Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

'I was wandering about up there, picking heather flowers-' and here she darted me a look, swift as quicksilver, '-simply gathering flowers, and he crept up behind me. I thought I'd had it, I can tell you! God, how he stank. He gave me a good pinching and pawing, I screamed, and then my brave Petroc drove him away, bloody and weeping.' She clapped her hands joyfully once more, like a little girl at play. I blushed at the look of admiration that Pavlos turned upon me. 'I don't know about weeping,' I muttered.

'Nonsense! You bold warriors, always so very modest. Drove him away, I say, drove him off to die,' Anna insisted, her face all but twitching with mischief. I held up both hands, hoping to change the subject. 'And your leg, how does it feel?' I asked.

'It is serviceable,' she replied. 'Sore when I lean upon it. It will be stiff tomorrow.'

We must get you back to the Cormaran,' broke in Pavlos. The Captain is in a mighty rage – although I believe his anger is a disguise for concern. But…' 'I will not go back while the sun shines,' Anna snapped. 'But, Vassileia…' 'I will not, I say!' 'Aghia Panayia… Come, Vassileia, you must.'

'Here I stay,' Anna repeated, kicking her feet into the grass so that she indeed appeared rooted in place.

'I will stay here while you warn de Montalhac,' I ventured. 'It is not far to the ship.' I threw a warning look at Anna, who had turned her stubborn glare on me. 'If all is well, we shall come in at nightfall, on any signal you choose.'

'Did you hurt him to death, Petroc?' Pavlos turned to me. I shrugged, feeling horrible.

'No!' I said. 'I only kicked his ballocks for him. But he was holding aloft a great boulder, and he dropped it on his own shoulder. I heard it break, like piece of kindling.' 'Exactly where was it?'

I showed him on my own shoulder. 'I think the stone carried away his ear, too,' I added. He wanted to know how much blood I had seen. For a minute he paced in a tight circle, staring at us through narrowed eyes. Finally he stopped, and dragged his hands across his face.

'So be it,' he sighed. You will stay here. I do not think your lunatic will be back, and it seems unlikely that there are more of his like about. But, Petroc, I shall bring you something more useful than that,' and he waved a finger at Thorn. 'Can you use a bow?' I nodded – it was true, I had been a fair shot at the abbey, shooting at the butts set up by the river for sport and preparation, for it was not unknown for the monks to go forth armed to drive folk off abbey land. 'Good,' said Pavlos doubtfully. 'I will arrange a signal with the Captain. But if you see one hair of a stranger's head, you will shoot to kill, then run for your lives. Do you swear it?' 'I swear it,' I agreed.

'I swear nothing,' said Anna stiffly. 'But I will do as Petroc advises me, as he has guided me well thus far.' And she stared at Pavlos down her fine, narrow nose.

'Thanks be to God,' said the Greek, fervently, and crossed himself once more. 'I shall return with all speed.'

And he turned and all but ran down the hill. I felt Anna at my side, and heard her laughter, the same laughter that had disturbed my morning bath.

'Pavlos is a good man,' she said finally, 'but he does fuss over me like an old hen. He has the habits of a palace guard, you see – he can no more break them than… than I can resist making sport of him. I have the habits of the palace too.'

Where is your palace – your home?' I asked her, hearing the sadness in her voice.

'In Nicea, which is in Asia Minor, in that part we call Anatolia,' she replied. She looked at me quizzically. 'Do you know where that is?'

'It is on the eastern shore of the Mare Mediterraneum,' I said, 'above the lands of Outremer, and east of Byzantium.'

Well, well! A scholar! My Devonshire boy, you are deeper than the Sea of Darkness,' she said. You did not come by such map-learning amongst that band of cutthroats, I think.'

'No, you are right,' I said, still watching the small figure of Pavlos as it hurried across the beach. Now he had reached the ship, and disappeared behind the hull. 'But, my lady, very little aboard the Cormaran is what it seems – like bundles of whalebone, for instance,' I added.

She snorted disparagingly – a most unladylike sound – and, taking my hand, drew me down to the heather. She sat back and crossed her legs like a tailor. Feeling awkward, I knelt before her, as if at prayer.

You at least are not who you seem to be,' she said. You are too gentle. Oh, I know…' and she held up a hand as if to silence my protest. "You are fearless, I have the proof of it. But you do not seem like one of them… like a pirate, for that is what they are, isn't that true?' 'They are traders,' I mumbled.

'Oh, rubbish! That de Montalhac is a rogue through and through – a wolf. But a gentleman,' she admitted.

'And more,' I said. 'They are all… most of them are good men. They saved my life, and took me in like a long-lost brother.'

'Lord! That ship is manned by a veritable guild of life-savers! And from what did they save yours?'

'From a man…' I began reluctantly. 'From being hanged for a thing I had no part in.' I hung my head, still sickened at the memory of it all.

'Peace, Petroc. I have a mocking tongue, but a loving heart. Listen. It is but a little past noon, and we shall be sitting on this great dry mountain for hours to come. As I have fallen amongst traders', and she reached out one leg and prodded me in the thigh with a dirty toe, 'I will trade you my history for yours. And I wager that you get the better bargain, although we shall see. So, is it yes? Do you agree?'

I considered. I had no great wish to pick over my dark time. The long sea-voyage had healed much, though I could sense Sir Hugh somewhere in the background, lurking like unclean smoke. But looking at this girl, who regarded me so coolly from under those arching brows, and past her at the strange shore upon which we had been thrown together, I realised that I longed to tell my story to someone – all of it, not just the fragments I had let fall in conversation aboard the Cormaran. Only the Captain knew it all, and confiding in the Captain was like consigning a secret to a deep, black pool in which countless other sorrows lay sleeping. 'Well, where should I begin?' I asked. At the beginning, of course,' said she. So I told her everything, from my boyhood on the moors, to the abbey, to gloomy Balecester and all the blood that had flowed there, to Dartmouth and, finally, to this place, this little rock in the ocean. I found I could tell of Will's murder, although my hands began to tremble, and I was glad when Pavlos interrupted me, loping up to drop a longbow and quiver of good, goose-fletched arrows beside me. I saw him appraise the situation, hands on hips, measuring in his mind the distance between his Vassileia and my common self. Apparently satisfied, he left us in peace. Then my tale flowed untrammelled to its ending on this island, hearing Anna's laugh on the wind. When I had finished, I looked up, for I had been gazing at my feet as I spoke, caught up despite myself in the tale I had not wished to drag forth. Anna was staring at me, hugging herself as if to ward off a chill, although the sun was scorching us. Her eyes were red.

'How great is the misery of this world,' she murmured. 'And how little it seems that the Almighty cares for his creations.'

I opened my mouth to reply, but no words came. She had touched upon the darkest shadow within me; the empty niche that had once held my faith. I wondered if that secret were written on my skin like leprosy, but then Anna grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

'I have wronged you, Petroc,' she said. 'I took you for yet another pirate, although, granted, with a gentle demeanour. But it seems that we are more alike than I thought, you and I. We are both clerics, for a start…' And she laughed, mirthlessly. 'Clerics?' I was startled.