Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘Nothing, it’s too dark,’ she replied, coming back out again.

  He turned to the chimney and lifted down a rushlight, lit it at the fire, and handed it to her. Ishraq thrust it into the dark opening, wriggled her shoulders through and looked down. Freize held her feet.

  ‘Don’t fall,’ he warned her. ‘And don’t for pity’s sake leave me here.’

  Fitfully, the flame flickered, illuminating the dark moving water at the end of the stone quay, immediately below her, and on the stones a glint here, a blaze of reflected light there, and then finally a cold draught of air blew the light out altogether and left her in damp blackness with nothing but the eerie slap of the dark waters to warn her of the edge of the quay.

  ‘What can you see?’ Freize’s voice whispered from the room behind her. ‘Come back! What can you see?’

  ‘Gold,’ Ishraq said, her voice quiet with awe. ‘An absolute fortune in sacks and sacks of gold nobles.’

  Brother Peter and Luca watched the gamblers at their place and then went into San Giacomo Church. As they had expected, Father Pietro was kneeling at a side chapel before the flickering flame of a candle placed at the feet of an exquisite statue of the Madonna and Child. Both men bent their knee and crossed themselves. Luca went to kneel in silence beside the priest.

  ‘You do not disturb me, because I was praying for you,’ Father Pietro said quietly, hardly opening his eyes.

  ‘I suppose that it’s too soon for any news?’

  ‘Perhaps tomorrow, or the next day. You can come to me on the Rialto or I can send you a message.’

  ‘I’ll come to you,’ Luca promised. ‘I hardly dare to pray for the safety of my father. I hardly dare to think that he might come home to me.’

  The priest turned and made the sign of a cross over Luca’s bowed head. ‘God is merciful,’ he said quietly. ‘He is always merciful. Perhaps He will be merciful to you and your father and your mother.’

  ‘Amen,’ Luca whispered.

  Father Pietro looked up at the serene face of the Madonna. He smiled at her, as a man who knows that his work is blessed. Luca thought that a more superstitious man would have thought that the beautiful statue smiled back.

  ‘Thank you, Father Pietro,’ he said. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart.’

  ‘Thank me when your father holds you in his arms, my son,’ the priest replied.

  Luca and Brother Peter completed their prayers and went to the back of the church and quietly opened the great wooden door and slipped out together.

  Luca squinted at the brightness of the sunlight on the square, looked in one direction, and then another, and then quietly said: ‘Oh no.’

  The place where Jacinta had laid out her game earlier was empty. Drago and his daughter were missing.

  And Isolde, their lookout, had vanished into thin air.

  Isolde, her long skirt bunched into her hand, was running as fast as she could, through the narrow alleyway, her feet pounding on the damp cobblestones of the poorer streets, speeding up as she crossed a square paved with flagstones. She had watched Jacinta play for a crowd of people and Nacari stand over her and then suddenly, without a word of warning, far ahead of their usual time, they had packed up the game, stepped to the quayside and hailed a passing gondola.

  Isolde, her breath coming short, hammered over the little wooden bridges, hailed the ferry boats in a panting shout, and then raced down the road from the bridge to where the Nacari’s tall house stood, trying to beat them by running the short cut which Freize had described to her, while the gondola went round the long way on the little canals.

  She recognised the house at once from Ishraq’s drawing and hammered on the door. ‘Freize! Ishraq!’ she shouted. ‘Come away!’

  In the quiet house, the hammering on the door was shockingly loud. In the storeroom, Ishraq and Freize, locking up the hatch, both jumped in fear at the explosion of noise. Freize’s first terrified thought was that the mysterious golem had come for them, as Ishraq started for the hall. ‘It’s Isolde,’ she said.

  ‘Open the door, quick,’ Freize said. ‘She’ll turn out the watch in a moment.’

  Ishraq raced along the narrow hall and slid the bolts to throw open the door.

  ‘They’ve left the square, they could be coming here!’ Isolde gasped. ‘I don’t know where they’re going, they took a gondola. I ran as fast as I could.’ Her nun’s hood had fallen from her head, and her blonde hair was tumbling down around her shoulders. She was panting from her run.

  Ishraq at once put her arm around her friend’s shoulders as if to leave at once. ‘Come on,’ she said to Freize. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Not out of the front door, they left it bolted from the inside,’ Freize reminded her.

  As she hesitated, Isolde glanced down the narrow canal and saw the frightening silhouette of the shadow of the prow of a gondola on the canal wall, just as it was about to turn the corner and see them, on the doorstep of the house. They heard the gondolier cry a warning: ‘Gondola! Gondola! Gondola!’

  ‘Too late!’ Isolde whispered. ‘We’ll have to go inside.’

  They slipped back into the hall, closing the front door behind them.

  ‘Out through the garden,’ Ishraq hissed. ‘Quickly, or they’ll see us as they come in.’

  She drew Isolde through the house as Freize bolted the door to the street.

  ‘My God, what is that smell?’ Isolde hesitated and put her hand over her mouth as they went past the open door to the storeroom. ‘It’s like death.’

  ‘Quick,’ Ishraq said, closing the door and leading the two of them through the living quarters and out through the door into the little courtyard garden.

  ‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll lock up behind you and come out through the bedroom window.’

  ‘I’ll go!’ Freize volunteered. ‘You get out.’

  He was too late. Ishraq was already racing up the stairs to the upper room. Freize turned to Isolde. ‘We’ll have to get over the wall,’ he whispered. ‘The garden door is locked and they have the key.’ He cupped his hand for Isolde’s shoe. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Like getting up on a horse!’ Isolde stepped up and he threw her upwards so that she caught the branch of the tree and heaved herself up to the top of the wall. Arduously, Freize hauled himself up beside her, and then paused. They both clung to the top of the wall, and watched, horrified, as below them the Nacaris, father and daughter, walked to the garden door, produced a key and let themselves in. They opened the door to the house, and went inside.

  ‘What can we do?’ Isolde whispered. ‘We have to get her out!’

  ‘Wait,’ Freize advised.

  Ishraq, in the house, went swift-footed silently up the stairs. She heard the garden door open and the Nacaris come in. She heard Jacinta remark on the coldness of the day and then she heard, frighteningly clear, Drago say: ‘What’s that noise?’

  Silently, Ishraq slid across the treacherous floorboards to the bedroom window and eased herself out. She flung herself down the spiral stone staircase to the garden and saw her two friends, poised on the top of the wall.

  ‘Get down!’ she hissed. ‘They’re in the house. They’ll see us if they look out of the window!’

  Freize jumped down into the street and reached up for Isolde, who dropped down into his arms as Ishraq stretched for a low bending bough, and swarmed her way upwards. As soon as she was at the top of the wall she too lowered herself down and then jumped clear.

  They were facing a small tributary canal and further down the water was a little swing wooden bridge.

  ‘This way,’ Isolde said, pulling up the hood of her robe over her blonde hair, and leading the way at a brisk walk. She wiped her face with her sleeve. ‘I haven’t run so fast since we left Lucretili,’ she remarked to Ishraq.

  ‘You always were fast,’ her friend said. ‘Faster than me. Now I should teach you to fight.’

  Isolde shook her head in a smiling denial.

  ‘She doesn’t like