Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

They were making a meal of it, the bridge-men. It would be minutes yet before anyone could cross safely. And the street behind me was filling up with Venetians, chattering and squawking at each other like a flock of gaudy starlings. I glanced back and saw that the square was bursting with a crowd anxious to cross over to San Polo and too idle or poor to pay for the ferry, which in any case was lurking on the far side, its boatman too lazy or spiteful to row through the waves. Then I saw the follower: a flash of cowslip silk at the corner of an old church.

Frantically I pushed my way to the front of the crowd, past more quarrelsome tarts and some young rakes in garish striped hose. Another glance behind me: the follower was at the last corner before the street opened on to the waterfront and as I watched began to shove forward, not caring any longer if I noticed. In front of me the bridge-men had got their bucking pontoons under some degree of mastery and were heaving the two sides towards each other. Two yards of fretting green water separated them. I saw very clearly what I would do next, and it surprised me so much that my head had no time to argue with my legs. That was fortunate, as they had begun to sprint at full tilt over the flagstones and on to the heaving, slippery planks of the bridge. Suddenly I felt weightless as the wooden causeway yielded beneath me, banging with every footfall. I might as well be running on the waves themselves. The bridge-men's mouths were hanging open like empty feed-bags.

'Keep pulling those fucking ropes,' I yelled in English. The bouncing of the planks was forcing my knees up into my chest as I ran and I knew I would fall if I slowed even a little. But I would have to plant my feet for the leap. The ropes were slack in the hands of the bridge-man, who was fighting to keep his balance, and as I crashed towards him he dropped them and grabbed at me. I saw his huge hands in front of my face and open water ahead and then suddenly, incredibly, I was in the air. The other bridge-man stepped aside and I was across, skipping like a stone along the twisting, rearing causeway. I had solid ground beneath my feet when I staggered to a halt and turned to see one bridge-man in the canal, his mate heaving him towards the planks, and a cheering, jeering crowd on the other side. The two halves of the bridge were drifting apart once more. And there, fists on hips at the edge of the water, a slight young man in a wondrously shimmering tunic of yellow Venetian silk.

For a moment I felt as light-hearted as a child who has scored some little victory over a rival. I wanted nothing more than to taunt my follower, but crushed that urge and instead slipped into the nearest side street. I was beginning to get the hang of the city, and allowed myself to become half-lost, all the while heading roughly northwards, checking at every corner for any sign of pursuit. But there was none, and soon I began searching for the Campo San Cassiano, which was not too hard, for I followed the most furtive-looking men, and soon I was back in the square of brothels, where the tarts were still touting their wares, and the men were still gazing aloft, rapt, as if God and his angels were descending from the heavens.

The hunchback let me in to The Trapped Eel, and I hurried upstairs to find Letice. ‘I’ve been followed’ I told her breathlessly. 'Here?' Her voice was sharp.

'No, no.' I told her what had happened, and how foolish my pursuer had looked, stranded on the wrong side of the canal.

'Describe him’ she demanded. I did, as much as I could: blond, fresh-faced, a dandy.

'Sounds like Righi’ she said, scowling. 'One of the Querini bravoes. You were marked, all right. And they did not follow you here? You are sure?'

I was, for I had been taught well in such villains' crafts these last few years. 'He was making it bloody obvious’ I added.

Well, he is not the cleverest of God's creations’ said Letice. 'But even so…'

She was interrupted by a clamour from downstairs, men's voices raised in anger, and women's shrieks. Letice rubbed her cheeks in vexation. 'This bloody place’ she muttered. What is it?'

'Drunken men in too much of a hurry to get their eels trapped’ said the girl wryly. 'It is always so. Do not worry. Luchas the Hunchback will see to them – beat their brains out, most likely. Christ, I hope we do not have to stay here long.'

But the noise did not abate. It grew in ferocity, until I opened the door and stuck my head out on to the landing. We were four flights up, but I could hear doors being hammered upon, and outraged cries from disturbed revellers.

'Something's wrong’ I said. 'Quick – is there another way out?' Letice shook her head. I could see a blue vein darken in her temple, so pale had she become.

'One staircase. The roof – too far to leap to the next building.'

I looked out of the window. It was a long drop into a narrow canal, and who knew how deep it might be? No escape there.

We'll have to go down’ I told her. 'Perhaps they won't recognise us. Because it must be Querini's men, mustn't it? Quick – tie up your hair, and… and put these on.' I picked up my travelling clothes from the floor and flung them on to the bed. She looked at me for an instant, about to speak, and then in one motion she turned her back on me and pulled her robe up over her shoulders. I caught no more than a glimpse of her long back, as white and supple as cream poured out from a ewer, before I wrenched my head away. When I turned back, she was draped in the ugly, salt-stained things of black fustian, busily stuffing her tresses into my dark coif. But such thoughts I had had meanwhile, thoughts I could not keep away, that had swarmed and bitten like midges, a thousand tiny ghosts that were the shards of one shattered spirit. How I loathed this room.

Take this’ I said, unhooking Thorn from my belt and holding out the hilt to her. She reached for it, and stopped. ‘You take it’ she said.

'No. You. I am… I'm stronger than you. The knife will make us equal’ She bit her lower lip, and grasped the green stone of the hilt. Our eyes met, and, like the first pangs of sickness or the hidden stab of joy when the hidden meaning of a thing reveals itself, I felt as I had those many months ago, when she had looked up at me from the floor of Baldwin's chambers in Rome. The curve of her long lip, the perfect sculpture of her nose… all at once, the tormenting ghosts were gone, and I was alone with Letice in an empty room, just a room where people had lived, fucked and died, a room like every other in the world. ‘I am ready’ I told her. 'Are you?'

She nodded once, briskly, and, holding the knife by the scabbard, tucked it up under her left sleeve and curled her fingers over the hilt so that it was hidden. I looked around the room, spied the big, crude chamber-pot and snatched it 'Right then’ I said, and opened the door.

There was pandemonium going on below us, and I led the way down towards it, fast, taking the stairs two at a time. The first landing was empty, and I did not pause, but grabbed the banister and leaped down the next flight. There was a man coming up towards us, red-faced, holding a club of bog-oak. He had time to look shocked before my foot caught him under the chin and he fell backwards, arms out, into space, and then into the wall at the bend in the stairwell. He lay still, head crooked. I picked up the club in my free hand, for the man was insensible or dead, and kept moving. I could hear Letice behind me, the stiff cloth of her clothes rustling but no words, no sound from her lips. Around the next corner another man was puffing up the stairs, but he was stark naked and red as a robin's breast, and so we pushed him aside and kept going down.

I could hear a loud female voice. It was high, but as tightly controlled as the others were panicked. 'By what right?' it said. 'By whose authority?' Mother Zaneta, apparently, was having none of it. There was a piercing yelp beside me. Through an open door, I saw a big man with a scratched face pinning a young whore against the wall by her throat. He was fumbling somewhere between them: going either for his knife or his cock. I took two strides across the room and slammed the club across the back of his head. He buckled, his face smearing blood down the girl's breasts as he fell.