Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

We will show them’ he muttered, rummaging in my sea-chest and pulling out a handful of bright silk, at the sight of which my heart lurched.

It had been a gift from Anna. She had bought them for me in Bruges: a tunic of white damask, striped with black and gold, with sleeves that tapered to hug the forearm; a sleeveless tunic of the sort called cycladibus, cut from a rich bronze silk ringed from neck to hem with broad bands of deepest midnight blue. The hem itself was scalloped and, like the neck, edged with bronze ribbon, and it was very – indeed immodestly – short. Then there was a pair of hose the hue of very old clary wine, woven so that, although all of one shade, they appeared striped; and a coif of saffron-coloured linen, worked at the edges with silver thread. That night I had worn my Venetian finery for the first and only time, feeling horribly aware that my calves, resplendent in their striped hose, were on display. The height of fashion it might be, but I was more comfortable in the kind of things a rich Devon farmer might wear to Totnes Market. Soon afterwards we had set out for London, and soon after that the time for fine clothes was past. And yet Zianni had unerringly pulled out every item that Anna had selected for me. Perhaps it was a sign. Trying hard to banish the pain of memory, I dressed myself, and buckled on Thorn, my jade-handled Moorish dagger. Zianni sat back and whistled appreciatively.

'Que bella figura! Almost a Venetian, my dearest shepherd. I will have to dig deep to best you, but I shall, never fear!'

I will admit that I had no fears on that account, for when I descended to find the others I saw that Zianni had rigged himself up in an even more preposterous bedizenment. His hose were flame-coloured and he was within two inches of exposing his knees to the gaze of all, and his own cycladibus blazed in shifting hues of red: blood, rubies, fire. I could barely look at him.

'Do you like the colour?' he asked me, as one dandy to another. 'It is called sakarlat – Persian, you know.'

'Very nice’ I replied, glancing at the Captain, who honoured me with the ghost of a wink. As ever, he was dressed in plain black. Horst, dowdy, German and impatient, snorted. 'Time to drink’ he said.

We made an amen and strutted down to the street door. 'I hope no one laughs at my legs’ I muttered to the Captain.

He led us under a low archway, so low that I could feel my head brushing against the moss that grew beneath it, and into a narrow street lined with stone colonnades. The sun had almost set, but in here it was already night. Like everything else here, the buildings seemed to be sinking into the soft earth, and when we came to the door of the inn I realised that this place had once been at the level of the street, but was now all but underground. Following my friends, I found myself in a long room made of stone, great, honey-coloured blocks of it, lit everywhere by oil lamps and tapers, and by a fire that burned, festooned with cook pots and loaded spits, in a huge fireplace. There were people everywhere, making a great and lusty noise. The owner, a villainous fellow with close-cropped hair and a much-broken beak of a nose, gave a genuinely reverent bow when he saw us, and ploughed through his customers to seize the Captain in his arms and plant two fervent kisses upon his cheeks. Then, giving the rest of us a regal nod, he led us to an empty table over against the far wall, and sent over three surly pot-boys to ask our pleasure. I was feeling almost faint with hunger, and with the shock of being outside and in Rome, and so when a boy brought over a hot, greasy pie filled with what proved to be peppery, vinegary tripe I wolfed the thing down, felt slightly sick, and leaned back against the cool stone wall. Life began to ebb back into me, and after a few minutes spent watching the comings and goings around us, I was ready to join in.

The evening flowed happily on from there. It emerged that our host had once served in the Captain's company, although long before the time of any of us present – before, if such a time were imaginable, the Cormaran herself had first set sail. But the man, who delighted in the name of Marcho Antonio Marso, was plainly still a confidant of his old captain, for after we had been shown our table the two of them vanished into a back room together, and emerged a little while later with the intent look that comes after a deep conversation. Business, I imagined, and why not? Marcho Antonio kept a fine house. The wine was good, if somewhat sweet, and the food was abundant and tasty. I was beginning to gather that the Romans liked to eat every last bit of their beasts, from snout to ballocks, and indeed I had eaten both snout and ballock, I believe, by the time I was sated. I leaned on my elbows, picking at a dish of rice balls stuffed with cheese, watching the crowd ebb and flow and listening absently to my friends.

Zianni was explaining the finer points of Venetian etiquette to the Captain, and to Horst, who seemed to have fallen in love with a tart called Clementia he had met the day before. He had described her every charm to me at least six times already since we had left the palazzo. I thought of Anna, of course, but trying to banish such thoughts I pushed my chair back on its hind legs and stretched noisily. And in another instant I was scrabbling at the table as a jolt of shocked surprise sent me off balance.

For two men, soldiers by their weathered faces and cropped heads, had appeared behind Zianni and were looming over him, hands to the hilts of their swords. Between them appeared, as if by a mountebank's trick, another face. It was young, very young: a boy's face, smooth and slack, as if the puppet-strings that life weaves behind our visages had not yet taken hold there. I will call him a boy for that is how he always seemed, although when I first saw him he was in his twentieth year, married and already provided with a son and heir. He met my eyes, and smiled. His hands squeezed Zianni's shoulders and he looked down at the Venetian's coiffed head.

Well met indeed, Jean de Sol,' he said. Zianni sat, a marble idol of himself.

'Have a care, my lord huntsman, before you blow your horn,' said the Captain evenly. 'Do not sound the kill, for you do not have your prey, nor even know him.' Then he turned to me. 'Do you know what manner of man stands before us?' he asked. It was not a question I could answer at that moment, for I swung, unbalanced, between the safety of the table and the unknown void behind me, my right hand – even while my left hand reached for the table's edge – grasping the cool stone of Thorn's hilt. The Captain took my flailing hand and pulled me upright. In answer to his question I shook my head, never taking my eyes from the stranger's face. 'Not a man at all, in fact,' said the Captain. With a touch of his finger on my hand he pushed Thorn back into her sheath. The whole place had suddenly fallen silent, and with an almost painful surge of relief I heard her neat little click. 'No, not a man. And not merely a boy. This is an emperor’

The emperor blinked. He had large blue eyes that looked neither innocent nor malign; rather, they were the guileful eyes of a spoiled child forever trying to get his own way. I was staring full into them. He blinked again. I did not.

'Emperor of where?’ Horst asked the Captain, taking no pains to keep the rudeness from his voice.

Now the boys hand was on his sword – he was wearing a short sword, I now noticed, and so were his two men, and their hands were ready too. Horst had pushed his chair against the wall. Zianni's knuckles were white as he gripped the table's edge. The Captain looked past me and raised a casual finger, as if calling for another jug of wine.

'To your left, my lord Emperor’ he said. We all looked. The proprietor was leaning calmly on the marble counter, aiming a small crossbow steadily at the boy in green. The three pot-boys had cleared the floor and faced our table, legs apart, one holding an iron mace, one weighing a cudgel and one slowly swinging a gigantic falchion. The Captain turned back to me. I felt him release my knife hand. 'You were saying, Horst?' he said. ‘I merely asked, emperor of where?' he replied thinly.