Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

'Don't waste time!' hissed Letice. I grimaced: she was right. We abandoned the girl, who was picking her tormentor's purse, and charged down the next flight of stairs. No one there, and the doors were either shut tight or open to reveal empty rooms. There was a peal of cursing and then barked orders from below – the ground floor. We had come to it. I paused and looked at Letice. She shrugged and bared her teeth in a desperate grin. Her face was flushed, the darker red that lies at the centre of a pink rose, and she shook back her sleeve and jerked Thorn free of her scabbard. A laugh that was not fuelled by joy rose like a bubble in my chest. I switched the chamber-pot to my right hand and shrugged helplessly, grinning myself, feeling the fingers of madness upon my face. With Letice at my back I hurled myself down the stairs. We turned the corner together, and ran straight into the young man in yellow. His hands were empty, and he took one look at Thorn and fled with a clatter, with me treading upon his heels. We reached the downstairs hall together. I had time to see Facio, sword drawn and laid casually across his shoulder, and another man; and Mother Zaneta, who was staring them down like some ancient martyr facing the pliers and the saw.

Then the boy, in his panic, pitched headlong into the man next to Facio, who fended him off with an indignant shout and sent him flying into the old woman. The two of them fell in a tangle, and a cacophony of shrieks and laments rang out, for now I saw that beyond Facio a huddle of girls clung to each other, shaking and whimpering in fear. Facio had whipped around and I found myself surging towards the gently wavering point of his blade. I had no time to stop, but reflexively put up my right hand to cover my breast, and the gaping mouth of the chamber-pot swallowed the sword point. The sword was stout but the pot was stouter, and did not break; but its heavy bottom banged into my chest and stopped me short. Facio drew back his blade to strike again and without thinking I hurled the pot at him. He got his hand up and the pot glanced off his knuckles and smashed into the side of his face. He staggered and, awkwardly, wildly, I swung the club with my left hand and bludgeoned him on the ear. He went down awkwardly and I sprang forward and stamped with all my weight upon his crotch. The other man had meanwhile tugged out a hideous short sword, more a cleaver than a sword, and was raising it to chop me down when there was a flash of quicksilver beside me and the man's arm opened to the bone -I glimpsed its blood-netted yellow – and he dropped the cleaver with a scream.

Instantly Letice struck again, stabbing him in the upper shoulder. He flailed with his good arm and caught her wrist, twisting it. My foot was caught between Facio's legs and as I tore myself free and brought up my club, the man's knees buckled and he fell in a heap. Behind him stood a whore, a long-handled copper kettle in her hands. She raised it up and hit him again, and then, as if some terrible mechanism had been triggered, the kicking body was being belaboured from all sides by women wielding fire-irons, pots, clogs, even a wooden stool. The boy in yellow had got to his knees, but Mother had him by the collar. I raised my club, but saw in time that he had no weapon and was a boy, younger than me, and weeping in terror.

Tie him up!' I yelled at Letice. Everyone was yelling now save the men on the floor, for Facio was doubled up in agony and his companion would never make another sound. She nodded as if in a fevered trance, eyes showing white all around. I straddled Facio to keep the whores from him while Letice bound the boy’s wrists together with his own belt and forced his head down to the floor as he sobbed and shook in a palsy of terror. I held out my hand to Mother Zaneta and helped her to her feet. Then I bent down and hauled Facio up by the neck of his tunic until he was sitting, his face ashen, panting with the pain of his crushed stones, eyes screwed shut. I took hold of his hair and shook him until he opened them. He did not seem to recognise me. I shook him again.

'Remember me? From Tiber-side? Querini sent you to find me, did he not? Tell me!' I was mad with rage; my spittle was flecking his cheeks. He shook his head, then nodded.

It was you who killed Anna.. ‘ He tried to shake his head. 'No, no, you charnel rat’ I told him urgently, 'you did: you rode her down in Cheapside and broke her skull. You trampled her face into the mud…' I had twisted his hair so tightly around my fingers that they had gone numb. He was wincing in pain, but still he held my gaze. 'And Horst – do not shake your head at me, filth! – the man you butchered in Foligno. And the boy in Spoleto, when it should have been my head on the flagstones, what about him?' 'Petroc’ said Letice, quietly.

'No! He will tell me why!' I shook the club under his nose, then threw it away in disgust. 'Letitia?' gasped Facio, seeing her for the first time. 'Good morrow, Facio. Why did you come here?'

'To take you and this one to Messer Nicholas. You were seen coming into Chioggia. I thought he was chasing ghosts

'Ghosts? No’ said Letice. 'Nicholas wouldn't waste time on ghosts.' Why?' I pressed. He panted and shook his head. 'The letter?' he winced. 'Baldwin's letter. Christ, you know better than I.'

'No, you do not understand’ I said, all the fury suddenly draining from me. Why? I want to know why.'

'Gold, what else?' he said, eyes narrowing. He was almost master of himself again. 'Oceans of gold. See? You already know, you fool.'

There was a stillness in the room, a breathlessness. The whores, with their gory, hair-crusted pots and shoes; the hunchback, who had appeared from somewhere, a bloody rag clutched to his head; a customer, who cringed by the fireplace; the boy, whose shoulders heaved, though he made no sound; Facio, who was rocking gently in my grasp, eyes still fixed on me; Letice, who had gone quite pale again, save for a constellation of sprayed blood across her face; and Mother Zaneta. Someone had found her cane, and she was gripping it, standing straight and sombre as a poplar tree. She was staring at me too. Everyone was. I had become the centre of the room. Mother smoothed back her hair, for her wimple had been knocked off, and her heavy tresses, the colour of burnished pewter, had come free. Then she held out her hand to Letice.

'Give it me’ she said softly, and took Thorn from her, almost sweetly, as if prying a rattle away from a tired baby. Then she held the knife out to me.

I still had a hold of Facio's hair. Without thinking I reached for my knife, and a ripple went through the room, a shiver, a scurrying of thought, skittering like mouse-feet. Letice reached for my hand, but Mother Zaneta warded it off with her cane. The green stone hilt did not waver. Mothers eyes were the same green. I took the knife.

Facio set his jaw. He raised his chin and glared at me. I looked past him, at the faces arrayed there: young, smooth, ravaged, keen and simple. Luchas' lips were pulled back like a fox at bay. Righi sniffed, his eyes gone soft, distant, as if he were trying to will himself away from here with all the useless conjurations of a trapped mind. Mother Zaneta drew herself up even straighter, trembling with the effort. A lock of hair had fallen down across her face, making her seem at once a girl and terribly old, a rain-smoothed idol dressed up for some heathen rite. She pushed it away and, closing her eyes, bowed her head.

I looked at Facio. There was nothing much in my own head, I found, save for the memory of Anna as the apoplexy took her, and her fingers as they had scrabbled at my palm and then gone still. There was Horst, teaching me to ride amongst the thistles on the Janiculum hill, and the hollow knock of the poor servant Giovanni's skull against the stones of Spoleto. And now the Captain turned his head to me, eyes swollen shut, the stink of rot about his body. I shook my head and they left, but I still had hold of a mans hair, and of a knife. I did not wish to do this.