Read Online Relics by Pip Vaughan-Hughes - Free Book Online

filled to bursting with all the poisons and fetor of that filthy place. From the miasma that rose around us, I gathered that human as well as pig, cow and horse-shit had a place here. My legs were becoming unpleasantly warm - hot, even - and I tried to drag myself out. It felt like quicksand below me, drawing me down into the pile, and I braced myself for another try. Will was cursing and struggling. I felt hot slime ooze between my toes. Something was trying to wiggle between my sandal and the sole of my foot. I yelped, and threw myself forward. My hand struck something sharp. Now I was hanging forward over the pile. For a second I thought I was still trapped, and then the weight of my body dragged me downwards and out, and the front of the mound gave away. Will and I tumbled head-first down the slope, clods of horror bouncing around us, until a thick wall of brambles and last year's nettle stalks caught us at the bottom. I found I was still clutching something: a pig's jaw. I flung it away. Will reared to his feet, and I followed.
    'Patch, oh Patch,' he rasped, and hawked mightily. 'I think I kissed a dead cat.'
    'That must be what Purgatory feels like,' I said. 'But the Devil himself would leave us alone in this state.'
    We were in a dark, stinking bower formed by the skeleton of a large apple tree which had fallen onto the roof of a dilapidated shanty. Years of live and dead briars, goose-grass, nettles and bindweed had grown up and died back, forming a dismal, snarled wall. We pushed our way through as best we could, squeezing ourselves along the crumbling side of the shanty where the thick lattice of dead apple boughs was thinnest. Will was through and I had almost fought clear when footfalls sounded high above us on the wall, and then the gabble of angry, frustrated men. I froze. A torch appeared between two battlements, then another and another, the guttering orange light skittering down the dunghill towards me. I pressed myself into the rotten wood, and the light fluttered past me. I was in the deep shadow of the apple's trunk, just out of reach of the trembling, searching fingers of torchlight.
'Move on, Jack. That's a neckbreaker, down there.'
    'Didn't I fucking tell you? He'll have got down onto one of them tannery roofs further along.'
    The light went out as suddenly as it had appeared. I waited until the hunters' voices were a faint snarl in the distance, then pushed through to join Will on the other side. His eyes were very wide and white in the gloom.
    That lot are off to the tanneries,' he said, pulling pieces of bramble from his arms. 'If we skirt along to the right for a bit, we'll get to the river upstream of town. That puts the whole city between us and them.'
    'They chased me down Silver Street,' I agreed. 'Maybe Sir Hugh believes I made for the water-meadows.'
    'So we'll follow the river upstream. It will lead us to the Fosse Way. Watling Street cuts across it and will take you to London. I'll go with you as far as the crossroads, then go north. Coming?'
    I shrugged. You'll be safer there, at least,' Will pointed out. 'Hide in the crowds. Then find a ship and go abroad: Flanders, perhaps. Yes, indeed, Flanders!' His voice held a little warmth now. 'My father has business partners there. They will help you. A plan, Patch, a plan! Trala!' And he slapped me lightly across the shoulders.
    'Save yourself, Will,' I told him. What would I do in Flanders?' At that moment, as the dunghill stench crept around me with the memory of how I had shrunk, like vermin, from the torchlight, I felt myself at the end. 'I'll give myself up. Perhaps the courts will believe my story - it is, after all, the truth. Anyway, they'll hang me quick, and Sir Hugh will be cheated of his fun.'
    You are no coward, Petroc,' he snapped back. 'So move yourself. Now!'
    There were shadows all around us, darkness that gave forth the stink of death and decay. Death was behind - death was surely all around. But ahead?
'I don't speak Flemish,' I