Relics

'Death,' I muttered. You know what I have had festering inside me since…' The two men nodded. Well, then: if this is to be a chance to hurt Kervezey, even in his… his purse, then that will do for me.'

You are strong of heart, Patch – no one doubts it,' said the Captain, gently. 'But for such a task, there are a few more…' he pinched the bridge of his nose, as he did when searching for the right word, '… experienced men on the Cormaran. This time, perhaps-'

'Sir, with the greatest respect, there is no one aboard with more experience of Kervezey. My own… think, Captain, of that boy Tom. Kervezey is like a bot-fly, laying his eggs in innocent flesh and watching as the maggots hatch and feed, on the Toms, the Wills…' I fell silent. From the moment Tom had spoken, the horror of my last night in Balecester had wrapped itself around me like corpse-breath. I looked up. The Captain was studying me through narrowed eyes.

'How did it feel to face those swine, Kervezey's beasts?' he asked.

'I felt nothing,' I said. 'Save pity for Tom.' I stood up and walked to the edge of the cliff. 'I grew up scrambling,' I said. 'And I am not afraid any more. Do you think I can manage Tula on my own, though?'

'Tula will be light as a feather, my lad,' the Captain said. I turned and found the two of them on their feet, studying me. 'The job is yours if you wish.' They both reached out to me and laid hands on my shoulders. 'Now let us get back – your betrothed will be getting worried.'

Anna was not the least bit worried, though. She was learning a folk song from the headman's wife, and by the blush on that good woman's face it was clear that the noble lady had wheedled out something ribald.

'It's a good one,' she confirmed. About goats. I swapped for one I know about an old couple and a giant melon. They use it as a privy: brilliant song.'

So I listened to dirty Greek songs as the cicadas thrummed along, and sipped astringent retsina. As the cypress shadows lengthened and turned our walled circle into a giant sundial, as the village packed up and said farewell to their saint, and as I jogged back down the mountain on the fiendish donkey, all I could think about was the long, dark climb to come, and opening the old blue door on a blackness that would be deeper than any moonless night.

Chapter Nineteen

We made our excuses and weighed anchor as soon as we got back to Limonohori. I was happy to leave. My conscience was troubling me with a vengeance, and the warmth of our send-off felt like a knife twisting in my soul. The villagers seemed to want to keep us there forever, and when we finally tore ourselves away they loaded us with food and wine, gifts they certainly could not afford. And so I kept my back turned as we crossed the bay and swept out past the guardian windmills that were turning madly in the evening breeze which filled our own sails.

The plan was to sail north and west to a small rocky island we had seen from the mountainside. A casual question to the headman had revealed it to be deserted save for goats. We would hide until nightfall, and until the fishermen of Limonohori had put out. They fished at night in these parts, using flaming torches to lure the fish up from the deep and into their nets. Fortunately for us, the evening wind was sharp this time of year, and the men would use it to run south along the coast, rowing back in the early hours when the air would be still again. Meanwhile, we would make our way to the cove below the shrine. I would climb up, Tula's replacement strapped to my back, make the switch and scramble down again. It was nothing if not simple. The only thing I had to remember was not to break the relic. My own neck felt far less important.

Gilles called me down to the hold. A number of chests and bundles had been moved and a coffin of rough deal planks had been dug out from the bowels of the cargo. Gilles handed me the lamp he was carrying and pried off the lid with a claw hammer.

'The eighteenth woman,' he intoned as the contents were revealed. It was indeed a body, and I suddenly wondered how many other corpses I had been sailing with these past months. It was not a pleasant thought. I could see several more coffin-shaped chests now that the covers were disturbed, and although I had seen at least one of them before it had never occurred to me that they held anything like this. Eighteen women? How many more were there? I must have said something aloud, because Gilles seemed to guess what I was thinking.

'This is our stock-in-trade, Patch. Our inventory. We try to keep them from piling up down here, but…' He shrugged. 'And there is much else besides, all of which you will learn about soon. Now come and help me. Don't worry: they won't hurt you.'

The occupant of the open box was swaddled in soft white sheeting, which Gilles unwound from the head. A soft, dry scent crept into the air, not altogether unpleasant and somehow familiar.

Well, that's not going to work,' I muttered as a face came into the light.

The eighteenth woman looked nothing like Cordula. She had short, dark curls lying close about her scalp, through which yellow skull-bone showed where the skin had peeled back. Her eyes were half open, but the sockets were filled with what looked like pitch. The nose was perfect but the corpse had no lips. Black skin opened onto a hedge of snaggled brown teeth set in a piteous, hopeless snarl.

Gilles swore. You are right,' he admitted. 'Never mind. Help me.'

There was obviously some system governing the cargo. Gilles clambered into the heart of it, moved a large rolled carpet and tugged out another crude coffin. He set it down next to the open one and pried the lid off. 'The nineteenth woman?' I guessed. 'No, twenty-third,' Gilles replied, absently.

She was a far better prospect, but still not perfect. The hair would pass in bad light. The face was battered but intact and in proportion. She was also the right height. While Gilles had paced nervously in Tula's shrine he had measured out the reliquary and guessed the size of her body, and this cadaver would fit.

‘We can work on the face,' Gilles explained. 'That is not so hard. The priest and probably some of the older women will have spent time with Tula and will notice details, but the truth is that most people do not like to study dead people. Who can blame them? But it makes this sort of thing a little easier. Anyway, this is just to cover our tracks until we have put a good few sea leagues between us and Koskino.' 'Is this easy, then?'

'For me, you mean? Yes, I think it is. I have seen a legion of corpses in my life, many of them people I loved. The body is simply a shell made by the Evil One, but still Death's work is never easy to contemplate. This one, poor dear, left this life many, many years ago. Her soul… that is not right. Her essence is long gone. She is merely a thing.'

And then I remembered the smell. It brought me back to the night in Gardar when the Captain had shown me the heart of St Cosmas. 'She is from Egypt,' I said. Gilles looked surprised. 'That she is. How did you know?'

I told him of my evening in the Gardar tavern. 'So you know all our secrets, then,' he said when I was finished. 'I greatly doubt that,' I said, and he smiled.

'But Egypt is our greatest secret,' he said. 'It is where we hunt for our stock-in-trade. We can make a relic if need be: it is not hard. But for quality and true age, the tombs of Egypt are where you must look.'

'So are they all counterfeit, the relics that we deal in?' It was a question I had wanted to ask the Captain, but I had never had the chance after we sailed from Gardar.

'The answer is twofold. No is one of them. Many genuine relics pass through our hands. You are sitting on the shroud of Saint Lazarus' wife.' He laughed as I jumped to my feet. 'There is a great trade, a legitimate trade as it were, in relics, and we are at the very heart of it. But the second answer is, what is counterfeit? That shroud, for instance. It is indeed genuine. We found it last year in a monastery in the Sinai desert, where it has laid for generations. Another monastery in Alsace is awaiting its delivery. The monks of Sinai were glad of the money from Alsace to redig their failing well. A business transaction, all above board. The shroud is really a Coptic burial tunic in good condition, but several centuries younger than Madame Lazarus. I know that. No one outside this boat does, though. It is my business, and I have studied long. But most people do not care for history, or the study of ancient things. They require easy answers. For perhaps eight centuries folk have believed that the wife of Lazarus wore this shroud, and that makes it a fact. We are certainly not going to be scrupulous about it: no one would welcome the truth. Faith is more powerful than truth, and that is how we can earn our living from the dead.' 'I think Cordula is real, though. You do too.'