Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

It was Anna’s locket, a square of filigreed gold that enclosed a tiny panel of ivory, upon which some careful hand in the time of Constantine had placed the image of Saint George spearing his dragon. It was cold to the touch, of course. I had never felt it so, for its rightful place had always been the freckled hollow where her breasts began to rise. I opened it. Inside, like a tiny window on to the blackness beyond the stars, lay the plait of Anna's hair. I lifted it to my face and inhaled the scent that still clung, strong as life, to the dead strands: gillieflowers, Anna’s own smell.

Time does not stand still, nor does it run backwards. But for an instant I felt her fingers again, warm on my cheek, and heard her slow, deep laugh, so full of delight and passion. Then the sparrows commenced some little war over a crumb, and I was alone again but for the ethereal breath of gillieflowers.

The next day I awoke half-fogged with pain and confusion, and could not even lift my head. Isaac attended me with his bitter draughts, but they did nothing, for it seemed I was filled up with bitter already, as if my blood had turned to wormwood. Muttering about the balance of my humours, he retired to consult his books, for I was not feverish, merely clubbed with malaise, and my mind, infected with the same bitter gall, wandered through the cold, stinking mists of London in search of Anna that I might close her staring eye.

So I lay, my room dark, while visitors came and went like wraiths, their voices nothing but faint hissing in my ears. I was racked by nervous pains and stabbings, but I could not move, for I was rendered immobile by an invisible pall, heavy as chain mail, that pinned me to the sheets. I do not know how long this state of affairs continued, but candles had been lit, so the day must have slipped away when I opened my eyes to find a grey face staring down at me. Grey skin, grey eyes. Thick, beetling eyebrows the colour of pewter. A black hood pulled tight under a grey stubbled chin.

'Are you with us, boy?' The voice was strong, gravelly. The man spoke in English, but he was not an Englishman. Who are you?' I said. Why can't you all leave me alone?'

'Feeling sorry for yourself, my lad. Good. Oh, very good, indeed. Self-pity is the strongest of all the emotions save love, and even then… Can you move your limbs at all?' I tried. I could, feebly, like a beetle on its back. The paralysis is passing off. Close your eyes. What do you see?' 'Nothing.' 'Nothing at all?' 'No. Darkness.' 'Darkness is not nothing.'

I opened my eyes again. My visitor was peering at one of Isaac's physic bottles. He sniffed it, and grimaced, a clown's mask of distaste. I laughed. At once the man's eyes fixed themselves to mine and held me there. 'Who are you, Master?' I asked once again.

'Michael Scotus,' he told me. Of course: he was a Scot, although his tongue was much laced with the lilts of other, warmer places.

'Who summoned you?' I wanted to know. 'Isaac? Do you know Isaac?'

'I did not know your worthy Jew before today,' he replied. 'Although we have much in common, for we both studied our art in Toledo, and we have passed a fine afternoon in discourse while you lingered in your shadows. You have been in excellent hands. I was, I daresay, not needed at all.' Then…'

'I am here at the bidding of His Holiness the Pope. His Eminence heard of your indisposition, and wondered if my humble talents might be of some service to you.'

The pope? What cares… I mean to say, I am exceedingly grateful. But…' I struggled to sit up and succeeded in propping myself against the bolsters and the wall. Michael Scotus was regarding me.

'You occupy a small but important corner of a surprisingly small world, lad.' He laid a long, long-nailed finger alongside his nose. 'So: you are well. Isaac has cured you. You are young, your body is strong. If you were going to die of your fall, you would have done so by now. So. What ails you then, lad?'

'I grieve’ I blurted out. I did not know this odd doctor, if doctor he was, but something about him made words leap from my mouth.

'Grief. You have lost someone’ I nodded, praying he would ask no more. ‘Whom did you lose?’ 'My love’ I muttered. 'My lady love’

'How do you feel?' His eyes seemed to reach into my head and force the words out of me.

'If I could vomit up my soul, and have it drop into the palm of my hand like a golden coin, and then pitch it into the deepest, blackest well that has ever been, I would not feel so bereft:’ I said.

'It dizzies you, then’ He seemed to be pondering, though what was so complicated about my state I failed to see.

'Listen to me, sir’ I began. 'My woman – her name was Anna – is dead. She was barely one and twenty. She was kicked in the head by a horse and died of an apoplexy’ 'And could you have saved her?'

I took a deep breath. 'It was fate. If I had been quicker, perhaps the horse would have kicked me instead. An instant more, an instant less, and the hooves would have missed her. I… it is not that I could have saved her, sir; it is that I was not..’ 'She died alone?'

'No, no, sir. I was with her. Many of us… It was beyond the art of man to heal her wound. Her skull.. ‘ I broke off, wincing. 'And so you saw her die?' 'I did’ 'And it was dreadful’

'She had not found, ah…' I choked back a sob. 'Repose. She was, my friend – whoever you are – ruined. As perfect a creature that ever blessed this world, mangled by a horse, by a fucking dray horse in a shit-splattered London alley. And I cannot see her as she was in life, but only as she lay, all cold and stiff, her face stove in, her eye – oh, Christ! You speak of being dizzied? Her eye will not close, sir! I cannot close her eye!'

The doctor leaned forward and laid his hands on my shoulder. His gaze was scalding. 'Look into that eye. What do you see?' 'No! I cannot!' 'Look!'

I shuddered and kicked as a white orb, slick and silken as a pearl, swelled and grew dull like some ghastly night-sown fungus, an earthball pregnant with spores of death; then it was the winter moon, then a great cloud, seething and mounting up over sea and land, roiling. I managed to shriek feebly, like a coney in a snare, then Michael Scot was holding a basin for me as I puked myself raw.

'There, there. It is over. You are done. Good lad, good lad.'

I gulped and gagged, then found my breath. The chain-mail quilt seemed to have left me. You are not sick, lad: you are haunted.'

'Haunted? Do you mean that Anna…' I tried to shake the thought from my head. In my land, folk believed that those who died badly could not let their loved ones be, but harried and hunted them to death. People, healthy, young people, sickened and faded and died for no reason. I had seen it happen. As a novice monk I had sung my first mass over a ghost-struck corpse. But I did not feel her near me. I felt nothing. 'She might possess me?'

'No! Dear God, no. Why, do you believe she does? That would be altogether too simple, I think. No, you are possessed by a great melancholy – ach, half a lifetime spent studying in the finest schools in Christendom, to bring you that diagnosis!'

I laughed despite myself, which set off another bout of retching, which in turn brought Isaac clattering into the room.

'Good Master Michael! What are you about?' he cried, seizing my wrist and feeling for my pulse.

'Good Doctor Isaac, I have made my diagnosis – lad, what did I say ails you?'

'Melancholy, apparently,' I replied, submitting to a barrage of prods and probings from Isaac's anxious fingers. Truth to tell, I was indeed feeling considerably better.

Well, well, well,' Isaac answered, seriously. Who would have thought it?' Then he straightened up and turned to Michael. 'He is prone to it,' he told him. 'There was a bad episode – not as bad as this, mind – two or so years ago.'