Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

'I do not believe anyone here is really in a position to negotiate,' said the Captain. 'No. But what if…' I began. What?'

'Nothing,' I said, deflated. 'I was thinking that if Querini is holding Baldwin in lieu of a mortgage, there might be a way for us to parlay the negotiations with Louis into… no, it does not make sense.'

'No, go on,' said the Captain. 'I had not been thinking in terms of a mortgage, simply of hostages.'

Well, if Louis has money to spend on the Crown, could not he still buy it? Then the barons would have money to… to ransom, or redeem, rather, their sovereign.'

Yes! But why should they, though?' the Captain said, shoulders sagging.

'Because he is their ruler, and because the pope will be, I don't know. Very angry. Excommunicate Constantinople, not that it would make much difference.'

You might be right,' said the Captain, not sounding very convinced. 'No, you might be.'

'And we would collect our commission whatever happened,' I pointed out. He raised his head at that.

A fine point!' he said. 'If money changes hands between Louis and the empire, we stand to collect. The nature of the transaction need not concern us. Patch, you have it!' 'But I cannot do this alone,' I told him.

'Nonsense. It will be plain dealing. The friars will talk money and the Regent, sick with gold-greed as he is, will agree to anything. You have the pope's decree, which gives you the authority to make the transaction. Then you need merely witness the contract, and your work is done. That you can do alone’ he added. 'So. It is agreed. Gilles' information cannot be ignored. I will leave on the morrow -I have found a ship already, a fast Venetian galley with a master happy to be bribed – and you will stay and conclude this ridiculous affair. I am sorry to leave you here, though: this city is detestable.'

'It is’ I agreed, although I was blinking with surprise at the speed of all this. I did not let the Captain see, but I was shaken at the prospect of being alone here, and in the rafters of my mind the ghosts had awoken. I made my excuses soon after and went off in search of drink strong enough to put me to sleep.

I thought it would be easy enough to fetch a servant, but no means existed that I could see. I wandered through the rotting halls, through the pools of shadow that stretched between the rush lights in the walls, thinking to hail someone. But I had navigated my way almost to the Regent's state chambers before I chanced upon a serving wench hurrying on someone else's errand, a linen-draped trencher in her hands. I stopped her and she stared at me, terrified, great black-ringed eyes searching my face for who knows what dreadful portent. It was the girl who sometimes came to clean my room, I found, but it plainly heralded terrible things for servant girls to be hailed by Frankish men in this place, for she did not seem to recognise me, and I hastily spoke to her in Greek.

Wait, dear one. I wish nothing more than a jug of wine. Do you know how I might come by such a thing?' And to show her I had no ill intent, I stepped away and held my palms up before me. She quivered like a mouse stranded in the middle of a threshing floor. 'The tap-room?' I tried again. Again she shook her head. Indeed she shook all over, so hard that I feared she would drop her trencher. I was so appalled by the terror I was inflicting upon her that I had backed up hard against the wall. ‘Sto kali despoinaki? I told her: Go to the good, little queen. She goggled, and as I edged away she scuttled off in the opposite direction and disappeared into the gloom. Feeling more unnerved than ever, I kept walking until I came to the zone of light and life, where servants were running to and fro and where I could at last follow my nose to the kitchens. There I procured myself a great clay jug of wine from a fat German cellarman, who was quite disturbed to be collared by one of the quality in his own domain, but who promised me the best of his supply. By the smell of it, his supply was poor indeed, but it was not vinegar, and gratefully enough I set off again into the purgatory of deserted hallways.

I had already climbed the stairs and was, I thought, quite close to my chambers when I heard a muffled squeak and a thump behind me. Those sour shadows were rich with suggested horrors, and so I whirled around, to find empty gloom. This was a desolate quarter of the palace, where the walls were flaking and the rush lights few and far between. Doorways appeared at odd intervals, and side passages opened unexpectedly, sometimes giving on to stairways going down and sometimes up, although as far as I knew the upper floors were unsafe and uninhabited. The little hairs on my neck were prickling, and I shrugged away the gooseflesh, shuddering. This place gave me terrors far worse than come upon folk who wander in open places. The sullen dead of a thousand years had left their essences to flitter and blunder about like grey and dusty moths, so thick in places that you could almost smell their grave-cloth wings. I began to step backwards towards the nearest pool of light. Then the sound came again. It was no ghostly sound after all. A man's low growl, the click of metal on stone, and a woman's moan, stifled. I listened again. My hairs were still prickling, but now they were telling me of a different kind of fear. Was it fear, though, or pleasure? A tiny, sharp voice in my skull told me this was none of my business. I agreed with myself wholeheartedly, but then came another moan, more desperate than before. That was no woman: it was a child. I set down the wine and made my way towards the sound. My feet made no sound in the thick dust, and it was obvious from the rustling ahead that I was undetected. Now I could tell that it was coming from one of those sinister side passages. Back to the wall, I slid along until I was close enough to peer around the corner. I hesitated, for I was fearful that I had heard nothing but an illicit but happy coupling, and that my intrusion might be taken for prurience or worse. But I was no prude, and knew what love sounded like, and lust as well; and this did not sound quite like either. So, gritting my teeth, I leaned slowly, silently, into the darkness of the passage.

Nothing was visible at first save two pale stains of light, and for an instant my heart lurched at the threat of the unearthly, but then they resolved themselves into a pair of naked legs, white and sun-starved. A man seemed to be crawling up a narrow flight of stone stairs on his hands and knees, but there, in the almost black shadows beneath the collapsed tent of his clothing, was another pale smear: no more than two black holes in a weak halo of light, a ghost skull which, as I blinked, uncomprehending, became the great, terrified eyes of the little Greek serving girl I had met in the corridors below. She mewed like a kitten, and no louder, for a thick hand was over her mouth. The ink-black circles of her eyes were as hollow as those of a corpse, yet she gave a feeble jerk and the man who lay upon her slapped her head hard with the hand which was not stopping her breath.

Black hair, pale skin, dying eyes. I did not think, I did not consider, until my hands were caught in the man's clothes and I was wrenching him backwards. He was big but surprised, and I threw him against the wall, grabbed him and spun him towards me. I glimpsed thick, sandy hair and a dull, drunken Frankish face. Then I broke his nose with my forehead, a sound like a walnut cracked between stones; and as his blood ran down my neck I kneed him in the cods and swung his slumped weight out into the corridor. He landed heavily on the stone floor. I ran at him and landed one good kick in his guts before he cringed away, stumbled to his feet and lurched off into the shadows. I heard his feet picking up speed and vanishing into the desolation.

I turned to find the girl cowering against the steps. Her long tunic of homespun was still tangled about her ankles, and I reckoned, my mind whirling to make a calculation of the unspeakable, that her attacker had not reached his goal. Making soothing noises as if to a frightened beast I reached out to her, but she gave an awful, feral cry and, gathering her tunic up to her knees, jumped up and darted past me. She sprinted away, pale legs scissoring, up the corridor towards my quarters. In another instant she was gone. Had I not had a ringing in my head, and another man's blood trickling down my front, I might have dreamed the whole thing for all the evidence that remained.