The Vault of Bones (16 page)

The man in the shadows had been Venetian. What had Baldwin said that day? I racked my brains, and fought my way down through hazy memories of the Captain aloof in his chair while Baldwin squirmed, and how young the emperor had looked, young and frantic. There: I had it. 'Very solidly in debt to Venice’ he had told us. Very anxious that the Republic did not know he was in Rome - or perhaps he had meant Italy. So the man was a creditor. But why abduct Baldwin, unless ... I sighed. He meant to hold the emperor as security, or ransom him. Christ's foreskin: Venice had repossessed Baldwin de Courtenay.

By this time I was drawing near to the fish market again, for I was back in the Jewish quarter. It was a good place to hide, for there was much to and fro of people, much noise and commerce. I found a rag-pickers' market set up in a little piazza and let myself fade into the corner. I needed to think. There was a stone bench on which two old men were sleeping, spittle crusting on their bristly chins. I sat down next to them and leaned back against the brick wall behind me.

The bull: there was no reason to believe that the Venetian knew anything about it. Baldwin had not been expecting any such thing, and the Captain had not known of it until Gregory had entrusted it to us. But to Baldwin's captor, any document from the pope might signify money, and that was why he had sent his creatures to pursue me. Or perhaps he believed I was a witness to his crime, whatever it had been, and had decided to silence me. If so, I was in mortal danger, for they would kill me out of hand. I preferred to believe that the document was drawing them on, if only to quell the icy fear that had settled in the pit of my belly.

It was late in the afternoon, and the little square had fallen into shadow. I had been keeping watch on the main entrance, but no one worrisome had come in or out. The rag-sellers were packing up now, but I realised that in my bright Venetian costume I was an easy mark and so I bought a ragged old traveller's cloak for a few pennies and threw it about my shoulders, much to the amusement of the gimlet-eyed merchant, who offered me silver for my cycladibus and tunic, and more if I would strip off my hose into the bargain.. I hesitated, though, for they were Anna's gift, and left the man shaking his head in disappointment.

So I lurked in my cloak, which carried the whiff of night-soil in its folds and made me feel somewhat unlike myself: a true disguise, I suppose, for as I slunk about, stinking, I began to feel as if I were sinking down into the understorey of the city: the human detritus that lies, like leaf mould in a wood, unnoticed underfoot as the better sort of folk go about their business with their noses turned up. I wandered the streets, keeping to the shadows, pausing once to take a cup of wine at a fisherman's tavern near the river, but not yet daring to step out on to the open ground that lay between the buildings and the water. I had already decided that I would take the Jews' Bridge, for the bridges over to the Tiber Island were less crowded, and I did not like the look of the towers that guarded them. I found another tavern, barely worthy of the name and haunted only by broken-down folk to whom my vile cloak no doubt seemed like a king’s ermine. It stank of unwashed tripe and forgotten fish-heads. I was served wine, of a sort, by a young wench with limp whitish hair and a double chin who made sheep's eyes at me and dangled her tits in my face as she poured out my vinegary drink. But I could, by craning my neck, see the end of the Jews' Bridge and the traffic going to and fro upon it, still busy as dusk came on with folk going back to their houses in Trastevere. I thought I would cross with the crowds, but as I watched I knew I had missed my chance for that. Courage would have seized the moment, but instead I had skulked in a dead man's cloak. Tra-la. I would have to wait until dark, then.

I pretended to drink my wine, but then bought myself some more time by draining my cup of its foul contents and suffering a second helping. The wine was scouring my insides, and as my guts were already roiling in fear and anticipation I was starting to feel quite horrible. But the sun was setting at last behind the Janiculum and now the shadows on the banks of the Tiber were growing. Another cup of infernal wine and I could leave.

My stomach was beginning to feel as if it were filled with burning coals, and the pain was making me wince. A wave of it struck me and I screwed my eyes shut against the raw agony. When I looked up I was staring into the face of the woman from the White Hound.

You going to finish that?' she enquired, nodding at the cup which I was gripping with pale knuckles.

What?' I said, surprise making a mooncalf of me.

'Because I wouldn't. Finish it. Honest.' To my mangled wits came the information that she was speaking English, London English.

Why not?' I stammered

'It'll kill you. Now then, time to go. Come on, love.' I looked at her, bereft of words.

'Has this stuff burned your tongue out? Because you don't say much. I took you for a clever one.' With cool fingers she prised my own from the cup. 'Makes no odds. Time to go outside.'

I stood up, for it struck me that one woman could be overpowered, or merely run from. But she followed me with those eyes. Where is the bag?' she asked, mildly curious, or so it sounded. I watched her for an instant.

'I took it back to the Lateran,' I said. 'After the Pantheon. I thought you meant to rob me, and it was not enough of my affair to ...'

'Have I put you to any bother?' she asked, sweetly. 'Come on. You are not in the pay of the Curia. You are Jean de Sol's man.'

What makes you think so? And who is this Jean de Sol?' I added hurriedly.

'The man in whose company you visited His Majesty Baldwin of Romania a couple of weeks ago.'

'I don't know—'

'Please. Put a stopper in it. Innkeepers talk. Servants never stop talking. And surly Frenchies, even, if you ask them nice enough. We know, all right?'

You don't. You cannot. And what have you done with Baldwin, for God's sake? What was that blood you were scrubbing away?'

'Not that you care, of course, for you know nothing, do you? Someone had a nosebleed, my sweet. Do not worry: Baldwin is our guest. And now, out. We are upsetting these nice people.'

I saw no evidence of that, save for the looks that the serving girl was giving us, enough to curdle milk. I stood up. We would walk to the door, and I would run. This girl would not catch me in her skirts. And I still had my knife.

Well done - oh, don't forget to pay!' she scolded, blue eyes flaying me. Flustered again, I threw a handful of pennies on to the table, turned on my heel and made for the door. I heard her chair scrape behind me, but I was pushing past the fat serving maid, now positively squinting with displeasure, and lifting the latch I stepped out into the warm dusk. Except that it was not dusk. While I had sat there in the tavern the sun had departed and night had fallen. I hesitated, confused, trying to get my bearings. A fisherman's fire burned on the river bank to my left, and torches flickered in the street. I took off, heading for the river, thinking to sprint for the bridge, but as I rounded the corner of the tavern wall I slammed into something and fell back hard on to my arse.

‘Pick him up, Dardi,' called the blue-eyed woman in broad Venetian. I looked up into a broad, bearded face, smiling nastily. Hands like farriers' tongs grabbed me under the armpits and hoisted me upright.

'Salve’
said Dardi, not letting go. A hand snaked round my waist, fingers just brushing the top of my groin, and relieved me of Thorn. The woman took the knife and admired it.

'Ooh, how pretty,' she exclaimed. 'Thank you, gentle sir!'

'Don't cut yourself,' I said in English, through gritted teeth.

'I'll try not to,' she whispered back. She stepped in front of me. I saw that she had two companions: the man called Dardi, who released me, and another man, tall and slim, who in the same moment produced a long, slim, double-edged dagger.

‘Please give us the pope's document’ he said pleasantly. We have no quarrel with you, boy.'

'I don't have it’ I told him, hoarsely. 'Ask her.' Well, Signora Letitia?'

'He claims he took it back to the Lateran. I don't believe him. In any event he does not have it now’ said the fair woman.

'Then you will fetch it,' said the man with the knife, his voice tighter.

‘I will not. I cannot’ I muttered.

At that, Dardi drew back and punched me hard in the stomach. I bent double, meeting his knee with my chin. Quicksilver flooded into my eye sockets as I reeled, fighting to keep on my feet.

You will fetch it’ Dardi grunted.

'Fetch it yourself’ I told him. I reasoned, very foggily, that if they were beating me up they probably would not kill me, at least right now. If I could just stay upright...

'Stop it, Dardi’ said the woman, impatiently. 'Listen, boy. You are wasting our time. No, actually’ she said, shifting her feet and crossing her arms resignedly across her chest, 'you are wasting our master's time. Much worse.'

Who is your master, then? Not that blustering coxcomb Querini?' I gasped.

'Nicholas Querini of Venice. Hardly a coxcomb: an extremely wealthy and reputable gentleman. Ask anyone about him. Jean de Sol, for instance.'

Wasn't he the one who knocked you down in the street the other day?' I shot back. 'I felt sorrow for you then, fair maid, all sprawled out in the market square.' I straightened up carefully. She was scowling. ‘I would have offered you my hand.'

'I didn't need it,' she hissed.

'Letitia's not your real name,' I went on, babbling to stay alive a minute longer. You're no Venetian. You hail from London, I'd wager, and I'll further wager that your tongue got its edge somewhere lovely like New Gate.'

'Aha! And under your Venetian silks
you
are a little Wessex sheep-shagger,' she told me. Perhaps I imagined the hint of amusement in her voice.

'Devon, ma'am,' I told her, as proudly as I could. 'I know of no man called Sol. I am clerk to a lazy swine at the Curia who promised me a silver coin if I delivered that letter while he went off and fucked his mistress. Now I have no coin, and you are about to remove my giblets. A very poor bargain all round.'

What is your wish, Signora Letitia?' asked the one called Facio. He raised his blade and pointed it at my throat.

'Listen, you,' she said. 'My master is a great friend of little Baldwin de Courtenay - his very best friend, I would dare say. The emperor needs to be protected from scum like de Sol. Last chance. The letter - tell us where it is.' I shook my head, feigning ignorance but not desperation. She leaned forward, until her chin almost touched my shoulder.
'This
is your last chance,' she whispered in her London drawl. 'I did see you in the market: 'twas a kind thought you had. And you had me nearly right: it was Smooth Field, not New Gate.' Her breath smelled of fennel seeds. She stepped back and scratched thoughtfully at her nose, where this morning I had seen a spot breaking out - this morning, an eternity ago. Then she smiled.

Well then. Nice to meet you, Master Devonshire,' she said briskly. You must have been the best-dressed suitor a sheep ever had. Pity you ever left your bog, though, innit?' She brushed past me, cupped her hand around Facio's ear and whispered something. Then she took to her heels, and in a moment she was gone, lost amongst the pools of light and dark between the city and its river.

'Allora’
said Facio, pleasantly. He tapped Dardi on the shoulder and gave some guttural command in Venetian, and in the next instant Dardi's booted foot had caught me squarely between the fork of my legs and I was retching on my hands and knees, aware of nothing but churning agony and bile searing my nose and throat. Then those tong-like hands had hoisted me up again and I was half-walking, half being dragged towards the river. I dimly felt my legs snag in some low brambles. Then Dardi stepped back and Facio was standing there. I could barely see his face, but he might have been smiling. Then he nodded briskly, placed the palm of his left hand square upon my breast-bone, and drew back his knife hand. I barely had time to draw in a rasping gulp of air when I felt a terrible blow on my left breast and a splinter of frigid pain. Then my head burst into stars and I was falling down, down, blows striking me from left and right. But I could not feel my body, for I was no longer the tenant of that destroyed shell of flesh. I was dissolving into the night, the fetid, marsh-stinking night.

Chapter Eleven

I

t was a smell that brought me to my senses. Nay, not a smell: a stench, a miasma. I opened my eyes, or at least fancied that I had, for it was pitch dark. For an awful moment I was struck by the horrifying, juddering fear that I was smelling my own long-dead and rotten flesh. I could not move, not a sinew, and that dreadful reek was all about me, smothering me like cuckoo-spit on a leaf. I could not even move the tiniest breath of air through my throat, could not utter a sound. As slow as judgement I sank, choking, into the darkness once more.

When I awoke again I was lying stretched out upon something hard. In a flash I fancied that it was the bottom of my coffin that I felt, but then I opened my eyes and saw, not the solid black of a grave, but whitewashed plaster arches, dimly flickering with lamplight. I shut my eyes again, disbelieving what they told me. But when I opened them again, I saw a tonsured head above me, and a face that, save for a pair of kindly eyes, was all nose and fleshy lips. I gave a small cry, for this was worse: surely now I was beginning my atonement for all my vile past, for why else would a monk be here with me? He was still there when I dared look again, though, and this time he spoke, not with the voice of a demon or a judge, but in the rough, reassuring tones of a Roman. 'Are you awake, my son? What is your name?' 'Is this hell?' I asked.

The monk chuckled. 'Only when the Abbot is in his cups,' he whispered. 'But I did not say that. No, you are in the Hospice of Saint Bartholomew.'

'In London?' I croaked, sitting up with a jerk.

'No, no!' said the monk, eyebrows signalling amusement on one side and concern on the other. 'On the Tiber Island. Is there one in London?'

I nodded, not wishing to explain how I knew. 'A fisherman found you and we brought you here, for you were lying no more than a few yards from our bridge,' he continued.

I lay back, trying to remember any of that, and failing. Then I remembered something after all. 'I was stabbed in the heart! How ...'

'Stabbed, you say? Well, well. No, you were not stabbed, my son.'

'No, I saw...' I looked down, and realised that I was naked under a rough flaxen sheet, and that I stank, although not of the corpse-fetor I was expecting, but of vinegar. Despite a stiff neck I searched for the wound I was sure I would find in my chest, but instead saw only a great bruise, two or three small grazes and a long scratch, fine as a hair, under my arm. 'But truly, I saw the knife! I felt him stab me,' I protested.

'Him?'

'The ... the footpad,' I stammered. 'There were two of them.'

Yes, they did rob you,' said the monk, frowning. We found no purse with you. We had to wash your clothes in vinegar, and swab you, too, for you were lying in a great dead fish, all slime and maggots.' He mimed being assailed by a ghastly stink.

I must go,' I said. 'Please bring my clothes, Brother. I am unhurt, it seems, and I must...'

'No, no’ said the monk, grasping my shoulders. You took a blow to the head, for one thing’

But I protested, vehemently if politely, and at last the poor, confused soul shuffled off to fetch my clothes, much scrubbed and free of the horror of dead fish, but practically glowing with the fumes of vinegar. They were still wet, and the vinegar made my various scrapes and bruises sting. I guessed that the doughty fishermen had taken my purse, and I considered the money well spent. I knew who had my knife. But it was not until I was limping out of the building, the monk fussing at my side and I making haste, for I did not want the Watch to be called, or to have questions put to me, that he sighed and said, 'A sorry night for guests in our city. You at least are leaving us on foot’

'What do you mean?' I said, half listening.

Well, we pulled a Frank out of the river at sundown’ he said. 'A Frenchman. You were lucky, my son. That one was dead’

I stopped in my tracks. 'Dead?' I asked. A Frenchman? How do you know?'

'He carried a promissory note from the Margrave of Namur. Namur is in France, I think?'

You are right. Was he short, with grey hair and no front teeth?' The monk shook his head, humouring me. 'Then was he tall - taller than you, anyway, with a broken nose and an old scar on his face?' I drew my finger from my left temple down to the corner of my mouth.

'He was. He was! Lord in Heaven, did you know him?' The good brother was aghast. I shook my head hastily.

'No’ I lied. 'But a companion of mine, another Frenchman, was looking for his friend, a knight of Namur, who seemed to have disappeared this morning. Shall I send him down here to see if it is the right fellow?' I added guilelessly.

'Oh, please do so’ said the monk, crossing himself. What an ill fortune follows you, my son! Why not stay awhile, and I will hear your confession? Or you may pray in the church ...'

But I was already gone, walking as fast as I could across the bridge to Trastevere, where I ducked into the narrow streets and left the hospice, and the kindly, confused monk behind me. And behind me also, the corpse of Fulk de Grez, late companion to the Emperor of Constantinople. Like a spirit summoned up from the mist on the river, I remembered something my father had told me many years ago on a wet Dartmoor afternoon. We were watching his dogs herd a flock of bedraggled sheep into a pen of hurdles, and I had exclaimed, worried that the dogs were going to harm the sheep, for they snapped at their heels with great fury. But no, said my father. Think of your hands and fingers, all the things you can do with them: tie knots, pick your nose. A dog has no hands, and perforce he must do everything with his mouth. A dogs teeth are his fingers, and he knows exactly what to do with them. He will not bite the sheep. When a dog snaps at your hand and misses, we think he tried to bite and failed, but no, it was a warning. If a dog wishes to bite you, bite he will. And now I thought: as dogs with their teeth, so Venetians with their knives. If a Venetian bravo wished to cut out your sweetbreads with a flick of his wrist, he would do it. These folk did not miss. I had been spared - spared, and warned.

It was easy enough to get back to the Borgo, though it took what remained of the night. I found a path that ran between the high ground of the Janiculum hill and the river, where the folk of Trastevere have their gardens, and crept past sprouting cabbages and new beans, dozing chickens and rabbits shut up in their hutches. I saw nothing and nobody-save a fox, which did not bother to run from me but glared from beside an artichoke bed, and a polecat, surprised atop a henhouse, that fled silently. The gate into the Borgo was not guarded - or at least there was a guard, but he was at muffled rut behind a tree and I slipped past as the woman begged the guard to stab her with his great big sword.

I made my way home, squinting through a raging headache at the skinny cats who, by night, filled the doorways of the quarter. On my own doorstep, a fat, red-faced priest gaped at me with alarm and I stepped back, for he seemed to have four feet, two sandalled ones planted on the stone step, two bare ones reversed and facing me, soles out. Shaking my fuddled head, I realised that the bare feet belonged to a tart kneeling before him, his cassock providing a sort of confessional that covered her from the knees up, and indeed there were muffled sounds coming from under the cloth.

'She's making a full confession, I see’ I said. The man's eyes were bulging out of his face, and still he made an effort to avoid mine. 'And I believe that's worth a three-year penance’ I added, slipping past him and closing the door on his quivering back. This city was starting to bother me: I thanked the stars I was leaving in the morning.

I was sure that my lodgings would be watched, but they were not, or at least I saw nothing to make me suspicious. And I had been certain that they would at least have searched my rooms, but again all was safe and in its place. So I hastily pulled on my clean clothes, neatly folded on the bed, and stuffed the vinegary ones into a saddlebag. The gold was where I had left it, up in an old mortise-hole in one of the ceiling beams. The excitement I always felt before beginning a journey was offset by a sharp foreboding that, on top of my sleepless night and the blow to my head, began to make my limbs twitch as though Saint Vitus's dance were creeping over me.

Eventually I could bear my own nerves no longer and drank off a pint of the landlady's strong, sweet wine I kept for emergencies, but which I heartily disliked. But it did the trick, settling my stomach and curing me of the urge to scuttle away to the jakes every five minutes. At last I saw that I was ready for the off, and allowed myself a moment to lean on the cold marble of the windowsill. There was no one about down in the street. The air was cool and sharp, not the usual rich swirl of the sun-baked kennel, but astringent, dry: the breath of Rome's ancient stone. There was a pallor in the east, and the red flowers that cascaded from roofs and windows all around were beginning to glow with the first hint of sunrise. Time to go. I buckled on my sword and slung my bags across my shoulder.

Dawn was unfolding its petals far above the city as I looked up and down the street from the doorway. It was still night down here, and I saw nobody, heard nothing, until my own footfalls rapped - too loud, surely - along the dirty stones. I tried not to hurry around the corner, through the passageway beside the Frisian hostel, and as I saw that only the bony grey cats kept watch my heart began to grow calm and I slowed down. There was a lamp lit at the livery stables and a bleared and surly boy in a leather apron greeted me with an uncivil leer. My horse was deep in his nose-bag and bared his great teeth at us when we put an end to his breakfast, but when he saw it was me he had the grace to nod his head and even whinny a little. I raised an eyebrow to the stable-boy, who ignored my natural mastery of all creatures and instead presented me with his master's well-padded bill, which I paid with what was, by Roman standards, quite good grace. He watched me critically as I made my packs fast to the saddle and fiddled unconvincingly with the bridle and girth. I tossed him another farthing to get lost, and when I was sure no one was watching I patted the horse on the nose and muttered into one ear: 'Don't fuck me about, please, beast’

The horse - I could not bring myself to think of him as Iblis, a far too exotic and mysterious name for a pretty grey nag - regarded me with a jaundiced eye. I had never noticed how long horse eyelashes are, and seeing Iblis bat his girlish lashes at me, I began to feel much less afraid of him. I swung myself up into the saddle. This was the moment of truth; I made sure the stable-lad was not looking, and urged the horse on with a gentle rub of my heels. Earning my eternal gratitude, he snorted purposefully and headed for the door.

Horst, I realised, had taught me well. Now I was on my own, I found that riding held no terrors for me after all. Indeed, by the time we had wound our way through the tangled lanes of the Borgo, keeping the grim bulk of the Castel Sant'Angelo to our right, I felt, if not quite a centaur, at least almost normal. The guards outside the fortress gate regarded us with baleful disinterest. Dawn was soaking fast into the sky, and on the other side of the river the mouldering corpses that hung from the gibbets of the Tor di Nona were tinged a lovely shade of rose. I spat, and urged Iblis into a trot.

There were no straight roads in Rome, I knew, and so I plunged into the chaos of streets and alleys, always keeping the rising sun on my right hand. The great city was waking up, and as I rode deeper into the maze I found myself pushing through a growing crowd of people, some friendly, some not, but all of them as loud and vehement as a flock of magpies. Cooking smells filled the air, doing battle with the fetid reek of night-soil, and I was tempted by more than one food-seller. But I was in a hurry, and keeping my rumbling guts under control I pressed on. Now I found myself in a river of men and women pushing barrows, driving carts or bent under packs, all on their way to the Pons San Petri. They carried vegetables, fruit, flowers, all still with the morning's dew upon them. I passed what seemed to be a walking rosebush, and looking down, saw a little girl staggering along under the weight of a huge bunch of roses, all pink petals and gold stamens and so fresh and fragrant that a few sleepy city bees were taking breakfast there. The girl looked up at me and for a moment I caught her eye and she stuck out her tongue at me and cackled. She was the happiest creature I had seen that morning, and I would have dropped her a coin or two if I had not seen that she needed both hands and all her strength to carry her gorgeous burden. And I noticed, as I rode on, that the thorny stems had scratched her bare arms so that blood had begun to drip from the cut ends. I shuddered. As usual, Rome was making me feel slightly sick, but if it was with disgust or joy I had still not quite decided.

At last - it seemed as if I had been riding for an eternity, and I had begun to fear that I had missed my way - the dark, narrow alleyway down which I had been forcing Iblis, and which had seemed like the only even vaguely northward-leading route, suddenly gave out on to open country. Just like that, I had left Rome. The buildings thinned out abruptly until I was riding through a curious landscape of poor huts, vegetable plots, waste-ground through which jutted odd, decayed blocks of travertine, and everywhere the low, toadstool-shaped pine trees that grew wherever men had abandoned even the tiniest patch of Roman ground.

On my side of the river I was in a landscape of little hills, all terraced and planted with olives and vines, and crowned, every one, with a thicket of Roman pines. From every bush and tree, insects battered and clattered out their songs. Here and there, great clumps of butcher's broom were flowering, and the scent filled the dry air. It was already getting hot, although I found I had made good time so far. Leaving the city had been much easier than I had expected. And the day seemed to be going well for my fellow travellers as well, for I was riding against a flowing stream of country folk all hurrying towards the city. They were seemingly all in good humour, singing and laughing to one another, exchanging loud greetings with others passing in the opposite direction. It was impossible not to get caught up in the jollity, and soon I was beaming to myself as I rode along. And what was there to be sour about? The blue heavens stretched flawlessly above. A light breeze stirred the olive trees, and their silvery grey leaves danced against the sky. I was alone with nothing more daunting than this road before me, and - this above all else - I was friends with my horse.