Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

'How does it go with you, Patch?' she asked, shyly: a voice I had not heard before.

'It goes better. Better, now that I have scoured every speck, every mote of last night from me,' I said, without thinking. 'Every trace of last night?'

'Everything,' I said passionately. It was true: I had been desperate to free myself from the blood that had drenched me, dry and flaking where it had dried on my face and hands, still horribly wet where it had run under my arms and even between my legs. Its salty fetor had kept me on the verge of retching as I sat before the Captain. Now all I could smell was the familiar mustiness of long-worn clothes and my own clean skin. But Anna had hung her head a little, and her eyes seemed to follow something across the deck at our feet.

'I took sand and rubbed myself raw,' I blabbed on. 'Mother of God! I feel clean, at least, but…' I trailed off, thinking yet again of the swordsman's last breath. 'I doubt I shall ever feel pure again.'

'Petroc, look at me!' Her voice was tight, almost desperate. Her cloak had fallen open and there was the blue tunic and red surcoat she had put on in the church. The sunlight glimmered over the magical complexities of the silk and picked out where the cloth was stiff and lifeless. Blood had stained it in gouts from neck to hem, and there was a black smear on the skin of her throat.

'Please help me, Patch.' She was pleading. 'I do not want to touch these clothes,' she whispered, and reached out for my arm. Her hand was bloody to the wrist. I flinched, meaning no more than to keep the gore from my skin, but she snatched her hand back and held it to herself as if it burned. Before I could reach for her in turn she whirled away from me and hurried off across the deck to the hatch, where Pavlos happened to be standing. He began to help her down the ladder. I shrugged, not at all sure what had just occurred. I was going to help her. I wanted more than anything to talk, to take both her hands in mine and hold my cheek against hers. But the ghastly sheen of the crimson silk and those dark clots in the fine hair of her arm had unbalanced me for a moment. I thought I remembered that her eyes had widened with shock, almost terror, in the instant before she had turned from me. All at once everything – every taste, pleasure, pain, sound, sight and smell – from the past day and night came back to me, whirling about my head like rooks around a ruined tower, and I barely groped for the rail before I was sicker than I had ever been. I emptied myself into the river until my throat bled. I had no thought of Anna, and whether she watched me before ducking down into the peaceful gloom of the hold I do not know.

When I was done I picked my way aft and pissed into the wake, watching the city blend into the haze. Although there was no wind and the river was flat as a counter-pane I nearly lost my footing and found myself hugging a rope, forehead rasping on the bristly hemp. I realised that, on top of the bane afflicting my soul, I had a ghastly hangover made worse by a sleepless night. So I staggered off in search of Isaac, who gave me a revolting tincture thoughtfully diluted in a little cup of wine. The wine, at least, helped, and in a little while I was dipping into a pot of beans and pork fat that Dimitri had thrown together for all who had returned from last night's bloody carouse.

Mirko was there, pallid and drained, his arm in a splint. By the slow, stunned look on his face I guessed that Isaac's poppy was working in him, for he did not seem in pain. The same was not true for Hanno, who had a ragged cut down one thigh and was cursing hot enough to boil the river beneath us. Others were bruised from other, less ominous brawls, the kind that can kill a man any night of any week with no reason or meaning at all. We all were sick from drink and sleeplessness, and Dimitri fussed over us like a great ugly hen, giving us swigs from a goatskin full of harsh wine laced with some bitter herb and feeding Mirko with a horn spoon as tenderly as any nursemaid. I had no chores and no watch for a while and so, soon enough, my belly full of beans and warmed by the wine, I curled up behind a coil of rope and fell asleep.

Time passed, measured by the slow rocking of the deck. I slept, drifting in soft, empty darkness, until a foot prodded me awake and I looked up blearily from my tar-scented nest. Will peered down at me. 'I was worried about you,' I croaked.

'Indeed. The suffering is plain to see in your face. Now move over.' He dropped down next to me and we sat, leaning on the rope and each other, watching the gulls. We shared the silence of old friends, and for a brief while it seemed as if it might at least be possible that the horrors and wonders of the past few months had never happened, and that we were two careless students stealing an afternoon away from our books. But then Will stretched out a lazy hand, pointing something out to me on shore, and I saw the blood staining his fingernails. There was no escape, then. Time could not be made to retreat, the shadows chased backwards around the dial until we regained our innocence. I sighed and wished for another swallow of Dimitri's wine. 'So what did you make of the Captain?' I said at last.

Will stared at the distant riverbank. After a long silence, he said, 'It would be a foolish man who tried to hide anything from him.' "What do you mean?'

He paused again, then laughed a little hollowly. 'I only meant that he is like a great owl and you are a rat scuttling across the floor of his bam. Does it not seem as if he sees where you are, where you have been and where you will go?' He shook his head. 'I… I like him, I think. He scared my guts near out of my breech, but I like him very much.' 'Is that the right word? "Like?"'

Well, "fear" would be another word. And, I think, "trust". Do you trust him, Patch?' 'I have done. I do. With my life.' 'And I have done the same, gladly.' 'He had your story from you, then?' 'He did.' 'Then so will I – and you will have mine in return.'

'Done. But does that great ugly man yonder not have a wineskin about him? I am feeling quite in need, now that you have reminded me of my audience with the owl.'

Dimitri was happy to make Will's acquaintance and to share his wine. There were some scrapings of fatty stew left and he doled them out, searching my friend's face with approval.

You are a fighter, eh? Good, good. One is lost – poor Jens, may he find peace – and another is found.'

What is in this wine, friend Dimitri? It is tanning my throat as it goes down,' Will enquired through a mouthful of beans.

Yarrow, melissa, rue, dandelion, and-' he made some harsh sound in his own tongue, '-for to thicken up the blood. Drink more. It will make you piss like a warhorse, boy, and carry off the bad spirits.'

And indeed we spent a good part of the afternoon hanging off the stern, voiding our bad spirits into the Gironde. But I told Will all that had happened since Sir Hugh de Kervezey had ambushed us that quiet morning. My flight from the abbey, the fight on the wharves of Dartmouth and Greenland, and Anna's rescue: I ran through it all as quickly as I could, far more eager to hear Will's adventures than to retell my own, although he was forever stopping me to hear something in greater detail, and those details were not what I wished to linger upon. But after my jaw ached with talking, and we had found ajar of wine free of herbs, I placed my finger firmly on his breastbone.

'That is my sorry life, up to this very instant. You have had it all, every last drop. Very gruesome, is it not?'

'No! Not at all. You have lived, man. Christ! But you have left out everything important: the lady Anna. How… Patch, have you…'

I held up a too-hasty hand. 'The Vassileia Anna is under the protection of Captain de Montalhac, and – could we, please, not talk about her just now? She is the niece of the Emperor of Byzantium, for God's sake!'