Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

But Horst's murder had opened another wound, for I had not forgotten our last conversation, and his doubts about Anna’s death. Horst had believed it was murder, that someone had used a destrier’s hooves as a weapon. I had kept my own thoughts at bay, but now that my friend had himself been murdered, I could hold them off no longer. Someone had wanted Anna dead. Who that might be I did not know, but the strange letter had seemed to speak of Greece. Could it have been her own uncle? But there was no reason for that. Someone from her past? That was more promising. The Captain had rescued her from exile in Greenland, where she had been sent when the mad Norse prince she had been given to as a child bride had turned upon her. Did the prince still live? I had no doubt that, from the tales that Anna had told of her life in Trondheim, he was mad enough. But where was the profit in this? She was dead, and I was yet alive and mired to the ears in some business that was threatening to devour the only world I had known these past two years.

I laid my head down at last, after I had barred the door with a chair and balanced upon that a pitcher of water, so that it would overturn if the door opened and wake me – in theory, at least. I did not dare undress, but lay like a knight on a tomb, hands clasped on the hilt of my sword. I was bound for Ancona, then. At least I knew the way, for the Ravenna Road passed through that city – indeed, that was where I would have turned north towards Venice. And then the solution slapped me across the face: Gilles was in Ancona. He would know what to do. All I had to do was find the Three Dolphins.

I slept, finally, for with my decision – or rather, my decision to leave any and all decisions to someone else, one of the most satisfying choices one is ever given the luxury to make – the crab had at last released my skull, and I passed the night unmolested save for bedbugs. Dawn found me on the road in the crisp air of the mountains, and alone; The stone-faced widow who had been my ungracious hostess had seen and heard nobody upon the road at night, and neither had the wall-eyed groom. I began to believe that I was not being followed after all, for I had seen no other riders behind me, even with the long views granted by my swooping route across the mountains, and I had not tarried long in one place since leaving Spoleto. And so I took myself over the Apennine Mountains and filled myself with their glorious solitude, as summer came to its peak around me, bleaching the grass in the valleys, drying up the stream-beds and making the very air shiver. And by the time I had passed over their spine and had dropped down into the rolling land between the peaks and the sea, the leaves were almost turning.

The waters of the Hellespont were turbulent and confused. They seemed to unravel around the galley s beak of a prow. There was a sharp and steady breeze blowing down the channel into our faces, making the oarsmen sweat and curse, and crusting our skins with a fine, stinging film of salt. There was plenty of other traffic around us. The coves and beaches that shone like white bite-marks at the base of the lowering mountains on either side each had its little shoal of fishing boats, and out here in the deep water a steady procession of big vessels struggled up under oars or ran down swiftly under straining sails. There were many galleys like ours, sword-like and scuttling, flying the gonfalons of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Valencia and a confusion of others. There were squat trading vessels from northern waters, ugly as beetles among their southern cousins. And there were Moorish ships too, with their swooping sails and crescent-blazoned pennants. But what I saw most of were the little slipper-shaped boats of the Greeks, busily criss-crossing the channel laden with all manner of cargo. The men who sailed them were sun-scorched and friendly, and more than once one such boat dashed cheekily across our bows, to the delight of its crew and the fury of ours. But I, lounging idly where the rail met the bowsprit, always waved, and once was rewarded by a golden missile shied at me by a boy crouched atop a pile of baskets, which I caught, only to find I held a large, pock-marked orange. I peeled and ate it gratefully, although the juice stung my salt-split lips.

We had been at sea the best part of a month, and although the weather had been fair – clear, hot days and warm nights – we had struggled against the wind since rounding Cerigo and entering the Aegean Sea. Our ship was a mid-sized galley chartered at Brundisium, Venice-built but now the property of a cartel of Apulian merchants, and as such flying the imperial standard. Perhaps because of this we had an easy time of it: in any case no corsairs came close to us, and the Venetians, not having quite picked sides in the gathering storm, left us alone as we skirted their Greek possessions. It was odd being a passenger, and at first I was irked by the strangeness of it, and kept offering my services to mend the sail or scrub the decks. But my offers were always rebuffed with a kindly, embarrassed firmness: we were paying our way, and paying handsomely, and it would not look right for rich passengers to be monkeying about in the rigging or down in the stench of the rowing deck. My companion was likewise affected, and, exiled like me to a life of wandering the deck and gazing at distant sails and shorelines, he sought my company and I his. I had arrived in Ancona somewhat bedraggled and extremely saddle-sore. I had pushed Iblis much farther than I should have, and I hoped the poor beast had forgiven me. It had been an easy enough journey, although I had been caught in an early snow squall as I descended the western slope of the mountains. I followed the easy, straight road through the gentle country of the Marches: oak woods and vineyards, golden corn in the valleys and eagles above the high hillsides. And then, after a week and more, I crested an olive-crowned ridge to find the sea twinkling below. Ancona is not a large place, though tightly packed within its walls, and it was not hard to find the Three Dolphins, a good sort of sailors' hostelry near a mighty Roman arch that stood out on the promontory that formed the harbour's mole, its crumbling marble span framing nothing but the odd fishing dinghy. I gave my spent but uncomplaining Iblis to the stables with gold and instructions that his every need was to be met – the finest oats, spring water, a mare if necessary – and stalked on stiff horseman's legs into the inn. To my surprise and relief Gilles was there, poring over a pile of dog-eared pages. When he saw me his mouth fell open in surprise. Then he hurried over to embrace me, despite the road-dust that cloaked my clothes, skin and hair.

'Patch! How astounding!' he exclaimed, then broke into a dust-induced coughing fit. 'Christ, did you tunnel here? You are filthy,' he added, when he had caught his breath. 'But why are you in Ancona? We are not meant to be here either. I am waiting for Horst, in fact.' Then an explanation appeared to seize him. You met with Horst upon the road, it is obvious! Where is he?'

'Gilles, he is dead,' I said. I had had plenty of time to rehearse this moment, but when the time came I could only blurt out the news, and drop down on to the bench, there to sink my head in my hands.

'Dead? I do not understand. Was there an accident?' said Gilles, after a horrible pause.

'Horst is dead? Patch, what happened?' It was another voice, another familiar voice. The Captain was looking down at me, the lines at the corners of his eyes alive with worry.

'Master? What are you doing here?' I gasped. I was so weary and sad that I was not so sure, at that moment, that what I beheld was not some phantom conjured by my beleaguered mind.