I had not forgotten our last conversation, and his doubts about Anna’s death. Horst had believed it was murder, that someone had used a destrier’s hooves as a weapon. I had kept my own thoughts at bay, but now that my friend had himself been murdered, I could hold them off no longer. Someone had wanted Anna dead. Who that might be I did not know, but the strange letter had seemed to speak of Greece. Could it have been her own uncle? But there was no reason for that. Someone from her past? That was more promising. The Captain had rescued her from exile in Greenland, where she had been sent when the mad Norse prince she had been given to as a child bride had turned upon her. Did the prince still live? I had no doubt that, from the tales that Anna had told of her life in Trondheim, he was mad enough. But where was the profit in this? She was dead, and I was yet alive and mired to the ears in some business that was threatening to devour the only world I had known these past two years.

  I laid my head down at last, after I had barred the door with a chair and balanced upon that a pitcher of water, so that it would overturn if the door opened and wake me – in theory, at least. I did not dare undress, but lay like a knight on a tomb, hands clasped on the hilt of my sword. I was bound for Ancona, then. At least I knew the way, for the Ravenna Road passed through that city – indeed, that was where I would have turned north towards Venice. And then the solution slapped me across the face: Gilles was in Ancona. He would know what to do. All I had to do was find the Three Dolphins.

  I slept, finally, for with my decision – or rather, my decision to leave any and all decisions to someone else, one of the most satisfying choices one is ever given the luxury to make – the crab had at last released my skull, and I passed the night unmolested save for bedbugs. Dawn found me on the road in the crisp air of the mountains, and alone; The stone-faced widow who had been my ungracious hostess had seen and heard nobody upon the road at night, and neither had the wall-eyed groom. I began to believe that I was not being followed after all, for I had seen no other riders behind me, even with the long views granted by my swooping route across the mountains, and I had not tarried long in one place since leaving Spoleto. And so I took myself over the Apennine Mountains and filled myself with their glorious solitude, as summer came to its peak around me, bleaching the grass in the valleys, drying up the stream-beds and making the very air shiver. And by the time I had passed over their spine and had dropped down into the rolling land between the peaks and the sea, the leaves were almost turning.

  PART THREE

  Constantinople

  Chapter Fourteen

  The waters of the Hellespont were turbulent and confused. They seemed to unravel around the galley s beak of a prow. There was a sharp and steady breeze blowing down the channel into our faces, making the oarsmen sweat and curse, and crusting our skins with a fine, stinging film of salt. There was plenty of other traffic around us. The coves and beaches that shone like white bite-marks at the base of the lowering mountains on either side each had its little shoal of fishing boats, and out here in the deep water a steady procession of big vessels struggled up under oars or ran down swiftly under straining sails. There were many galleys like ours, sword-like and scuttling, flying the gonfalons of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Valencia and a confusion of others. There were squat trading vessels from northern waters, ugly as beetles among their southern cousins. And there were Moorish ships too, with their swooping sails and crescent-blazoned pennants. But what I saw most of were the little slipper-shaped boats of the Greeks, busily criss-crossing the channel laden with all manner of cargo. The men who sailed them were sun-scorched and friendly, and more than once one such boat dashed cheekily across our bows, to the delight of its crew and the fury of ours. But I, lounging idly where the rail met the bowsprit, always waved, and once was rewarded by a golden missile shied at me by a boy crouched atop a pile of baskets, which I caught, only to find I held a large, pock-marked orange. I peeled and ate it gratefully, although the juice stung my salt-split lips.

  We had been at sea the best part of a month, and although the weather had been fair – clear, hot days and warm nights – we had struggled against the wind since rounding Cerigo and entering the Aegean Sea. Our ship was a mid-sized galley chartered at Brundisium, Venice-built but now the property of a cartel of Apulian merchants, and as such flying the imperial standard. Perhaps because of this we had an easy time of it: in any case no corsairs came close to us, and the Venetians, not having quite picked sides in the gathering storm, left us alone as we skirted their Greek possessions. It was odd being a passenger, and at first I was irked by the strangeness of it, and kept offering my services to mend the sail or scrub the decks. But my offers were always rebuffed with a kindly, embarrassed firmness: we were paying our way, and paying handsomely, and it would not look right for rich passengers to be monkeying about in the rigging or down in the stench of the rowing deck. My companion was likewise affected, and, exiled like me to a life of wandering the deck and gazing at distant sails and shorelines, he sought my company and I his. I had arrived in Ancona somewhat bedraggled and extremely saddle-sore. I had pushed Iblis much farther than I should have, and I hoped the poor beast had forgiven me. It had been an easy enough journey, although I had been caught in an early snow squall as I descended the western slope of the mountains. I followed the easy, straight road through the gentle country of the Marches: oak woods and vineyards, golden corn in the valleys and eagles above the high hillsides. And then, after a week and more, I crested an olive-crowned ridge to find the sea twinkling below. Ancona is not a large place, though tightly packed within its walls, and it was not hard to find the Three Dolphins, a good sort of sailors' hostelry near a mighty Roman arch that stood out on the promontory that formed the harbour's mole, its crumbling marble span framing nothing but the odd fishing dinghy. I gave my spent but uncomplaining Iblis to the stables with gold and instructions that his every need was to be met – the finest oats, spring water, a mare if necessary – and stalked on stiff horseman's legs into the inn. To my surprise and relief Gilles was there, poring over a pile of dog-eared pages. When he saw me his mouth fell open in surprise. Then he hurried over to embrace me, despite the road-dust that cloaked my clothes, skin and hair.

  'Patch! How astounding!' he exclaimed, then broke into a dust-induced coughing fit. 'Christ, did you tunnel here? You are filthy,' he added, when he had caught his breath. 'But why are you in Ancona? We are not meant to be here either. I am waiting for Horst, in fact.' Then an explanation appeared to seize him. You met with Horst upon the road, it is obvious! Where is he?'

  'Gilles, he is dead,' I said. I had had plenty of time to rehearse this moment, but when the time came I could only blurt out the news, and drop down on to the bench, there to sink my head in my hands.

  'Dead? I do not understand. Was there an accident?' said Gilles, after a horrible pause.

  'Horst is dead? Patch, what happened?' It was another voice, another familiar voice. The Captain was looking down at me, the lines at the corners of his eyes alive with worry.

  'Master? What are you doing here?' I gasped. I was so weary and sad that I was not so sure, at that moment, that what I beheld was not some phantom conjured by my beleaguered mind.

  'I am going to Constantinople instead of Gilles,' said the Captain. 'I left Louis' friars in Venice and wore out three horses to get here before he left. Gilles can manage whatever nest of snakes has been stirred up against us in Venice, and I know Constantinople a little better, so… but Patch, what has happened to Horst? I must know quickly.'

&
nbsp; So I told them my whole tale there and then, before taking off my cloak, before slaking my thirst. From the morning in Rome when I had found Baldwin gone, to finding Horst stretched out upon cold stone. I gave him my suspicions as to what Horst had succeeded in concealing from the Venetians, and what he perhaps had not. When all was said I was exhausted, and would have laid down my head upon the table and slept there and then, had not the Captain's furious excitement kept my eyelids trembling, but open. If Baldwin was taken by the Venetians, then there was no reason for us to continue our mission, he said. But then again, if we reached Constantinople before the news from Venice, we might conclude some business there and salvage a little from the wreckage. I told him I thought it likely that we would be ahead of any message from the Republic. And then I remembered something. You must see this,' I said, taking the Inventarium of Michael Scotus from my valise and holding it out for the Captain. He frowned as he took it, but his eyes widened and widened until he was gawping like a shocked barn owl.

  ‘Where… where did you get this, Patch, for God's sake?' he stuttered at last. So I told him that, too.

  ‘I am… I do not know what to think,' said the Captain after a long pause. He had gone pale. 'This is an Inventarium of relics that reside in the Pharos Chapel, et cetera, et cetera. That you know already. But whose inventory is it?' 'Baldwin's?' I said, uncertainly. 'Are there others?'

  What we know of the relics of Constantinople come from old texts, but these are useless, for the city was plundered down to the roof-nails by the crusaders’ he replied. ‘For what remained in the Bucoleon Palace, we have the words of Robert de Clari. This might be his list, but it is in Greek, so…' Wait. Robert who?'