Order of Darkness Read online

  Luca turned to Brother Peter.

  ‘But why did you fasten up the handcuffs after you had released them?’ Brother Peter asked.

  Freize paused. ‘For confusion,’ he said gravely. ‘To cause more confusion.’

  Isolde, despite her anxiety, choked back a laugh. ‘You have certainly done that,’ she said. A small smile exchanged between them made Luca suddenly frown.

  ‘And do you swear you did this?’ he asked tightly. ‘However ridiculous you are?’

  ‘I do,’ Freize said solemnly. ‘However ridiculous I am.’

  Luca turned to Brother Peter. ‘This vindicates them from the charge of witchcraft.’

  ‘The report has gone,’ Brother Peter ruled thoughtfully. ‘We said that the captives were missing, accused of witchcraft, but that their accusers were definitely guilty. The matter is closed unless you want to reopen it. We don’t have to report that we met them again. It is not our job to arrest them if we have no evidence of witchcraft. We’re not holding an inquiry now. Our inquiry is closed.’

  ‘Sleeping dogs,’ Freize volunteered.

  Luca rounded on him. ‘What in hell do you mean now?’

  ‘Better let them lie. That’s what people say. Let sleeping dogs lie. Your inquiry is completed, everyone is happy. We’re off on some other damn fool mission. And the two women who were wrongly accused are free as little birds of the air. Why make trouble?’

  Luca was about to argue, but then he paused. He turned towards Isolde. After one powerful blue gaze that she had shot at Freize when he had confessed to releasing them, she had returned to studying her hands held in her lap.

  ‘Is it true that Freize released you? He let you go? As he says?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why did you not say so at once?’

  ‘I didn’t want to get him into trouble.’

  Luca sighed. It was unlikely, but if Freize was holding to his confession and Isolde would offer no other explanation, then he could not see what more he should do. ‘Who is going to believe this?’

  ‘Better this, than you trying to tell everyone that we melted through leg-cuffs and handcuffs,’ she pointed out. ‘Who would believe that?’

  Luca glanced at Brother Peter. ‘Will you write that we are satisfied that our servant released them, exceeding his duties but believing that he was doing the right thing? And that now we are clear that there was no witchcraft? And they are free to go?’

  Brother Peter was wearing his most dour look. ‘If you instruct me so to do,’ he said pedantically. ‘I think there is more to it than your servant stepping out of his place. But since he always steps out of his place and since you always allow it, and since you seem determined that these women shall go free, I can write this.’

  ‘You will clear my name?’ Isolde pressed.

  ‘I will not accuse you of escaping by witchcraft,’ Brother Peter specified. ‘That’s all I am prepared to do. I don’t know that you are innocent of everything; but as no woman is innocent since the sin of Eve, I am prepared to agree that there is no evidence and no charge to set against you for now.’

  ‘It’s good enough,’ Luca ruled.

  ‘So she’s innocent,’ Freize confirmed.

  Luca nodded. ‘Certainly there are no charges that we would bring against her.’

  ‘Then I have something for you,’ Freize told her with a bow. ‘In the confusion of leaving, I thought I should take it.’

  Brother Peter looked at Luca. ‘Has he stolen something?’ he asked. ‘From the Abbey? Do you allow him to steal now?’

  Luca spread his hands to show his complete ignorance of what Freize had done, or might do, as Freize went to his room and returned, carrying something long and thin wrapped in a saddle-cloth.

  ‘It’s your own goods,’ he said cheerfully to Isolde. ‘So not stealing. Your brother brought it for you, and then left it behind in his hurry. I took it that he didn’t want it any more, and I thought that you might like it. If we had not met up with you I would have kept it for the little lord, as a young man who should have a great sword.’

  As they watched him, he unwrapped the crusader broadsword and laid it gently on the table. They could see the engraved scabbard and the sparkle of embedded jewels. They could see the beautiful metalwork of the cross-guard where a bolt had been made to forge the sword into the scabbard. The sword could not be drawn unless someone struck off the metal guard.

  ‘It is my father’s crusader sword,’ Isolde said quietly. She put her hand on the hilt, and she looked at Freize. ‘You have given me a great gift, the greatest thing anyone has given me,’ she said. ‘My father’s friend’s sword.’

  ‘It’s not your father’s sword?’ Luca asked.

  She shook her head. ‘When he came back from the crusade with his dearest friend, my godfather, they both had their swords engraved with a great secret. Each of them had a secret to put on their sword. They sheathed their swords and hid their secrets and had their swords bolted into their scabbards. They gave their swords to each other, and they said that if ever they were in need, or if they needed the secret to be told, they would meet again and draw their swords.’

  ‘What’s the secret?’ Freize asked,

  She smiled. ‘Of course, I don’t know. No-one knows. And anyway, this sword does not hold my father’s secret, it’s the secret my godfather gave him to keep. This is my godfather’s sword. But my father kept it with him, took it with him everywhere. It was a reminder of their friendship, and a reminder of when he fought for God. He promised to give it to me, so that I could be a lord and a crusader like him. But then he changed his mind and left everything to my brother.’

  She fell silent.

  ‘Perhaps he did not,’ Luca suggested. ‘We have seen that your brother would not hesitate to cheat you. I think he was planning to murder you. Perhaps he changed your father’s will to force you into the abbey so that he could discredit you and all the nuns.’

  Her hand closed on the handle of the sword. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think he did. I think he was planning to destroy me, and then kill me. But I have this now, and I will turn on him. I will meet him and I will know what was my father’s will. I will know the truth of this, and I will not rest until I do.’

  Brother Peter looked gravely at her. ‘But committing no crime,’ he recalled her to the present.

  She smiled at him. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I might declare war on him, but I won’t trick him or cheat him as he cheated me.’

  ‘And remembering womanly virtues of modesty, obedience and peace-making,’ Brother Peter urged on her.

  A little giggle escaped her. ‘I don’t think I can promise that,’ she said.

  ‘Where will you go?’ Luca asked.

  ‘I have been puzzled as to what I should do. But this gift, this very great gift shows me the way. I will go to the son of my father’s friend, my godfather’s son. I can trust him and he has a reputation for being a tenacious fighter. I will ask him to clear my name, and to ride with me against my brother. It seems my brother did all of this to steal my inheritance from me, to kill me. So I will take his inheritance from him. I shall take back what is mine.’

  ‘There is more than you know,’ Luca told her. ‘It is worse than you know. He had commanded the Lady Almoner to set the nuns to pan for gold in the stream in your woods.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Gold?’

  ‘It’s probably why your brother was determined to drive you out of the abbey. There may be a fortune in gold in the hills, draining out into the stream in dust.’

  ‘They were panning for gold?’

  He nodded. ‘He was using the Lady Almoner to steal gold from your abbey lands. Now she is dead and you have run away, the abbey and the lands and the gold are all his.’

  He saw her jaw harden. ‘He has won my home, my inheritance, and a fortune as well?’

  Luca nodded. ‘He left the Lady Almoner to her death and rode away.’

  She turned on Brother Peter. ‘But you didn’t