Relics (40 page)

The island - it was called Hrinos, Pig Island, as it took the vague shape of a boar's back - was coming up ahead. It would be dark in three hours, and then we would sail back, beating across the channel to Koskino. With a bit of sailor's luck, the night wind would still be strong and would carry us north with Cordula. I was trying not to think about the hours in between, so I climbed up to where Nizam stood at the tiller.

'I will be sorry to leave this sea,' I said, as we watched Hrinos slide towards us.

'And I,' said the Moor. 'It is my sea too. Sometimes I believe that every ocean is a mere road to bring me back here.'

'But I will not be sorry to have this night's work over and done,' I muttered.

'Oh, my friend: it is in your blood.'

I had the same answer from Rassoul, from Pavlos, from Isaac. According to them, I had nerves of iron and this would be easy. But I was beginning to feel less sanguine about volunteering for this endeavour. It was less the mechanics of the thing: the climb, the theft. Rather, it was Kervezey in the shadows. But when I closed my eyes I could see Will's lips pulled back in his death-smile. I would not back down now.

I think I wanted Anna to make a fuss. But she did not. She had tucked herself into her favourite spot alongside the bowsprit and was letting the salt spray stiffen her hair again. When I leaned beside her she put an affectionate hand on my chest.

'Brave boy,' she said. 'The Captain wants you.'

That was all. She went back to studying Hrinos, coming up fast now. I could only shrug and take a lonely walk back to the Captain's cabin.

'I should think you are ready to soil yourself with terror,' he said as I ducked through the door. They were the sweetest words I had heard all day.

'Something akin to that,' I admitted.

'Good lad. Only the lunatics feel no fear. It is a good thing: it keeps your mind sharp and open. Now, here is my plan.'

We would anchor off Hrinos, out of sight of any watchers on Koskino. The shore party would row across in the gig. There would be six of us: four to row, one to steer, and me, saving my strength. The five would wait on the beach until I returned, and we would row back. Very simple.

'But what will I do in the shrine?' I asked. 'How careful should I be about making the switch?'

'As careful as you can be, which might not mean very much in the dark. Gilles will have our stand-in looking as much like Tula as he can. It will be good, I can tell you that. He has a phenomenal memory, that one. Our own relic will be wrapped like Tula. You will simply replace those ghastly red slippers, the pectoral and the rings - do not worry. They will come off easily enough. Now, you will need this.'

He pulled a small, cloth-wrapped bundle from under his seat. It held a tinderbox, a stubby, thick-bladed chisel and the smallest lantern I had ever seen. Blind on three sides, it had one window of thick yellowish glass. You'll use it with these,' said the Captain, showing me two squat candles. 'Smell them: beeswax,' he said. 'That way you won't leave any odd smoke odour. It is the kind of detail which someone like that priest might notice.'

'I should take my sword.'

'No, just your knife. That way you won't spit yourself if you lose your footing. I do not think you will need it. Your mind is on Kervezey, but he is on the other side of Koskino. His men will hardly have got back to the town, and even if Kervezey cared to, he could not reach the shrine before morning. No, I am more worried that you will meet a shepherd or a hunter. If you do, run. Make your way back to the sea, and keep signalling towards the
Cormaran
with your light. We will find you.' He patted my arm. 'It is a simple task, Petroc. But I am proud of you, and we will all be very grateful. Now prepare yourself.'

As the gig sliced its way towards the dark bulk of Koskino, I sat in the bows, wrapped in my cloak. Gilles had bound Thorn to my left arm just below the shoulder, and rubbed my face with lamp-black. I could not get used to the feel of it. For the thousandth time I wrinkled my nose and grimaced. It was driving me mad, but at least my mind was not dwelling on the job at hand. Behind me, Pavlos steered, while Istvan, Zianni, Kilij the Turk and Horst bent over the oars. I was grateful to the Captain for such companions. They were, I thought, the most terrifying fighters aboard the
Cormaran.
Granted, they would be skipping stones on the beach while I did the hard work alone, but it felt good to be in their company.

Between the rowers lay the long dark shape of the False Cordula, as I had dubbed her. She was bound tight with oilcloth and splinted between three boards, to which straps had been fastened. The lamp was strapped across her chest. She weighed almost nothing. I had climbed up and down the ladder to the steering deck with her, and she was more a presence than a burden. But I was trying not to dwell on her presence. I glanced back. Hrinos was a black shape against a field of deeper blackness. We were almost there.

The gig ran up onto the white cobbles of the beach, and I jumped ashore with the painter. There was nothing to make fast to, so I tied it around a large boulder. Stones crunched behind me. It was Zianni with my pack. 'I hate to touch this thing,' he shuddered.

'Thank you, my friend,' I told him, acidly. 'It's fortunate that you don't have to lug it up a mountain in the dark, then. Now help me put it on.'

We huddled at the head of the cove, where a goat path showed palely through the scrub. 'Be very careful, Petroc,' said Pavlos. 'And remember, if you slip, try to land on your front. Your ladies are fragile.' I looked at the circle of faces around me. Five pairs of eyes gleamed wolfishly. I shrugged the straps into place and patted Thorn.

Well, I'll be on my way,' I muttered. There was nothing more to say, and I had run out of bravado, so I stepped onto the path and began to climb.

It was steep at first, a dusty scramble up loose pebbles, but then the path levelled and I looked back to find that I was already more than a mast's height above the beach. Above me, the sharp ridge of the mountain spur was another few minute's climb, then I judged the going would be easier until just under the shrine, where I would come to a crag. It had not looked too difficult that afternoon, but now I would be searching for handholds in the dark. I followed the path until it began to veer off to the side. Cursing the goats for taking the easy route, I plunged into the scrub. Straight away I was enfolded in a cloud of scent as the herbs of the mountain, which Anna had named one by one as we rode to the shrine and I had not listened, were crushed beneath my boots. It was hard going. Many of the low bushes were spiny or so dense that they tripped me. Soon enough, though, I came upon another goat path, which I followed until it too began to head off in the wrong direction. And so it went: a wade through scrub, an easy stretch on a goat way, then back into the scrub. I was hot and scratched but not much out of breath by the time I came out onto the ridge.

In my memory I had pictured a stony knife-edge, but in fact I was on a wide neck of land that had once been terraced for farming. There was an olive grove ahead of me, and to my disbelieving joy a real, man-made track. I adjusted the dead woman on my back and set off at a fast stroll.

Now that I was not surrounded by the scrape of twigs and the clatter of stones, I could hear the sounds of the night. The cicadas were quieter, but they had been joined by other things that peeped and chirped. Somewhere above, an owl was hunting, and nightingales were awake in the olive trees. I remembered the last time I had been alone in the countryside at night: my dark journey to Dartmouth. For months - in truth I did not know how long it had been - I had lived on the
Cormaran,
where solitude meant nothing. It was strange to be alone under the stars again. The air was warm, and sweat was gathering on my back where the false saint clung to me. I had given her almost no thought. Gilles had been right: she was just a thing, empty of the last presence of her existence, and I was thankful for it. Up ahead, the olives stood like a gnarled coven. But it felt safe, and I picked my way past the ancient, latticed trunks, the nightingales stilling, dry leaves crunching underfoot.

The faint silver light of the stars was enough to light my way. The going was easy up here. It had looked fierce, but I found that the spur rose in a series of gigantic steps and the steep parts were mercifully short. Here and there I had to climb over a tumbledown wall that must have marked old boundaries, but as far as I could tell I was making good time. I could already see the shape of the crag above and to my left. I would have to pick my way through a patch of huge boulders, which as I came up to them proved to be even more gargantuan than I had thought. They threw great shadows of pitch blackness, and for the first time since I had left the beach I felt a stab of disquiet. I reached out and touched the nearest stone; it still had a ghostly warmth to it, a last vestige of the day, and that made me feel less uneasy.

It was not particularly hard climbing the crag, which was deeply fissured and furrowed, as if more monstrous boulders were struggling to birth themselves from the living rock. I had to be careful not to use my back as I squeezed up one long gutter, and once a root which I had stupidly grabbed came away in my hand and I had a second of panicked scrabbling before my fingers found another hold. But before I realised it, I was pulling myself up onto the rocky platform where I had sat with Gilles and the Captain mere hours before. There was a big old fig-tree, I remembered, at the entrance to the walled track that would bring me to Tula's shrine. There it was, and that must be the shrine, a pale daub at the far end of the passageway. I plucked a plump fruit and turned it inside out into my mouth. I was parched, and the seed-filled pulp felt good as it slipped down my dry throat. I picked another. A bat flitted past me and dived between the walls. Suddenly there was a great clattering, and two black shapes were rushing me from the mouth of the track. Before thought could form I hurled the fig at my attackers and had Thorn half-unsheathed. But they rattled past me and I saw four sickle horns against the sky before the goats hurled themselves down some secret path in the cliff. Only then did I hear the hollow clank of their copper bells.

My heart was beating itself out from between my ribs. I shoved my knife back and cursed silently, viciously. By some miracle I had not had time to lurch backwards, or my passenger would have surely been smashed to dust against the trunk of the fig-tree. And what fucking good, I thought, would that fig have done? Somehow the futility of trying to defend myself with a fruit had shaken me more than the goats. I stood and quivered for a good few minutes until I had mastered myself enough to set off again. And I also wondered whether something - someone - had scared the beasts, or if this was just what Greek goats got up to after dark. But at last I bit my lip and started towards the shrine.

It seemed lighter in the stone circle. The little shrine appeared to give off a glow of its own, the whitewash shimmering between the black brushstrokes of the cypresses, or perhaps the starlight reflected more brightly from the pale stone walls and the white gravel. There were no goats about, and everything was still except for the rattle of the cicadas. To make sure, I walked slowly around the outer walls, peering around each opening in turn, but there was no one. Only then did I strike out across the gravel to where the shrine waited for me.

Stepping down into the sunken area before the door, I slipped the False Cordula from my back and propped her against the earth wall. I ducked down and untied the bundle that held the lamp. The tinder struck first time, and I fitted the lit candle into the tiny steel box. To my surprise, it threw a strong, thin beam of yellow light. I reached out and gingerly tried the door: it was unlocked, as before. I would not be needing the chisel, so I tucked it into my boot. It was time. I took a deep, diver's breath and opened the door.

As I had feared, the darkness inside was absolute. It seemed to pour out over the threshold like spilled ink. But the beam from my lantern cut through and broke the spell. I stepped inside and closed the door gently behind me. I had rehearsed the next move in my mind over the last endless hours of waiting. Laying my pack down, I untied the knots that held it together. The splints fell away easily, and I unfolded the oilcloth to reveal the dead woman inside. I did not care to look at her: the blackness of her skin seemed to have some affinity with the shadows around me, and I felt my flesh begin to prickle. Rubbing the sweat from my hands, I padded over to the reliquary, from which the lantern beam was striking shards of metallic brilliance. I propped the lantern on the nearest pew so that it threw its light lengthwise across the lid, searched out the catches with my fingers and opened them. Then, with my flesh crawling in earnest now, I slowly raised the lid itself and let it settle back on its chain.

In the dim light, Cordula had lost even the vestige of benign peace she had seemed to possess that afternoon. Now she lay rigid and clenched, her hands like talons. I could hardly bring myself to touch them. They were hard as wood and very smooth, but at least the rings came off, clicking faintly but horribly over the knuckles. I lifted off the pectoral cross and laid it, with the rings, on the oilcloth behind me. Then the slippers. That was worse: the feet were more dead than the rest of the body, somehow; at once pathetic and threatening. I bent over the coffin and slipped my hands around the body. As I lifted, I inadvertently looked into the saint's face. It was strange how Cordula had retained so much more of life's vestige - essence, as Gilles had said - than had the stacked bodies on the ship. I could sense disapproval in the raised eyebrows, and a warning in the curled, desiccated lips. A warning . . .

And then I heard it, a faint chink chik! chink chik! not much louder than the cicadas but out of place in the choir of the night. Metal against metal. I let go of the body in my arms, and it sank back into its nest of linen with a faint whisper. On my haunches now, I laid my forehead for a moment against the cold silver of the coffin. The worst had come to pass, as it had to. I was dead. This would teach me to volunteer. I would never see Anna again. All these thoughts and a hundred more hurtled around my mind like sparrows trapped in a room. Then I noticed that the sound had not come any nearer, and was quite unhurried. Perhaps there was time . . . for what? Quivering, I reached up, grabbed the lantern and set it on the floor, glass against the stone of the altar. Instantly the shrine was plunged into complete darkness. I did not wish to crush the other body or trip over some hidden thing, so as quickly as I could I crawled on my belly to the door. Prying it open, I slipped outside into the little sunken space.