Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

Except that it was not painted. It looked as if someone had just, in the last few seconds, drawn upon the cloth with water, for the image was a stain, I decided. Or a painting in blood – no, not blood. What… what would Gilles use, for authenticity? But it looked like fresh water, just now soaking into the weave, with darker flecks of blood about the nose and forehead. The face was like that in. the icon, but more alive, even though it was formed out of nothing but stains and suggestions. A young man with a beard, a long face, flowing hair and wide-set eyes that were nothing but smudges, but which held my gaze. I slammed the lid shut.

It's this one’ I croaked. The face still hung in the air before me, like a ghost. It was a ghost, I realised: the artist, or whoever – I bit back hard on the thought of whatever – had somehow imprisoned a phantom in the weave of the cloth. I imagined it hanging there, folded in on itself, like smoke, like a shoal of fish hanging motionless in clear water. I set down what I had thought was the Mandylion. It suddenly seemed as crude a thing as I might have painted in an idle afternoon aboard the Cormaran. 'Let us leave now’

We tidied up as best we could, put everything back in its place, and turned our attentions to the corpse. Dardi had hardly bled, and most of it had gone on Letice. We dragged him over behind the altar, Letice grabbing an arm without a word or a grimace. I told her to climb up through the window and on to the roof, and watched her haunches, bare under her dress, struggle up past Our Lord's face, her skin pale and alive against the balefully glowing, painted flesh. It occurred to me, too late, that she might just pull the rope out with her and leave me to be flayed, but after she had squeezed through the window, sending whispered curses flying like bats around the rafters, and disappeared, the rope stayed where it was and gave a companionable jerk when I pulled upon it.

I tied the end around Dardi's chest so that the knot lay against his throat. Then I pinched out the last candle and pulled myself, hand over hand, up the wall. It was easier getting out than in, after I had sent my pack through first and hung it from one of the iron spikes in the wall outside, useful after all. I climbed stiffly up to the roof and laid the pack down next to Letice, who was lying flat on the tiles, her chin on her hands, which were gripping the edge. 'Right, now for Dardi’ I told her.

I had not really had a plan, and it turned out that heaving a large dead man up a wall and through a window was not an easy task for two people, let alone a half-starved, battered man and a maid. But heave we did, and because I had hauled up many sails and anchors in my time it was not so very hard, except when the wretch jammed himself in the window. I had to take the slack out of the rope, climb down and wrestle him through, scrabbling at his clothing and manhandling his shoulders around so that he was propped at a diagonal, his head dangling, tongue clamped between blood-black teeth, above the drop. Then, feet on both sides of the window, I jerked and strained until, like a breech-birthed calf, he slipped out and fell for a moment before the rope brought him up and he swung, slowly. I got a good grip with one hand, drew out Thorn and cut him down. He landed with a ripe but brittle crash and rolled down on to the rocks. After that it was simple enough to jam the grille back into the window and prop the slate up in front of it. I helped Letice over the edge and on to the ladder and followed her down in silence. She let me heave Dardi into the sea and launch the little boat. The ladders I smashed with a stone and scattered. When the pack was placed safely in the bows I turned to help her aboard.

She was kneeling at the water’s edge, on a flat rock whose sea-lapped edge was encrusted, jewel-like, with sea-anemones. Her hands, palm to palm, hovered before her face, and her curving thumbs met the curved tip of her nose. I left her to her prayers and sat, fending off the boat, my spirit surging and lapping like the water. I felt relief, somewhat. I was tired, very tired. My injuries had stopped hurting very badly, so perhaps they were not so bad. Or perhaps I was just dying.

Letice dropped her hands at last, as the most grudging hint of light showed itself, moiled in cloud, in the far east. She stood up stiffly and tottered a little. Then she bent down again and washed her hands. Will that make amends?' she asked. 'No’ I said, without thinking. ‘I didn't think so. I was very jolly in there, while I was damning myself. What about you? Aren't you bothered?' I shrugged, with an unconcern I did not feel. ‘I do it for a living,' I muttered.

'Listen, Petroc. I'm coming with you now. And I want us to be safe. There's things we need to be safe from, yes? I've… you've seen something that I've done, something dreadful. So you have power over me.' I shook my head. 'I don't care.'

'No. Do not make this a game. You are the kind of soul that can lie, and hurt, and come up smelling like a field of flowers. Tell me something. Give me some power over you, so we can be alike.'

I looked at her face. The light was flat and thin, but at least there was light, and it glimmered upon the flare of her nose and her upper lip that seemed, all of a sudden, like the bud of an apple-flower about to bloom.

'My name is Petroc of Auneford. I am called Patch. I am also the man they are calling the Gurt Dog of Balecester. They sing songs about me in London. Perhaps even in Smooth Field.' I looked at her. She cocked a fair eyebrow. Then she smiled, and then laughter was spilling up out of her, incredulous, amazed. You're not!' she said.

There was little strength left in my shoulders, and I stopped rowing when the little boat was safely away from the rocks. After I had hauled up the mast and secured it with pins and wedge, I raised the sail. It hung, a triangle of black against the brighter, star-sown blackness of the sky, as if I had torn the firmament itself. But the breeze, offshore as Michael had promised, licked at it tentatively and then filled it, so that the halyard creaked and the mainsheet grew taut in my hands.

It took little time to sail the quarter-mile or so back to where Michael Scot stood waiting with the stooped figure of the old Greek at his side. He took a step back when he saw that I had a companion with me, but I waved my arms to signal all was well, and, leaving the girl crouched in the prow, I jumped ashore.

'Do not worry, Doctor,' I assured him. We do not have time to explain. She will not trouble us, though, I do not think.'

Michael Scot was not convinced, but he had little choice in the matter, and between us we helped Mesarites aboard. He was much frailer than I had thought, and light as a child, and I lifted him clean off his feet and planted him amidships. Doctor Scot seemed as quietly proficient with boats as he was with all other things, and soon we were under way. What do you wish me to do?' I asked Scot, for the wind was freshening and the sail had started to fret. He reached into his pack and produced a small dark cube.

'I have a compass’ he said. 'The French ship is sailing here straight from the Dardanelles, so that in order to intercept her we should be on a heading of…'

'Good Doctor, the Sea of Marmara must be fifteen leagues across!' I protested. 'How do you expect to meet one ship in that great expanse of water?'

'if you hold this heading -' and he rattled off a string of numbers that meant nothing to me – 'by my calculations we will be in the middle of the sea roads from the Hellespont to Constantinople. They are narrow and not well travelled in this season. I'll wager the French ship will be the only one abroad upon the face of the waters. We will find her, if you can hold the heading.' And again he pronounced his tangle of numbers. I confessed that I had no idea what he was talking about.