Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

There was the gilded wall, and there the awful cross with its tormented giant. I felt sick and suffocated, as I had done before, but shook my head until it cleared. There was much work to be done. I looked around. It was clear where the great chest that held the Crown of Thorns had sat, for there was a rectangle of clear stone outlined in the plaster dust that lay everywhere in a thin layer – plaster dust and dead flies, and the granulated emanations of the fatal treasures that were shut up in here. I felt the stifling weight of them all around me. But I was here to work. What had the Captain said? 'All these things: money and nothing more. Never forget that: money, and that alone’ It was hardly comforting, but I felt sharper when I muttered those words to myself. But where to start?

Most helpfully, the reliquaries – or most of them, at least – were sheathed in panels of hammered gold or silver which bore upon them some indication of what lay inside. The first one I examined showed, in beautiful relief, the washing of Christ's feet. There was the Virgin suckling her baby: Mary's Milk, no doubt. I had seen enough of that cheesy stuff being packed into vials aboard the Cormaran that I had no desire to look further. A long, slender case, I assumed, held the Staff of Moses. There was a small box, encrusted with gems, that showed the soldier Longinus at work with his lance. Curious, I opened it, and found an old, diamond-bladed spearhead into which a smith had cut four wedges to form a rough cross. A shiver of unease ran through me and I hastily shut the box. But I saw that it had been sitting upon an icon case whose cover also bore the image of Longinus. The icon inside was ancient and encrusted with a tarry patina, overlaid with a richly jewelled frame into which was set a small triangle of metal. Frowning to myself, I opened the box again, and saw that the spearhead was missing its tip, and it was this that was set into the icon. The Inventarium mentioned only one Spear, though. I considered. The icon was lighter, but the spearhead was more impressive and besides, the box would be worth something. I dropped it into my pack.

In short order I found the other relics: the Sponge, the Reed, the Swaddling Clothes. The Stone from the Sepulchre was, I guessed, the large stone sitting upon a gilded plinth, and the Chain was indeed a large and rusty chain. The three saints' heads were stacked one atop the other against the back of the rood-screen. Various vials of blood – there is no relic so fundamentally unconvincing, and yet so appealing to the customer, save wood from the Cross itself, and lo! here were two pieces of that very structure. I ignored them, for I had exhausted the smaller reliquaries and had not found what I sought. So now I turned my attention to the big chests that lined the walls.

I held a candle close up to the carbuncled metal of the reliquaries. The images glittered and swum before my eyes, so I opened one at random. A box within a box, and then a long thing wrapped in silk. I did not need to unwrap it, for I felt the hard claws at one end and the jagged, splintered bone at the other: the Baptist's arm. Had those stick-like fingers, so brittle and vulnerable, once held Our Lord under the waters of Jordan? I felt another twinge of dread, as if the lolling head on the wall behind me were about to speak. Time to banish all such thoughts. Money, remember: only money.

The next box gave me something I wanted: a suspiciously well-preserved pair of leather sandals, somewhat dried-out and crushed, the soles beginning to curl, but nonetheless, I thought, almost wearable. Christ's Sandals – it sounded like a prudish oath, but these were on the pope's list and not on Baldwin's. They were coming with me. I felt nothing when I handled them but a creeping respect for the men who passed things like this off to the credulous, century after century. To my delight, there were some authenticating documents in Greek and Aramaic. I made a parcel of shoes and papers with the silk they had rested upon, and opened another chest. Having heard not even a scrape or a cough from beyond the chapel I had more or less convinced myself that the guards were either asleep, drunk or were gone for the night, for who would be making the long and haunted journey through the ruined palace to their post at this hour? So I dragged the next box into the light with less care and let the lid fall back with a thud on one of its fellows. The thud, muffled and weak in the smothering atmosphere of the chapel, found an echo, an answering bump from beyond the rood-screen, out in the nave.

An explosion of panic hurled me across the floor to the altar, and I dropped down behind the stone and held my knees against my chest. I seemed to have grabbed my pack, at least. Oh God, the lights! I jumped up and pinched out the candles in a frenzy. But there were more alight over by the rood-screen. I hung there in a torment of indecision, not quite able to order myself across the sanctuary floor, nor yet daring to commit myself to the dangling rope behind me. As I stood there quivering, the smoke from the snuffed candles threading upwards around me, I remembered a word that Anna had told me long ago: not rood-screen. Iconostasis. And then the door opened.

I ducked down behind the altar again, my thoughts as ordered as a kicked ant-hill. I had no weapon, curse it! I had left the hammer and chisel up on the roof. I cast my eyes around in the gloom for anything else I could use, but all I saw were the painted nails pinning His feet, and the frozen dribble of blood from the gash in His side. Good Longinus, put me out of my misery now, for when they catch me they will flay me, I half-prayed. Longinus… The door creaked open, and I heard two voices, very low and then, when they saw the light, very loud. They were speaking Venetian. Footsteps running up the aisle of the nave and stopping at the door into the sanctuary. I stood up and prepared to die fighting, the holy Lance in my fist.

'Oh, fuck me!' The nasal orison of London town cut the air like a blunt falchion. Letitia of Smooth Field stood there, open-mouthed. At her side, Dardi was already pulling out his dagger, a wide, single-edged thing like a butchers knife.

‘I thought they'd skinned you,' Letitia added, dropping her hands to her hips and regarding me with bemused impatience.

'Not yet,' I said, eyeing Dardi's knife. There was no time to think any more. I stepped smartly out from behind the altar and raised my weapon. Was Letitia armed? No doubt. But still…

'Come and get it, you fat fucker,' I snarled at Dardi. His eyebrows shot ceilingwards.

'He doesn't speak English, love, or don't you remember?' said Letitia. Want me to translate?'

Dardi turned to her, chin raised in question. She pointed at me and muttered something. The big man laughed, then spat wetly on to the floor. I heard the gob splatter. How badly I hoped that it wasn't the last sound I would hear. I noted that he wiped his mouth and cast nervous eyes at the painted figure behind me, though.

'Get on with it!' I told him, in Italian. 'Come on, pig!' If I was hoping to goad him, it did not work.

What have you got there, a plasterer's trowel?' he asked. ‘You going to wall me up or something? I knew you had no balls the first time.' Again, he paused and crossed himself. 'Come on. Put that down. We'll do it outside. It will be quick, I promise.'

Letitia said something else in Venetian, and looked behind her at the door. Dardi shrugged, crossed himself again and squared his shoulders. He gave me the smile that butchers give to tied hogs. He wasn't scared of me, not even the tiniest bit. I felt the metal of the spearhead grow warm and slippery with sweat.

'Do you know what this is, you blasphemer?' I asked him, remembering dimly how I had almost, long ago, become a priest. 'Shut up’ Dardi told me.