Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

Lying there in Rome I found I could remember no single word she had spoken that day. Instead, my somewhat fevered mind returned again and again to the fine dark down that, in certain lights, could be found on her upper lip. I travelled up the single wrinkle that lay between her eyebrows, and along the two frown lines upon her forehead, and dwelt for long hours in the place where the gold wire of a jewelled pendant pierced her earlobe.

Now, on the fourth day of this agonised lethargy, I lay and made this journey again and again, but by then I was barely ill, in truth, and my lassitude was more of an indulgence than an affliction. Ill thoughts prey upon idle minds, and Horst's words came back to me. Why had such a dangerous animal been ridden down one of London's busiest streets? And what of the rider? He had never come forward, and the coroner's men had not found him. But these thoughts were unbearable. That would mean that Anna had been murdered. Was that what Horst had been trying to tell me? Of course – and he believed it too, it was plain. But it made no sense, for who would wish such a thing, and plan it so neatly? Neat it had been, but crude and bloody, not like something planned. So I began to brood and fret, and at last I began to toss and turn and finally to pace about the room, which tired me so that I returned to bed, to begin the miserable process over again. I had paid the landlady's little nephew to keep a watch for Baldwin, and to run and tell me should he arrive, but no word had come. The day became a fevered round of pacings and a kind of stunned lassitude, until night fell and I finally, gratefully, began to grow weary enough to sleep. I was beginning the feathery drift down into oblivion when a sharp rapping came at my door. I thought I had dreamed it, for it had the quality of those strange sounds that jolt one awake but come from within one's own head. But the rapping came again, insistent, commanding. Puzzled, I reasoned that it must be the landlady, for all my friends had left the city by now, but the raps, when they came again, were so commanding that, unnerved, I snatched up Thorn. Pulling my cloak around me I lurched up to open the door a crack, and peered out. I was met by the grey gaze of Michael Scotus.

'Hello, lad. Did I not say I would see you again? Get dressed. Come with me.' To where? Good Master Scotus, what hour is it?'

‘You are sick. I have come to heal you for good and all. Physicians keep odd hours, and this is one of those. Come.'

Never in my right mind would I have gone out into the streets of Rome with a stranger in the dead of night, but as before, the words of Michael Scot brooked no refusal. I found myself pulling on clothes, and tying up my boots. ‘You will not need your knife’ said the Scot.

And I left it under my pillow, and followed him out, meek as a calf. He led me up my street, while I cursed silently for giving up my weapon so easily. I was about to plead sickness or some other more transparent excuse when I heard a snort and, turning a corner, saw a knot of men waiting, dressed in black cloaks like Michael Scot, and grasping halberds. My heart clenched like a fist but my companion shushed me peremptorily. 'Our escort’ he said. 'Vatican guards. And here: our mounts.'

The guards stepped aside to reveal two mules. Their coats glinted like pewter in the light of the young moon. Mules are the least sinister of creatures, and these two, the colour of spiderwebs and thistledown, held so little threat that I almost laughed with relief.

'Come away’ said the Scot. We have a distance to go, and the night will soon be waning.'

He climbed nimbly on to one of the mules, again belying his threescore and more years, and I mounted the other. It was odd being astride such a small beast after a week of Iblis, but I was soon bouncing along behind Michael Scot, who without another word had kicked his mule into a quick trot. Strange to say, I felt none of the fevered torpor that had dogged me all that day. The guards fell in around us and began to jog silently, keeping pace with us, although we were not slow. Their boots seemed muffled, for they made hardly any sound. Soon we had crossed the Tiber and were clip-clopping through the quiet streets on the other side. We passed through the Campo dei Fiori, threaded through some alleyways and emerged under the sudden bulk of the Capitoline Hill. This we skirted, keeping it to our right. Then we were in the valley that lies, a confusion of ancient ruins and newer but no less ruinous slums, between the Capitoline and the Quirinal, and there, in the distance, squatting and monstrous, the Coliseum. Feeling an unbidden stab of dread I turned to my companion. The moon shone full in his face and made of it a mask.

What are we about, and… where exactly are we going, sir?' I asked, trying not to sound querulous and, I realised, not succeeding.

Why, there, of course’ he said, casually. 'Have you never visited the Coliseum at night?'

'No, and nor does any sane man!' I blurted. What folly is this, sir? It is no place for the living – every Roman knows it!'

'Are you a Roman? No, and neither am I. As for the why of it, here I shall complete your cure.'

'But am I not cured of… of what afflicted me before?' I squeaked, for my illness was so far behind me that I barely recalled it. ‘I have a mere cold now.'

'Hardly. The flesh fares well, my good lad, but the soul, I perceive, yet has need of medicine. That is what we seek tonight.'

His Scottish brogue seemed a little thicker, somehow, and strangely I found it calming, for my heart, which had started to knock with anxiety, fell back into its quieter rhythm. Nevertheless I shot a look around me at our escort. But all had pulled up their cowls and their faces were hidden in shadow. The hooves of our mules clacked emptily against the stones of the street. We might have been a procession of the dead. In the daytime the Coliseum is a brutish place. Its stones bask in the sunshine with a kind of stolid self-satisfaction, and it dwarfs with ease the sightseers who dare to poke about in its cat-haunted mazes. On my wanderings I had learned that, only a few years before, the place had been a fortress until an earthquake had driven out the occupiers, and left it at the mercy of stone-thieves who picked away at the marble to burn in their lime-kilns. But as all men knew, it had been built in pagan times as a temple to all the old gods of Rome, and when Mother Church had ended their rule on earth they lingered on here as demonic shades, lappers of blood, who were known to issue forth and spread plague and misfortune through the city. They took the shape of beasts, and there were many who had seen them emerge from the great arches led by a phantom bull, mighty in size and red as blood, bellowing forth fire and smoke.

Nowadays the Romans themselves keep away from the stones, although they will picnic in its shade and make assignations – although, unlike any other ruin or alleyway, couples do not rut in its cool halls and caves, for the place has an atmosphere, an air as heavy as its vast round mass, that does not tempt one to linger there. It is the pilgrims from the northern lands who enter, rivalling the pigeons with their chatter, and who clamber over the walls and through the galleries, weaving excited, fatuous speculations as to past glories and horrors. But even they are oppressed by the place, and eventually seek ever more desperately for the way out, and one sees them regrouping – pale and over-sated, like guests at an over-rich meal at which the meat has spoiled – out in the sunshine, while the Romans regard them with superior contempt.

At night, though, it might be a different place altogether. While the merciless Roman sun makes the mighty circle of arches seem heavy with slothful menace, the moon, if it is bright, turns it into a many-eyed phantom. If in the daytime it squats, at night it appears to hover and shimmer, and if in the sun it is unquestionably the work of men who exercised all their brutal skill to draw it out of the base earth, at night it is unearthly, its myriad arches and windows giving it the mottled, silvery aspect of the moons face. Tonight there was not a living soul anywhere to be seen or heard as we rode out on to the dead grass of the field which surrounds it. We skirted the building, riding through the moon-shadow and out again into light, until at a signal from Michael we halted and dismounted. Our escort gathered up our reins and tied the mules up to a slender marble column that stood nearby. Then Michael took my upper arm gently but firmly and nodded his head once, solemnly. I saw that in his other hand he held a long, slender staff of dark wood that was finished in such a way that it did not catch the light. He inclined it very slightly, pointing towards an archway in which an immense door of studded wood hung askew off its hinges. It was very black beyond the door, as black as Michael's staff, which now led us onward under the mighty keystone of the entrance.