Order of Darkness

by Philippa Gregory

  A few people, remembering stories of inexplicable great waves in fairy tales and folk stories, felt the chill of old fears at their backs, and turned and started to run. Their panic was infectious, and in moments the quayside was empty, people banging into their houses and bolting the doors, climbing to the upper windows to look out towards the sea, other people running past them, up the steep streets to the highest point of the village, to the walls around the landward side of the town, some taking shelter in the church and climbing up the stone steps of the bell tower to look out to sea. A few women ran against the terrified crowd, down to the quayside, shading their eyes against the dazzle of bright sunshine on wet mud, calling their children’s names, begging them to come away from the crusade, to come home.

  What they saw made them moan with horror. On the dry bed of the harbour, advancing in a ragged half-circle, as if going to dance hand-in-hand, were the children, singing as they went, certain of salvation. And, beyond them, far away towards the horizon, but coming closer with incredible speed, was the white crest of a great wave, higher than a tree, higher than a house, as high as the church tower itself, as fast as a galloping horse. The children, looking to Johann, or with their eyes on heaven, did not see it, did not see anything. They only understood their danger when they started to feel it. The water which had been sucking away from under their feet so they were triumphantly dry-shod on the sea bed, started to gurgle and flow forwards again. The smaller children were knee deep in moments; they looked down, and cried out, but their voices were drowned in the singing.

  They pulled on the hands of the bigger children beside them, trying to get their attention, but the children swung hands gladly, and went on. Then they all heard it. Over the sound of their own canticle they heard the deep terrible roar of the sea.

  When they looked up, they saw the wave coming towards them, heard its full-throated rage, and knew that the water that had flowed away so quickly, emptying the harbour in mere moments, had turned on them and was coming back as one wave, as one great surge. At once, some of them cried out and spun around, broke the line and tried to run, thigh deep in water, as if they dreamed that they could outrun the sea. But most of them stood stock still, holding each other’s little hands and watching, open-mouthed, as the wall of the wave powered up to them and then fell down upon them and buried them in full fathoms in a second.

  Moments later it hit the town. Boats that had been beached on the floor of the harbour were now thrown roof-high, tossed up and dropped down again. The first wave hit the quayside wall and crashed upwards like an eruption, and then, terrifyingly, beyond reason, flowed on, out of its bounds, rushing past houses, up alleyways, towards the market square where no sea had ever been. The quayside disappeared at once underwater, the panes of the windows of the inn smashing in a fusilade, as the waves breached the walls and poured inside the inn, into all the quayside houses. In Ishraq and Isolde’s bedroom the two girls flinched back as the windows splintered like ice in a flood and the water poured in; they were waist deep in seconds and yet the wave still came on, the water still rose.

  ‘This way,’ Luca yelled beside them. He kicked out the frame of the window. Wood and the remaining horn panes of the window whirled away as the sea thrust him backwards. Soon the water in the room was up to their shoulders, Ishraq and Isolde off their feet, and flailing in the icy seawater as they gripped each other’s hands, bobbing in the turbulence as the waves crashed into the little room and washed out again. Isolde dropped the broadsword, it fell like a lance in the murky water.

  Luca swam towards Isolde, the current pushing them deeper into the room and away from the torrent surging in the open window. ‘Take a breath!’ he shouted, and with his arm around her shoulders, he dragged her under the water as if he would drown her. She slipped from his grip and went like an eel through the broken aperture to the raging water outside. He bobbed up and saw Brother Peter supporting Ishraq, both of them, faces raised to the ceiling of the room, mouths upturned, snatching at the last inches of air.

  ‘We have to get out of the window!’ he shouted. He gulped air, grabbed at Ishraq and thrust her deep down into the water of the room. He felt her struggle and then turn towards him and he pushed her clumsily towards the open window and swam behind her, forcing her on. A hand on his foot told him that Peter was following them.

  Luca had his eyes open underwater, though all he could see was a swirl of grey and all he could hear was the ravenous roar of the wave as it reclaimed the land. But then he saw that the faint square of the window was blocked, and he realised that Ishraq was not through, she was caught.

  Her gown had snagged on one of the broken spars of the window; she was trapped inside the broken window frame deep below the water. Luca shot up for the ceiling of the room again, snatched a breath and dived down. He could see air pouring from her mouth in a stream of silver, as her hands struggled with the gown. Luca swam towards her, grabbed hold of her shoulders, and when she turned her face to him, pressed his mouth to hers, desperately giving her air from his mouth to hers. For a moment they were locked together, gripping like lovers as he breathed into her lungs and then he kicked up to the ceiling again, snatched at a breath, his lips against the roof beams, then he dived down again. He was afraid she was still caught. Then he saw her shrug, like a snake sloughing a skin, like a beautiful mermaid, and she was out of her gown and her chemise was a flash of white and she escaped through the hole of the window and was outside, leaving her gown waving in the flood like a drowned ghost.

  Ishraq, Luca, and Brother Peter burst, choking and desperately heaving for air, into a terrifying open sea, an ocean where the village had been, with nothing around them but little islands of roofs and chimneys, the current snatching them at once and dragging them inland.

  ‘Take my cloak!’ came a scream from above.

  Ishraq looked up, choking, fighting against the rush of water which was peeling her away from the roof of the inn and rushing her inland, and saw Isolde, clinging to the chimney of the inn with one hand and reaching down with the other. She was holding out her cloak twisted like a rope towards them. Ishraq grabbed it and pulled herself towards the roof, fighting the current that threatened to tear her away. She could feel the overlapping tiles like slippery steps under her scrabbling feet and hands. Clinging like a monkey, Ishraq gripped the twisted cape and swarmed up the steep slope of the roof, buffeted by the waves, crawling through the rough water, getting higher and higher until she made it into the dry on the very apex of the roof, followed by Brother Peter, and then Luca. All four of them sat astride the roof, as if they were riding it, while the crash of the water below made the building sway, and the terrifying swiftness of the surge flung loose ships at the height of chimneys towards them. They clung together in the boil and terrible noise of the flood and prayed to their own gods.

  ‘If the building goes . . .’ Brother Peter shouted in Luca’s ear.

  ‘We should rope together,’ Luca said. He took their capes and knotted them into a line. The girls wrapped their arms around the middle section. They all knew that they were preparing for little more than drowning together.

  ‘See if we can catch some driftwood,’ Luca shouted at Brother Peter.

  Brother Peter said no more. They watched in horror as lumber and wreckage, uprooted trees and an overturned market stall thudded into the wall of the inn, and the roof below them. They heard the roof shed its tiles into the water and felt the roof beams shift. An old wooden chest bobbed up from out of the attic below them and Luca reached out and grabbed hold of it, struggling to hold it against the current. ‘If you fall in the water, you must hang on to this!’ he shouted at the two girls, who were clinging to each other as they realised that if the building collapsed the old chest would not save them, they would go down, tumbled among roof beams and tiles, certain to drown.

  Isolde leaned down and put her face against the ridge tiles of the inn, closing her eyes against the terror of the boiling flood around her, whispe
ring her prayers over and over by rote, the words of her childhood, though she was too frightened to think. Ishraq stared wide-eyed as the sea boiled around them, watched the waters thrust and break on the roof, as they rose steadily higher. She looked at Luca and at Brother Peter, watched Luca struggling to hold the wooden chest balanced on the roof and saw that it might support her and Isolde but that the men would be lost. She gritted her teeth, and watched the rising water, trying to measure its height, as the waves broke against the roof, each time coming a little closer to them. A sudden eddy would make a high wave break over her feet and she could see Isolde flinch as the cold water snatched at her foot, but then the dip between the waves would make it seem as if it was ebbing. Ishraq held her foot very still and counted the unsteady roof tiles between her foot and the water. She glanced over at Luca and saw that he was doing the same thing. Both of them were desperately hoping that the wave was at its full height, that the flood had run inland and was now steadying, both of them trying to calculate the rise of the waters to know how long before they would be hopelessly engulfed.

  Luca met her eyes. ‘It’s still rising,’ he said flatly.

  She nodded in agreement and pointed. ‘It’s two tiles below me now, and before it was three.’

  ‘It will be over the roof in an hour,’ Luca calculated. ‘We’ll have to be ready to swim.’

  She nodded, knowing that it was a death sentence, and crept a little closer to Isolde. And then, slowly, after what felt like long, long hours, the waters started to become still. The sea coiling and recoiling like a wild river around the town flowed through ancient streets, spat out of hearths, swirled through windows, gurgled in chimneys; but the incoming roar of the wave fell silent, the groan of the earth was finished, and the water steadied, one tile below Ishraq’s bare foot.

  Somewhere, all alone, a bird started to sing, calling for its lost mate.

  ‘Where’s Freize?’ Luca suddenly asked.

  The group’s slowly dawning relief at their own escape suddenly turned into nauseous fear. Luca, still clenching his knees on the sides of the roof, raised himself up and shaded his eyes against the bright sunshine. He looked out to sea, and then down to the quayside. ‘I saw him running out towards the children,’ he said.

  ‘He turned some of them back. They got into the inn yard,’ Isolde replied in a small voice. ‘I saw that.’

  ‘He turned around,’ Brother Peter said. ‘He was coming back in, carrying a little girl.’

  Isolde let out a shuddering sob. ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘What just happened?’

  Nobody answered her. Nobody knew. Luca tied his cloak to the chimney, and using it to steady himself like a rope, climbed down the steeply sloping roof, kicking his booted feet between the displaced tiles. He looked down. The water level was falling now, as the sea flowed away. It was below the window of the girls’ room. He held on to the end of the cloak and got his feet onto the sill of their smashed window.

  ‘Climb down to me,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you in.’

  Brother Peter gripped Isolde’s hands and lowered her down the rope of capes towards Luca, who held tight to her legs, her waist and her shoulders as she scrabbled over him and dropped into the room, knee deep in flood water. Ishraq followed, naked but for her linen chemise. Brother Peter came last.

  The girls’ bedroom was draining fast, the water sluicing through the gaps in the floorboards to the room below, as the water level all over the village dropped and the sea drained out of houses, down the higher streets and gurgled in drains and watercourses.

  ‘You’d better stay here,’ Luca said to Ishraq and Isolde. ‘It may be bad downstairs.’

  ‘We’ll come,’ Isolde decided. ‘I don’t want to be trapped in here again.’

  Ishraq shuddered at the wet chaos that had been their room. ‘This is unbearable.’

  They had to force the door; Luca kicked it open. It was crooked in its frame as the whole house had shifted under the impact of the wave. They went down the stairs that were awash with dirt and weed and debris, and slippery underfoot. The whole house which had smelled so comfortingly of cooking and woodsmoke and old wine only a few hours ago, was dank and wet, and filled with the noise of water rushing away, and of loud dripping, as if it were an underwater cave and not an inn at all. Ishraq shuddered and reached for Isolde. ‘Can you hear it? Is it coming again? Let’s get outside.’

  Downstairs was even worse, the ground floor chest deep in water. They held hands to wade through the kitchen and out into the yard. Isolde had a sudden horror that she would step on a drowned man, or that a dead hand would clasp round her foot. She shuddered and Luca looked around at her. ‘Are you sure that you wouldn’t rather wait upstairs?’

  ‘I want to be outside,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear the smell.’

  Outside in the stable yard was the terrible sight of drowned horses in their stalls, their heads lolling over the stable doors where they had scrabbled and reared, gasping for air; but the innkeeper was there, miraculously alive. ‘I was on the top of the haystack,’ he said, almost crying with relief. ‘On the very top, chucking down some hay, when the sea came over my yard wall, higher than my house, and just dropped down on me like an avalanche. Knocked me flat but knocked me down on the hay. I breathed in hay while it battered down on me and then it tore me to the stable roof, and when I stopped swimming and put down my feet, I was on an island! God be praised, I saw fishing ships sail over my stable yard, and I am here to say it.’

  ‘We were on the roof,’ Ishraq volunteered. ‘The sea came rushing in.’

  ‘God help us all! And the little children?’

  ‘They were walking out to sea,’ Isolde said quietly. ‘God bless and keep them.’

  He did not understand. ‘Walking on the quayside?’

  ‘Walking on the harbour floor. They thought the sea had dried up for them. They walked out towards the wave as it came in.’

  ‘The sea went out as Johann said it would?’

  ‘And then came in again,’ Luca said grimly.

  They were all silent for a moment with the horror of it.

  ‘They swam?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Luca said.

  ‘Some of them came back,’ Ishraq said. ‘Freize sent some of them back. Did you see them?’

  The innkeeper was stunned. ‘I thought they were playing a game, they ran through the yard. I shouted at them for disturbing the horses, they were kicking and rearing in their stalls. I didn’t know. Dear God, I didn’t know. I didn’t understand what they were shouting, or why the horses were so upset.’

  ‘Nobody knew,’ Isolde said. ‘How could we?’

  ‘Did Freize come in with the children?’ Luca demanded.

  ‘Not that I saw. Have you seen my wife?’ the man asked.

  They shook their heads.

  ‘Everyone will be at the church,’ the innkeeper said. ‘People will be looking for each other there. Let’s go up the hill to the church. Pray God that it has been spared and we find our loved ones there.’

  They came out of the yard of the inn and paused at the quayside. The harbour was ruined. Every house that stood on the quayside was battered as if it had been bombarded, with windows torn away, doors flung open and some roofs missing, water draining from their gaping windows and doors. The ships which had been anchored in the port had been flung up and down on the wave, some washed out to sea, some thrown inland to cause more damage. The iron ring on the quay where their ship had been tied was empty, its ropes dangling down into the murky water. The gangplank had been washed far away, and their ship and the horses and Freize were gone. Where it had grounded on the harbour floor was now an angry swirl of deep water – it was unbelievable that this had ever been dry, even for a moment.

  ‘Freize!’ Luca cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled despairingly into the harbour, towards the town, and back over the sea again.

  There was no answering shout, only the terrible agitated slapping of the sea, washing to
o high, against the harbour wall, like a familiar dog which has risen up and savaged terribly and now settles back down again.

  The church was a scene of families greeting each other, others crying and calling over the heads of the crowd for missing children. Some of the fishing ships had been at sea when the wave had risen and some people thought that they might have been able to ride out the storm; the older men, who had heard of stories of a monster wave, shook their heads and said that such a wall of water was too steep for a little boat to climb. Many people were sitting silently on the benches which ran all round the side of the church, their heads bowed over their hands in fervent prayer while their clothes streamed water onto the stone floor.

  When the wave had hit the town some people had got to the higher ground in time – the church was safe, the water had rushed through it at knee height, and anything west and north of the market square was untouched by the flood. Many people had clung to something and had the wave wash over them, half-drown them but rush on, leaving them choking and terrified but safe. Some had been torn away by the force of the water, turning over and over in the flood that took them as if they were twigs in a river in spate, and their families put wet candles in the drenched candle stands for them. Nobody could light candles. The candle which had burned on the altar to show the presence of God had blown out in the blast of air that came before the wave. The church felt desolate and cold without it, godforsaken. The priest, Father Benito, was missing.

  Luca, desperate for something to do to help restore the village to normal life, went to the priest’s house and took a flint and, finding some dry stuff in a high cupboard, lit a fire in the kitchen grate so that people could come and take a candle flame or taper and spread the warmth throughout the drowned village. He took a burning taper into the church and went behind the rood screen to the altar to light the candle.

  ‘Send Freize back to me,’ he whispered as the little flame flickered into life. ‘Spare all Your children. Show mercy to us all. Forgive us for our sins and let the waters go back to the deep. But save Freize. Send my beloved Freize back to me.’