Order of Darkness Read online

  Freize could not bring himself to touch it, but he pulled the cap from his head and laid it down. The little thing took a bold leap and landed in the cap like a fish in a net. Freize shook his head in horror and bafflement. ‘What am I to do with you?’ he whispered.

  He heard the breath of a whispered reply: ‘The canal.’

  The guardsmen had kicked out the old wooden hatch that closed off the quay and now they saw Ishraq’s pale frightened face in the opening.

  ‘There’s a girl here!’ someone shouted. ‘Get her!’

  One man bent down and tried to climb through the opening as Freize made a mighty dive, hands first, getting in before him, blocking the gap with his shoulders. ‘Ishraq!’ he yelled, and thrust the cap towards her.

  She caught the cap in her hands. ‘What?’ she recoiled at the little being, curled up inside. ‘What’s this? My God Freize! What is it?’

  The soldiers fell on Freize’s legs and dragged him backwards from the hatch. ‘Get it in the river!’ Freize shouted to her. ‘Get it in the water.’ Someone trod on his outstretched hands in their haste to get through the hatch to capture Ishraq. ‘Let it go!’ Freize yelled. ‘Set it free! And get away yourself!’

  He saw her duck away from the hatch towards the canal, but then someone kicked him in the head and something fell beside him with a loud clatter, and then everything was dark.

  Wet and dripping, Ishraq approached the garden gate of the palazzo on the Grand Canal, and tried the latch. It yielded and she stepped into the garden. It was dusk, and the waning spring moon was rising over the shadow of the wall. She was still wet, and her hair was in rats’ tails down her back, her expensive costume torn into strips and tied out of the way. She stepped warily into the enclosed space and looked up at the house.

  Everything seemed quiet. Ishraq tiptoed barefoot to one of the windows and listened. There was silence; she cupped her hand over her eyes and peered in. The room was empty. Carefully, Ishraq went under the shade of the portico to the garden door and pushed it open. There was a slight creak but in a moment she was in the stone-flagged back hall, and then, picking up her damp skirts, she crossed the hall and mounted the stairs, past the main room and up to the floor that she shared with Isolde.

  The door to their rooms was locked. Ishraq tapped the rhythm that they had used from childhood

  and at once the door opened and Isolde pulled her in.

  ‘I have been waiting and waiting for you. You’re freezing! Are you safe? You’re soaked! Did you get to them in time?’

  Isolde ran to her room and fetched a linen sheet and started to towel Ishraq’s hair, while the girl pulled off her wet torn clothes.

  ‘I got to them before the Doge’s men came, and they got away. Their equipment was broken and I think they captured Freize.’

  ‘No! We must tell Luca!’

  Ishraq took a blanket and wrapped it around her bare shoulders. ‘Has the guard all gone?’

  ‘They left only one man behind, at the watergate. That’s why I stayed locked in, up here, though they have gone. They didn’t see you go, so they think you’re locked in here with me. Change your clothes and nobody will ever know you were out of the house. There’s nothing to connect us with the alchemists. Hurry – we have to tell Luca and Brother Peter about Freize.’

  Ishraq rubbed her hair dry, pulled on a dress and tied her hair back in a knot. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

  The two young women hurried down the stairs and into the main room. Brother Peter and Luca were at the window, looking down to the darkening canal, as the door behind them opened and they turned around and saw Ishraq.

  ‘Thank God you’re safe!’ Luca exclaimed. ‘What a dive you made! Ishraq, what a risk you took!’ He crossed the room and hugged her to him. ‘You’re still wet!’ he said.

  Brother Peter was shaking his head. ‘I suppose you went to warn them,’ he said. ‘Were you seen?’

  ‘Worse,’ Ishraq said briefly. ‘I am sorry, Brother Peter. They saw me, but I got away; and they caught Freize.’

  ‘Freize!’

  ‘We rowed there together. We went in by their watergate. We could hear the Doge’s men at the front door. The alchemist and Jacinta were trying to get their things, the books and the manuscripts and some herbs and things from their work room. They got into our boat . . .’ Ishraq broke off at the memory of the horror of the young woman with the old, old face and straggling white hair who had rushed past her to get into the boat. ‘Anyway. They got away in our boat. But the men charged in; and they got Freize. I swam for it.’

  She stopped again. Somewhere in the water, not far from her as she had dived off the quay, had been the little thing, something like a baby, something like a lizard, something like a frog. She had held the cap towards the water’s edge and seen it jump into the water, seen it dive, the soft skin of its back gleaming palely as it went deep down into the canal.

  ‘What happened?’ Isolde asked, seeing the expression of blank horror on her friend’s face.

  Ishraq shook her head. ‘I don’t know what they were doing there,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what they had done. I don’t know what they had made, in that bell jar of theirs. I don’t know what sort of thing it was.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’ Luca repeated, taking her hand.

  She met his honest brown eyes with a deep sense of relief, as if Luca was the only person that she would be able to tell.

  ‘Luca,’ she whispered. ‘I want to tell you.’ She hesitated. ‘But I am afraid to even speak. It was horrific – and pitiful. I want to tell you. I can’t.’

  Without thinking, he put his arm around her shoulders and walked her away from the other two. When their heads were close together and his arm was tight around her waist, he felt her lean towards him and relax against him, as if he were warm, as if he were safety for her.

  ‘You can tell me,’ he said. ‘Whatever it was.’

  She turned her face to his neck and then raised her mouth to whisper in his ear. She could smell the light clean scent of his hair; he smelled of the real world, of normality, of a young man. She felt desire as if it were the only real thing in a dangerous world filled with mysteries. It was as if the only thing that was real, the only thing that she could trust, was Luca. ‘I think they had made a homunculus,’ she breathed.

  He froze at the word and turned to face her. ‘Would that be what they meant by saying they were making life?’

  Her eyes dark with fear, she nodded. ‘Perhaps. I don’t know.’

  ‘What was it like?’

  ‘Like a tiny man, like a horrible tiny man. I thought it was a lizard but it was a person, a tiny, tiny person. It was in the bell jar. I think they had made it in the jar. Jacinta was trying to get it away, but when the bell jar broke, Freize took it up and passed it through the hatch to me.’

  ‘Why? Why did Freize save it?’

  A ghost of a smile touched her lips. ‘Because that’s what he’s like; because he’s Freize,’ she said. ‘If it called out to him, he would have to answer. It wanted to be in the canal. Freize had put it in his cap. I held the cap to the edge of the canal and it jumped out.’ She shivered. ‘I didn’t throw it in,’ she said quickly. ‘I wasn’t trying to drown it. He told me to set it free. It jumped in and then it dived down, like a fish, and then it was gone.’ She gave a deep shudder.

  ‘What?’ Luca asked.

  ‘Luca, it wasn’t like a fish, it was just like a child. I saw its face as it bobbed in the canal. It took a breath and then dived down. I saw its rump and the soles of its little feet as it went down. Like a child but tiny, as small as a rat, but swimming like a man. Horrible.’ She gave a shuddering sob. ‘It was horrible.’

  He held her closer as she trembled. ‘And then?’

  She raised her head and spoke so that the others could hear her. ‘I dived into the water and I swam round to the side canal beside the Nacari house. I waited in the water. I kept down low. I saw the Doge’s guards bring Freize out in manacles.