The Vault of Bones

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  Chapter Fifteen

  The next morning brought fog. It was chilly, and the Captain and I, accustomed as we were to the sun, shivered as we broke our fast with our Pisan hosts. Then we set out for the palace. We had nothing but our packs, and the Pisans offered us a servant to carry those to the inn. To be polite we accepted, but not the offer of a guide. The Captain could find his way, he said, and we set out. The dour mood of last night had vanished with the mornings fog, which the sun had indeed chased away, and I was fairly skipping as I followed the Captain along the foot of the walls, winding through a maze of lodgings, warehouses, offices and churches, some of which were still being built, and all of which hummed and sometimes raged with Italian voices, the sing-song dialects of Genoa and Venice, Pisa, Florence, Siena and a babel of others I did not recognise. It was here I heard my first Greek spoken, though the speakers were labourers working on one of the new Frankish churches, whose campanile was beginning to rise above the level of the sea walls. Soon afterwards we came to a gate, much broken down and guarded by sleepy-looking men-at-arms in the imperial red and gold livery, leaning on their spears in the shade and gossiping with each other in French. They did not bat an eyelash at us. Thus I entered Constantinople.

  The street we found ourselves walking down was almost empty save for a few ancient crones in dusty black clothes who regarded us with icy indifference. As soon as we had passed through the gate I knew I was inside the rotten jawbone I had imagined from the boat. The houses around us, once grand, were in a horrible state of disrepair. Some were roofless, the sun shining through their upper windows. Those that were intact looked half occupied, with some windows boarded up and others showing a ragged curtain or a drape of tattered laundry. Every wall showed evidence of fire. I have said the street was near empty, but only of people: stray dogs, emaciated and flayed by mange, scurried everywhere, and the air was rank with their piss and turds. We hurried on under the impassive eyes of the old women. Turning a corner, we entered a wider thoroughfare, but the same neglect and ruin was in evidence here also. The buildings were high and flat-fronted, in the main, with many tiers of round-arched windows. They stood side by side so that often the street was a seamless wall of stone. The effect was majestic even now, and more than a little sinister. This had not been a city like the ones back home, I knew now, with their ramshackle houses of wood and mud all leaning on each other's shoulders like a congregation of drunkards. And it had paid a terrible price for its superiority.

  Thus we made our way, mostly in silence, although the Captain would every now and again point out some landmark, or what had once been such, for invariably it was now a gutted shell. I could not believe how empty the streets were. This had been a city of a million people, and now ... There were a few more old people here, and children with matted hair and dirty faces played in doorways and chased the dogs. I shook my head in dismay, but all of a sudden the Captain grabbed my shoulder and jerked me against the nearest wall. There was a cacophony of barking and curses, and a great pack of mangy dogs hurtled past us, driven by a company of men-at-arms who marched towards us up the street, swords and spears clinking against chain mail, jeering and swearing at the few people who were abroad. The old folk retreated into their houses, crossing themselves in the backwards Greek fashion, but some of the bolder children fell into step with the soldiers, tugging on their surcoats and holding out their hands. A couple of them were rewarded with small coins, but one, a cheeky boy with great brown eyes who was skipping about in front of the man who looked to be the company's leader and chanting 'Please! Please!' in Greek, came too close and the man suddenly lashed out, sending him sprawling over the flagstones. The others laughed and, to my horror, marched right over him, trampling his little body heedlessly with their boots. I was about to drag him out of the way, but the Captain stopped me, and indeed the little one picked himself up, dusted himself off and limped away to his fellows, who surrounded him, cackling. Meanwhile the soldiers had drawn abreast of us, and the one who had trampled the child glanced our way and saluted us, a twisted smile on his boozy face. I was about to tell him what was on my mind, but again the Captain stopped me, and replied to the soldier's greeting with a haughty lift of his chin. The soldiers clattered away towards the sea, and left the street to the dogs, the children, and ourselves.

  We walked on, but the children, in search of fresh diversion, began to tag along behind us. We had gone a few paces when I felt a tug on the hem of my tunic.

  'Lordos! Lordos!' The voice was a hoarse squeak. I turned and looked down into the dust-streaked face of the little boy. He was around nine years old, I judged, and his hair was thick with dust. A thin trickle of blood ran from each nostril, and he had wiped it crosswise across his cheek.

  What do you want, little one?' I asked him gently, in the

  Greek Anna had taught me. He stepped back in amazement.

  'Coin, Lordos?' he asked again in Venetian. I pulled out a silver florin and and held it out to him.

  'I am no lord’ I told him in Greek. He looked me up and down in disbelief, and I realised I was dressed in my finest Venetian clothes: short, point-sleeved tunic of white and black-striped silk; bronze silk surcoat with broad blue stripes, scalloped at the neck and hem with bronze ribbon; red woollen hose; saffron-coloured coif. I had my sword buckled on, and the knife hung next to my red leather purse. The boy snatched the coin and took a couple of hasty steps backwards.

  ‘Who are you, then?' he asked me in Greek.

  ‘Kakenas’ I told him. Nobody. He cocked his head and regarded me for a moment with hooded eyes. Confusion and perhaps anger came from him like the heat of a fever: I could feel it. For a moment I thought he would spit at me, but instead he bit the florin and turned his blood-smeared face up to mine once more before turning on his heel and running back to his mates.

  We walked on through one ruined street after another. The very air was suffused with an oppressive melancholy, as if the ruined buildings were breathing it out through their blackened skull-mouths.

  °Where are all the people?' I asked quietly.

  They fled, some of them’ the Captain answered. 'Like Anna's people, to Anatolia, Epiros. Scattered. But many did not flee.' He pointed to an empty house. It had been quite grand once, red brick trimmed with marble that had been carved, around windows and door, into thick, leafy vines. Now fat stains of soot stretched up from each blank cavity where a fire had once raged. 'They died in their houses, or in the streets. Or they were herded into the churches and butchered like vermin.'

  'Raped on the altars.' It was something that Anna always said, and I always thought it a bit of hyperbole. Now I saw it must have happened just as she had told it.

  Yes, then hacked to pieces. The crusaders hated the Greeks. Called them effete and soft, corrupted. Do they look effete now?'

  Indeed they do not.'

  'This place ... thirty-three years ago, in my lifetime, this place, this Constantinople, was the centre of the world,' he went on. He was angry, I realised: very angry, though not with me. 'It was the greatest city man has ever known. Look! This street is empty, save for that beggar, those children. That woman - is she a whore, or simply a pauper? There used to be a million people teeming here. A million! These walls would have swallowed every soul in London, Rome, Paris, all of them at once without a trace. Doge Dandolo and his crusaders looted and burned until there was nothing left. I was born the year the crusaders came here, but I have talked to old men who remember the city that was—'

  'And Anna, too,' I interrupted. 'To her it was a city of gold, a miracle.'

  'And now it is a skeleton.' The Captain kicked a lump of charred brick, which clattered hollowly into an empty doorway.

  'That is what I saw from the ship, as we came in last night,' I told him. 'A jawbone, all rotten. And the merchant churches like fat worms feasting on the decay.'

  At last we found ourselves in another open space, a public space, surely, but one that now held no one who might be described
as public. It did, however, contain a large number of armed men, who loafed about, polished weapons or fed horses. On the far side rose a vast wall of stone and brick. It rose in a series of arches, one row atop the other, to a tumult of domes, battlements and spires topped with Greek crosses, two-headed birds and other arcane devices. Many flags and pennants fluttered: the gold and red of the empire, of course, and others I did not recognise. As we walked closer I saw that we were approaching a gate in an outer wall, that was in itself as complex as the palace - for so it was - that it shielded. It extended out of sight on both sides, swallowed up in other buildings or in heaps of rubble, to which, in many places, it had itself been reduced. Now at last we were among crowds, and it became apparent that these men did not follow the practices of the effete Greeks they despised. For they stank. The square gave off a rancid stench of unwashed flesh, manure and horse-piss. It was almost as foul as the air on the rowing deck of the Stella Maris.

  Around us, uncouth voices croaked and snarled in French, Flemish, Catalan, Piedmontese. I guessed it was some regular gathering - pay day, perhaps — for the soldiers were bored but restless. The bulk of them I took to be mercenaries - for what else would Catalans be doing in Greece? - but here and there I saw white surcoats stitched with the rough cross of the crusader. Old Pope Gregory had said a crusade had been preached, and evidently a few, at least, had heeded the call, but their fresh, younger faces were at odds with the scarred, scowling countenances of their fellows. Those men lolled about, many of them perched on plinths of stone that were dotted about regularly, and which I guessed had held statues or monuments that had been looted or destroyed. And indeed I glimpsed a headless marble figure that had evidently been part of a fountain or some such. Now it lacked, not only a head, but one arm and much of its upper torso. By way of compensation, though, it had been endowed with a gigantic, virile cock sketched crudely in charcoal. Horses were tethered to one of its legs. The streets we had walked to get here had been more or less clean, save for the detritus of ruin, for there was no one to foul them. Here, though, the ordure lay in heaps all around, and the stone pavement of the square was all but hidden by a thick layer of dung and other filth. It was a barnyard, a midden. The Franks had been here thirty-three years, and they had yet to find a broom.

  The gate, in keeping with the gargantuan scale of the palace, was towering, and wide enough for a company of horsemen to ride through six abreast. It had been much hacked about lower down, and was charred and streaked with the memory of fire. Many of its iron fittings were bent and buckled. And yet it was still formidable, and at this hour it was shut fast.

  A pair of smart-looking guards in leather hauberks, with gold crosses upon their red surcoats, came noisily to attention as we stepped out of the reeking throng and approached them. For the second time that morning I remembered that we were dressed like Frankish lords, and felt somewhat smug when the guards wiped the surliness from their faces. I allowed the Captain to take the lead, and-when one of the guards stepped forward to ask our business, he flourished the letter with the gigantic papal bull under the man's nose. In the wink of an eye the gate was hauled open a crack by unseen hands, and we had been ushered through into an immense courtyard. The guard indicated a second gateway, and we set out across the yard. In a way this place was the exact opposite to the square outside. Here the marble flagstones were swept clean, and the statues still upon their plinths, although here again only a couple still retained their heads. It was clean and orderly, but I had the sense that, when once such a majestic yard would have had dozens of servants devoted to its upkeep, now it was maintained by one tired man. The trees - for oranges, olives, bay laurels and even palms grew here and there - were dead or dying, although their fallen leaves had been removed. Swarms of brown sparrows and pigeons crowded the dry branches and filled the air with their shrill riot. It was as bright and cheerful a scene as I had yet found in Constantinople, and yet it was a ruin nonetheless, and here, as outside, there were phantoms.

  Well, gentlemen, greetings indeed!' said Narjot de Toucy, looking up in surprise from the pope's letter. He beckoned over a tall, thickset man who was standing against a nearby column. This is my lord Anseau de Cayeux, Regent of the Empire of Constantinople. Anseau, these chaps have a letter from the pope.'

  It was our turn to be surprised, and we both backed away and made the lowest, courtliest bows in our repertoire.

  ‘Jean de Sol, at your service, Excellency,' intoned my companion.

  ‘Petrus Zennorius,' I echoed. The man laughed good-naturedly.

  'Nay, nay, good people. You are most welcome here. We do not stand on a great deal of ceremony, as you have no doubt observed.' He laid a friendly arm across the shoulders of Narjot de Toucy, and the two barons regarded us amiably. They were quite unlike, these two: de Toucy was hollow-cheeked and crow-like, with coarse black hair and a short-cropped soldier's beard; de Cayeux was somewhat florid, with a lion's mane of golden curls. He appeared to be running to fat, but I saw that this was not the case. His jolly appearance was deceptive: what seemed to be fat was muscle, and his happy blue eyes were piercing.

  We had arrived at this temporary throne room after much peregrination through the labyrinthine and decaying corridors of the Bucoleon Palace. Beyond the great doors we had entered another courtyard, this one shaded and smelling of cat-piss and wet moss, and through another gateway into a high hall that receded into shadow in a series of pillared archways. Here again the cats had been diligent, and although large Flemish tapestries were hung here and there on the walls they were dwarfed by the great height of the ceiling, and, when I cast my now expert eye over one as I passed by, I saw that it was old and not of any great quality: no more than would have graced the dining-chamber of an Antwerp burgomeister of the middle rank. The tapestries tried to mask the faded murals and damaged mosaics that covered the walls, but seemed crude and ugly in contrast. For though the plaster was crumbling, and the mosaics had been stripped, I guessed, of their gold, where they still existed they yet possessed a hint of dignity, like the shred of life that lingers on the faces of the dead until the flesh has grown cold. As we made our way down this hall we came upon small groups of men who turned their heads and regarded us suspiciously as we passed by. They were French nobles and priests, mainly, to judge from their dress. We came to the end of the corridor to find ourselves at a locked door and a crossways: seeing people to our left we chose that road, but only by asking a legion of slack-faced serving lads had we found ourselves in this far-flung corner of the palace. I had long since lost track of how we had come here, although, thinking back, we might have passed the ancient throne room, a lofty cavern whose walls were faced with purple stone but whose ceiling had indeed caved in. Nothing but spiderwebs here now: spiders and dust.

  I was beginning to wonder if one of the thousand locked doors we had passed hid the Pharos Chapel, and if its wonders were not already buried under tons of ancient roofing.

  When we had at last found the guarded door we sought, we were ushered in, only to find that there was no throne to speak of, only a round-walled chamber with marble columns supporting a mercifully strong-seeming roof, around which a gaggle of men stood, talking loudly and idly picking at a table laden with silver trenchers of food. Silence fell abruptly as we were announced by a man we took to be the chamberlain, and all heads turned towards us. It was strangely like walking into a country tavern where you are not known. Finally the man with the black hair had stepped forward, gestured for our letter, and blinked with amazement. At once the hubbub was restored, the chamberlain had wandered away, and the Regent had come over to meet us.

  Anseau de Cayeux studied the letter in silence. Nothing disturbed his placid face save a little twitch of one eyebrow. Then he murmured something into de Toucy s proffered ear. Their eyes met for a brief moment, then the Regent turned back to us.

  ‘Jean de Sol, Petrus Zennorius. Your visit was unlooked for, but it comes as the answer to our prayers’ he exclaimed. ‘We ar
e ... the empire is suffering a small upheaval, temporary of course, and we cannot welcome distinguished guests as we would wish. This .. ‘ he swept his arms around the low-ceilinged room in which we stood. 'These are somewhat sorry-looking quarters, but the roof collapsed in the throne room - fearful builders, the Greeks! - and in a month or two we shall be moving the court to the Palace of Blachernae. Shocking, really. But soon remedied!' And he threw back his golden head and laughed, as if all this - the palace, Constantinople, the empire itself - were nothing but a good-natured prank at his expense.

  'Now, come and share our meal’ he finished, and with a familiar hand on our shoulders he steered us over to the table. Taking my lead from the Captain, who appeared entirely at ease, I accepted a goblet of wine and tore the leg off a pea-hen. The room might be shabby, I thought, but the dinner service was quite impressive: ancient silver and gold carved and hammered into scenes of gambolling animals and humans. I wondered how long it would be before it was sold off. Although the Regent and de Toucy were solicitous, the other barons held back, ignoring us or studying us with hooded eyes. Nervous, I tried to ignore them, and instead watched a tendril of carved ivy as it strangled a marble pillar.

  ‘Where are you lodging, may I ask?’ The Regent was asking a question.

  ‘We arrived but yesterday evening, and stayed at the house of some Pisan merchants,' said the Captain. We shall take rooms in an inn close by here, God willing - our hosts recommended it.'