Dark Tracks Read online

  Lord Vargarten snapped orders at a groom of the servery, who went first to the buttery, a large cupboard at the head of the hall behind the great table, and brought out cups of small ale, and then jogged out of the hall door and down the steps and across the castle green to the bakery to bring back hot bread rolls in a basket.

  A kitchen boy emerged from an inner doorway with a tray of meats, and the three men seated themselves at the top table and ate a good breakfast with their hosts. As soon as he had finished, Lord Vargarten went to fetch his padded jacket and his helmet and see that his horse was saddled, while his lady sat in her chair, high-backed and as grand as a throne, and watched Luca eat.

  “Drive them away,” she said privately to him. “While you have the chance. You drive them into the river and they can drown like the worthless dogs they are. You would drown a dog with rabies, wouldn’t you? Drown them.”

  Luca suddenly found his food tasteless, got up from the table, bowed to the lady, and went out into the morning sunshine of the castle yard.

  Back in the town, Isolde and Ishraq had ventured down to the taproom that looked out over the stable yard. Now and then, someone slipped in from the square, tipped his hat to them, and said that the dancers were resting, the drum and the haunting fiddle were silent, that actually it was safe if the young women wanted to walk out. The shops were open during this period of quiet, the priest was in his church, the town was trying to behave as if it were not under siege from madness, as if it were an ordinary morning.

  “I’d like to attend Mass,” Isolde said. “The church is just across the square.”

  “Better stay inside,” Ishraq advised.

  “You do right to stay here, at the back of the building,” another man interrupted. “No point in taking risks. Do you go out to take the air when the plague wind blows? Not if you have any sense.”

  There was a tap at the front door; the landlady peered through the spyhole and made a pleased remark, then slid the heavy bolts. She opened the door and a peddler came in, easing the pack off his back. “Where’s the market today?” he asked. “I came to show my goods here and found not a stall in place, and nobody on the quayside. No one will even open their front door. Where is everybody?”

  “There can be no market while the dancers are making merry in our town square,” the landlady said crossly. “And they buy nothing and sell nothing and just turn the heads of everyone who hears them. Here are these young ladies, not even walking out, for fear of dancing. What d’you have to sell? And what can I get you to drink? Will you take something to eat?”

  “I’ll have a glass of ale and some breakfast,” the man said. He was a small man, no taller than Isolde, deeply tanned by the sun. He had one earlobe pierced with a silver ring like a sailor and his dark hair was tied at the nape of his neck in a ponytail. His face was lined like a man who smiles all the time. He leaned his pack, bulging with goods, against the legs of the common table and pulled up a stool.

  “And are you ladies trapped in here?” he asked Isolde and Ishraq with a sympathetic smile. “Besieged by merriment?”

  “I wouldn’t call it merry,” Ishraq replied. “They dance like people in a dream, like people in a nightmare, not like people having fun.”

  “You may be right,” he said. “I’ve seen it once before in Italy. A young man took up his flute and went dancing off, his family ran after him, and everywhere he went more people joined him.”

  “What happened to him?” Isolde asked.

  “He danced till he died, poor lad,” the peddler said. “They said he had been bitten by a tarantula spider; they named his dance the tarantella after the spider. God help them and save them from themselves. Sometimes people can’t stop themselves, you know. Sometimes a girl hears a jig and has to dance away.”

  The landlady put a big pewter mug of ale before him and he nodded to her to put the cost on the slate behind the serving table. “And God save all of us,” he continued, taking a deep drink. “Have you come far? D’you have far to go? Shall you dance onward?”

  “From Venice,” Isolde said.

  “Ah, then I shall not trouble you with my poor things,” he said. “You will have seen the finest of jewelry and lace in Venice. You will not condescend to look at my treasure box.”

  “There were many pretty things in the city, of course,” Isolde said. Then, as curiosity got the better of her, she asked: “But what do you carry?”

  “Oh, nothing fit for you,” he said firmly. “Nothing for a lady such as yourself.”

  The landlady put some freshly baked bread and some cheese before him as he turned to Ishraq. “But I confess, I have some silver earrings with the darkest of sapphires that would be beautiful on you, Lady.”

  Ishraq smiled. “You won’t find a good customer in me. I have no money, and if I did I would not spend it on earrings. But dark sapphires? What are they?”

  “Black star sapphires,” he said, lingering over the words. “True black.”

  “I’ve never seen such things,” she remarked. “Are they really obsidian, that you are calling sapphires to mislead foolish girls? Do you take me for a foolish girl?”

  He took a bite of bread and a pull of his ale and shook his head. “No, I swear it. Star sapphires because they make a star shape when they sparkle, and black as night. Try them. You know that only a true gemstone can cut glass? Well, you could write your name on the windowpane with these.” He plunged his hand into the pack and felt around the side. “Here,” he said, bringing out a tiny leather purse. “I’d never seen such a thing in my life before I came across these, but it is true.”

  Isolde watched, fascinated, as Ishraq opened the drawstrings and tipped the earrings into her cupped palm. They were beautifully worked, each shaped like a long stem of silver with hanging flowers, and the bud of each flower was black—darkest black—but sparkling like a diamond.

  “Oh!” Ishraq breathed.

  “Oh, indeed,” the peddler replied. “Try it yourself. I won’t touch them while I am eating, for fear of getting butter on them.”

  Ishraq took one of the earrings and drew a swift line on the windowpane. “See?” he challenged her. “Only a true gem will cut glass. They are black sapphires, and they could have been made for you.”

  Ishraq hesitated, her eyes on the black stones.

  “Mined for you and made for you,” he repeated. “Dug for you from mines far away, in West Africa, brought for you by camel train to the Moors. Cut for you, and set by them into silver. You’re the first woman I have shown them to, because nobody else could wear them. But they are the very color of your eyes. They are yours. You should have them. Nobody but you should have them. Just try them on.”

  “I’ll put them in for you,” Isolde offered. She stood up and gathered her friend’s thick dark hair away from her ears and hooked first one little silver spray and then the other in her earlobes. Then she stood back to admire the effect. “He’s right, they’re perfect on you,” she said.

  The peddler smiled with pleasure at the sight of the beautiful brown-skinned girl with the black sapphires in her ears. He raised his mug and took a gulp of ale, then took up the second roll of bread. “A dark beauty,” he murmured. “As soon as I saw you, I knew that I had been carrying them all this while just for you.”

  Ishraq glowed with pleasure. “But we can’t possibly be buying earrings,” she said quietly to Isolde. “We’re on a long journey and have to save our money. We will need funds to hire your godfather’s son’s army when we reach him.”

  “How much are they?” Isolde boldly asked the peddler. To Ishraq she whispered: “We have the money that Luca’s lord gave us, remember, to repay what we lost in Venice. We have the money that he paid us for the fools’ gold.”

  “But we traded your mother’s rubies to buy the counterfeit coins!” Ishraq protested.

  “So let’s buy some black sapphires to put in their place!”

  The peddler named a sum that made the girls pause. Immediately, I