Relics (38 page)

The track was steeper now, and the donkeys' hooves rang on stone. For the first time that morning I was glad I was not on foot. Up ahead, the priest looked on the point of apoplexy as he floundered in his long black robe. And then the walls on either side opened out and we were in a wide open space, circled by more walls. In the centre, surrounded by a grove of cypresses whose narrow trunks were contorted with age, was a tiny domed chapel hardly bigger than the cabin on the
Cormaran.
So old that it seemed to have sunk into the ground, it had been freshly whitewashed so that, like most buildings on Koskino, it hurt to look at in the bright sunshine. Two steps led down to the blue-painted door. The priest signalled for us to wait, staggered down the steps and opened the door. I noticed it was not locked. He disappeared into darkness. Around us the villagers were spreading rugs on the hard earth and laying out food and drink. How had they managed to lug all that up here, I wondered as I swung my bruised carcass down from the diabolical saddle. It was agony bringing my legs together and I prayed my stones had not been pounded flat, as I could no longer feel them.

I was just hobbling over to Anna with as much Flemish nobility as I could muster when the priest emerged from the chapel, planted his staff in front of him and began to sing. It was a liturgy of some sort, swooping, quavering, echoing from the walls around us. The man had a voice that seemed to flow up through him from the roots of the mountain. The villagers left their picnics and began to gather around us, crossing themselves in the backwards Greek manner. The song paused, and a murmur of
ameen
drifted up. The priest was beckoning us. It was time.

I took Anna's hand and we made our way on stiff legs towards the door of the chapel, which gaped like the mouth of a cave behind the priest. Gathering his robes about him, he stepped down and went in. I hesitated for a moment. The doorway was black as the darkest night, and framed by the sun-blasted white of the chapel wall it seemed to me like a hole cut in the day itself. Then a gentle tug of Anna's hand and I was inside.

It took an instant or two for my eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom. All around me was a glimmering, and as my eyes came into focus I realised we were surrounded by hundreds of candles, narrow tapers that each gave out a minute flame of light. There was more space in here than seemed possible from the outside. We stood on a well-worn floor of black and white checkerboard tiles. Around the walls, pews of dark wood flowed with carved vines and snakelike dragons. I looked up. There was a skylight, but the glass was so smoked from centuries of guttering candles that it let in only a dull amber glow. There were faces up there, angels amid a wreath of entwined wings. And ahead, in a halo of candlelight, lay the coffin of Saint Tula. I sucked in my breath with surprise.

Tula lay in a reliquary as rich as any in the great cathedrals of Christendom. It was a rectangular casket clad in hammered silver, into which a skilful hand had inlaid a tracery of leafy branches where birds perched and little animals played. In the centre was a Greek cross in relief, four arms tipped with emeralds radiating from an immense garnet. It was the work of the old Romans, so much finer and lighter than anything of our age. And surely this was the coffin of a Roman noblewoman, not some hedgerow saint. So Adric had been right. The scholars in Cologne had been right. Someone of importance had fetched up here in this out-of-the-way place, and instead of a great cathedral and a cult that brought pilgrims from all corners of the world, she had sunk into obscurity: just another village guardian. And Will had died for her.

As our chaperones, Gilles and the Captain, had followed us into the shrine. I turned and caught Gilles, eyes like saucers, taking everything in. He looked a little like a fox in a henhouse and paced slowly and carefully back and forth across the narrow room. I could read nothing in the Captain's face. Meanwhile the priest was busy with the ornate catches at the head and foot of the casket. He bowed his head and half-sung, half-mumbled a prayer, his palms flat on the lid. Then, with a distinct flourish, he opened it, swinging it back on its hinges until a silver chain held it upright, and beckoned us forward. There was a coverlet of new green silk, which the priest drew to one side. Another loose shroud of linen was parted, and we were looking down on the face of Saint Cordula.

It was still a face, even after nine centuries. The years had turned her skin to the colour and shine of jet. Closed eyelids had fallen in to the sockets, but her eyebrows still arched haughtily. A straight, pinched nose led down to thin lips whose rictus barely hid a flash of shockingly white teeth. Perhaps her hair had been brown. Now it was a dusty bronze, and clung in loose, brittle curls to the black dome of her skull. She wore a tunic of yellowed, stained linen richly worked at collar and cuffs with threads of precious metal, and over it the body was wrapped from neck to ankles in transparent muslin, perhaps to keep the fragile clothing from crumbling. Beneath the cloth the ribcage reared up over the void of the belly. Her hands, rings on three of the black fingers, were crossed below her vanished breasts where a rich pectoral cross nestled. Her feet were encased in new slippers of incongruously bright red leather. The priest removed these with another conjuror's nourish and signalled Anna to approach. He whispered into her ear, and she nodded. Crossing herself slowly, gathered fingers to forehead, heart, right shoulder, left shoulder, she bent and touched the saint's withered lips with her own, then laid her hands on Cordula's chest, then the empty bowl of her stomach, before coming to rest on her groin. Then another motion from the priest, and Anna bent again and kissed Cordula's feet. Then the priest kissed her, one cheek and then the other.

To my intense relief, I was not required to lay lips or even hands on the dead saint. We were ushered out, blinking like moles, into the searing outer world. The people of Limonohori were waiting with flowers, which they threw at our feet as we passed by. So we were drawn, through a lane of grinning, flower-strewing, spitting villagers ('remember - the Evil Eye,' hissed Anna), to the shade of the cypresses, where a trestle table laid with fruit, cakes and a mound of roast fowl awaited us. There were big earthenware pitchers beaded with condensation, which surely held more of that strange island wine. Suddenly I was in powerful need of a drink, and well-water was not going to be enough.

I need not have worried. There was wine in abundance, and although I knew better than to repeat my mistake of the night before, I soon had my thirst satisfied. The balance of things was being restored. Anna taught me how to eat a pomegranate, which I thought an odd kind of food, and an orange. It was sour and refreshing, nothing like anything in my experience. I could find nothing to compare it to: perhaps the juice of a plum with the tang of sorrel - but no. The orange was something else that belonged to this place alone. It would make no sense at home.

Neither the priest nor the village headman spoke anything but Greek and a smattering of Venetian, so we were safe talking in English. I hoped the Greeks would mistake it for Flemish. I did not want to be too obvious, but my impatience was driving me mad.

'So?' I finally asked the Captain, who was to my left, absently spearing grapes with the point of his knife and popping them into his mouth.

You know as well as I do.'

We've found her.'

'I really think we have.'

'I
know
we have,' said Anna, reaching out for a grilled quail. 'So sure?' The Captain had an eyebrow cocked in her direction.

'Oh, yes. There's evidence. Did you see the cross on her chest? It had a gold coin set into it, a Roman solidus. Thank your good fortune that I have eyes like an owl. The emperor on the coin was Valentinian the Third. I'm happy to tell you that Valentinian ruled the West from 425 to 455, and Attila sacked Cologne in ... 453, wasn't it?'

'I have no idea. Lady Eleni, you are a prodigy,' said the Captain.

'I simply have a basic education,' she grinned. 'So that really is . . .' I swallowed. 'It is who we hoped it would be, I mean.'

'So it seems,' said Gilles.

'But - and perhaps I'm a little slow, so make allowances, please - I thought Saint Ursula and her virgins were a myth. I mean, that's what most educated people think.'

'And what about Adric's paper trail?' 'Superstitious fabrications, surely.'

'So what are we doing here, then?' asked Gilles through a mouthful of spice cake.

'I thought - I
assumed -
we were taking advantage of some ancient nonsense and giving our client what he expected, an old body with some sort of shady provenance. Our proof for him would be the fact that we took her from this particular place. But the lady in there really could be you-know-who. And I don't understand how.'

'I can try to answer that,' said the Captain. 'Have a little more wine. Now, it is as Adric suspected. In these cases, where there is a popular legend that seems exactly that, a legend, there is no smoke without some kind of fire. Eleven thousand virgins? Ridiculous, of course. Eleven virgins? Not impossible, but too neat, too pious. A girl called Ursula who got killed along with a friend or two? Now that happens all the time, particularly when the Huns are around. Remember that Adric's letter said nothing about virgins, or even mentions the name of Ursula. I believe, as Adric did, that you-know-who, as you call her, was the daughter, or niece, or cousin - even lover, perhaps - of the soldier who brought her body back here. He was an important man, probably a senator or a consul - we can tell that from the coffin in there. Given the effort he took to bring the body all the way back here, does it seem unlikely that he left a monument back in Cologne as well? Something - a stone tablet, perhaps, with a name, a date and perhaps how she died - that was found later and tied in with Ursula, who meanwhile had become celebrated. I would guess that Cor -
you-know-who -
is the only real thing in the whole Ursula myth, and perhaps what started it all in the first place. So. Are you answered?'

'I have to admit that it makes perfect sense.'

And it did, incredible as it was. I did have some more wine,

and munched my way through a number of small birds, delicious and crunchy and doused in olive oil and spicy herbs. Stripping a minute leg of its meat, I realised that this was probably why I had heard almost no birdsong on Koskino. I was just reaching for another blackbird, or possibly a lark, when the happy chatter around us went quiet. I turned to see three men walk into the walled circle. And one of them I recognised.

By their dress they were plainly Franks: loose tunics and leggings in the style of Outremer, and long surcoats belted at the waist. Surcoats of blue cloth, upon which reared white hounds. Two of the men wore wide-brimmed straw hats, like pilgrims. But the third, who seemed to be the leader, was bareheaded, and as if in a dream I saw a face from my past. As I struggled to make the connection I felt as if I were being pulled down a whirlpool of bad memories. And then I had him. It was Tom, page to the Bishop of Balecester. I stared, dumfounded, at a man who could not possibly be here. But he was. My companions had seen the strangers too, and I saw Gilles drop his hand gently to his lap, where no weapon lay. All of us - except Anna, whose blade remained our secret -had unbuckled our swords in deference to the saint and they were piled, guarded by the village children, under the trees. So it was with a glimmer of relief I noticed that the Frankish apparitions had no arms in sight. But for the first time in my life I felt utterly naked without even Thorn at my belt. The three men had stopped and were looking about them, dazed no doubt from their climb up here. But they had come from up the mountain. They must have crossed from the other side of the island. Meanwhile, they had not yet seen us over in the shadow of the chapel. As casually as I could, I leaned over to the Captain.

'I know that man,' I murmured. 'His name is Tom. The bishop of Balecester's page. They all wear the Bishop's livery. What the fuck are they doing here?'

Will he know you?' he replied, smiling as if I had told him a joke.

I wondered. He had seen me once, and he had seen a young monk in a dark hallway. I was much changed - perhaps I was a completely different person. In any event I had a full head of hair and the sun had beaten every vestige of boyhood from my face.

'I think probably not,' I said, carefully. 'But you know him.'

'I met him once only, but I have forgotten nothing about that night. He was a nervous boy hiding in the shadows. Sir Hugh made him jump, that I know.'

'And Kervezey must be on the island - this proves it. But why come here now? Play this very close, Patch. Very close indeed. This lad will not recognise us. Maybe he will believe we are who we say we are.'

Anna gripped my knee beneath the table. Who are they?' she hissed.

They have something to do with Kervezey,' I told her. 'Be very calm.'

Even as we spoke, the three men saw us and began striding through the crowd. I had gone rigid with anticipation, planning the fight to come, but when Tom reached our table he bowed low to Anna in what I had to admit was a very courtly manner.

'I am truly surprised to find such a fair lady in this rough isle,' he began. I noted that his voice had sunk an octave since I had last heard it. But now Tom was bowing to each of us in turn.

'Forgive me,' he went on. 'I had no intention of causing any disruption. I see you are people of quality, and from the north and west, by your dress. I am Thomas of Trobridge, and my fellows and I are bound for Cyprus. We stopped in this Godforsaken place to take on water, and took it into our heads to climb the mountain. I am glad we found you, as we are a little low on water ourselves. Again, please forgive me, but I am so happy to have met some fellow - what do these people call us? - Franks.'

'The pleasure is ours, dear sir.' It was the Captain, at his most charming. His English was near perfect. We are feasting in honour of my lady Eleni's visit to this shrine of Saint Tula. My lady is the Duchess of Grammos, and this is her betrothed, my lord of Arenberg, currently residing in Venice. We are returning to the Serenissima for the wedding, but my lady heard a charming native tradition that this Saint Tula has a virtue of fertility and . . .' He waved his hand discreetly.