Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

‘I could have been a corpse by now,' I told Michael at last. 'Nothing more than a skin drying on some door. I wish with all my heart that I was, and not alive to hear this.'

'But you have heard it, and you still live. Which is good. I have need of you.' ‘I do not wish to be… I wish to die,' I said.

'That is not allotted to you, not yet,' said Michael sadly. You have suffered much in the last few days. There has been a battle, an arrest. You have become another ghost in this terrible city. And you have seen your hopes dashed. Nicholas Querini carried off the Crown of Thorns under your very nose. Now I am offering you restitution.' 'There is no restitution.' 'Then what about revenge?'

What manner of revenge do you mean? Stealing back a relic for this Mesarites, if that is who he really is? Anna would not care. She detested superstition and the worship of… of icons and suchlike.'

‘I am talking about money,' said Michael Scotus, giving me a grey stare. 'More money than one man has ever seen. For you alone, or for your Captain de Montalhac. And with it the ruin of Nicholas Querini.'

'Ruin? What good is ruin? He should be made to feel what Anna felt! He will…'

'To lose his wealth and his power would be worse for him than death, and you can strip him of both. And here as well is the chance to snap your fingers under Gregory's nose. Do not mistake me: I am a churchman, but I have no illusions about one thing: the Lateran is a great beast with iron jaws and flaming lips, and a terrible thirst that can only be slaked with gold.'

'Gregory knew what he had caused,' I whispered. 'He made mention of something, that day in Viterbo, but I thought nothing of it. I thought…'

'Even a pope cannot bring about the death of a princess without feeling some prick of guilt,' said Michael, gently. 'It was he who sent you the Inventarium. At my suggestion. Some little gesture to make amends: no doubt he has forgotten all about it by now. But you, my boy, can use that little gift against him, against Querini – nay, against the whole of Christendom, if your rage is hot enough.' He set his chin upon his finger-ends and regarded me.

I tried to make sense of what I had heard. What did I care for money, or any of it? I wanted to kill Nicholas Querini, nothing more. My rage, kindled more by despair than anger, was as simple as my desire to eat the last apple on the plate before me. Use the pope's gift? Christ, I was become more an animal than a man! There would never again be a time for gifts. And… and yet there was something in Michael's watchful stillness that calmed the turmoil in my head.

'As to that, why do you want the Mandylion? I asked reluctantly, for misery had begun to curdle into anger, and with it a sullen trace of hope. 'Old Gregory is your friend – you said so yourself.'

'And I meant it. The war that is coming: Guelfs against Ghibellines, spiritual against temporal, brother against brother. It will consume the world, gobble it whole. It is the Apocalypse. I will not take sides.' 'But the Mandylion? I insisted.

'There is yet a chance that the war can be averted, for the beast's jaws are not yet locked. The Mandylion is a thing beyond worth: the holiest of the holy. I intend to give it to Frederick, so that he may present it to Gregory as a peace offering. Although you will not have heard this in Rome, Frederick does not seek war in Italy. He wishes to rule, not to destroy.'

'But you, Your Eminence,' I protested, turning to Mesarites. 'You are robbing yourself. Why would you help us Franks to finish the ruin of your city?'

'Mikaili and I have known each other for half a lifetime,' he replied slowly. We met here, in this city, when I was sent to debate with the emissaries of Pope… I do not remember which pope. It was thought that the two Churches, Greek and Latin, might be reconciled, and this has always been my dearest wish. It was not Constantine's vision, nor Justinian's, that the Empire of the Romans should be divided for ever, or that Christian should revile Christian over matters of mere custom. Mikaili had come with the papal delegation, and we became friends over…' 'Over Aristotle’ Michael prompted.

Just so. I have kept abreast of matters in Rome and at the imperial court these many years through my friend. And so I know that Gregory truly desires unity between the Churches, but on his own terms. Frederick desires the same thing, but he loves the Greeks, and he would have our rights upheld. If there could be peace between pope and prince, brokered by our greatest treasure, it is my hope that the schism might be healed, perhaps in my lifetime – although that I do not dare expect’

'But what, then, is this Mandylion! I have heard it is something like the Veronica, with a painting of Christ's face. There are many such icons, though.'

'The Mandylion is not one of those!' snorted Mesarites. He seemed to straighten up a little. A painting? It is… acheiropoietos. Not made by human hands. And not just the face…' he paused, and crossed himself. 'The whole of Our Lord's precious body, laid out in death.' 'Or life’ said Michael.

'Ach. We disagree. The impression – it is a miraculous imprint, Frankish boy, not a painting – is of a dead man. There are the stains of blood, around the head, in the side, in the hands and feet.' 'And you have seen this?'

'Oh, many times’ he cried. 'Our Lord was revealed every Friday in the Church of Blachernae, rising as if from the tomb. Resurrected in glory.'

'But it is a face’ I persisted. 'In a picture. It says so in the inventories.'

'Oh dear, Petroc’ sighed Michael, shaking his head like an exasperated schoolmaster. 'It is folded. Folded so that only the face shows, and so that it fits into a picture frame. That was its secret, and until a few years before the sack, known only to the archbishops of Blachernae. And because it vanished when the Franks took the city, that secret is not known in the West. Imagine the revelation, the… the universal wonderment when it is revealed. The pope will declare a jubilee!'

I looked at these two men, so agog at the wonder of it all. It was not so strange in the Greek, perhaps, for he was a churchman; but Michael Scotus… I was surprised that his dark and shadowy person should be so suffused with superstitious joy. I felt, all at once, utterly different from them, a goat amongst sheep or an ape amongst men. What cared I for their jubilee? If men could kill a blameless woman on a whim, in the name of holy Mother Church, was it not equally unbelievable that a piece of old, stained cloth would stop the same men from destroying each other? I did not care. But, I realised as I watched the burning eyes of the two old men, if something could be salvaged, some scrap for Captain de Montalhac, for Gilles and for the rest of us who lived outside the world of both pope and emperor, then I would gladly die in the attempt.

There was another door, an old postern that let out on to the beach below the walls. Michael led me through it and out into the night. The sea lapped and gurgled very near us, and the air was sharp with the rot of weed and flotsam that had once been alive. I trudged after Michael, to where a huge old plane tree, half dead, was growing out of the wall and hanging its branches far out over the water.

'Help me,' he said, beckoning. He was tugging at a pile of driftwood. When I reached it I saw that the pile was disguising a small fishing boat, short, pointed fore and aft, with a pronounced rocker and two rowlocks. We heaved it over. It looked seaworthy enough in the moonlight, for the timbers were sound and the paint was not old. It had a mast, folded flat against the deck, and a tighdy furled sail. Then Michael led me back to the postern. Just inside were two ladders, lying propped lengthwise against the wall.

'Scaling ladders from the siege’ said Mesarites, shuffling over with a light. 'There were legions of them, a forest. Afterwards, some who were left alive picked them up and saved them, thinking they might have a use when pruning time came. But it has never come. Here: these are not long enough, but you can lash them together.'