Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

The Rubra Saxa were not the landmark I had expected, just an outcropping of reddish stone that reminded me of the red earth around Totnes, far away in Devon. Marcho Antonio appeared from a spinney of holm oaks, seated, to my amazement, upon an ass that supported his angry bulk with the detached look of a martyr in extremis. Who goes there: Maxentius or Constantine?' he boomed.

'At this point I'm the disembodied fucking voice’ I told him. 'There's not much else left’ He laughed and handed me my valise.

'I resisted the temptations of the Dark Lord and did not break the seal of Antichrist’ he said. 'Very sorely tempted I was, too. If you get the chance, ask Michel to explain it all to me one day, will you?'

I assured him that I would, and to my surprise he leaned across and embraced me. It was like being hugged by a bear that had bathed in wine and rubbed its pelt with garlic, and I was so moved that I began to weep. I halted for the night at the village of Rignano, that lies under the mountain called Soracte. It had been an easy ride but a long one, and the stars were beginning to shine and bats to whirr above my head as I guided my weary but uncomplaining horse up the narrow street to the inn, which a countryman, baffled at first by my request for directions in execrable Roman dialect, had kindly pointed me towards from the now almost deserted Ravenna Road. Dog-tired, I ignored the travellers' chatter around me in the common room as I hurriedly ate a chicken and bean stew, drank a jar of thin wine and took myself off to bed, but not before giving my vinegar-soaked clothes to a maid for the best wash she could manage. Iblis I left in the stable, face deep in a bag of oats. As a brand-new horseman who had just completed his first day in the saddle without mishap, I can perhaps be forgiven for the grateful kiss I planted on his bony forehead, and the silver coin I gave to the astonished stable-lad to buy the best possible care for my friend.

I secured the door to my room, and dropped on to the bed. It was time to examine the letter that Gilles had left me, and suddenly I hoped that it had not contained instructions for any task I should have performed before leaving Rome. I broke the seal with anxious fingers. The bulk of the letter – what had made it seem so fat – was merely another map, a simple copy of the one I already had, which dispensed with all except the line of the road and the towns and landmarks along it. I was pleased to see Rignano appear as a tiny turreted building, then squinted to see the word 'bedbugs', much underlined, scrawled beside it. Plainly, I should have opened the letter last night. I looked closer, and saw that the map was heavily annotated in many different hands. I recognised Gilles' letters, but there were others that were strange to me. Nevertheless they offered good advice, these absent guides: 'sweet water'; 'brigands'; 'dishonest landlord'; 'horrible wine'. Beside one village much farther up the line, someone who I took to be the Captain had scribbled Try the sheep's feet!'. In other places the only admonition was a stark 'AVOID'. I turned to the other part of the letter. To Petrus Zennorius, traveller, vanguard and agent of the ship Cormaran, greetings!

I trust this finds you recovered from your sickness. I trust you will pardon our precipitate departure, but I received word of a ship to be had at Brindisi, and I have already delayed long enough. My hope is that this crude map will be of use and comfort. I assure you, though, that I, and the others whose scrawl you will find upon your map, have trod those roads, and slept in those beds, more recently than Pliny.

One thing: I would have you perform a small service for us on your way. Take the branch of the Ravenna Road which passes through Spoleto – that is the right branch that comes soon after Narni – and in that interesting city put up at the White Lion. I have sent Horst there. He will have left some documents for you, letters of credit from some business contracted in Florence that Captain de M wishes you to deposit at our bank in Venice. If he is still there, make him buy you dinner, for he will have received a fat commission (but please do not tell him that you know this!). That is all. Then hurry to Venice. Your destination, in case you do not remember, is the Palazzo Centranico on the Rio Morto, hard by the Church of San Cassan in the sestriere of Santa Croce. You are expected, and more detailed instructions will await you there.

With any luck at all, you will also find some fresh communication from myself and perhaps Captain de M as to the progress of our affairs. If all goes well I shall see you there myself before next spring has passed. But we will discuss this in more detail, for, good Patch, I will require you to be a more diligent writer of letters than you have so far proved. Soy until we meet again, good luck and fine weather! Gilles de Peyrolles

‘The next morning I awoke to bedbugs and drizzle. The tiny swine had pecked a tracery of red into my shins and arms, and one of my ears felt hot and swollen. I cursed them volubly in broad Devon. Tired as I had been last night, I had made sure to tuck my sword beneath my bolster in case the inn was less friendly than it seemed. I had been attacked, all right, but the villains had been rather smaller than I had thought to guard against. But my clothes were clean and had dried by the fire, and to my surprise the hideous cloak, now freed of the filth of ages, seemed to have once been a rich man's garment, for there was silver thread in the hem, and the cloth was fine. I grudgingly paid my bill and managed to be back on the Ravenna Road while the air was still cool.

I had hoped to spend the night at Narni, but it was further than I had thought, and instead we stopped at Vigne, where I took the precaution of sleeping on the floor of my room. Rising early next day with no fresh bedbug bites, I set off for Narni. It was late afternoon before we topped a ridge and saw the town before us, perched on a steep stone hill above the Tiber. There was not much left of the day, and I should have halted there, but I thought it looked sinister perched up there on its crag, and so I urged Iblis down the slope to the bridge. The country on the other side of the river looked rich and friendly, and I guessed I would find a pleasant bed there without too much difficulty. The guards – the first soldiers I had seen on my journey – regarded me sourly but gave me – no trouble, and I paid my toll and rode across. It was indeed pleasant on the other side, and with the anticipation of supper giving me confidence, I nudged Iblis into a trot, then a canter. Down the road we swept, kicking up dust and earning curses and cheers in equal measure from the people on foot, for the road was busy again here.

But strangely, as we topped the nearest ridge, the people thinned out to nothing and we were alone again. And there before us, painted a sombre crimson by the setting sun, was a great slab of mountain which cut off the view to the north and east. It was like a wave of stone rearing up over the gentle landscape, menacing it with a savage face of cliff and tumbled rocks. The road descended to pass beneath this frightful monster, and down there it looked dark and sinister. I scanned the way ahead for any sign of an inn or even a farmstead where Iblis and I might buy a place to sleep, but there seemed to be nothing but olive trees and the occasional hovel. So reluctantly we passed the night in a grove of ancient olive trees a little way back from, and above, the road. It was clear that the trees were ancient, for they were little more than gnarled tangles of wooden tracery that still supported branches heavy with leaves and unripe fruit, and their roots reared up out of the ground, forming little hollows filled with dry leaves, natural beds that looked almost inviting. Fortunately I had bought bread, hard cheese, some onions and more leathery sausage at Vigne, and I had topped off my wineskin too, so supper was no great hardship. And to sleep on the bare earth was nothing new to me, so after making sure that Iblis had plenty of green stuff on which to graze, I arranged my packs to make a pillow and laid my sword down beside me, and tried to fall asleep. If you are bone weary you will fall asleep under a tree as readily as you would in a feather bed. If you fear the wild world, you will lie, saucer-eyed, and try in vain to see through the black night which your fancy has peopled with imps, ghosts, wolves and murderers. But if, like I was then, you are neither tired nor afraid of the world beyond your walls and doors, you will stay awake for hours listening to the sounds of the night and gazing up at the stars. Tonight the Via Lactea leaped across the sky and all the star-creatures blazed down: bears, dragons, long-dead gods and heroes made immortal as solemn, silvery points of light. A nightingale started up in a thicket nearby, then moved further and further away until I could hear her no longer. Owls hissed and shrieked, and everywhere, from every rock and blade of grass, the insects poured out their song, as implacable as waves hissing on a pebble shore. So there I lay, idly sipping from my wineskin and thinking of the last time I had slept on the ground: a far less happy night that I had passed under a rain-drenched yew tree in one of Dartmouth's churchyards. I had been a frightened boy then, nothing but death behind me and less than a glimmer of hope in front. I had woken up starving and robbed some poor gravediggers for my breakfast, but that night I had come aboard the Cormaran for the first time.