Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

My dampness and desire for solitude all forgotten, I peered out into the corridor. It was empty save for the Regent and his companions, and so I crept out and began to follow them, hugging the walls where the shadows were thick, and where I knew the thick carpet of dust and crumbled plaster would muffle my footsteps. The three men turned a corner, then another, but to my surprise I discovered I still knew where I was. I had been this way before, weeks ago. Then I passed a ruined piece of mosaic, a faceless emperor raising his hand to bless the cobwebs, and I realised where I was being led: this was the way to the Pharos Chapel.

The lamps were few and far between down in this far outpost of the Bucoleon. Most were guttering and some were out, and so I was picking my way through pools of darkness. I was not worried that I would be found out, for I had learned this craft from Gilles himself, and besides, there were plenty of places to hide. So when the final corner was turned I was able to hunker down in the shadows behind an archway and watch as the guards, who clearly had not expected visitors to their remote outpost and were busy playing knucklebones, leaped to their feet with a crash of rusty chain mail. The Regent barked at them impatiently and pulled out a key. I heard it snick inside the lock, and then the door opened. The Regent indicated, with a somewhat cursory show of deference, that the Venetian should go first, and so he stepped into the blackness, followed by de Toucy, who had taken a lighted torch from the guards. The Regent came last, and pulled the door shut behind him.

I squatted there in the near-dark, breathing in the cold smell of damp limestone and dead flies. But my mind was ablaze. What business could these men have in the chapel at this late hour? I chewed it over. The Regent had a right to be anywhere he wished, I supposed, for it was his palace as far as that went. De Toucy clearly had not wished to accompany him. And Querini? He looked happy enough. My calves were being chewed by cramp and I had all but resolved to creep back to my chambers when the lock of the chapel door scratched and clicked and the hinges gave a dry moan.

Narjot de Toucy stepped out. He beckoned to a guardsman, who bent to hear a muttered command. Then the guard barked at his company and they jumped to their feet, looking at one another in puzzlement. Then they shuffled together until they stood shoulder to shoulder, and on another bark from the man I took for their sergeant they turned and faced the wall. When every guard had his back to the chapel door, de Toucy went back through it, only to emerge a moment later closely followed by the Regent. They were carrying a large black chest between them, and from the Regent's strained look it was plainly quite heavy. Then the Venetian emerged, and it was he who took out the key and locked the chapel door. To my growing amazement, the Regent and de Toucy, red in the face and breathing hard, started towards me down the passage, the Venetian following them with his self-satisfied, considered walk, an amused look upon his visage. I just had time to slide along the wall and into a side-vault before they passed me. I had a clear look at the chest. It seemed as though the two Franks carried the night itself between them, for their burden was hooped about with iron and nails, and long ago it had been coated with pitch. It was the reliquary of the Crown itself.

Surely this was some official business? Were they taking the Crown to Louis already, even before Louis' friars had arrived? That must be it. These men were taking the Crown to the friars in Venice. These thoughts flew across my mind like swallows through a barn, but I could grasp none of them, and none of them rang true, save the the one that told me I was in terrible trouble.

I recalled the looks on the faces of the men as they had entered the chapel. It had been no state business. There was no doubt but that this was a robbery, if a man can steal his own possession: but was the Regent the man committing the theft? From the look I had seen upon the Venetian's face I thought I knew the answer to that. He was a thief, pure and simple. I had seen that look a hundred times, and felt it upon my own face.

Back through the dead palace I followed them, my heart knocking against my ribs now, for here was the end of all my hopes, and the hopes of every man who served the Cormaran. But what to do? This affair had been left in my care – mine! Feeling not at all like a man who had conversed with pope and emperor, but very much like a frightened Dartmoor shepherd boy I trailed the men back through the realms of spider and bat, past the smashed glory of a lost age, wondering how, in this world, I could make amends, and how I could, somehow, avenge my master.

Meanwhile, thievery had evidently loosened the tongues of the three men, for now the Regent had started to chatter nervously to the other two. I could not hear very much, for the walls either muffled sound or splintered it into a thousand twittering echoes. But as I crept along behind, at last I made out the words 'de Montalhac' and 'decree’. It was the Regent who had spoken, and in reply, Querini threw back his head and laughed. I skipped and shuffled as close as I dared, throwing myself behind an unravelling tapestry in time to hear Querini say:'… be dead by now, I should think… paid the ship's master enough…'

A chill descended upon me and I shrank against the wall, into its crust of rotten fresco and dead insects. The Captain was dead. No! Impossible: dear Jesus, it could not be possible. But he had left on a Venetian ship a day after Aimery had said Querini had landed. I closed my eyes, and there he was, hand raised to me against the muddy sky, the ship sliding out into the black water. 'I bribed the master.' I heard him speak the words, and saw, as I had done in Foligno, how clear had been the trap. Now… now I was truly alone.

The footsteps in the passage were growing fainter. My quarry had not stopped at the state-rooms, but kept on towards the servants' quarters. Whimpering like an abandoned hound I forced myself to follow. They marched – more shuffled, in truth, for the two Frankish lords were plainly not in the flower of their manhood, and stopped more than once to set down their burden while they wrung their hands and panted. When they heard footsteps approaching they, like me, would duck into the first empty room, but as it was dinner time most of the Frankish folk were occupied, and I noticed that the Regent and his friends cared not that the Greek servants observed them. Finally they halted before a door I had not seen before, but which I judged must lead to one of the outer buildings of the palace. The Venetian knocked, and at once the door swung open to reveal a small company of soldiers. They were far better dressed and equipped than the imperial troops, for they wore new leather hauberks on which were sewn patches and bosses of shining metal, they were clean shaven and looked well-fed. I had seen such men on the deck of Querini's galley. The two lords had set down the chest gratefully, and at a signal from the Venetian it was at once scooped up by four soldiers and carried from my sight. The Venetian – even from my vantage point some way away I could see he was fairly quivering with pride – gave a jaunty bow to the Regent and offered his hand. The Regent offered his hand and winced when it was squeezed. Then, leaving nothing but a ghost of saffron light in his wake, the Venetian leaped after his men and was gone.

I did not wait to see what the Frankish lords did next, but rushed through a welter of grief and panic towards my chambers. I needed to make some sort of plan, I knew, but what, dear God, was the point? No! I must not fail my master and my company. As I forced myself up the long staircase, I thought I would write a letter to Gilles, which perhaps could be sent by fast ship tomorrow. But, no – a letter? What a feeble thought, what nonsense! It was far, far too late for that, I knew, for like words resolving themselves as the reading-stone is lowered on to them, the events of the last few days came into sharp and terrible focus. The Venetian, Querini or whoever he was, had killed Captain de Montalhac and bought the Crown. He had purchased it outright, I guessed, and the sight of real money had turned the heads of the Regent and his barons. The Captain had been too inconvenient; doubtless – how clear it all became now! – Querini planned to treat with Louis himself. And he had turned the court into a nest of simoniacs. Because… because he thought the Captain still had the decree of absolution. How many were involved? Was it the whole court? But the three men had been furtive indeed, like thieves in their own house, so perchance this was a plot. So much the worse for me, then: Querini, or the Regent himself, had tried to have me put out of the way along with the Captain. I could not stay here an hour longer: Aimery was right. I was a dead man if I did not leave at once.