Relics

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  I knew that Will made free with the city's whores -'courtesans,' he delighted in calling them - but it was a shock to find one of these creatures sitting in front of me, close enough for me to smell her, a warm waft of vetiver and sweat. She was young, no older than me, with the round, pink face of a country girl, a tangled mass of yellow hair piled on top of her head in a comically inept attempt to ape the courtly fashion of the day. She was plump, and her bosom was straining the threadbare linen of her tunic.

  'This is Clarissa,' said Will. 'Clarissa, this fine personage is Petroc, my brother in Jesus.'

  'Come in, Petroc,' said Clarissa, with a giggle that was almost coy. Her voice confirmed that she was indeed a local girl from some outlying village. I stepped into the room and closed the door hurriedly.

  What ho, Will,' I stammered, trying but failing to sound like a man of the world.

  What ho, yourself,' he replied. 'Are we away to the Crozier?'

  'I hope,' said I.

  "Well then,' he said to the girl, 'I will take my leave of you, dearest.'

  You've kept me too long as it is,' she pouted, and pinched him lightly on the earlobe.

  I saw then that Clarissa was arranging her clothes. So I had at least blundered in on the end of their business, not the beginning. She stood, plucked something from the top of Will's clothes-chest. I saw the flash of metal as she wound it into a fold of her skirt. Then she was standing before me, and regarding me pertly, her head cocked to one side. I found myself searching her face for the marks of sin, but all I saw was a pretty, tired country girl.

  You're a big boy, brother Petroc,' she said, and pouted again. I realised that she was searching my face in turn. 'Do you need anything?'

  'Nothing,' I blurted.

  'Petroc really is good,' said Will from the pallet. 'But not in a bad way,' he added. 'Time to be off, Clarissa.' I caught a warning note in his voice.

  But the girl stood before me, as if trying to decide some small but niggling problem. Then she gave a lopsided smile and hooked her thumbs into the top of her unlaced tunic. She jerked it down, and her breasts came spilling out. They were large and round, and very white. As a sea of mortification flooded over me, burning and freezing every inch of my body, I saw blue veins and brown nipples. She shook them slightly, and they juddered. Then I saw that there were flecks of white on the puckered teats. Clarissa was nursing. I tore my eyes away and glanced at Will. He sat there with a rather confused grin on his pitted face. I had never before seen him blush.

  'Clarissa . . .' he said again.

  The girl shrugged, and tucked herself back into her ridiculously small bodice. She put her forefinger against her thumb to make a little circle. It would not be the only time I saw that odd little gesture tonight.

  'It don't cost nothing to look,' she whispered to me, and, reaching down, flicked me in the crotch with her finger. Then she was gone. I heard the door grind open and thud shut again.

  It hurt between my legs where she had flicked me. Her aim had been true - my pitifully weak flesh had risen proudly to meet her. I gazed dumbly around the room. Something had changed, although what it was I could not tell. Then I understood. It was I who had changed. Something had been broken or damaged. I was like a new knife that, used carelessly for the first time, picks up a nick or a tiny twist to the blade and never fits so smoothly into its sheath again.

  'Oh no,' I breathed.

  'They weren't that bad,' said Will, who had stepped to my side. Anyway, you didn't touch anything, so you should be safe. Soul-wise,' he added. He grabbed me round the shoulders and shook me. 'Come on, boy. Don't tell me that's the first pair of bubbies you've clapped eyes on.'

  But it was - save nursing women glimpsed and hurriedly turned away from in the streets. Clarissa, too, was a mother, and yet Will ... I shook my head to clear it. How easy damnation crept upon one. How simple, and how sweet. Oh, Christ. I thumped myself in the groin, and my flesh howled in protest.

  'Easy, brother,' said Will. You need that for pissing.'

  Then he was pulling me from the room and out into the dreary Balecester dusk, and we made our way to the Crozier, and I found Clarissa's breasts all too easy, after a brace of beers, to forgive, if not quite to forget.

  Now Will was worrying about me yet again. 'Those oafs care for nothing but drink and women, and as they cannot lay their nasty mitts on the one, they must perforce concentrate on the other,' he was saying. 'And they are as greedy as swine: no sooner were you gone than Owen and Alfred rushed to look for the gold, but the passage was empty. Now they have returned to their slothful chatter, and I for one am tired of it. Besides, this is evidently a dangerous night to be walking about alone.'

  What kind of a man plays games with knives and gold, Will?' I said. 'Who do you suppose he is?'

  'If he is the man I have seen near the palace, I would say that he is a knight returned from the Holy Land. He has been under a hot sun, and he has a fighter's look. Besides, his clothes are foreign.' I remembered the man's green cloak: it had looked like rich, patterned silk.

  'He was French, I think,' I said.

  'Or Norman,' said Will. 'The French are small - this fellow is tall, and his lip curls like a Norman.' He spat.

  Will had no love for the Normans. His father's grandfather, or the grandfather's grandfather, was a thegne who had died in King Harold's shield-wall at Hastings. The family lost their lands and had become wool-merchants instead, growing quite rich again and building a fine house in Morpeth, a town in the far north which my friend described as 'a whorehouse for Scots and drovers, but lacking the whores'. Will, the bright third son, had been packed off to Balecester 'to become a bishop', Will would say ruefully. 'A burgher's fat soul needs a bishop in the family if it is to squeeze into heaven. My father is about as pious as his sheep. But the Lord is a shepherd, and Pater trades in wool, so the old monster feels a certain kinship with his Redeemer' - and here he would wink at me - 'but he knows you can fleece men as well as lambkins: he longs to see me with crozier in one hand, shears in the other, and my holy bum on a golden woolsack.'

  As we turned up Ox Lane, the street where I made my lodgings, the curfew bell sounded in the distance, and as always I strained to hear the scurrying of feet which I always imagined must follow. In my experience, bells were rung for a purpose: to summon, to warn and to drive away storms. Here in the town, no one took much notice, until the Sheriff s men came at them with their knobbled staves. We students were meant to fight these dullards, it was expected of us, and Will boasted a long scar that divided his tonsure almost from ear to ear. Sophisticate that I was, I felt inclined to be at home and abed whilst these rumpuses took place. And now, as my landlady's door came into view, I turned and caught that twinkle in my companion's eye that meant his night was not yet over.

  We reached the threshold of my lodgings. Will tapped me on the chest with a loose fist. He was grinning like a hungry fox.

  'Bar your door tonight, brother, in case your crusader comes a-knocking.'

  'My crusader, Will? You are more than welcome to him yourself I replied. I was tired now, although it was not late, and sleep seemed the most desirable thing in the world.

  'Keep safe, brother,' I said. 'Don't go picking up stray coins.'

  'My eyes will be on the heavens, Patch, as always.'

  And he turned and loped away into the moon-shadows. I climbed the narrow, creaking stairs to my lodgings under the roof. The latch stuck, as always, and then the usual smell of mildewed thatch greeted me. I lit a candle stub and let the warm tallow reek fight off the roofs stale breath - I had decided, soon after taking up residence, that the thatch was so damp that I was unlikely to set it on fire. My pallet, too, was damp and I shivered for a while, my sheepskin mantle tight around me. The candlelight flickered yellow along the rafters and over the bilious straw. Sleep was near, and the bedbugs were hungry. I could hear their little guts rumble as I snuffed out the flame.

  Chapter Three

  T

 
he next morning brought rain. It woke me in the near-dawn before matins, filtering through the decay of the thatch, drip-dripping onto the end of my nose and down into my open mouth. I carried the taste with me as I sloshed through the puddles, my robes hitched up like an alewife, and as I dozed through the morning service. Only when my head drooped and my jaw hit the pew in front with a hollow clunk did the savour of blood drive it away. I had bitten my tongue, but I was awake.

  The rest of the morning passed in an unpleasant haze. My head throbbed slightly from the evening's beer, and my tongue throbbed where my teeth had pinched it. I had volunteered -always the eager one - to copy out a lengthy gloss of Origen for one of the masters, and the effort of keeping the quill steady left me exhausted by lunchtime. I found Will in the refectory. He looked sour and twisted, like a hawk with an excess of bile, and like a hawk he croaked and baited when I enquired about his nocturnal activities. He cheered somewhat when I insisted he drink my share of the small-beer provided. In the afternoon I would have to endure a lecture on Roman law, and I needed to keep a clear head. Any unfortunate who dropped off while Magister Jens Tribonensis lectured would be woken by the fat German's stave across his shoulders, and a verbal flaying thereafter. Master Jens might look like a jovial, red-faced buffoon, but he took his Cicero very seriously indeed.

  Will squinted at me through red eyes. 'Sweet dreams, brother Patch?' he enquired.

  'The pure of heart never dream, as you well know.' I lied. A dream of sorts had returned again and again. Cornish Owen pelted me with gold coins in a stinking tavern room, and I knew that, in a chamber above us, a man in a green cloak admired his knife. I heard my name, a whisper that slid down the staircase in the corner of the room. As I scrabbled at the door, which of course would not open, Owen burbled a mindlessly filthy ditty behind me.

  'You, on the other hand, have not put the purity of your own heart to the test lately, Will. Your eyes look as if they need peeling.'

  'Strange, my dearest brother, for they were peeled all last night, looking for your dagger-man.'

  'I earnestly want to forget that bastard.'

  "Well, of course. But as I said, I'm sure I have seen him before. So I sniffed around the palace—'

  Before I knew it I had grabbed Will's sleeve.

  'Please, brother. Let us forget last night.'

  We both looked down. My knuckles stood out white against the dark cloth.

  'Softly, Patch,' my friend said. 'I'm sorry. I just wanted to warn you. Your friend — your acquaintance — is the Bishop's Steward. Or at least I am fairly sure he is.'

  "What is a madman like that doing in the Bishop's service?' I asked, curious despite everything.

  'I don't know. Making enough money to throw about the place, for one thing.' Will patted my hand soothingly. 'Don't worry, Patch. I'm sure he's forgotten all about you. On the other hand, according to my sources, he is a really unpleasant creature. Likes tying up girls and tickling them with his knife.'

  'Oh yes? So your enquiries involved looking up skirts as well as around comers.' I was feeling a little better.

  Will ignored me. 'He isn't a Norman: he's Breton. He has not long arrived from the Holy Land, it seems, and the Bishop keeps him as a strong-man of some kind. From what I gathered, his duties are of an—' He paused, and cleared his throat.'—An executive nature.' What do you mean?'

  'I mean if someone is tardy with their debts, your man pays a visit. But I understand he is also employed in more complex matters. He tracks down heretics, apparently, and keeps an eye on anyone who strays from the true path.'

  'He didn't look much like a scourge of the ungodly last night. More like a dandy with nasty Eastern habits.'

  'Oh, yes,' Will added, taking a pull at my beer. 'He is, or rather was, a Templar Knight. Got kicked out over an affair of honour in Jerusalem.'

  'Templars are monks first and soldiers second, I thought. They don't go in for affairs of honour.'

  'As I said, he was kicked out.'

  I spent the afternoon in the company of Aristotle, gazing at text, but thinking instead about the mad Templar. I knew about the Templars, of course: knights who served only the Lord, monks in armour who were the soul of honour and the scourge of the Infidel. Will's information explained the exotic dress and the sun-touched skin, not to mention the Moorish knife. It did not seem surprising that such a man would have found himself unsuited to life in an ascetic order. But now to be involved in Church matters? I suddenly remembered a nasty fact: he had known my name. How? How would a heretic-finder know the name of a lowly student, and, more importantly, why?

  I was no heretic. I was plainly and honestly orthodox. Looking back, I can see that my spirituality had all the refinement of the tonsured rustics who taught me. I had an enquiring spirit, to be sure, but not in matters religious. I knew the beliefs of the moorland people, but those were nasty, odd superstitions. I was aware, of course, that the Mahometans and Jews followed a different path from ours, and had heard the uneducated slanders about idols and child sacrifice, which I did not believe. I knew that there were Christians who picked quarrels with Holy Writ, but I had little interest in that. In truth I cared little about doctrinal niceties. I fancied myself a historian, with a touch of the botanist to relieve all the dust and dead bones.

  If anything, I felt a little safer now. I had sacrificed no children, after all. It was a coincidence, a malicious joke, a mistake. I began to shrug the encounter off along with my hangover.

  And so I stayed at my books until evening, in that kind of near-trance that spidery writing, old pages and guttering tallow-light often conjures, much to the detriment of scholarship. It is now, when eyelids droop and the mind substitutes its own text for that on the vellum, that Satan reaches for ripe monastic souls. To my mind, bigger windows and a liberal expenditure on candles would keep more clerics on the strait path than a lifetime of hair shirts and midnight prayers. But forgive these maunderings. For the purposes of my story, however, they will perhaps deflect your attention from the boredom of that life, and from the fact that I have forgotten some of the smaller events of those days. Enough, I hope, to say that at some time after vespers I was walking past the great west doors of the cathedral, on my way, I suppose, to my lodgings. Balecester cathedral stands on the crown of a low but steep hill that rises out of a bend in the river. It is surrounded by a pretty, paved space, the Cathedral Yard. Shops and fine dwelling-places bound the Yard on three sides, and on the north side stands the great stone pile of the Bishop's Palace, more a fortress than a palace and guarded day and night by armed men bearing the crest of Bishop Ranulph: a yellow crozier and a white hound on a sky-blue field. The grim palace, such a contrast to the soaring, airy (if stone can be airy) presence of the cathedral itself, was the object of the townspeople's muttered resentment. If it was true to say that the Normans had replaced the ancient cathedral with a far more beautiful and majestic building, it was also true that the Bishop's palace was bald proof of the conquerors' power. But tonight my thoughts were still with the long-dead Romans and their legal tussles, and I heard nothing until a sudden rustle of clothing behind me broke into my reverie. I spun around, knowing as I did so that my tormentor had found me again.

  There was a stronger moon tonight. It shone into the stranger's dark face, lighting the white crescents of his eyes, which stared unblinking into mine. I stood like a pillar of ice, all my fears, driven out by the boredom of the day, flocking about me like starlings returning to their roost. The man was dressed in the same green damask he had worn last night, but now a short surcoat of a darker green covered his body. Upon it I saw two long bones, embroidered in silver thread, forming an upright cross. Around it were four stars with long wavy arms, also in silver. The man put out his hand and, as my sinews clenched, laid it gently upon my shoulder. A smile appeared on his Hps. My terror only grew.

  Well met, brother Petroc,' I heard. The voice was soft, nothing like the cold hiss I remembered from last night.

  The man
bent slightly and peered into my face. 'Petroc!' he said again, and shook me gently. 'Have you turned into a mooncalf, my young friend?'

  I felt the power of speech return. My mouth was arid, but words began to form.

  Who are you?' I managed. Not the most well-chosen words, I grant you. But the creature grinned. He gave my shoulder another companionable shake.

  Your friend, Petroc, your friend - but you are still afflicted by last night.' Now there was concern in his voice as well. 'A game, truly, as I said it was. I would no more have cut you than . . .' his smile became rueful. 'Let us become friends, then? It is the least I can offer after curdling your wits like that. For which I beg your forgiveness.'

  The advice of any sane man would be to mistrust anyone who calls you friend more than once in a single breath, but I was little more than a boy with country mud on his boots. God help me, I dropped my guard, and smiled.

  'Last night was taken as no more than a game, sir. I struggle even to recall it.' Such a poor attempt at urbanity, but greater fates are sealed by less.

  'I am happy for it, brother Petroc!' And with that, he linked his arm through mine and began to stroll. 'As to who I am, my name is Sir Hugh de Kervezey, knight of Monmouthshire and Brittany, late of Outremer and now Steward to his Excellency Bishop Ranulph.'

  And so I found myself strolling in the cathedral precinct with the Bishop's Steward, too startled to resist - and who, indeed, would have resisted? This man was powerful. He had the Bishop's ear, and he was a crusader, as my own father had been. I was just worldly enough to know that fortunes turned on just such acts of chance. Patronage - I hardly knew what it meant, but it almost made me forget the knife that had gleamed in front of my nose so recently. Fortunes had been decided by a chance meeting; why not my own? Perhaps, I now thought - young idiot that I was - the knight's behaviour had been nothing more than some test well known to worldly men, which I had passed. In any event, no harm was likely to befall me in the shadow of the cathedral.