Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

It was early yet, before nine bells, but Anna had heard of a spice merchant in a street nearby who promised the freshest and strangest oddities from Ind and Cathay, and then perhaps a visit to a silk-seller. They were not really shopping trips, these excursions, but rather Anna’s way to justify long and rambling explorations, a passion I shared with her. Whenever the Cormaran brought us to an interesting landfall we would lose ourselves in streets and alleys, twisting and turning, chatting to townsfolk in cookshops and taverns, until we thought we had found the heart of the place. London was our greatest challenge so far, and so far we had only dipped our toes in its roiling, limitless waters. So we set out, and quickly found the spice merchant, whose wares were as withered and overpriced as we had expected. Finding ourselves near the Hospital of Saint Bartholomew, we strolled out beyond the walls to the great, stinking plain of Smooth Field, where the kingdom's farmers bring their animals for slaughter and butchering. There were no cows today, merely a churned-up expanse of muddy grass rank with dung and old blood, and a small town of rude huts and some grander houses of wattle and brick, peopled, so it seemed, by filthy children whose play was blows and vile oaths, and by men and women crippled either by drink or the drip. Driven back inside the walls by a reeking host of beggars, we wandered some more, past ancient churches and grand houses, hopelessly entwined in the tangled net of streets. Or so I supposed, until, turning a corner, I found that we had come back to Cheapside, and that our lodgings were only a little way away, across the teeming street.

'How did you manage that?' I asked Anna, amazed. She said nothing, but looked smug and tapped her head wisely with a finger. Then I realised. It is almost noon, is it not?' I said.

'I could not resist’ she said. You do not mind, do you? If I do not find out who this fellow is, it will drive me mad.' 'But.. ‘I began to protest.

You will protect me’ she said, smiling. 'And we will spy, only that. Peer at the fellow from behind a door. Do not worry: if there is trouble, I will tell the Captain, I promise. And, you well know, if trouble is coming, it will find us anyway’

I could not argue with that, so I huffed peevishly and set off after her. I knew her well enough to know that if her mind was made up, nothing I could say or do would change it, short of binding her hand and foot. Cheapside was crowded – it was always crowded, but at the middle of the day it seemed as if all the people in the world were hurrying along it, on foot, in carts or on horseback. Anna was hurrying along, heading for the place where a stepping stone had been laid in the kennel, for that foul and stinking runnel of shit and night-water was almost too wide to jump over. She stopped and waited for a haywain to pass, and when it had creaked by, she darted out, shouldering her way past a stout countrywoman shuffling along with a yoke and two baskets of dead geese, heads lolling, thick pink tongues jutting from their open beaks. Looking past her towards the Blue Falcon, my eye was caught by a man who had paused at the door, and who seemed to be looking in our direction.

He was quite tall, and crop-headed like a soldier, and even from this distance I could tell that his face had suffered in battle, for the thin winter sun caught the silver trail of an old scar as the man turned his head. But if he recognised Anna, he made no sign, and kept his place at the door. Still I hurried to catch up with her, for now we could not go into the inn through the front, if we went in at all. I had almost caught her when she stepped neatly around two fat burghers talking loudly about money and skipped up on to the stepping stone. Now I was blocked by a man with a barrow, who swore at me absently, the quick-tongued foul geniality of London. I was about to curse him back when the words seized in my throat, for a beast was screaming, high and sharp, and a woman's voice had joined it. I shoved the barrow-man aside with my shoulder in time to see Anna, in the street beyond the kennel, raise her arms high over her head as if to grasp the great hooves that flailed there, for a great piebald horse loomed above her, dwarfing her, and then all at once her slim shape was for an instant caged in the living bars of its legs before it reared up again and came down upon her with both hooves, dashing her to the mud. The rider seemed to be grappling with the reins and let out a despairing cry as the horse came up again, seemed to walk for an instant like a man upon its hind legs, before plunging forward and setting off down the street, rider clinging to its back like a ragdoll.

Anna was lying crooked in the mud, pressed into the paste of earth and dung, one arm beneath her, the other flung back behind her head. Her hair was across her face and trampled into the filth like a dead crow. I knelt, babbling, cooing wordlessly to her in my panic, and brushed the hair away. She turned and looked at me, and I gasped with relief, for our eyes met and her lips parted, to tell me it was all right, it hurt a little bit here, and here. The world stilled, I reached for her, told her not to move, for her leg was broken; slid a hand beneath her head, bent my own head to catch her words.

Then her good leg gave a kick and her neck shuddered beneath my fingers. Her eyes fixed on mine for a moment longer and then slid away, seeming to flutter across the hedge of muddy legs that surrounded us. No words came, only a throttled, rattling hiss. I pulled her from the mud and tried to cradle her head in my lap, and found that my hands were wet with blood. I could feel it, flooding hotly across my legs. Her leg kicked again, like a snared beast, and the world started its heedless dance once more, and the London sun trickled down upon us, pale as piss, while an apple bobbed past down the kennel.

She was alive when we carried her into the Blue Falcon, myself and a page, an egg-seller and the barrow-pusher, and laid her on the bed she and I had awoken in two mornings ago. Captain de Montalhac burst in with Gilles, just that moment returned from some business out in the city, and a doctor was sent for. I relate these things as if I were aware of them, and I was, though only as a reader is aware of the tiny painted figures crawling about the margins of a book. For Anna did not move, though a woman came and sponged the blood from her face and chafed her wrists, and I whispered in her ear and stroked her cold forehead. She was still, save for the rise and fall of her chest, and silent, but for her breath, which hissed and creaked and held not the slightest hint of her voice.

The doctor came, a grey old monk from that same Hospital of Saint Bartholomew we had passed just an hour or two ago. He came to the bedside and ran his hands gently, over Anna's head. She did not stir, nor did her breathing change its timbre. He peered into her ears, put his ear to her chest, and lifted her eyelids with a careful thumb. Then he looked up and met my desperate gaze. He patted my hand where it lay upon Anna's collarbone, and sighed.

'A kick from a horse, was it?' he said. 'There is little to be done. Perhaps…' and he paused, and raised his hands. I thought he was about to pray, and my heart shrank within me, but instead he interlaced his fingers. The bones of the skull are fitted together thus, like the vaulting of a stone roof. The lady… her skull is shattered in one place, and the vault is collapsing in upon her brain, which is inflamed and has started to swell. There have been seizures?' I told him of her kicking leg. 'They will worsen, until…'

'Is there truly nothing to be done?' I croaked, searching his grey eyes and finding nothing there save resignation.

'I could attempt to remove the pieces of bone, which might relieve the pressure upon her brain.' Then do it, for God's sake! Do not hesitate!'