The Vault of Bones (32 page)

'Gregory knew what he had caused,' I whispered. 'He made mention of something, that day in Viterbo, but I thought nothing of it. I thought...'

'Even a pope cannot bring about the death of a princess without feeling some prick of guilt,' said Michael, gently. 'It was he who sent you the
Inventarium.
At my suggestion. Some little gesture to make amends: no doubt he has forgotten all about it by now. But you, my boy, can use that little gift against him, against Querini - nay, against the whole of Christendom, if your rage is hot enough.' He set his chin upon his finger-ends and regarded me.

I tried to make sense of what I had heard. What did I care for money, or any of it? I wanted to kill Nicholas Querini, nothing more. My rage, kindled more by despair than anger, was as simple as my desire to eat the last apple on the plate before me. Use the pope's gift? Christ, I was become more an animal than a man! There would never again be a time for gifts. And ... and yet there was something in Michael's watchful stillness that calmed the turmoil in my head.

'As to that, why do you want the
Mandylion?
I asked reluctantly, for misery had begun to curdle into anger, and with it a sullen trace of hope. 'Old Gregory is your friend - you said so yourself.'

'And I meant it. The war that is coming: Guelfs against Ghibellines, spiritual against temporal, brother against brother. It will consume the world, gobble it whole. It is the Apocalypse. I will not take sides.'

'But the
Mandylion?
I insisted.

'There is yet a chance that the war can be averted, for the beast's jaws are not yet locked. The
Mandylion
is a thing beyond worth: the holiest of the holy. I intend to give it to Frederick, so that he may present it to Gregory as a peace offering. Although you will not have heard this in Rome, Frederick does not seek war in Italy. He wishes to rule, not to destroy.'

'But you, Your Eminence,' I protested, turning to Mesarites. 'You are robbing yourself. Why would you help us Franks to finish the ruin of your city?'

'Mikaili and I have known each other for half a lifetime,' he replied slowly. We met here, in this city, when I was sent to debate with the emissaries of Pope ... I do not remember which pope. It was thought that the two Churches, Greek and Latin, might be reconciled, and this has always been my dearest wish. It was not Constantine's vision, nor Justinian's, that the Empire of the Romans should be divided for ever, or that Christian should revile Christian over matters of mere custom. Mikaili had come with the papal delegation, and we became friends over ...'

'Over Aristotle’ Michael prompted.

Just so. I have kept abreast of matters in Rome and at the imperial court these many years through my friend. And so I know that Gregory truly desires unity between the Churches, but on his own terms. Frederick desires the same thing, but he loves the Greeks, and he would have our rights upheld. If there could be peace between pope and prince, brokered by our greatest treasure, it is my hope that the schism might be healed, perhaps in my lifetime - although that I do not dare expect’

'But what, then, is this
Mandylion!
I have heard it is something like the Veronica, with a painting of Christ's face. There are many such icons, though.'

'The
Mandylion
is not one of those!' snorted Mesarites. He seemed to straighten up a little. A painting? It is ...
acheiropoietos.
Not made by human hands. And not just the face ...' he paused, and crossed himself. 'The whole of Our Lord's precious body, laid out in death.'

'Or life’ said Michael.

'Ach. We disagree. The impression - it is a miraculous
imprint,
Frankish boy, not a painting - is of a dead man. There are the stains of blood, around the head, in the side, in the hands and feet.'

'And you have seen this?'

'Oh, many times’ he cried. 'Our Lord was revealed every Friday in the Church of Blachernae, rising as if from the tomb. Resurrected in glory.'

'But it is a face’ I persisted. 'In a picture. It says so in the inventories.'

'Oh dear, Petroc’ sighed Michael, shaking his head like an exasperated schoolmaster. 'It is folded. Folded so that only the face shows, and so that it fits into a picture frame. That was its secret, and until a few years before the sack, known only to the archbishops of Blachernae. And because it vanished when the Franks took the city, that secret is not known in the West. Imagine the revelation, the ... the universal wonderment when it is revealed. The pope will declare a jubilee!'

I looked at these two men, so agog at the wonder of it all. It was not so strange in the Greek, perhaps, for he was a churchman; but Michael Scotus ... I was surprised that his dark and shadowy person should be so suffused with superstitious joy. I felt, all at once, utterly different from them, a goat amongst sheep or an ape amongst men. What cared I for their jubilee? If men could kill a blameless woman on a whim, in the name of holy Mother Church, was it not equally unbelievable that a piece of old, stained cloth would stop the same men from destroying each other? I did not care. But, I realised as I watched the burning eyes of the two old men, if something could be salvaged, some scrap for Captain de Montalhac, for Gilles and for the rest of us who lived outside the world of both pope and emperor, then I would gladly die in the attempt.

There was another door, an old postern that let out on to the beach below the walls. Michael led me through it and out into the night. The sea lapped and gurgled very near us, and the air was sharp with the rot of weed and flotsam that had once been alive. I trudged after Michael, to where a huge old plane tree, half dead, was growing out of the wall and hanging its branches far out over the water.

'Help me,' he said, beckoning. He was tugging at a pile of driftwood. When I reached it I saw that the pile was disguising a small fishing boat, short, pointed fore and aft, with a pronounced rocker and two rowlocks. We heaved it over. It looked seaworthy enough in the moonlight, for the timbers were sound and the paint was not old. It had a mast, folded flat against the deck, and a tighdy furled sail. Then Michael led me back to the postern. Just inside were two ladders, lying propped lengthwise against the wall.

'Scaling ladders from the siege’ said Mesarites, shuffling over with a light. 'There were legions of them, a forest. Afterwards, some who were left alive picked them up and saved them, thinking they might have a use when pruning time came. But it has never come. Here: these are not long enough, but you can lash them together.'

To my astonishment, he produced a coil of thin rope, thin as string, and gave it to me. It was black and oily.

'Eel skin’ he said. 'It will take your weight, never fear.' As I was pondering this, Michael Scotus handed me a pack, with two straps for the shoulders, roughly stitched from what looked like sailcloth. I hefted it and looked inside: it held a chipping hammer and a chisel.

'Come now: it is getting late’ muttered the doctor.

With the growing sense that I was no more in control of things than a ball launched down a hill, I found myself clambering into the boat. Michael shoved me off as I fumbled the oars into the rowlocks.

'Do not dally, lad’ hissed Michael. And then: 'Be careful, Petroc. Be very, very careful.'

I raised my hand in a half-hearted salute and began to row, clumsily at first, the blades biting too deep or jumping across the surface. But in a minute I found my rhythm, and the little boat began to surge eagerly, happily across the still water. Soon Michael was swallowed up in the tree-shadows, and I was alone. I bent my shoulders into the work of rowing, feeling my hands grow sore with the labour, my spirits rising with each little rush across the water. I was propelling myself, at last, beyond the reach of both persecutors and those who called themselves my friends, but whom I knew it would be madness to trust. A faint breeze was blowing from the west, from Greece and beyond, and catspaws hissed against the side of the boat. There was the crouched, crumbled mound of the Bucoleon Palace, over my right shoulder. No lights showed anywhere to seawards. The home of emperors lay humped upon the shore like a great, dead beast. I set my feet on the bench in front of me and pulled, pulled away, my wake a pathway showing faint and pale. But there was no path ahead of me, by sea or by land. I had no life beyond the next dip of my oars. How tempting to ship them and simply drift, alone in the dark. But that would be death, and now I could see the dim flash of foam where the sea was breaking under the palace. There was no escape: I would wash up sooner or later. Well, I knew how to row, and so I kept to it, the corpse of Constantinople sliding by on the port side.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I

moored the boat to a broken marble pole jutting from the slimy rocks. Everything was wreckage here, rubble and seaweed. I could hear the rattle of crab claws on the rocks as I clambered ashore, and the pop of bladderwrack under my feet. The round wall of the chapel was right in front of me, looming overhead, very high and forbidding. It sat upon a crumbling buttress of boulders and rubble which the sea had been chewing so intently that the whole building was nearly undercut. Another decade or so and the Pharos Chapel would be another heap of weed-slick rubble, home to the crabs and eels. I pulled the ladders from the boat and propped them against the buttress, then heaved the boat up on to the rocks, turned it over and draped it with rags of seaweed. Then I scrambled up until I stood on a sort of rough platform or shelf, the width of a couple of feet, under the wall itself. I rested for a little while, for my nose was throbbing horribly and one side of my chest felt as if it were lying upon hot coals. From here the roof seemed much closer, and I could see the moss that hung from the overhang of tiles. Chewing upon my lip to take my mind from the pain of my injuries, I pulled the ladders up next to me and lashed them together with the eelskin cords. Then, after a glance out to sea to make sure I was not observed, I shrugged on my pack and laid a foot upon the bottom rung.

The ladder shook and bowed, and I felt like a big grasshopper climbing a little grass stem. With every step the ladders feet danced upon the loose earth, and the top scraped and jounced on the tiles. The higher I got, the more precarious I felt, and I fairly dived on to the tiles when at last I reached the roof. Somewhat shaky with pain and relief I pulled the ladder up after me and set about looking for a place to attach my rope. There was a sort of stone finial at the apex of the roof but when I tugged at it experimentally it grated and shook in its nest of loose mortar. Further behind me the palace rose in its decaying tiers, and in the wall from which the chapel jutted, a little stone window glimmered faintly, white against the surrounding brick. I went over and felt it: the window, really a block of marble with four holes bored through it, was solidly anchored, and so with a little fussing and scraping of knuckle-skin I managed to thread the rope in one hole and out through another. Twice more and a hefty knot, and I had something to which I could trust my weight.

Tying the rope around my waist, I sat on the roof s edge, legs dangling. The hammer and chisel were tucked into my belt, the empty pack limp against my spine. Before me the sea brooded, black upon black. Away in the distance some fishermen's lights winked very faintly, but below me the water was empty, and I could hear nothing save the slap of water against the rocks. I gave the rope one last tug, and swung myself over the edge, twisting as I dropped, and as my grip on the rope brought me up short I fended the wall off with my feet. There were old iron spikes sticking out of the wall here and there, doubtless meant to keep folk like me away, but they were placed wrong and I ignored them as I lowered myself, fist over fist, until my feet were planted on either side of the chapel window. Carefully I dropped another arm's length, then another, until I was looking at the square of slate. It had been mortared in once, but now it was just propped. I pulled it out and dropped it into my pack. A delicate breath of incense came from inside. With one hand I took hold of the rusty iron grille and tugged.

I had been right. Centuries of weather and of salt sea spray had gnawed at the iron where it was set into the lintels, and had rotted the stone and the mortar into nothing more than coarse gravel. Hanging free, I pulled out the hammer and chisel and gave one of the sockets a cautious tap. There was a low echo from within, and some loose gravel tinkled down the inner wall. I tried again, and again, keeping my blows light, for I did not wish to rouse the guards. After a couple of minutes I had exposed one arm of the grille and had set to work on the next. It took me no more than half an hour to work the iron free from its stone surrounding. When I judged that my work was done, I tied the loose end of the rope around it and heaved it out. With a grinding and a shower of rust flakes, it came. Wasting no time, I dragged myself back up to the roof, dumped the grille and the slate, and lowered myself down again. It was still dark: the guards had not heard, and I did not think they could, through thick stone walls and that heavy old door.

From the memories of one look at the inside of the Pharos Chapel when I had not been thinking about it, I had calculated - if my science, made up as it was of equal parts desperation, hope and the ever-tempting notion that if I believed it was so, it would be, could be called calculation of any sort, and not a nonsense akin to the casting of bones - that I would easily fit through the window. And so I could, with room to spare. But I was so wounded and bruised that I found that I could barely make my limbs obey me. Every move was a torment. Straining, feeling my clothing snag on the holes I had made in the sill, I found myself looking down at the ground, some way below, and at the belly of the rope that hung there.

Wiggling like a worm in cheese, I was horribly aware of the dark void in which half of me was flailing, a place that had terrified me when I had visited it with candles and company. My ribs, jammed against the stone, were howling in agony.

But with a heave, and remembering just as I began to slip backwards to grab the rope above the window and not below, I dropped into the blackness. Tugging the loop of rope through after me, I gingerly lowered myself, feet swinging, desperate to feel something solid beneath them. And then I realised. I was dangling, like a fly in a spider’s larder, before the great painting of Our Lord in agony, that paean to torture and lingering death that covered the wall behind the altar. I could not see it, but I felt it: the pallid skin suffused with desolate luminescence, the blood-limp hair. With a choking cry I let go of the rope for a split second, but it was enough to send me sliding down, hands burning on the eel skin, until with a hollow thud I landed. Wringing my searing hands I stumbled forward and collided with the altar. The cold stone instantly soothed my palms and I laid my forehead down on the slab, which I could not see but which calmed me enough so that I could untie the rope and struggle out of my pack, into which I dived frantically, fishing for the tinderbox. I found it, and the candle-stub, and after a few clumsy attempts I had struck fire and a pinpoint of light grew into a glow, a halo that lit up the altar, but which seemed too feeble to force its way into the black air beyond. I lit the other candles on the altar, steeled myself, then turned round.

There was the gilded wall, and there the awful cross with its tormented giant. I felt sick and suffocated, as I had done before, but shook my head until it cleared. There was much work to be done. I looked around. It was clear where the great chest that held the Crown of Thorns had sat, for there was a rectangle of clear stone outlined in the plaster dust that lay everywhere in a thin layer - plaster dust and dead flies, and the granulated emanations of the fatal treasures that were shut up in here. I felt the stifling weight of them all around me. But I was here to work. What had the Captain said? 'All these things: money and nothing more. Never forget that: money, and that alone’ It was hardly comforting, but I felt sharper when I muttered those words to myself. But where to start?

Most helpfully, the reliquaries - or most of them, at least - were sheathed in panels of hammered gold or silver which bore upon them some indication of what lay inside. The first one I examined showed, in beautiful relief, the washing of Christ's feet. There was the Virgin suckling her baby: Mary's Milk, no doubt. I had seen enough of that cheesy stuff being packed into vials aboard the
Cormaran
that I had no desire to look further. A long, slender case, I assumed, held the Staff of Moses. There was a small box, encrusted with gems, that showed the soldier Longinus at work with his lance. Curious, I opened it, and found an old, diamond-bladed spearhead into which a smith had cut four wedges to form a rough cross. A shiver of unease ran through me and I hastily shut the box. But I saw that it had been sitting upon an icon case whose cover also bore the image of Longinus. The icon inside was ancient and encrusted with a tarry patina, overlaid with a richly jewelled frame into which was set a small triangle of metal. Frowning to myself, I opened the box again, and saw that the spearhead was missing its tip, and it was this that was set into the icon. The
Inventarium
mentioned only one Spear, though. I considered. The icon was lighter, but the spearhead was more impressive and besides, the box would be worth something. I dropped it into my pack.

In short order I found the other relics: the Sponge, the Reed, the Swaddling Clothes. The Stone from the Sepulchre was, I guessed, the large stone sitting upon a gilded plinth, and the Chain was indeed a large and rusty chain. The three saints' heads were stacked one atop the other against the back of the rood-screen. Various vials of blood - there is no relic so fundamentally unconvincing, and yet so appealing to the customer, save wood from the Cross itself, and lo! here were two pieces of that very structure. I ignored them, for I had exhausted the smaller reliquaries and had not found what I sought. So now I turned my attention to the big chests that lined the walls.

I held a candle close up to the carbuncled metal of the reliquaries. The images glittered and swum before my eyes, so I opened one at random. A box within a box, and then a long thing wrapped in silk. I did not need to unwrap it, for I felt the hard claws at one end and the jagged, splintered bone at the other: the Baptist's arm. Had those stick-like fingers, so brittle and vulnerable, once held Our Lord under the waters of Jordan? I felt another twinge of dread, as if the lolling head on the wall behind me were about to speak. Time to banish all such thoughts. Money, remember: only money.

The next box gave me something I wanted: a suspiciously well-preserved pair of leather sandals, somewhat dried-out and crushed, the soles beginning to curl, but nonetheless, I thought, almost wearable. Christ's Sandals - it sounded like a prudish oath, but these were on the pope's list and not on Baldwin's. They were coming with me. I felt nothing when I handled them but a creeping respect for the men who passed things like this off to the credulous, century after century. To my delight, there were some authenticating documents in Greek and Aramaic. I made a parcel of shoes and papers with the silk they had rested upon, and opened another chest. Having heard not even a scrape or a cough from beyond the chapel I had more or less convinced myself that the guards were either asleep, drunk or were gone for the night, for who would be making the long and haunted journey through the ruined palace to their post at this hour? So I dragged the next box into the light with less care and let the lid fall back with a thud on one of its fellows. The thud, muffled and weak in the smothering atmosphere of the chapel, found an echo, an answering bump from beyond the rood-screen, out in the nave.

An explosion of panic hurled me across the floor to the altar, and I dropped down behind the stone and held my knees against my chest. I seemed to have grabbed my pack, at least. Oh God, the lights! I jumped up and pinched out the candles in a frenzy. But there were more alight over by the rood-screen. I hung there in a torment of indecision, not quite able to order myself across the sanctuary floor, nor yet daring to commit myself to the dangling rope behind me. As I stood there quivering, the smoke from the snuffed candles threading upwards around me, I remembered a word that Anna had told me long ago: not rood-screen.
Iconostasis.
And then the door opened.

I ducked down behind the altar again, my thoughts as ordered as a kicked ant-hill. I had no weapon, curse it! I had left the hammer and chisel up on the roof. I cast my eyes around in the gloom for anything else I could use, but all I saw were the painted nails pinning His feet, and the frozen dribble of blood from the gash in His side. Good Longinus, put me out of my misery now, for when they catch me they will flay me, I half-prayed. Longinus ... The door creaked open, and I heard two voices, very low and then, when they saw the light, very loud. They were speaking Venetian. Footsteps running up the aisle of the nave and stopping at the door into the sanctuary. I stood up and prepared to die fighting, the holy Lance in my fist.

'Oh, fuck me!' The nasal orison of London town cut the air like a blunt falchion. Letitia of Smooth Field stood there, open-mouthed. At her side, Dardi was already pulling out his dagger, a wide, single-edged thing like a butchers knife.

‘I thought they'd skinned you,' Letitia added, dropping her hands to her hips and regarding me with bemused impatience.

'Not yet,' I said, eyeing Dardi's knife. There was no time to think any more. I stepped smartly out from behind the altar and raised my weapon. Was Letitia armed? No doubt. But still...

'Come and get it, you fat fucker,' I snarled at Dardi. His eyebrows shot ceilingwards.

'He doesn't speak English, love, or don't you remember?' said Letitia. Want me to translate?'

Dardi turned to her, chin raised in question. She pointed at me and muttered something. The big man laughed, then spat wetly on to the floor. I heard the gob splatter. How badly I hoped that it wasn't the last sound I would hear. I noted that he wiped his mouth and cast nervous eyes at the painted figure behind me, though.

'Get on with it!' I told him, in Italian. 'Come on, pig!' If I was hoping to goad him, it did not work.

What have you got there, a plasterer's trowel?' he asked. ‘You going to wall me up or something? I knew you had no balls the first time.' Again, he paused and crossed himself. 'Come on. Put that down. We'll do it outside. It will be quick, I promise.'

Letitia said something else in Venetian, and looked behind her at the door. Dardi shrugged, crossed himself again and squared his shoulders. He gave me the smile that butchers give to tied hogs. He wasn't scared of me, not even the tiniest bit. I felt the metal of the spearhead grow warm and slippery with sweat.