Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘My father believed that a woman could understand as well as a man,’ Isolde remarked. ‘He let Ishraq study whatever she wanted.’

  ‘And you?’ Luca turned to her. ‘Did you attend the university in Spain?’

  She shook her head. ‘My father intended me to be a lady to command Lucretili,’ she said. ‘He taught me how to calculate the profits from the land, how to command the loyalty of people, how to manage land and choose the crops, how to command the guard of a castle under attack.’ She made a funny little face. ‘And he had me taught the skills a lady should have – love of fine clothes, dancing, music, speaking languages, writing, reading, singing, poetry.’

  ‘She envies me the skills he taught me,’ Ishraq said with a hidden smile. ‘He taught her to be a lady and me to be a power in the world.’

  ‘What woman would not want to be a lady of a great castle?’ Luca wondered.

  ‘I would want it,’ Isolde said. ‘I do want it. But I wish I had been taught to fight as well.’

  At sunset on the first evening, they pulled up their horses before an isolated monastery. Ishraq and Isolde exchanged an anxious glance. ‘The hue and cry?’ she muttered to Luca.

  ‘It won’t have reached here. I doubt your brother sent out any messages once he was away from the abbey. I would guess he signed the writ only to demonstrate his own innocence.’

  She nodded. ‘Just enough to keep me away,’ she said. ‘Naming me as a witch and declaring me dead, leaves him with the castle and the abbey under his control, giving him the abbey lands and the gold. He wins everything.’

  Freize dismounted and went to pull the great ring outside the closed door. The bell in the gatehouse rang loudly, and the porter heaved the double gates open. ‘Welcome, travellers, in the name of God,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How many are you?’

  ‘One young lord, one clerk, one servant, one lady and her companion,’ Freize replied. ‘And nine horses and one donkey. They can go in the meadow or in the stables as suits you.’

  ‘We can put them out on good grass,’ the lay brother said, smiling. ‘Come in.’

  He welcomed them into a big yard and Brother Peter and Luca swung down from their saddles. Luca turned to Isolde’s horse and held up his arms to lift her down. She smiled briefly and gestured that she could get down on her own, then swung her leg and, lithe as a boy, jumped to the ground.

  Freize went to Ishraq’s horse and held out his arm. ‘Don’t jump,’ he said. ‘You’ll faint the moment you touch the ground. You’ve been near to fainting any time this last five miles.’

  She gathered her dark veil across her mouth and looked at him over the top of it.

  ‘And don’t look daggers at me either,’ Freize said cheerfully.

  ‘You’d have done better behind me with your arms around my waist and my back to lean on, but you’re as stubborn as the donkey. Come on down, girl, and let me help you.’

  Surprisingly, she did as he suggested and leaned towards him and let herself fall into his arms. He took her gently and set her on her feet with his arm around her to keep her steady. Isolde went to her and supported her. ‘I didn’t realise . . .’

  ‘Just tired.’

  The porter gave them a light to the guesthouse, indicated the women’s rooms on one side of the high wall and the entry to the men’s rooms on the other. He showed them the refectory and told them that they might get their dinner with the monks after Vespers, while the ladies would be served in the guesthouse. Then he left them with lit candles and a blessing.

  ‘Goodnight,’ Isolde said to Luca, bowing her head to Brother Peter.

  ‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ Luca said to both women.

  ‘We should leave straight after Prime.’

  Isolde nodded. ‘We’ll be ready.’

  Ishraq curtseyed to the two men and nodded at Freize.

  ‘Pillion saddle tomorrow?’ he asked her.

  ‘Yes,’ she said.

  ‘Because you were overtired with the ride today?’ Freize said, driving the point home.

  She showed him a warm frank smile before she tucked her veil across her face. ‘Don’t gloat,’ she said. ‘I’m tired to my very bones. You were right, I was wrong, and foolishly proud. I’ll ride pillion tomorrow and be glad of it; but if you mock me I will pinch you every step of the way.’

  Freize ducked his head. ‘Not a word,’ he promised her.

  ‘You will find me reticent to a fault.’

  ‘Reticent?’

  He nodded. ‘It is my new ambition. It’s my new word: reticent.’

  They left immediately after Prime and breakfast, and the sun was up on their right-hand side as they headed north. ‘Thing is,’ Freize remarked to Ishraq quietly as she rode behind him, seated sideways, her feet resting on the pillion support, one hand around his waist, tucked into his belt, ‘thing is, we never know where we are going. We just go along, steady as the donkey, who knows no more than us but plods along, and then that pompous jackal suddenly brings out a piece of paper and tells us we are to go somewhere else entirely and get into God knows what trouble.’

  ‘But of course,’ she said. ‘Because you are travelling as an inquiry. You have to go and inquire into things.’

  ‘I don’t see why we can’t know where we are going,’ Freize said. ‘And then a man might have a chance of making sure we stopped at a good inn.’

  ‘Ah, it is a matter of dinner,’ she said, smiling behind her veil. ‘I understand now.’

  Freize patted the hand that was holding his belt. ‘There are very few things more important than dinner to a hard-working man,’ he said firmly. Then, ‘Hulloah? What’s this?’

  Ahead of them in the road were half a dozen men, struggling with pitchforks and flails to hold down an animal which was netted and roped and twisting about in the dirt. Freize halted and Isolde, Luca and Peter pulled up behind him.

  ‘What have you got there?’ Luca called to the men.

  One of the men broke from the struggle and came towards them. ‘We’d be glad of your help,’ he said. ‘If we could rope the creature to two of your horses we’d be able to get it along the road. We can’t get forwards or backwards at the moment.’

  ‘What is it?’ Luca asked.

  The man crossed himself. ‘The Lord save us, it is a werewolf,’ he said. ‘It has been plaguing our village and forests every full moon for a year but last night my brother and I, and our friends, and cousin, went out and trapped it.’

  Brother Peter crossed himself, and Isolde copied him. ‘How did you trap it?’

  ‘We planned it for months, truly months. We didn’t dare to go out at night – we were afraid his power would be too strong under the moon. We waited till it was a waning moon when we knew that his power would be weakened and shrunken. Then we dug a deep pit on the track to the village and we staked out a haunch of mutton on the far side. We thought he would come to the village as he always does and smell the meat. We hoped he would follow the track to the meat and he did. We covered the pit with light branches and leaves, and he didn’t see it. It collapsed beneath him and he fell in. We kept him there for days, with nothing to eat so he weakened. Then we dropped the nets on him and pulled them tight and hauled him out of the pit. Now we have him.’

  ‘And what are you going to do with him?’ Isolde looked fearfully at the writhing animal, laden with nets, struggling on the road.

  ‘We are going to cage it in the village till we can make a silver arrow, as only a silver arrow can kill it, and then we are going to shoot it in the heart and bury it at the crossroads. Then it will lie quiet and we will be safe in our beds again.’

  ‘Pretty small for a wolf,’ Freize observed, peering at the thrashing net. ‘More like a dog.’

  ‘It grows bigger with the moon,’ the man said. ‘When the moon is full it waxes too – as big as the biggest wolf. And then, though we bolt our doors and shutter our windows, we can hear it round the village, trying the doors, sniffing at the locks, trying to get in.�