Relics

Chapter Eighteen

Koskino was a mountain, a slab of white rock thrust straight up out of the sea. Lush lower down, the trees thinned as the slopes became cliffs, with here and there a slash of dark green where a company of cypresses had taken hold, and then the island ended in an abrupt, stark line, seemingly flat as a table on top. It was getting dark as we drew near, and the clouds had formed out of a clear sky and were rolling slowly over the top of the cliff wall. It had seemed tiny from a distance, this place, another speck among specks in the ruffled, inky sea. We were sailing into its shadow now, and the day's heat reached us, a parching breath, along with the mad choir of insects.

Anna was with me in the bow. We were friends again, although we had not spoken of what it was that had come between us since leaving Bordeaux. Indeed I did not want to dwell on it, for it seemed a time of sickness, as if I had been suffering from a long fever and a wandering of the mind and now was well again. That is a strange thing to say, perhaps, by one who had just seen his greatest friend suffer a bloody and untimely death. But now what troubled me most was not the manner of Will's passing – for that was pure pain and could be treated almost like a wound – but the knowledge that his life had been poisoned by Sir Hugh de Kervezey, long before Kervezey – and I did not doubt it had been his hand on the trigger – had put an end to it. The sense that Will's life had been doomed long before our last night in Balecester, in fact from the moment we had met, came back to haunt me. I found I could not even remember our first meeting – the refectory at the cathedral school, perhaps? – and this troubled me even more. Kervezey had cursed us – not just in the trials we had suffered in our flesh, but in our souls, for whatever else I believe about the soul, I know it is there that love, and friendship, grow like bright flowers. Kervezey had blighted us, both outside and in.

And now the anger that had so afflicted me while my friend was at my side returned in earnest. But this time, with a potent fuel, it burned like a pyre. It is strange how rage can drive away sadness, but it was as if my tears were dried up inside me by the heat of my anger. Sometimes it burned hot, like a fistful of coals aglow within my belly, and at other times it was utterly cold, and my soul felt enveloped in hoarfrost. But although I was full up to the brim with this anger, so that I feared I might at any moment vomit live cinders onto the deck, in my outward self I was calm. My mind was clear, and indeed I seemed to see everything with a clarity and a brightness that would probably have frightened me at any other time. I saw that there had been no chance in our reunion and took an obscure comfort from it. The thought that everything might have been arbitrary, that we had met and been torn apart again by some heartless, random coincidence, was more frightening than the knowledge that we had both been struggling in the same net. It is a habit of men, that we search for meaning in the deaths of those we love, and here was meaning aplenty, however cruel.

That first morning, Anna had stood with me, silently – for hours, perhaps. The sun had risen in earnest when she reached out a cool, careful finger and touched me, feather-like, below one eye, then another. 'They are dry,' she said, puzzled.

'There is nothing there,' I answered, my voice raspy. 'Nothing. But… I loved him, you know.'

'I know,' she said. We stood quiet again. Then she said, 'May I weep for him, then?'

I took her in my arms and let her offer up her tears. My own face grew wet with them, and I thought, how strange that I must have a surrogate to mourn Will for me.

'He made a good end,' I told her after a while, when we were both sitting on the deck, our backs to the rail. How insufficient my words had become. 'He was clear in his mind, and he went with love… with love in his heart,' I finished, which was true in its way.

'Did he suffer?' asked Anna, tremulously. I winced, and took her hand. 'If I told you no, would you believe me?' She searched my face with her salt-red eyes, then shook her head, a tiny shiver. 'No,' she whispered.

Yes, he suffered very much, but less towards the end. He was brave and strong, and death had to wait his turn. We talked of many things, of…'I paused. I found I did not wish to tell Anna how I had sworn to Will that I would never let her go. Perhaps I worried she would be horrified, to be bound by an oath made to a dead man. But in truth that oath was the last thing that tied me to my friend, a secret shared with no one but him and so an invisible thread that connected us, stretching from the land of the living to wherever Will now dwelt. It had its beginning deep within my heart, and there was a tension in it, a thrum of motion sent through this lonely, fragile thread across empty worlds where the winds of loss blow coldly and without cease, that told of some presence holding fast to the other end. I felt it then, and it brought me solace. I feel it now. 'Do you still not weep?' she persisted.

Will would not have approved,' I said, gruffly. 'Not of me blubbering, in any case. You, however… Besides, I wept a veritable Nile for the man, in error, while he still lived.' 'Oh! My God, Patch, you are a miser of grief.'

I shook my head and took her hands between both of mine. 'I was wrong to grieve then: I should have raged! Well, now I shall. There will be no tears, my love, not one tear until…' My voice began to shake, and I pressed Anna's fingers to my lips until I had mastered myself. 'Sir Hugh de Kervezey…' I grimaced at the name, bitter as gall. 'I will have that man's life, I swear it. That will be the Mass I say for my brother. When I have stopped his breath, then I shall weep.' 'Patch, I…'

'No, my love. I am burning up like a barrel of pitch! I must let the fire burn, and so must you.' I would have added, if I had known what words to use, that it was too wild a fire for me to control, although I knew that, as it burned through, I would see its form and know, from the embers, what my course would be.

Soon, too soon, it was time for Adric to take his leave. With him, at least, we did not have to conceal our feelings with great care. The old man had never been one to bother himself with how others lived, so long as nothing interrupted his gathering of knowledge, but I was a little surprised how his cadaverous features took on a certain glow after first making Anna's acquaintance. He became positively courtly, although Anna assured me that he was only interested in the manuscripts that lay in her uncle's library.

With me he seemed almost frightened, until I sat him down in the bows and convinced him that I did not blame him for Will's murder, for my flight from England or for any of the other dolorous strands of the web that held us both. After that we were as we had always been, although we both knew that nothing was really the same. I was no longer his pupil but a blooded outlaw, and he was no longer an abbey librarian with an appetite for esoteric wonders but an intriguer at large in a world that did not appear to frighten him in the slightest. I had never really thought of Adric as a brave man, only heedless of his safety in the way that eccentric people sometimes are. But after the events in Pisa, and remembering our adventure in Vennor long ago, I realised that not only was he fearless but that he was in possession of a very cool head indeed. We spent a happy two days running down the coast to Ostia. He was going back to Rome after all and there was no concealing his excitement.

'I have unfinished business in the Vatican libraries,' he said dreamily, and I knew that he was understating the case more than a little. Had Adric the nine lives of a cat – indeed, had he the gift of life eternal, his business with libraries would never be done. What are you digging for this time?' I asked.

'Hmm.' He treated me to an inscrutable look. 'A small investigation here, a few loose ends tied there. I will tell you everything when we meet again.' 'Do you think there's a chance of that, Adric?'

'A chance? My dear boy, I believe we now serve under the same captain,' he said. 'There's every chance that we shall be heartily sick at the sight of one another before too long. No, no – you go to Koskino, and I to Rome, and we shall all meet up before the winter's here… Venice, perhaps? I rather wish I were coming with you, of course.'

That cheered me, as I had feared this would be our last parting. So while I was terribly sorry to see him clamber, in his long, spidery fashion, down into the fishing barque that would take him up the Tiber to Rome, I drew some comfort from the knowledge that he would be the happiest man in that city as he burrowed ever deeper into its endless libraries. We will see each other soon, then,' I had said as I helped him over the side, and although he only nodded in reply, his mind on the shaky rope-ladder and the waiting books, I felt it might be true, and when he struggled upright in the fishing boat – to the evident concern of the fishermen – and waved back to the Cormaran, I understood that if Adric said we would meet again, we likely would.

In the days that followed it was almost impossible to be alone with Anna, and so we made do with hasty caresses and now and then a kiss, separated by long spans of time in which the blue waters sped by, mile after mile, beneath the hull. Although the knowledge that, sooner or later, she would be put ashore in Venice cast a faint shadow, we chose, I think, to put it from our minds, there being much else – and worse – near at hand about which to fret. But one night Anna had woken me from a deep sleep and led me through a maze of slumbering men to her lair in the hold. We had spent an hour of agony and pleasure there in the dark, brazenly alive to every fingertip, every touch of skin upon hot skin, while keeping as silent as the dead. It was torture, but exquisite. By some miracle we were not discovered, and afterwards we sat together on deck, watching the stars. Anna's head was on my shoulder, and she traced a slow circle with her fingernail on the back of my hand. I heard her sigh, then she turned and spoke softly in my ear: 'I never did tell you about my time in the Norse lands, did I?'

You did not finish – or you did, but we were interrupted,' I said. It seemed a very long time ago.

'I told you they locked me up?' I nodded. 'They kept me locked away for two years,' she went on. 'Two endless years, in a plain white room with no glass in the window.'

You didn't… it must have seemed a lifetime,' I said, taking her hand. 'And I was only a child, really, at least at the beginning.'

'How did you – you know, how did you manage?' I asked carefully.

'There was a kind priest. Father Jago,' she said. 'He was a good man, for a Frank – no, by any measure. He did not try to cram his doctrines down my gullet. Instead he bought me flowers for my window-ledge, and found my belongings where they had been thrown in the cellars, so I could hang my tapestries. And he bought me my books. He was amazed, quite amazed, that a woman could read, and we spent hours together. He gave me hope.' 'So you were not very lonely?' I asked.

'I have never been so alone,' she said. 'Jago would read with me – Virgil, Aristotle, even Augustine – and I would see my home. Bees would come to sup at my flowers, and I would mourn, for they would never taste the rosemary or the lavender of our palace gardens. The mind plays cruel games.' 'Terrible games,' I agreed.

'Petroc, can I tell you something?' I nodded absently, looking up at the peaceful river of the Milky Way.

'Do you remember when we… back in Bordeaux? The first time?' I nodded again, and kissed her hand.

'It was not the first time. Not for me,' she said. I dropped her hand. 'Really?' I said, my voice reedy with surprise.

'No. You are shocked,' she insisted. I paused, considering. Then I picked up her hand again.

'I have no right to be shocked by anything,' I said. 'The greatest shock I ever had was discovering that you desired me. I have never judged you, Anna.'

'That is not true,' she protested. 'The day after Bordeaux, you acted as if I were Eve and Salome rolled into one.'

'No, no!' I shook my head furiously. 'No, it was the blood! I was sickened to my very soul by what I had done. And you had blood on your hands – I mean just that: your hands were all bloody, and I did not want more blood on me. That was all, Anna! I swear it!'

'I thought that you were revolted by me, by who – what – I was, what we had done. No, listen! In Trondheim, I was so lonely that I took one of my guards for a lover. He was a boy – big, blond, a peasant – and I was a girl. We did it exactly twice, then he boasted to his mates, there was a fight, and he lost the use of his arm. The whole castle found out. They put me in the cells, Patch! They would have tortured me were it not for my imperial blood.' She spat the words out distainfully. 'Then they decreed I should go to the stake. To burn. They would have done it, but Jago, my old priest, saved me. That was how I ended up in Greenland.' What about the guard?'

'Oh, I'm sure they killed him,' she replied. There was mockery in her voice, but it did not conceal the pain.

'Anna, you are neither Eve nor Salome. You did not kill that boy. Yes, there are many who would say otherwise – your husband, for one, and those pious murderers who administer the noose and the pyre as if those were Christ's sacrament. It is they who are damned, Anna. I judge them, not you.'

'Oh, what nonsense, Petroc!' she cried. I hushed her with my finger.

'Listen to me,' I said. 'That morning, after the fight, I was recoiling from what I had done to that man, not from what we had… There has never been anything finer than that in my mean little life. What you did in Trondheim, whose affair is it but yours? My God, Anna, how long were you in Gardar – two years? Well then, you have even done your penance as it is written down by the Church itself. But do not ask absolution of me. In my sight you are spotless. You are as pure as the whitest lily, my love.' 'Do you really mean all that?' she asked, quietly. With all my heart.'

'Then you are a fool,' she said. Her words were harsh, but her lips on mine were not.

The saint who watches over lovers and fools – and over foolish lovers most of all – was guarding us that night, for no one saw us, or if they did, chose not to make it their business. We were not so reckless again, but that night had battered down every last vestige of the reserve that had come between us for so long. If we were not so bold, then at least we spent our idle hours, be they night or day, together. And if my terrible rage was not quenched, it was tempered, and I saw, at last, that although I had come to know death, I had also found out life's store of sweetness, and how to share it with another.

Thus we had passed the great Bay of Naples and the great smouldering peak of Vesuvius, of which I had read in Pliny, and then down past the flames of Stromboli and the smoke of Etna – I remember these sights more than any other, as they were the strangest and filled me with wondering dread. We passed Stromboli at night, and Anna's lips found mine for a moment as we stood at the rail and watched the flames from the mountaintop cast ghastly pink and orange shadows on the black cloud that lowered overhead.

Then, as we passed the Straits of Messina and left Italy at Cape Spartivento, setting off into the Ionian Sea – I loved to hear these names, and pestered Nizam all I could to learn them – I felt a change in Anna. She was quivering like a courser about to be slipped free, and grew silent, although she seemed to seek my presence more. But most days she spent in her station at the bows, wedged in the angle between the rail and the bowsprit, watching the dolphins and flying fish that kept us company and gazing endlessly at the blue distance which hid Greece. She had taken her place there early on the morning we reached the island, as soon as land showed itself as the merest sliver on the horizon. Now her hair was stiff with salt spray, and her eyes were distant and slightly fevered.

'Do you hear it?' she asked. 'The land is singing to us. That is the song of my home.'

We were making for a gap in the lower cliffs that seemed to ring the island. Smaller breaks in the rock gave onto little beaches, each with a grove of trees clinging to whatever level ground there was. But Nizam had pointed the Cormaran at a stone gateway, where the cliffs dipped down into tapering spits and finally broke, letting the sea flow in towards the base of the greater mountain. At the end of each arm of rock stood two small stone turrets from the top of which spun four triangles of pure white cloth. They were windmills, childlike compared to the creaking giants of home but strangely festive amid all this water and arid rock.

We passed close enough to the starboard spit to hear the swish of the mills and to see the rock drop sheer into the deeps, white stone gleaming through the air-clear water. Thick red weed grew there, with fat sea anemones and clusters of black, spiky orbs.

'Echinoos,' said Pavlos, licking his lips. "You would say "urchins".'

I told him we had no such barbaric creatures in Devon, and that I wasn't going to have them anywhere near my mouth. 'No, no: you are the barbarian here, Patch,' Anna reminded me. You will eat echinoos, I insist. They are sublime. They taste like… you'll see.' I huffed. But in truth I was strangely drawn to this place already. We had made only one other landfall in the Mediterranean Sea, at Pisa, a place of man's artistry and artifice, and the filth that always accompanies man had turned the water a sickly, opaque grey. We had skirted the arid coasts at a distance, close enough to smell the herb-laced breeze but too distant to make out details. Now it was close enough to touch, and I felt a sudden shiver of excitement. Then we were past the point, and the Bay of Limonohori opened before us.

It was a gigantic cove, a giant's stone basin tipped towards the sea, the lip just submerged, the walls rising on all sides until they fused with the mountain that towered high over everything. Straight ahead, a white village on a strip of white beach shimmered through the heat. Suddenly we were out of the wind and the air was still and hot and filled with the shrieks and rasps of unnumbered legions of insects. I smelled pine resin and thyme, and herbs that I could not name; stone dust, and a faint, pungent stink that was not unpleasant. The place was soaked in scent and noise and dry heat, as if the bay were an alchemist's alembic and we had intruded on some miraculous operation.

As we moved on, I could see houses on either side of us, small whitewashed cubes with roofs of red pan tile standing out from the dark grey-green trees. On the beaches, men sat mending nets while their brightly painted boats skipped at anchor in the clear, silver-blue shallows. I waved – something not done aboard the Cormaran, but I could not help myself – and a few waved back. At my side the Greeks were visibly shaking with joy. They whispered back and forth, their hands drawing urgent signs in the air between them. 'Have you been here before?' I asked them.

'I have,' said Pavlos. His face fell for a moment. 'They were not so pleased to see me then. It was when I sailed with… when I was with the pirates. I think we raided every village on these islands, but we didn't see the people. They would hide in the mountains, and besides, they had nothing to steal. But Venice is strong now, and the pirates are all dead or fat and old. Or respectable-' and he dug Panayoti in the ribs. 'They don't seem to be afraid of us at all.'

'Because we bring trade, not ruin. In any case, this time our brand of piracy will be more – what shall I say? – delicate.'

'He means that we aren't going to land, collar the first old man we see and tell him we've come to pinch their Saint Tula.' It was Gilles. 'The Captain is very, very good at his work.'

The truth, of course, was that we were here to steal these people's most precious possession. Tula's body was the beating heart of Limonohori and of Koskino itself. Although I did not believe that – nor did any of us -1 had not forgotten that I had once been one of the faithful, the credulous. I missed it, that feeling of certainty. When you lose faith you never quite fill the emptiness left behind. And so I was not yet so estranged from my past to wave away the import of what we had come here to do.

But then I thought, as the cypresses and those strangely gnarled, grey-leaved trees slipped by, if no one knows that Tula has gone, has she really left? It is faith that has the true power, not the object, and provided we left their faith intact, maybe we would have done no great wrong. I spat over the side. Well, I had solved that problem, I thought, bitterly.

I am a little ashamed to report that these dark thoughts slipped away as soon as I heard the rattle and hiss of the anchor cable and felt the Cormaran stall beneath my feet. We were perhaps four rods' length from shore, but the cable paid out twenty fathoms before the anchor struck. It was deep below us, and the sun's rays, very low now, made darts of speckled gold that dived and vanished. The village was there before us, a scatter of houses and a strange little church, with a merry chaos of painted boats at anchor in the shallows and drawn up onto the glaring white pebbles. A crowd was gathering at the edge of the water. They certainly were not afraid of the Cormaran, I thought, as I watched men wade out to their boats and begin to row out to us. They rowed standing up and facing forward, pushing their whole bodies into the task, sunburned men with curly black hair and beards, wearing simple tunics as white as the stones of the beach.

Pavlos, with Elia and Panayoti at his heels, was clambering into the gig. Anna made to follow, but Gilles held her back gently. 'Not yet, Vassileia,' he murmured. We will do this properly, with a little style.' Meanwhile the three Greeks were rowing madly towards the villagers. They met in open water, and the villager in the lead boat grabbed the gunwales of the gig and pulled it alongside him. I saw Pavlos put out his hand and felt a certain relief when it was taken warmly. There was much hand waving in the Greek style, and then the flotilla pulled towards us again.

'So they trust us for now,' said the Captain behind us. 'That is good.' The village headman had ordered a feast in our honour, and despite the short notice, pigs and goats were already sizzling on their spits by the time Anna and I waded ashore. Trestles had been set up in the square beneath two great trees whose bark was smooth and peeling, showing the creamy skin of the trunk beneath.

'Platanos,' Anna told me. 'I don't know what you call them in your country. Here every village has one in the square for shade. Often they are older than the village itself. And those other trees you are gawping at are lemons. Limoni – how this place got its name.'

She sat beside me at the head of the table – that is to say, she sat at the head of the table, the Captain on one side, myself on the other. It seemed unfair to me that Gilles or another, more senior crewman should be placed below me, but Gilles himself insisted, waving away my protests. Anna, he explained, had been presented to the village as Eleni, the daughter of a Macedonian duke. She was being married off to a Flemish lord living in Venice – myself, as it turned out – who had come to fetch his bride and carry her back to the Serenissima. The Lady Eleni had heard of the shrine of Saint Tula from her old nursemaid, and had come to make an offering and pray for many sons. That had overjoyed the folk of Limonohori. They loved their saint, they told us, and everyone who came to visit her was sent by God to bring joy to the island. But of course, few had come while the pirates (may their intestines be chewed by wild pigs) had held sway. Now pilgrims were coming again, thanks be to the Frankish lords, but never often enough.

The food was wonderful. Chargers of red earthenware piled high with the hacked-apart meat passed from hand to hand. There were bitter greens, little grilled fish, strange and rich stews of vegetables, some of which I recognised, some not. 'Melitzana,' Anna would explain. 'Bamyes; fasolyes.' I finally tasted a lemon, squeezing a half into my mouth and almost choking on the knife-like sourness while the villagers roared. A boorish Frank, but at least he's trying, they seemed to think, and that was fine. Anna and I were at the very centre of a constant swirl of bustle and noise: we, the noble lovers, were the guests of honour. Every new dish came to us for a first taste, every speech – and there were many, each one more eloquent and wine-loosened than the last – began with a toast to us. I took a guilty joy in the thought that these poor people, so profligate with their hospitality, had no idea just how lowly one of us was, and how truly imperial the other. We did not have to play-act very much, there being small likelihood of anyone in Limonohori knowing much about the social life of Antwerp – not that I knew much more than them. I kept my chin up and my manner as lordly as I could under the determined siege of the strange pine-soaked wine. Anna, meanwhile, seemed to be in paradise. They brought her babies to bless, and I blanched at first when she spat on the little swaddled things until she explained that it warded off evil. She pinched children's cheeks and had her own pinched beet-red by an endless line of old women who would have loved to get their claws on my own jowls had they dared. Rank evidently had its advantages.

The wine flowed as if from a fountain. It was honey-coloured and tasted strongly of freshly cut pine wood, a flavour so unexpected that I forgot to be repelled. By the second cup I hardly noticed it, by the third I welcomed it, and then I ceased keeping count. How Will would have loved this, I thought: the wine, the laughter, the proud dark women. Gradually the rumpus of the party faded and I sat staring up at the glowing night sky, the most sublime, unearthly blue I had ever seen. Big bats flitted about up there, and the sharp edge of the mountain shone faintly, a silver thread below the stars.

Someone was nudging me. It was Anna, and she was drawing my attention to a big red bowl brimming with spiny black balls held by a grinning, toothless village woman. At last, the echinoos,' she said, picking one of the terrible things out with a light touch. She laid it on the table and with her knife jabbed vigorously at the centre, loosening the vicious spines and opening a hole in what I saw was a fragile, bony shell. She poured water into the hole and with a swirl and a flourish tipped the urchin's guts out onto the ground. Another flick of the knife, and there on its point was a bright orange slug. 'This is the bit you eat,' she said. 'Go on, then.'

'It's a slug,' I protested, my tongue suddenly thick with wine.

'No it isn't. It's the eggs. Go on – the village is watching, my lord.'

Head reeling, I bent and licked the ghastly morsel from the steel. There was a burst of salty, fishy, bloody pleasure on my tongue. I took a long swallow of the pungent wine.

'So that's the secret of the echinoos’ I heard myself say, as the table rose up fast to meet me. 'They taste just like…'

I awoke the next morning to the realisation that every bat in Limonohori was roosting in my head. Many of them seemed to have relieved themselves in my mouth. I was back on the Cormaran, under the Captain's table, wrapped in the Egyptian carpet. It was early, and only Fafner saw me as I crawled to the water butt and ladled merciful, brackish water down my throat. After a few rough swallows I had the energy to pull myself up on the rail. Beneath me the sea was a dark mirror. The stars were just beginning to fade before the sun, still far below the horizon, and the trees and edges of the island were sharp purple outlines. My clothes felt clinging and stale, so without thinking I stripped and swung myself over the side. For a moment I was hanging in the lambent air and heard a single note of birdsong before the shock of the cold water swallowed me. I let myself sink, knowing I would not touch bottom, then opened my eyes to the sting of salt and looked up. The false sky of the surface trembled like disturbed quicksilver. I kicked and rose slowly, letting the air bubble from my mouth, more quicksilver streaming around me. The bats were leaving their roost in my skull. 'To work, drunken lord!'

A coil of rope dropped around me, and grabbing it, I found myself being hauled back aboard, until I stood, naked, dripping and sheepish, before the Captain. 'Feeling full of life? Humours all in agreement?' 'Oh, Christ, sir. I am so sorry. I must…'

'Nonsense. Greek wine, my boy, is one of the world's great deceivers. Goes down like water, and waits for you with a giant's club. You were almost the soberest there: you passed out early enough. Very good thinking on your part.'

Yes, well, I had everything carefully planned. So dare I ask where everyone else is?'

'Mostly in a heap under the trees of Limonohori. The Vassileia is below – she has an armoured gut, that one. No, after you went down – you just missed ramming your face into that bowl of sea urchins, by the by – things got a good deal more spirited. God alone knows how they have such an endless supply of retsina. Anyway, there were no fights, no angry words – a miracle, you might say. The Greeks are very, very good at being hospitable, though. They had us under control.' 'And how…'

'Gilles and I lugged you back in the gig. We were going to leave you in it, and the Vassileia agreed, but you came to life enough to climb the ladder.' 'Thank you,' I said.

You are entirely welcome. And now, shall we step into my cabin? I think the fumes have dissipated a little.'

Gilles sat at the Captain's table, and I was happy to note the green tinge to his cheeks.

'How do you fare, Master de Peyrolles?' I enquired, all innocence. 'I am as fresh as a little foal, dear Master Auneford.' 'And that is exactly how you appear.'

'Enough, lads: you can compare hangovers later. Meanwhile, drink this.' And he poured us all a cup of some dark wine from an old clay jar. 'This is the good stuff,' he assured us. 'Choke it down. We have much work to do, and I need your heads clear.'

The wine was good indeed, and once the wave of nausea had passed I began to feel quite alive.

We cannot draw out our time here, pleasant as it is,' the Captain began. 'The village loves us now, and we will trade today, so they will love us more. But the moment one of us gets too drunk and pinches the wrong bottom, let alone tups the wrong daughter, they will drive us off. These are kind folk, but they are as hard as the rock of this land and have suffered many lifetimes under people like us. So we will do what we came to do and leave, today if possible, tomorrow more likely. However.' And he poured himself another finger of wine and drank it off. 'There is a complication.' 'Ah, yes,' said Gilles. 'Tell him.'

While you were napping in your dinner, Petroc, the village headman came over to pay his respects to the Lady Eleni. Amid the obsequies he let drop that he had heard of another Frankish lord – how Koskino is blessed! – who had arrived a day or so earlier on the other side of the island and taken lodgings in the big town. We asked politely if this lord had a name. He did not know, but told us that the town children had christened him "Polyphemus". Now we looked at each other then, you can be sure. And why, we enquired, was that? Well, he was rather frightening, apparently, and – Petroc, you have an educated mind. Who was Polyphemus?'

I paused to think. I had read bits and pieces of the ancient writers, and Adric had been particularly fond of an ancient copy of Homer, a ragged and neglected old thing that only he and I ever opened. I had dipped here and there – the walls of Troy, Achilles' unseemly friendship with another fellow, various murders, and a long voyage. Odysseus. All sorts of adventures with whirlpools, witches, nymphs and a giant called Polyphemus, who lived in a cave, and… 'This man has only one eye?'

They nodded gravely. The bright morning had become grim in the cabin. I felt cold drops of sweat start under my tunic, but then the furnace of my anger began to glow. Well then.'

'Indeed,' said Gilles. 'It means he has a ship, and a fast one, to beat us here – he must have killed horses beneath him to cross Italy. He is confident now. He will show his hand.'

'Let him,' I said. Gilles and the Captain cocked their heads towards me in surprise.

Anna was sharpening her sword. Dimitri turned the wheel, but she would let no one else touch the blade. It was small and double-edged and tapered slowly to a wickedly sharp point. I had not seen it since that night in Bordeaux, when she had spitted the mercenary Benno with it.

'She is Circassian, a kama,' Anna said. A gift from my fencing master. I can use a long-sword, but I've never found one light enough for me. The Circassians still make their swords in the Roman style, and so I feel close to my ancestors when I wear her.'

Satisfied at last with the edge, she rubbed the grooved blade to life with a greasy rag, and the wavy lines of damask seemed to ripple like clear water. No perfectionist, I handed my own sword to Dimitri.

'Let me,' said Anna, and waited until the armourer handed it over. 'This is a good blade.'

I nodded. Gilles had picked it out for me from one of the mysterious corners of the hold one morning after we had. left Bordeaux. The blade was a little shorter than usual, wide at the base and pointed, not blunt. 'This is a new style,' Gilles had told me. 'See: you can stab and thrust, as well as slash. You are used to a knife, so this will suit you better than one of those crude hackers. I have one, so does the Captain. May it serve you well.' I liked how it felt in my hand. The hilt was an upturned half-moon, the grip was a tight braid of some woven metal, and best of all, the pommel was a smooth, eight-sided ball of steel, pointed like a filbert and inlaid on each facet with a little flower of silver. I had liked wearing it last night. It was pretty, but it had a purpose. It had helped me kill one man and more than likely I would soon be needing its services again. 'It is French,' I shrugged. 'Apparently it's the latest thing.' 'And apparently', she mocked, eyebrows cocked, 'you can use it.'

In fact I could, after a fashion. By now, I had long been part of the fencing games that Dimitri insisted upon every fine day. Some of the men were skilled indeed, others just very vicious. There was much to learn from all of them. Pavlos, who with his Varangian schooling could probably have cut the whiskers from a flying moth, had shown me many subtleties of wrist and posture. From Horst, on the other hand, I had learned how to smash the pommel into the enemy's face while mashing his stones with your knee. And I already knew how it felt to kill a man. In that baleful way at least, I was the equal of any man aboard, and even of the woman who now stroked sparks from the edge of my sword. We'll see,' I answered.

In a half-hour we would go ashore and make our procession to the shrine of the saint. It would be our scouting trip. Then later we would go back and do what we had come to do. Now we were dressed in our finest. Anna's hair was caged in its golden net, and she wore the gown I had seen first in Bordeaux. And I was draped in the finest Venetian silks. I hoped I did them justice: Dimitri had been busy with his needle and thread, and whoever they had once belonged to, they now fitted me as if cut by the Emperor's own tailor. I retrieved my sword, now sharp enough to shave with. It hissed into its sheath. Anna's own blade was well hidden: why would a lady go armed to a shrine? Why would any of us? I felt a little hollow inside, and not with fear.

Anna had been watching me. You have moped around since I woke up,' she told me. Why?' I muttered something about my guilty conscience.

'This is our work now,' she shot back. 'So do you believe in this Saint Tula all of a sudden?' 'No, but…'

'But habits die hard, is that it? Well, let them die. These people… they are my people, Petroc! These people are full of life: they brim with it. And yet you worry about stealing something dead from them. I will tell you something. When they told me how the Franks sacked Byzantium and stole the holy relics, I was happy. I have always hated priests and their spells and mumbles, and their old bones most of all. They keep us in the shadows. We are not doing an evil thing. We are delivering these folk from being in thrall to an old corpse.'

Well, if everything goes properly, they won't actually know the old corpse is gone, so I don't think that is true.'

Anna waved her hand as she always did, swatting away annoying words. 'But… but we know, and their precious Saint Tula will actually be gone, and that's all that counts.' There was no point in arguing. She was an armed princess, and as such was under no obligation to make sense. And at least she was talking to me.

As the honoured guests, we rode up to Tula's shrine on two knobbly, fly-bitten donkeys, the finest the village could supply. The saddles were wooden and fitted on the beasts like little roofs. I had to straddle the ridge, which was only slightly less than sharp, as if the maker, proudly introducing a note of luxury, had given it the once-over with his bluntest file. The path was long, twisting and steep, and before we had even left the village I felt like Saint Simon the Zealot, sawed in two up the middle. Christ alone knew how Anna managed to keep such composure perched side-saddle. But the donkeys were an honour it would have been suspicious of us to refuse, so we toiled up and up, led by the jovial priest with his cross-crowned staff and followed by ten of the most presentable of our crew and what seemed to be the entire village of Limonohori done up in their finest.

The day was beautiful, and infernally hot. The track ran between high stone walls that hid orchards and gardens, and many vineyards. Vines heavy with unripe grapes hung over the grey stone. We stumbled over rough cobbles and up wide steps cut – who knew how long ago? – into the mountain itself. The insect noise blazed. Often we were bombarded by grasshoppers, bigger than any I had ever seen, whose dull brown armour hid wings of vivid red or blue. Flies had laid siege to our donkeys' ears, and soon turned their attentions to us, nipping at our sweat-beaded flesh. I had drained my water flask too early, and watching Anna sip sparingly at hers piled on the torture. More than once it occurred to me that by the time we made it to the shrine I would be well and truly martyred myself. Perhaps they would accept my donkey-mangled corpse as a substitute for Tula.

The track was steeper now, and the donkeys' hooves rang on stone. For the first time that morning I was glad I was not on foot. Up ahead, the priest looked on the point of apoplexy as he floundered in his long black robe. And then the walls on either side opened out and we were in a wide open space, circled by more walls. In the centre, surrounded by a grove of cypresses whose narrow trunks were contorted with age, was a tiny domed chapel hardly bigger than the cabin on the Cormaran. So old that it seemed to have sunk into the ground, it had been freshly whitewashed so that, like most buildings on Koskino, it hurt to look at in the bright sunshine. Two steps led down to the blue-painted door. The priest signalled for us to wait, staggered down the steps and opened the door. I noticed it was not locked. He disappeared into darkness. Around us the villagers were spreading rugs on the hard earth and laying out food and drink. How had they managed to lug all that up here, I wondered as I swung my bruised carcass down from the diabolical saddle. It was agony bringing my legs together and I prayed my stones had not been pounded flat, as I could no longer feel them.

I was just hobbling over to Anna with as much Flemish nobility as I could muster when the priest emerged from the chapel, planted his staff in front of him and began to sing. It was a liturgy of some sort, swooping, quavering, echoing from the walls around us. The man had a voice that seemed to flow up through him from the roots of the mountain. The villagers left their picnics and began to gather around us, crossing themselves in the backwards Greek manner. The song paused, and a murmur of ameen drifted up. The priest was beckoning us. It was time.

I took Anna's hand and we made our way on stiff legs towards the door of the chapel, which gaped like the mouth of a cave behind the priest. Gathering his robes about him, he stepped down and went in. I hesitated for a moment. The doorway was black as the darkest night, and framed by the sun-blasted white of the chapel wall it seemed to me like a hole cut in the day itself. Then a gentle tug of Anna's hand and I was inside.

It took an instant or two for my eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. All around me was a glimmering, and as my eyes came into focus I realised we were surrounded by hundreds of candles, narrow tapers that each gave out a minute flame of light. There was more space in here than seemed possible from the outside. We stood on a well-worn floor of black and white checkerboard tiles. Around the walls, pews of dark wood flowed with carved vines and snakelike dragons. I looked up. There was a skylight, but the glass was so smoked from centuries of guttering candles that it let in only a dull amber glow. There were faces up there, angels amid a wreath of entwined wings. And ahead, in a halo of candlelight, lay the coffin of Saint Tula. I sucked in my breath with surprise.

Tula lay in a reliquary as rich as any in the great cathedrals of Christendom. It was a rectangular casket clad in hammered silver, into which a skilful hand had inlaid a tracery of leafy branches where birds perched and little animals played. In the centre was a Greek cross in relief, four arms tipped with emeralds radiating from an immense garnet. It was the work of the old Romans, so much finer and lighter than anything of our age. And surely this was the coffin of a Roman noblewoman, not some hedgerow saint. So Adric had been right. The scholars in Cologne had been right. Someone of importance had fetched up here in this out-of-the-way place, and instead of a great cathedral and a cult that brought pilgrims from all corners of the world, she had sunk into obscurity: just another village guardian. And Will had died for her.

As our chaperones, Gilles and the Captain, had followed us into the shrine. I turned and caught Gilles, eyes like saucers, taking everything in. He looked a little like a fox in a henhouse and paced slowly and carefully back and forth across the narrow room. I could read nothing in the Captain's face. Meanwhile the priest was busy with the ornate catches at the head and foot of the casket. He bowed his head and half-sung, half-mumbled a prayer, his palms flat on the lid. Then, with a distinct flourish, he opened it, swinging it back on its hinges until a silver chain held it upright, and beckoned us forward. There was a coverlet of new green silk, which the priest drew to one side. Another loose shroud of linen was parted, and we were looking down on the face of Saint Cordula.

It was still a face, even after nine centuries. The years had turned her skin to the colour and shine of jet. Closed eyelids had fallen in to the sockets, but her eyebrows still arched haughtily. A straight, pinched nose led down to thin lips whose rictus barely hid a flash of shockingly white teeth. Perhaps her hair had been brown. Now it was a dusty bronze, and clung in loose, brittle curls to the black dome of her skull. She wore a tunic of yellowed, stained linen richly worked at collar and cuffs with threads of precious metal, and over it the body was wrapped from neck to ankles in transparent muslin, perhaps to keep the fragile clothing from crumbling. Beneath the cloth the ribcage reared up over the void of the belly. Her hands, rings on three of the black fingers, were crossed below her vanished breasts where a rich pectoral cross nestled. Her feet were encased in new slippers of incongruously bright red leather. The priest removed these with another conjuror's nourish and signalled Anna to approach. He whispered into her ear, and she nodded. Crossing herself slowly, gathered fingers to forehead, heart, right shoulder, left shoulder, she bent and touched the saint's withered lips with her own, then laid her hands on Cordula's chest, then the empty bowl of her stomach, before coming to rest on her groin. Then another motion from the priest, and Anna bent again and kissed Cordula's feet. Then the priest kissed her, one cheek and then the other.

To my intense relief, I was not required to lay lips or even hands on the dead saint. We were ushered out, blinking like moles, into the searing outer world. The people of Limonohori were waiting with flowers, which they threw at our feet as we passed by. So we were drawn, through a lane of grinning, flower-strewing, spitting villagers ('remember – the Evil Eye,' hissed Anna), to the shade of the cypresses, where a trestle table laid with fruit, cakes and a mound of roast fowl awaited us. There were big earthenware pitchers beaded with condensation, which surely held more of that strange island wine. Suddenly I was in powerful need of a drink, and well-water was not going to be enough.

I need not have worried. There was wine in abundance, and although I knew better than to repeat my mistake of the night before, I soon had my thirst satisfied. The balance of things was being restored. Anna taught me how to eat a pomegranate, which I thought an odd kind of food, and an orange. It was sour and refreshing, nothing like anything in my experience. I could find nothing to compare it to: perhaps the juice of a plum with the tang of sorrel – but no. The orange was something else that belonged to this place alone. It would make no sense at home.

Neither the priest nor the village headman spoke anything but Greek and a smattering of Venetian, so we were safe talking in English. I hoped the Greeks would mistake it for Flemish. I did not want to be too obvious, but my impatience was driving me mad.

'So?' I finally asked the Captain, who was to my left, absently spearing grapes with the point of his knife and popping them into his mouth. You know as well as I do.' We've found her.' 'I really think we have.' 'I know we have,' said Anna, reaching out for a grilled quail. 'So sure?' The Captain had an eyebrow cocked in her direction.

'Oh, yes. There's evidence. Did you see the cross on her chest? It had a gold coin set into it, a Roman solidus. Thank your good fortune that I have eyes like an owl. The emperor on the coin was Valentinian the Third. I'm happy to tell you that Valentinian ruled the West from 425 to 455, and Attila sacked Cologne in… 453, wasn't it?'

'I have no idea. Lady Eleni, you are a prodigy,' said the Captain. 'I simply have a basic education,' she grinned. 'So that really is…' I swallowed. 'It is who we hoped it would be, I mean.' 'So it seems,' said Gilles.

'But – and perhaps I'm a little slow, so make allowances, please – I thought Saint Ursula and her virgins were a myth. I mean, that's what most educated people think.' 'And what about Adric's paper trail?' 'Superstitious fabrications, surely.'

'So what are we doing here, then?' asked Gilles through a mouthful of spice cake.

'I thought – I assumed – we were taking advantage of some ancient nonsense and giving our client what he expected, an old body with some sort of shady provenance. Our proof for him would be the fact that we took her from this particular place. But the lady in there really could be you-know-who. And I don't understand how.'

'I can try to answer that,' said the Captain. 'Have a little more wine. Now, it is as Adric suspected. In these cases, where there is a popular legend that seems exactly that, a legend, there is no smoke without some kind of fire. Eleven thousand virgins? Ridiculous, of course. Eleven virgins? Not impossible, but too neat, too pious. A girl called Ursula who got killed along with a friend or two? Now that happens all the time, particularly when the Huns are around. Remember that Adric's letter said nothing about virgins, or even mentions the name of Ursula. I believe, as Adric did, that you-know-who, as you call her, was the daughter, or niece, or cousin – even lover, perhaps – of the soldier who brought her body back here. He was an important man, probably a senator or a consul – we can tell that from the coffin in there. Given the effort he took to bring the body all the way back here, does it seem unlikely that he left a monument back in Cologne as well? Something – a stone tablet, perhaps, with a name, a date and perhaps how she died – that was found later and tied in with Ursula, who meanwhile had become celebrated. I would guess that Cor -you-know-who – is the only real thing in the whole Ursula myth, and perhaps what started it all in the first place. So. Are you answered?' 'I have to admit that it makes perfect sense.' And it did, incredible as it was. I did have some more wine, and munched my way through a number of small birds, delicious and crunchy and doused in olive oil and spicy herbs. Stripping a minute leg of its meat, I realised that this was probably why I had heard almost no birdsong on Koskino. I was just reaching for another blackbird, or possibly a lark, when the happy chatter around us went quiet. I turned to see three men walk into the walled circle. And one of them I recognised.

By their dress they were plainly Franks: loose tunics and leggings in the style of Outremer, and long surcoats belted at the waist. Surcoats of blue cloth, upon which reared white hounds. Two of the men wore wide-brimmed straw hats, like pilgrims. But the third, who seemed to be the leader, was bareheaded, and as if in a dream I saw a face from my past. As I struggled to make the connection I felt as if I were being pulled down a whirlpool of bad memories. And then I had him. It was Tom, page to the Bishop of Balecester. I stared, dumfounded, at a man who could not possibly be here. But he was. My companions had seen the strangers too, and I saw Gilles drop his hand gently to his lap, where no weapon lay. All of us – except Anna, whose blade remained our secret -had unbuckled our swords in deference to the saint and they were piled, guarded by the village children, under the trees. So it was with a glimmer of relief I noticed that the Frankish apparitions had no arms in sight. But for the first time in my life I felt utterly naked without even Thorn at my belt. The three men had stopped and were looking about them, dazed no doubt from their climb up here. But they had come from up the mountain. They must have crossed from the other side of the island. Meanwhile, they had not yet seen us over in the shadow of the chapel. As casually as I could, I leaned over to the Captain.

'I know that man,' I murmured. 'His name is Tom. The bishop of Balecester's page. They all wear the Bishop's livery. What the fuck are they doing here?'

Will he know you?' he replied, smiling as if I had told him a joke.

I wondered. He had seen me once, and he had seen a young monk in a dark hallway. I was much changed – perhaps I was a completely different person. In any event I had a full head of hair and the sun had beaten every vestige of boyhood from my face. 'I think probably not,' I said, carefully. 'But you know him.'

'I met him once only, but I have forgotten nothing about that night. He was a nervous boy hiding in the shadows. Sir Hugh made him jump, that I know.'

'And Kervezey must be on the island – this proves it. But why come here now? Play this very close, Patch. Very close indeed. This lad will not recognise us. Maybe he will believe we are who we say we are.'

Anna gripped my knee beneath the table. Who are they?' she hissed.

They have something to do with Kervezey,' I told her. 'Be very calm.'

Even as we spoke, the three men saw us and began striding through the crowd. I had gone rigid with anticipation, planning the fight to come, but when Tom reached our table he bowed low to Anna in what I had to admit was a very courtly manner.

'I am truly surprised to find such a fair lady in this rough isle,' he began. I noted that his voice had sunk an octave since I had last heard it. But now Tom was bowing to each of us in turn.

'Forgive me,' he went on. 'I had no intention of causing any disruption. I see you are people of quality, and from the north and west, by your dress. I am Thomas of Trobridge, and my fellows and I are bound for Cyprus. We stopped in this Godforsaken place to take on water, and took it into our heads to climb the mountain. I am glad we found you, as we are a little low on water ourselves. Again, please forgive me, but I am so happy to have met some fellow – what do these people call us? – Franks.'

'The pleasure is ours, dear sir.' It was the Captain, at his most charming. His English was near perfect. We are feasting in honour of my lady Eleni's visit to this shrine of Saint Tula. My lady is the Duchess of Grammos, and this is her betrothed, my lord of Arenberg, currently residing in Venice. We are returning to the Serenissima for the wedding, but my lady heard a charming native tradition that this Saint Tula has a virtue of fertility and…' He waved his hand discreetly. And I have the pleasure of addressing?'

'I am Zianni Maschiagi, young sir. I keep a squadron of ships at the Doge's disposal, but my current passion is my vineyards at Monemvasia. My lord and lady's ship stove in her keel in a storm off Cape Lerax and put in at my port. I was bound for Venice on business and… a jolly accident, in any event. And yourself? Cyprus is very far from England.'

'Cyprus, sir, and then Jerusalem. I made a vow to my lord the Bishop of Balecester, in whose service I am – this is his emblem,' and he tugged at his surcoat. 'I will fight the Infidel for three years.' And return to serve your bishop?'

'Indeed. He let it be known that I might find my fortune in such a way.' Tom paused, almost panting, and looked about him. 'So this is Tula's shrine? What incredible luck. I mean, we've trudged…'

'My young companion had heard of some stupid Greek superstition and wanted to take a look. We're sorry to trouble you, my lords – we'll be on our way.'

It was another of the Franks. He had come up behind Tom and now stood with a not altogether companionable hand on his shoulder. If I did not recognise him, I knew his sort: a Balecester thug, the kind we students would fight with on Saturday nights. They became tannery hands or men-at-arms. The third man was the same. Now I could see that Tom was quite guileless compared to these two. The man who had spoken had pig's eyes that roamed across our faces, intent and angry. The third was sullen, breathing listlessly through a slack mouth. They had round Balecester heads and the sun had scorched their faces nearly raw.

Anna's clear voice cut through the tension-heavy air. She was hiding her English behind a thick Greek accent that I had never heard before, but her words were clipped and as cold as hailstones.

'Is this how knaves deport themselves in the lands of the Barbarians?'

'If…' The pig-eyed one was swelling with belligerence, but it was his turn to be cut off by Tom, who whispered urgently into his red ear. 'Your pardon, Highness,' he began again. 'I did not know who I stood before.'

Much to my horror, Anna turned to me. 'My lord, I am going into exile for your sake – will you allow me to be insulted on my own soil? Or is my people's stupidity legendary in your country?'

My eyes had somehow become locked with those of the angry pig. An appalling calm settled on me, a white-hot, almost joyful clarity. I reached out, carefully selected a bird from the dish, and pulled off a leg. Sucking off the meat, I laid the tiny bone on the table in front of me. Now the whole gathering was staring at me.

'My love, are you insulted by the stench of the pigsty? The pig cannot help the stink of his shit: it is his nature to live out his days with a muddy snout and a shitten arse. So with these creatures: the low-born Englishman is a creature whose ignorance clothes him like the pig is clothed in his own dung. Do not be insulted, dear one. One cannot be insulted by beasts.'

I took the other leg, dragged it between my teeth, and laid it cross-wise over its fellow. I took a long swallow of wine, draining my cup, and ran my thumb once across my lips.

'Give these thirsty hogs some water, and cry them on their way,' I said.

You were quite good, Patch,' said Gilles. 'Every inch a lord.' The three of us had wandered off from the shrine under the pretence of relieving ourselves. Now we sat on an outcrop of rock overlooking the sea. We could still hear the festivities behind us, and below us one of the mountain's many spurs swooped, a knife-edged ridge, down to the blue water a half-mile below. One of those miniature coves glimmered there, and a flock of goats was ambling across it, black dots against white stone. 'Kervezey is here, and that settles it, I suppose. We'll sail in the morning.'

'No, no,' said the Captain. He had been in an unusually good mood since the Franks had been sent packing up the mountain.

'But this is business,' said Gilles, surprised. We have no obligations, we have received no advances. Kervezey was using those oafs to scout for the prize. Now he has found it, and he will fight for it, the island will be raised against all Franks, and that will be the end. It is over.'

'It will be over tomorrow,' the Captain replied. We will take the saint tonight. No, dear friend…' and he raised a hand. We can. You know that we can.'

We could,' said Gilles. 'It is possible. I can see as well as you that the Cormaran could anchor down there and that a party could scramble up. But in the dark, over unfamiliar ground? We need preparation.' 'I could do it,' I said. ‘You?' ‘Why not I?'

‘What has got into you?' It was the Captain, and he was grinning. I was not.

'Death,' I muttered. You know what I have had festering inside me since…' The two men nodded. Well, then: if this is to be a chance to hurt Kervezey, even in his… his purse, then that will do for me.'

You are strong of heart, Patch – no one doubts it,' said the Captain, gently. 'But for such a task, there are a few more…' he pinched the bridge of his nose, as he did when searching for the right word, '… experienced men on the Cormaran. This time, perhaps-'

'Sir, with the greatest respect, there is no one aboard with more experience of Kervezey. My own… think, Captain, of that boy Tom. Kervezey is like a bot-fly, laying his eggs in innocent flesh and watching as the maggots hatch and feed, on the Toms, the Wills…' I fell silent. From the moment Tom had spoken, the horror of my last night in Balecester had wrapped itself around me like corpse-breath. I looked up. The Captain was studying me through narrowed eyes.

'How did it feel to face those swine, Kervezey's beasts?' he asked.

'I felt nothing,' I said. 'Save pity for Tom.' I stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. 'I grew up scrambling,' I said. 'And I am not afraid any more. Do you think I can manage Tula on my own, though?'

'Tula will be light as a feather, my lad,' the Captain said. I turned and found the two of them on their feet, studying me. 'The job is yours if you wish.' They both reached out to me and laid hands on my shoulders. 'Now let us get back – your betrothed will be getting worried.'

Anna was not the least bit worried, though. She was learning a folk song from the headman's wife, and by the blush on that good woman's face it was clear that the noble lady had wheedled out something ribald.

'It's a good one,' she confirmed. About goats. I swapped for one I know about an old couple and a giant melon. They use it as a privy: brilliant song.'

So I listened to dirty Greek songs as the cicadas thrummed along, and sipped astringent retsina. As the cypress shadows lengthened and turned our walled circle into a giant sundial, as the village packed up and said farewell to their saint, and as I jogged back down the mountain on the fiendish donkey, all I could think about was the long, dark climb to come, and opening the old blue door on a blackness that would be deeper than any moonless night.