The Vault of bones bp-2

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Nothing was visible at first save two pale stains of light, and for an instant my heart lurched at the threat of the unearthly, but then they resolved themselves into a pair of naked legs, white and sun-starved. A man seemed to be crawling up a narrow flight of stone stairs on his hands and knees, but there, in the almost black shadows beneath the collapsed tent of his clothing, was another pale smear: no more than two black holes in a weak halo of light, a ghost skull which, as I blinked, uncomprehending, became the great, terrified eyes of the little Greek serving girl I had met in the corridors below. She mewed like a kitten, and no louder, for a thick hand was over her mouth. The ink-black circles of her eyes were as hollow as those of a corpse, yet she gave a feeble jerk and the man who lay upon her slapped her head hard with the hand which was not stopping her breath.

  Black hair, pale skin, dying eyes. I did not think, I did not consider, until my hands were caught in the man's clothes and I was wrenching him backwards. He was big but surprised, and I threw him against the wall, grabbed him and spun him towards me. I glimpsed thick, sandy hair and a dull, drunken Frankish face. Then I broke his nose with my forehead, a sound like a walnut cracked between stones; and as his blood ran down my neck I kneed him in the cods and swung his slumped weight out into the corridor. He landed heavily on the stone floor. I ran at him and landed one good kick in his guts before he cringed away, stumbled to his feet and lurched off into the shadows. I heard his feet picking up speed and vanishing into the desolation.

  I turned to find the girl cowering against the steps. Her long tunic of homespun was still tangled about her ankles, and I reckoned, my mind whirling to make a calculation of the unspeakable, that her attacker had not reached his goal. Making soothing noises as if to a frightened beast I reached out to her, but she gave an awful, feral cry and, gathering her tunic up to her knees, jumped up and darted past me. She sprinted away, pale legs scissoring, up the corridor towards my quarters. In another instant she was gone. Had I not had a ringing in my head, and another man's blood trickling down my front, I might have dreamed the whole thing for all the evidence that remained.

  My jug of wine was where I had set it down, but later, as I lay upon my bed and drank, I knew that the sly palace ghosts had lapped at it like Aristotle tells us the shades of the dead heroes, feeble and squeaking, drank the warm blood of sacrifices. The haunted wine was suitable company, for if I had gone in search of wine to dull her memory and my grief, I had instead found Anna's fetch. For what else could that girl be? I knew it was not so, with my scholar's mind that shunned superstition and with the aching in my head, for I had butted a living man, and such oafs do not seek to violate spirits. But my bereaved heart had found a shred of relief, a piece of flotsam to cling to in the howling storm, and so I lay there and remembered how I had first found my love and saved her from a man who meant to kill her, how her black hair and white skin had pierced my soul. Only when the wine was all but gone, and I could taste clay from the jug in the dregs, did I banish such thoughts and tell myself that I had merely saved the virtue of an inconsequential servant, and made an enemy of Christ alone knew who. At last I slept, and the mothy ghosts of the palace swarmed about me, drawn to me, as to all who slept there, as if to flame. We draw them, we living souls, our hot blood and beating hearts as enticing as a lantern on a summer night, but the dead are never warm, and we cannot give them warmth; and they dash themselves against us as we dream our little, desperate dreams of life.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Two days later the Captain left on a Venetian galley that was guaranteed, by its eager master, to be the fastest in the port. The party made its way to the docks with all ceremony, and I trailed along, somewhat abjectly, for I was not relishing – nay, I am dissembling: I was frankly terrified of – the prospect of being left alone in this wretched city. I went down to the docks and waved the Captain off, feeling as if I were sawing through my lifeline with every wave. I watched his ship lose itself amongst the sun-shimmer and the teeming boats, then set off back to the palace. Before me stretched nothing but empty time to fill until the King of France's emissaries turned up, and who knew when that might be. So as I trudged back through the empty, hollow streets I trailed my spirits behind me in the gutter like a tattered cloak.

  The palace was more gloomy and dispiriting – if such a thing were possible – without the Captain, and my days would have passed as though in a veritable purgatory of boredom and isolation had it not been for one thing. For after a morning spent wandering the empty halls, I returned to my chambers to find a maid turning down my bed linen. When she heard the door she jumped and turned to face me, shoulders clenched in anticipation of something – reprimand, or worse – and I saw that she was the girl I had rescued. When she realised it was me she blushed, more from consternation than embarrassement, bowed nervously and scuttled past me and out into the hall.

  After this inauspicious start I saw her often, for – whether she had been assigned to me or had merely chosen the duty herself I could not discover – she was often in my chambers, bringing fresh linen and water, a jug of wine in the evening and a meal if I was in need of one. She was as light and pale as a ghost, and if I believed in such things I might have thought her a house-spirit of some kind. For she never spoke, no matter how I tried to draw her out. At first, when I addressed her, she would simply leave. But after some time had passed she decided that I merited a smile and a shy duck of the head, and sometimes I was honoured with a smile or a nod in answer to some question. I never even learned her name. I hoped, at least, that she knew how much I had come to treasure her silent ministrations.

  Meantime I filled the next few days with wandering about Constantinople, finding its famous landmarks and finding each one in such horrible stages of ruin or neglect that each expedition left me more crestfallen than the last. It was after one such day that I was greeted, upon my return to the palace, by a summons to dinner at the high table. Someone had taken pity on me and, I guessed, wished to curry favour with the pope. Somewhat reluctantly I dressed in my finest Roman garb and made my way to the state rooms.

  In truth, it was not a bad evening. As a stranger, I was somewhat left out of things, but that suited my mood and anyway, the food was excellent. Or rather, the dressings and accompaniments to the various dishes of meat were delicious, the joints themselves being of poor quality: old, ill-fed beasts had died to provide the barons' feast. And yet the Franks fell upon this meat with great joy and smacking of lips, all but ignoring the smaller dishes of greenstuff and vegetables which were cooked in the Greek style with plenty of oil, lemon and olives, and on which I fell greedily, to the surprise of my fellows. To fit in, I allowed them to serve me half a septuagenarian cockerel and a lump of mutton with all the appeal and texture of oakum. I choked this down with draughts of adequate wine, and, as I was enjoying its strengthening glow, I felt a dig in my ribs.

  'Are you a priest, sir?' my neighbour asked me. He was a black-haired man a little older than myself, with a sharp nose and piercing eyes. 'God, no! I mean, no, sir, I am not. A lay brother only.' 'Hmm. D'you hunt?'

  'Not habitually’ Not much of an answer, but better, I hoped, than a flat 'no’

  'And yet you are a man of action, I perceive. A soldier, I hear, yes? Would you care to hunt the wild boar with us tomorrow?' I saw the black eyebrows rise in challenge. Was this man trying to pick a fight or make a friend? I picked a steely mutton fibre from my teeth and considered quickly. I had never enjoyed hunting, and yet I was bored almost to the point of sickness. What possible harm could there be: another wasted day at worst. 'I should be delighted!' I said.

  'Good, then: I was sure you would be. The Regent has charged me with entertaining you while you are a guest here, and I took the liberty of organising a little hunt in your honour – sure you would not be offended, and you were not! We will meet at dawn, by the fountain in the square before the gate. And now, let us be strangers no more. I am called Aimery de Lille Charpigny. My lands are to the south
of here, in the Achaea, but I have been at court since the siege last year. Lord, this place is dull…' 'Amen, sir,' I agreed with all my heart.

  Thus commenced a pleasant few hours. Aimery had obviously appointed himself my host – or been so appointed, although I was glad of it either way. He kept my cup full and, with little prompting, told me much about court life, such as it was; the parlous state of the empire, and how much, he detested Greeks. He grew positively rapturous, however, describing his barony in the far south of the empire, a land of crags, miraculous wine and endless hunting. In turn I told him a bit about my own homeland, embellishing it a little and inventing a past for myself that left out my humble birth and career as a novice monk, embroidering matters instead with tales I had heard from my long-lost friends at school in Balecester. By the time the fire had died down and people had begun to drift away I was almost looking forward to my first boar hunt, for it sounded like no more than a jolly excursion to the woods. So I bid Aimery a grateful farewell, and promised to make the arranged rendezvous at dawn. He had been diligent in making my evening a pleasant one, and I was truly thankful for that. In the way of these Franks he was not truly friendly, for a suspicion, a chill, seemed to lie behind the smiling face. But we were both a little drunk, and so we clasped hands warmly and I took myself off to my bed.

  The next day was the boar hunt that Aimery de Lille Charpigny had organised in my honour. It was still barely light when I found the company gathered in the open space before Hagia Sophia, horses snorting plumes of white breath, men passing flasks between them and cackling hoarsely in early-morning voices. Aimery, clad in green fustian and with a great horn slung across his shoulders, greeted me as if I were an old companion-in-arms and not simply a chance dinner companion. He showed me to my borrowed mount, a lovely white and dappled mare, and introduced me to the others. They were Franks all, bearing sturdy French names like Eudes and Raymond, and they all had the loose-limbed confidence that rank and privilege confer. I did not doubt that this lot would have been as happy hunting Greeks as wild pigs. One of them, Rolant, introduced as Rollo, seemed to be Aimery's particular friend. He was a tow-headed, round-faced young man whose mouth seemed perpetually open in laughter. He slapped me hard on the shoulder and made some jolly comment about Englishmen that was obviously meant to be funny. I smiled dutifully, and was relieved when, as the company made ready to leave, Aimery chose to ride by my side.

  We left the city by the Blachernae Gate, trotting out past unshaven guardsmen scratching their fundaments while the smoke from their breakfast fires seeped thickly from the arrow-slits in the guardhouse. The alaunt hounds sniffed them curiously and were driven away with boots and curses.

  'The chimney s blocked’ I observed to my companion. He laughed.

  'There's no chimney. Those are Catalans from the high mountains. They miss their stinking turf huts, and so they light their fires on the floor.' 'But they will burn themselves out of doors!' 'Good Christ, man, they do that with some regularity.'

  Pondering upon the quality, or lack thereof, of the men who guarded the great city of Constantinople, I rode along in silence. The land began to slope upwards almost immediately. It was a patchy mix of houses, abandoned and fast tumbling down, fields that were reverting to wilderness, and scrubby copses of turkey oak and olive trees. We were on a wide paved road, which we had all to ourselves. It was becoming a jolly party now that we had left the city. The annoying young man with the long hood had pulled a rebec from his saddlebag and was sawing away at it, singing French love songs in a high, somewhat cracked voice. In truth he was not bad, and pulled some sweet tones from the strings, although his throat seemed in need of lubrication. However, when this was provided, in the form of wine, it had no effect save to turn his songs bawdy. The others began to join in one by one, until the whole party – save myself, who did not know the words – were singing lustily. Every so often a dog would give tongue, perhaps in protest, and his fellows would join in, to the merriment of all. I had to admit that this was not, perhaps, the worst use of a day, and by the time we came to a fork in the road and left the wide highway for a narrower track, I was in quite high spirits myself. I had not let my guard down, not quite; but I was beginning to feel loose-limbed and hot-blooded, and I was looking forward to the chase.

  We had come no more than two miles, riding slowly, passing flasks of wine to and fro. The woods were thicker now. Plane trees, their leaves dead and dry, spread their great canopies for the starlings, and cypresses grew straight in deep green spinneys. We had seen almost no one since passing through the gate, and passed a very few mean habitations – hovels amidst patches of bare earth in which bald, mite-gnawed chickens scratched resignedly – but here we had entered a desert. No smoke rose, and no one seemed to use the road, which, although it too was paved with good Roman stone, had been left to the mud and colonising grass. But I began to notice that the beasts had found this lack of men much to their liking. Rabbits shot across our path, and I saw how well trained our hounds were, for they did not so much as twitch in their direction. A fox loped away and then sat on his haunches like a tame dog and regarded us from an outcropping of rock. Pheasants and partridges burst away from us in whirring explosions. Birds shrilled and gossiped everywhere. In all, this empty heath was a livelier place by far than the city of men we had left behind us.

  At last we came upon evidence of man's presence. A great tangle of furze had been hacked down and burned, and beyond the black and ash-heaped circle left by the fire stood a wall into which a gateway had been let. Gateless now, the archway had been overrun with vines, and a thatch of caper plants grew from its apex like a badly made wig.

  'Here is the Philopation,' said Aimery. 'Hunting park of the great Roman emperors. Fucking mess, isn't it?' 'It does not look very imperial,' I agreed.

  'What does, eh? What does,' Aimery agreed. 'Too near the walls. We wrecked the place when we took the city. There are palaces in there, all fallen down. Terrible waste, really. But who would make their home out here? Not I.' 'Does anyone live here, then?'

  'Vagabonds – nay, not vagabonds…' It was one of the others, a tall man in green who wore a fine, old-looking horn over his shoulder. He had been riding at the front, and seemed to have some authority. Now he clicked his fingers in search of a word. 'Rollo, what do they call them? The conjuring folk?' 'Athingani,' answered Rollo, tucking away his rebec. 'Lori,' added another. 'Aigupti,' a man with a crossbow chimed in.

  'There you have it,' said the man. "They are wanderers, and have power over beasts, particularly snakes. The men have a snake tattooed across their chests, the savages! Their women are dark 'And fuck like a basketful of vipers,' said Rollo.

  'Into which I would sooner stick my cock,' Aimery said. 'But we will not see them. They do not like us, nor we them. In fact, a florin for any man who kills an Athingani! Eh?' He winked at me, perhaps to signify that he did not mean it. Or perhaps that he did. In any event I thought no more of it. The park looked utterly deserted, and any conjurors would surely have sense enough to steer clear of a pack of buffoons such as us.

  Beyond the walls the land began to roll away in a lazy ripple of knolls, little crags and shallow, wooded ravines. I could see that it had once been cared for, as it was overgrown but not wild. Not far away stood a little stone lodge, gutted by fire. There had been a group of marble fountains in front of it, and these were cracked and choked with moss. The ruin of Constantinople could not be contained, plainly, and must spread its tendrils outwards like dry rot to consume everything within its reach. I felt someone walk across my grave, as I often did in the city's smashed and fouled streets, but resolved not to let the day be spoiled by melancholic thoughts. I was free, at least for the day; in jolly company, and with the prospect of fine sport ahead.

  Well, lead on, boys!' I called. Aimery whooped and set spurs to his horse, and we crashed through the gate and into the park.

  We had gone no more than two bow-shots from the gate when the land closed in around
us. The gate and the lodge were invisible, swallowed up in a haze of cypresses and young oaks. Aimery declared that we would split up into pairs and hunt until lunchtime, but the tall man thought it would be better sport to divide into two groups. Thus we would have company as well as sport, and perhaps after lunch we could go off in pairs. We had dismounted in a clearing, and the servant had opened his oilskin bundle to reveal short spears with broad, leaf-shaped heads and stout iron cross-guards. There were bows too, short, curved Saracen ones with quivers full of red-fletched arrows. The alaunts sniffed about, cocking their legs and dropping huge, reeking turds wherever they pleased, while we hunters fortified ourselves with wine and dried sausage. To my chagrin, Rollo singled me out and cast his arm around my neck.

  'Let us bring each other luck, friend Petrus’ he said. I agreed with what I hoped was good grace. His puppy-like quality grated upon me, as did his somewhat desperate need to be loved – unnecessary, for his companions seemed to love him to distraction – and the prospect of wandering through gulley and thicket while he jabbered and jested dampened my mood. But I put my best face upon the situation, for I was a guest and a gentleman (for all they knew) and must show my breeding.

  Will you sing the beasts out of their lairs for us?' I asked him, with my best grin. 'And on to the points of our spears!' he crowed.

  'Aye, and who could blame them’I told him. His eyebrows shot up, but then he treated me to another of his laughs. Aimery, who had heard my poor joke, joined in, and soon the whole party was cackling like a building of rooks. I joined in while making sure my wine flask was full, for I feared it would be a long time until lunch.

  Our party chose to take a narrow goat-path that led off to the south, towards the river. The others decided to try their luck in the higher ground to the north, where the park rose to overlook the Golden Horn. But we had been riding no more than five minutes when Rollo signalled to me and dropped behind the others. Then, when we were a horse's length behind the last man, Rollo whistled out his four dogs from the pack, then wheeled his horse with a mad cry and set off into the trees to our left. My horse, whether scared or excited, took to her heels after him. We were off into the wild. I was intensely grateful to Horst, for my merciless riding instructor had made sure I could ride and use a weapon. Finally Rollo slowed his horse and let me catch up.