The Lazarus Vault

XLII

Our boat glides up the Thames. Around Woolwich bend we see London like a blot on the horizon. A white stone tower guards its approach, looming over the whole city. It dwarfs everything. Cranes and scaffolds around it show tributary defences still under construction.

‘The city’s well protected,’ I say.

Hugh, standing by the bow wrapped in a dark cloak, grunts. ‘The tower isn’t there to defend the city. It’s there to dominate it. Even the colour is foreign — the Normans brought white stone across the sea from Caen to build it.’ He grunts. ‘Literally, putting our land under theirs.’

We’ve travelled together for six weeks now, but the facts I know about Hugh would barely fill eight syllables of verse. He’s English. His family must have made some compromise with the Normans, or he wouldn’t be a knight, but every so often I glimpse the hatred he has for them. I don’t know if he counts me as a Norman. He has so many other reasons to hate me, it’s hard to tell.

It’s almost eight years since I was last in England. Back then, the country was in its springtime — ripe fields, safe roads, handsome towns and well-loved King Henry. Now, winter has fallen. Civil war has split the country open, and the wound is festering. King Henry died without a son: his nephew, Stephen, seized the crown, but Henry’s daughter, the Empress Maud, contests it. They’ve been trading blows, gaining and losing territory, these past four years.

As we travel upriver every town we pass has its gates barred and fires set in the watchtowers. Occasionally, we see strange mounds erupting from the flat landscape, the mottes where castles have been thrown up and thrown down again during the war. Some still show the scorch marks: blackened lumps, bruises on the body of the country. Severed heads, in various degrees of decomposition, shrivel on spikes along the riverfront.

London looks as if it’s preparing for a siege. So many ships crowd its wharves that we need three hours just to reach our mooring. The sheriff’s men ask us hard questions when we land — even the barrel of wine we give them doesn’t deter them. But they don’t find the false bottom in our hull, the mail shirts, shields, swords and spears that give the boat its ballast.

We find lodgings at an inn on West Chepe. Hugh takes a room on the first floor, across from the mouth of an alley, and pays the innkeeper handsomely to have it to ourselves. He draws two stools up by the window — hour after hour, we sit there and watch, listening to the drinking, gambling and fighting which drifts through the floorboards. London is a city of constant noise and motion — like Troyes at fairtime, but every day and magnified a hundredfold. The smiths and pewterers and carpenters and masons hammer their metal, wood and stone; the hawkers shout in the markets to be heard over the smiths; and the merchants shout to be heard above the rest.

Down the alley, according to the clerk in Troyes, is the house where Lazar’s debts are settled. I want to go and see it, but Hugh’s worried I’ll be recognised. Two of his men, Beric and Anselm, go and report that the building is locked and shuttered. They pass by twice a day to see if anyone arrives, while I stay confined to the inn, watching men pass beneath the grimy window, trying to make out the features beneath hats, scarves and collars. Even our meals get taken in the room.

Hours stretch into days. One afternoon I ask Hugh, ‘What did Malegant steal?’

I’ve been working up my courage for the last hour to say it. I expect him to tell me to shut up. He stays silent so long I think he’s decided to ignore me. At last he says, ‘There are things in this world we can’t understand.’

‘You mean you won’t tell me?’

He frowns. ‘I mean you won’t understand it.’

He stretches out his legs. ‘There are objects in this world which have powers we can manufacture. A bucket has the power to draw water. An axe cuts wood. But there are other things we can’t explain. The way a single seed contains an entire tree, or a woman’s belly produces a life.’

I pick a lump of eel out of the grail-dish on the table and feel it slither down my throat. I lick the salt juice off my fingers and remember the first time I met Ada. She was carrying a dish like this that night.

‘You’re speaking in riddles.’

‘Because I don’t understand it myself.’

‘Then why try so hard to get these objects back?’

‘Because I know what they can do, even if I can’t explain it. Their powers are terrifying.’

‘Have you seen them?’

‘I have.’

‘Can you tell me what they look like?’

‘Commonplace. They could be any of the objects in this room. But they have powers …’

He’s beginning to irritate me. ‘What sort of powers?’

He waves his hand out the window. ‘Look at England. Ten years ago, this was the happiest country in Christendom. Now it’s a wasteland. That’s the sort of power Malegant stole.’

And then I see him.

It’s a Friday afternoon in late January and Hugh’s gone out: I’m sitting on my own. A man comes up the alley and stands there a moment, sniffing the air like a pointer. A beaver-fur hat covers his face, but he’s too cautious. He looks up, alert to danger from any direction, and as his gaze passes over the inn I see him full on. A grey face wrapped in furs, a single eye scanning the street.

I stifle the urge to draw back. He can’t possibly see me in the dark window, but he might notice the movement. He stands there another moment, then eases forward into the crowds.

I rush out of the room, down the stairs and into the street. The sun’s almost disappeared, but I can just glimpse the crown of his hat weaving through the throng. He turns right towards the river, along a street that stinks of fish. Fish guts clog the gutters; fallen scales make the cobbles slippery. Half-dead fish flop and flounder in crates stacked by the fishmongers’ doors.

The one-eyed man ducks into a wine shop on the corner. The Thames flows just beyond, though I can hardly see it through the fleet of vessels jamming the docks. I stand aside to let two porters go in, then step smartly in after them. If the one-eyed man looks up as they enter, he doesn’t see me behind them.

The room is low, dim and smoky: the few tallow candles the landlord’s put out cast more shadows than light. I look to the darkest corners and get a vague gleaning of a man taking off his fur hat. I edge around the room towards him. I’m halfway there when he looks up — straight at me.

I freeze. I’m unarmed, and the wine shop looks like the sort of place where brawls are commonplace. A corpse spirited out the back and dropped down a hole into the Thames probably wouldn’t trouble the owner.

A man shoulders his way past me and clasps the one-eyed man’s hand. He wasn’t looking at me. My heart starts to beat again.

‘Alberic,’ the other man greets him. His voice is loud, a London voice trained in its markets and trading-halls.

‘Alderman.’

The new arrival takes a seat facing Alberic. White curls bloom from the sides of his cap like hyacinth. His nose droops, his cheeks blush with broken veins. He takes the drink Alberic offers and sips it while he listens. I can’t hear what Alberic says. He’s facing away, and he speaks like a man well used to conspiring in dark corners. But I catch the reply.

‘London supports King Stephen. We were the first to recognise him. When the Empress Maud came to London, we drove her out as a tyrant and a usurper.’

Again, I don’t hear Alberic’s reply, but I see the alderman’s face change.

‘London’s true loyalty will always be to commerce. War is bad for business.’

Alberic swills his drink. His head moves back and forth as if he’s laughing, though if he is, it’s too soft for me to hear. I drag my stool slightly closer.

‘War is excellent for business. We’ve never made so much money as we have since Maud and the Angevins invaded. The weak are crushed; the strong charge what they like.’

The alderman looks alarmed. ‘I thought we were talking about peace.’

Alberic takes his arm, soothing. ‘We are. When Stephen’s victory is secured, all we want is to protect our privileges.’

‘And my consideration?’

Alberic reaches inside his hat and extracts a limp piece of vellum. ‘I thought in a place like this, a bag of gold might be too obvious.’

The alderman smiles. He pulls out his own piece of parchment and slides it across the table.

‘This will get you your audience.’

The two men down the last of their wine. The alderman leaves; Alberic waits a few minutes, stroking the parchment thoughtfully, then goes out. I daren’t follow immediately, and when I do go I find my way blocked at every turn in the crowded room. By the time I reach the street, he’s vanished into the night.