Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

'This is the treasure-house of Christendom. Do you see Our Lord in His Passion behind me? His grave-clothes are behind you. Do you see that wound in His side, and the blood pouring forth like a spring? This made that very wound’ I said, holding up the spearhead. 'The holy Lance. And it will pierce your liver, you dog.'

Dardi blinked, and his knife wavered. He crossed himself again, fervently, and when he raised his knife again it was less steady. His eyes darted up towards the dead face of Christ and his arms came up, as if he were being crucified in his turn by doubt. I stepped towards him, and he turned to Letitia, pleading. She stepped back, glanced at me, her face a pale blank, and with a mere flick of movement, like a fish darting through a strong current, she pulled out a blade and thrust it once, twice, into Dardi's ribs and held it there as his own knife dropped from his hand and he sank down to his knees and then backwards, arms still out, until he lay, legs twisted beneath him, a failed pieta. Letitia pulled out her knife with a grunt, squatted and wiped it on his jutting belly, took a deep breath, and turned to me. She had clamped her lower lip between her teeth.

'I was hoping you would do that’ she said at last, after we had regarded each other for a silent eternity.

I lowered the spearhead very slowly. What… what the fuck is going on?' I rasped, mouth as dry as desert sand.

Wait!' she said, holding up a finger. Turning in a flounce of skirts she ran lightly down the aisle and shut the door. Locking it, she held up the key to me. Then she walked briskly back into the sanctuary.

'Right. What are you doing here?' she said. 'And, love, put that thing down. Is it really the… holy Spear, or whatever?'

'I don't know. I mean, what… Look, could you put your knife down as well?'

She looked down at her hand, all bloody up to the wrist, as if in surprise.

'Oh. This is yours,' she said, and held out the knife to me, hilt first. Through the darkening blood I saw that the hilt was carved from green stone. I took it, mute with shock. Letitia handed me the scabbard.

'Right. I came to kill him, and to nick something. What's the most valuable thing in here?' I looked at her, slack-jawed.

'I said, Devonshire, what's the most valuable thing in this place? You know, don't you: that's why you came here.'

'Um.' I gave Thorn another wipe, sheathed her and tucked her into my belt. 'It's… it's not what's valuable that counts.' Inside, I was screaming to myself: She has the key! She has the bloody key!

'Listen. I just saved your life – not for the first time either. Be nice to me, all right?' 'Letitia…'

'Oh, and my name's not Letitia. Bloody Letitia. It's Letice. Letice Londeneyse, sometimes called Letice Pyefote. You'd better tell me yours now.' 'Petrus – Petroc. Petroc of Auneford.'

We were watching one another, panting as if we had just wrestled. I tore my eyes away and looked around the room. Dardi's sprawled body was taking up most of the sanctuary floor. There were scattered reliquaries everywhere. I decided that it might be possible to get out of here free and more or less alive.

Why did you…' I began, jerking my head towards the corpse.

'Messer Nicholas… Listen, I am a whore, Master Petroc. Actually, a courtesan, as they say in Venice. Messer Nicholas is tired of me. He planned to give me to that fat fucker, that stinking, slobbering hog, and make me live out my days on some island he owns: a bare rock in the middle of nowhere. I wasn't going to do it. Dardi likes – liked – to give a woman pain, before, during and after. I wouldn't've lasted a year – Nicholas knew that, by the way.'

I looked at her closely. She seemed quite at ease with what she had done, but not happy: it did not seem to have filled her with that seething joy I had seen possess some after they had killed or maimed. She seemed weary, and businesslike. Upper lip curling a little, she gave me back my look.

'Listen to me,' I said. 'I came to get three things. Christ's Sandals, which I have. The Maphorion of the Theotokos – Mary's Robe. And something called the Mandylion of Edessa. They're on a list, an old inventory that I have, and they aren't on the emperor's own list – nor's that spear, and I am keeping it. As he's about to flog the whole lot off to your Master Nicholas, I thought I'd take them for my own…' I was going to say master, but it did not seem right. 'Help me look, would you? There are pictures on the boxes, to help nice thieves like us.'

In truth I was feeling almost light-headed, for here I was, more or less trapped in the second holiest place in the world with a dead man and a strange woman with warm blood on her hands. For a moment I felt like an alchemist's transmutation, something sealed in an alembic, changing into… what? Not a corpse, if I could help it.

There's a lovely little virgin on this one’ Letice was saying. 'Shall I open it?'

'No! There's blood on your hands. I mean, let me. We don't want to leave traces.'

'Traces! What about him over there?' She jerked her head at the dead man.

I pointed to the window. 'Do not ask. We will do it.' I opened the chest, and two more within, until I found a small, flat casket of solid gold adorned with lapis lazuli. Inside was a square of linen or some such cloth; a plain, faded maroon, but with a faintly golden sheen. It was much folded, and I did not dare to probe further in case it was fragile. There's a lot of towels in this one’ called Letice.

'I told you, don't touch anything!' I hissed. I tucked the gold casket into my bag and went over to investigate.

'But it's all dry now, the blood’ she was protesting. 'Anyway, I only touched the chest.'

Those, I will hazard, are the grave-clothes of Our Lord’ I said, peering in.

'Bloody hell!' she squeaked, jerking back and sitting down hard on the floor.

'Squeamish, are you?' I said bitterly. I did not want to touch these things myself, but, I reasoned, how many yards of Christ's shrouds already existed, out there in the world of the credulous? Enough to make sails for the English fleet, for sure. Still, I winced as I thrust my hands into the folds, but all was clean and dry. A faint smell of myrrh drifted up, nothing more.

'God, you're fishing around in there as if it were bed linen’ said Letice. 'Oh – there's a picture in this one.'

I looked over. She was holding up an icon, a big square of silver with a shape cut out of the middle, through which two dim, ancient eyes peered out. Letice's own blue eyes regarded me over the top.

'That might be the Mandyion,' I said, shutting the lid gratefully on the shrouds. What's a Mandylion, then?'

'Supposed to be a holy image, on a cloth, made into an icon. Can I have a look?'

The thing was very old. It looked older than the dead things I had seen in the hold of the Cormaran, but more alive, for the face, hollow-cheeked and thin of lip, seemed to appraise me with gloomy indifference.

‘It might be,' I said. 'It must be.' I touched the face, very gently. Smooth paint, and the faintest ripple of woven threads beneath.

Well, this is the last one. Doesn't look like much,' she added. I heard the creak of a lid and the click as it closed. What was it?' I asked over my shoulder.

'You said not to touch,' she said, coolly. 'Anyhow, it was just a big box, no gold or anything. Just wood.'

I was ready to leave with this thing I held, for at last I had found something that felt at least worthy of veneration in this storehouse of forgeries. As real, anyway, as the Crown, but not half as terrible. Still, another minute would not harm us, for dawn was still, I judged, an hour or two away. I knelt down and opened the chest, and tugged out the box inside. It was as plain as she had said, made of some scented wood that still felt a little oily to the touch. I opened it. Inside was another folded square of linen, and on it a painted face.