Order of Darkness Read online

  ‘I found him staggering in the yard just now on my way to Lauds. When I got him into the infirmary he fainted. I was coming to wake you and Brother Peter.’

  ‘Take me to him.’

  She turned, and Freize staggered after her into the long low room. There were about ten beds arranged on both sides of the room, poor pallet beds of straw with unbleached sacking thrown over them. Only one was occupied. It was Luca – deathly pale, eyes shut, breathing lightly.

  ‘Dearest saints!’ Freize murmured, in an agony of anxiety. ‘Little lord, speak to me!’

  Slowly Luca opened his hazel eyes. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Praise God, it is. Thank Our Lady that it is, as ever it was.’

  ‘I heard you shout and then I fell down the stairs,’ he said, his speech muffled by the bruise on his mouth.

  ‘I heard you come down like a sack of kindling,’ confirmed Freize. ‘Dearest saints, when I heard you hit the floor! And someone hit me . . .’

  ‘I feel like the damned in hell.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Sleep then, we’ll talk in the morning.’

  Luca closed his eyes. The Lady Almoner approached. ‘Let me bathe your wounds.’ She was holding a bowl with a white linen cloth, and there was a scent of lavender and crushed leaves of arnica. Freize allowed himself to be persuaded onto another bed.

  ‘Were you attacked in your beds?’ she asked him. ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Freize said, too stunned by the blow to make anything up. Besides, she could see the open door to the storeroom as well as he, and she had found Luca in the yard. ‘I can’t remember anything,’ he said lamely and, as she dabbed and exclaimed at the bruises and scratches on his face, he stretched out under the luxury of a woman’s care, and fell fast asleep.

  Freize woke to a very grey cold dawn. Luca was snoring slightly on the opposite bed, a little snuffle followed by a long relaxed whistle. Freize lay listening to the penetrating noise for some time before he opened his eyes, and then he blinked and raised himself up onto his arm. He could not believe what he saw. The bed next to him was now occupied by a nun, laid on her back, her face as white as her hood, which was pushed back exposing her clammy shaven head. Her fingers, enfolded in a position of prayer on her completely still breast, were blue, the fingernails rimmed as if with ink. But worst of all were her eyes, which were horribly open, the pupils dilated black in black. She was completely still. She was clearly – even to Freize’s inexperienced frightened stare – dead.

  A praying nun knelt at her feet, endlessly murmuring the rosary. Another knelt by her head, muttering the same prayers. The narrow bed was ringed with candles, which illuminated the scene like a tableau of martyrdom. Freize sat up, certain that he was dreaming, hoping that he was dreaming, pinched himself in the hope of waking, and put his feet on the floor, silently cursing the thudding in his head, not daring to stand yet. ‘Sister, God bless you. What happened to the poor girl?’

  The nun at the head of the bed did not speak until she finished the prayer but looked at him with eyes that were dark with unshed tears. ‘She died in her sleep,’ she said eventually. ‘We don’t know why.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Freize crossed himself with a sudden superstitious fear that it was one of the nuns who had come to give evidence to their inquiry. ‘Bless her soul and keep her.’

  ‘Sister Augusta,’ she said, a name he did not know.

  He stole a quick glance at the white cold face and recoiled from the blackness of her dead gaze.

  ‘Saint’s sake! Why have you not closed her eyes and weighted them?’

  ‘They won’t close,’ the nun at the foot of the bed said, trembling. ‘We have tried and tried. They won’t close.’

  ‘They must do! Why would they not?’

  She spoke in a low monotone: ‘Her eyes are black because she was dreaming of Death again. She was always dreaming of Death. And now He has come for her. Her dark eyes are filled with that last vision, of Him coming for her. That’s why they won’t close, that’s why they are as black as jet. If you look deeply into her terrible black eyes you will see Death himself reflected in them like a mirror. You will see the face of Death looking out at you.’

  The first nun let out a little wail, a cold keening noise. ‘He will come for us all,’ she whispered.

  They both crossed themselves and returned to their muttered prayers as Freize shuddered and bowed his head in a prayer for the dead. Gingerly, he got up and, gritting his teeth against his swimming head, walked cautiously around the nuns to the bed where Luca still snored. He shook his shoulder: ‘Little lord, wake up.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ said Luca groggily.

  ‘Wake up, wake up. One of the nuns is dead.’

  Luca sat up abruptly then held his head and swayed. ‘Was she attacked?’

  Freize nodded at the praying nuns. ‘They say she died in her sleep.’

  ‘Can you see?’ Luca whispered.

  Freize shook his head. ‘She has no head wound, I can’t see anything else.’

  ‘What do they say?’ Luca’s nod indicated the praying nuns who had returned to their devotions. To his surprise, he saw Freize shiver as if a cold wind had touched him.

  ‘They don’t make any sense,’ Freize said, denying the thought that Death was coming for them all.

  Just then, the door opened and the Lady Almoner came in, leading four lay sisters. The nuns at the head and foot of the corpse rose up and stood aside as the women in brown robes carefully lifted the lifeless body onto a rough stretcher, and took it through an arched stone doorway into the neighbouring room.

  ‘That is our mortuary. They will dress her and prepare her for burial tomorrow,’ the Lady Almoner said in reply to Luca’s questioning glance. She was white with strain and fatigue. The nuns took their candles and went to keep their vigil in the cold outer room. Luca saw their shadows jump huge on the stone walls, big as black monsters, as they set down their lights and knelt to pray, then someone closed the door on them.

  ‘What happened to her?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘She died in her sleep,’ the Lady Almoner said. ‘God alone knows what is happening here. When they went to wake her early, for she was to serve at Prime, she was gone. She was cold and stiff and her eyes were fixed open. Who knows what she saw or dreamed, or what came to torment her?’ Quickly she crossed herself and put her hand to the small gold cross that hung from a gold chain on her belt.

  She came closer to Luca and looked into his eyes. ‘And you? Are you dizzy? Or faint?’

  ‘I’ll live,’ he said wryly.

  ‘I’m faint,’ Freize volunteered hopefully.

  ‘I’ll get you some small ale,’ she said, and poured some from a pitcher. She handed them both a cup. ‘Did you see the assassin?’

  ‘Assassin.’ Freize repeated the word, strange to him, which usually meant a hired Arab killer.

  ‘Whoever it was who tried to kill you,’ she amended. ‘And anyway, what were you doing in the storeroom?’

  ‘I was searching for something,’ Luca said evasively. ‘Will you take me there now?’

  ‘We should wait for sunrise,’ she replied.

  ‘You have the keys?’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’

  ‘Then Freize will let us in with his key.’

  The look she gave Freize was very cold. ‘You have a key to my storeroom?’

  Freize nodded, his face a picture of guilt. ‘Just for essential supplies. So as not to be a nuisance.’

  ‘I don’t think you are well enough to walk over there,’ she said to Luca.

  ‘Yes I am,’ he said. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘The stair is broken.’

  ‘Then we’ll get a ladder.’

  She realised that he would insist. ‘I’m afraid. To be honest, I am afraid to go.’

  ‘I understand,’ Luca said with a quick smile. ‘Of course you are. Terrible things happened last night. But you have to