Order of Darkness Read online

  From the shadow of the hat her dark eyes regarded him. ‘These are my people,’ she said quietly. ‘These that you are calling devils.’

  ‘These are nothing to do with you. They are devils,’ he said flatly. ‘They took my father and my mother from their own safe fields and I don’t know where they are now, or even if they are alive.’

  She started to put out her hand to him, and then she remembered Isolde’s jealous rage and tucked both her hands firmly in the jacket pockets. ‘I’m ready,’ she said.

  Freize stood one side of her and Luca the other. From the sailmaker’s loft came four men, carrying a heavy rolled sail on their shoulders. Further down the quayside a dozen men carrying ropes slung under a long mast were walking in slow step towards the fort.

  The captain of the fort came forwards to meet them. ‘Are you all carrying knives?’ he asked. They nodded in silence. ‘Keep them hidden until I give the word,’ he said. ‘If they keep the peace then we will too. If anything goes wrong fall back on the fort.’ To Ishraq he said, ‘Warn us at once if you suspect anything.’

  She nodded. ‘I understand.’

  He glanced at Luca. ‘Are you ready, Inquirer?’

  Luca nodded, and they led the way past the fort to where the quayside sloped down to the sea and the galley was held to the harbour wall by two waiting men. One of them was a tall broad man from the coast of Benin, his black face completely impassive, his dark eyes scanning each one of them as they walked towards him. The other was a tall white man, blond-haired and blue-eyed. The master of the galley stood in the stern of his ship, the drummer beside him.

  The master was a young man, little more than eighteen, richly dressed in a pair of wide navy brocade pantaloons with beautiful red leather short boots. He had a richly embroidered white linen shirt, the sleeves billowing, and a surcoat over the top, encrusted with precious stones. At his side he wore a belt with a long curved sword and on his head – strangest of all for Luca – was a tight small white turban with a stone and the white floating plume of egrets’ feathers at the front. His skin was tanned golden, his eyes dark, squinting now against the bright sky as he looked up at the quay as the Christians arrived, followed by the men carrying the sail and the long mast. He stood like a young man filled with joy in his own strength and confidence, accustomed to command. He was, as even Luca could see at once, dazzlingly handsome.

  Luca, the captain of the fort, Freize and Ishraq came to the brink of the quay so that they could look down into the slaving galley; it was a pitiful sight. Every oar had two men chained to it, and there were forty, perhaps fifty oars. That was only the first deck. Below the enslaved rowers was another deck with another set of men chained to their oars, dressed in rags, burned brown as dried nuts from the constant blaze of the sun, sitting in their own filth, dully awaiting the order of the pounding drum. Luca gave a horrified exclamation and stepped back, cupping his palm over his nose and mouth against the stench, trying not to retch.

  ‘Will you help us to fit the mast?’ the master asked.

  Ishraq listened carefully to his accent, looked from the one man onshore to the other, strained to get a sense of their purpose, to see if there was double-dealing planned here. Unnoticed, she eased her feet out of the ill-fitting shoes. If she was going to have to run or fight, she was not going to stumble.

  ‘First, you will release the Italians,’ Luca said, his anger in every clipped word.

  ‘Are you in command here?’ the young man asked politely, bowing his head a little. The great ruby in his turban winked in the sunlight. ‘Are you the one that he said was an Inquirer? From Rome?’

  ‘I am visiting the town. The commander of the defence is this captain,’ Luca explained.

  ‘You are a traveller?’

  Luca nodded.

  ‘Appointed by the Pope?’

  ‘I am a papal Inquirer,’ Luca said. ‘But it is no business of yours. What are you doing here?’

  He laughed as if something had amused him. ‘Oh, I have been inquiring too – I take an interest in coastal defences.’

  Ishraq eased towards Luca. ‘He’s a very senior commander,’ she muttered. ‘See the ruby in his turban and the jewels in his coat.’

  ‘Where are you going to?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Homeward bound,’ he showed them a taunting smile. ‘We call it home now. You called it Constantinople, but we call it Istanbul. Do you know why?’

  At the new name that the conquering infidels had given to the Christian city of Constantinople, Brother Peter hissed in horror and crossed himself. The commander laughed at the gesture. ‘We named it from the Greek.’

  Luca, who had not been taught Greek, gritted his teeth on his own ignorance.

  ‘The Greek istimbolin means “in the city”. We are in the city now and we will never lose it. So we have called it In-the-city.’

  ‘What’s your name?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Radu Bey,’ he replied. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Luca Vero.’

  ‘Priest?’

  ‘Novice.’

  ‘Ah, I know who you are,’ he said with sudden understanding. ‘You’re one of those commanded to make inquiry for the secret order. You will be a servant of the Order of Darkness.’

  Luca exchanged a quick shocked glance with Brother Peter. ‘What do you know of the Order of Darkness?’ he demanded.

  ‘More than you would think. A lot more than you would think. Am I right?’

  ‘I don’t discuss it with you.’

  ‘Do you know your commander? Milord, does he call himself? Do you know any other Inquirers?’

  Luca kept his face impassive.

  ‘I think not,’ the commander said in Arabic, quietly, almost to himself. ‘It’s just how I would do it.’

  ‘He said “I think not . . . it’s just how I would do it,” ’ Ishraq translated in Luca’s ear.

  ‘First, the children,’ Luca said, as the Piccolo men, sweating, dumped the long heavy mast beside the folded sail.

  ‘Will you take them, whether they want to come with you or no?’ Radu asked. ‘Will you take them against their will?’

  ‘No, of course not. But why would they choose to go into slavery with you?’

  ‘Because they are not going to be enslaved. They’re going to be janissaries. The greatest soldiers in the world. They might rise through my army, they could become commanders.’ He smiled at Luca, inviting him to see the joke. ‘When we conquer Italy, they could be the ones riding at the head of the invading army, the triumphant army. Either one of them could rise to be governor, and come back to his home as a lord. He could march into his own village, he could live in the castle in the place of the Christian lord. They may prefer this future to coming back to plough the fields and muck out stables for you.’

  Luca ignored him and called directly to the children. ‘Do you want to come ashore? I will see that you get back to your homes. You have been saved from the flood by a miracle. Do you want to come home now and go back to your father and mother and serve God?’

  ‘They are brothers,’ Radu remarked, watching them. ‘And their father beat them every day, and their mother starved them. That’s why they ran away in the first place. I don’t think they’ll want to go back home.’

  ‘I can put you into a monastery,’ Luca offered. ‘You can live and work in the Church. That’s how I was raised, and Freize my friend here. It was all right. We ate well, we were educated.’

  ‘But you didn’t learn Greek,’ the slave galley commander taunted him.

  ‘That hardly matters,’ Luca said, irritated.

  Clearly the boys did not know what to do.

  ‘My brother and I were both taken by the Ottomans,’ Radu remarked to the boys. ‘We might be an example to you. We chose different routes. He went home to the Christians and is now a great commander; one of the greatest, a man of high ambition, advisor to the Pope himself. You could take his path and rise as well as he did. You could go with these men; I am sure they would put