Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

'And you treated it how?' the Scotsman replied, deferentially. Then to my surprise the two men turned away and began to mutter excitedly in what I realised was Arabic. The only word I understood was Aristotle, who both mentioned again and again, although what that obscure old Greek had to do with my affliction I could not imagine. Feeling bold as only a man with a brimming basin of vomit sloshing in his lap can, I called out to them that this was no philosophy school.

'Ah, Patch. The good Michael here was discussing a theory of Aristotle concerning black bile, and I was countering with the teachings of the great ben Maimon, whom you know as Maimonides. Do you like the music of lutes, dear friend?' 'I do not know. I have never really thought about it. Why?'

'Ibn Sina – your Averroes – prescribes the music of stringed instruments for your particular sickness’ Michael Scot put in. 'Shall I send some musicians?' 'I pray you, do not!' I insisted.

'He is much recovered’ mused Isaac. 'What exactly did you do?'

'I merely applied that which is set out in the Poetics of Aristode and developed by Averroes. To whit, I challenged the dark humour by holding up a mirror to it’ 'And only that? Extraordinary’

'It is a beginning. I believe I may accomplish a complete cure, but I will require some time to prepare. Master Petroc, I will see you again’ And without another word he embraced Isaac, turned to regard me for another piercing instant, and stalked from the room. I had not noticed until that moment that he was tall, and though he must have been all of sixty years if not more, he did not stoop, and moved like a man half his age.

'Is that it? Who was that very odd fellow?' I demanded of Isaac as soon as the door had closed.

'Michael Scotus’ he spread his arms wide, palms open to heaven. 'A prodigy, and a gift from… I know not where.' You know him, then?' 'His fame is, one might say, legendary’ said Isaac with a touch of professional hauteur. 'Nevertheless…'

'No, no, you are right. Famous to those such as myself. He was still spoken of at Toledo, although he had been gone two decades or more when I was a student. Strange, though. I believed he had died’ 'Plainly not’

'Quite so. But there were reports… quite definite ones. The pope – this one, Gregory whatever he is – recommended him for Archbishop of Canterbury, but the English would not have him. Tis said he returned to his homeland and died of disappointment’

Why wouldn't they have him?' I enquired, feeling strong enough at last to move the reeking basin on to the night stand.

‘Um. Well, the ignorant often… our profession is ill-understood by the mass of humanity, my friend. Our services are needed but feared, for – so it seems to them – we hold sway over life and death. Would that it were so,' he added, pouring me another draught of some noxious, syrupy physic. 'But in the case of our worthy Scot, whose talents and interests stretched much, much further than the healing of the sick, the ignorant painted him with their most foul slur. Not so incredible, perhaps: he spent many years at the court of the Emperor Frederick, who is so repellent to the pious amongst your people. But this was a man, Petroc, who knew the greatest minds of his age, who understood Ibn Sina, Ibn'Rushd, Maimon, whose intellect reached back deep into the pagan ages to discourse with Aristotle…'

'But what was the charge?' I rasped, my throat flayed by whatever I had just swallowed.

'Sorcery. What else?' he answered, picking up the basin and leaving me to my thoughts, which, suddenly unencumbered by the crushing weight of melancholia, were circling and cawing like gulls about a herring boat. Whatever Michael Scot had done to me – and I could not recall him having done anything at all, save make me puke -I began to recover, for in truth there was barely anything the matter with my body, and my strange doctor had, I thought, somehow released my natural energies so that the vitality of youth, and the impatience, began to flow once more. So in a day I had left my room, and before another three days had passed I was pacing about the rooms that the Captain had taken for us, and which seemed to occupy an entire floor of some ancient and labyrinthine building. Most of the crew had stayed with the ship, but Horst the Swabian, Zianni the Venetian and a couple of others had come to help with city business. My wanderings had begun to annoy my companions, I would guess, for I was pestering Zianni one afternoon when he snapped his fingers under my nose.

'Listen, my invalid, you are more irritating than a bot-fly. Why do you not go outside?'

I… I do not know this city,' I stammered, taken aback. Indeed, why had I not left the building? 'I was waiting for Isaac to give me a clean bill of health, I suppose.' 'Right, then, I shall see to it that he does, immediately.'

Isaac did indeed pronounce me free of his care that very afternoon, and did so with a smile in which I detected a hint of relief. He sent me to see the Captain, whom I found in his room, talking with Gilles, who had just returned from a couple of days with the Cormaran, which lay at Ostia.

'What cheer, lad?' he asked brightly. I hunched my shoulders. 'None at all, but I am up,' I said. 'Have you told Gilles of your strange physician?'

'I have not,' I said, and gave him the story. It left him exchanging looks of frank puzzlement with the Captain. 'The Michael Scotus?' said Gilles at last. 'He is dead.'

'So Isaac told me. Was he a revenant, Patch? Did he carry a whiff of the grave?' 'Not at all. He was as lively as a foal.'

'But terrifying, surely?' Gilles pressed. 'His reputation is – Good Christ, I have known of him since first I learned to read!'

'Not terrifying, but very intent, I would say. I felt as if he peered right inside me. In fact…'

The Captain interrupted, fortunately, and saved me from reliving the horrible vision the grey man had stirred up in my mind's eye. 'Sent by Pope Gregory himself. Is that not curious? I did not think we merited such favour.'

'Nor did I. Curious that His Holiness even knows we are here – but he is a customer, so no doubt he has been expecting us.'

'Indeed, I did send word of our arrival to the Lateran Palace,' said the Captain, looking unconvinced. 'If indeed old Gregory is even there. And of course we do have some… some items that will interest him. But to send his own physician…'

'He loves us, it is plain,' said Gilles. 'But in point of fact, Scotus is not the pope's physician. That is a fellow by the name of… oh, I forget. A Cypriot, very fat. And so far as I know, Scotus was the emperor's man, his tutor, I believe, and of course his necromancer, if you believe the chatter of the mob. Nonsense, of course, but… No, I have it. He died five years ago, in Edinburgh.'

'Another Michael Scotus, maybe?' I ventured. 'But Isaac thought he was the real article. And how could he be a necromancer if the pope marked him as Archbishop of Canterbury?'

'Necromancer or not, he has mended our Patch,' said the Captain, and squeezed my shoulder.

Later, after we had dined on hotly spiced ox-tails, various strange but delightfully chewy entrails and an assortment of bitter greens washed down with a pale, somewhat thin wine, the Captain wiped the gravy from his beard.

'Now then, Gilles. It is high time we introduced our young friend to the city of Rome.' My last clear recollections were of the grey, muddy streets of London, so stepping out into the warm afternoon light of Rome was perhaps the greatest shock I had yet received since waking from my long slumber, and from the numb revenant's existence I had led since Anna's death. For almost my whole life, Rome had been like a lodestone to my thoughts. The greatest city on earth, where Peter and Paul and countless other martyrs had met their glorious deaths. Seat of the Holy Father, and the place where Caesar had walked, and Nero, Cicero, Virgil… And my journey here had been like a miracle. I had been borne here, unconscious and unknowing, and my awakening had been a sort of resurrection. These and a cloud of other portentous thoughts were whirling around my head as I waited for a servant in sober livery to unlatch the huge, studded street door. Then it swung open, and we strode out into the city.