Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Did she not want to keep you at home, despite your father’s ambition?’ Isolde asked, thinking of the delightful boy that Luca must have been.

  He hesitated. ‘There was something else,’ he admitted. ‘Another reason for them to send me away. You see – they were quite old when they had me. They had prayed for a son for years and God had not given them a child, so there were many people in the village who were surprised when I was born.’

  ‘Surprised?’ she queried. The cobblestones were slippery; she skidded for a moment and he caught her. The two of them paused as if struck by the other’s touch, then they walked together, in step, their long stride matching easily together.

  ‘To tell you the truth, it was worse than that,’ Luca said honestly. ‘I don’t like to speak of it. There was gossip – insulting gossip. The village said that I was a changeling, a child given to my parents, not made by them. People said that they had found me on their doorstep, or perhaps in the woods. People called me a f . . .’ He could not bring himself to say the word. ‘A f . . .’

  ‘A faerie child?’ she asked, her voice very low, conscious of his painful embarrassment.

  He nodded as if he were confessing to a crime.

  ‘There’s no shame in that,’ she said stoutly. ‘People say the most ridiculous things, and ignorant people long to believe in magic rather than an ordinary explanation.’

  ‘We were shamed,’ he admitted. ‘There was a wood near to our house, on our own land, that they called a faerie wood. They said that my mother had gone there, desperate to have a child, and that she had lain with a faerie lord. They said that she gave birth to me and passed me off to my father as a mortal boy. Then, when I grew up and could learn languages, and understand numbers in the blink of an eye, they all said that it proved that I had wisdom beyond the making of mortals.’

  Isolde’s face was filled with pity as she turned to the handsome young man. ‘People can be so cruel. They thought you the child of a faerie lord?’

  He turned his head away and nodded in silence.

  ‘And so your parents sent you away? Just because you were such a clever boy? Because you were gifted? Because you were so good-looking?’

  ‘I thought then that it was a curse and not a gift,’ he admitted. ‘I used to stand beside my father when he was seated by the fire and he would put his arm around me, and take coins from his pocket and ask me to calculate the value if he spent half of them, if he spent a third, if he put half out at interest and earned fifteen per cent but lost the other half. And always I was right – I could just see the answers as if written on the air, I could see the numbers as if they were shining with colours, and he would kiss my forehead and say “my boy, my clever boy”, and my mother would say “he is your boy” as if it should be repeated, and he should be reassured.

  ‘And then, one summer, strangers came to the village, a travelling troupe of Egyptians, and I went down to see them with the other village children and I heard them speaking amongst themselves. The children laughed at them, and someone threw a stone; but one of the gypsies saw me watching them and said something aside to me, and I answered him – I had their language in a moment, the very moment that I heard it. That was the end of it really. Next morning we found a thick ring of salt, all around the farmhouse, and a horseshoe at north, south, east and west.’

  ‘Salt?’

  ‘A faerie can’t cross iron and salt. They thought that they would imprison me. That decided it. My parents were afraid that they would trap me inside the house and then burn the house down.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens. People are afraid of what they cannot understand. It was not that they did not respect my father. But I did not have playmates among the village children, I was never quite like them, I could never talk easily with them. I could not fit with them. I was different and we couldn’t deny it any more. My mother and father agreed that it was too dangerous for me to be in the outside world and they sent me to the monastery for safety.’

  ‘Did you fit there?’ she asked, thinking of her own experience in the nunnery where she had been isolated and alone except for Ishraq, another outsider.

  ‘Freize took a liking to me,’ he smiled. ‘He was the only one. He was the kitchen boy and he used to steal food to feed me up. And as soon as they taught me to read and calculate I started to ask questions.’

  ‘Questions?’

  He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t help it. I just wanted to know more. But it turned out that most questions are heresies.’

  ‘And then the Ottoman slaving galleys took your mother and father?’ Isolde prompted him quietly.

  Luca sighed, as if he still could not bear to think of it. ‘You know, it’s been four years now, but I think of them every day . . . I have to know if they survived the raid. If they are alive I should save them. They did everything for me. I must see them again. And if I am too late and they are dead, then I should honour their deaths and see them properly buried. If Johann is right and they will rise again in Jerusalem then I feel as if I have to go with him. It’s like a calling; a sacred duty.’

  Isolde flushed a warm rose colour. ‘You’re not thinking of going to Jerusalem?’

  Reluctantly, Luca nodded. ‘Part of me feels that I should go on with my quest. I have been commanded by Milord and licensed by the Pope, I have only just started . . . but if I can get permission from the lord of our order, I feel that I should go. I feel as if Johann spoke to me and promised me that I would meet my parents in Jerusalem. What calling could be greater than to see them again, before the end of all the world? At the very moment of the end of the world?’

  They arrived at the quayside and turned towards the inn, dawdling to prolong their time together.

  ‘I’m going to go too,’ Isolde said fervently. ‘I won’t go to Hungary, not now that I have heard this. I carry the death of my father like a wound. It is terrible to me. Every day I wake up and I think I am in my old bedroom at Lucretili and he is alive, and every day I have to remember that he is dead, and I have lost my home and I am half-lost myself. If I could only see him again! Just once. I would go anywhere for that chance.’

  ‘You really think you will see him again in Jerusalem? You believe Johann?’

  ‘While he was speaking I was certain of it – but now – when you ask me like that, of course I’m not so sure.’

  She paused, and they stood together: her hand on his arm, the seagulls crying over their heads, and the boats beside them, bobbing at anchor. A pale moon started to lift in the twilight of the winter afternoon and lay a silver path across the sea.

  ‘I know it sounds so incredible. And yet – you are here, commanded by the Pope because he believes that the end of days is coming. The Pope himself thinks it could be any day now. We know it must come now that the infidel are in Constantinople. We all know that the dead will rise on judgement day . . .’ She puzzled over it, then put her hand to the neck of the plain gown as if to feel the pace of her heart. It was as if the steady beat reassured her: ‘Why should it not be true? I believe Johann has a vision. This must be a sign. It has to be a sign. I’m going to Jerusalem and I pray that I will meet my father there, among the risen dead, and that he will forgive me for failing him. And he will tell me how I can win back my home.’

  Moved by her grief, Luca reached out his hand and touched her shoulder, and then, more daringly, put the back of his hand against the smooth line of her cheek. As soon as she felt his gentle touch on her skin, he felt her tremble. For a moment she stood quite still and then, with an inarticulate murmur, she moved aside.

  ‘Why do you say that you failed him?’ he asked very quietly.

  ‘When my father was dying my brother told me that he didn’t want me to see him in pain and despair. I believed my brother, and I prayed in the chapel while my father died alone. When I discovered that my brother had lied to me and stolen my inheritance, I feared that he had lied to my father about me too. What if my father died asking for me, but my brother told him that I would not co