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  “I never thought I would sit by her deathbed,” Luca said shortly. “This is one terrible sight I never thought I would see.”

  “No,” his lordship conceded. “And a beautiful girl.”

  Luca looked up, suddenly animated. “You should have known her. She was so much more than just beautiful. She was brave, she had tremendous courage and energy, and she loved the Lady Lucretili and would have laid down her life for her. She was as loyal as any comrade in arms. And she never shirked a challenge nor failed in anything she did.”

  He broke off, remembering one night on a dark quayside when he had been most unhappy and she had come out into the darkness and challenged him to be a man and fight his grief. He had listened to her when no one else could have reached him. “She could fight with a sword,” he went on. “She could shoot a bow. She spoke many languages, she was a scholar, and as hardheaded as a philosopher; but once I saw her go up a ladder at midnight to rescue a kitten stuck on a roof.”

  He fell silent, as the words he wanted to say went quiet in his mouth. Then he spoke them: “I love her,” he said quietly, and his own surprise at the words silenced him. “I have loved her for all this time and never known it.”

  “Bit late now,” his lordship said callously.

  “Yes,” Luca agreed. “I am a fool in this, too.”

  He was silent, and the enormity of his confession filled the room.

  “A man rarely knows his first love till he has lost her,” Lord Vargarten said, never having loved anyone. “So God bless her, anyway. Are you sure you won’t come to the castle for safety?”

  Vehemently, Luca shook his head.

  “Very well,” Lord Vargarten said indifferently. “Good night.”

  He left the room. Luca heard his heavy tread on the stairs, heard the outer door bang shut, and then silence. The room, the inn, the town was filled with silence. Somewhere, an owl hooted.

  Luca touched his hand to Ishraq’s cheek. She was even colder, as if her heart were slowly stopping and the warmth draining from her young body. Brother Peter came quietly into the room, followed by a priest carrying in a box of the sacred oils for the last rites that are given only to a dying person.

  “Is it time?” Brother Peter asked quietly, his eyes on the beautiful girl, so still and so cold on the bed.

  “It’s time,” Luca said, feeling his heart wrenched. “But I don’t think we should give her the last rites. She may not have wanted them.”

  Brother Peter was profoundly shocked. “We can’t let her die unshriven.”

  Luca raised his head. “Brother, I don’t really know what her faith was. I never saw her pray and I never heard her call on any god. I want to honor and respect her now, at her death, whatever her beliefs. I don’t think we should give her the last rites without her asking for them. I think we should just pray for her.”

  “Was she a heretic?” the priest asked, alarmed. “She is dressed like a Mahometan.”

  “She lived like a Christian woman in every way,” Brother Peter said, defending Ishraq now, despite his many criticisms of her in the past. “She wore the leggings and robe as an act of modesty when we were riding. But she was raised in a Christian home and she said that her father was a Christian, though she did not name him. We owe her the proper observances.”

  “I think she was a seeker after truth,” Luca said. “I think she studied many texts. She was a philosopher. I don’t know that she had a single faith.”

  “Then we must pray for her soul,” the priest said firmly. “For without a doubt she will go straight to hell. Everything that you say about her shows that she was born in sin and lived deep in sin.”

  “She was always questioning,” Brother Peter said with a little smile.

  “That’s very bad, especially in a woman,” the priest said. “That’s sin.”

  Luca could not contain a choke of laughter at the thought of what his funny, indomitable friend would say to that. “Yes,” he said, giving up trying to explain that he thought Ishraq was not a sinner but a woman who was finding her own way in a world that was not generous to young women. The three men knelt beside the girl’s bed and prayed until the room grew shadowy and night fell on the quiet town.

  “And so, I will leave you,” the priest said, crossing himself. “And may God have mercy upon her soul. She can be buried tomorrow. She’ll have to be buried on the wrong side of the churchyard wall, outside sanctified ground, but we can say prayers over her grave.”

  Luca nodded, not trusting his voice.

  “I’ll go to pray at the church,” Brother Peter said quietly. “Will you eat something? Come with me?”

  “I’ll wait here. There must be some reason for this; there must be some explanation. I’ll sit with her; perhaps I will be able to understand what has happened. I wish we knew . . . I wish we knew so much. We are like fools blundering about in darkness and now we have lost Ishraq. I’ll stay here tonight. I don’t want her to . . . to—” He broke off. Brother Peter realized that the young man could not say the words “die alone.”

  “Stay with her till the end,” Brother Peter agreed. “I will pray for her soul.” He went quietly from the room.

  In the dappled, moonlit forest, Freize waited until he was sure that the dancers were all asleep. Several times he started to creep toward them and then froze when one turned and cried out in their sleep, or another, chilled into wakefulness by the night dew, rose up and took a few steps of dance to warm up, and then lay down again.

  He was about to take the risk of approaching Isolde and trying to wake her, even though she was beside the landlady and the fiddler, when he saw something moving on the far side of the clearing. Something crept behind a tree, a bush moved, and then, crawling along the ground like a legless beast, he saw the strange Being worming his way silently across the open ground of the glade.

  Freize stayed still and watched, wondering what the creature was doing, and if he would disturb the dancers, perhaps causing such a diversion that Freize could run in, pull Isolde to her feet, and get her away during the confusion. But, as the young man watched, he saw, with increasing fear, that Isolde seemed to be the goal of this stealthy progress. The Being was clearly snaking his way toward her, where she lay partly covered by the fiddler’s cape, next to the sleeping bulk of the landlady.

  Anxiously, Freize rose up, thinking that he should protect Isolde from this new danger, but then he thought that this might be a rescue attempt, and he should wait and see if it was successful. So far, the Being had wormed his way across the open ground unobserved, and was now creeping up on the sleeping trio.

  The Being reached Isolde’s side and reared up to his knees. In the uncertain light from the moon, he seemed taller than he had been just hours earlier and, as Freize watched, he put his hands under the sleeping girl’s shoulders and knees. Drawing her away from the cape, he picked her up without any effort. Clearly, he was much stronger than any ordinary man, for, holding the sleeping girl in his arms, he rose easily to his feet and started to take big, silent steps backward across the clearing, his moon face watchfully turned toward the fiddler, his eyes on the sleeping dancers.

  Isolde did not even stir as, without making a sound, the Being melted into the darkness of the forest. Unable to believe his luck, Freize watched as he carried the sleeping girl back to the little track that ran through the forest. “He’s done it!” Freize whispered to himself, quietly creeping through the woods after them. “God bless him, for he has her safe. I could not have lifted her and carried her in silence, but the creature has done it.”

  The Being had reached the track that led back to the village and—with the girl still sleeping in his arms—he turned and started to walk, not toward Freize and safety, but north, farther and farther away from Mauthausen.

  “No, no, that won’t do!” Freize muttered under his breath. “You’re going the wrong way, my friend!” He did not dare to shout aloud, and he did not dare to run down the bare road, which was brilliantly lit by