Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said comfortably. ‘I was raised by my dark-skinned beautiful mother in a strange land to always be sure who I was – even if nobody else knew.’

  ‘A unicorn indeed,’ he said.

  She smiled. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘You certainly have the air of a young woman who knows her own mind. It’s very unmaidenly.’

  ‘But of course, I do wonder what will become of us both,’ she conceded more seriously. ‘We have to find Isolde’s godfather’s son, Count Wladislaw, and then we have to convince him to order her brother to give back her castle and lands. What if he refuses to help us? What shall we do then? However will she get home? Really, whether she’s in love with Luca or not is the least of our worries.’

  Ahead of them, Isolde threw back her head and laughed aloud at something Luca had whispered to her.

  ‘Aye, she looks worried sick,’ Freize remarked.

  ‘We are happy, inshallah,’ she said. ‘She is easier in her mind than she has been in months, ever since the death of her father. And if, as your Pope thinks, the world is going to end, then we might as well be happy today, and not worry about the future.’

  The fifth member of their party, Brother Peter, brought his horse up alongside them. ‘We’ll be coming into the village of Piccolo as the sun sets,’ he said. ‘Brother Luca should not be riding with the woman. It looks . . .’ He paused, searching for the right reproof . . .

  ‘Normal?’ Ishraq offered impertinently.

  ‘Happy,’ Freize agreed.

  ‘Improper,’ Brother Peter corrected them. ‘At best it looks careless, and as if he were not a young man promised to the Church.’ He turned to Ishraq. ‘Your lady should ride alongside you, both of you with your heads down and your eyes on the ground like maidens with pure minds, and you should speak only to each other, and that seldom and very quietly. Brother Luca should ride alone in prayer, or with me in thoughtful conversation. And anyway, I have our orders.’

  At once, Freize slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘The sealed orders!’ he exclaimed wrathfully. ‘Any time we are minding our own business and going quietly to somewhere, a pleasant inn ahead of us, perhaps a couple of days with nothing to do but feed up the horses and rest ourselves, out come the sealed orders and we are sent off to inquire into God knows what!’

  ‘We are on a mission of inquiry,’ Brother Peter said quietly. ‘Of course we have sealed orders which I am commanded to open and read at certain times. Of course we are sent to inquire. The very point of this journey is not – whatever some people may think – to ride from one pleasant inn to another, meeting women; but to discover what signs there are of the end of days, of the end of the world. And I have to open these orders at sunset today, and discover where we are to go next and what we are to inspect.’

  Freize put two fingers in his mouth and made an ear-piercing whistle. At once the two lead horses, obedient to his signal, stopped in their tracks. Luca and Isolde turned round and rode the few paces back to where the others were halted under the shade of some thick pine trees. The scent of the resin was as powerful as perfume in the warm evening air. The horses’ hooves crunched on the fallen pine cones and their shadows were long on the pale sandy soil.

  ‘New orders,’ Freize said to his master Luca, nodding at Brother Peter, who took a cream manuscript, heavily sealed with red wax and ribbons, from the inside pocket of his jacket. To Brother Peter he turned and said curiously, ‘How many more of them have you got tucked away in there?’

  The older man did not trouble to answer the servant. With the little group watching he broke the seals in silence and unfolded the stiff paper. He read, and they saw him give a little sigh of disappointment.

  ‘Not back to Rome!’ Freize begged him, unable to bear the suspense for a moment longer. ‘Tell me we don’t have to turn round and go back to the old life!’ He caught Ishraq’s gleam of amusement. ‘The inquiry is an arduous duty,’ he corrected himself quickly. ‘But I don’t want to leave it incomplete. I have a sense of duty, of obligation.’

  ‘You’d do anything rather than return to the monastery and be a kitchen lad again,’ she said accurately. ‘Just as I would rather be here than serving as a lady companion in an isolated castle. At least we are free, and every day we wake up and know that anything could happen.’

  ‘I remind you, we don’t travel for our own pleasure,’ Brother Peter said sternly. ‘We are commanded to go to the fishing village of Piccolo, take a ship across the sea to Split and travel onwards to Zagreb. We are to take the pilgrim road to the chapels of St. George and St. Martin at Our Lady’s church outside Zagreb.’

  There was a muffled gasp from Isolde. ‘Zagreb!’ A quick gesture from Luca as he reached out for her – and then snatched back his hand, remembering that he might not touch her – betrayed him too.

  ‘We travel on your road,’ he said, the joy in his voice audible to everyone. ‘We can stay together.’

  The flash of assent from her dark blue eyes was ignored by Brother Peter who was deep in the new orders. ‘We are to inquire on the way as to anything we see that is out of the ordinary,’ he read. ‘We are to stop and set up an inquiry if we encounter anything that indicates the work of Satan, the rise of unknown fears, the evidence of the wickedness of man, or the end of days.’ He stopped reading and refolded the letter, looking at the four young people. ‘And so, it seems, that since Zagreb is on the way to Buda-Pest, and since the ladies insist that they must go there to seek Count Wladislaw, that God Himself wills that we must travel the same road as these young ladies.’

  Isolde had herself well under control by the time Brother Peter raised his eyes to her. She kept her gaze down, careful not to look at Luca. ‘Of course we would be grateful for your company,’ she said demurely. ‘But this is a famous pilgrims’ road. There will be other people who will be going the same way. We can join them. We don’t need to burden you.’

  The bright look on Luca’s face told her that she was no burden; but Brother Peter answered before anyone else could speak. ‘Certainly, I would advise that as soon as you meet a party with ladies travelling to Buda-Pest you should join them. We cannot be guides and guardians for you. We have to serve a great mission; and you are young women – however much you try to behave with modesty you cannot help but be distracting and misleading.’

  ‘Saved our bacon at Vittorito,’ Freize observed quietly. He nodded towards Ishraq. ‘She can fight and shoot an arrow, and knows medicine too. Hard to find anyone more useful as a travelling companion. Hard to find a better comrade on a dangerous journey.’

  ‘Clearly distracting,’ Peter sternly repeated.

  ‘As they say, they will leave us when they find a suitable party to join,’ Luca ruled. His delight that he was to be with Isolde for another night, and another after that, even if it was only a few more nights, was clear to everyone, especially to her. Her dark blue eyes met his hazel ones in a long silent look.

  ‘You don’t even ask what we are to do at the sacred site?’ Brother Peter demanded reproachfully. ‘At the chapels? You don’t even want to know that there are reports of heresy that we are to discover?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Luca said quickly. ‘You must tell me what we are to see. I will study. I will need to think about it. I will create a full inquiry and you shall write the report and send it to the lord of our order, for the Pope to see. We shall do our work, as commanded by our lord, by the Pope, and by God Himself.’

  ‘And best of all, we can get a good dinner in Piccolo,’ Freize remarked cheerfully, looking at the setting sun. ‘And tomorrow morning will be time enough to worry about hiring a boat to sail across to Croatia.’

  PICCOLO, ITALY, NOVEMBER 1460

  The little fishing village was ringed on the landward side by high walls pierced by a single gate that was officially closed at sunset. Freize shouted up for the porter, who opened the shutter to stick his head out of the window and argue that travellers should show respect for the rules,