Relics

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  We walked thus, in companionable silence, until we had crossed the Cathedral Yard and the walls of the Bishop's palace rose in front of us. Then Sir Hugh stiffened, as if struck by a sudden thought.

  Would you like a look inside the palace, brother?' he asked, turning to me. 'I must speak to the Bishop, but it will be a matter of a few minutes. Why not wait for me inside? A promising young man like you might well be spending time there soon enough, and it will be my pleasure to show you around.'

  This was my daydream of power made reality. I nodded like a simpleton. "Yes please!' I gushed. 'Wonderful!' said the knight.

  The guards at the palace gate bowed their heads respectfully to Sir Hugh, and let me past without question. Now we were inside, my companion became more talkative.

  'A little while ago you were staring at my surcoat, Petroc,' he said.

  'Forgive me, sir, but it is striking,' I said carefully.

  To my relief, Sir Hugh laughed. Yes, it certainly is that,' he said. And there is a noble tale behind it. You shall hear it.' And not waiting for my reply, he continued.

  'My grandfather went to the Holy Land with His Majesty King Philip of France,' he began. 'He was a knight in the service of the Duke of Morlaix - that is in Brittany - and when the Duke was killed near Aleppo, Grandfather was at his side.' He glanced down to where I scurried along beside him trying to keep up and listen at the same time. 'The Duke's dying wish was for his bones to rest in Brittany, and his heart in Jerusalem,' the knight continued. 'Grandfather saw to it that his lord's bones were boiled in wine, and then he carried bones and heart towards the Holy City. But his party were ambushed by the Saracens, and things went ill for them. A young page who lay hidden behind a great stone saw Grandfather fight to his last breath. When they found him later, he was lying on a hill of dead Mahometans. His sword was broken at the hilt, but in each hand he held one of the Duke's leg-bones, all smeared with the blood of the Infidel.' He sighed. 'The King gave us the crossed bones for our crest, and Grandfather lies buried near his lord's heart in Jerusalem.'

  'Have you been there, sir - Jerusalem, I mean?' I said.

  'Indeed I have,' he replied. And to Jaffa, Aleppo, Horns - strange and wonderful places.' He fell silent, and a certain wistfulness played across his face, softening it for a brief moment. We walked on a few paces, and then he seemed to shrug off his mood.

  'How old are you, Petroc? Nineteen, twenty?' The voice was brisk and purposeful.

  'Eighteen, sir.'

  'And where are you from?'

  'Dartmoor. Which is in Devon.'

  'Devon.' Something in his voice hinted that his question might have been rhetorical. But how could he know my origins? Absurd misgivings, I told myself.

  "Well, that moorland air has served you well - you seem older.'

  'Thank you, sir,' I said, extremely flattered.

  And here we are,' said Sir Hugh. Talking, we had strolled through a long stone-paved corridor, its walls hung with rather drab tapestries, then climbed a narrow spiral stair that seemed cut out of the thickness of the palace walls. At the top was another, wider passage, and the tapestries that hung here were finer and brighter. Rush torches burned in finely wrought wall-sconces. The door Sir Hugh was now leading me towards was flanked by two great iron candelabras, festooned with heavy swathes of dried wax like frozen honey. An armed man and a page, both in the Bishop's livery of white hounds rearing on a blue field, stood in the shadows.

  'The Bishop's quarters. I'm afraid you will have to stay out here, my friend. But Tom—' and he gestured towards the page, who stiffened, then scurried over to us,'—will bring you a little refreshment. Won't you, Tommy?'

  At once, Steward,' said Tom. The poor boy - younger than me anyway, I supposed - looked terrified.

  'Thank you,' I said, embarrassed. Being waited upon by liveried servants was a new experience, and I wasn't sure if I liked it.

  'Sit, brother,' the page offered, pointing to a wooden bench just beyond the light of the candles. 'I will return in a minute.' And he set off running.

  Meanwhile, the guard had opened the door. A warm glow, of candles and firelight, ebbed out. Sir Hugh patted my shoulder gently.

  'I will be a little while. Then, perhaps, you will be my guest for dinner? I have yet to make amends for last night.'

  I was speechless yet again, and managed an idiot's nod.

  'Very well, then. Tom will take care of you in the meanwhile.' And with that he stalked into the Bishop's chambers, and the guard pulled the door shut behind him.

  And so I spent a pleasant half-hour in a corridor of the Bishop's palace, eating cold fowl from a silver plate and sipping at a goblet of some rich, garnet-red wine. The page, Tom, presented these delights to me with a nervous bow and then retreated to his place in the shadows by the door, from where he watched me like a timid owl. The wine's smoky fumes reached into my head like the roots of a tree that sends tendrils creeping into every tiny crevice of the rock on which it grows -and indeed I fell to thinking of the moor, and of a hot day in August when I had laid down to rest on a tor high above my home. I had dozed and woken to find a little adder asleep in the curve of my neck. I gasped in fright and it opened a yellow eye, gazed at me with surprise, and disappeared into a fold in the stone. I had been taught to fear the glossy brown vipers, short and stocky with a black zigzag running the length of their backs, but this little creature had been gentle and as afraid of me as I had been of it. Perhaps Sir Hugh is that sort of viper, I thought idly, picking at a chicken wing. But on the whole, I doubted it.

  Finally the door to the Bishop's chambers swung open and Sir Hugh strode out. A smaller, wider man followed him to the threshold, and I recognised Bishop Ranulph. I had sprung to my feet as soon as I heard the creak of the door, and was surreptitiously wiping chicken grease from my fingers onto my habit when Sir Hugh beckoned to me.

  'Brother Petroc,' he said, 'come.'

  Ducking my head in dismay, I did as I was bid.

  'I have commended you to His Excellency,' said the knight. You are greatly honoured.'

  I looked up, and found myself looking at the Bishop's outstretched hand. Upon the fourth finger squatted an immense ring of gold and carnelian. I knelt and kissed it, shooting a moment's glance upward as I did so. Perhaps my daydream of the moors had not quite faded, for I realised that Bishop Ranulph, whom I had only ever seen from a distance, looked like a buzzard. A thick shock of grey hair fell close around a face that held close-set, slate-grey eyes either side of a hawkish nose, below which was a thin, curving mouth. The man even held his head cocked bird-like to one side as he looked down at me beadily and, I thought, hungrily. I had seen buzzards rip the guts from baby rabbits with just such an air of concentration, and I hurriedly dropped my eyes.

  "You are a constant surprise to me, Hugh,' I heard him say. 'I hardly thought you'd be one for proteges.' The Bishop's voice was deep, flat, and every word had an inflection of finality. This was not a man who expected to be questioned.

  'Hardly a protege, Excellency,' Sir Hugh replied casually. 'Of mine, anyhow. Brother Petroc is a thinker. I merely wished to demonstrate some of the promising material the University is nurturing.'

  'Thinker, eh?' the flat voice said. 'Make sure he's thinking the right thoughts, then, Hugh.' There was a sort of laughter, a rustle of fabric, and the grumble of a closing door. Sir Hugh tapped my tonsure.

  'Unfreeze yourself, brother. Let us find some dinner.'

  And so we retraced our steps through the stony anatomy of the palace, Sir Hugh wrapped, seemingly, in his thoughts and I in mine. Chief of these concerned my introduction to the Bishop, and my sense that I had acquitted myself rather poorly. The man was quite terrifying, and kneeling on the flagstones between him and Sir Hugh I had felt like a frog caught between two sharp-beaked herons. But now the Bishop knew my name and face. What a stroke of fortune - an introduction to Bishop Ranulph! Wait and see,' I told myself. Wait and see.'

  By now we were back in Cathedral Yar
d. Sir Hugh was still preoccupied, and although ignored I reasoned I had been invited to dinner, so I kept close to his side. Then, to my surprise, Sir Hugh steered me towards the great west door of the cathedral.

  'Forgive my silence, Petroc. The cares of work. And I'm afraid I have an errand to perform,' said Sir Hugh. 'A small matter of the Bishop's business. It will take but a few minutes. In fact—' and he turned to me as if a new thought had struck him, '—you can be of some help . . . that is, if you don't mind?'

  And although I was too surprised - not to say worried - to reply, he cuffed my arm companionably. 'Splendid. That is, unless you have made other plans for your evening?'

  'No, no,' I managed, unable for the life of me to imagine how I could help this strange and intimidating man.

  'It is simply that, as a cleric, you are the appropriate person for this task, which will assist me and please His Excellency the Bishop,' said the knight, as if reading my thoughts.

  After that, how could I resist? Besides, we were now at the cathedral door. It was unlocked at this hour, and Sir Hugh gestured me inside with a courtly flourish.

  I had always loved Balecester cathedral, although love is too easy a word. It is a titanic cave of stone, and yet the artisans who made it shaped that stone as if it had been wood, or wax. It was always cool and silent, except during Mass and on feast days and festivals, when it blazed with candles, buzzed with humanity and was filled with billows of incense from huge censers. Just a few weeks back, a great Mass had been held in the presence of the Pope's own legate, one Otto, and it seemed as if the entire city had craned its neck to catch a glimpse of this exotic plenipotentiary from Rome. Tonight it was empty, and lit only by the candles that burned in its chapels and before the altar. As we walked through the transept and reached the nave, I looked up, as I always did here. Columns of stone soared up and away, and met far over our heads in a filigree of arcs and leafy bosses, some carved as clusters of leaves, others as heraldic designs or grotesque beasts and men. It was like being inside a stone forest, and now, although the ceiling was deep in shadow, I felt tiny, awe-struck and insignificant compared to this mighty work honouring a mightier God.

  If Sir Hugh felt such things, he did not show it. While I made a full genuflection towards the high altar, the knight gave a curt bow and crossed himself briskly. Then he strolled on up the nave, and I hurried along behind him, trying to keep up. I was surprised when we passed under the rood screen and into the chancel. Sir Hugh was a layman — a knight, of course, and an erstwhile Templar - but he was also the Bishop's man, and so maybe had some kind of dispensation that allowed him access to the sanctuary. The rood screen itself always made me shiver. I saw it as a colossal web of stonework that held seemingly hundreds of statues, of kings, noblemen, bishops and saints, guarding the altar. So much holiness — and so much weight, supported as if by a miracle. But if I felt the fear of the pious, Sir Hugh was immune. Or was he? Now he hesitated, dropped quickly to one knee and, taking my arm, led us back into the nave.

  'I will have to ask forgiveness for that,' he said, and I thought his voice sounded strained. 'But I used to be in orders myself, and the training never leaves one.' The poise and presence of the man seemed to have left him all of a sudden. I was intrigued. He was human after all. Will had mentioned the Templars, and I was about to say something, when Sir Hugh continued.

  'As the Bishop's Steward I have the right to approach the altar, but I do not like to do so,' he said. Which is how you can be of service, Petroc. The Bishop has asked me to bring him a certain holy relic that is kept there,' and he pointed to the altar. 'It would be right and fitting if you were to carry it, brother.'

  I felt a glow of pride. 'Of course,' I said.

  'Excellent!' said Sir Hugh. His spirits seemed to have revived a little. 'The Bishop has need of the hand of St Euphemia. It is held in a reliquary shaped like a hand, thus,' and he raised his own hand in imitation of querulous, feminine benediction. It was startling in its precision, and faintly mocking: an actor's gesture. It was also deeply out of place, somehow: like the polished, tightly coiled knight himself, with his white eyes and evil little knife. I heard, somewhere in the back of my mind, a gasp of outrage from the stone worthies in the rood screen. But the sense I had of Sir Hugh's otherness, his utter remoteness from anything or anyone in my experience, only tightened his hold over me. I had no familiarity with power. For all I knew, this was how it manifested itself to lesser persons like myself.

  So it was against my better judgement, indeed almost against my will, that I turned and entered the chancel once more. The floor here was made of richly coloured tiles, which were quieter than the flagstones of the nave. The tiered pews of the choir rose on either side of me, and at any other time I would have paused to admire the dense carving that rambled over every surface. The misericords — the hinged seats that folded up against the pew-backs - each had a face or a beast under them, some obvious caricatures of real people, others leaf-haired wood-woses or green men. They were cheerful things that brought a spark of fun to the serious business of Mass, but tonight the thought of all those odd faces made me uncomfortable. Like the statues in the screen, I felt their eyes upon me.

  But now I had reached the altar. I climbed the three steps slowly; the inlaid marble of different hues and patterns that made the treads glow in the light was smooth and slippery under the leather of my soles. The great stone table before me was laden with candles, and the flames winked and slid over the gold and jewels of the tall crucifix, the covers of the Bible and Psalter, the chalice and pyx. I saw a casket of figured ivory; the stand for a crystal globe which held a single tooth of St Matthew suspended within it like the iris of a grotesque eye; a small cross of filigreed gold and garnets that I knew guarded a splinter from the True Cross. And there, almost hidden by the Psalter, slim golden fingers rose to catch the tiniest beads of candlelight on their tips. The reliquary. Catching my breath, I gathered up my right sleeve so as not to brush the altar or the gems that studded the Psalter's cover, reached across and took the hand of St Euphemia.

  It was cool, not cold, to my touch, a thin hand smaller than my own, and finely boned - not unlike my mother's, I thought suddenly. It rose from a richly patterned sleeve that formed a base. The Saint had seemingly lost her hand three or four inches below the wrist. I held the thing reverently. Although I had heard of St Euphemia, a Roman woman of Balecester who had been chopped into pieces by the soldiers of Diocletian, and knew that her powers of healing were revered by country women, I had never given her much consideration. My favourite saint had always been St Christopher, whose image my father wore always and whom I could imagine striding across the moors, carrying Our Lord across brook and mire. St Euphemia had lived and died in Balecester, and her cult was here in a city I neither liked nor wished to remain in. Nevertheless, holding this thing, a thin skin of gold separating my flesh from the flesh of the long-dead woman, I felt a tingle of power coming through the metal. I closed my eyes and offered up a prayer to her, and again, the image of my mother came unbidden to my mind. Feeling oddly comforted, I turned from the altar and found myself face-to-face with a man whose pinched face twitched with shock and outrage.

  What have you done?' he said in a strangled voice. 'How dare you — how dare you!'

  I was terrified. The man was clearly a deacon, and quite young. He must have been in the vestry and heard Sir Hugh and I talking. I had been so preoccupied that I had not heard him come stealthily up behind me. For all he knew I was a common thief and the worst sort of impious blasphemer. But then I remembered why I was here.

  'I am doing the Bishop's bidding,' I stammered.

  'The Bishop? What have you to do with the Bishop, boy?' The deacon had merely been shocked before: now he was angry as well.

  'I am with Sir Hugh de Kervezey, Steward to the Bishop. He asked me to fetch the hand of St Euphemia. The Bishop requires it.'

  'I see no Steward,' said the deacon. And, looking past his shoulder, neither
did I. From where we stood, the body of the cathedral beyond the rood screen was in shadow. Sir Hugh must be sitting in a pew out of sight, I thought.

  'He did not wish to approach the altar, although he has permission,' I said, desperately. 'The Bishop wants the hand. I am Petroc of Auneford, late of Buckfast in Devon and now studying here at the Cathedral School. Please,' I added, feeling close to childish tears, 'I mean no harm. Sir Hugh will speak for me.'

  'Sir Hugh be damned, boy,' spat the deacon. 'Give me the hand.'

  'Please, sir, it is true,' I pleaded.

  'Give me the hand, and then I will call the Watch. You should not have drawn the Bishop into your poisonous lies, boy. You will surely suffer for what you have done.'

  I was about to give up the reliquary, but a flash of something in the nave caught my eye. And there was Sir Hugh leaning against the rood screen, his arm raised casually.

  'Come, Petroc, the Bishop is waiting for us,' he called.

  I looked at the deacon in triumph. 'Sir Hugh,' I told him. The man glared at me. 'I see an accomplice, and a bold one,' he said. 'Come with me.' And he grabbed a fistful of my cowl and began to drag me down the aisle.

  We were about half-way across the chancel when I felt his grip loosen, and we halted. The deacon turned to me, and his face had changed. Rage had fled, to be replaced with doubt.

  'That is Sir Hugh de Kervezey,' he informed me. I nodded.

  'I know,' I said. 'Please talk to him, then you will see I was telling the truth.'

  And now I followed the deacon as he strode across the tiles. He was quite a tall man, and perhaps ten years older than me. Now that he had regained some composure, I saw that his face was not unkind, although he looked very tired. Long hours in this cold building, I thought, and who knows what battles he fought in prayer? I began to feel less ill-inclined towards him.