Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

Yes, why not? It was early in my time with… the company. I was brought very low, low enough to wonder how quick a rope around my neck would get the job done. I didn't get very far, but I thought about it very carefully. Probably thought about it too much, actually, because while I was agonising and debating I began to feel better, and little by little the life came back into me.' 'But why? What made you?'

'There is much I cannot…' he paused, and gave me the most haunted look I had ever seen upon his face. 'I do not know. The shock of being cast out of my familiar world, perhaps. The knock on the head. Many things can stir up the black bile. It is done, though. That's what I wanted to tell you: it passes. Time is as good as any potion, of that I am convinced.'

'I have thought about it too,' I admitted, unwillingly. 'But it seems too easy an escape.'

'And what of the comforts of Mother Church?' he asked. 'It was no help to me, but you…'

'No comfort there, Will.' I told him a little of my epiphany in the cathedral at Gardar.

'There has been a burden on you for a long time, then,' he said. 'Loss of faith… I am no theologian, no Albertus Magnus, God forbid! And I never really had faith like you did, Patch – horrible confession, is it not? Do not tell me that you did not suspect! But when the faithful are stripped of all they believe, they are like a stone house gutted by fire: the walls stand, but all within is gone: rooms, stairs, decorations, beds, tables, everything familiar, gone. If the walls are sound the house may be rebuilt inside – in time. But it will not be familiar, Patch – it will not be home.'

'No Albertus Magnus? You are right there. Hardly even a hedge-scholar, brother!' But Will had found me out. My faith was gone, and although I did not wish to regain it – strange how fast a lifetime's habits of thought can come to seem like childish superstition – the hollow it had left had yet to be filled with anything as sustaining.

'I live like a beast,' I told him. 'I breathe, I eat, sleep, work… I have no purpose other than to remain alive. And I am less and less sure why I bother even to do that.'

'But life itself – what more is there? You have the Cormaran, and the brotherhood of this fine crew of villains, myself included. You have two arms, two legs, two eyes, you are strong… and what of all you have learned? Does that not fill you up?'

I raised my arms hopelessly. 'I am filled, brother: up to the brim with guilt,' I said. WHiat good is it to keep yourself alive if you must do it at the cost of others? I live like a beast, but I am no beast. I am a man, and if God or his son Jesus Christ will not judge me, then I must judge myself.'

'Aha!' cried Will. 'I have found you out! You are like that snake who eats his own tail, the…the…' he snapped his fingers in frustration. 'Ouroboros,' I muttered.

'Exactly. But instead of your tail, you have rammed your head up your own fundament and are gnawing away at your tripes. You are blind to anything but yourself – anyone but yourself. Pull your head out, Patch. It must be very dark up there.' 'It isn't like that,' I whimpered.

'Then how is it? Have you learned nothing since we left home? You must seize hold of life and squeeze it until the juice comes. Patch, you were doing a fine job until I came along. What about Lady Anna? How do you think…'

'I will not talk about the Princess Anna!' I snapped, jumping up in a rage that caught us both by surprise.

'Peace, peace – I meant nothing and you know it. Now sit down and take another drink.'

And so I did, but only stayed for another minute. Then with a civil 'goodnight' I took myself off to my berth. I lay sleepless that whole night until at last my anger melted into self-pity. Who or what I raged against I did not know, for I was no more the master of my moods than a bee caught in a hurricane can choose which way to fly. I longed for someone – it was too hard even to name that someone to myself – to come to me and wash away my sins, as I knew was in her power. But no sacrament would be given that night, and instead the stars were my company, mocking me with their cold distance.

We were hurrying across this beautiful sea. Land lay always to port, but far away: no more than a low purple bruise on the horizon. We were following a course towards the coast of Italy and a rendezvous in the great city of Pisa: that at least I knew from the Captain, but if he confided more I do not remember, so wrapped in misery was I. I say wrapped: it did indeed feel as if I were caught up in a winding-sheet but still walked, my limbs alive, my insides dead. Isaac began to watch me closely and ply me with potions and pills – dill, rue, hyssop, bee-balm and other wonders from his store which I had never heard of but which tasted as bitter as any roadside weed. Under his ministrations the melancholy would ebb sometimes, long enough to marvel at the clever porpoises and dolphins who came to visit the Cormaran, weaving in and out of our wake and racing with us, a race they always won with ease. On such days Will and I would find our old delight in each other's company, although I sensed that he treated me carefully, as if I might break suddenly. One day I saw a shoal of fish leap out of the water all at once and spread wings. Like silver swifts they glided stiffly for a distance, then plunged back into the deeps. Soon this miracle – miracle for me, although the other men hardly paid it any mind – became a commonplace, and when a brace of the magical fish missed their aim and crashed to the deck, I hardly noticed when they were added to the night's meal. I became a zealous fisherman, as it was the best excuse for spending my free hours leaning over the side, staring into the sea. I was not interested in what I caught, but the crew were: strange, lovely and occasionally hideous creatures that all tasted good enough. Once, I think the day after we raised the island of Formentera and were creeping past the mountains of Mallorca, I dropped my line unknowingly into a great shoal of mackerel and, as I hauled them up, frantically tying more and more hooks to my line, every man with a free hand rushed to the side with their own lines and soon the deck was carpeted with a writhing, stranded shoal that gleamed and rippled like living chain-mail. Everyone – even the Captain and Gilles, even Anna – waded in to gather them up, stun them and throw them into one of the salting barrels that Guthlaf had pulled from the hold. It was as I bent to this task that I heard a squeal and saw Anna fending off a mackerel that flapped and jerked in her arms. She flung it away, stooped and picked up another struggling fish which, with a triumphant laugh, she threw at one of the crew. Her aim was good: the mackerel hit Will square on his crooked nose.

Like all those who suffer a surfeit of melancholy I was drawn more and more inside myself, studying as if with an inner eye the sooty and damaged rubric of what I took to be my soul. It is hard to look back on those days with any great sympathy for myself, for the humours made me selfish, sour and unfriendly, and those traits are not easily borne in a community as tight-knit as a ship. It says much for the good nature of the crew that they did not heave me overboard, but it must have been a great temptation for them at times. But I was oblivious to the feelings of others, indeed I barely noticed them, so intent on anatomising my worthlessness had I become. But looking up at that moment to see the look of pure happiness on Anna's face, and finding it mirrored in Will's, brought me to my senses like a whiff of sal ammoniac. While I had brooded – how many days had it been? Weeks, perhaps? – life had been going on without me. Things had been happening under my nose. I had turned my feelings for Anna over and over like meat on a spit, watching them become shrivelled and burnt. Out here in the sunshine, though, Anna was happy and quite unconcerned.