Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘And your followers?’ Luca asked him.

  ‘God will provide for them,’ the youth said confidently.

  Luca glanced towards Brother Peter. ‘Actually, the priest is bringing food for them, the abbey is baking bread,’ Brother Peter told him, rather stiffly. ‘I see you are not fasting with them.’

  ‘Because I knew that God would provide,’ Johann confirmed. ‘And now you tell me He has done so. You invite me to breakfast and so God provides for me. Why should I not trust Him and praise His holy name?’

  ‘Why not indeed?’ Brother Peter said glacially, and led the way to the dining room of the inn.

  Ishraq and Isolde did not join the men for breakfast. They peeped through the open door to see the boy Johann, and then carried their plates upstairs to their bedroom and ate, sitting at the window, watching the scene on the quayside as children continued to pour into the town, the smallest and the frailest coming last as if they could hardly keep up. Their ragged clothes showed that they were from many different areas. There were children from fishing villages further north up the coast who wore the rough smocks of the region, and there were children who had come from farms and wore the capes and leggings of shepherds and goatherds. There were many girls, some of them dressed as if they had been in service, in worsted gowns with goatskin aprons. Isolde nudged

  Ishraq as three girls in the robes of novices of a convent came through the gate of the town, their rosaries in their hands, their veiled heads bowed, and passed under the overhanging window.

  ‘They must have run away from a nunnery,’ she said.

  ‘Like us,’ Ishraq agreed. ‘But where do they think they’re going?’

  In the dining room the youth prayed in silence over the food, blessed the bread, and then ate a substantial breakfast that Freize brought up from the kitchen. After the boy had finished, he gave thanks in a lengthy prayer to God and a short word of appreciation to Luca. Brother Peter took out his papers from his travelling writing-box and dipped his pen in ink.

  ‘I have to report to my lord who, in turn, reports to the Holy Father,’ he explained as the boy looked at his preparations. ‘If your journey is blessed by God then the Holy Father will want to know the proofs. If he thinks you have a calling he will support you. If not, he will want to know about you.’

  ‘It is blessed,’ the boy said. ‘D’you think we could have come all this way if God had not guided us?’

  ‘Why, how far have you come?’ Luca asked cautiously.

  ‘I was a goat herder in the canton of Zurich when I heard God’s voice,’ the boy said simply. ‘He told me that a terrible thing had happened in the east. A worse thing than the great flood itself. A greater wrong than the flood that drowned everyone but Noah. He said that the Ottomans had come against Christendom in a mighty wave of men, and had taken Constantinople, our holy city, the heart of the Church in the east, and destroyed it. Did I hear right or no?’

  ‘You did,’ Luca said. ‘But any passing pedlar could have told you so.’

  ‘But it was not a passing pedlar who told me so, for I was up in the hills with my goats. Every dawn I left the village and took the goats up the paths to the higher fields where the grass grows fresh and sweet. Every day I sat in the fields with them, and watched over them. Sometimes I played my pipe, sometimes I lay on my back and watched the clouds. When the sun sat in the top branches of the silver birch tree I ate the bread and cheeses that my mother had tied into a cloth for me. Every evening as the sun started to go down, I brought my flock safe home again and saw them into my neighbours’ fields and stables. I saw no-one, I talked to no-one. I had no companion but an angel. Then one day, God spoke to me and He told me that the infidels had taken the holy church of Constantinople. He said that the sea had risen so high that they had rowed their galleys right over the land, over the harbour wall, over the city walls, and into the harbour. He said that the greatest church in the whole world was once called Hagia Sophia and that now it is in the hands of the infidels and they will make it into a mosque, take down the altar and defile its sacred aisles, and that this is a true sign of the end of days. Did I hear right or no?’

  ‘They took the cathedral,’ Luca confirmed uneasily. ‘They took the city.’

  ‘Did the priests pray at the altar as the infidels came in the door and cut them down?’ Johann asked.

  Luca glanced to Brother Peter. ‘They served the Mass until the last moment,’ Brother Peter confirmed.

  ‘Did they row their galleys over the land?’

  ‘It can’t be true,’ Luca interrupted.

  ‘It wasn’t exactly true,’ Brother Peter explained. ‘It was a trick of war. They mounted the galleys on great rollers and pushed them across the land into the inner harbour. The Devil himself guided them to put the rowers to the oars and the drummers to the beat so they looked as if they were rowing through the air. Everyone said it looked like a fleet of galleys sailing along the road.’

  ‘Why would they do such a thing?’ Luca demanded.

  ‘To spread terror,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘See? A goatherd in Switzerland dreams of it seven years later.’

  The boy nodded, as if he had seen the terrifying sight and then the sacrilege himself. ‘God told me that the infidels would come and bring terror to every village in the world, and that just as they have come through Greece they will come on and on, and nothing can stop them. He said they would come into my own canton, they will come to every village in Switzerland. He said that they are led by a young man only a little older than me. Is that right?’

  Luca looked at Brother Peter. ‘Sultan Mehmet was nineteen years old when he took Constantinople.’

  ‘God told me that this is a war for young people and for children. The infidels are led by a young man; I heard my calling. I knew that I must leave my home.’

  The two men waited.

  ‘I took my crook and my knapsack and I said farewell to my father and mother. The whole village came out to see me leave. They knew that I was inspired by God Himself.’

  ‘Did anyone leave with you?’

  He shook his head and stared at the window as if he could see on the dim pieces of the horn panes the poverty of the dirty village street, the dreary lives of the people who scratched a living from the thin mountain soil, who were hungry and cold every winter and knew, even in the warmth of summer, that the cold and hunger of winter would come again. People who confidently expected that nothing would ever change, that life would go on in the same cycle of hard winters and bright summers in a remorseless unchanging round – until the day that they heard that the Turks were coming and understood that everything had suddenly got worse and would get worse still.

  ‘Children joined me as I walked,’ Johann said. ‘They heard my voice, they understood. We all know that the end of days is coming. We all want to be in Jerusalem for judgement day.’

  ‘You think you’re going to Jerusalem?’ Freize demanded incredulously from the doorway. ‘You’re leading these children to Jerusalem?’

  The boy smiled at him. ‘God is leading them to Jerusalem,’ he said patiently. ‘I am only walking with them. I am walking beside them.’

  ‘Then God has chosen an odd route,’ Freize said rudely. ‘Why would He send you to the east of Italy? Why not go to Rome and get help? Why not take a ship from there? Why walk these children such a long way?’

  The boy looked a little shaken at Freize’s loud scepticism. ‘I don’t lead them, I don’t choose the route, I go where God tells me,’ he said quietly. He looked at Brother Peter. ‘The way is revealed to me, as I walk. Who is this man questioning me?’

  ‘This is Brother Luca’s servant,’ Brother Peter said irritably. ‘You need not answer his questions. He has no part in our inquiry.’

  ‘Oh, beg pardon for interrupting, I’m sure,’ Freize said, not sounding at all sorry. ‘But am I to give your leavings out at the door? Your followers seem to be hungry. And there are broken meats from your breakfast, and the untouched