Order of Darkness Read online

  Freize froze on the side of the arena, silently watching as the beast rose from his four legs to his hind legs, as if he was remembering how to walk, as if he was remembering the woman who had held his hands for every step that he took. Sara pushed herself off the arena wall and moved towards him, her legs weak beneath her, hands outstretched.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said wonderingly, but with absolute certainty. ‘It’s you . . . Stefan. My Stefan, come to me.’

  He took a step towards her, then another, and then in a rush which made the watching people gasp with fear but which made his mother cry out with joy, he dashed at her and flung himself into her arms. ‘My boy! My boy!’ she cried out, wrapping her arms around his scarred body, pulling his matted head to her shoulder: ‘My son!’

  He looked up at her, his dark eyes bright through his matted mane of hair. ‘Mama,’ he said in his little boy’s voice. ‘Mama.’

  The bishop got hold of Luca for a whispered angry consultation. ‘You knew of this?’

  ‘Not I.’

  ‘It was your heretic servant who had an arrow on the bow and didn’t shoot. It was your fool of a servant who has been feeding the beast and coaxing it. He must have known, but he led us into this trap.’

  ‘She was ready with the arrow, you saw her yourself. And my servant was about to jump into the arena and get between the woman and the beast himself.’

  ‘Why didn’t she shoot? She said that she could shoot. Why didn’t she do so?’

  ‘How would I know? She is no servant of mine. I will ask her what she thought she was doing and I will write it up in my report.’

  ‘The report is the last of our worries!’

  ‘Forgive me, Your Eminence, it is my principal concern.’

  ‘But the beast! The beast! We came to kill it and show a triumph for the Church over sin. There can be no killing of the beast now.’

  ‘Of course not,’ Luca said. ‘As my report will show. He is no beast. His mother has claimed him back. She will take him and bathe him and cut his hair and nails and teach him to wear clothes again and to speak.’

  ‘And what do you think you will say in your report?’ the bishop said acidly. ‘You had a werewolf in your keeping and behold now you have nothing but a dirty wild boy. You don’t come out of this very well, any more than we do.’

  ‘I shall say that your scholarship revealed to us what happened here,’ Luca said smoothly. ‘Among the other accounts that your scholars prepared, you brought us the classical story of Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf and founded the City of Rome, our rock. You told us of other stories of children who had been lost in the forest and were raised by wolves and then by God’s grace found again. Your library held these stories, your scholarship recognised them, your authority warned us what might have happened here.’

  The bishop paused, mollified, his rounded belly swelling with his vanity. ‘The people were waiting for an execution,’ he warned. ‘They won’t understand the miracle that has happened here. They wanted a death, you are offering them a restoration.’

  ‘That is the power of your authority,’ Luca said quickly. ‘Only you can explain to them what happened. Only you have the scholarship and the skill to tell them. Only you can proclaim a miracle. Will you preach now? It is the theme of the Prodigal Son, I think: the return of the lost one whose father sees him afar off and runs to greet him, loving him dearly.’

  The bishop looked thoughtful. ‘They will need guidance,’ he considered, one plump finger to his lips. ‘They were expecting a trial to the death. They will want a death. They are a savage unlearned people. They were expecting an execution and they will want a death. The Church shows its power by putting evil-doers to death. We have to be seen to conquer over sin. There is nothing that brings more people to the church than a witch-burning or an execution.’

  ‘Your Grace, they are lost in the darkness of their own confusion. They are your sheep; lead them to the light. Tell them that a miracle has taken place here. A little child was lost in the wood, he was raised by wolves, he became like a wolf. But as Your Eminence watched, he recognised his mother. Who can doubt that the presence of a bishop made all the difference? These are an ignorant and fearful people but you can preach a sermon here that people will remember forever. They will always remember the day that the great bishop came to their village and a miracle took place.’

  The bishop rose up and straightened his cape. ‘I will preach to them from the open window of the dining room,’ he said. ‘I will preach now, while they are gathered before me. I shall preach a midnight sermon, extempore. Get torches to shine on me. And take notes.’

  ‘At once,’ Luca said. He hurried from the room and gave the order to Freize. The balcony glowed with torchlight, the people, abuzz with speculation and fear, turned their faces upwards. As their attention went to the bishop, glorious in his purple cope and mitre at the window, Freize and Ishraq, Raul Rossi and his younger son, unbarred the single entrance door into the arena, and went in to fetch Sara Rossi, her eldest son held tightly in her arms.

  ‘I want to take him home,’ she said simply to her husband. ‘This is our son Stefan, returned to us by a miracle.’

  ‘I know it,’ Raul replied. His wind-burned cheeks were wet with tears. ‘I knew him too. As soon as he said “Mama”, I knew it. I recognised his voice.’

  Stefan could barely walk; he stumbled and leaned on his mother, his dirty head on her shoulder.

  ‘Can we put him on the donkey?’ Freize suggested.

  They lifted the panniers of wolfsbane from the donkey’s back but the herb was still in its mane and clinging to the animal’s back. Sara helped him up, and he did not flinch either at the touch of the herb or the smell of the flowers. Ishraq, watching quietly in the darkness, gave a quick affirmative nod.

  Freize led the donkey away from the village, up the twisting little steps, as Sara walked beside her son cooing soothingly to him. ‘Soon we will be home,’ she said. ‘You will remember your home. Your bed is just as it was, the sheets on the bed, the pillow waiting for you. Your little poppet Roos – do you remember your toy? – still on your pillow. In all these years I have never changed your room. It has always been waiting for you. I have always been waiting for you.’

  On the other side of the donkey, Raul Rossi held his son steady, one hand on his little tanned leg, one hand on his scarred back. Ishraq and Isolde came behind with his little brother Tomas, his dog at his heels.

  The farmhouse was shuttered for the night, but they brought the wolf-boy into the hall and he looked around, his eyes squinting against the firelight, without fear, as if he could just remember, as in a dream, when this had been his home.

  ‘We can care for him now,’ Raul Rossi said to the girls and Freize. ‘My wife and I thank you from our hearts for all you have done.’

  Sara went with them to the door. ‘You have given me my son,’ she said to Ishraq. ‘You have done for me what I prayed the Virgin Mary would do. I owe you a debt for all my life.’

  Ishraq made a strange gesture: she put her hands together in the gesture of prayer and then with her fingertips she touched her own forehead, her lips, and her breast, and then bowed to the farmer’s wife. ‘Salaam. It was you who did a great thing. It was you who had the courage to love him for so long,’ she said. ‘It was you who lived with grief and tried to bury your sorrow and yet kept his room for him, and your heart open to him. It was you that did not accuse the beast – when the whole village howled for vengeance. It was you who had pity for him. And then it was you who had the courage to say his name when you thought you faced a wolf. All I did was throw you down into the pit.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Freize said. ‘You threw her down into the bear pit to face a beast?’

  Isolde pursed her lips in disapproval, but clearly she was not at all surprised.

  Ishraq faced Freize. ‘I’m afraid I did.’

  Raul Rossi, one arm around his wife, one around Tomas’s shoulders, looked at Ishra