Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Relics

'It was just a game, monklet. You were never meant to win. Now keep still.'

His grip moved to my throat and he forced my face up to meet his gaze. His finger was on the blade of the poignard as he sighted along it. All I could see was a glittering shaft of steel and at its apex, Kervezey's grey eye. A red spark flashed there and suddenly he let go. 'Oh, my lord God.'

He still stooped over me, but he was transfixed by something over my shoulder. The poignard wavered. I brought my hand up to grab it and found that I still held Thorn. Taking her in both fists I rammed her up under Kervezey's ribs. He gave an odd little hiccup and I stabbed him again. I felt the poignard blade brush my neck, and then it fell into the water and Sir Hugh turned his head back to me. Something that could have been a smile worked at the corner of his white lips.

'I think you have killed me, Petroc,' he gasped, and a bubble of blood welled up and speckled us both. With my own little knife. I never thought it…'

He began to shudder, and his eye roved as if in urgent quest of something hidden in my face. I felt his hands pluck feebly at my chest and as I flinched he leaned his forehead gently against mine, took a shuddering breath and died. I pushed him off and he fell back, arms outstretched on the white pebbles.

I turned slowly to see what had saved me. There, not three furlongs away across the mirrored calm, a long-boat flowered from stem to stern with a great blossom of orange fire. The great dark shape of the Cormaran was pulling slowly, calmly towards me. I could see the water as it dripped from the oars. Someone was calling me. I couldn't even turn my head as Pavlos stepped into the ripples and sat down beside me. He laid a cloak across my shoulders and pulled me against him, and I began to cry, deep, wrenching sobs that would not stop. I cried for Will, for Cordula, for James among the olives, for all the blood that seemed to be flowing from me into the endless salty sea.

‘Greek fire!' Anna was beside herself with joy. 'It was Greek fire, do you see?' 'I don't even know what that means,' I rasped.

'The most terrible weapon of the Romans,' she explained, bouncing on her heels. 'It is a secret known only to us. Trust the Captain to have some to hand. He won't tell me how he came by it. Not very surprising, really: my uncle would have his guts as bootlaces for even knowing the recipe.'

I was lying on a pallet on top of the stern castle. We were two days out from Koskino and sailing among the little islands of Dalmatia. Isaac had patched me up while I slept, and I had been asleep since Pavlos carried me aboard the Cormaran. Nizam had kept watch over me through the days and the warm nights, and had been the first to bring me cold water when I woke. I had not wanted to talk at first, so he waved away anyone who started up the ladder. Now and then he would name one of the islands that floated by: Lastovo, Susak, Vis. Finally the Captain had come to sit beside me. 'I owe you a great debt of gratitude,' he said. 'How so?'

'For ridding me of Sir Hugh. And I also owe you my abject apology. I did not think they would attempt to steal our relic from the shrine, and I certainly did not believe that Kervezey would be with them when they did.'

'As I was foolish enough to volunteer for the task, no apologies are needed,' I reminded him. He looked rueful.

'But what about Kervezey's ship?' I asked suddenly. You knew about that?'

'No. That is, I knew he must have a fast ship, because he beat us to Koskino, but not an armed galley. His father has deeper pockets than I ever suspected. No, we saw Kervezey's red lantern on the mountain, then your light, and we realised something was amiss. I put out from Hrinos to take you off the island or to reinforce Pavlos, and it was lucky I did, for we saw the galley coming down the channel towards us. It would have surprised us at anchor otherwise, and we might not be taking our ease now if that had happened.' 'I am sorry about Cordula. I failed you after all.'

He smiled and shook his head. 'No, no. The outcome… I could not have wished for a better one. We are rid – you have rid us – of a dangerous enemy. And we at least have the false saint.' He noted my look of surprise. ‘We had a fair wind, so after we took you off the beach we sailed around to the town, just in time to catch three very surprised Franks, standing on the dock with a long bundle. They took one look at Dimitri and handed it over with great haste.'

It was then that Anna, who had crept up the ladder in fine disregard for Nizam's warnings, added her information about the fire of the Greeks.

'But what is it?' I asked, despite myself. I still did not want to dwell on what had happened.

'I am not giving up any more secrets,' laughed the Captain. 'But very broadly speaking, it is a fire that, once lit, burns even on water and will destroy anything that it touches. Two pots of it, dropped on their deck just as they were about to ram us, and they were lost. And so were we, almost. The men had to row like devils in hell to pull us away in time.'

'It was incredible,' Anna broke in. 'The whole deck went up in flames. The-' She stopped. 'Really, it was horrible,' she went on, sober now. 'The men at the oars couldn't get out. I think most of the deck crew got off, but the oarsmen… only a few got free. They screamed and screamed. But it was over quickly. She burned to the waterline in minutes.'

She had taken my hand and was gripping it. Our knuckles were white.

What about the others on the island?' I asked. It was the question I had dreaded, but since the mood had turned to horror…

'Kilij will limp until his dying day – may it be far off. Zianni is a little cut about, but he will be strutting in a week. The others are fine.' He shrugged. 'Kervezey's men died, except for your friend.'

'I met him only once, under bad circumstances,' I protested weakly. 'But I'm glad. What happened to him?'

'He proved himself an honourable man. He would only defend himself, not attack, and when they disarmed him he revealed that he had been indentured to Sir Hugh by the Bishop and had been planning to escape. He did not know of Kervezey's tomb-robbing plans, it seems. In any case he satisfied me. He came aboard for a while, you know. We talked for a long time. He will do us a service, and in return will get his freedom and a nice purseful.' I raised the eyebrow that could move. 'Go on.'

We put him ashore at Ragusa. He will travel on to Jerusalem, which he genuinely wanted to see, poor fellow, and send word from there to Balecester, a letter that will tell the Bishop that his son perished of a quartain fever on Samos. Or did we say Samothrace? It doesn't matter.' 'But why bother?'

'Because,' trilled Anna, We still have business with my lord the Bishop.' Later that day, Nizam steered the Cormaran with great care between the rocky walls of a bay on a tiny nameless islet, a hump of rock lost amongst the tangle of islands off Zadar. It was a remote place out of the sea lanes and populated only by cicadas. Not even fishermen came there. It was crowned with a thatch of stunted pine-trees, and there was one building, a stone dwelling that had been empty for years but which still had a roof of sorts. Inside there was nothing, Anna told me, save a flaking icon painted on the wall and a big stone trough.

'Perfect: I told you,' said Gilles, when he saw it. The Captain chuckled and nodded. We'll start at once,' he said.

The men went to work hauling sacks up from the hold and over to the hut. I practised walking on the little beach with Anna, who never left my side, and sometimes with Zianni, whose left arm had been 'filleted like a mullet', as he never tired of telling me. Isaac's needlework had saved it, and the physician had been to work on my leg as well, and under my arm. It was he who had insisted on my stay on the steering deck: he had a strange idea that fresh air was good for recovery, but I never saw fit to question his judgement after I had healed. The salt water must have done me some good, too, he said. I told him that if I had been at home I would have been daubed with white mercury and cat shit and left to die in a sealed room. Isaac had nodded soberly, and offered to collect some of Fafner's droppings if it would make me feel better. I decided to trust him from then on.