The Vault of Bones (34 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

There was little strength left in my shoulders, and I stopped rowing when the little boat was safely away from the rocks. After I had hauled up the mast and secured it with pins and wedge, I raised the sail. It hung, a triangle of black against the brighter, star-sown blackness of the sky, as if I had torn the firmament itself. But the breeze, offshore as Michael had promised, licked at it tentatively and then filled it, so that the halyard creaked and the mainsheet grew taut in my hands.

It took little time to sail the quarter-mile or so back to where Michael Scot stood waiting with the stooped figure of the old Greek at his side. He took a step back when he saw that I had a companion with me, but I waved my arms to signal all was well, and, leaving the girl crouched in the prow, I jumped ashore.

'Do not worry, Doctor,' I assured him. We do not have time to explain. She will not trouble us, though, I do not think.'

Michael Scot was not convinced, but he had little choice in the matter, and between us we helped Mesarites aboard. He was much frailer than I had thought, and light as a child, and I lifted him clean off his feet and planted him amidships. Doctor Scot seemed as quietly proficient with boats as he was with all other things, and soon we were under way.

What do you wish me to do?' I asked Scot, for the wind was freshening and the sail had started to fret. He reached into his pack and produced a small dark cube.

'I have a compass’ he said. 'The French ship is sailing here straight from the Dardanelles, so that in order to intercept her we should be on a heading of.. .'

'Good Doctor, the Sea of Marmara must be fifteen leagues across!' I protested. 'How do you expect to meet one ship in that great expanse of water?'

'if you hold this heading -' and he rattled off a string of numbers that meant nothing to me - 'by my calculations we will be in the middle of the sea roads from the Hellespont to Constantinople. They are narrow and not well travelled in this season. I'll wager the French ship will be the only one abroad upon the face of the waters. We will find her, if you can hold the heading.' And again he pronounced his tangle of numbers. I confessed that I had no idea what he was talking about.

Well, hold the thing so that the needle points to
here.
That should be the right course’ he said impatiently.

'Do you think you can do that?' I asked Letice.

'Suppose so’ she muttered. I gave her the compass box and whispered Michael's instructions: keep your heading dead on south-south-east. She gave a little sigh of incomprehension, so I showed her how to keep the needle steady and line up the right arrow on the wind-rose with the bowsprit. Grateful, perhaps, for something useful to do, she hunkered down and threw the blanket I offered around her, blotting out the ghost-gleam of her yellow hair. I trimmed the sail while Michael and the old man settled themselves in the stern. I called softly to the shadow of the girl, and she held up a hand.

'Steer left’ she hissed. Smiling to myself, I let out the sail until the prow came around and the girl's hand went down. The water began to shush and crackle against the planks and we were away, sailing on a broad reach through the dark sea. I hoped Letice Londeneyse - or Pyefote, or whatever her name really was - had her eyes on the sea as well as the compass, for a floating log or spar would wreck a little boat like this in a trice. Yet as we rushed on, as the sail cupped the chill easterly breeze and the narrow hull jumped and skittered across the catspaws, I felt more free than I had since first setting eyes on Byzantium. Orion hung above us, his shimmering belt pointing the way to Sirius, low in the sky in the south-east. Letice Londeneyse could ruin her sight, staring at the all-but-invisible compass needle, but I would go by Sirius. The Dog Star, at least, I could trust.

No bells were ringing in the city behind us, but I judged that we were somewhere around the second hour of the morning. There was a fair wind now, and we were scudding along through white curls of foam. Nothing showed ahead save the night. And so we sailed, another hour, another, and then another. A faint purple line showed between land and sky to the north, and then the land showed itself, undulating low hills, still nothing more than shadows. As the light waxed, so the wind fell, and tendrils of mist began to creep across the sea, until we were passing silently through thick, cold fog. It was dark again now, and I heard - I could not see - Letice swear nastily and call to me to turn right. The fog seeped into me, and my hands, one on the tiller, one on the mainsheet, began to ache. Only the pitching of the boat, and the pull of the mainsheet, told me that we were still moving. I began to wonder how near the land had been.

And then the dawn returned. At first it was a cold glow, weak as waning moonbeams. But it warmed, and became golden, like honey poured into milk, until we were sailing through pure radiance. I let out a great sigh, and in the bow the girl held up her hands and laughed, deep and happy and full of relief. The tiller jerked in my hand, the sail snapped and filled, and all at once we leaped forward, the wind strong at our backs, and the fog began to rise from the sea. Like a veil lifted from a chalice, the white pall ascended, hovered for an instant high above the masthead, was caught by the breeze and blew away, breaking up and vanishing southwards. The sea spread out around us, flat, ruffled here and there by the breath of the wind. The coast was half a mile off our starboard side, flat land rising to dry, arid hills, near enough to see the pale line where the waves washed the rocks clean, and white buildings, first just dots, like scurf on the fur of an old brown dog, that grew with the coming light into cottages, houses, a church. And all of them deserted, I said to myself.

'Ship ho!' cried the girl, throwing out her arm. The blanket whipped from her shoulders and flew over the rail into the sea, but she seemed not to notice. For there before us, shaking the last rags of fog from its topmast, a ship, a big, high-prowed ship, was ploughing through the swell.

‘Is it them?' I asked aloud.

'How the fuck should I know?' answered Letice, quick as lightning.

It was a merchantman, perhaps Genoese, a round-ship somewhat resembling the
Cormaran
but smaller and with the bulk of an overfed pony. The red and white flag of Pisa fluttered from the mast head. There were figures on the deck, sailors going about their morning chores. We were rushing towards each other now, on opposite reaches. On our present course they would pass a bow's shot away to starboard. Letice looked over her shoulder, her face white and anxious. She pointed again, in case I hadn't seen the ship. I nodded, and trimmed the sail. I could see faces now, too far away still to make out individual features. I wondered briefly if this was the right ship; if it might be a trap. But no: either it was the envoys vessel or just another merchant, I reasoned, and feeling reassured, I pulled the boat as tight to the wind as she would go, the sail taut and humming, the little craft seething through the chop. Our prow was now aimed squarely at the rudder of the merchantman. A tall man appeared at the rail of the steering deck, and then two more beside him. I took a deep breath, pulled the boat's head to the wind and jumped to drop the sail before it began to luff and drag. We were drifting now, still moving fast. Letice shot me another look, worried this time, and began to clamber aft towards me. I began to steer us alongside, but we were still a slingshot from the ship when a loud snap rang out. Letice flinched and I looked up in time to see a great flag reach the limit of its unfurling from the stern rigging, a bedsheet of deepest blue constellated with golden lilies, the bed linen of the King of France himself.

I let out a great huzzah, and the girl cringed, thinking perhaps that I had been struck by an arrow. But I whooped again and waved my free hand in a delirium. Mesarites looked at me as if I had gone mad, but Michael Scot put a comforting arm around his shoulders.

It's all right!' I yelled to them. It
is
all right! We are saved!' With a flourish that I would have been ashamed of at another time, I rammed over the tiller and let the boat slide broadside on towards the French ship. The moment of ecstasy I had felt as we sailed came back to me tenfold, a hundredfold, and I forgot all about the terrors of the last days. Another moment, and our boat came to rest gently against its salty planking. I looked up into the sun-haloed face of a deck-hand. A rope-end landed on the deck. The girl grabbed it, paused, and brought it over to me. I gave it a tug and pulled it tight.

Up you go,' I said to her. She looked more worried than ever, her upper lip clamped between her teeth and her eyes wide and black. I took her hand gently and laid it upon the rope.

'Do not worry’ I said. 'Go: climb up. You are safe, I swear on my life.' She stared hard into my eyes, set her mouth into a hard line and gave a curt nod. Grabbing the rope, she jumped and, fast as any deep-water sailor, swarmed up and over the rail. I threw the painter after her, hauled my pack on to my shoulders and climbed up in my turn. Strong hands grabbed me as I came level with the deck, and for a horrible instant my fears crowded back, but the next moment I was set upon my feet and steadied, as I rummaged for the pope's letter and tried to hide my tears from the wind-burned men around me: tears of joy, of relief and resurrection.

I had not noticed how beaten about I had become until I was seated under an awning, reclining Moorish-fashion upon rugs and cushions, Letice nearby, swathed in a fur cloak, for although the day was growing warm, in the shadows it was winter. Michael Scot and Mesarites were nowhere to be seen. Without the pressing need to survive, to crawl, to steal, to sail a bloody boat, my body was under no compunction to pretend it was anything other than very damaged. My face still throbbed and burned where Hughues the chamberlain had struck me, there was at least one broken rib in my chest, I was more than half-starved, and I could not remember the last time I had slept. The captain of the ship, a Genoese, as I had guessed, had summoned the barber, who had insisted on cleaning the suppurating gashes across my face at once, and had complimented me upon my brace of black eyes; and only then did I realise that, far from the handsome young fellow I had assumed myself still to be - we all allow ourselves such vanities, do we not, when mirrors are not to hand? - I was a scarred, pustular ghoul. No wonder Letice Londeneyse had been so quick to believe that I was indeed the Gurt Dog of Balecester, and great wonder that she had not knifed me out of hand when she had had the chance. Now she was eating quail and watching me from under her heavy-lidded eyes with what might have been amusement or indeed disgust. For I myself was addressing the victuals before me with all the refinement of a jackal, grease and wine dripping from me like blood. The Genoese captain was also watching me, a curious but polite smile upon his face. When I had finished, when my bruised belly could take no more and I felt more like the sun-bloated carcass of a seal than a man, he stood up and beckoned reverently to someone out on the deck. Two figures ducked under the awning and lowered themselves carefully on to the rug. Shielding my eyes with a greasy hand, I beheld two tonsured men dressed in the black and white garb of the Dominican order. One man was of medium height, well-fed and smooth-cheeked: an infant's visage, in fact, were it not for the broken veins in his nose that spoke of a fondness for wine. His fellow was taller and lean. He had the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes of an ascetic. No wine for this one, I guessed: nor pork chops neither.

I am James of Paris’ said the smooth-faced one. 'And my colleague is Andrew of Longjumeau

I raised myself stiffly and found myself stooping under the awning as I attempted a courtly bow.

‘I greet the most worthy emissaries of His Majesty the royal and most pious King of France’ I croaked in my best French. The smooth-faced man beamed and motioned me to sit with the flat of his hand. I glanced at his cadaverous friend, and to my surprise I saw that he too was smiling, an honest grin that showed a row of yellow, horsy teeth.

'Please sit down, sir’ he said. He had a rich voice, a singers voice, that belied his pinched visage. You have fallen on ill times, and come to us out of the night and the mists of the sea - and yet you bear a letter from His Holiness that pertains to our mission here in the Empire of the Latins. I find this exceedingly curious, to say the least’

'My name is Petrus ... indeed, it is Petroc of Auneford’ I corrected myself. 'I serve Monsieur Jean de Sol, of whom I believe you will have heard.'

'De Sol? But of course’ cried James of Paris. 'Our travelling companion in Italy. He left us in Venice to come here, to Constantinople. He is here still ... ?' He left the words fluttering in the air between us, a question not quite asked.

'Alas, he is not’ I said, and bowed my head. The tall man, Andrew, leaned forward sharply, like a heron who spies a frog.

'Not here?' he said, carefully. 'And from your evident travails, I find myself drawing unpleasant conclusions. Tell us everything, please.'

'Monsieur de Sol, my dear master and benefactor, is dead - or so I fear’ I rasped, for my throat had gone very dry. ‘I cannot be certain, but I have little hope.'

'But you must tell us’ said James. He had gone somewhat pale.

'I shall, but first I must warn you that nothing good awaits you in that city’ I said, pointing beyond the bowsprit to where Constantinople hovered, a rapidly resolving blur. 'Captain, I would suggest you take in some sail and let us slacken our pace, for I have a long tale to tell, and I would not have us at the quayside before I am done.'

The man looked somewhat taken aback, and turned to the friars. We have talked matters over with Doctor Scotus’ said the one called Andrew. 'He - I
did
think he was dead, but no matter - he has confirmed everything you have told me, save the awful news of your master. Yes, Captain, do as he says.' James nodded urgently to him, and he left us to see to his men. Letice - I had almost forgotten about the girl, I realised - had sunk down into her swaddlings and I thought she might be falling asleep, but then her eyes flashed and I knew she was following the proceedings with every one of her needle-sharp wits.