Dark Tracks Read online

  “I will help Him.” Lord Vargarten laughed, his voice thick. He turned to the gateman, high on the tower beside the gate, looking anxiously down at them.

  “Your lordship is welcome to our poor village,” he said, his voice a nervous thread. “Most welcome. What can we do for you?”

  “You can open the gates!” Lord Vargarten shouted.

  “Your men?”

  “They’ll stay outside for now.”

  There was a low murmur from the Vargarten men as if they had been looking forward to galloping down the main street; but the lord did not even turn his head to them.

  “I’ll open them,” the gateman promised, and ducked down behind the wall. They could hear him struggling with the great beam that barred the gates shut, and then one of the gates swung open wide enough to admit only one horseman, as if he hoped to slam it shut after his lordship.

  “Fool,” Lord Vargarten said. He rode into the village with Luca following close behind him.

  Brother Peter waited for the dancers to limp past him, back along the road to Mauthausen, and then mounted his horse. Riding slowly, trying to look unconcerned but painfully conscious of the stares of the Vargarten men, he set his horse to walk down the road, leading the other two horses. The soldiers watched him come, recognizing him as the old priest who had failed to bring the dancers to their senses.

  “Let me through,” Brother Peter said steadily to the first of the men. “I wish to see Lord Vargarten. My brother in Christ, Brother Luca, an Inquirer of a Holy Order, is with him.”

  The troop drew their horses to one side to let Brother Peter pass. “Tell him to send us out some dinner,” one of the men said in an undertone. “Tell them we are thirsty.”

  The captain of the troop rapped on the wooden panels of the gates and shouted: “Gateman!”

  At once, the gatekeeper slid back a panel and glared through a grille. “A visitor for his lordship,” the captain said.

  The gateman, seeing Brother Peter riding determinedly toward him, scowled and opened the gate for him. Brother Peter, shrinking from the gaze of the Jewish man as if it carried a pestilence, rode toward Lord Vargarten and Luca.

  Ishraq rode at a canter on the smooth track, slowing to a walk only when the ground was rough. By the afternoon, she had crossed the River Danube and was on the quay of Mauthausen, before the barred quay gate.

  “Why’s the gate shut?” she demanded of the gateman.

  “Lord Vargarten’s orders, in case the dancers return,” he replied.

  “They might return?”

  “He went out after them this morning, with his mounted guard,” the man said. “They’ve joined with the Jews as one wickedness loves another. His lordship will kill them all, as he would knock down a wasp nest, or burn out a brood of rats.”

  “But the Lady of Lucretili is not with the dancers,” Ishraq demanded. “Surely she has returned with her friends?”

  “Not her. She danced off with them to the Jews. You’ll not see her again.”

  “Let me in!” Ishraq said shortly, and led both horses through the town to the stable yard of the inn. The stableman was lounging in the yard.

  “Take my horse and see that it is rubbed down and turned out to grass,” Ishraq said shortly, handing over the reins.

  “The mistress has come home exhausted, and gone to bed. Tired out by dancing,” he told her.

  “And the young lady?”

  “Still with the dancers, or run off with the Jews now,” he said, relishing the scandal. “But his lordship will destroy them all, for sure.” He took the reins of her horse, but did not interrupt his story. “They’re as bad as each other: Jews and dancers. Both strange, both unruly, both unknown, both responsible for plague and hunger and danger, though who knows how?” He glanced at Ishraq’s dark face. “Infidels,” he said. “Other.”

  Ishraq turned away from his insults, mounted the horse she had stolen from the peddler, and rode out of the stable yard, through the north gate as fast as she could down the road. When she went past the lane that led to Lord Vargarten’s castle, she could see the tracks of many horses on the mud of the road, and when it turned a corner and she came out from the trees she could see the road winding down the steep slope to the river, the bridge, and the village with the mounted soldiers waiting before it.

  She set her horse down the slope, and rode past the men without a glance at them though they loudly remarked on her Arab dress and on the great crusader sword in the sheath at her saddle. “Admit me,” she said imperiously to the gateman, who swung open the gate without hesitation.

  As soon as she was through, she saw Luca, and Brother Peter, dismounted from their horses, talking earnestly to Lord Vargarten, who sat at his ease, high on his horse, above them.

  “You’re safe!” Luca exclaimed.

  “Yes,” she said shortly, as if it were of no importance. “Where is Isolde?”

  “Safe too. God be praised, these people gave her refuge,” Luca answered. He turned to the rabbi. “This is our traveling companion, Ishraq, the friend of the Lady of Lucretili.”

  “You will want to see her,” the rabbi guessed. “She’s in my house. She is quite unhurt. She insisted on coming into our village and promised we would not be punished for giving her refuge. You can go straight in.” He gestured to a house that stood adjoining the synagogue, in the middle of the square, facing the gate. “She has been perfectly safe,” he said to Lord Vargarten. “She will tell you herself. We rescued her from the dancers and we have not touched her. She came into the village at her own request. She begged for entry.”

  “Christians and Jews have to live apart,” Lord Vargarten ruled. “It’s the law. You’ve broken the law. You’ll be fined.”

  The rabbi bowed his head. “Your lordship knows that Christians come and go here and everywhere, as they wish. How can we stop them? We’re not allowed to bar a door to them.”

  “I’ll find her,” Ishraq said. She jumped down from her horse, handed Brother Peter her reins, threw a quick smile at Luca, and went to the house where the door stood open, tapped on it, and went inside.

  She blinked as her eyes became accustomed to the shadowy room. At first glance she could see that it was not a Christian room, but Ishraq had seen the beautifully ornate interiors of the Moorish houses of Spain and it did not frighten her. Unlike Christian houses there was no little icon on the wall, nor a candle before a crucifix. Instead there was a sideboard with some silver cups and a silver plate marked with symbols around the rim, and a beautiful, many-branched candelabra with pure white wax candles unlit.

  Isolde was seated on a stool before the cold fireplace, her feet in a bowl of water, a woman kneeling before her, sponging the bruises and scrapes on her battered feet. She looked up as she heard the door open and the relief on her face shone as she recognized Ishraq.

  “Ishraq!” she said. “My love. Thank God it’s you.”

  “Sister,” Ishraq replied. She took two swift steps across the room and wrapped Isolde in her arms, kissing her head and stroking her blonde hair. “I was afraid I would never see you again.”

  Eagerly, Isolde pulled Ishraq down so that their two heads, one very dark and one very fair, were level. “And you? Are you quite safe? Luca said that the peddler put you to sleep, but that you had gone after him?”

  Ishraq paused for a moment, thinking of the night of unconsciousness, and the dark swim out of death, thought of waking with Luca’s arms around her, waking to lovemaking and wanting to never let him go, then the breakneck ride after the peddler, the stone to his face, and holding him down on the road with her heel in his back.

  “So much to tell you! The earrings were poisoned, and I fell unconscious on the landlady’s floor. I didn’t come round till morning, and found you were gone. That was terrible. The peddler stole your broadsword, so Luca went after you, and I went after the thief and got it back. Are your feet all right? Are you very hurt?”

  “Just bruised, just scratched. It was as if I