The Vault of Bones

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  We buried her in the Church of Saint Faith Under Saint Paul's. Cormaran gold bought the services of a reluctant, hand-wringing priest, for only the communion of money could induce the Church to treat the mortal remains of an unwed, schismatic woman with any sort of deference. The only mourners were the Cormaran’s crew, but even so the little church, which stands in the shadow of the great, ugly cathedral, was full. The Greeks could not teach our poor priest how to bury Anna in her own faith, but every man kissed her farewell, and Pavlos stood and chanted in his tongue some spoken hymn, words I do not recall that rose and fell like the waves of the sea, or starlings wheeling and flocking at sunset. Anna lay in state before the altar dedicated to the service of a faith she despised, and was laid to sleep in a stone tomb in the heart of a land she felt nothing for, surrounded by the bones of reviled Franks. But she has a fine slab carved with Greek letters in the custom of her people, and there she will rest for all time.

  Whatever business we had in London was concluded, I presume, and days later, or perhaps weeks afterward, the Cormaran slipped down the Thames, past the brown marshes, the desert of hissing reeds, the frost-painted meadows grazed by sheep, the towns where folk were living and dying; and out into the bleak oblivion, the cold comfort of the sea.

  PART TWO

  Rome

  Chapter Two

  Rome, April 1237

  ‘Do you not mean "Where am I?" or perhaps "Who are you?"? asked the man. I shook my head. Thoughts were whirling around my skull like flying ants around a summer lantern. I took another draught of water. One by one my thoughts began to take hold of one another. Faster and faster they spun until they were one thought, and at that instant my reason returned to me.

  ‘You are Isaac’ I told him. I am .. My mind throbbed. I thought of the city of Balecester, that was destroyed. No, not destroyed: that had been a dream. But I had been in those water meadows, once. I had washed up there, after a madman had killed my best friend - or so I had believed - and knocked me senseless into the river. Balecester was lost to me, sure enough, as certainly as if it had indeed been consumed by fire. I had stolen a holy relic and been accused of murdering a priest. Then I knew myself. I was Petroc of Auneford, monk of the Abbey of Buckfast in Devon, erstwhile scholar, fugitive, outcast. My home was a ship called the Cormaran, and for two years I had known no other.

  ‘I know who I am’ I said. And we ... but this is not London, is it?' My last memories were of that great, stinking town, of rummaging through a market with the Lady Anna Doukaina at my side.

  The man put down the cup and clapped his hands, then raised them, palms up, towards the ceiling. 'God be praised!' he laughed. 'Praised indeed! I did not know if it was the fever that had broken, or your spirit. No, we are not in London. We are in Rome.'

  'But that is ... oh.' I tried to sit up, and found my backbone as weak as a poppy-stalk. 'How long have I been ...'

  'Ten days. There was a storm off Oran, and you fell from the mast. You landed on your head - a hard head, to be sure, as it did not break. But you fell into a deathly sleep. My dear friend, I feared we would be burying you in the blue water.'

  'Ten days? From a knock on the head?'

  Isaac shrugged. You developed a brain fever.' I shuddered. A brain fever had carried off both my parents when I was very young. 'That I could treat, and the lump on your pate. But there was something else working in you, I think. You really remember nothing?'

  'No,' I said impatiently. Then I did recall the ghost of a memory, Is Anna nearby?'

  Even in my addled state I saw that Isaac's smile had frozen on his face. He grimaced, and feigned an itch alongside his nose. I jerked upright, and my head swum horribly. But I seized him by the sleeve and feebly shook his arm. Isaac said nothing, but looked grave, the way doctors do when they must tell you that your running nose will kill you within the day. He gently eased his arm from my grasp and, going over to a table in the corner of the chamber, poured a dark liquid into a goblet. To this he added something from a small vial. When he held it to my mouth I found it was wine, with something bitter and sharp mixed in. But the wine was strong and gave me some warmth, so I drank down half of it. To my surprise, Isaac drained the goblet himself and sank down on to the pallet next to me with a sigh.

  The wine was closing in on my reason like thick ivy around an old ruin, and I felt my eyes grow heavy, although I desperately willed them to stay open. Perhaps I had not heard Isaac properly. I opened my mouth to speak, but he placed his palm on my forehead, and his fingers pressed gently into my temples.

  'Sleep a little, and then things may be a little more clear,' he murmured.

  I tried to protest, but a deep, soft darkness was engulfing me. It was the friendliest oblivion, and I gave up struggling against it. But just as the last spark of light went out in my skull I glimpsed an image. It was Anna, a dark cloak about her shoulders, tears painting streaks of kohl down her cheeks. She turned from me. Turned away, and stepped through a great stone doorway into shadow. Darkness swallowed her, and then it swallowed me.

  When I woke next, it was morning. At least, I supposed it was morning, for the light was coming in through the window at a sharp angle and lighting up the walls of my room. Without thinking I swung myself out of bed, only to find that I had no strength in my legs. I slumped on to the bedcovers, and then managed to haul myself upright. Leaning against the wall, I shuffled over to the window. The sunlight was strong, and blinded me for a moment. I blinked, and saw, stretching away below me, a field of tumbled stones and ruined walls. My heart gave a lurch as I remembered how I had seen Balecester destroyed. Had it really happened? Then I blinked and saw goats clambering over the stones, and the silver-green of olive trees. I rested my elbows on the cold stone of the windowsill. Tears started to prick my dry eyes, and then I heard a noise behind me. I turned and found that I had not been alone. Captain de Montalhac was seated in a narrow chair, his long legs thrust out before him. He had been sleeping, I supposed, for now he yawned and rubbed his hands through his greying hair.

  '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 p
ain. 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 shit-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 laugh
ed 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.