Relics

'If you don't breathe soon, your eyes will pop out of your head, pop, pop.' I knew that voice, and it was not Sir Hugh. It was Will.

And I did breathe, a horrible, ragged gasp. Another breath, and I was choking, down on all fours with Will pounding my back. I had been sick, and my room smelled worse now, if that were possible. Little points of coloured light were dancing before my eyes. There was a cold, heavy sensation in the pit of my stomach and I ducked my head for another heave. But it was only St Euphemia's hand. I crawled over to my pallet and lay still.

'Jesus, Patch! You're hurt!' Will was kneeling beside me, running his hands over my robe. He was muttering in his haste. 'All this blood. I thought you'd fallen in the river. Where are you wounded, Patch? Come on!' I sat up, and brushed him away.

'It isn't my blood, Will. Get off me. What the hell are you doing here?'

Well then, for fuck's sake whose blood is it?' said Will, ignoring me.

All at once I had to be free of my gory habit. I jumped up and began tearing at the knot in my belt. The cord was soaked and had tightened, and my thumbnail broke before the thing came undone. I pulled it away, and with a clank the golden hand dropped from between my legs like some grotesque birth. Will gasped and I saw his face go white as he backed away down the pallet. 'Mother of God!' he whispered.

Meanwhile I had struggled out of my habit, which settled on the floor in stiff folds as if some part of me were still wearing it. Throwing open the lid of my trunk, I grabbed a dirty flaxen shirt that I had stuffed there some weeks earlier and began scrubbing myself There was water in a clay jug on the floor, and I poured it over my head, hardly noticing that it was freezing cold. I scrubbed some more, Will staring with great round eyes at the naked madman who had recently been his good friend Petroc. Then I attacked the trunk again, flinging clothes over my shoulder until I had what I needed.

I soon had myself dressed in a pair of baggy grey woollen britches, a linen undershirt and a brown fustian tunic. The small bag of coins I kept hidden in the thatch I tied into a corner of the shirt and tucked it down around my groin. At the bottom of the trunk was my old sheepskin jerkin, very worn and moth-eaten and only packed for sentimental reasons. I had outgrown it a little, but pulled it on anyway: it would be warm, at least. I had my sandals. Now all I required were garters, and I had none. So I tore another dirty shirt into strips and began to bind my calves with them.

In the meantime Will had been watching me, his intelligent face frozen in a mask of confusion. He was owed an explanation, and so, while I wound the makeshift garters up my legs, I tried to give one. 'The Steward found me again,' I began. 'Sweet Christ! He attacked you!' Will broke in.

'No, not me. He took me to the palace, and then to the cathedral. He told me the Bishop wanted St Euphemia's hand for something-' and I touched the thing with my foot,'-and told me to fetch it from the altar. Then Deacon Jean caught me.' A sob rose with my gorge. I gulped it back. 'Deacon Jean caught me, and Sir Hugh killed him. Cut his throat like a lamb. Pretended I'd done it. Made me run.'

Wait a minute, Patch,' said Will, carefully. 'Sir Hugh killed a deacon? Why?'

'God's guts, Will! Why? He's a madman – there is no "why"! He killed the poor priest, and he's killed me, too. I'm running, but there's no fucking point, is there?'

And there's the hand,' Will said, his calm cutting across my growing panic. "You kept the hand.'

'I did.' I sat down on the bed. 'I found it in my own hand when I reached the bridge. I thought of chucking it in the water, but that would have been a sin.' I laughed mirthlessly. There's no room for a bigger stain on my soul, brother.'

To my surprise, Will rose, picked up the relic and, using the wet and bloody shirt I had used to wash myself, began to rub the stains from the golden fingers. 'It's very beautiful,' he said, softly. 'He told you the Bishop wanted it?' I nodded. And the deacon refused?' he asked.

'No, no.' I shuddered, a spasm that caught me off guard and set my teeth chattering. 'He was happy for Sir Hugh to have it. He was friendly. All he did was ask what the Bishop needed it for. And then…' I saw again the fountain of blood, and retched. 'Softly, Patch. Did he try to kill you as well?'

'No.' It was true. The Steward had not lifted a finger against me. 'I ran, and he laughed at me, mocked me. Told me I'd made a terrible mess.' I fought down another dry heave. 'I got outside, and tried to raise the alarm. Then he appeared and accused me. He was spotless – you saw what I looked like. So they turned on me, and I ran.'

Will had finished polishing. He held the hand up to the candlelight, and it gleamed warmly, as benign a thing as it had been on the altar. 'I don't think the Steward is mad. He is playing a game, as he did before. What happened in the palace, Patch?'

'Nothing. The Steward had business with the Bishop. He presented me to him.' "You met the Bishop, Patch?' Will was incredulous. Yes. He looked like a buzzard. Has a nasty laugh.'

'I know what he looks like,' said Will. You've stumbled into something, my dear old friend. God knows what, but you've got to get away right now.' And with that he hauled me to my feet. 'Do you know where you'll go?' he asked, looking me hard in the face. I blinked. I'm going home,' I said.

I don't really remember the next few minutes. I know that I tried to leave the hand – I felt it might go better for me if I made some effort to return it, perhaps through Will. 'Terrible idea,' he said. 'There is a trade in such trinkets – there's a fortune in gold and gems here. And the relic… what price the hand of a martyr?' I was to keep the relic, to sell or to bargain with. It was priceless, after all, but its value as gold bullion alone would probably be enough to buy all of Dartmoor. He bound it to my chest with a linen scarf, which my mother had given to me when I became a novice. St Euphemia's touch was oddly comforting, but the metal dug into me in awkward places. It would be maddening, I knew, but there was no time to think of that now.

Will's plan, if it could be called such, was simple. I would leave Balecester dressed as I was, a peasant to any curious eyes. Once I had put a day between the city and myself, I would put on my habit and be a monk once more. Monks were revered or reviled by country folk: in any event, they generally left us alone. It was the best protection I could hope for. My tonsure was a problem, however, and Will paced for a moment. Then he picked up my water jug and held the base over the candle's flame for a minute. The clay was soon coated with a layer of lampblack, and Will wiped this off with one hand and, before I could protest, began smearing it on my shaven pate.

'Lucky you went to the barber last week, my boy,' he said. Tour hair is no more than black fuzz, and this will look like more of the same, I hope. Don't forget to wipe it off

I was not about to put my habit back on, though. 'There's more blood in that thing than I have in my own body,' I told him.

Well, you'd better have mine, brother,' Will replied, and he pulled off his robe and rolled it long-ways, binding the ends together to make a great, heavy ring. I hung it across my body. It was bulky and hot over my rough clothes, but I said nothing. Meanwhile my friend was standing in his tunic and breech-clout. 'If you could loan me a pair of britches, I'd be eternally grateful,' he said. I gestured at the trunk. He rummaged, and found a tattered thing that nonetheless proved to fit. It was strange to see Will dressed like a layman, and seeing my expression, he winked at me. 'I feel like a real person again, Patch,' he said. 'That sack may be good for the soul, but it lacks grace.'

Then he blew out the candle and pushed me from the room. The stairs were still empty as we crept down them. Will stopped me at the door with a look, opened it and peered out. 'No one about,' he breathed. Then we were in the street and walking, arm in arm, two friends out for a stroll. We headed away from Bridge Street, towards the wall, beyond which a smear of tumble-down houses faded into hovels and then into the patchwork fields that stretched for miles out into the flat lands to the south and east. I would head south, skirting the city, and then turn west, into the wooded hills. It would mean crossing the river, but upstream where it was more narrow.