Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Does your lord not expect the sea to part for the children?’ Freize asked. ‘Surely that’s the plan? Why would you need ships? Why would you need the Hospitallers? Isn’t God going to part the oceans?’

  Brother Peter looked up, irritated by the interruption and by Freize’s sarcastic tone. ‘God is providing for the children,’ he said. ‘If a miracle takes place we are to report it, of course.’

  ‘I won’t spy on him and I won’t entrap him,’ Luca stipulated.

  Brother Peter shrugged. ‘You are to inquire,’ he said simply. ‘Look for God, look for Satan. What else have you been appointed to do?’

  It was true that Luca had agreed to inquire into anything and everything. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will look clear-sighted at whatever happens. I won’t entrap him, but I will watch him closely. I’ll tell Johann we will travel with him and pay for the ships.’

  ‘Does your lord send money for feeding the children?’ Freize asked dulcetly.

  ‘A letter for the priest, and for other religious houses along the way,’ Brother Peter answered, showing him the messages. ‘To tell them to prepare food and distribute it. His Holiness will see that they are reimbursed.’

  ‘I’ll take that to the church then,’ Freize said. ‘That’s probably more important than the protection of the Hospitallers, who are, if I hear truly, an odd bunch of men.’

  ‘They are knights devoted to the service of God and the guarding of pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem,’ Brother Peter said firmly. ‘Whatever they do, they do it for the great cause of Christian victory in the Holy Land.’

  ‘Murderers, who have found a good excuse to wage war in the name of God,’ Freize said quietly, as he went out and closed the door to silence his own insubordination.

  Luca found Johann sitting on a wooden mooring post on the quayside looking out to sea. ‘May I speak with you?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course.’ Johann smiled his sweet smile. ‘I was listening to the waves and wondering if I could hear God. But He will speak to me in His own time, not mine.’

  ‘I have written of you to Milord, the commander of our order, and he has spoken of you to the Holy Father.’

  Johann nodded but did not seem particularly excited by the attention of the great men.

  ‘The Holy Father says that I am to guide you to Bari, further down the coast, where he will arrange for ships to take you and the children to Rhodes. From there, the Hospitallers will help you to Jerusalem.’

  ‘The Hospitallers? Who are they?’

  Luca smiled at the boy’s ignorance. ‘Perhaps you won’t have heard of them in Switzerland? They’re an order of knights who help pilgrims to and from the Holy Land. They nurse people who fall sick, and support people on their way. They are soldiers too, they guard pilgrims against attack from the infidels. They are a powerful and mighty order and if you are under their protection you will be safe. They can protect you from attack, and can help you with food and medicine if it is needed. The Holy Land has been conquered by the infidels and sometimes they attack pilgrims. It can be a fearfully dangerous road. You will need a friend on the way. The Hospitallers will be your guardians.’

  The boy took in the information but did not seem very impressed. ‘God will provide for us,’ he said. ‘He always has done. We need no help but His. And He is our friend. He is the only guardian we need.’

  ‘Yes,’ Luca agreed. ‘And perhaps this is His way to help you, with His Holy Order of Hospitallers. Will you let me guide you to Bari and we can all go on the ships that the Holy Father will send for us? It’s a long way to the Holy Land, and better for us all if there are good ships waiting for us and the Hospitallers to guard us.’

  Johann looked surprised. ‘We are not to walk all the way? We are not to wait for the seas to part?’

  ‘Milord says that the Holy Father suggests this way. And he has sent me letters that we can show at holy houses, abbeys and monasteries all along the way, and at pilgrims’ houses, and they will feed the children.’

  ‘And so God provides,’ Johann observed. ‘As He promised He would. Are you coming with us all the way to Jerusalem, Luca Vero?’

  ‘I would like to do so, if you will allow it. I am travelling with a lady and her servant, and they would like to come too. I will bring my servant Freize and my clerk Brother Peter.’

  ‘Of course you can all come,’ Johann said. ‘If God has called you, you have to obey. Do you think He has called you? Or are you following the commands of man?’

  ‘I felt sure that you were speaking of me when you spoke of a fatherless boy,’ Luca said. He was shy, telling this youth of his deepest sorrow. ‘I am a man who lost both his father and mother when he was only a boy and I have never known where they are, nor even if they are alive or dead. I believed you when you said that I should see them in Jerusalem. Do you really think it is so?’

  ‘I know it is so,’ the boy said with quiet conviction.

  ‘Then I hope I can help you on the journey, for I am certain that it is my duty as their son that I should come with you.’

  ‘As you wish, Brother.’

  ‘And if you have any doubts about your calling,’ Luca said, feeling like a Judas, tempting the boy to betray himself. ‘Then you can tell me. I am not yet a priest – I was a novice when I was called from the monastery to serve in this way – but I can talk with you and advise you.’

  ‘I have no doubts,’ Johann said, gently smiling at him. ‘The doubts are all yours, Brother Luca. You doubted your calling to the monastery, and now you doubt your mission. You doubt your instructions, you doubt the lord of your order, and you doubt even the words you speak to me now. Don’t you think I can hear the lies on your tongue and see the doubts in your mind?’

  Luca flushed at the boy’s insight. ‘I had no doubts when I heard you speak. I had no doubts then. My father was taken by the slavers when I was only fourteen. I long to see him again. My mother was taken too. Sometimes I dream of them and the childhood that I had with them. Sometimes even now I cannot bear that they are lost to me, cannot bear to think that they may be suffering. I was helpless to save them then, I am helpless now.’

  Johann was silent for a moment, his brilliant blue eyes searching Luca’s face. ‘You will see them,’ he said gently. ‘You will see them again. I know it.’

  Luca put his hand on his heart, as if to hold down his grief. ‘I pray for it,’ he said.

  ‘And I will pray for you,’ Johann said. ‘And tomorrow morning at dawn, we will walk on.’

  ‘To Bari?’ Luca confirmed. ‘You will allow me to guide you and help you to Bari?’

  ‘As God wills,’ Johann said cheerfully.

  In the top bedroom of the inn Ishraq and Isolde were packing their few clothes in a saddlebag, for the journey on the next day. Isolde twisted back her plait of fair hair. ‘D’you think the landlady would send up a bath and hot water?’

  Ishraq shook her head. ‘I already asked. She is boiling our linen in her washday copper and she was displeased at having to get that out for us. She washes her own things once a month. They bathe only once a year, and that on Good Friday. She was scandalised when I said we wanted more than a jug of water for washing.’

  Isolde laughed out loud. ‘No! So what are we to do?’

  ‘There’s a little lake in the woods outside the west gate – the stable boy told me that the lads go there to swim in summer. Could you bear to wash in cold water?’

  ‘Better than nothing,’ Isolde agreed. ‘Shall we go now?’

  ‘Before the sun goes down,’ Ishraq agreed with a shiver. ‘And whether she likes it or not I shall have some linen towels from the landlady to dry us off, and our clean clothes to wear.’

  Discreetly, the two girls watched Luca talking to Johann on the quayside, checked that Freize was helping in the kitchen and Brother Peter studying in the dining room and then went up the cobbled steps to the market square, and out through the west gate. The porter watched them go. ‘Gate closes at dusk!’ he