Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘They held me in a room like a wooden box,’ he said. ‘And from the little window of the box I could see a rope, two ropes, hanging from the high ceiling, and a set of stairs to climb up to them.’

  ‘Do they hang men indoors?’ Luca asked without interest.

  ‘Not by the neck. They hang them by their wrists till they give information,’ Freize said. ‘I was glad to be most ignorant. Nobody would waste their time hanging me, if they wanted information. You would have to hang me by my heels to shake a thought out of my head.’ He had hoped to make Luca smile, but the young man only nodded briefly and carried on staring into the darkness.

  There was a cold wind coming across the water and it blew ravelled strips of dark cloud across the stars. There was a waning moon which helped the gondolier to see the bank. It was a long way. Ishraq wrapped her cloak tightly around her and pulled her veil over her mouth for warmth as well as modesty.

  ‘Here,’ Giuseppe said finally. ‘Here is where the galleys are moored overnight when they wait for repair.’

  Luca stood up and the gondola rocked, perilously.

  ‘Sit down,’ Giuseppe said. ‘What is the name of the captain?’

  Ishraq turned to tell him: ‘Bayeed.’

  ‘From Istanbul?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Giuseppe pointed to a long low building. ‘The galley crews sleep in there,’ he said. ‘The master goes into town. He will come back at dawn, perhaps.’

  ‘In there?’ Luca looked with horror at the building, the barred windows, the bolted doors.

  ‘Sentry on the door,’ Freize remarked quietly. ‘Sword in his belt, probably a handgun too. What d’you want to do?’

  ‘I just want to see him,’ Luca said passionately. ‘I can’t be so near him and not see him!’

  ‘Why don’t we try bribing the sentry?’ Ishraq suggested. ‘Perhaps Signor Vero could come to the window?’

  ‘I’ll go,’ Freize said.

  ‘I’ll go,’ Ishraq overruled him. ‘He won’t draw his sword on a woman. You can watch out for me.’

  Luca fumbled in his pocket and found Isolde’s two rings. ‘Here.’

  Ishraq took them, recognised them at once. ‘She gave you her mother’s rings?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Distracted, Luca dismissed the importance of the gift. ‘Go to him, Ishraq. See what you can do.’

  Giuseppe brought the gondola to the quayside. Ishraq went up the steps and walked towards the sentry, careful to keep in the middle of the quay so that he could see her slow progress towards him, spreading her hands so that he could see she was carrying no weapon.

  ‘Masaa Elkheir,’ she called from a distance, speaking Arabic.

  He put his hand to his sword. ‘Keep back,’ he said. ‘You’re a long way from home, girl.’

  ‘You too, warrior,’ she said deferentially. ‘But I would have words with you. My master wants to speak with one of the galley slaves. He will pay you, if you allow such a thing, for your kindness. He is a faranj, a foreigner and a Christian, and it is his father who is enslaved. He longs to see the face of his father. It would be a kindness to let them speak together through the window. It would be a good deed. And you would be well rewarded.’

  ‘How well rewarded?’ the man asked. ‘And I want none of the English nobles. I know they are as precious as sand. Don’t try to cheat me.’

  In answer she held up a golden ring. ‘This to let him come to the window,’ she said. ‘The same again as we sail away safely.’

  ‘He must come alone,’ the man stipulated.

  ‘Whatever you say,’ Ishraq said obediently.

  ‘You give me the ring and go back to your gondola and send him. The gondolier and everyone else to stay on board. He can have a few minutes, no more.’

  ‘I agree,’ Ishraq said. She made a gesture to show that she would throw the ring and he snapped his fingers to show that he was ready. Carefully she threw it into his catch, and then went back to the gondola.

  ‘You have a few moments, and he has to have the other ring at the end of your talk,’ she said. ‘But you can go to the window. You can talk for only a few minutes.’

  Luca leapt out of the gondola and was up the steps in a moment. He gave a nod to the sentry and went quickly to the window. It was set high in the wall but there was a barrel nearby. Luca rolled it under the grille, and jumped up on it. Dimly he could see a dark room, filled with sleeping men, and he could smell the stench of exhaustion and illness.

  ‘Gwilliam Vero!’ he said in a hoarse whisper. ‘Gwilliam Vero, are you in there?’

  ‘Who wants him?’ came a muffled reply, and Luca recognised, with a gasp, the accent of his home village, his father’s beloved voice.

  ‘Father, it’s me!’ he cried. ‘Father! It is me, your son Luca.’

  There was a silence and then a scuffling noise, and the sound of a man curse as Gwilliam made his way, stumbling over the sleeping men, to the window. Luca, looking in and downward, could see the pale face of his father looking up from the sunken floor below.

  ‘It’s you,’ Luca said breathlessly. ‘Father!’ He tightened his grip on the bars over the window as he felt his knees weaken beneath him at the sight of his father. ‘Father! It’s me! Luca! Your son!’

  The old man, his skin scorched into leather by the burning sun on the slave galley deck, his face scored with deep lines of pain, peered up at the window where Luca peered in.

  ‘I was trying to ransom you,’ Luca said breathlessly. ‘Bayeed refused the coins. But I will get pure gold. I will buy your freedom. I will come for you.’

  ‘Do you know where your mother is?’ His voice was husky, he rarely spoke these days. When they slaved over the oars, obedient to the beat of the pace-drum, they never spoke. In the evening when they were released to eat there was nothing to say. After the first year he had ceased to weep, after the second year he had stopped praying.

  ‘I am looking for her,’ Luca promised. ‘I swear I will find her and ransom her too.’

  There was a silence. Incredulously, Luca realised that he was within speaking distance of his long-lost father and he had so much to say that he could not find words.

  ‘Are you in pain?’ he asked.

  ‘Always,’ came the grim reply.

  ‘I have missed you and my mother,’ Luca said quietly.

  The man choked on his sore throat and spat. ‘You must think of me as dead to you,’ was all he said. ‘I believe I am dead and gone to hell.’

  ‘I won’t think of you as dead,’ Luca exclaimed passionately. ‘I will ransom you and return you to our farm. You will live again, as you used to live. We will be happy.’

  ‘I can’t think of it,’ his father flatly refused. ‘I would go mad if I thought of it. Go, son, leave me in hell. I cannot dream of freedom.’

  ‘But I—’

  ‘No,’ came the stern reply.

  ‘Father!’

  ‘Don’t call me Father,’ he said chillingly. ‘You have no Father. I am dead to you and you to me. I cannot think of your world and your hopes and your plans. I can only think about today and tonight, and then the next one. The only hope that I have is that I will die tonight and this will end.’

  He turned to go back into the darkness of the prison, Luca saw the scars from the whip on his back. ‘Father! Don’t go! Of course I will call you Father, of course I will ransom you. You can hope! I will never leave you. I will never stop looking for you. I am your son!’

  ‘You’re a changeling.’ Gwilliam Vero rounded on Luca. ‘No son of mine. You said you would ransom me but you have not done so. You say you will come again but I cannot bear to hope. Do you understand that, Stranger? I cannot bear to hope. I don’t want to think of my farm and my son and my wife. I will go mad if I think of such things and live like this – in hell. I have no son. You are a stranger. You are a changeling. You have no reason to ransom me. Go away and forget all about me. I am a dead stranger to you, and you are a changeling boy to me.’