Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

I nodded, trying to look cold and uninterested. Jacopo wasted no more time. He spun on his heel and led us into the castle. I was suddenly overcome by the urge to draw my sword and divide the fat little man down the centre, but I resisted it.

'How many men does your garrison number?' I asked, in what I hoped was a bored voice. I was not permitting myself the smallest morsel of hope, for false hope is a greater affliction than no hope at all. 'Five’ said Jacopo over his shoulder. 'And ten Greek lads – but they are all down in the village today, for they are celebrating one of their vile, schismatic holy days tomorrow’

We passed through the hall, where a great fireplace adorned with the Querini shield had yet to be swept. Then we climbed, first one straight stair, then a winding one. I had expected us to descend, for were not prisoners kept in dungeons? But perhaps new castles did not have dungeons. I glanced at Letice, but she was staring at Jacopo's quivering backside, a dangerous blankness upon her face. The memory of Dardi's shocked face came back to me, and I prayed silently that she was not planning some new revenge, for this was her world and I knew almost nothing about it, nor what she might be capable of.

'Here we are!' panted Jacopo at last. We must have reached the very top of the castle, for there were no more stairs, and we stood on a landing with two closed doors facing us. A rush lamp was burning down in a sconce. Jacopo turned a key and opened the nearest door. The room was small, but the walls were newly whitewashed, and the low winter sun was slanting in through the narrow window. It was far from a dungeon, but there was something cold and desperate about it: something dead. There were no furnishings of any sort save for a straw pallet on the tiled floor under the window. And upon it a naked man lay stretched out upon his belly, one hand lolling, palm up and fingers limp, upon the tiles. Letice stayed Jacopo and I with an imperious raised finger, walked briskly across the room and squatted down before the man. She reached down and grabbed a handful of his iron-grey hair and raised his head, but I could not see the face, for it was hidden by her thigh.

Letice dropped the lolling head and, straightening, she turned to Jacopo.

‘It is he,' she said. You may leave us alone with him. We will ask some questions and, depending upon the answers – if answers there be – Signor Petrus will take the wretch onwards with him to Venice’

Jacopo beamed and almost leaped from the room, closing the door after him. As soon as the latch clicked I hurled myself over to the pallet and dropped to the floor beside Letice. The man’s face was sunk into the straw. I reached for him, then paused. His back was a contorted mass of scabs, some crusted over, some pink and suppurating, that roiled over the livid skin like a tangle of lobworms. There was a heavy stench of piss and spoiled meat. But the shoulders rose and fell faintly, so I swallowed and, wincing, gently rolled the head over.

Captain de Montalhac licked his blistered lips and his eyelids fluttered, but both eyes were bruised black and swollen shut. Dried blood had blocked both nostrils. But he breathed, he lived. I had held the things that witnessed the Resurrection of Our Lord in my hands, but they had been dumb. The dead are dead, and they do not return. The bones of Constantinople's Greeks; the withered clay of the relics I had stolen and sold; Anna… they would not come back. It is not the dead who are abandoned, it is the living. But I had been alone, and now the Captain had returned to me. I bent down and kissed his brow.

'Patch?' he said, although it was no more than a sigh, and I had to lean so close that I felt his breath flutter upon my ear. 'Patch? They have you.' He seemed to go limp, and I took his shoulder and shook it gently, urgently.

'No, Master,' I whispered, smoothing the matted hair away from his burning forehead. 'I have come for you. You are safe.'

'They have the letter,' he said suddenly, clearly, his good eye opening very wide.

'No, no!' I exclaimed. ‘I have it. And more. Let us be gone from here. Can you rise?'

He tried to roll himself over, but could not. Taking off my cloak, I draped it carefully over his wounded back, pushed my arm under his shoulder and tried to heave him up, but he was heavy. 'Letice,' I called softly, 'can you persuade friend Jacopo to call out the guards? We must bring my master to the ship’ She gazed at me for a second, eyes narrowed, then nodded and went to the door. She left the room and I heard her voice, raised and hectoring, and Jacopo's, wheedling and then relieved; and then the sound of feet on stone stairs. Letice peered around the door.

'He will fetch them, and a litter’ she said. 'He's fucking delighted to be rid of your master, so if we play it very fine, I believe we will be away from here without any trouble.’ She came and knelt beside me. 'Jacopo is a fool, but not much of one. He hates this island, for he misses Venice and his bum-boys. It is my guess he had nothing to do with this -' and she laid her hand gently upon the Captain's matted head. It looked very long and white against the blood-seized ropes of black and grey – 'for he is not cruel, merely greedy. He fears Dardi above all things, and believes that your master will die, and that Dardi will want to make someone's flesh suffer as a consequence – Jacopo's flesh, I mean. If we do not push him I think he will believe what he wishes to believe.' She gazed down at the Captain and crossed herself slowly. 'The guards did this, I expect. Nicholas would not soil his hands. But he finds it a simple matter to squeeze cruelty out of others,' she muttered, and her shoulders stiffened for a moment. Footsteps sounded upon the stair.

The guards – the young lad from the gatehouse and three others, stubbly and hungover Venetian stevedores, by the looks of them – heaved the Captain on to a stretcher and, cursing, manhandled him down the stairs. It seemed to take hours, and I was terrified that they would drop him, but in the end we reached the hall, and they dumped their burden down upon the dining table.

'Did he come with any effects – clothes, documents, the like?' I asked Jacopo. He considered for a moment, bustled away and came back a while later, bearing a dark bundle. Although the cloth was filthy, I recognized the black damask of the robe he had worn the day he left Constantinople.

And the rest?' I snapped. Jacopo, clearly expecting to be praised, cringed a little and shook his head.

'Nothing, Signor,' he said. 'He came ashore in these clothes

I did not believe him, but the men-at-arms had stopped panting like blown carthorses, and we must needs be gone from here. I snapped my fingers as I hoped Facio might do, and the Captain was heaved up on to four shoulders and carried, wreathed in muttered curses, out of the hall and out of the Castle of Stampalia. Down through the narrow, winding alleys of the village, down through the olive trees, past the fishermen, who averted their eyes this time. The stretcher was edged on to the jolly-boat, and I began to help Letice aboard.

'Signora Letitia, where are you going?' Jacopo whined. He was dancing from foot to foot, as if in dire need of a piss.

'To give Signor Petrus his instructions, and to pay the ship's master,' she snapped. 'I have dealt with too many fools already today,' she added dangerously, 'to imagine that Messer Nicholas' instructions will be carried out merely because I wish them to be. I will send Petrus on his way and then come back to deal with things here. You will await me at the castle.' And with that she snapped her fingers at the oarsmen, and I pushed the little boat off the shingle and vaulted over the gunwale as the oars bit and we began to surge seawards. Jacopo watched us, still doing his dance of indecision, while the soldiers turned and began to trudge up the beach. Letice and I steadied the Captain, and as the swell took the boat and the oars began to kick up spray, he turned his head to me and opened his eye. We regarded each other for a while, silently, and then he took a great lungful of the cold, brine-sharpened air. The corners of his mouth turned up, perhaps, a fraction, and he laid his hand upon mine. I looked at Letice. She was watching the Captain, her white face tight with a bitter sympathy.