Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

The sweep of the oars and the cracking of the sail was strange music to me that afternoon, for I had barely drawn breath before we were aboard the ship Stella Maris and the master had ordered all lines let go. Galleys can be quick when the wind and tide favour them, and soon the white beacon of the Roman arch had slipped away behind and we were striking out across the ruffled waters towards Dalmatia. In a few days we were running south past Zadar and the Captain was pointing out the nameless little isle where Sir Hugh de Kervezey had undergone his strange transfiguration into Saint Exuperius of blessed memory, and a week later we passed the hog's back of Hrinos and came close enough to the high peak of Koskino Island that we could hear the cicadas and smell the sage and thyme of her hillsides. There was the horseshoe bay guarded by its three windmills, and there the tiny white huddle of the village, sleeping beneath its lemon trees. I felt a little strange, and fancied that the scars on my thigh, where a crossbow bolt had pierced me the night I had been hunted across those barren hills, were aching in some kind of sympathy with the place, but later I decided I had imagined it. But nonetheless I felt better when Koskino's mountain had sunk, in its turn, into our wake, and back into my past.

'I fear to tell you anything of Constantinople’ said the Captain, when I pressed him. He had been there, he said, but would not tell me more. If you find it one way, you will think I embroidered my account and be angry, and if another, you will say I was too mean and sparing and again I will be blamed’ he laughed. It is a very great city, as great or greater than Rome itself, for it is her sister. But time has used her very harshly, and..He shook his head and sighed. 'Perhaps her fortunes have changed’ he said, 'although all news that comes from there says otherwise. I have no expectations, so that I will not be confused and diverted from our task when we arrive and things are not as I thought they would be’

It was all very mysterious, but I could extract no more from him. Instead he laid out our mission. We were required to secure the Crown relic and also to verify it, negotiate the transfer with Emperor Baldwin's Regent, and await the arrival of the French Kings emissaries. Our key to the Chapel of Pharos was Pope Gregory's decree, which I handed over to the Captain with huge relief. Not for the first time, I pondered the strangeness of our lives. How could it be that we, who practised nothing but deception, find such willing accomplices amongst the great of this world, and how could it be that we now had the complicity of the Holy Father himself? And our business now was with an emperor, no less, or at least his Regent. No matter that the empire was a sham, an old sheep with its throat already in the wolf's jaws. What cared I for such distinctions? I was still, at heart, a shepherd's son, and my fortune was becoming such a thing that I would never have dared imagine in my deepest summer daydream. But the Captain was expecting trouble. What had been a simple job had become not so simple, for now we would have to persuade the emperor's barons that King Louis' offer would be worth the waiting, and that they should not be sniffing around in their treasure house yet.

So I burned with anticipation as we inched our way across the Aegean into the teeth of those Greek breezes that blow clean and steady, driving salt into the skin and making every piece of rigging hiss like a nest of snakes, but which barely ruffle the surface of the water. Our oarsmen sweated and groaned, but I tucked myself into the bows each day and dreamed of Constantinople. I had heard so much of the city from Anna that I could all but walk a maze of her streets in my mind, which was a little strange in that Anna herself had never set foot there, for her family had gone into exile long before her birth. Nevertheless, for her – as for all Greeks – it was the navel, the lodestone of her world, the true Rome, of which the great city I had just left was a pale, barbarian, and heretical counterfeit. But further, I still clung to the notion that I might find some answer there to the riddle of her death, though I had no idea how that might come about. So I burned to see Constantinople for myself, and as we at last put Samothrace behind us and inched into the great passage of the Hellespont, and when we burst out into the Sea of Marmara beyond, even my dreams had become infected with the place. My night-self inhabited a landscape of vast buildings: gigantic cathedrals shimmering with gold and gems, statues and monuments of pure marble rearing like great phantoms from amongst palaces sheltered by gilded roofs. And the people of this dream city were giants too: Constantines and Justinians, grave and terrible; white-clad empresses; warriors in the image of the Angel Michael and Saint George with flaming swords and armour of golden scales. And around every corner, someone with Anna's face. Sometimes this sprite fled from me, sometimes she beckoned me into some dark and secret place, but always I awoke as my hand reached for her.

So I was in a ferment when the cry finally came from the top of the main mast: 'Constantinople!' Yesterday the Stella Maris had rounded the island of Marmara and sailed into a placid inland sea, and I knew that we were almost at our destination. But according to the crew we were still a good twenty sea leagues away, and all that day we sailed towards a bank of heat shimmer that revealed nothing. Now, straining my eyes through the golden haze of morning I saw nothing, then a line of low hills that seemed to close off the way ahead, still many leagues off.

'There is the Long Wall’ said the Captain, coming to my side. I followed his outstretched arm and saw a great fortification snaking down to the waters edge. It was high and strong, and punctuated by sturdy battlements and towers, but looking closer I saw it was all abandoned, and that vines and small trees had taken root in its cracks. The land on either side of it seemed deserted too. There was no one abroad, and the farms were empty of people and animals. The fields stood fallow and the vineyards were choked with weeds. A pack of wild dogs was just visible on the long white beach. This had been rich land once, a garden of men, for every slope was terraced and the olive trees grew thickly. As the rowers bent into their work and the breeze, our friend for once, fluttered out of the north-east and gave a breath of life to the sails, we began to make headway, and by midday I could make out a blackness on the skyline which, with agonising slowness, resolved itself into the shapes of buildings. We had passed a small town that had seemed populated, although much of it was clearly ruined. The wind blew steadily, and was heavy with the scent of rotten fruit, for it was the end of summer and there was no one to harvest the great garden. It soon became cloying, and I pictured swarms of wasps consuming the bounty that men now ignored. When I asked the Captain what had caused all this desolation, he scratched his nose wearily. 'The Franks’ he said simply.

'But this is their kingdom – I mean, their empire!' I said, amazed. 'Such are the Franks’ he said. 'But why destroy it all?'

'It was not the Franks alone who did this. There has been war here – incessantly, really, for many score years. But the Franks aided and abetted the wreckers then, when they did not help. And now they are poor and incompetent. The good people who farmed this land, and who held it, are dead or driven off. Some remain, and they are harried and repressed by their new Frankish masters, who have set themselves up here in the manner they were used to at home, over folk they despise and do not understand. So it was in my land also.' He fell silent.

'But we are Franks too – at least to the Greeks’ I said carefully.