Relics

Chapter Eleven

North and north we sailed, until I was sure we would brest the top of the world and fall down the other side into oblivion. But then we reached the Faroe Isles, and I wondered whether we had not already sailed out of the familiar world. This place of looming cliffs and smooth green grass was unearthly. Myriad seabirds wheeled and shrieked about the crags, and waves boomed and rang in the caves below. The beaches were desolate, and the inhabitants avoided us, although we passed one of their villages, the low houses thatched with living turf so that the place looked like nothing so much as a colony of ant-hills. There seemed to be as many sheep as seabirds. White shapes against the blue sky above, and the green grass below.

We put in to a sheltered cove on a little island to take on water. My wound having healed in the salt air and Isaac's bastings, I went ashore in the long-boat with the watering party, and after the casks were filled at a little stream that ran clear as diamonds down to the sea, I wandered among the tussocky grass for a while, marvelling at the odd birds that squatted and scurried about everywhere on bright red feet, creatures the size of ducks with grotesque wedge-shaped beaks that seemed to bear all the colours of the rainbow. In the air they whizzed about like crossbow bolts. 'Puffins,' Horst called them. 'Funny, are they not? You will be cursing them before long.' I wondered what he meant: the stubby, self-important creatures looked good-natured and harmless. I stored Horst's remark away in the overflowing sea-chest of my mind with all the other odd lore I had heard on board. 'Ask about puffins,' I told myself. A shout came from the long-boat: time to be off. I forgot all about birds as I ran back down to the shore, horrified at the prospect of being marooned in this desolate place.

We put in for half a day at Torshavn, a little town of turf-roofed houses that Nizam told me was the most important place hereabouts. Tough, salt-wizened men with bleached out hair and eyes unloaded a few dark bales from our hold, and loaded on a few more casks and bottles, some bundles of sealskins, and many sacks of wool. The Captain went ashore, and I saw him deep in conversation with a small but important-looking islander. They nodded back and forth, then the Captain roared with laughter while the other grinned gap-toothed at him. They embraced, and the Captain strolled back to the ship.

'These are good people,' he told me later. We were standing on the bridge, the Captain, Nizam, Gilles and myself, watching Torshavn dwindle to a blur behind us. 'Sheep and whales are all they know, but although they are farmers, they have pirate blood in their veins.'

They look as tough as old ox-hide,' I said. 'I would not live there, not for all the spices of India.'

Gilles grunted pleasantly. 'It is lucky you did not wish to be put ashore in a safe port, Master Petroc,' he said. 'I can think of no safer port than Torshavn.'

What did we take on board?' I asked, to change the subject. 'I saw woolsacks.'

We trade wool for skins,' answered the Captain. 'Bear, wolf, simple stuff. The fur is as welcome as gold, and we will trade the wool in Greenland.'

'And where do we sail now? To Iceland?' I shivered. Further north, towards the abyss. I could feel the loneliness of the islands with me still, as if it lingered around the ship like mist. I dreaded to think what awaited us next. 'Aye. We'll stop for water and provisions, but no trade, I think, this trip. Sturri – the man I was talking to, a councillor -warned us off. King Haakon has men in Reykjavik, to smother unlawful business. A shame. You would like the Icelanders. Odd folk, but friendly. They are all related to each other, you see. Vikings, every one.' And the Greenlanders?'

You will see for yourself. A sad place, too near the world's edge for people to settle comfortably. In times past it was safe and green, but this age of the world is turning cold, and they freeze, little by little, year by year. It is… you will see.'

With that, the subject was closed, and we stood quietly and watched the petrels skim our wake as the islands dropped below the edge of the world. The horizon was wide and desolate, and the water was fretful. Away ahead of us, sea and sky merged in a dark green haze. Nizam hunched his shoulders for an instant, as if settling a heavy load upon his back. 'The Sea of Darkness,' he murmured.

A steady south wind eased our crossing to Iceland, although the sea was black and troubled, and we were followed by dark sea birds that swooped and scudded across our wake. Leagues and leagues from any shore they wandered, never alighting, not even on our masts, which to me seemed incredible; but these creatures were wedded to the air as men are bound to the land: even on the oceans we create little landscapes of wood on which we can firmly set our feet. When I was not working -and I now had my share of chores with the rest of the crew – I would climb to the bridge and stand with Nizam, looking out at the little birds that were so close and yet so unknowable.

Iceland appeared as a stern grey line one late afternoon. We found landfall at Hofn, a small port on the south-eastern coast, a dour place that huddled on a flat shore behind which mountains rose and beyond them, so the Captain told me, the great ice-fields of Vatnajokull spread out in a frigid hell, many days travel of desolation in any direction. As in the Faroes, some business was conducted on the wharfside, and we carried many small but heavy barrels aboard. As the Captain had said, we did no trade, but he and Gilles spent half a day in conference with some of the town's important men. We took to sea again, stopped for water and set a western course.

The southern wind blew for a week or so longer, and we skipped and rolled crosswise over a steady swell, although I began to notice a deeper mood in the motion of the ship, a faint, almost imperceptible roll at odds with the action of the waves. I asked Nizam, who had become my oracle in all things relating to the sea and the ship, about it.

'It is the swell of the deep ocean,' he told me. 'Though the winds shift all about the compass, yet steadily all weather comes from the world's edge in the far west, and always the oceans feel it and are driven by it – perhaps there are great storms far, far away that whip the seas into mountains of water, and this swell is a faint memory of that. No one knows, but I have heard that on the western shores of Ireland the waves can top the highest cliffs, and that after a great storm sea monsters have been dragged up out of the abyss and thrown onto the beaches. We had an Irishman aboard for a while – Colm, his name was – who swore he had seen such a creature. A great pale serpent bigger than a forest tree and as thick around; when he approached, it yelped at him in a language he did not understand and writhed away back to the water.'

This was not likely to comfort someone new to the life of a deep-water sailor. My dreams became invaded by writhing tangles of colossal serpents that seethed far below me like the eels that I had seen in the river at Balecester, feasting in the shallows on dead cats and dogs.

That night in the Captain's cabin each diner wore the same look of tense excitement I had seen on the crew's faces all day. The talk was quieter, the banter a little more restrained than usual. Nizam was there, and Horst and the ship's carpenter, Guthlaf, a pale Dane who generally kept to himself. Tonight, however, he was almost garrulous, deep in a conversation with Nizam about the northern seas. I chatted idly to Horst, who had been teaching me the complexities of knot-tying.

Just as my stomach began to gurgle audibly, the door was flung open, and Jacques entered. I had become inured to skerpikjot, the dried, smoked mutton of the Faroes that the rest of the crew loathed, indeed almost looked forward to its appearance even though we had been lucky at fishing and had often enjoyed fat cod and herring since leaving Iceland. Wordlessly he set down a great trencher piled with a brown, dried meat. 'Aha,' said Horst at my side. The rest of the party eyed the dish in silence. Finally, Gilles cleared his throat.

'My friends, the time has come again to give thanks for that special blessing of northern seas, the bounty that comes from above and stints not.' Amen.' The word rippled around the table.

To our youngest, newest brother goes the serving of honour,' continued Gilles in the same sepulchral tones. The Captain speared a portion of meat and flicked it onto my wooden plate.

'Eat, and join us in the brotherhood of the Whale Road,' he murmured.

I prodded the stuff, and glanced up. All eyes were upon me. I sawed off a corner and cautiously slipped it into my mouth. To my surprise, it was not at all bad, something like very well-aged and smoked venison. It was a little oily, and left a hint, after it had gone down, of the bottom of the herring barrel, but in all it seemed to me to be manna indeed. I said so.

Gales of laughter. Horst slapped my back so hard I thought for a moment he had dislocated my shoulder. Welcome, brother,' he hooted. Welcome, welcome,' carolled the rest. I blushed and took another, bigger bite. Even tastier this time. What is this?' I asked through a full mouth.

'Puffin. Smoked, cured puffin, prepared by those witches in Iceland,' said Horst. 'Do you truly like it?' I nodded. 'Churning bowels of Christ! Truly? Captain – do you hear it? The English are hard folk, to be sure.' 'Why do you make such a to-do about this food?' I asked.

'Lad, this is your first – your second, Mary's tears! – but the rest of us must have eaten a hundred score each of the damned painted imps. By the end of this voyage our feet will all be turning orange, mark me well.'

Then the Captain slapped the table to get our attention. 'Brothers, friends,' he said, 'late tomorrow or the next day, we will be sighting Greenland. The folk in Hofn gave me news that I find worrying, however. It seems the western settlement at Godthab is all but abandoned, and on the east coast Eric's Brattahild is no more. The chill is creeping over the land, and the Skraelings come with it. It was but four years since we were there last, and in so short a time the lives of those poor wretches have come quite undone.'

'How could things be worse there, Captain?' asked Horst. 'It was no paradise, to say the least, that we found on our last visit.'

'That is what I dread to find out,' replied de Montalhac. 'But we will be at Gardar in a short time, and you may have your answer then.' After that the subject seemed to be closed, although the rest of the meal passed under something of a cloud.

We sighted land mid-morning two days later. It was a grim-looking country, and I wondered why anyone had chosen it as a home to begin with. Dark mountains streaked with snow fell to a rocky coast. Here and there a clutch of pallid green fields clung to flatter areas of land, and smoke rose from tiny stone houses that were very few and far between. By evening we had rounded a sombre headland and were approaching the little port of Gardar. It was almost dark by the time we bumped against what passed for a wharf, and though the Captain, Gilles and Rassoul went ashore to seek the harbourmaster, the rest of the crew stayed aboard.

I gazed across at the meagre little town and marvelled once again at the tenacity of folk who lived in these northern lands. The Faroes were a land of milk and honey compared to this place; even barren Iceland seemed almost comfortable. It was cold, of course, a bitter cold that spoke of desolation and death. The wind that plucked at the rigging came, I was certain, from some awful wilderness where only spirits of ice and snow dwelt. Dim lights flickered in the long, low houses, but other than the lap of the sea and the rustling wind there was silence. No one was about, not even a dog. This, I thought, is truly the edge of the world.

The next morning it was raining when I awoke. Water came down in thick ropes that struck so hard that a thin mist hovered at ankle height above the deck. The bilges gurgled. In Hofn I had acquired, on Snorri's advice, a sailcloth cape that had been soaked in seal blubber to make it waterproof. I stared glumly out from under the hood, upon which raindrops exploded like fat on a hot pan, at the water cascading from the roofs of Gardar's houses. The streets were empty, and now that every window was shadowed it seemed as if the town was deserted. Then I saw a swaddled figure dash from one building to another. There was life here after all.

Fortunately the rain stopped around midday, and we went ashore to see what, if anything, Greenland had to offer. The answer to that was, it soon emerged, precious little. Over half of the crew had been here before on the Cormaran’s last northern voyage, and they shook their heads and clucked their tongues at the changes the intervening four years had wrought. I gathered from Horst that Gardar had come down in the world, which to me seemed hardly possible. It was a clutch of Viking longhouses whose gable ends, crossed and jutting above the roof line, were carved in the likeness of dragon heads. Looming over all was a colossal stone barn, which turned out to be the cathedral, and a high but clumsy bell tower. Instinctively, I threw the hood of my cape over my head and drew it tight – even though I knew that this was a far country, indeed the farthest country in the whole world, I had a sudden dread of being in the company of churchmen. Only when a skinny deacon passed us and gave a haunted, distant smile did I concede that I was just another stranger to these folk. I wondered who the bishop was, and what he had done to earn such a demesne.

Some of the men remembered a whorehouse, but could not find it. There were a couple of taverns, and we repaired to the first we came to. It was dark and reeked of smoke and wet straw, but the beer was drinkable. The tavern-keeper was a burly, red-bearded fellow who recognised Snorri and a few others and made us tolerably welcome. His wife, a skinny haint with blond hair and a red nose, watched us with suspicion in her smoke-reddened eyes as she ladled out some manner of lamb soup into wooden bowls. In their turn, the crewmen regarded her with ill-concealed lust while her husband glowered. I thought of a circle of dogs each chasing the tail of the beast in front, and supped my beer, feeling left out and not particularly sorry for that. After sucking down a good few mugs I tottered outside for a piss.

The cold, damp breeze felt better than the stale fug of the tavern, and I chose not to rejoin my friends for the moment. Instead, I wandered back in the direction of the cathedral, the first house of God I had seen since leaving the graveyard in Dartmouth. There was a broad patch of grass before it, and from a distance I had thought that sheep grazed there, but as I drew closer I saw that what I had taken for sheep were bones, great white skulls from which tusks as long as my legs jutted, their empty eye sockets regarding my trespass balefully. Guarding the door were still stranger wonders, and I would have most likely fainted in amazement had not one of the crew already told me of the narwhal, the strange fish of the deep ocean from whose forehead sprouts a twisted unicorn's horn. A small forest of these things were clustered on either side of the path, and even though I knew what they were they left me with a sense of the unearthly which, in those surroundings, was not pleasant. I hesitated at the towering door of time-bleached wood. The last time I had been inside a cathedral… Perhaps it was partly to exorcise the image of Deacon Jean's eyes as they bulged with pain and terror, and the memory of scalding blood streaming over my skin, that I turned the big iron handle and stepped inside.

It was like stepping into a cave, a cave with wooden pews and candles burning dimly at the farthest end. The smell of incense mingled queasily with the ranker scents of mildew and burning tallow, and shadows fluttered moth-like across the rafters. As my eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, I saw that every wooden surface – pews, rafters, beams – was carved into fluid, rippling forms. I ran my hand over the nearest pew. Dragons writhed and chased one another through flowering branches, and other monstrous beasts chased them in their turn. The work had the mad energy of a fever dream, and there was a kind of desperation in the urgent repetition. The beer and the heavy air of this place were making me feel slightly sick. I advanced reluctantly up the aisle.

What, exactly, was I doing here? I asked myself as I approached the altar. A pale Christ, carved from ivory, hung from a golden cross. It reminded me of suet, the thick fat from around an ox's kidneys, hanging on a butcher's stall. Why was I, a churchman, a servant of Our Lord, for whom churches and monasteries had been home since I was a child, suddenly thinking of carcasses and the squalor of death in this holy place? With a start, I realised that I had not been thinking about my soul of late, that, in fact, I had all but sloughed off my monkish skin on the long voyage north from Dartmouth. I sank down onto the nearest pew. Holy Mother! I had not talked of God with another person for months, not read a sacred text – I had not even prayed since that long night in the marshes outside Balecester. My faith had shattered like the frailest eggshell, and what had emerged? An unwashed, uncouth boy, the pet of a boat-load of heathen cutthroats.

I had had enough of this place. Turning my back on the altar, I left the strange cathedral to its damp and dragon-fretted dreams. I could not even bring myself to genuflect. I hurried outside, looking neither left nor right to avoid the ghastly sentinels of bone, and almost ran full-tilt into the Captain himself. Wrapped in a thick woollen cloak and with a bulbous satchel slung across his body, he almost looked ordinary, until I met his gimlet gaze.

'Hello, Petroc,' he said with a tight grin. 'Did you find what you sought?'

'I found something; but what I was in search of, I do not know,' I replied, honestly enough.

The Captain chuckled, the same odd grin on his face. He looked wolfish, I thought.

'In your experience of cathedrals, how did you find this one?' he asked.

'It is too big,' I said carefully. And full of strange carvings. I do not care for it very much, to speak the truth.' And what of the trappings? Is it rich, would you say?'

'I would say it is tolerably poor, at that. There is little gold. The crucifix is ivory, there is an ivory pyx, and some silver candlesticks with dragons on them.'

'In a place as poor as this, even the Church goes hungry,' said the Captain. He gave a snort, as if in response to some wry inner jest. "Were you looking for me?' I asked.

'For you? No, lad. My business is with the Bishop. I am not happy inside such places…' and he waved at the cathedral door. 'So I hoped to catch him as he went amongst his flock.' Abruptly he bent at the waist so that his head was below mine, and stared upwards into my eyes. His look was so fierce I could almost feel my eyebrows singe. 'Did your soul pull you hence, Petroc? Do you still feel the pull of duty? Are there some ties that have yet to be broken?'

'Nothing like that,' I answered, stung. 'I went in from curiosity, and because, as you say, I felt the tug of long years' habit. But sitting before the altar I could think of nothing but the tales of my crewmates. I had tried to picture Our Lord's passion, but all I could see were the hidden workings of Deacon Jean's throat. My soul is dead within me, it seems.' I spoke sharply, but at my words the man's face softened, and he smiled his familiar smile.

"Your pardon, lad,' he said. 'I did not mean to put you to the question. I fear that this place works its misery upon me. Whatever you keep close to your heart is your own affair. I have not kept a crew like mine together by prying. And now, let us find somewhere warm, you and I, and pass the time before the wretched Bishop shows himself again.'

The Captain led me through muddy streets to Gardar's other tavern, which looked a good deal worse than the one I had left earlier. The innkeeper wore a leather skullcap and had a squint, and his guests, for the most part, seemed to be on the verge of death. There were no women to be seen. The Captain seemed to be known, however: the squinter greeted us warmly and we were ushered to the rear of the longhouse and behind a thick hide curtain, which concealed a private room of sorts, complete with a crackling fire. There were three high-backed chairs of dark wood, carved all over with more dragons and nightmare-beasts, as I noted with a private shudder.

When we were seated and our feet were before the fire, the Captain reached into his satchel and brought out a large clay bottle sealed with red wax. The innkeeper bustled in with two drinking cups and a trencher full of roasted mutton – fresh mutton, by God! I had not smelled anything so savoury for many a sea-tossed day. As I gnawed a rib-bone, the Captain opened his bottle and filled our cups with wine, red wine so dark it was almost black.

'Drink, my friend,' he said and took a slow pull himself. His eyes closed. 'The wine of my country,' he said. I sipped. The taste was heavy, almost sweet but with a hard edge. I thought of wild marjoram and sun-baked stone, and sighed.

'A sigh! Ah, Petroc! You are a lucky find,' the Captain laughed, and slapped my knee. 'For me, this wine is almost like a bottled sigh. I knew these very grape-vines when I was a boy. I have pressed their grapes with my own feet. That was long ago, and other feet press them now, but no matter. I keep a secret hoard on the Cormaran for just such dismal landfalls as this. I could not set foot in Gardar without it, I swear!'

We talked thus for the time it took to drain a cup or two and finish the mutton. I told him about my own home, the sights and smells of the moor. I dwelt a little on my mother, which made me sad, and on my father, which cheered me. And then in his turn the Captain told me a little of his childhood, and I listened as one listens to the words of a famous teacher, aware that mysteries were on the verge of being revealed. I learned that he was the first son of a noble family who held lands in the western part of the Duchy of Provence. His home had been a castle, a place of rose-coloured stone that perched upon a thyme-scented crag. Goat-bells had lulled him to sleep at night. His father had been a warrior but also, wonderful as this sounded to me, a poet – a troubadour, as the Captain said -who was famous in the land for his songs and fine playing on the lute. He had raised his son to be the same, although the Captain waved his hand in refusal when I asked for a song. Fearing I had spoken out of place I begged his pardon, but he laughed away my apology. 'My voice would scare a raven now, and besides, the songs of that sunny place would sound a strange note here, I think.' The mutton gone, we settled back in our chairs. The fire spat and sparked, and burning birch-wood filled the room with its tart, spicy smell.

'So, are you curious as to my business with the Bishop?' the Captain asked. I confessed that I was. He reached into his satchel once more and pulled forth two small packages wrapped in oiled cloth. Untying one, he held it out to me. I reached in, touched something hard and drew it out.

And blushed furiously. I was holding an exquisite ivory carving as long as my hand. Or rather, two carvings that fitted together. Two figures, a man and a woman, represented in every particular by a master craftsman. They were naked, the man stretched out with his arms bent at the elbow, the woman crouching. The man's – how would I have described it then? His membrum virile? His shame? – stuck out as plain as a pikestaff. There was a crease between the woman's thighs that deepened into a little hole. With shaking hands I moved the strange dolls together. The man fitted perfectly into his mate, and they clung together, their little ivory faces scrunched up in a simulacrum of ecstasy. I laid them down carefully upon the table, not daring to look at the Captain. The couple rocked together. Very slowly, I breathed out.

'Exquisite, are they not?' said the Captain. I managed a nod. 'Look in the other parcel,' he murmured.

It was about the size of my fist and bound tightly. I untied the soft leather, cords and unwrapped the oil-cloth. Inside was another bundle of deep crimson silk. I found an end and began unwinding. Three feet of silk later, I was holding a simple wooden box, plain and unadorned and yet giving off a feeling of great age. I swallowed and opened it.

Instead of the obscenity I had been expecting, I gazed down at a black, wrinkled lump. 'It's a prune,' I blurted in relief.

'Show some deference, boy!' the Captain barked. I flinched in surprise. You hold the only true heart of St Cosmas in your impious hands.' Holy Mother! I dropped the relic onto the table as if it were a piece of white-hot iron. 'I beg your pardon,' I gibbered. 'I had no idea that…'

The Captain's laughter drowned my words. At last I dared to look at him. Rich red wine was dribbling down his chin and neck. He thumped the table, and the carven beast with two backs jumped and clacked.

'I am truly sorry, Petroc,' he croaked, when the breath had returned to his body. 'But I could not resist… Pick it up again. Pick up the heart.'

I hesitated, then remembered my feelings earlier in the cathedral, my Saviour as so much tortured meat hung up for my adoration. What was this poor man's heart to me except meat, dry meat? I picked up the box, and felt nothing: no tingle, no flicker of the Other such as I had received from the hand of St Euphemia. I looked closer. The thing did indeed resemble a very large prune, although as I examined it, coal also came to my mind. I glanced at the Captain, who had just pulled a second wine flask from his satchel. 'How does this come to be here?' I asked.

He tapped his nose with a long finger, refilled our cups and raised his in a toast. I did the same, if only because I suddenly needed to feel strong liquor in my veins.

'To heart's ease,' said the Captain, and drank deeply. I followed suit.

'How did you come by St Cosmas' heart?' I asked again, the strong wine making me bolder. 'Did you steal it?'

He regarded me gravely, his eyes unreadable, almost blank. Reaching between us, he picked up the wizened heart and held it up to his face, turning it with his fingertips like a usurer examining a precious bauble. 'Steal it?' he echoed. 'Steal it?' His eyes flicked back to mine, and held them. And what do you think it is?'

The heart of St Cosmas,' I said, stupidly. The Captain just stared. 'So it is not the Saint's heart?' I ventured. He gave his head a minute shake. 'But it is a heart, and it is very old,' I ploughed on. Whose is it, then?'

'It is very old – older than St Cosmas, whoever he really was,' said the Captain. Suddenly he was holding the thing an inch from my face. 'Smell it,' he said. With infinite reluctance I sniffed, and smelt dust – dust, and something else: the faintest suggestion of something astringent, spicy. Then the Captain was slipping the grisly lump back inside its silken wrappings. 'I found it in Egypt,' he said. "While this is indubitably not a portion of St Cosmas, it is a heart, the heart of, I believe, a woman from the time of Pharaoh, or one of the pharaohs, as the Egyptians say that there were many. The ancient ones used unguents and spices to preserve their dead, which is what you might have scented.' 'Egypt!' I marvelled.

'Perhaps we will go there together,' the Captain said. 'I make it a point to stop there as often as I can. The markets of Cairo are rich hunting grounds for me. And now I see you require some explanations.' He refilled our cups, threw another log onto the fire, and began.

'I once told you that we were traders. Insightful as you are, you guessed that we are really smugglers. The truth is a little of both, but stranger yet than either. Yes, we trade. We trade in the strange, the odd, the difficult, the dangerous and, as you saw just now, the holy and the sinful. We bring sheepskins and wine to these sad Greenlanders, which we trade for white bear skins and walrus ivory that will find an eager market in Germany and further south. We have even brought back Gyrfalcons – great white hawks – that many a prince would knife his best friend to possess. From the land of the Skrae-lings we bring beaver, fox and sable pelts. We will sell Baltic amber to the Saracens, and Saracen rosewater to the dignitaries of Hamburg. Because we are fierce and strong we pay no heed to charters or customs. So in that way we are smugglers, and that is no great thing. But our true calling, Petroc, is deeper. We procure items for those who desire them – powerful patrons with tastes broadened by experience and, perhaps, happy or malign humours. Such a man is the Bishop of Gardar. You wonder how a man could find himself exiled to such a place as this. The answer to that lies in those ivory toys you admired so well – at home in Denmark he played with living mannequins, of course, but here he must content himself with make-believe. He asks me to find him trinkets and books to keep his weak flame alight, and I am happy to oblige. That toy, by the by, I found in Cairo. It is Chinese – do you even know where China is? East from India; further, even, than the lands of Prester John. Judging by their works, the people of China and India are positively roiling in what the Bishop knows as sin. I have promised that I will find out for myself one day. In any case, there are things in our hold that would have made Mary Magdalene blush.

'But that was not all that the good Bishop requested of me. He has his cathedral, but it is lacking in a crucial respect -there is no important relic. A cathedral needs relics, as you know, like a fire needs wood: something for the faithful to warm their hands against. In Gardar they have a few wisps of cloth from the habit of some nun no one has heard of, and an old nail from St Andrew's cross that no one believes in – quite rightly so, as it probably came from some unlucky fishing boat. The Bishop wanted a relic, and so he entrusted the search to me. For that is my trade, my true calling. I deal in relics. I sell them to any man, woman, abbot, bishop, king or queen who can pay for them. I find relics. When I cannot buy them, I steal them. What cannot be stolen, I make myself. The Bishop of Gardar is paying me much of what lies in the cathedral's muniments room for a true relic of the oldest ages of man, although instead of a saint's heart he will be enshrining part of a woman who worshipped animal-headed demons and had as much inkling of divine grace as the shores of Greenland have of date-palms. He will never know – how can a holy relic be verified? The spices of Egypt provide the requisite odour of sanctity, the thing is as old as the hills, and he has my word on the matter. And besides, I know he has paid for the other trifle – and other less pretty ones – with the hard-won pennies of these pitiful Greenlanders, so he will be very, very careful not to annoy me. As far as my usual business goes, this will be an easy transaction.

Think of the hand of St Euphemia that you bore in so much terror. A poor old shrivelled thing it was, was it not, inside its precious glove? But you believed, Petroc, and for all I know you believe still. I can tell you this: it was a human hand, all right, but St Euphemia? Perhaps. I know that a corpse lying around in a damp place like Balecester will moulder and rot, and I'd lay my fortune that Euphemia herself has been dust for a thousand years. The precious claw was bought or made – I said human, but I would not have been surprised to find the paw of an ape. Credulity and greed will blind most men – that is the truth that keeps the Cormaran afloat. I can show you much, my good friend, but I fear it will tear the guts from your faith and trample them into the mud. It was easy for me – I never had any faith, at least not in the way you understand it. But for you… think for a while.'

I paused. There was one more question to be answered, and I hardly dared ask it. But ask I must.

'Captain,' I began hesitantly, "You, Gilles and the others from… from Provence: forgive me, but are you what I would call Cathars?'

To my immense relief he smiled, the weariest smile I had ever seen. 'There is nothing to forgive, my boy. We are indeed cathari – Cathars. Was it such a hard guess?'

'No,' I said, and he chuckled. 'Then we are not as mysterious as we suppose ourselves to be,' he said. We are credenti – believers, the least of our kind, but there are few of us now indeed, and perhaps…' he shook his head. "You do not fear us, at least, and I do not think you even judge us.' 'I do not,' I interrupted. 'That is good. And what do you think?'

'I can guess what became of the grapes you tended as a boy,' I said quietly. 'News reached us even down in Devon, and so I heard of the war against your people from my friend Adric. For the Cathars, I am sure you know what nonsense they teach boys: cat-worship and blasphemy. I have also heard that you believe the Devil created the earth, and that Christ is a ghost, and that you swear no oaths, for there is no one above you save God himself.' I paused. 'In my present mood, and at this point where I find myself, I am no friend to my Church, and when I look for faith I find myself as empty as a new-dug grave. I mean that I can find no fault in your people's beliefs.'

The Captain gazed at me for a long silent moment.*You are… indeed you are the very first man I have heard such words from. I know the turmoil of your soul, and I will not press you further. But I will say one more thing, and then we are done with this matter: if you would know more – and there is much to learn – we will be glad to teach you. I believe you will know when the time is right.'

He reached for a mutton-bone, took a small bite and tossed it into the hearth. The deep glow from the flame-caressed embers had lent his profile a sombre, brooding edge, and his grey eyes held splinters of fire. He ran his thumb along the lip of his wine-cup again and again.

'Master,' I said, feeling as I did so the sensation of falling, so strongly that I reached out and grabbed the table's edge, 'you have given answers to all my questions, and I have given none to yours. Here is my answer: I will join you. My head is glad, but my heart is empty. If you will have a soul that is beyond care and a spirit that has lost its footing in the darkness, I will serve you. My love of Mother Church has curdled, and I see only rottenness where I once saw salvation. If you can use someone like me, I am yours.' So saying, I took a great gulp of the wine, and met the Captain's level gaze.

'Done,' said de Montalhac, and grasped my hand. 'I have the better bargain, Master Petroc of Auneford. Your heart is not empty: it is full and strong, and your soul is but dull and sooty with the smoke of false ritual. It will shine once more. You are one of us now. You are right: my people do not swear oaths, so you come with us of your own free will, and you may leave when and where you wish.'

We drank again, and slowly the night's edges softened once more until we were nothing but two friends enjoying wine, warmth and each other's company. But I was not the same as I had been before. My faith was gone: I knew it for a certainty.