The Vault of bones

Chapter Twenty-Three

I moored the boat to a broken marble pole jutting from the slimy rocks. Everything was wreckage here, rubble and seaweed. I could hear the rattle of crab claws on the rocks as I clambered ashore, and the pop of bladderwrack under my feet. The round wall of the chapel was right in front of me, looming overhead, very high and forbidding. It sat upon a crumbling buttress of boulders and rubble which the sea had been chewing so intently that the whole building was nearly undercut. Another decade or so and the Pharos Chapel would be another heap of weed-slick rubble, home to the crabs and eels. I pulled the ladders from the boat and propped them against the buttress, then heaved the boat up on to the rocks, turned it over and draped it with rags of seaweed. Then I scrambled up until I stood on a sort of rough platform or shelf, the width of a couple of feet, under the wall itself. I rested for a little while, for my nose was throbbing horribly and one side of my chest felt as if it were lying upon hot coals. From here the roof seemed much closer, and I could see the moss that hung from the overhang of tiles. Chewing upon my lip to take my mind from the pain of my injuries, I pulled the ladders up next to me and lashed them together with the eelskin cords. Then, after a glance out to sea to make sure I was not observed, I shrugged on my pack and laid a foot upon the bottom rung. The ladder shook and bowed, and I felt like a big grasshopper climbing a little grass stem. With every step the ladders feet danced upon the loose earth, and the top scraped and jounced on the tiles. The higher I got, the more precarious I felt, and I fairly dived on to the tiles when at last I reached the roof. Somewhat shaky with pain and relief I pulled the ladder up after me and set about looking for a place to attach my rope. There was a sort of stone finial at the apex of the roof but when I tugged at it experimentally it grated and shook in its nest of loose mortar. Further behind me the palace rose in its decaying tiers, and in the wall from which the chapel jutted, a little stone window glimmered faintly, white against the surrounding brick. I went over and felt it: the window, really a block of marble with four holes bored through it, was solidly anchored, and so with a little fussing and scraping of knuckle-skin I managed to thread the rope in one hole and out through another. Twice more and a hefty knot, and I had something to which I could trust my weight.

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

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

From the memories of one look at the inside of the Pharos Chapel when I had not been thinking about it, I had calculated – if my science, made up as it was of equal parts desperation, hope and the ever-tempting notion that if I believed it was so, it would be, could be called calculation of any sort, and not a nonsense akin to the casting of bones – that I would easily fit through the window. And so I could, with room to spare. But I was so wounded and bruised that I found that I could barely make my limbs obey me. Every move was a torment. Straining, feeling my clothing snag on the holes I had made in the sill, I found myself looking down at the ground, some way below, and at the belly of the rope that hung there. Wiggling like a worm in cheese, I was horribly aware of the dark void in which half of me was flailing, a place that had terrified me when I had visited it with candles and company. My ribs, jammed against the stone, were howling in agony.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'Do you know what this is, you blasphemer?' I asked him, remembering dimly how I had almost, long ago, become a priest. 'Shut up’ Dardi told me.

'This is the treasure-house of Christendom. Do you see Our Lord in His Passion behind me? His grave-clothes are behind you. Do you see that wound in His side, and the blood pouring forth like a spring? This made that very wound’ I said, holding up the spearhead. 'The holy Lance. And it will pierce your liver, you dog.'

Dardi blinked, and his knife wavered. He crossed himself again, fervently, and when he raised his knife again it was less steady. His eyes darted up towards the dead face of Christ and his arms came up, as if he were being crucified in his turn by doubt. I stepped towards him, and he turned to Letitia, pleading. She stepped back, glanced at me, her face a pale blank, and with a mere flick of movement, like a fish darting through a strong current, she pulled out a blade and thrust it once, twice, into Dardi's ribs and held it there as his own knife dropped from his hand and he sank down to his knees and then backwards, arms still out, until he lay, legs twisted beneath him, a failed pieta. Letitia pulled out her knife with a grunt, squatted and wiped it on his jutting belly, took a deep breath, and turned to me. She had clamped her lower lip between her teeth.

'I was hoping you would do that’ she said at last, after we had regarded each other for a silent eternity.

I lowered the spearhead very slowly. What… what the fuck is going on?' I rasped, mouth as dry as desert sand.

Wait!' she said, holding up a finger. Turning in a flounce of skirts she ran lightly down the aisle and shut the door. Locking it, she held up the key to me. Then she walked briskly back into the sanctuary.

'Right. What are you doing here?' she said. 'And, love, put that thing down. Is it really the… holy Spear, or whatever?'

'I don't know. I mean, what… Look, could you put your knife down as well?'

She looked down at her hand, all bloody up to the wrist, as if in surprise.

'Oh. This is yours,' she said, and held out the knife to me, hilt first. Through the darkening blood I saw that the hilt was carved from green stone. I took it, mute with shock. Letitia handed me the scabbard.

'Right. I came to kill him, and to nick something. What's the most valuable thing in here?' I looked at her, slack-jawed.

'I said, Devonshire, what's the most valuable thing in this place? You know, don't you: that's why you came here.'

'Um.' I gave Thorn another wipe, sheathed her and tucked her into my belt. 'It's… it's not what's valuable that counts.' Inside, I was screaming to myself: She has the key! She has the bloody key!

'Listen. I just saved your life – not for the first time either. Be nice to me, all right?' 'Letitia…'

'Oh, and my name's not Letitia. Bloody Letitia. It's Letice. Letice Londeneyse, sometimes called Letice Pyefote. You'd better tell me yours now.' 'Petrus – Petroc. Petroc of Auneford.'

We were watching one another, panting as if we had just wrestled. I tore my eyes away and looked around the room. Dardi's sprawled body was taking up most of the sanctuary floor. There were scattered reliquaries everywhere. I decided that it might be possible to get out of here free and more or less alive.

Why did you…' I began, jerking my head towards the corpse.

'Messer Nicholas… Listen, I am a whore, Master Petroc. Actually, a courtesan, as they say in Venice. Messer Nicholas is tired of me. He planned to give me to that fat fucker, that stinking, slobbering hog, and make me live out my days on some island he owns: a bare rock in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't going to do it. Dardi likes – liked – to give a woman pain, before, during and after. I wouldn't've lasted a year – Nicholas knew that, by the way.'

I looked at her closely. She seemed quite at ease with what she had done, but not happy: it did not seem to have filled her with that seething joy I had seen possess some after they had killed or maimed. She seemed weary, and businesslike. Upper lip curling a little, she gave me back my look.

'Listen to me,' I said. 'I came to get three things. Christ's Sandals, which I have. The Maphorion of the Theotokos – Mary's Robe. And something called the Mandylion of Edessa. They're on a list, an old inventory that I have, and they aren't on the emperor's own list – nor's that spear, and I am keeping it. As he's about to flog the whole lot off to your Master Nicholas, I thought I'd take them for my own…' I was going to say master, but it did not seem right. 'Help me look, would you? There are pictures on the boxes, to help nice thieves like us.'

In truth I was feeling almost light-headed, for here I was, more or less trapped in the second holiest place in the world with a dead man and a strange woman with warm blood on her hands. For a moment I felt like an alchemist's transmutation, something sealed in an alembic, changing into… what? Not a corpse, if I could help it.

There's a lovely little virgin on this one’ Letice was saying. 'Shall I open it?'

'No! There's blood on your hands. I mean, let me. We don't want to leave traces.'

'Traces! What about him over there?' She jerked her head at the dead man.

I pointed to the window. 'Do not ask. We will do it.' I opened the chest, and two more within, until I found a small, flat casket of solid gold adorned with lapis lazuli. Inside was a square of linen or some such cloth; a plain, faded maroon, but with a faintly golden sheen. It was much folded, and I did not dare to probe further in case it was fragile. There's a lot of towels in this one’ called Letice.

'I told you, don't touch anything!' I hissed. I tucked the gold casket into my bag and went over to investigate.

'But it's all dry now, the blood’ she was protesting. 'Anyway, I only touched the chest.'

Those, I will hazard, are the grave-clothes of Our Lord’ I said, peering in.

'Bloody hell!' she squeaked, jerking back and sitting down hard on the floor.

'Squeamish, are you?' I said bitterly. I did not want to touch these things myself, but, I reasoned, how many yards of Christ's shrouds already existed, out there in the world of the credulous? Enough to make sails for the English fleet, for sure. Still, I winced as I thrust my hands into the folds, but all was clean and dry. A faint smell of myrrh drifted up, nothing more.

'God, you're fishing around in there as if it were bed linen’ said Letice. 'Oh – there's a picture in this one.'

I looked over. She was holding up an icon, a big square of silver with a shape cut out of the middle, through which two dim, ancient eyes peered out. Letice's own blue eyes regarded me over the top.

'That might be the Mandyion,' I said, shutting the lid gratefully on the shrouds. What's a Mandylion, then?'

'Supposed to be a holy image, on a cloth, made into an icon. Can I have a look?'

The thing was very old. It looked older than the dead things I had seen in the hold of the Cormaran, but more alive, for the face, hollow-cheeked and thin of lip, seemed to appraise me with gloomy indifference.

‘It might be,' I said. 'It must be.' I touched the face, very gently. Smooth paint, and the faintest ripple of woven threads beneath.

Well, this is the last one. Doesn't look like much,' she added. I heard the creak of a lid and the click as it closed. What was it?' I asked over my shoulder.

'You said not to touch,' she said, coolly. 'Anyhow, it was just a big box, no gold or anything. Just wood.'

I was ready to leave with this thing I held, for at last I had found something that felt at least worthy of veneration in this storehouse of forgeries. As real, anyway, as the Crown, but not half as terrible. Still, another minute would not harm us, for dawn was still, I judged, an hour or two away. I knelt down and opened the chest, and tugged out the box inside. It was as plain as she had said, made of some scented wood that still felt a little oily to the touch. I opened it. Inside was another folded square of linen, and on it a painted face.

Except that it was not painted. It looked as if someone had just, in the last few seconds, drawn upon the cloth with water, for the image was a stain, I decided. Or a painting in blood – no, not blood. What… what would Gilles use, for authenticity? But it looked like fresh water, just now soaking into the weave, with darker flecks of blood about the nose and forehead. The face was like that in. the icon, but more alive, even though it was formed out of nothing but stains and suggestions. A young man with a beard, a long face, flowing hair and wide-set eyes that were nothing but smudges, but which held my gaze. I slammed the lid shut.

It's this one’ I croaked. The face still hung in the air before me, like a ghost. It was a ghost, I realised: the artist, or whoever – I bit back hard on the thought of whatever – had somehow imprisoned a phantom in the weave of the cloth. I imagined it hanging there, folded in on itself, like smoke, like a shoal of fish hanging motionless in clear water. I set down what I had thought was the Mandylion. It suddenly seemed as crude a thing as I might have painted in an idle afternoon aboard the Cormaran. 'Let us leave now’

We tidied up as best we could, put everything back in its place, and turned our attentions to the corpse. Dardi had hardly bled, and most of it had gone on Letice. We dragged him over behind the altar, Letice grabbing an arm without a word or a grimace. I told her to climb up through the window and on to the roof, and watched her haunches, bare under her dress, struggle up past Our Lord's face, her skin pale and alive against the balefully glowing, painted flesh. It occurred to me, too late, that she might just pull the rope out with her and leave me to be flayed, but after she had squeezed through the window, sending whispered curses flying like bats around the rafters, and disappeared, the rope stayed where it was and gave a companionable jerk when I pulled upon it.

I tied the end around Dardi's chest so that the knot lay against his throat. Then I pinched out the last candle and pulled myself, hand over hand, up the wall. It was easier getting out than in, after I had sent my pack through first and hung it from one of the iron spikes in the wall outside, useful after all. I climbed stiffly up to the roof and laid the pack down next to Letice, who was lying flat on the tiles, her chin on her hands, which were gripping the edge. 'Right, now for Dardi’ I told her.

I had not really had a plan, and it turned out that heaving a large dead man up a wall and through a window was not an easy task for two people, let alone a half-starved, battered man and a maid. But heave we did, and because I had hauled up many sails and anchors in my time it was not so very hard, except when the wretch jammed himself in the window. I had to take the slack out of the rope, climb down and wrestle him through, scrabbling at his clothing and manhandling his shoulders around so that he was propped at a diagonal, his head dangling, tongue clamped between blood-black teeth, above the drop. Then, feet on both sides of the window, I jerked and strained until, like a breech-birthed calf, he slipped out and fell for a moment before the rope brought him up and he swung, slowly. I got a good grip with one hand, drew out Thorn and cut him down. He landed with a ripe but brittle crash and rolled down on to the rocks. After that it was simple enough to jam the grille back into the window and prop the slate up in front of it. I helped Letice over the edge and on to the ladder and followed her down in silence. She let me heave Dardi into the sea and launch the little boat. The ladders I smashed with a stone and scattered. When the pack was placed safely in the bows I turned to help her aboard.

She was kneeling at the water’s edge, on a flat rock whose sea-lapped edge was encrusted, jewel-like, with sea-anemones. Her hands, palm to palm, hovered before her face, and her curving thumbs met the curved tip of her nose. I left her to her prayers and sat, fending off the boat, my spirit surging and lapping like the water. I felt relief, somewhat. I was tired, very tired. My injuries had stopped hurting very badly, so perhaps they were not so bad. Or perhaps I was just dying.

Letice dropped her hands at last, as the most grudging hint of light showed itself, moiled in cloud, in the far east. She stood up stiffly and tottered a little. Then she bent down again and washed her hands. Will that make amends?' she asked. 'No’ I said, without thinking. ‘I didn't think so. I was very jolly in there, while I was damning myself. What about you? Aren't you bothered?' I shrugged, with an unconcern I did not feel. ‘I do it for a living,' I muttered.

'Listen, Petroc. I'm coming with you now. And I want us to be safe. There's things we need to be safe from, yes? I've… you've seen something that I've done, something dreadful. So you have power over me.' I shook my head. 'I don't care.'

'No. Do not make this a game. You are the kind of soul that can lie, and hurt, and come up smelling like a field of flowers. Tell me something. Give me some power over you, so we can be alike.'

I looked at her face. The light was flat and thin, but at least there was light, and it glimmered upon the flare of her nose and her upper lip that seemed, all of a sudden, like the bud of an apple-flower about to bloom.

'My name is Petroc of Auneford. I am called Patch. I am also the man they are calling the Gurt Dog of Balecester. They sing songs about me in London. Perhaps even in Smooth Field.' I looked at her. She cocked a fair eyebrow. Then she smiled, and then laughter was spilling up out of her, incredulous, amazed. You're not!' she said.