The Vault of Bones

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  And he, it appeared, was determined to be friends with me. He clopped along at a sprightly walk that had us overtaking most of the other traffic, but he did so with a supple grace that caused my arse, unused as it was to the hard contours of a saddle, no undue discomfort. Such was our progress that in what I judged to be an hour and a half we came up to the river Tiber - for I had asked the way to the Saxa Rubra from a couple pushing a handcart of pinioned geese - and to a disreputable, crumbling bridge that had undoubtedly stood there a very long time. I heard the words ‘Ponte Milvio' uttered several times by those preparing to cross, and then I realised that this was the Milvian Bridge I had read of in Eusebius, years ago in the college library of Balecester. This was where Constantine had seen the fiery cross and the words of the Lord before his battle with Maxentius that had won him the Roman Empire. I glanced up, but the sky was innocent of either cross or writing. In hoc signo vinces, the emperor had been told: In this sign you shall conquer’ But time appeared to have conquered here, and human frailty, judging by the party of lepers who squatted off to the side of the road, waiting for a break in the traffic so that they could cross without disturbing those of sound body. I looked down at the Tiber as it rippled below, hoping to catch some hint of the Divine, perhaps, or at least of something vaguely mysterious. But here, as at the ancient, holy monuments I had visited in Rome, there was nothing but decay and the exuberant intrusion of the present. I shrugged, scratched Iblis behind the ears, and rode on, looking out for Marcho Antonio Marso.

  The Rubra Saxa were not the landmark I had expected, just an outcropping of reddish stone that reminded me of the red earth around Totnes, far away in Devon. Marcho Antonio appeared from a spinney of holm oaks, seated, to my amazement, upon an ass that supported his angry bulk with the detached look of a martyr in extremis.

  Who goes there: Maxentius or Constantine?' he boomed.

  'At this point I'm the disembodied fucking voice’ I told him. 'There's not much else left’ He laughed and handed me my valise.

  'I resisted the temptations of the Dark Lord and did not break the seal of Antichrist’ he said. 'Very sorely tempted I was, too. If you get the chance, ask Michel to explain it all to me one day, will you?'

  I assured him that I would, and to my surprise he leaned across and embraced me. It was like being hugged by a bear that had bathed in wine and rubbed its pelt with garlic, and I was so moved that I began to weep.

  I halted for the night at the village of Rignano, that lies under the mountain called Soracte. It had been an easy ride but a long one, and the stars were beginning to shine and bats to whirr above my head as I guided my weary but uncomplaining horse up the narrow street to the inn, which a countryman, baffled at first by my request for directions in execrable Roman dialect, had kindly pointed me towards from the now almost deserted Ravenna Road. Dog-tired, I ignored the travellers' chatter around me in the common room as I hurriedly ate a chicken and bean stew, drank a jar of thin wine and took myself off to bed, but not before giving my vinegar-soaked clothes to a maid for the best wash she could manage. Iblis I left in the stable, face deep in a bag of oats. As a brand-new horseman who had just completed his first day in the saddle without mishap, I can perhaps be forgiven for the grateful kiss I planted on his bony forehead, and the silver coin I gave to the astonished stable-lad to buy the best possible care for my friend.

  I secured the door to my room, and dropped on to the bed. It was time to examine the letter that Gilles had left me, and suddenly I hoped that it had not contained instructions for any task I should have performed before leaving Rome. I broke the seal with anxious fingers. The bulk of the letter - what had made it seem so fat - was merely another map, a simple copy of the one I already had, which dispensed with all except the line of the road and the towns and landmarks along it. I was pleased to see Rignano appear as a tiny turreted building, then squinted to see the word 'bedbugs', much underlined, scrawled beside it. Plainly, I should have opened the letter last night. I looked closer, and saw that the map was heavily annotated in many different hands. I recognised Gilles' letters, but there were others that were strange to me. Nevertheless they offered good advice, these absent guides: 'sweet water'; 'brigands'; 'dishonest landlord'; 'horrible wine'. Beside one village much farther up the line, someone who I took to be the Captain had scribbled Try the sheep's feet!'. In other places the only admonition was a stark 'AVOID'. I turned to the other part of the letter.

  To Petrus Zennorius, traveller, vanguard and agent of the ship Cormaran, greetings!

  I trust this finds you recovered from your sickness. I trust you will pardon our precipitate departure, but I received word of a ship to be had at Brindisi, and I have already delayed long enough. My hope is that this crude map will be of use and comfort. I assure you, though, that I, and the others whose scrawl you will find upon your map, have trod those roads, and slept in those beds, more recently than Pliny.

  One thing: I would have you perform a small service for us on your way. Take the branch of the Ravenna Road which passes through Spoleto - that is the right branch that comes soon after Narni - and in that interesting city put up at the White Lion. I have sent Horst there. He will have left some documents for you, letters of credit from some business contracted in Florence that Captain de M wishes you to deposit at our bank in Venice. If he is still there, make him buy you dinner, for he will have received a fat commission (but please do not tell him that you know this!). That is all. Then hurry to Venice. Your destination, in case you do not remember, is the Palazzo Centranico on the Rio Morto, hard by the Church of San Cassan in the sestriere of Santa Croce. You are expected, and more detailed instructions will await you there.

  With any luck at all, you will also find some fresh communication from myself and perhaps Captain de M as to the progress of our affairs. If all goes well I shall see you there myself before next spring has passed. But we will discuss this in more detail, for, good Patch, I will require you to be a more

  diligent writer of letters than you have so far proved. Soy until we meet again, good luck and fine weather! Gilles de Peyrolles

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘I

  he next morning I awoke to bedbugs and drizzle. The tiny swine had pecked a tracery of red into my shins and arms, and one of my ears felt hot and swollen. I cursed them volubly in broad Devon. Tired as I had been last night, I had made sure to tuck my sword beneath my bolster in case the inn was less friendly than it seemed. I had been attacked, all right, but the villains had been rather smaller than I had thought to guard against. But my clothes were clean and had dried by the fire, and to my surprise the hideous cloak, now freed of the filth of ages, seemed to have once been a rich man's garment, for there was silver thread in the hem, and the cloth was fine. I grudgingly paid my bill and managed to be back on the Ravenna Road while the air was still cool.

  I had hoped to spend the night at Narni, but it was further than I had thought, and instead we stopped at Vigne, where I took the precaution of sleeping on the floor of my room. Rising early next day with no fresh bedbug bites, I set off for Narni. It was late afternoon before we topped a ridge and saw the town before us, perched on a steep stone hill above the Tiber. There was not much left of the day, and I should have halted there, but I thought it looked sinister perched up there on its crag, and so I urged Iblis down the slope to the bridge. The country on the other side of the river looked rich and friendly, and I guessed I would find a pleasant bed there without too much difficulty. The guards - the first soldiers I had seen on my journey - regarded me sourly but gave me - no trouble, and I paid my toll and rode across. It was indeed pleasant on the other side, and with the anticipation of supper giving me confidence, I nudged Iblis into a trot, then a canter. Down the road we swept, kicking up dust and earning curses and cheers in equal measure from the people on foot, for the road was busy again here.

  But strangely, as we topped the nearest ridge, the people thinned out to nothing and we were alone again. And ther
e before us, painted a sombre crimson by the setting sun, was a great slab of mountain which cut off the view to the north and east. It was like a wave of stone rearing up over the gentle landscape, menacing it with a savage face of cliff and tumbled rocks. The road descended to pass beneath this frightful monster, and down there it looked dark and sinister. I scanned the way ahead for any sign of an inn or even a farmstead where Iblis and I might buy a place to sleep, but there seemed to be nothing but olive trees and the occasional hovel. So reluctantly we passed the night in a grove of ancient olive trees a little way back from, and above, the road. It was clear that the trees were ancient, for they were little more than gnarled tangles of wooden tracery that still supported branches heavy with leaves and unripe fruit, and their roots reared up out of the ground, forming little hollows filled with dry leaves, natural beds that looked almost inviting. Fortunately I had bought bread, hard cheese, some onions and more leathery sausage at Vigne, and I had topped off my wineskin too, so supper was no great hardship. And to sleep on the bare earth was nothing new to me, so after making sure that Iblis had plenty of green stuff on which to graze, I arranged my packs to make a pillow and laid my sword down beside me, and tried to fall asleep.

  If you are bone weary you will fall asleep under a tree as readily as you would in a feather bed. If you fear the wild world, you will lie, saucer-eyed, and try in vain to see through the black night which your fancy has peopled with imps, ghosts, wolves and murderers. But if, like I was then, you are neither tired nor afraid of the world beyond your walls and doors, you will stay awake for hours listening to the sounds of the night and gazing up at the stars. Tonight the Via Lactea leaped across the sky and all the star-creatures blazed down: bears, dragons, long-dead gods and heroes made immortal as solemn, silvery points of light. A nightingale started up in a thicket nearby, then moved further and further away until I could hear her no longer. Owls hissed and shrieked, and everywhere, from every rock and blade of grass, the insects poured out their song, as implacable as waves hissing on a pebble shore. So there I lay, idly sipping from my wineskin and thinking of the last time I had slept on the ground: a far less happy night that I had passed under a rain-drenched yew tree in one of Dartmouth's churchyards. I had been a frightened boy then, nothing but death behind me and less than a glimmer of hope in front. I had woken up starving and robbed some poor gravediggers for my breakfast, but that night I had come aboard the Cormaran for the first time.

  As I say, I was indulging myself in these thoughts, full of wine and pleasant fatigue and beginning to sink drowsily into my nest of crackling leaves, when Iblis gave a snort, and then a quiet whinny. Startled, I sat up, 'but there was nothing but the cicadas and the shrilling of bats and so I settled back down. He has probably scented a fox or a badger, I mused. And what a fine guard-dog he makes into the bargain. Feeling drowsy again, and pleased with my good fortune, my eyes began to droop and my head to nod, when from below me on the road came a loud drumming of hooves. More than one horse - three or four, by the clamour of them - were racing up from Narni at breakneck speed. Iblis whinnied again, then neighed in earnest, but if the riders heard him they did not stop, and I doubted they could hear anything above the din of their mounts. But I was surprised enough to grab the pommel of my sword and throw my blanket off, and in the few moments it took me to do so the riders had passed and the sound of them was fading away northwards, soon to sink beneath the chorus of cicadas.

  I sat for a while, waiting for my heart to still, and listening for more travellers below. But everything was still on the road, and before long - and with the aid of the last of the wine -I laid my head down again, this time to sleep in earnest. By the time I woke early the next morning, thick-headed and with a mouth full of tiny ants, I had all but forgotten the riders. I found a little stream nearby and led Iblis to drink there, and bathed my own grimy face. Then we set out again.

  After I had ridden for a couple of hours, the Ravenna Road began to amble through soft, rolling country again. It was a little like Devon, I mused, but with olives instead of apples. And then, to confound me even more, orchards began to spring up on either side of the road. There were mountains not too far away, brown backs dotted with trees, and every hilltop hereabouts seemed to have a castle or a fortified village perched upon it. I took an excellent lunch of grilled sausages in one of these villages before pressing on to Spoleto which, despite the innkeepers gloomy assessment, I drew near to well before the sun began to sink behind yet another ridge of high mountains.

  If I had found Narni a little sinister, it was nothing compared to my first view of the city of Spoleto. I crested a hill, and the road - little more than a track, in truth - dropped steeply down into a wide basin between the ridge of mountains I had been riding towards, and the hills over which I had just ridden. A river ran coolly through the darkening land, past a crude round fortress; and away to my left a broad, flat, marshy valley stretched away almost to the horizon, only to be blocked by a high, round-topped peak that seemed to rise vertically from the valley floor. But ahead of me was a town built on a hill that rose from the centre of the basin - I say a hill, but it seemed no less than a tiny mountain in itself, so steep and craggy was it. Down this crag seemed to pour - or rather ooze, like golden resin from a pine-tree - a confusion of honey-coloured stone, which, as I stared, resolved itself into churches, spires, houses and streets, all clinging to the sides of the mountain and springing up in tighter clusters wherever there was a hint of flat land on which to gain a purchase. In the fading light it looked unbelievably ancient, or indeed other-worldly, as if not made by the hands of men at all. With a growing sense of foreboding I rode down the hill towards the gate.

  The sun was not quite down, and the guardsmen, decked in livery the colour of old blood, let me through with suspicious glances but no trouble. I was to meet Horst at the White Lion, near the cathedral. I asked an old woman leaning in a doorway where that might be, and she wordlessly pointed straight up. I took this to mean that I had to ride to the very top of the hill, and indeed I thought I remembered seeing at least one belltower up there, so with a sincere apology to Iblis I guided him up the horribly steep roadway.

  The arms of Spoleto proved to be a white lion, so I guessed that Horst was lodged at the city's chief hostelry. I was looking forward to some supper and a wash, so I fell to imagining what the kitchen might be offering, while Iblis plodded up, climbing the cobbled street with his head lowered purposefully. After a while I took pity on him and dismounted, and together we laboured along our zigzag course, for the road wound up the hillside like clumsy stitching. But despite my misgivings this seemed like a pleasant city after all. The streets, most of which, apart from the one we had chosen, seemed to be nothing more than staircases cut into the face of the hill, were full of people taking their ease, and children playing noisily with tops and hoops. Food was being prepared, and folk were bellowing at each other companionably from windows and doorways. Nevertheless I was beginning to grow weary by the time I led Iblis under a great, mossy archway and on to a patch of mercifully flat ground where, judging from the rotting fruit and vegetables being fought over by a swarm of bone-thin dogs, a market had recently held sway. There was a large church in front of me, and I hoped this was the cathedral, but a cowled monk, scurrying across the marketplace on some errand, told me that the place I sought was beyond, and to the right. As I suspected, that meant heaving our exhausted carcasses up another almost sheer street, and I was cursing the whole world when suddenly the buildings opened up on my left and I found myself looking down a wide course of steps and on to a wide piazza of golden brick, beyond which a marble church rose, blushing faintly pink with the last rays of the sun. This, plainly, was the cathedral. But where was the inn? I was sinking down on the topmost step to get my breath back, Iblis breathing hody down my neck, when there was a loud flurry of voices behind me. I turned, and saw that a party of young men were trotting down the street towards me, chattering loudly. Behind them, at the top
of the hill, a loud argument was being played out between a very fat man with a bald head and another younger fellow, who with a final angry wave of his arms, took off after his friends. The fat man watched him go, hands on fleshy hips, before shaking his head and stepping back through a doorway, above which hung a sign emblazoned with the image of a white lion rampant against a blood-red field. I had found my inn.

  The proprietor of the White Lion - the fat gentleman I had seen arguing outside - was evidently used to his guests arriving in the last stages of fatigue, and he raised not so much as an eyebrow hair as I stood before him panting, sweat pattering down on to my tunic from the tip of my nose. He had a bed for me, but of course. Please to leave my beautiful horse with Giovanni the groom. Of course, Signor Horst of the Cormaran had arrived four days ago; and come in, come in.

  'He left this for you’ said the innkeeper, opening a drawer in his table and passing me a letter. I glanced at it, and saw that ‘Petrus Zennorius' was written there. I was about to ask for Horst's whereabouts, but at that moment a serving girl passed with a flagon of something cold enough to make the earthenware beady with dew. I must have looked desperate, for the innkeeper signed discreetly to another girl, who was placing a beaker of icy white wine in my hand so speedily I thought for a moment that I had conjured it up myself by sheer force of desire. I took a deep draught as the fat man watched me indulgently.