Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Are you not a resident priest?’ Luca asked, first shaking the man’s hand and then kneeling for his blessing.

  ‘We have a monastery just the other side of the great house,’ the priest explained. ‘The first Lord of Lucretili chose to found two religious houses: one for men and one for women. We priests come over daily to take the services. Alas, this house is of the order of Augustine nuns. We men are of the Dominican order.’ He leaned towards Luca. ‘As you’d understand, I think it would be better for everyone if the nunnery were put under the discipline of the Dominican order. They could be supervised from our monastery and enjoy the discipline of our order. Under the Augustinian order these women have been allowed to simply do as they please. And now you see what happens.’

  ‘They observe the services,’ Luca protested. ‘They’re not running wild.’

  ‘Only because they choose to do so. If they wanted to stop or to change, then they could. They have no rule, unlike us Dominicans, for whom everything is set down. Under the Augustinian order every house can live as they please. They serve God as they think best and as a result—’

  He broke off as the Lady Almoner came up, treading quietly on the beautiful marble floor of the church. ‘Well, here is my Lady Almoner come to bid us to breakfast, I am sure.’

  ‘You can take breakfast in my private chamber,’ she said. ‘There is a fire lit there. Please, Father, show our guests the way.’

  ‘I will, I will,’ he said pleasantly and, as she left them, he turned to Luca. ‘She holds this place together,’ he said. ‘A remarkable woman. Manages the farmlands, maintains the buildings, buys the goods, sells the produce. She could have been the lady of any castle in Italy, a natural Magistra: a teacher, a leader, a natural lady of any great house.’ He beamed. ‘And, I have to say, her rooms are the most comfortable in this place and her cook second to none.’

  He led the way out of the church across the cloister through the entrance yard to the house that formed the eastern side of the courtyard. The wooden front door stood open, and they went in, where a table was already laid for the three of them. Luca and Peter took their seats. Freize stood at the doorway to serve the men as one of the lay-woman cooks passed him dishes to set on the table. They had three sorts of roasted meats: ham, lamb and beef; and two types of bread: white manchet and dark rye. There were local cheeses, and jams, a basket of hard-boiled eggs, and a bowl of plums with a taste so strong that Luca sliced them on a slice of wheat bread to eat like sweet jam.

  ‘Does the Lady Almoner always eat privately and not dine with her sisters in the refectory?’ Luca asked curiously.

  ‘Wouldn’t you, if you had a cook like this?’ the priest asked. ‘High days and holy days, I don’t doubt that she sits with her sisters. But she likes things done just so; and one of the privileges of her office is that she has things as she likes them, in her own house. She doesn’t sleep in a dormitory nor eat in the refectory. The Lady Abbess is the same in her own house next door.

  ‘Now,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘I have a drop of brandy in my saddlebag. I’ll pour us a measure. It settles the belly after a good breakfast.’ He went out of the room and Peter got to his feet and looked out of the window at the entry courtyard where the priest’s mule was waiting.

  Idly, Luca glanced round the room as Freize cleared their plates. The chimney breast was a beautifully carved wall of polished wood. When Luca had been a little boy his grandfather, a carpenter, had made just such a carved chimney breast for the hall of their farmhouse. Then, it had been an innovation and the envy of the village. Behind one of the carvings had been a secret cupboard where his father had kept sugared plums, which he gave to Luca on a Sunday, if he had been good all the week. On a whim, Luca turned the five bosses along the front of the carved chimney breast one after the other. One yielded under his hand and, to his surprise, a hidden door swung open, just like the one he’d known as a child. Behind it was a glass jar holding not sugared plums but some sort of spice: dried black seeds. Beside it was a cobbler’s awl – a little tool for piercing lace holes in leather.

  Luca shut the cupboard door. ‘My father always used to hide sugared plums in the chimney cupboard,’ he remarked.

  ‘We didn’t have anything like this,’ Peter the clerk replied. ‘We all lived in the kitchen, and my mother turned her roast meats on the spit in the fireplace and smoked all her hams in the chimney. When it was morning and the fire was out and we children were really hungry, we’d put our heads up into the soot and nibble at the fatty edges of the hams. She used to tell my father it was mice, God bless her.’

  ‘How did you get your learning in such a poor house?’ Luca asked.

  Peter shrugged. ‘The priest saw that I was a bright boy, so my parents sent me to the monastery.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Milord asked me if I would serve him, serve the order. Of course I said yes.’

  The door opened and the priest returned, a small bottle discreetly tucked into the sleeve of his robe. ‘Just a drop helps me on my way,’ he said. Luca took a splash of the strong liquor in his earthenware cup, Peter refused, and the priest took a hearty swig from the mouth of the bottle. Freize looked longingly from the doorway, but decided against saying anything.

  ‘Now I’ll take you to the Lady Abbess,’ the priest said, carefully stoppering the cork. ‘And you’ll bear in mind, if she asks you for advice, that she could put this nunnery under the care of her brother monastery, we would run it for her, and all her troubles would be over.’

  ‘I’ll remember,’ Luca said, without committing himself to one view or the other.

  The abbess’s house was next door, built on the outer wall of the nunnery, facing inwards onto the cloister and outwards to the forest and the high mountains beyond. The windows that looked to the outer world were heavily leaded, and shielded with thick metal grilles.

  ‘This place is built like a square within a square,’ the priest told them. ‘The inner square is made up of the church, with the cloister and the nuns’ cells around it. This house extends from the cloister to the outer courtyard. The Lady Almoner’s half of the house faces the courtyard and the main gate, so she can see all the comings and goings, and the south wall is the hospital for the poor.’

  The priest gestured towards the door. ‘The Lady Abbess said for you to go in.’ He stood back, and Luca and Peter went in, Freize behind them. They found themselves in a small room furnished with two wooden benches and two very plain chairs. A strong wrought-iron grille in the wall on the far side blocked the opening into the next room, veiled by a curtain of white wool. As they stood waiting, the curtain was silently drawn back and on the other side they could just make out a white robe, a wimple headdress, and a pale face through the obscuring mesh of the metal.

  ‘God bless you and keep you,’ a clear voice said. ‘I welcome you to this abbey. I am the Lady Abbess here.’

  ‘I am Luca Vero.’ Luca stepped up to the grille, but he could see only the silhouette of a woman through the richly wrought ironwork of grapes, fruit, leaves and flowers. There was a faint light perfume, like rosewater. Behind the lady, he could just make out the shadowy outline of another woman in a dark robe.

  ‘This is my clerk Brother Peter, and my servant Freize. And I have been sent here to make an inquiry into your abbey.’

  ‘I know,’ she said quietly.

  ‘I did not know that you were enclosed,’ Luca said, careful not to offend.

  ‘It is the tradition that visitors speak to the ladies of our order through a grille.’

  ‘But I shall need to speak with them for my inquiry. I shall need them to come to report to me.’

  He could sense her reluctance through the bars.

  ‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Since we have agreed to your inquiry.’

  Luca knew perfectly well, that this cool Lady Abbess had not agreed to the inquiry: she had been offered no choice in the matter. His inquiry had been sent to her house by the lord of the Order,