Painted in Blood

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  ‘They worshipped an old piece of cloth like the one you took off that heretic in Royan,’ I said. ‘A crude copy, and I realised this at last, of an icon that was once famous in Constantinople. I saw a drawing of it there, and copies of it were quite popular with the heretic brethren called Bogomili, or so an old Greek priest told me. It proved some esoteric point of their absurd doctrine – I never troubled to learn the details. A copy of a facsimile of something half-remembered. We have been chasing a phantom.’

  ‘And the heretic treasure? One has heard about it,’ he whispered. ‘I guessed that it was …’

  ‘No, it was not the Mandylion,’ I told him. ‘And besides, all has been destroyed. The heretics went up in flames, and their treasure with them. That is the truth, and the end of it.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘Almost,’ I said and, catching his incredulous look, managed to grin. I slapped my satchel. ‘My lord, I have a wedding gift to deliver. Let us go and find the bride-to-be.’

  Letice Londeneyse was surrounded by a gaggle of bridesmaids and old maids and serving maids, all twittering and clucking. There was a merry hum all through the chamber, which overlooked the abbey precinct and the little church of Saint Margaret’s, whose bells had just started to ring, shaking the dust from the beams and sending it down twinkling through the sunlight. When the women saw me they all gasped and threw themselves into attitudes of mock anger or overplayed modesty, and I had the pleasure of seeing Letice’s lovely mouth fall open in utter bewilderment.

  ‘I was invited,’ I said, striding in, ‘so I am here. Pleased to see me?’

  Pushing through the women and knocking one of them back on her plump bottom, Letice bounded across the room in a most unladylike fashion, holding up her skirts and bawling something at me in the arcane tongue of Smooth Field. She wrapped herself around me and squeezed until my ribs creaked.

  ‘I thought you were dead!’ she yelled in my ear.

  ‘Not yet,’ I gasped. ‘I’m so happy for you, Letice. How is your leg?’

  ‘Patch, that was two years ago! It is fine, of course it is! Where have you been, you bloody man?’

  ‘Almost to the end of the world,’ I told her. ‘Letice … Agnes, I need to tell you …’ But I could not. The Captain would not have wanted it so. Sad news did not belong in that room, and the tattered clouds of grief I had been trailing had no place in the speckled sunlight. ‘I need to tell you that there is no finer man in the world than Aimery.’

  ‘Oh, I know, I know! Even if he does bang on about his precious chivalry. I’ve read those books, you know. Rubbish!’ She was chattering happily. ‘God, it’s so long ago! The battle … it all got puffed up beyond belief, you know, what I did. And then Aimery took me back to Paris … Do you know what? With all my money we are going to buy back his lands in Burgundy! King Louis has said yes …’

  ‘You had better tell me later,’ I said gently. ‘The bells are ringing, or have you deafened yourself with all this chatter? Listen, I have a gift for you, but we need to be alone for a minute.’

  ‘Alone? I don’t think …’ She was not really listening, for the women were giving her impatient looks, so I bowed to them, the most flowery Venetian bow I could muster, and took Letice by the arm.

  ‘You must lend me the bride for two minutes,’ I said. ‘We …’ I remembered that I had passed a tiny private chapel, its door ajar, just down the passage. ‘We need to say a prayer together.’ And before anyone could protest I had half led, half dragged Letice out of the door and into the chapel. I shut the door behind me and made sure it was latched.

  ‘We only have a moment,’ I said.

  ‘What’s come over you, Patch? Praying, all of a sudden?’ Letice was put out. Her ears had gone red, a sure sign of disfavour.

  ‘Shush,’ I said. ‘Take off your dress.’

  ‘Bloody hell! You little bastard!’ she shrieked. I put my hand over her mouth and shook my head urgently.

  ‘No, no! I missed my chance long ago. You’re safe, my dear. Look: it’s this.’ I jerked open the satchel and pulled out the folded Mandylion, creased and crushed into a tight square from my using it as a cushion.

  ‘Patch, that’s the shroud from Constantinople,’ she hissed, her eyes very wide.

  ‘So it is. And I am giving it to you, to do with as you will. It is worth more gold than either of us have ever dreamed of, but … I would not sell it. You can, but I cannot. The Captain …’ I stopped, and let the folds loosen and unwrap themselves. The dark impressions of bloodied feet appeared. ‘Listen to me. Keep it safe for a while. Many people are hunting for it for their own reasons. Let it become an old myth again, and then, perhaps, take it to King Louis or Earl Richard. Your fortune will be made ten thousand times over. Or … please, though, Letice. Please do not believe in it.’

  I could see fear and interest working in her eyes, and then something else appeared, a spark I had not seen for many years. She took her bottom lip between her teeth and held it there. Then she nodded sharply.

  ‘Go on then,’ she said. She hoicked up her heavy robe of blue Florentine silk and there she was, pale and lithe and naked save for her hosen. I averted my eyes, suddenly feeling indecent, even though I had not seen a woman’s body, God save me, since Royan. I took the end of the shroud and wrapped it once around her waist, tucking the end in on itself, and then began to wind it, all fourteen feet of it, as tightly as I dared. She helped me, turning and tucking, and on the third turn we both began to laugh nervously as we wound the dark, stained cloth onto her like a living bobbin, Letice wincing at the feel of the ancient stuff against her skin, both of us trying to avoid seeing the shapes that had been marked there. Soon it was done, and with a sound like snow falling from a roof she let her heavy dress slide to the floor.

  ‘If it is a true relic, may it give you blessings,’ I said softly, and still on my knees I put my arms around her waist and laid my face against her belly, though all I felt was the stiffness of the shroud. She laid her hands gently on my hair.

  ‘What do you think it is, Patch?’ she asked.

  ‘Desire. Desire for peace, for truth, for death. And love, if you believe the Gospels. I think it is man’s desire, painted in blood.’

  There was an impatient rustling of gowns out in the corridor. I stood up, and Letice smoothed down her silks.

  ‘We have caused a scandal,’ she said, and gave me a peck on the cheek.

  ‘My darling Letice, we have done much, much more than that,’ I said, and taking her head in my hands I kissed her hard on her forehead. The sun was filling the room, and the bells were clanging. ‘May you have light like this always, my love,’ I said, and together we opened the chapel door.

  Agnes de Wharram, widow of the City of London, ship-owner and purveyor of pepper, silk and other rarities, married Sir Aimery de Lille Charpigny, knight of France, in Saint Margaret’s Church in the Liberty of Westminster on the twenty-fifth day of April in the year of Our Lord 1244. Richard, Earl of Cornwall led her up the aisle and as her protector, gave her away to the groom. She moved a little stiffly, my Letice, and she had gone a little red in the face for lack of air, but she did not burst out laughing, as I had feared that she might, or weeping, for which I would not have blamed her, and nor did any ancient cloth appear from under her shimmering blue dress. I watched until Bishop Ranulph had put her hand in Aimery’s, and slipped from my pew unnoticed. I had wanted to see Aimery again, but after the liberty I had just taken with his bride I doubted that I could look him in the face.

  I paused in the doorway. They were still listening to the bishop as he sought to bind love with the laws of Rome, and the light was dancing off the crucifix and from all the gold and jewels on the altar. I was thinking of Captain de Montalhac and his Alayda, and of Anna, and how an English priest had spoken over her as she lay, cold and white, not very far from this place. There was a song winding through all this, somehow, a cold but lovely voice bidding us all to take the sweetness of life in both han
ds and hold it tight, for the dawn was coming, and with it the end of dreams. Bishop Ranulph had taken the chalice and was raising it up over the lovers’ heads, and the garnets that studded it caught the light and set a host of tiny red sparks dancing over the congregation. I looked down, thinking one had touched me, but there was nothing. The light danced again and I saw the flames go up from the pyre of Montségur, all those cinders that had been Gilles, and Bishop Bertrand, and two hundred people I had known. All free now, perhaps: all perfect. Gilles had desired that more than anything: to be free from desire.

  I did not want that. As Aimery took Letice in his arms and kissed her, embracing the thing that Ranulph of Balecester desired above all things, I knew that I would not be perfect. Gilles had told me, long ago, that when he had become a bon homme it had felt as if someone had opened him like a lantern and blown the ember inside into a flame. Something was kindling inside me now. I said a silent goodbye and went out into the burying ground. There, among the ancient dead, the mothers and fathers, enemies and lovers, my own father’s words came back to me: there is some light left in you. Perhaps I could find it. I had found stranger things. I could try – at least I could try.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  I went to Paris, to Vincennes, and found myself sitting once more beneath King Louis’ oak, watching the brimstone butterflies drift through the glossy leaves of May. I had visited the Sainte Chapelle, growing slowly in the midst of Paris, a filigree of wondrously carved stone strangely at odds with the lumpy, formless buildings that surrounded it, the skeleton of some fabled sea-beast washed up on a crude cobbled beach.

  ‘King Henry is rebuilding Westminster Abbey to rival it,’ I told Louis, and he smiled as if it were a great compliment.

  ‘Will he succeed?’ he asked, mischievously.

  ‘Without your Monsieur Pierre de Montreuil, I don’t expect so,’ I said. ‘Interesting thing, though, Your Majesty. Isabella of Angoulême has been taking an extraordinarily keen interest in the proceedings. Even to the extent of trying to procure for her son a relic to rival your own.’

  ‘There is none,’ said Louis, giving me a puzzled look.

  ‘To be sure. But she appears to have fallen under the spell of the fabled Mandylion,’ I went on, dismissively. ‘Even to the extent of seizing at least one agent of yours, Your Majesty, who was searching for it on your behalf.’

  ‘No!’ He sat bolt upright, and a thrush began to scold him from the lower branches.

  ‘Indeed yes. She made it a capital matter, no less. Treachery, to her mind. This is hearsay, of course, Sire.’

  ‘Damn her! That woman has plagued me for too long! First a ridiculous war, and now this. But she has it, though?’ Louis had gone horribly white.

  ‘Of course not, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Good. Isabella! I will have to take steps … But the Mandylion, though?’

  ‘Your Majesty, trust me when I tell you that it does not exist. If it ever did – and it may have done, I will admit – it has gone from this world, as is the way with things miraculous,’ I added piously.

  ‘And the heretics?’

  ‘An illusion. Daubings on bed-sheets to scare the credulous. I believe the so-called heretic bishop, one Bertrand Marty, was responsible.’

  ‘I remember the name. He was burned.’

  ‘At Montségur. I think that you will find these whisperings, these rumours about a miraculous shroud will fade with the passing of the bons hommes.’

  ‘That is a pity,’ sighed Louis. He had regained his natural colour, and looked once more like an overgrown boy. ‘Of all the great relics …’

  ‘Your treasurer will thank you, Sire,’ I reminded him.

  ‘And, great heavens, my mother,’ he whispered, and we both laughed, as though the things that were said here in this gentle place had no power to harm anything greater than a horsefly.

  I rode south after that, down through the soft valleys of Burgundy to the Rhône and then to Avignon. I had no idea how to search for Iselda, so I began by seeking out the town of Rosers, from which she had taken her name. I found a Rosières, and a Roziers, but no trobairitz had ever been heard of in either one. There was a Rosers near Arles, a verminous hamlet of old women and three-legged dogs, and she was not there. By the end of the summer I had gone almost to Marmande in the west and Grasse in the east, picking my way through the sad lands of the Languedoc and keeping far away from the southern mountains, for I did not wish to see those places again. There had been a day of storms that had raced over me one after the other as I rode towards Narbonne, and I had taken refuge in a barn close to the Abbey of Fontfroide. Huddled under my cloak, wet and lonely, I decided that enough was enough. I would go back to Venice and see what waited for me there. But when I awoke the next day that plan did not seem so attractive, so I took a track leading away from the coast towards Carcassonne. It took me through low, dusty hills planted with vines, and some time after midday, when the air was still and the heat was clamped around my head, and there seemed to be nothing in the world but the ageless churr of cicadas, I came to a village that rose in terraces up a hillside above a river. The windows were shuttered and the doors shut tight against the heat, so I watered my horse at the fountain in the tiny square and found some cool shade by the wall of the church. I fell asleep, and when I woke up the heat had eased and there were people walking about.

  I bought some figs and cheese, and walked to the end of the main street, which gave out on the bare hillside. There was nothing but wild sage, and rock roses, and bees in the thyme bushes, but it was peaceful, and I looked across the valley at the next shoulder of hills, and the ridge beyond. And far away, dancing in the breath of the hot earth, the mountains. I got up and walked back to where my horse was waiting. I did not feel tired, and I thought, how fine it would be to ride all night and come to Carcassonne in the morning. Then I would be done with this aimless life, and go back to Venice at peace with myself. The little stalls along the street were doing a little business, and the old ladies were gathered in their doorways. A goose was chasing a little boy, who was screeching that it had bitten his arse. Shutters banged. A girl staggered past me with two big pails full of water yoked across her shoulders. And from a window a woman’s voice drifted down, pure as the water Moses brought forth in the desert.

  My handsome friend,

  Brave knight you may be,

  But your bright armour and your painted shield

  Are no match for the thorns that await

  When you go to pick roses.

  I looked up, but the window opened onto shadow.

  ‘Iselda!’ I called. ‘Iselda! Is it you?’ The song broke off, and I looked around guiltily, but no one except me seemed to have noticed. ‘Iselda!’ I called again.

  She put her head out of the window. Her long plaits dropped from the sill and hung against the ancient stone. ‘Who’s calling Iselda?’ she said. Then she saw me.

  ‘I’ve been searching for you,’ I said. ‘All through these lands.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I had to.’ People were beginning to look at me – perhaps I was to be the evening’s entertainment: a mouthy foreigner annoying the village singer. ‘And I have something for you.’

  ‘These are riddles, sir. I do not answer riddles. I am not a sphinx. Go away.’

  ‘I cannot, Iselda. There is too much to say. And I can only tell you.’ She was reaching for the shutters. ‘No! Listen to me. I told you once that you had enchanted me. Perhaps that was true. How else could I be standing here? I have news for you: sad and strange. I don’t know what you will make of it. But you ought at least to hear it, and I have brought it to you across a thousand miles or more.’

  ‘News?’ She let go of the shutters and leaned her arms on the windowsill. She seemed to be staring at me very hard, and her head fell to one side as she did. I realised she was smiling at me the way she had when we had last said goodbye, in the rain outside Nîmes. ‘I will listen to anything and everything you bring m
e, save the news. I have been hiding from the world, though not from you, Petroc Black-Dog. Do not ask me how, but I knew you would come, by and by. Because you were right: the spring did find me at last. And now you have too. What else have you brought?’

  I raised my hands towards her. ‘Figs and cheese,’ I offered.

  ‘Wait!’ She ducked back into the shadows and then reappeared. Stretching out her arm, she opened her fist and something small and black fell towards me. I reached out my arms, a reflex, and snatched a key out of the air.

  ‘You’d better come up, then,’ she said.

  Epilogue

  Montségur, September 1244

  There was the pog, rising like the stub of a broken tooth in the great jaws of the mountains. We had come up the road and had our first sight of Montségur in the mid-morning. It was a clear day, though a breeze was coming down off the high peaks and breathing cold air in our faces. The oaks and chestnuts were just beginning to turn. Fat sheep were grazing in the pastures, and beside us the river was clucking to itself in its stony bed, almost dry, waiting for the rains of autumn. There were no people about. We had not passed anyone on the road for five miles or more. I sniffed at the cool air for the taint of burning, but there was nothing.

  It was Iselda’s wish that had brought us here. We would lay her father’s bones to rest along with the dead perfecti of Montségur. ‘He would have sought death there,’ she had told me, after I had given her, at last, all the news she had dreaded to hear. ‘But he thought he could help keep the belief alive in Italy. I wonder, if the bishop had not commanded him, he would have left? I think his heart stayed on the pog.’

  ‘I think his heart had come to rest here,’ I told her, kissing her brow. I did not want to see Montségur again, or whatever terrible thing the Crusaders’ piety had left there, but now Iselda’s idea had lodged in some unhealed part of my soul and I knew that, though neither of us wanted to make this journey, this was a thing beyond desire, and we would both return there one final time.