The Vault of Bones (27 page)

'Querini?' I stammered. 'A short man, thickset? A swaggerer with a broken nose?' Aimery nodded, curious. 'Dear God, Aimery. Your ...' I shut my mouth hurriedly.

You know this man?' Aimery's brows furrowed in surprise.

'Of him. His reputation ... his influence, I mean, is far-flung.'

'Saints' blood, but I thank God I am but a soldier. I could not find my way for one minute in the mazes of your world,' said Aimery. I thanked the Fates that he did not press me further on the matter of Nicholas Querini, for he would have wished for answers that I had just begun to quest for myself. The wine was gone, and he stood up.

‘I must leave - I have duties at the palace. I am glad I found you, Master Petrus. I no longer wish to kill you.'

'Praise the Lord!' I uttered.

'But there will be an end to that nonsense, fellow,' he snapped. ‘I am no fool, and you are no priest, nor churchman either. What you are I have not yet divined, but you avenged my friend Rollo, and you have scented out something rotten in my lord's court. For that you have my gratitude. You are very far from your home, as am I - but if I have no ken of your world of intrigues and companies, I understand this place, and you do not. Be very careful. I do not believe that you have any friends here.'

I could say nothing to that, so I stood and shook his hand.

‘You should leave Constantinople’ he said, as we left the tavern.

'I cannot. I must wait for the French envoys’ I reminded him.

'Then I think you will die here’ said Aimery, bluntly. He shook my hand again, gave me a nod that was more of a soldiers salute, and strode off into the lengthening shadows.

Chapter Twenty

I went back to the Bucoleon, for where else could I go? Aimery was right: I was utterly friendless in this city. No one remarked upon my arrival, though, which I took as a good sign. Querini had plainly not been lodged in the palace, the lucky man. Soaking wet and feeling shot through with cold, I made my way to the dining hall, for a fire often burned there all day even though the place was empty. Sure enough, a big olive-wood log was smouldering on its bed of embers. I sat down on the hot stone of the hearth and shivered with gratitude as the heat soaked into me. I spread my cloak out beside me and sat like that for a while, gazing up at the ceiling of coffered plaster, trying to make sense of things. When that failed I fell to wondering, as I often did in this sad palace, what the room had been in its days of glory, and so engaged in this pleasant and useless reverie did I become that I was roused only when a company of serving boys came in and started banging things about on the tables. Cursing, for I could see that it was dusk outside, I grabbed my cloak - still damp - and crept away, for I was not in the mood for company, and I did not wish to pass the time of day with any more Frankish ruffians.

I was navigating the maze of hallways that lay between the dining hall and the state-rooms, beyond which lay the way up to my lodgings, when I heard voices up ahead. I had no wish to be seen, so without thinking I ducked into the nearest doorway. I found myself in the ruined throne room with its fallen beams and heaps of rubble, a place I had been meaning to poke around in, but which, at this hour, was almost pitch dark. I leaned against a pillar to wait for the Franks to pass in the corridor. They clattered by, and I heard the voice of the Regent. He was speaking urgently, and sounded excited. Then Narjot de Toucy answered, sounding worried. Suddenly curious, I peeped around the column, just in time to catch a glimpse of the Regent's back as he swept by. And next to him, strolling along as if he were the emperor himself, a figure in a Venetian tunic of saffron silk. It was Nicholas Querini.

My dampness and desire for solitude all forgotten, I peered out into the corridor. It was empty save for the Regent and his companions, and so I crept out and began to follow them, hugging the walls where the shadows were thick, and where I knew the thick carpet of dust and crumbled plaster would muffle my footsteps. The three men turned a corner, then another, but to my surprise I discovered I still knew where I was. I had been this way before, weeks ago. Then I passed a ruined piece of mosaic, a faceless emperor raising his hand to bless the cobwebs, and I realised where I was being led: this was the way to the Pharos Chapel.

The lamps were few and far between down in this far outpost of the Bucoleon. Most were guttering and some were out, and so I was picking my way through pools of darkness. I was not worried that I would be found out, for I had learned this craft from Gilles himself, and besides, there were plenty of places to hide. So when the final corner was turned I was able to hunker down in the shadows behind an archway and watch as the guards, who clearly had not expected visitors to their remote outpost and were busy playing knucklebones, leaped to their feet with a crash of rusty chain mail. The Regent barked at them impatiently and pulled out a key. I heard it snick inside the lock, and then the door opened. The Regent indicated, with a somewhat cursory show of deference, that the Venetian should go first, and so he stepped into the blackness, followed by de Toucy, who had taken a lighted torch from the guards. The Regent came last, and pulled the door shut behind him.

I squatted there in the near-dark, breathing in the cold smell of damp limestone and dead flies. But my mind was ablaze. What business could these men have in the chapel at this late hour? I chewed it over. The Regent had a right to be anywhere he wished, I supposed, for it was his palace as far as that went. De Toucy clearly had not wished to accompany him. And Querini? He looked happy enough. My calves were being chewed by cramp and I had all but resolved to creep back to my chambers when the lock of the chapel door scratched and clicked and the hinges gave a dry moan.

Narjot de Toucy stepped out. He beckoned to a guardsman, who bent to hear a muttered command. Then the guard barked at his company and they jumped to their feet, looking at one another in puzzlement. Then they shuffled together until they stood shoulder to shoulder, and on another bark from the man I took for their sergeant they turned and faced the wall. When every guard had his back to the chapel door, de Toucy went back through it, only to emerge a moment later closely followed by the Regent. They were carrying a large black chest between them, and from the Regent's strained look it was plainly quite heavy. Then the Venetian emerged, and it was he who took out the key and locked the chapel door. To my growing amazement, the Regent and de Toucy, red in the face and breathing hard, started towards me down the passage, the Venetian following them with his self-satisfied, considered walk, an amused look upon his visage. I just had time to slide along the wall and into a side-vault before they passed me. I had a clear look at the chest. It seemed as though the two Franks carried the night itself between them, for their burden was hooped about with iron and nails, and long ago it had been coated with pitch. It was the reliquary of the Crown itself.

Surely this was some official business? Were they taking the Crown to Louis already, even before Louis' friars had arrived? That must be it. These men were taking the Crown to the friars in Venice. These thoughts flew across my mind like swallows through a barn, but I could grasp none of them, and none of them rang true, save the the one that told me I was in terrible trouble.

I recalled the looks on the faces of the men as they had entered the chapel. It had been no state business. There was no doubt but that this was a robbery, if a man can steal his own possession: but was the Regent the man committing the theft? From the look I had seen upon the Venetian's face I thought I knew the answer to that. He was a thief, pure and simple. I had seen that look a hundred times, and felt it upon my own face.

Back through the dead palace I followed them, my heart knocking against my ribs now, for here was the end of all my hopes, and the hopes of every man who served the
Cormaran.
But what to do? This affair had been left in my care - mine! Feeling not at all like a man who had conversed with pope and emperor, but very much like a frightened Dartmoor shepherd boy I trailed the men back through the realms of spider and bat, past the smashed glory of a lost age, wondering how, in this world, I could make amends, and how I could, somehow, avenge my master.

Meanwhile, thievery had evidently loosened the tongues of the three men, for now the Regent had started to chatter nervously to the other two. I could not hear very much, for the walls either muffled sound or splintered it into a thousand twittering echoes. But as I crept along behind, at last I made out the words 'de Montalhac' and 'decree’. It was the Regent who had spoken, and in reply, Querini threw back his head and laughed. I skipped and shuffled as close as I dared, throwing myself behind an unravelling tapestry in time to hear Querini say:'... be dead by now, I should think ... paid the ship's master enough ...'

A chill descended upon me and I shrank against the wall, into its crust of rotten fresco and dead insects. The Captain was dead. No! Impossible: dear Jesus, it could not be possible. But he had left on a Venetian ship a day after Aimery had said Querini had landed. I closed my eyes, and there he was, hand raised to me against the muddy sky, the ship sliding out into the black water. 'I bribed the master.' I heard him speak the words, and saw, as I had done in Foligno, how clear had been the trap. Now ... now I was truly alone.

The footsteps in the passage were growing fainter. My quarry had not stopped at the state-rooms, but kept on towards the servants' quarters. Whimpering like an abandoned hound I forced myself to follow. They marched - more shuffled, in truth, for the two Frankish lords were plainly not in the flower of their manhood, and stopped more than once to set down their burden while they wrung their hands and panted. When they heard footsteps approaching they, like me, would duck into the first empty room, but as it was dinner time most of the Frankish folk were occupied, and I noticed that the Regent and his friends cared not that the Greek servants observed them. Finally they halted before a door I had not seen before, but which I judged must lead to one of the outer buildings of the palace. The Venetian knocked, and at once the door swung open to reveal a small company of soldiers. They were far better dressed and equipped than the imperial troops, for they wore new leather hauberks on which were sewn patches and bosses of shining metal, they were clean shaven and looked well-fed. I had seen such men on the deck of Querini's galley. The two lords had set down the chest gratefully, and at a signal from the Venetian it was at once scooped up by four soldiers and carried from my sight. The Venetian - even from my vantage point some way away I could see he was fairly quivering with pride - gave a jaunty bow to the Regent and offered his hand. The Regent offered his hand and winced when it was squeezed. Then, leaving nothing but a ghost of saffron light in his wake, the Venetian leaped after his men and was gone.

I did not wait to see what the Frankish lords did next, but rushed through a welter of grief and panic towards my chambers. I needed to make some sort of plan, I knew, but what, dear God, was the point? No! I must not fail my master and my company. As I forced myself up the long staircase, I thought I would write a letter to Gilles, which perhaps could be sent by fast ship tomorrow. But, no - a letter? What a feeble thought, what nonsense! It was far, far too late for that, I knew, for like words resolving themselves as the reading-stone is lowered on to them, the events of the last few days came into sharp and terrible focus. The Venetian, Querini or whoever he was, had killed Captain de Montalhac and bought the Crown. He had purchased it outright, I guessed, and the sight of real money had turned the heads of the Regent and his barons. The Captain had been too inconvenient; doubtless - how clear it all became now! - Querini planned to treat with Louis himself. And he had turned the court into a nest of simoniacs. Because ... because he thought the Captain still had the decree of absolution. How many were involved? Was it the whole court? But the three men had been furtive indeed, like thieves in their own house, so perchance this was a plot. So much the worse for me, then: Querini, or the Regent himself, had tried to have me put out of the way along with the Captain. I could not stay here an hour longer: Aimery was right. I was a dead man if I did not leave at once.

And then I understood, or rather surrendered myself to understanding, for it was not a path I wished to take. The discrepancies in the
Inventaria:
the sandals of Christ, the Robe of the Virgin Mary, and what had set Gilles and the Captain chattering: the
Mandylion
of Edessa. The spices, the Captain had called them: an added commission for us, priceless goods on top of the untold riches already guaranteed. They were to have disappeared into my luggage sometime during the leisurely negotiations and no one would have been the wiser. It was a plan almost banal in its simplicity. But now, suddenly, I had the means to offset disaster and the ruin of every one of our schemes. I still had the pope's decree, which perhaps was more valuable than everything else combined. But I would have to act fast. It should be easy to talk my way into the chapel, for the guards would not question the seal of Saint Peter. Nor would they question me, I hoped, if I removed certain things. For items were leaving already, and under the clear auspices of the Regent himself. It would be easy, if nerve-racking. I would do the thing now, at once, before I could change my mind. Then I would smuggle my loot out of the palace, make my way to a Genoese
ska’a
and buy my way on to the next ship back to Italy and the
Cormaran.

I had reached my corridor, and all but ran the last steps to my chambers. I wanted nothing more than to lock the door behind me and curl up in a corner. But as I stepped inside I was grabbed from either side, pulled off my feet and dragged, at a run, over to the bed. I did not have time to. cry out before someone grasped a handful of my hair, and then my face was being pressed into the sheets. I felt my knife being snatched from my belt, then my arms were tugged back much farther than nature had ever intended them to go. I shouted something - a protest, an oath - but a fierce blow to the ear silenced me. Then I was hauled up again by my arms, all but out of their sockets and flaying me with molten pain, and forced down on to my knees on the stone floor. I had time to see that the little iron-bound chest where the pope's decree had lain was open, the lock gouged and splintered. So Querini had it after all. Here is the end of everything, I thought. Then my hair was seized again - did I have any left? I felt tonsured anew - and my head jerked back so that I was looking up into the face of a man who had stepped in front of me. It was Hughues, the chamberlain.

'So: the murderer continues to enjoy our emperor's hospitality. How
practical
of him. Now then. Boy.' He snapped his fingers under my nose. Seeing how I flinched, he did it again, and when the others sniggered he slapped me across the face, hard. His fingers were loaded with heavy rings and I felt as if I had been punched by a mailed fist. Blood started to run down the back of my throat, and I coughed.

'All right, get him up, get him up. Take him to the scriptorium.' I tried to drink the blood that was pouring from my nose: I had a foggy idea that I could stop it staining my tunic.

'For God's sake, Hughues, can't we just slit his throat and drop him in the harbour? We know he killed young Rolant — don't we, Aimery?'

I tried to turn, but whoever had a hold of my hair gave it a twist and I bit my lip to keep from crying out.

'I know. He as much as told me. These churchmen, d'you see, they are so fond of their words. Condemned himself out of his own mouth. Shocking - absolutely shocking.'