Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

Well, hold the thing so that the needle points to here. That should be the right course’ he said impatiently. 'Do you think you can do that?' I asked Letice.

'Suppose so’ she muttered. I gave her the compass box and whispered Michael's instructions: keep your heading dead on south-south-east. She gave a little sigh of incomprehension, so I showed her how to keep the needle steady and line up the right arrow on the wind-rose with the bowsprit. Grateful, perhaps, for something useful to do, she hunkered down and threw the blanket I offered around her, blotting out the ghost-gleam of her yellow hair. I trimmed the sail while Michael and the old man settled themselves in the stern. I called softly to the shadow of the girl, and she held up a hand.

'Steer left’ she hissed. Smiling to myself, I let out the sail until the prow came around and the girl's hand went down. The water began to shush and crackle against the planks and we were away, sailing on a broad reach through the dark sea. I hoped Letice Londeneyse – or Pyefote, or whatever her name really was – had her eyes on the sea as well as the compass, for a floating log or spar would wreck a little boat like this in a trice. Yet as we rushed on, as the sail cupped the chill easterly breeze and the narrow hull jumped and skittered across the catspaws, I felt more free than I had since first setting eyes on Byzantium. Orion hung above us, his shimmering belt pointing the way to Sirius, low in the sky in the south-east. Letice Londeneyse could ruin her sight, staring at the all-but-invisible compass needle, but I would go by Sirius. The Dog Star, at least, I could trust. No bells were ringing in the city behind us, but I judged that we were somewhere around the second hour of the morning. There was a fair wind now, and we were scudding along through white curls of foam. Nothing showed ahead save the night. And so we sailed, another hour, another, and then another. A faint purple line showed between land and sky to the north, and then the land showed itself, undulating low hills, still nothing more than shadows. As the light waxed, so the wind fell, and tendrils of mist began to creep across the sea, until we were passing silently through thick, cold fog. It was dark again now, and I heard – I could not see – Letice swear nastily and call to me to turn right. The fog seeped into me, and my hands, one on the tiller, one on the mainsheet, began to ache. Only the pitching of the boat, and the pull of the mainsheet, told me that we were still moving. I began to wonder how near the land had been.

And then the dawn returned. At first it was a cold glow, weak as waning moonbeams. But it warmed, and became golden, like honey poured into milk, until we were sailing through pure radiance. I let out a great sigh, and in the bow the girl held up her hands and laughed, deep and happy and full of relief. The tiller jerked in my hand, the sail snapped and filled, and all at once we leaped forward, the wind strong at our backs, and the fog began to rise from the sea. Like a veil lifted from a chalice, the white pall ascended, hovered for an instant high above the masthead, was caught by the breeze and blew away, breaking up and vanishing southwards. The sea spread out around us, flat, ruffled here and there by the breath of the wind. The coast was half a mile off our starboard side, flat land rising to dry, arid hills, near enough to see the pale line where the waves washed the rocks clean, and white buildings, first just dots, like scurf on the fur of an old brown dog, that grew with the coming light into cottages, houses, a church. And all of them deserted, I said to myself.

'Ship ho!' cried the girl, throwing out her arm. The blanket whipped from her shoulders and flew over the rail into the sea, but she seemed not to notice. For there before us, shaking the last rags of fog from its topmast, a ship, a big, high-prowed ship, was ploughing through the swell. ‘Is it them?' I asked aloud.

'How the fuck should I know?' answered Letice, quick as lightning.

It was a merchantman, perhaps Genoese, a round-ship somewhat resembling the Cormaran but smaller and with the bulk of an overfed pony. The red and white flag of Pisa fluttered from the mast head. There were figures on the deck, sailors going about their morning chores. We were rushing towards each other now, on opposite reaches. On our present course they would pass a bow's shot away to starboard. Letice looked over her shoulder, her face white and anxious. She pointed again, in case I hadn't seen the ship. I nodded, and trimmed the sail. I could see faces now, too far away still to make out individual features. I wondered briefly if this was the right ship; if it might be a trap. But no: either it was the envoys vessel or just another merchant, I reasoned, and feeling reassured, I pulled the boat as tight to the wind as she would go, the sail taut and humming, the little craft seething through the chop. Our prow was now aimed squarely at the rudder of the merchantman. A tall man appeared at the rail of the steering deck, and then two more beside him. I took a deep breath, pulled the boat's head to the wind and jumped to drop the sail before it began to luff and drag. We were drifting now, still moving fast. Letice shot me another look, worried this time, and began to clamber aft towards me. I began to steer us alongside, but we were still a slingshot from the ship when a loud snap rang out. Letice flinched and I looked up in time to see a great flag reach the limit of its unfurling from the stern rigging, a bedsheet of deepest blue constellated with golden lilies, the bed linen of the King of France himself.

I let out a great huzzah, and the girl cringed, thinking perhaps that I had been struck by an arrow. But I whooped again and waved my free hand in a delirium. Mesarites looked at me as if I had gone mad, but Michael Scot put a comforting arm around his shoulders.

It's all right!' I yelled to them. It is all right! We are saved!' With a flourish that I would have been ashamed of at another time, I rammed over the tiller and let the boat slide broadside on towards the French ship. The moment of ecstasy I had felt as we sailed came back to me tenfold, a hundredfold, and I forgot all about the terrors of the last days. Another moment, and our boat came to rest gently against its salty planking. I looked up into the sun-haloed face of a deck-hand. A rope-end landed on the deck. The girl grabbed it, paused, and brought it over to me. I gave it a tug and pulled it tight. Up you go,' I said to her. She looked more worried than ever, her upper lip clamped between her teeth and her eyes wide and black. I took her hand gently and laid it upon the rope.

'Do not worry’ I said. 'Go: climb up. You are safe, I swear on my life.' She stared hard into my eyes, set her mouth into a hard line and gave a curt nod. Grabbing the rope, she jumped and, fast as any deep-water sailor, swarmed up and over the rail. I threw the painter after her, hauled my pack on to my shoulders and climbed up in my turn. Strong hands grabbed me as I came level with the deck, and for a horrible instant my fears crowded back, but the next moment I was set upon my feet and steadied, as I rummaged for the pope's letter and tried to hide my tears from the wind-burned men around me: tears of joy, of relief and resurrection. I had not noticed how beaten about I had become until I was seated under an awning, reclining Moorish-fashion upon rugs and cushions, Letice nearby, swathed in a fur cloak, for although the day was growing warm, in the shadows it was winter. Michael Scot and Mesarites were nowhere to be seen. Without the pressing need to survive, to crawl, to steal, to sail a bloody boat, my body was under no compunction to pretend it was anything other than very damaged. My face still throbbed and burned where Hughues the chamberlain had struck me, there was at least one broken rib in my chest, I was more than half-starved, and I could not remember the last time I had slept. The captain of the ship, a Genoese, as I had guessed, had summoned the barber, who had insisted on cleaning the suppurating gashes across my face at once, and had complimented me upon my brace of black eyes; and only then did I realise that, far from the handsome young fellow I had assumed myself still to be – we all allow ourselves such vanities, do we not, when mirrors are not to hand? – I was a scarred, pustular ghoul. No wonder Letice Londeneyse had been so quick to believe that I was indeed the Gurt Dog of Balecester, and great wonder that she had not knifed me out of hand when she had had the chance. Now she was eating quail and watching me from under her heavy-lidded eyes with what might have been amusement or indeed disgust. For I myself was addressing the victuals before me with all the refinement of a jackal, grease and wine dripping from me like blood. The Genoese captain was also watching me, a curious but polite smile upon his face. When I had finished, when my bruised belly could take no more and I felt more like the sun-bloated carcass of a seal than a man, he stood up and beckoned reverently to someone out on the deck. Two figures ducked under the awning and lowered themselves carefully on to the rug. Shielding my eyes with a greasy hand, I beheld two tonsured men dressed in the black and white garb of the Dominican order. One man was of medium height, well-fed and smooth-cheeked: an infant's visage, in fact, were it not for the broken veins in his nose that spoke of a fondness for wine. His fellow was taller and lean. He had the sunken cheeks and hollow eyes of an ascetic. No wine for this one, I guessed: nor pork chops neither.