Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

'Do you know Bede's words on this place?' Michael asked. His voice came from next to my ear. He was leading me through the thick darkness, through which I could see nothing, although his footfalls sounded as sure as if he were strolling about in broad daylight. In truth I had read the venerable monk's writings on Rome, but at that moment I was too full of confusion to recall them, for I had given myself over to the trust of this man whom I did not know in any real sense, and of whom I knew only the vaguest and most unpromising rumours. Nevertheless here I was, being drawn through the belly of this most cursed of all buildings in this whole haunted city, and I was not at all certain how I had allowed this to happen, and why I was not tempted, even now, to escape. So I shook my head, knowing that the gesture was invisible.

‘I cannot remember’ I breathed, suddenly terrified lest my words disturb whatever horrible legions might be hiding in the almost palpable dark.

“Quandiu stabit coliseus, stabit et Roma” Michael intoned. “Quando cadit coliseus, cadet et Roma. Quando cadet Roma, cadet et mundus?"

"While the Coliseum stands, Rome stands’" I said, remembering words I had read long ago, in the light of a spring morning in Devon, when my life still stretched before me, secure in the promise of its safety and blissful uneventfulness.

'Very good’ said Michael, approvingly. "When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; when Rome falls the world shall fall." I take that to mean that this place is the very centre of the world – where all roads converge: all roads, the seen and the unseen’ With those words we stepped out into the moonlight once more.

We were on the lip of a vast pit which, with the play of the silver light over a confusion of trees and ruins, appeared to be full of boiling quicksilver. I could make out no order, for there seemed to be newer buildings here and there, and even the crooked belltower of a little church that lurched at a dangerous angle. I let out a small squeak of breath, more of relief than anything else, for I was still in a place, a location on the face of the earth, although as Michael had guided me through the darkness I had felt the growing fear that I was being led to no-place, a way station on the unseen roads of which he had spoken. But I had no time to gather myself, for my escort was beckoning. He had begun to pick his way through a sloping maze of truncated walls and roofless passages down towards the centre of the Coliseum, which seemed to be a sort of oval field of flat earth or grass on which had been built a rough cluster of sheds or huts, most of which had burned down or collapsed. There were trees growing there too: olives, a stunted pine and the spiny billows of gorse. I followed, keeping my gaze fixed uneasily on Michael's staff, which he held up in front of him, a line of blackness, as if the door to an even more absolute night were opened just a hair's breadth. There was an urgent scrabbling to my right and I started and turned to see a cat clambering up a mound of scree. Another was already there, regarding me with slit-eyed contempt, and I realised that if I had thought this place was deserted I was mistaken, for there were cats everywhere. At first I was relieved to find only cats and not flame-mouthed bulls and demons, but before I had even reached the level ground where Michael now stood waiting my fancy had begun to work upon me, for the gaze of a cat is powerful, and when that power is multiplied a thousandfold it becomes something quite frightful.

I strode quickly to where Michael awaited me, trying to appear brisk and not terrified. He had found the very centre of the oval field. I looked about me: now I was in the midst of the seething cauldron, and the black rim, sometimes perfectly regular, sometimes jagged, sometimes adorned with crude battlements, framed an oval window of sky.

At the centre of all things,' Michael said, startling me. His voice was low and calm – priest-like, in fact. It was hard for me to picture him as the priest I knew him to be. But what manner of priest would seek out such a place as this?

'Do you see how we are in a kind of bowl?' he asked. 'And have you seen how the water in a trough, when the bung is removed, forms a spinning vortex as it drains, or how a child's marble, dropped into a dish, will circle around, spiralling ever downwards until it finds the still centre? So it is here, at the world's heart. All things that travel the invisible roads of the earth and of the heavens, can be brought to rest here. We have only to call them.'

'Call what?' I asked, feeling as if a tiny clawed hand, cold as ice, had just settled on my belly and was seeking a way inside.

Whom, lad: whom’ said the man who had almost been Archbishop of Canterbury.

He bid me wait there while he vanished into a nearby hovel. Emerging with a bundle of firewood – it was tied, and did not look like a chance find – he placed it carefully, turning to the four points of the compass and adjusting it according to some hidden purpose. Then he drew me back and, with the end of his staff, drew a circle in the sandy earth around the sticks. Turning his face to the sky, he muttered something at the stars and drew four symbols that I did not recognise into the earth at the cardinal points. They seemed a little like Arabic letters but also like sinuous little pictures of something indiscernible. Then he stooped over the wood. There was a loud sigh, as sleepers make when they are in the throes of a dream, and fire blossomed under his hands. He stepped back, and flames flew up higher than his head, sparks hurtling towards the moon.

'Stand here’ he told me, taking my shoulders and positioning me, as if I were a mannequin, in front of one of his symbols – and indeed, from the moment I had been awakened by Michael's knocking I had been no more in command of myself than a puppet. I believe I was facing west. 'Now look into the flames. Look!'

Wordlessly I obeyed, for I had no choice. The wood was burning fiercely, and gave off a rich and sharp smell. Michael Scot muttered something and waved a hand at the fire, which crackled into a storm of violet sparks. Then there was a roiling of oily black smoke, and when this cleared I was staring into a sheet of pure, golden flame. It was as if I were a child again, newly woken in summer and opening the door on a perfect days morning. There was utter calm. I felt myself sway, and then Michael's hand was across my shoulders, steadying me. Then something disturbed the golden peace: at first it seemed as if the smoke had returned, for an ugly stain had formed amongst the flames, but as I watched it resolved itself into an image.

Have you ever seen a piece of amber in which the corpse of some insect, an ant or a fly, hangs suspended? One looks as if through a hole in time at the creature whose tiny limbs are still but seemingly not dead, for there is no corruption. It is not a picture but a real thing, held just out of reach and magnified by the lens of its glassy tomb. Thus did I look into the flames and see, hanging a little way from the searing bed of embers, a swirl of black hair, billowing as if in water. I gasped, and felt – or imagined that I felt – Michael Scot's hand taking hold of the back of my skull, for I tried to turn my head and could not. And I very much wanted to turn away, for I knew what I would see next.

Anna's good eye stared into my own, unblinking. Down her cheek, livid and incongruous as a poached egg, hung her other eye. With the unbearable clarity that sometimes comes in dreams I saw every detail of her face, as if through a reading stone: every pore, every tiny hair on her upper lip, the pock-mark that lay in the curve of her nostril, the smile lines at the corners of her mouth. And always the awful, the intolerable presence of the eye, as dead as this creature of flame, this fetch of my dearest Anna, was surely alive. As I stared – for now I could not have torn my gaze away even had I tried – I saw her hands rise from the embers. They seemed to reach for me, and although they did not leave the nimbus of flame I seemed to feel them grasp my own wrists, although their touch was cool, and to see my hands – for now I was, or seemed to be, both standing on the earth and also within that world of fire – as she guided them to her face. She pressed my palms to her cheek and my left hand felt the yielding orb of the dangling eye. I tried to scream, but I felt her fingers pressing mine, drawing them upward. So we stood, half in this world, half in another, for how long I cannot tell, for there was nothing in my head but the soft whisper of the flames and the almost-warmth of the flesh that held my own. Then I felt her grasp loosen, and what I thought had been my hands fell from view. I felt them, back in this world, hanging at my sides, but only dimly, for Anna had lowered her own hands to show her face once more, and now two brown eyes, almond-shaped and perfect, regarded me. She blinked once, and smiled, and I saw the gap between her front teeth for the last time, for she was dissolving, pure as a blessing, into the shimmer of flame.