Stormbringers Read online

  The angry murmur of the crowd rose into a roar of outrage. Father Benito saw that there was no reasoning with them like this. He glanced at Luca and surrendered. ‘Very well. As you wish. Brother Luca Vero – would you hold an inquiry? We should hear what these good women have to say. It will be better for us all if all the fears are spoken aloud and you can tell us if there was anything that we could have done to prevent the flood.’

  ‘There!’ Another of the wise women was triumphant. ‘We will name the guilty ones!’

  ‘I will inquire into the cause of this wave, and I will tell the Pope what I decide.’ Luca ruled. ‘If anyone has caused it, I will see that they are charged with causing such a disaster, and I will see that they are punished.’

  ‘Burned,’ Mrs Ricci insisted. ‘And the ashes blown away on the storm wind that they called up.’

  ‘I will see that justice is done,’ he promised, but his level tones only angered her more. She dived towards him and snatched at his hands, shouting furiously into his young face. ‘You know there are witches who call up storms? You know this?’

  Luca had to force himself not to flinch away from her. ‘I know that many people believe this. I haven’t found anyone guilty of such a thing myself. But I have read of it.’

  ‘Read of it!’ someone said scornfully. ‘You’ve just seen it happen! What book can tell you what has just happened to us? What book was ever written that speaks of a wave that destroys a town, on a sunny day? For no reason?’

  Luca looked around; the little crowd around them was steadily growing in number, as more and more people came up from the market square, and stepped out of the doorways of their houses. They were no longer pale with grief, shocked into silence; they were angry and becoming dangerous, looking for someone to blame for their tragedy.

  ‘I think there may be books which tell of this,’ he said carefully. ‘I have not read them myself, it is the wisdom of the ancients which the Arabs have in their libraries. This is something that we should understand, so as to make ourselves safe. I will consider carefully what you, and everyone else has to say. I will start my inquiry this afternoon, at the inn.’

  ‘You should start there indeed,’ one of the midwives from the church said spitefully. ‘That’s the very place to start. You could start in the inn, in the upper room, in the attic bedroom.’

  ‘What?’ Luca asked baffled at the sudden rise of hostility in her voice, at the meaning of her accusation.

  She raised a pointing finger. The crowd was silent, watching as she slowly turned around until she was facing Ishraq and Isolde, the little girl Ree between them. At once there was a ripple of approval.

  ‘Name them!’ someone said.

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Name the storm-bringers!’

  ‘The upper room,’ she said. ‘The safe room. Safe for them, up there, calling up a storm; calling up a terrible wave and then sailing up to perch on the roof like seagulls while the flood drowned us mere mortals beneath them.’

  ‘They didn’t fly up to the roof!?’

  ‘Didn’t they wait out the storm safe and high above the town?’

  ‘I can vouch for these two ladies,’ Luca interrupted. ‘I was on the roof myself.’

  ‘You said yourself that the Arabs knew how the waves were caused . . .’

  ‘I said they had the books, they are books from the ancients . . .’

  ‘She’s an Arab! Isn’t she? Does she know Arab learning? Does she know how to call up a wave?’

  Ishraq stepped forward to defend herself, her dark eyes blazing, as Luca put up his hand to command silence. ‘This young woman is well-known to me,’ he said. ‘She is in the household of the Lord of Lucretili, a Crusader Lord, a Christian Lord. There is no question that she could have done anything wrong. I can promise you . . .’

  There was a sudden swirl of seagulls, disturbed from feeding on the flooded rubbish of the town, and they spiraled upwards into the sky, screaming their wild calls, right above the heads of the crowd.

  ‘The souls of the drowned!’ someone exclaimed.

  Several women crossed themselves.

  ‘Calling for justice!’

  ‘I can promise . . .’ Luca went on.

  ‘You can’t,’ one of the wise women cut disdainfully through his speech. ‘For you don’t know the half of it. You were talking to Johann the Pilgrim, blind as a fool, when the two young women were outside the walls of the town calling up a storm in the green lake.’

  There was a murmur of real consternation. A woman drew back from Ishraq and spat on the ground before her. Half the women of the crowd crossed their fingers, putting their thumb between the second and third finger to make the old sign against witchcraft, making their hands into fists.

  ‘The green lake?’ someone demanded. ‘What were they doing there?’

  ‘What is this?’ Brother Peter asked stepping forward.

  The old woman did not retreat, but her friend joined her and they both stood beside Mrs Ricci, their faces contorted with hate. ‘We saw them,’ she said so loudly that the newcomers at the very back of the crowd could hear every word of her damning accusation. ‘We saw the two young women, dressed so dainty and looking so innocent. Slipping out of town as night fell and coming back all wet in darkness. They went to the green lake and summoned a storm at twilight. And the next day the wave came. The young women called the wave up that night, and next day the bad children led our children into its path.’

  ‘Of course we did not!’ Isolde burst out, looking round at the pinched angry faces. ‘You must be mad to think such a thing!’

  ‘Mad?’ someone shouted. ‘It is you that are mad to bring such a thing down on us!’

  ‘Calling up a storm in the green lake, leading our children out to drown. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

  ‘Yes!’ a man shouted from the back of the crowd. ‘The Bible itself says: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

  The mass of people pressed closer to the two young women and the little girl between them. Ree dived beneath Isolde’s cloak and clung around her waist, crying for fear. Isolde was as white as the kerchief over her hair. Ishraq stepped in front of her, spread her hands, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to fight.

  Luca spread his arms, raised his voice. ‘These are my friends,’ he declared. ‘And we have lost our own friend to the sea, just as you have lost your dear ones. You cannot think that these young women would call up a wave that would drown our friend.’

  ‘I do think it,’ Mrs Ricci hurled the words at him. ‘We all think it. It is you who are misled. How will you hold an inquiry if you will not ask the most important questions? What were they doing in the lake?’

  Baffled, Luca turned to Isolde. ‘What were you doing in the lake?’

  She flushed red with anger that he should interrogate her before this crowd. ‘How dare you ask me?’

  His temper flared with his fear of the crowd. ‘Of course I ask you! Don’t be such a fool! Answer me at once! What were you doing?’

  ‘We were washing,’ she said, disdainful of him, of the crowd. ‘We went for a wash.’

  ‘Washing!’ the women scoffed. ‘In the green lake? As night fell? They are storm-bringers, you can see it in their faces.’

  There was a dangerous roar of agreement from the crowd and it encouraged the wise women on the attack.

  ‘You will name the storm-bringers?’ the woman pressed Luca. ‘These women who came with you, and the child who came later, their little accomplice? You will try all three of them?’

  ‘It was the children and the two women who called up the wave. That child would know. You must question her,’ a man commanded from the back of the crowd, his jacket dirty with sludge from baling out his house. ‘And we will burn all three of them together.’

  ‘Yes!’ a new woman agreed with him. ‘If they are guilty we will drown all three of them in our own harbour.’

  Ree’s little hand clenched onto Isolde’s stead