The Vault of Bones (19 page)
'Oh, by his voice - talked through his nose. And by his ridiculous, foppish dress’ said the innkeeper scornfully. 'Showing his knees, if you can believe it.'
'I can indeed’ I muttered.
'And then there came a crashing and banging, which we tried to ignore, as we pride ourselves, sir, on our discretion. But then came laughter and then nothing, and we forgot about the noise until next morning, when the chambermaid found him.' 'Found Horst ...' I said, an image forming in my mind. I tried to drive it out, but it would not go.
'Found your friend dead on the bed, all cut up. I have never seen the like. There was blood
everywhere
- oh, sir, I do beg your pardon’ he said quickly, and poured me more wine. 'In our business one does endure the occasional death on the premises, but from apoplexies or fevers. Never—''And the Venetian?' I broke in.
'Vanished. Gone out the window, most likely. It would not have been hard.'
'And everything was gone? All Horst's belongings?'
'His bag was emptied and there were clothes strewn all over. But we only found clothes. No other effects, no papers, no...'
'No money.'
'Quite. And so we did not know what to do. The holy brothers minister to the dead in our city, and they were called. He will be lying in their house.'
'Oh, Christ’ I said, rubbing my hot but tearless eyes. 'He would have been buried in a nameless pit, would he not?'
'And so thank the merciful Lord that his friend has come to save him from that’ said the innkeeper hurriedly.
He took me up to the room, but I saw nothing but a bare bed-frame and clean flagstones that reeked of lye. The walls had been freshly whitewashed, and the place had nothing to tell me. I looked at Horst's clothes, but indeed that was all that had been left. In a daze, I picked out a tunic and some leggings, things that I remembered him wearing, to clothe his corpse for burial, and told the innkeeper to give the rest to the poor. Then he led me through the noise and life of market day to the monastery of the black monks who had taken care of my friend. A friendly, ruddy-faced brother - not at all what I had expected, in truth, for to work with the dead has always seemed to me a dark and lonely vocation - met us at the door and led us through white cloisters to a long room lined with marble-topped plinths, perhaps ten or twelve of them. All were empty save one, and on that one lay a long shape draped with a sheet of white linen.
Horst was dead all right, although as one so often finds oneself doing when confronted with such an obvious fact, I found myself checking for signs of life. But his skin was waxen and his lips were already drawing back into the yellow grin of death. His throat had been cut, which must have been the fatal blow, but I supposed he must have fought his murderer, for he bore many other wounds: a long slash across his brow, and punctures next to his breast-bone and in his belly. His hands were also cut, and the bones were showing through the butchered skin of his palms.
You are merchants?' the brother was asking. I nodded, swallowing down my rising gorge. 'So many robberies, I am afraid’ he said almost apologetically. "These are troubled times.'
'Many robberies, good brother, but murders?' I asked. The monk stroked his tonsured scalp absently.
'Murders, yes, of course. Those who love His Holiness are assassinated by the followers of the emperor, and, one has to admit, vice versa’
'This is the emperor's city,' put in the innkeeper, with a certain pride.
'As I said, troubled times,' the monk said diplomatically. 'But a killing like this, for the sake of robbery?' He scratched his head again. ‘I will admit, I was surprised.'
'And yet you see many corpses,' I said, curious despite the confusion of my grief. 'Such is the calling of this house,' he replied, bowing his head. It was a show of piety, but I thought that the monk was a practical more than a holy man, and a good one, at that. Yes, indeed we see the dead. I said these were troubled times, but, my son, look about you! I have seen every table in use, and more poor souls stretched out on the floor. Wars, and plague - the Lord sees fit to keep us busy. But, come to that, I have not often seen a thief go at his victim in this manner. He fought back, your friend: one can see from the hands.'
I nodded, sickened. Well, there was nothing more to be done. I thanked the brother, paid for a handsome burial for poor Horst and left a donation for the house and, for the sake of appearances, bought a mass for Horst's soul, although I was sure the beneficiary would not have approved. Then, business being done, I turned back to the corpse. He had been my friend, this man. Nay, we had been companions. We had drunk together, worked side by side and shared our tales and hopes through long watches at sea. With what patience he had taught me, his clumsy, clay-footed friend, how to ride! And now I must remember him thus, laid out like meat upon a butcher's stall. For the sake of propriety I crossed myself, then, in the manner of the
Cormaran,
I bent to kiss his cold lips goodbye. And as I leaned down I saw, in the corner of his mouth, pasted to the grey skin by a dab of dried spittle, a scrap of parchment. I made to smooth his face and picked it off with my thumbnail, gave my kiss and walked out past carven skulls and murals of dancing bones.So I did not tarry in Foligno - not even long enough for lunch, for I could not have faced it - and set off instead up the Ravenna Road, up into the high mountains. Night found me bedding down in a verminous hostelry in some nameless hamlet, feeling alone and with a chill upon my soul, for I had planned to have Horst for company, and now I would never see him again. Then - and only then, by the light of a stinking tallow candle - could I bring myself to look at whatever I had taken from my friend's dead lips. It was not parchment, but paper, white paper, a piece no bigger than a fingernail, but on it there still remained a few strokes of ink, and though these had run, I could make out a 'c' and an V. An idea flared in my confused mind, and with a tremble of excitement I pulled out the Captain's letter to me. If truth be told, I could not say yea or nay that the characters matched, for Horst's were all but washed away. But they were similar enough to my eye to set my hand a-tremble. Horst had died in the act of destroying a letter from the Captain.
And so I read my own letter again. There was the warning against Venetians, of which Horst must have been well aware. There again the order to join Gilles at Ancona. I rubbed my eyes in frustration, for I had not slept properly for two days and my head was pounding. What should I do? It seemed to me that the value of this commission was negated by Horst's death, and in that case I should hurry to Venice, to warn the Captain. But that would be to disobey his command. I wondered if Horst had kept his attacker from reading his letter, and what papers the Venetian had taken from his body. I thought about this as hard as I could, although my skull felt as though it were caught in the pincers of a huge crab.
In his scribble to me Horst had said only that he had been sent to divert me to Ancona, whence he too was speeding. Would he have had papers from the Captain to Gilles? Most likely, and now the enemy, whoever he might be, must have them, for Horst could not have bolted the lot. But again, Horst's last meal: surely,
in extremis,
he would have sought to destroy the most important letter? I had to hope so. Christ. Everything was turning to stink and ruin beneath my feet, treacherous as a Dartmoor quagmire. Two men dead in as many nights, and all for what? For the enrichment of a ridiculous boy-king? Or for ... I thought of the list Michael Scotus had given me.
Valueless,
the Captain had called the things that were named there. And yet how many men had died since I had first heard them spoken of? Fulk and Gautier, Giovanni, and now Horst. I could place a value upon them.But Horst's murder had opened another wound, for I had not forgotten our last conversation, and his doubts about Anna’s death. Horst had believed it was murder, that someone had used a destrier’s hooves as a weapon. I had kept my own thoughts at bay, but now that my friend had himself been murdered, I could hold them off no longer. Someone had wanted Anna dead. Who that might be I did not know, but the strange letter had seemed to speak of Greece. Could it have been her own uncle? But there was no reason for that. Someone from her past? That was more promising. The Captain had rescued her from exile in Greenland, where she had been sent when the mad Norse prince she had been given to as a child bride had turned upon her. Did the prince still live? I had no doubt that, from the tales that Anna had told of her life in Trondheim, he was mad enough. But where was the profit in this? She was dead, and I was yet alive and mired to the ears in some business that was threatening to devour the only world I had known these past two years.
I laid my head down at last, after I had barred the door with a chair and balanced upon that a pitcher of water, so that it would overturn if the door opened and wake me - in theory, at least. I did not dare undress, but lay like a knight on a tomb, hands clasped on the hilt of my sword. I was bound for Ancona, then. At least I knew the way, for the Ravenna Road passed through that city - indeed, that was where I would have turned north towards Venice. And then the solution slapped me across the face: Gilles was in Ancona. He would know what to do. All I had to do was find the Three Dolphins.
I slept, finally, for with my decision - or rather, my decision to leave any and all decisions to someone else, one of the most satisfying choices one is ever given the luxury to make - the crab had at last released my skull, and I passed the night unmolested save for bedbugs. Dawn found me on the road in the crisp air of the mountains, and alone; The stone-faced widow who had been my ungracious hostess had seen and heard nobody upon the road at night, and neither had the wall-eyed groom. I began to believe that I was not being followed after all, for I had seen no other riders behind me, even with the long views granted by my swooping route across the mountains, and I had not tarried long in one place since leaving Spoleto. And so I took myself over the Apennine Mountains and filled myself with their glorious solitude, as summer came to its peak around me, bleaching the grass in the valleys, drying up the stream-beds and making the very air shiver. And by the time I had passed over their spine and had dropped down into the rolling land between the peaks and the sea, the leaves were almost turning.
PART THREE
Constantinople
Chapter Fourteen
The waters of the Hellespont were turbulent and confused. They seemed to unravel around the galley s beak of a prow. There was a sharp and steady breeze blowing down the channel into our faces, making the oarsmen sweat and curse, and crusting our skins with a fine, stinging film of salt. There was plenty of other traffic around us. The coves and beaches that shone like white bite-marks at the base of the lowering mountains on either side each had its little shoal of fishing boats, and out here in the deep water a steady procession of big vessels struggled up under oars or ran down swiftly under straining sails. There were many galleys like ours, sword-like and scuttling, flying the gonfalons of Venice, Genoa, Pisa, Valencia and a confusion of others. There were squat trading vessels from northern waters, ugly as beetles among their southern cousins. And there were Moorish ships too, with their swooping sails and crescent-blazoned pennants. But what I saw most of were the little slipper-shaped boats of the Greeks, busily criss-crossing the channel laden with all manner of cargo. The men who sailed them were sun-scorched and friendly, and more than once one such boat dashed cheekily across our bows, to the delight of its crew and the fury of ours. But I, lounging idly where the rail met the bowsprit, always waved, and once was rewarded by a golden missile shied at me by a boy crouched atop a pile of baskets, which I caught, only to find I held a large, pock-marked orange.
I peeled and ate it gratefully, although the juice stung my salt-split lips.
We had been at sea the best part of a month, and although the weather had been fair - clear, hot days and warm nights - we had struggled against the wind since rounding Cerigo and entering the Aegean Sea. Our ship was a mid-sized galley chartered at Brundisium, Venice-built but now the property of a cartel of Apulian merchants, and as such flying the imperial standard. Perhaps because of this we had an easy time of it: in any case no corsairs came close to us, and the Venetians, not having quite picked sides in the gathering storm, left us alone as we skirted their Greek possessions. It was odd being a passenger, and at first I was irked by the strangeness of it, and kept offering my services to mend the sail or scrub the decks. But my offers were always rebuffed with a kindly, embarrassed firmness: we were paying our way, and paying handsomely, and it would not look right for rich passengers to be monkeying about in the rigging or down in the stench of the rowing deck. My companion was likewise affected, and, exiled like me to a life of wandering the deck and gazing at distant sails and shorelines, he sought my company and I his.
I had arrived in Ancona somewhat bedraggled and extremely saddle-sore. I had pushed Iblis much farther than I should have, and I hoped the poor beast had forgiven me. It had been an easy enough journey, although I had been caught in an early snow squall as I descended the western slope of the mountains. I followed the easy, straight road through the gentle country of the Marches: oak woods and vineyards, golden corn in the valleys and eagles above the high hillsides. And then, after a week and more, I crested an olive-crowned ridge to find the sea twinkling below. Ancona is not a large place, though tightly packed within its walls, and it was not hard to find the Three Dolphins, a good sort of sailors' hostelry near a mighty Roman arch that stood out on the promontory that formed the harbour's mole, its crumbling marble span framing nothing but the odd fishing dinghy. I gave my spent but uncomplaining Iblis to the stables with gold and instructions that his every need was to be met - the finest oats, spring water, a mare if necessary - and stalked on stiff horseman's legs into the inn. To my surprise and relief Gilles was there, poring over a pile of dog-eared pages. When he saw me his mouth fell open in surprise. Then he hurried over to embrace me, despite the road-dust that cloaked my clothes, skin and hair.
'Patch! How astounding!' he exclaimed, then broke into a dust-induced coughing fit. 'Christ, did you tunnel here? You are filthy,' he added, when he had caught his breath. 'But why are you in Ancona? We are not meant to be here either. I am waiting for Horst, in fact.' Then an explanation appeared to seize him. You met with Horst upon the road, it is obvious! Where is he?'
'Gilles, he is dead,' I said. I had had plenty of time to rehearse this moment, but when the time came I could only blurt out the news, and drop down on to the bench, there to sink my head in my hands.
'Dead? I do not understand. Was there an accident?' said Gilles, after a horrible pause.
'Horst is dead? Patch, what happened?' It was another voice, another familiar voice. The Captain was looking down at me, the lines at the corners of his eyes alive with worry.
'Master? What are you doing here?' I gasped. I was so weary and sad that I was not so sure, at that moment, that what I beheld was not some phantom conjured by my beleaguered mind.
'I am going to Constantinople instead of Gilles,' said the Captain. 'I left Louis' friars in Venice and wore out three horses to get here before he left. Gilles can manage whatever nest of snakes has been stirred up against us in Venice, and I know Constantinople a little better, so ... but Patch, what has happened to Horst? I must know quickly.'
So I told them my whole tale there and then, before taking off my cloak, before slaking my thirst. From the morning in Rome when I had found Baldwin gone, to finding Horst stretched out upon cold stone. I gave him my suspicions as to what Horst had succeeded in concealing from the Venetians, and what he perhaps had not. When all was said I was exhausted, and would have laid down my head upon the table and slept there and then, had not the Captain's furious excitement kept my eyelids trembling, but open. If Baldwin was taken by the Venetians, then there was no reason for us to continue our mission, he said. But then again, if we reached Constantinople before the news from Venice, we might conclude some business there and salvage a little from the wreckage. I told him I thought it likely that we would be ahead of any message from the Republic. And then I remembered something. You must see this,' I said, taking the
Inventarium
of Michael Scotus from my valise and holding it out for the Captain. He frowned as he took it, but his eyes widened and widened until he was gawping like a shocked barn owl.‘Where ... where did you get this, Patch, for God's sake?' he stuttered at last. So I told him that, too.
‘I am ... I do not know what to think,' said the Captain after a long pause. He had gone pale. 'This is an
Inventarium
of relics that reside in the Pharos Chapel, et cetera, et cetera. That you know already. But
whose
inventory is it?''Baldwin's?' I said, uncertainly. 'Are there others?'
What we know of the relics of Constantinople come from old texts, but these are useless, for the city was plundered down to the roof-nails by the crusaders’ he replied. ‘For what remained in the Bucoleon Palace, we have the words of Robert de Clari. This might be his list, but it is in Greek, so ...'
Wait. Robert who?'
'De Clari - a knight of Amiens. One of the crusaders who sacked Byzantium. Another Frankish plunderer, but at least he kept his eyes open and wrote down what he saw. His book is called
The Story of Those Who Conquered Constantinople.
I have it in my pack. Strangely enough, I received it as a gift from young Baldwin's cousin Louis Capet himself. But I do not think this is de Clari's list.'"Whose, then?'
‘For myself, I am almost certain it was made by one Nicholas Mesarites, a priest who before the sack was
Skeuphylax-
storekeeper - of the imperial palaces. He stayed on to negotiate between the Greeks and their conquerors and ended up, I believe, as Bishop of Ephesus.'My mind was racing. The names meant nothing to me. And this list: why was it different? I tried to remember if Scotus had told me anything, for it seemed odd that he had not. Straining my memory, I could see nothing but flames, and the sour face of Pope Gregory.
'I do not see’ I muttered at last, 'how this can be important. It is ancient. And if it pre-dates the sack, the bulk of these things may well be gone.'
'My dear Patch, that is why I hope it was compiled by Mesarites, as he knew the chapel well after the pillaging had ceased. And there are more items on this list than de Clari mentions in his book.
Ergo ...''Ergo?
You believe this to be demonstrated, then, Michel?' asked Gilles with a cautious smile.'Um, probably, yes’ said the Captain, finally. The three of us laughed nervously.
'But what is this
Mandylion?
I persisted. 'And
Keramion?
That sounds like something made of clay - a brick. The
Mandylion:
something "in a holy picture". Is it a relic lodged in an icon? That is common amongst the Greeks’'No, no. I am not actually sure
what
it is, if you want the truth’ said the Captain, ruefully. 'It is certainly a relic of incredible age, for it was known in Edessa — the city in Outremer’ he added, while I nodded my head impatiently. 'The
Mandylion
was supposedly a piece of cloth brought to a king of Edessa during the lifetime of the Christ. It cured him of an illness. The cloth was supposed to bear the imprint of the Christ's wet face’'Oh, it is the Veronica!' I put in again. 'But that is back in Rome.'
'No, no - the Veronica is something else: perhaps the
other
True Image, so called’ put in Gilles.
‘This Mandylion
is a painting, I suppose, although in all the writings - and there are many on the subject - it is described quite strangely. The impression I have is that the face appears to be picked out in water, as though the cloth were still wet.'‘It seems as if you both know quite a lot about the thing after all’ I pointed out.
Yes, well ... no. You see, the thing has disappeared and reappeared again and again over the years. It came to Constantinople about three centuries ago, and when it did, a couple of people wrote about the occasion, for it was a very mighty one. I do not remember the exact words, but they do not describe a picture of a face. They describe a folded cloth bearing the
full
imprint of a crucified man, wounds and blood and all’
'A painting of Christ's whole body?'
'As large as life. And not a painting, remember: a miraculous image. An imprint.'
'I have never heard of any such,' I said, astounded.
And yet it was in Constantinople before the Franks came,' said the Captain. "The same Mesarites who had charge of the Pharos Chapel describes a ceremony held every week in the city - "the naked Lord rises again," he says. And a few crusaders saw it too, including de Clari. Except the
Mandylion
was meant to have resided in the Church of Blachernae, which was sacked completely.''Then...' 'Then nothing. It disappeared.'
'Someone stole it. That's not so astonishing. They seem to have stolen everything else, at least that is what Anna used to say.'
'That is what I believed. But ...' He tapped the list again. 'A
Mandylion
is here. And here: the holy Tile.''Tile!' I scoffed, feeling a little more confident about this. 'Another bit of old plaster from Mary and Joseph's palace, that if it were reassembled would dwarf the Tower of London.'
'It isn't,' said Gilles, shaking his head. I peered at him. He seemed to be quite serious. 'Nothing like that. Legend again, but it seems that the
Mandylion
was walled up somewhere in Edessa, leaning against a tiled wall. And the tile it leaned on received the image of the face of Christ.' 'But ...' I began to feel the ground beneath my feet, so secure for the past two years, begin to tremble.These are the True Images, Petroc,' he was saying, 'the ...'
‘Yes, I know all that,' I said, worried now. 'The Veronica, the
vera icon:
True Image. The holiest relics of all. These are things supposed lost, and yet someone - a very strange person, to be precise - has let us know they still exist. And, in fact, where to find them.''And the most important thing of all: that their owner may not even know he owns them’ said the Captain. He folded the parchment and handed it back to me.
'Keep it’ I said. But he shook his head.
'I will take a copy’ he said, 'but you should keep it. It was entrusted to you for some reason - something to do with old Gregory, plainly, for it came from his physician. But..’
'It makes a difference, does it not?' I said, brightly.
'A difference?
,
he cried, then he mastered himself. 'A difference, yes. Certainly. Ah ... perhaps, my lad, things are not as undone as they seem’ He kept rubbing his temples and staring at the little sheet of parchment.We will leave at once’ he decided. The ship was fitted up and ready, and it was the purest accident - a crewman had lost his hand while loading the cargo and a replacement had just been found - that he was here at all. If I would care to bathe and change my clothes, perhaps we could set off directly?
And so we left the shores of Italy. I embraced Gilles, and bid farewell to Iblis the horse, and to the surprise of us both I wet his soft snout with a couple of hot tears. I had grown extremely fond of the beast during the last few weeks. Poor Iblis! It is an onerous task to bear a man’s weight at the best of times, but I had added to his burden with my incessant prattle, for I had not been alone and beyond human company for nigh on two years and found the solitude maddening. The horse suffered my life's tale a score times and more, not to mention my ramblings on birds, beasts, food, theology and, relentlessly, Anna’s death. If a horse can feel relief, no doubt Iblis did when he learned he would be making his slow way back to Rome in the company of other horses, with no bereaved, raving madman bouncing atop his patient back.
The sweep of the oars and the cracking of the sail was strange music to me that afternoon, for I had barely drawn breath before we were aboard the ship
Stella Maris
and the master had ordered all lines let go. Galleys can be quick when the wind and tide favour them, and soon the white beacon of the Roman arch had slipped away behind and we were striking out across the ruffled waters towards Dalmatia. In a few days we were running south past Zadar and the Captain was pointing out the nameless little isle where Sir Hugh de Kervezey had undergone his strange transfiguration into Saint Exuperius of blessed memory, and a week later we passed the hog's back of Hrinos and came close enough to the high peak of Koskino Island that we could hear the cicadas and smell the sage and thyme of her hillsides. There was the horseshoe bay guarded by its three windmills, and there the tiny white huddle of the village, sleeping beneath its lemon trees. I felt a little strange, and fancied that the scars on my thigh, where a crossbow bolt had pierced me the night I had been hunted across those barren hills, were aching in some kind of sympathy with the place, but later I decided I had imagined it. But nonetheless I felt better when Koskino's mountain had sunk, in its turn, into our wake, and back into my past.'I fear to tell you anything of Constantinople’ said the Captain, when I pressed him. He had been there, he said, but would not tell me more. If you find it one way, you will think I embroidered my account and be angry, and if another, you will say I was too mean and sparing and again I will be blamed’ he laughed. It is a very great city, as great or greater than Rome itself, for it is her sister. But time has used her very harshly, and ..He shook his head and sighed. 'Perhaps her fortunes have changed’ he said, 'although all news that comes from there says otherwise. I have no expectations, so that I will not be confused and diverted from our task when we arrive and things are not as I thought they would be’
It was all very mysterious, but I could extract no more from him. Instead he laid out our mission. We were required to secure the Crown relic and also to verify it, negotiate the transfer with Emperor Baldwin's Regent, and await the arrival of the French Kings emissaries. Our key to the Chapel of Pharos was Pope Gregory's decree, which I handed over to the Captain with huge relief. Not for the first time, I pondered the strangeness of our lives. How could it be that we, who practised nothing but deception, find such willing accomplices amongst the great of this world, and how could it be that we now had the complicity of the Holy Father himself? And our business now was with an emperor, no less, or at least his Regent. No matter that the empire was a sham, an old sheep with its throat already in the wolf's jaws. What cared I for such distinctions? I was still, at heart, a shepherd's son, and my fortune was becoming such a thing that I would never have dared imagine in my deepest summer daydream. But the Captain was expecting trouble. What had been a simple job had become not so simple, for now we would have to persuade the emperor's barons that King Louis' offer would be worth the waiting, and that they should not be sniffing around in their treasure house yet.
So I burned with anticipation as we inched our way across the Aegean into the teeth of those Greek breezes that blow clean and steady, driving salt into the skin and making every piece of rigging hiss like a nest of snakes, but which barely ruffle the surface of the water. Our oarsmen sweated and groaned, but I tucked myself into the bows each day and dreamed of Constantinople. I had heard so much of the city from Anna that I could all but walk a maze of her streets in my mind, which was a little strange in that Anna herself had never set foot there, for her family had gone into exile long before her birth. Nevertheless, for her - as for all Greeks - it was the navel, the lodestone of her world, the true Rome, of which the great city I had just left was a pale, barbarian, and heretical counterfeit. But further, I still clung to the notion that I might find some answer there to the riddle of her death, though I had no idea how that might come about. So I burned to see Constantinople for myself, and as we at last put Samothrace behind us and inched into the great passage of the Hellespont, and when we burst out into the Sea of Marmara beyond, even my dreams had become infected with the place. My night-self inhabited a landscape of vast buildings: gigantic cathedrals shimmering with gold and gems, statues and monuments of pure marble rearing like great phantoms from amongst palaces sheltered by gilded roofs. And the people of this dream city were giants too: Constantines and Justinians, grave and terrible; white-clad empresses; warriors in the image of the Angel Michael and Saint George with flaming swords and armour of golden scales. And around every corner, someone with Anna's face. Sometimes this sprite fled from me, sometimes she beckoned me into some dark and secret place, but always I awoke as my hand reached for her.
So I was in a ferment when the cry finally came from the top of the main mast: 'Constantinople!' Yesterday the
Stella Maris
had rounded the island of Marmara and sailed into a placid inland sea, and I knew that we were almost at our destination. But according to the crew we were still a good twenty sea leagues away, and all that day we sailed towards a bank of heat shimmer that revealed nothing. Now, straining my eyes through the golden haze of morning I saw nothing, then a line of low hills that seemed to close off the way ahead, still many leagues off.'There is the Long Wall’ said the Captain, coming to my side. I followed his outstretched arm and saw a great fortification snaking down to the waters edge. It was high and strong, and punctuated by sturdy battlements and towers, but looking closer I saw it was all abandoned, and that vines and small trees had taken root in its cracks. The land on either side of it seemed deserted too. There was no one abroad, and the farms were empty of people and animals. The fields stood fallow and the vineyards were choked with weeds. A pack of wild dogs was just visible on the long white beach. This had been rich land once, a garden of men, for every slope was terraced and the olive trees grew thickly. As the rowers bent into their work and the breeze, our friend for once, fluttered out of the north-east and gave a breath of life to the sails, we began to make headway, and by midday I could make out a blackness on the skyline which, with agonising slowness, resolved itself into the shapes of buildings. We had passed a small town that had seemed populated, although much of it was clearly ruined. The wind blew steadily, and was heavy with the scent of rotten fruit, for it was the end of summer and there was no one to harvest the great garden. It soon became cloying, and I pictured swarms of wasps consuming the bounty that men now ignored. When I asked the Captain what had caused all this desolation, he scratched his nose wearily.
'The Franks’ he said simply.
'But this is their kingdom - I mean, their empire!' I said, amazed.
'Such are the Franks’ he said. 'But why destroy it all?'
'It was not the Franks alone who did this. There has been war here - incessantly, really, for many score years. But the Franks aided and abetted the wreckers then, when they did not help. And now they are poor and incompetent. The good people who farmed this land, and who held it, are dead or driven off. Some remain, and they are harried and repressed by their new Frankish masters, who have set themselves up here in the manner they were used to at home, over folk they despise and do not understand. So it was in my land also.' He fell silent.
'But we are Franks too - at least to the Greeks’ I said carefully.
'That is true. We wear Frankish skins’ the Captain replied, his mouth twisted in disgust. 'But underneath ..He spat over the side. I understood. Michel de Montalhac, as he watched the desolated lands drift by, and smelled the scents of neglect and decay, was doubtless seeing his own country. A crusade had laid waste to it, as it had to this country, and his folk had been destroyed or enslaved. I thought of Anna and how her face would tighten with rage whenever she spoke of the crusaders who had taken Constantinople - 'Dandolo's wolves', she had called them, when she was feeling generous. More often she would begin to swear in dense, rich Greek which I could not - perhaps dared not