Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Does it say how to find them?’ Freize asked gloomily. ‘For otherwise it’s bed under the trees and nothing but cold bread for supper. Beechnuts, I suppose. All you could eat of beechnuts. You could go mad with gluttony on them. I suppose I might get lucky and find us a mushroom.’

  ‘The road is just up ahead,’ Peter interrupted. ‘The abbey is near to the castle. I should think we can claim hospitality at either monastery or nunnery.’

  ‘We’ll go to the convent,’ Luca ruled. ‘It says that they are expecting us.’

  It did not look as if the convent was expecting anyone. It was growing dark, but there were no warm welcoming lights showing and no open doors. The shutters were closed at all the windows in the outer wall, and only narrow beams of flickering candlelight shone through the slats. In the darkness they could not tell how big it was; they just had a sense of great walls marching off either side of the wide-arched entrance gateway. A dim horn lantern was hung by the small door set in the great wooden gate, throwing a thin yellow light downward, and when Freize dismounted and hammered on the wooden gate with the handle of his dagger they could hear someone inside protesting at the noise and then opening a little spy hole in the door, to peer out at them.

  ‘I am Luca Vero, with my two servants,’ Luca shouted. ‘I am expected. Let us in.’

  The spy hole slammed shut, then they could hear the slow unbolting of the gate and the lifting of wooden bars and, finally, one side of the gate creaked reluctantly open. Freize led his horse and the donkey, Luca and Peter rode into the cobbled yard as a sturdy woman-servant pushed the gate shut behind them. The men dismounted and looked around as a wizened old lady in a habit of grey wool, with a tabard of grey tied at her waist by a plain rope, held up the torch she was carrying, to inspect the three of them.

  ‘Are you the man they sent to make inquiry? For if you are not, and it is hospitality that you want, you had better go on to the monastery, our brother house,’ she said to Peter, looking at him and his fine horse. ‘This house is in troubled times, we don’t want guests.’

  ‘No, I am to write the report. I am the clerk to the inquiry. This is Luca Vero, he is here to inquire.’

  ‘A boy!’ she exclaimed scornfully. ‘A beardless boy?’

  Luca flushed in irritation, then swung his leg over the neck of his horse, and jumped down to the ground, throwing the reins to Freize. ‘It doesn’t matter how many years I have, or if I have a beard or not. I am appointed to make inquiry here, and I will do so tomorrow. In the meantime we are tired and hungry and you should show me to the refectory and to the guest rooms. Please inform the Lady Abbess that I am here and will see her after Prime tomorrow.’

  ‘Rich in nothing,’ the old woman remarked, holding up her torch to take another look at Luca’s handsome young face, flushed under his dark fringe, his hazel eyes bright with anger.

  ‘Rich in nothing, is it?’ Freize questioned the horse as he led him to the stables ahead. ‘A virgin so old that she is like a pickled walnut and she calls the little lord a beardless boy? And him a genius and perhaps a changeling?’

  ‘You, take the horses to the stables and the lay sister there will take you to the kitchen,’ she snapped with sudden energy at Freize. ‘You can eat and sleep in the barn. You—’ She took in the measure of Peter the clerk and judged him superior to Freize but still wanting. ‘You can dine in the kitchen gallery. You’ll find it through that doorway. They’ll show you where to sleep in the guesthouse. You—’ She turned to Luca. ‘You, the Inquirer, I will show to the refectory and to your own bedroom. They said you were a priest?’

  ‘I have not yet said my vows,’ he said. ‘I am in the service of the Church, but I am not ordained.’

  ‘Too handsome by far for the priesthood, and with his tonsure grown out already,’ she said to herself. To Luca she said: ‘You can sleep in the rooms for the visiting priest, anyway. And in the morning I will tell my Lady Abbess that you are here.’

  She was leading the way to the refectory when a lady came through the archway from the inner cloister. Her habit was made of soft bleached wool, the wimple on her head pushed back to show a pale lovely face with smiling grey eyes. The girdle at her waist was of the finest leather and she had leather slippers, not the rough wooden pattens that working women wore to keep their shoes out of the mud.

  ‘I came to greet the Inquirer,’ she said, holding up the set of wax candles in her hand.

  Luca stepped forwards. ‘I am the Inquirer,’ he said.

  She smiled, taking in his height, his good looks and his youth in one swift gaze. ‘Let me take you to your dinner, you must be weary. Sister Anna here will see that your horses are stabled and your men comfortable.’

  He bowed and she turned ahead of him, leaving him to follow her through the stone archway, along a flagged gallery that opened into the arching refectory room. At the far end, near the fire that was banked in for the night, a place had been laid for one person; there was wine in the glass, bread on the plate, a knife and spoon either side of a bowl. Luca sighed with pleasure and sat down in the chair as a maidservant came in with a ewer and bowl to wash his hands, good linen to dry them, and behind her came a kitchen maid with a bowl of stewed chicken and vegetables.

  ‘You have everything that you need?’ the lady asked.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said awkwardly. He was uncomfortable in her presence; he had not spoken to a woman other than his mother since he had been sworn into the monastery at the age of eleven. ‘And you are?’

  She smiled at him and he realised in the glow of her smile that she was beautiful. ‘I am Sister Ursula, the Lady Almoner, responsible for the management of the abbey. I am glad you have come. I have been very anxious. I hope you can tell us what is happening and save us . . .’

  ‘Save you?’

  ‘This is a long-established and beautiful nunnery,’ Sister Ursula said earnestly. ‘I joined it when I was just a little girl. I have served God and my sisters here for all my life, I have been here for more than twenty years. I cannot bear the thought that Satan has entered in.’

  Luca dipped his bread in the rich thick gravy, and concentrated on the food to hide his consternation. ‘Satan?’

  She crossed herself, a quick unthinking gesture of devotion. ‘Some days I think it really is that bad, other days I think I am like a foolish girl, frightening myself with shadows.’ She gave him a shy, apologetic smile. ‘You will be able to judge. You will discover the truth of it all. But if we cannot rid ourselves of the gossip we will be ruined: no family will send their daughters to us, and now the farmers are starting to refuse to trade with us. It is my duty to make sure that the abbey earns its own living, that we sell our goods and farm produce in order to buy what we need. I can’t do that if the farmers’ wives refuse to speak with us when I send my lay sisters with our goods to market. We can’t trade if the people will neither sell to us nor buy from us.’ She shook her head. ‘Anyway, I will leave you to eat. The kitchen maid will show you to your bedroom in the guesthouse when you have finished eating. Bless you, my brother.’

  Luca suddenly realised he had quite forgotten to say grace: she would think he was an ignorant mannerless hedge friar. He had stared at her like a fool and stammered when he spoke to her. He had behaved like a young man who had never seen a beautiful woman before and not at all like a man of some importance, come to head a papal inquiry. What must she think of him? ‘Bless you, Lady Almoner,’ he said awkwardly.

  She bowed, hiding a little smile at his confusion, and walked slowly from the room, and he watched the sway of the hem of her gown as she left.

  On the east side of the enclosed abbey, the shutter of the ground-floor window was slightly open so that two pairs of eyes could watch the Lady Almoner’s candle illuminate her pale silhouette as she walked gracefully across the yard and then vanished into her house.

  ‘She’s greeted him, but she won’t have told him anything,’ Isolde whispered.

  ‘He will find nothing unl