Dark Tracks Read online

  Freize obeyed him and felt Isolde shaking all over as she leaned back against him. He put one arm round her shoulders and across her chest, and one arm round her waist. He could feel the rapid pulse making her whole body vibrate as she panted with fear.

  “You and you,” Radu Bey said, pointing his sheathed scimitar at two of the guards. “Hold her legs still. She must not move so much as a hair’s breadth.”

  The rabbi looked at the three men holding Isolde. “You consent?” he asked. “You are sure you want to risk this? You want these men to hold you down while I unsheathe my sword?”

  “I consent,” she said. Her voice was a breathless thread of sound.

  “Even that I take my scimitar to you?” Radu Bey showed her the wicked curving blade, reached forward and plucked a hair from her head, dropped it and slashed through it. They all saw the hair sliced in two: the scimitar was as sharp as a barber’s blade.

  “I consent,” she repeated, her voice hoarse.

  The rabbi nodded at the guards and each one straddled one of her legs, gripping her knees with their calves, holding her twitching feet in their strong hands at the ankles, keeping her as still as they could. They ducked their heads and closed their eyes so they did not see the Ottoman with his vicious sword; no one could have seen him and not flinched.

  “If I miss my aim and cut off her foot, any part of her foot, you kick away the log of wood and plunge the stump into the bucket of pitch at once,” Radu Bey commanded the men. “Don’t wait for a second. It must be done at once, or she will bleed to death and die of the shock.”

  Grimly, they nodded. Isolde felt their grip on her ankles tighten like a vise.

  Freize wrapped around her, his arms around her body, her head jammed against his neck, felt that time had stood still and that he was trapped in a terrible nightmare. His head was swirling as he tightened his grip. “Tell him no!” he whispered to Isolde. “For God’s sake, tell him no.”

  He felt her head tremble in denial and then he looked up as Radu Bey held the scimitar high over his head.

  Freize thought he would cry out, forbid the Ottoman to take the risk. But the man moved too fast, without warning. All at once there was a sudden whistle of noise, like someone slashing through silk, and in a blur of movement the dark-robed man whirled on the spot, his blade high as if cutting down an opponent, and brought it down once, spun around again in a full circle like a dervish, and slashed down again like a cracking whip, moving too fast to see. Isolde screamed aloud and Freize felt her go limp in his arms as she fainted. He gripped her tightly, but could not bring himself to look down at her feet, expecting to see her legs horribly mutilated, her feet sliced off on the cobblestones, and the guards thrusting the bleeding stumps into boiling pitch.

  But when he did look, the two men holding her feet were falling backward, their faces incredulous; her bloodstained feet were naked, the pleated soles limp on the cobbles, the uppers peeling away clean, as a cut ribbon. Isolde was coming round, blinking her eyes and looking down fearfully at her feet, freed from the red shoes at last.

  Freize gave a hoarse sob of relief and buried his face in her icy neck; but Isolde made no sound. She reached down and felt the soles of her feet, fingering them all over, as if she could not believe that they were not skinned to the bone by the merciless blade. She held her toes as if she would count them, then looked up at Radu Bey. She was dazzled, she could not see him—he was a threatening silhouette against the brightness of the morning sun.

  “Get me up,” she said to Freize. She never took her eyes from the Ottoman lord as she struggled up and stood gingerly barefoot. “I owe you a great debt; you have saved my life.”

  Cleaning his sword on a piece of black silk, he glanced at her and nodded. “You’re unhurt?” he confirmed. “Not even grazed?”

  “I did not believe it could be done,” she said breathlessly.

  “Then you were brave indeed to hold still,” he said. “Quite surprising in a woman.”

  Her white face flushed red. “I am the Lady of Lucretili,” she said with a sudden rush of pride. “I am not a frightened slave.”

  He nodded. “I know of your father,” he said. “You are his daughter indeed. He was a brave man.”

  “You knew he was a crusader?” she asked tentatively, wondering if perhaps his father had met the Lord of Lucretili in battle. “Were your people his enemy?”

  “My father was a Christian. Your father and mine fought side by side,” Radu Bey said. “My father loved him like a brother. He told me that your father came on crusade thinking to destroy everything; but, like a few others, he had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, and he married an Arab princess, and took her back home to his castle in Italy to be his lady and her sons to be his heirs.”

  Isolde’s hand on Freize’s arm tightened its grip. “No. That’s not true. He did no such thing. He already had a wife—my mother.”

  The Ottoman lord slid his scimitar back into its jeweled sheath. “Yes,” he told her. “He converted to Islam, and he took an Islamic wife. Ask anyone. She was his second wife—she knew of the first; she was content with the arrangement, which is not unusual for us. It was agreed and done by our laws.”

  Isolde choked for breath. “This is a lie! The Arab woman came to our castle as a guest; she had no son. Her only child was a girl—she is my friend and companion. You lie when you say the woman was my father’s wife. That is a lie. Take it back.”

  “Lady Isolde, this lord just saved your life,” the rabbi interposed. “And he is our honored guest.”

  She glared at him, her dark blue eyes burning. “It doesn’t buy him the right to lie about my father. My father was a crusader! He answered the call of the Holy Father! He went to recapture Jerusalem from the infidel. He would not have converted. He would never have imperiled his soul. He would never have brought an infidel wife home to our castle; he would never have put a half-Arab bastard into his chair.”

  Freize heard her voice grate and knew that she was near to breaking down. But Radu Bey raised an eyebrow. “I see your gratitude does not last too long,” he remarked. “I see your pride has a dark side of contempt.”

  “I just meant that my father would never have been unfaithful to my mother.” Her voice was shaking. “Our family honor is pure.”

  “I am sure he rode out as a crusader and came home again looking quite unchanged,” he said. “And perhaps he did not tell you—who must have been a baby in your mother’s womb when he left—all that happened.”

  “He was faithful to God. He was true to my mother,” Isolde insisted.

  Radu Bey nodded. “As you wish,” he said indifferently. “Fidelity and truth are hard to measure, especially for us, the children of great men. And who knows what god any man serves?” He turned away from her to the rabbi, as if he understood that she was near to breaking down. “I must go,” he said. “I won’t endanger you by staying any longer.”

  “I thank you for this.” The rabbi gestured to the shoes, limp and bloody in the dust. “We all thank you. I thank God that you were here. We owe you a debt that we will not forget.”

  The lord nodded with a gleam of a smile, as his horse was brought down the narrow street, his groom and his servants mounted and riding behind it.

  “You’re going?” Isolde exclaimed. “Now?”

  He bowed to her and turned away. Without any apparent sign passing between the horse and rider, the horse bent one knee to the ground as Radu Bey took hold of the pommel of the beautifully embroidered black saddle and vaulted up onto the animal’s back in one smooth movement. The horse stepped up to its full height. Radu Bey bowed again to Isolde from his high saddle and looked past her to Freize. “Who was it that you came in with?” he demanded.

  Freize jumped. “When we came into the village?”

  “Don’t play the fool,” Radu Bey advised. “Whoever it was that spoke Hebrew. You two certainly don’t.”

  “I don’t know,” Freize said honestly. “I don’t unders