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.