Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘I have something for you,’ she said smiling. ‘Hero or not.’

  He waited.

  From the inner pocket of her cape she produced the sleepy little kitten. Freize cupped his big hands and she put it gently into them. He took the kitten up to his face and inhaled the scent of warm fur, as the little thing stretched for a moment, and then wound its golden tail over its white nose and snuggled down clasped in his big hands.

  ‘You saved it for me?’

  ‘I woke in the night, last night, thinking of you and remembering it, and I got out of bed and went up the ladder to the roof in the darkness, and fetched it down from the chimney pot.’

  ‘You went up and down the roof in darkness?’

  ‘I should have remembered it before.’

  ‘Was it not dangerous?’

  ‘Nothing like you in the flood.’

  ‘You were thinking of me?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said frankly.

  ‘Worrying about me?’ he suggested.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Perhaps crying for me? A little? When nobody was looking?’

  She smiled a little, but she did not look away or pretend to shyness. She made a small nod of assent. ‘I cried for you and I told the whole village that I was sorry I had been unkind to you.’

  ‘Perhaps you were wishing that you had kissed an honest man when he asked you kindly, and not thrown him down in the mud, that time in Vittorito?’

  Again, the tiny nod told him that she had thought very kindly of him and regretted the missed kiss.

  ‘You could always kiss me now,’ Freize suggested.

  To his surprise, she did not refuse him, though he had expected her to box his ears for asking. Instead she stepped towards him and put one hand over the soft kitten in his cupped hands, as if to caress them both. She put her other hand on the nape of his warm neck, and drew his head down to her, and she kissed him, tenderly and fully on the lips so that he inhaled her breath, and tasted the soft dampness of the tender skin of her mouth.

  Ishraq waited in their shared room for Isolde to come back from church and took her cape as she entered, and stood behind her as she sat on the wooden three-legged stool. Ishraq untied the ribbon in Isolde’s blonde hair and ran her fingers through the plaits, pulling them loose. Slowly, luxuriously, she combed the beautiful golden ringlets till they lay heavy and smooth over Isolde’s shoulders, and then plaited them back up for the night. The girls changed places and Isolde combed and then plaited her friend’s thick dark hair, twisting the locks around her fingers.

  ‘Isn’t it a blessing that he is safe?’ she said quietly, ‘I had lit half a dozen candles for him in the church and then I was able to give thanks.’

  Ishraq bowed her head under the gentle caress. ‘Oh, yes.’

  ‘He came running after us up the hill to church and he looked filled with joy.’

  ‘Yes, I expect he did.’

  ‘Did you give him his kitten?’

  Ishraq nodded.

  ‘Was he very pleased?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Something in Ishraq’s reserve warned Isolde, who gave the fat dark plait a little admonitory tug. ‘What are you not telling me?’

  Ishraq turned to face her friend. ‘How do you know that there is something that I am not telling you?’

  ‘Because his face was alight with joy. Because you are saying nothing – but you look the same as he did. So what passed between the two of you?’

  Ishraq hesitated. ‘You won’t like it,’ she guessed.

  ‘Of course I won’t mind. Whatever it is. Why would I mind? Did he promise you his service for life, like he did to me?’

  ‘Oh no. He doesn’t think of me as a grand lady. He doesn’t want to be my squire. He asked me if I was sorry for throwing him down in the mud at Vittorito. And I said I was sorry.’

  ‘You apologised?’ Ishraq was amazed. ‘You never apologise!’

  ‘Well, I said sorry to him.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I said I wished that I had kissed him that time and not tripped him up.’

  ‘Ishraq!’ Isolde was playfully shocked. ‘What a thing to say to him! What can he have thought?’

  ‘Oh that was nothing. He asked me could he kiss me now?’

  ‘Well, he was bound to. And I hope you refused him kindly?’

  ‘Oh,’ Ishraq said nonchalantly. ‘I wanted to. So I kissed him.’

  Isolde was genuinely shocked. She dropped the comb and stared at Ishraq’s reflection in the little mirror. ‘You kissed him?’

  The girl nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’

  ‘How could you allow him? I know you were happy that he came back safely – we all are – but how could you forget yourself so? How could you permit him? A servant?’

  ‘I didn’t really allow him. I didn’t “permit him”, as you say.’

  ‘He never forced you?’ Isolde was horrified.

  ‘No! No! It was I who kissed him.’

  This was even worse. ‘But Ishraq, your honour!’

  The girl met her friend’s stunned gaze. ‘Oh! Honour!’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I suddenly felt, I suddenly thought, that nothing mattered more to me than that I had thought him dead, and that I was so happy that he was alive. I had thought he was lost and here he was – just as he had always been. And I was so glad of that – nothing else seemed to matter.’

  Isolde shook her head. ‘If you were so happy for him, you could have given him a favour or a gift. You could have let him kiss your hand. But to lower yourself to kiss him! What about your honour as a lady?’

  ‘I am sick of all of this,’ Ishraq said impatiently. ‘Like in the church today – people doubting our reputation just because we were going to wash where the boys swim. As if all that matters is how a lady behaves around boys! I want my honour to be about me as a person, not me as an object with boundaries and gateways, as if I were a field, as if I were a property with hedges. One man can touch my hand, one can see my face, but another can’t even speak to me. If my honour is a real thing then it can’t depend on whether a man sees my face, or touches my hand, or kisses my lips. If I am an honourable woman then I am an honourable woman like a man is an honourable man – whatever I wear, however I appear. It is about my respect for myself – not how the world sees me, not what events happen. I know that I am an honourable woman, I don’t stoop to sin, I don’t embarrass myself, I don’t do things that I know to be wrong. I know I am a good woman whether I wear a veil or keep my hair plaited out of sight. I felt that I could, in honour, give him the kiss that he once asked for, and that I wanted to do so. And I did so.’

  ‘A lady should be untouchable until marriage,’ Isolde stated the absolute rule that they had both been taught from childhood. ‘Her husband should know that she has known no other man, that no other man has been closer to her than to kiss her hand. He must know that she has felt no desire, permitted no touch.’

  ‘It’s not true,’ Ishraq said roundly. ‘You are a lady, a great lady, and you will make a great marriage with some high lord. But you will have known love and you will have felt desire.’

  ‘I won’t!’ Isolde insisted. ‘I would never admit to it.’

  ‘But there is more to life than trying to fit inside men’s idea of an honourable woman!’ Ishraq exclaimed. ‘We didn’t come away from the castle and then run away from the nunnery to live as if we were still enclosed.’

  Isolde was scandalised. ‘We should live as we were brought up to live! Not like loose women on the road, not as if we had no hopes of ourselves, no standards, no self-respect!’

  ‘Not me,’ Ishraq declared boldly. ‘I am out of the castle, I am out of the nunnery. I’m not going to wear a hood any more, I’m not going to wear a veil. I am going to dress as I please and do what I think right and I am going to kiss who I want to, and even lie with someone if I want to. My honour and my pride are in my heart, not in my dress, and not in what the world says.’