Relics

by Pip Vaughan-Hughes

  At last we caught a screeching gale from the west, and for endless days we flew on a broad reach, every man on deck for an eternity, working with frost-numbed hands. And then one day I felt a rope slacken in my grasp, and we all paused and looked aloft. The sail had relaxed, so slightly that I could have imagined it. A petrel whizzed past the crow's nest. Then the ship bucked again and the moment was past.

  But the next morning I woke - suddenly, with no transition between sleep and absolute wakefulness, as I had begun to do lately - to see a washed-out blue sky above, some harmless-seeming clouds and a white bird. The wind had gone; we were tacking across a fresh southerly breeze, and soon the bird was joined by others, a wheeling, screeching party of gulls. Not petrels or the solitary albatrosses that had tracked us through the empty seas, but big seagulls like the ones that would swarm over the newly ploughed fields back home. The men began to smile and talk a little more easily, and in truth we had all been a little subdued of late. The relentless diet of puffin had taken its toll, and something else was weakening us. My mouth had swollen and my tongue with it. Eating was a chore, and if a piece of dry meat should slip between my teeth there would be agony and blood in worrying amounts. My legs were always stiff and they were becoming speckled with dark spots. Many of the others were spitting blood and complaining of swollen joints. Horst had lost two back teeth, and Zianni nearly choked on one of his that dropped out as he slept. And our breaths all had the same sour, tomb-like reek. 'It is the scorbutus,' said Isaac, but he could offer no cure. We must wait for dry land and another food than this cursed puffin,' he said, and we had to believe him. But indeed we could smell land in the warm breeze: wet earth, a ghost of something green. The ship seemed to wake from a long fever dream.

  We were three days from Ireland. Our mad spider's course had brought us back to the Scottish isles, and that day we passed St Kilda, a tiny hermit's perch where countless gulls wheeled like bees around a hive. Nizam was aiming us at the North Channel, and Dublin - and some measure of civilization - had begun to occupy a large part of my waking mind. Streets, bustle, inns, beer! We talked of little else. Women, too, although that subject I tried to avoid as discreetly as I could. Will had often talked of the city whores he had enjoyed - to him such fleshly transactions were as natural as breathing. But the whores had scared me with their leering faces and heaving, sweat-streaked bosoms. There lay mortal sin, and of course I was also somewhat timid by nature.

  Oddly, though, the only naked female bodies I had seen were in church, the painted ones in the hell that covered the west wall of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, a holy place much frequented by Balecester students. Here, women complete with round, turnip-like breasts, little bellies and black stains between their thighs were herded by serpentine devils who fondled them lewdly and prodded their heavy buttocks with eel spears. I had often lain awake in my mean little room in Ox Lane with those pale figures writhing before me, my own flesh rebelling from my control. I would try to focus on the devils, to imagine their spears stabbing at my own flesh, but those breasts and the dark patches below the bellies that sagged ever so gently ... I would have to get out of bed and pray, kneeling until the hard floor hurt me enough to drive the foul visions away. Sometimes I would have to leave my room and wander the streets until dawn, saying my rosary and muttering to myself like, I daresay, a simpleton. It was on such a night that I had found the way onto the city walls.

  Now, I supposed, I was no longer bound by the Church and its strictures, and the lewd and often frankly bizarre tales that seemingly every crewman now found time to share with me seemed, if anything, a little more terrifying because of the knowledge that I could now have such adventures of my own, should I so choose. Meanwhile my dreams grew lurid: patchworks of flesh, scraps and fragments of the day's talk. It was on the second morning past St Kilda that I awoke from the dream of a painful tangle of limbs (an Egyptian gypsy and her snake, courtesy of Zianni, had befriended Elia's Finnish twin sisters and an obese but talented Genoese, as described by Horst), to find that we were putting in to land. A long beach of white sand lay ahead, lying like spilled milk below crag-topped moors.

  It was one of the Western Isles, lonely and uninhabited save for the wild sheep that grazed it, abandoned by settlers in time out of mind. There was a spring of sweet water above the beach, and we would fill our barrels here. Fresh water, and fresh mutton! The Cormaran preferred secrecy wherever possible, given the nature of its business. When we put into a populated harbour the traffic was one way: we brought our business to the land, and not the other way around. When it came to provisions and repairs, the Captain chose small, friendly villages or, even better, the privacy of a deserted shore. We were almost out of water, and although we had enough to bring us to Dublin, Gilles explained to me that the sharp and insatiable curiosity of the traders of that town was something to be deflected at all costs. And Guthlaf the carpenter was keen to repair a sprung plank and right some other ills inflicted by our dash across the Sea of Darkness.

  The tide was half out, and Nizam ran the ship up into a shallow gulley carved out by the stream that ran down off the moors. It would hold the Cormaran while Guthlaf went about his work and let us float off again at high water. In an hour we were high and dry, and I was swarming over the side with the rest of the crew. It was high summer, I realised with a shock as my feet sank into the warm, wet sand. I could smell the heather, and knew that the moorland would be alive with bees storing up their wealth for the dead times. So, after I had helped fill the butts at a place where the stream poured over a granite lip and down onto the sand, and rolled them back to the ship, and spent a gentle hour gathering sea kale with Abu (how wonderful the thick, green stems felt to the touch, and even more wonderful was the sharp juice that stung my destroyed gums), I slipped away and, turning my back on the sea, set off to follow the stream up the hill towards the lowering crags. It led at first through a field of scattered boulders. The orange and grey lichens that clung to the rock were the same ones that grew in Devon, I noticed. The stream picked a narrow way through two great tumbled slabs, and beyond them lay a small, deep, sedge-rimmed pool fed at one end by a little waterfall that gurgled over a ledge thickly padded with moss. It reminded me of a pool I used to bathe in on the Red Brook near my home, and so without thinking I shed my clothes and slipped into the water.

  It was icy cold and the peat made my white skin seem golden beneath the surface. I took a deep breath and ducked my head under, the chill gripping my skull like a helmet of ice.

  But it was wonderful after so long in damp, salt-stiff clothes and as I watched the tiny trout weave in and out of the smooth granite cobbles I soon felt myself warming up. The waterfall beckoned, and I clambered up and sat on its hp, cushioned by the deep moss, letting the water play under and around me. The sunny air fluttered across my back. And then I thought I heard someone laugh. It was a low, rich sound, but soft, so soft that it had to be some trick of the breeze among the stones. People who often wander alone in waste places are alive to the fancies of solitude: I had heard things on the wind before, and felt my flesh crawl under the gaze of eyes that were not there. The country people call it the work of faeries or demons, and I do not quarrel with that, but often it is the power of the land itself, and so I was not really surprised now. I took it as a greeting from the island. But I realised that time was slipping away, and so I dragged my clothing back on and set out upstream.

  I strolled for perhaps an hour, although I was lost in a cloud of moorland incense: heather flowers, bilberries, moss, sheep-shit and peat. I am home, I thought again and again. This path will lead me to my father's house and the tumbling brown waters of the Aune. My soul felt at ease here. Pausing to cram another handful of warm, bursting bilberries into my purple-stained mouth, I found that there was a stillness within me that I had not felt for many, many days. Since the Deacon's murder, I had been quivering inside like a plucked harp string, but now there was calm.

  It was an easy climb to the base
of the crag, and though I had not intended even to come this far, I was soon scrambling up the coarse, fissured granite. It was far less terrifying close up, this great dark cliff, and I had spent my boyhood scaling Dartmoor tors and scrabbling about on scree slopes. So it took me little time to reach the top. Standing on the wide platform, the warm wind ruffling my clothes, I looked back for the first time since leaving the beach.

  The boat was a little black crumb on the white sand, the crew a sprinkling of soot around it. Beyond, the sea was an impossible blue-green, like no colour I had ever seen. It stretched away, darkening, as far as I could see to north, south and west. To the east, some low shadows could have been land, or more islands, or just cloud shadows on the water. I was on the pinnacle of the island. Turning, I saw that our beach made up perhaps one quarter of the shoreline. There was another beach on the opposite side. To the north, the high ground met the sea in a great swooping curve of cliff. To the south, the moors petered out in a tumbled, stony puzzle of coves and rocky spits. To the east, a skewed grid of old dry-stone walls pushed inland from the beach. The grass was greener here, and here and there among the walls stood the remains of stone dwellings, their roofs long since tumbled in. Who had made this place their home? People like me, I supposed. I would be happy here, a little crumb of Dartmoor all my own, with no one to bother me. I gazed down at the boat, ugly as a dead fly on the perfect white of the sand. Perhaps I would stay up here. I sat down on a clump of thrift. Would they come looking for me? Would they bother?

  All at once I heard another laugh. I leaped up. I was alone on the rock, but it had been real, this time. So I had been followed after all. I cursed, loudly. We had been cooped up, a pack of starving madmen, on a tiny ship for God knew how many weeks or months. Who now would begrudge me a crumb of solitude?

  Who's there?' I yelled.

  There was silence: just the wind hissing through the thrift. The pink flowers nodded at me, possibly in sympathy.

  I sat down again, but it was no good. The spell was broken. I felt my happiness trickling away. I loved it up here, and someone had taken the trouble to ruin it for me. Someone . . . who? Who could possibly be up here, save for me? And then the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I felt eyes upon me, but when I whipped about, the moor was empty. Below me, very far away, were the only other folk on this island. All at once the terror that can come upon one in waste places washed over me, raising my skin into cold gooseflesh. I was a stranger here, and alone. What spirits had I disturbed? What manner of ghost might lurk in such a place? Lonely, answered the wind. Hungry.

  In a blind horror I took to my heels, tripped on a sedge tussock and went flying. Face-down in a bilberry bush, laughter rippled over me. Ahead, the crag faded into the gentle eastern slope and not far away the granite reared up again through the heather and one of the ruined stone walls led away from it down the hill. It was the perfect hiding place. Perhaps I might have considered the folly of hiding from that which cannot be seen, but I did not: leaping up again, I dashed towards the wall. The watcher laughed once more.

  And in the same breath the laugh became a shriek that was abruptly silenced, extinguished like a pinched-out candle flame. I stopped dead in my tracks. I was alone again, and the quiet was stifling. The shriek still rang in my ears. That had not been a ghost, nor any sprite. It had been made by flesh and blood, and it had sounded like a child. What had happened? My mind raced. What was a child doing here? Perhaps there were folk dwelling here after all. I tugged at my hair in confusion. Such a shriek could only mean dire hurt or worse, and so against my better judgement I started off again, haste making me sure-footed this time. Reaching the end of the wall, where it collapsed in a heap at the foot of the granite outcrop, I scrambled over. There was no one there, but to my left the crag jutted out, and I wondered if my tormentor had fallen from the top and now lay on the other side of that corner of the rock. I dashed around, and ran full tilt into someone.

  'No!' I grunted in terror, for the collision had almost winded me. All of a sudden I found myself flung against the granite, and saw that I had crashed, not into a ghost, but into a stranger: a tall, starved man. I had a glimpse of a cadaverous face, a sparse white-streaked beard and two great blue eyes, totally devoid of reason and quite utterly mad, before the man whirled his coat of rags about him and rammed me into the rock wall again. The back of my head met stone and I blacked out for an instant. I came to almost at once and saw the man rearing above a dark shape - the hurt child! - lying stretched out on the ground. He was howling like a beast, but I could make out words among the enraged screeching: 'Christ help me! Foul stench! Filth!'

  The gabble was a chant, like a half-remembered holy office soured with unimaginable hate. 'Devils, O God! Devils! Christ Jesus, help your servant . . .'

  As I stood, the scene swimming before me, the man groped for a huge stone and raised it with a mighty effort above his head. Without thinking I covered the ground between us with two quick strides and kicked him hard in the ballocks. It was the only bit of fighting I had ever learned, chiefly from having had it done to me during football games, and as the top of my foot landed solidly between his legs, I knew exactly what it would feel like. As I staggered backwards, off balance and trying not to step on the child, the man let out a strangled bleat. His arms went limp and the stone dropped, bounced off the side of his head and landed on his shoulder before crashing harmlessly to the ground. There was a nasty, dry cracking sound. Retching, the man twisted around and collapsed sideways, blood spraying from his head. He rolled away through the heather before scrambling to his feet. Then he was off, running away across the moor, wailing like a banished spirit until his voice was lost on the wind.

  I could hear nothing except my own rasping breath, and the blood humming in my ears. The body lay face down. I could see the soles of bare feet, white and sorrowful. I dropped to my knees. Reluctantly, I reached out and rolled the child over. The cloak was wrapped tight and tangled, and I struggled to get my hand in amongst its folds to feel for a heartbeat. But I felt nothing save an odd, yielding softness.

  A hand shot out and gripped my wrist. A slim hand whose fingers bore many rings of heavy gold and bright stones. I was staring into a pair of large, dark eyes under curved brows. Female eyes.

  As if from very far away, I heard a soft, amused voice. I had heard it before, laughing at me. The grip on my wrist tightened.

  'I am the Princess Anna Doukaina Komnena,' said the Laughing One. And if you don't get your meat-hooks off my tits right now, you'll be very, very sorry.'

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘I . . . beg your pardon?' I squawked. 'I say again: stop your pawing, and let me up.' But my fingers seemed to be trapped in the folds of the cloak. I tugged desperately. A knuckle popped: I was free. All the while, the Princess Anna Doukaina Komneria regarded me, one black eyebrow arched. She grinned suddenly, and I saw the gap between her front teeth. I find it strange to relate now, but at that moment I had no doubt that this strange creature was exactly who she said she was. She sat up. Two thick coils of heavy, midnight-dark hair fell from the cloak. In an agony of shamed confusion, I cast down my eyes and shuffled backwards on my arse. My insides had turned to frogspawn.

  'Forgive me,' I mumbled. Oh, sweet blood of martyrs! Could I set my feet nowhere without a chasm of hell opening beneath them? My mind, a little more nimble than hands or tongue, whirled. How did one address a lady of royal birth? Fragments of rhymes and songs beat around my skull. Bright shards of paintings, borders from ancient tomes in dusty libraries, knights with their lady-loves . . . Suddenly, light burst in. I rose to one knee and, carefully pulling Thorn from her sheath, held the knife out, hilt first, to the Princess. Risking a look, I saw that she still wore a wide, bemused smile.

  'My life is yours,' I began. Somehow this sounded right and proper. 'I am your servant. I fear I have given you great offence, so take my blade and do with me what you will.'

  'Oh, bloody hell!' the princess was laughing now.
You are English! You . . . you really are very English, aren't you?'

  'Madam—' I held Thorn out a little further. The princess waved her hand, which I could not help noticing was slender and pale, an imperious hand, a fine hand . . .

  'Do not call me madam! I don't want your knife - your blade. You seem to know how to use it: keep it. Who are you, anyway?'

  'Petroc of Auneford, Your Majesty.'

  'Petroc. From Cornwall?' she asked, and her eyes came alive with interest.

  'Devonshire, Your Majesty.' I stood up and brushed heather twigs from my clothing.

  'Devonshire! How far we both are from our homes. You have saved me from a demon, Petroc of Auneford. It is I who am your servant. And now, perhaps you can escort me back to the ship.' The princess tried to stand, but winced and held her hand out to me. She was very pale.

  'Who was he, the madman?' I asked, gently.

  'I don't know - obviously. What was he? Some manner of hermit, I think. I stumbled across him at prayer. There's a little shrine of some sort back there, a cross carved into a stone in a little dip. I actually fell over him. Like a demon from the fiery caverns, I suppose, poor old bastard. He seems to have had an aversion to the gentler sex - I thought he was going to rape me, but he was more keen on bashing my head in.'

  'I hurt him badly,' I said. To myself, I was beginning to wonder how badly.