Order of Darkness

by Philippa Gregory

  The new cemetery had been made beyond the church, just outside the walls of Piccolo, on newly-consecrated ground beyond the north gate. It was overlooking the sea, and here the gravediggers stood around, leaning on their spades, beside a great hole, dug deep and wide for all the children to be laid together, just as they had rolled up together in sleep when they were following Johann and believed themselves to be blessed. Isolde took one look as the men laid the little shrouded bodies gently in the bottom of the wide trench, and then led Rosa to stand behind the priest, where his robes, billowing in the wind from the sea, hid the view of the grave and the little bodies bundled together.

  Father Benito read the service for burial, his voice clear over the constant crying of the seagulls, and the more distant noise of people sweeping their houses, cleaning their wet rooms, and repairing roofs and windows all over the town. Half a dozen people attended the little service, and as they walked away from the gravediggers, filling in the great hole with the dusty soil of the region, the priest promised that he would commission a stone monument to name the children as the pilgrims who walked into the sea. ‘If you ever come back here, you will see that we have not forgotten them,’ he said to Brother Peter. ‘Nor our own losses.’

  ‘D’you know yet how many of the townspeople are missing?’ Luca asked quietly.

  The priest crossed himself. ‘About twenty people,’ he said. ‘And half a dozen of our own children. It is a terrible blow but this is a community of people who experience terrible blows, very often. In a bad plague year we would lose that number. If there is a storm which catches the fishermen at sea we might lose a ship or even two, five or six fathers lost at sea and five or six families thrown into grief and want. When the Black Death came through here a century ago, the village was emptied – half of them dead in a month, the fields barren of crops because there was no one to plant, the fish spawned in the sea without fishermen! God sends these things to try us; but this week He has sent us a trial indeed.’

  ‘A curse on them not a blessing!’ they heard a woman pantingly scream, running up the stone steps, out of the little town gate, and then ploughing breathlessly up the hill towards them, her gown bunched up in her fist, her hair wildly loose, her face ugly with grief. ‘Let Satan drag them down to hell! You should have thrown their bodies over the cliff, not given them a grave in sacred ground. Curse them all!’

  ‘What’s this?’ the priest spread his arms wide and intercepted her as if she were a runaway horse, halfway up the hill. ‘What’s this, Mistress Ricci? What are you doing running around like this? For shame, Mrs Ricci! Calm yourself!’

  She glared wildly around, it was obvious that she hardly saw him. ‘They should be flung in the sea not buried with rites!’ she cried. ‘Beware. They are the storm-bringers! You are honouring our murderers! Demons! Every one of them!’

  Half a dozen people, some coming down the hill from the simple funeral, others attracted from inside the village by the noise at the gate, started to gather around. ‘Storm-bringers?’ somebody repeated, a note of fear in their voice. ‘Storm-bringers?’

  ‘Devils,’ she said flatly. ‘These false children, saying that they were on a crusade! Weren’t they storm-bringers all along? Pretending to a holy quest, just to trick us? Were they mortals at all, that they appeared here without so much as a father or mother between them? Led by a boy as beautiful as an angel but with strange sea-blue eyes? And we gave them bread, and meat and cheese and they unleashed this horror on us? And now my son is missing at sea and my husband too, and the storm-bringers have destroyed our peace. And you dare to bless them? And bury them like Christians? Giving them our ground just as we gave them our own kin?’

  The priest exchanged one anxious glance with Luca.

  ‘What is she talking about?’ Luca asked quickly.

  ‘This is a fishing town, dependent on the sea for their livelihood, dependent on good weather for their safety,’ Father Benito answered him. ‘They cling to the belief that there are storm-bringers who can make spells and call up bad weather.’

  ‘They believe this as a truth?’ Luca whispered. ‘A literal truth? They think that people can whistle up a wind, bring down a storm?’

  ‘They have seen such things.’ Father Benito spread his hands. ‘Inquirer, I can tell you on oath. I have seen such things. I saw a woman call up a storm onto the mast of the ship of a man she hated. I saw it with my own eyes: the woman swore a curse on him as his ship sailed from port, and the one deckhand who swam to safety spoke of cold terrible lights dancing around the mast until the ship went down.’

  ‘We have had a crusade of storm-bringers, God help us,’ the woman cried out. ‘And then you bury them in holy ground?’

  The priest turned to her. ‘Mistress Ricci, the children were drowned as innocents. They were on a holy crusade. They were singing hymns as they walked out to sea.’

  She shot a pointing finger at Rosa. ‘All of them?’ she demanded, her face twisted with cunning. ‘Were they all drowned? Or did some of them cause the wave but then escape scot-free? Is there not, right here, a little girl who was one of the first into town and begging for bread, and yet she ran through the town ahead of the wave, silent – not warning anyone – and now here she is at the funeral of the others? Rejoicing in her work? Taunting us? Who is she? And what’s she going to do next? Bring down thunder? A plague? Are snakes going to come out of her hair? Frogs from her mouth?’

  ‘Now, that’s enough,’ Isolde commanded quietly, stepping forwards to shield the little girl. ‘She’s just a child. I am sorry for your grief, Mrs Ricci, but we have all lost someone we love. We must comfort each other . . .’

  ‘But who are they?’ Mrs Ricci looked from Isolde’s sympathetic face to Luca. ‘And how can you be so sure that they are mortal children? All very well for you to say that she is a child, that they were mortal children, but they didn’t act like mortal children. They came without parents, from who knows where! Did they not call up the great wave and ride away on it? Like the storm people they are?’

  The priest shook his head sorrowfully, raised his hand in blessing and turned away from the angry woman, refusing to answer her questions. He made his way through the little gate into the town, but nothing would discourage Mrs Ricci, and now the wise women were beside her, staring at Rosa and clenching their hands in the gesture against witchcraft.

  ‘This is ridiculous,’ Isolde drew Rosa to her side, then went to follow the priest. At once the three women darted forward and started to close the gate against her. Ishraq stepped quickly forwards and took the weight of the wooden door, pushing back against the angry women, her dark gaze on Mrs Ricci. ‘Don’t,’ she advised briefly. The three women, cowed by Ishraq’s gaze and the strong push at the gate, gave way and Isolde and Rosa walked through it into the town, Ishraq closely behind them as if on guard.

  ‘No, wait,’ a man said, putting a hand out to delay Father Benito as he headed for the church. ‘Not so fast, Father. Answer the women. What they say is true. There were children who ran back into town ahead of the flood. How did they know to run? Some of them got clear away?’

  ‘Did they warn the others?’ another man asked. ‘Did they warn us? No! They didn’t!’

  Another woman nodded. ‘They ran in silence,’ she said. ‘One went past me and never said one word of what was coming.’

  Rosa’s cold hand crept into Isolde’s palm. ‘We were just running away,’ she whispered.

  Ishraq stepped up beside Isolde, putting the child between them as if to protect the little girl from the increasingly angry crowd that was now blocking the lane from the church, their voices echoing loudly in the narrow street. Father Benito went on through them, and climbed the steps to the church turning to see more people joining the crowd from the market square, people coming out of their houses, still dirty from their work of salvage and repair, their faces suspicious and fearful.

  ‘Did they not tempt our children into the harbour with their promises? Did they not
bear false witness and lure us on? And then the wave came. What about their leader, Johann? Have we seen his body? Or did he go sailing back into the clouds having called up the wave to drown us all?’

  ‘That’s right!’ someone said from the back of the crowd. ‘We don’t know who they were, and they came just before the wave.’

  ‘They called up the wave!’ someone shouted. ‘You’re right, Mistress Ricci! They brought the wave down on us!’

  ‘I will have vengeance!’ Mrs Ricci raised her voice above the growing murmur of the crowd. ‘I swear I will have vengeance for my son and for my husband! I will see the bringers of storms burned as witches and their ashes scattered into their own storm winds.’

  Isolde flinched at the words and tightened her grip on Rosa, who crept as close as she could get, as if she would hide under Isolde’s rough cape. Luca and Brother Peter went up the steps of the church to Father Benito, readying themselves to face the crowd, to try to calm them. Luca glanced across to see Ishraq rise gently to her toes, as if preparing for a fight.

  ‘Now let’s all be calm,’ Luca said firmly, pitching his voice so that it could be heard over the crowd and the mad crying of the seagulls. ‘I am an Inquirer, appointed by the Pope himself. I have been sent out into Christendom to make a map of fears, and if your good Father Benito agrees that we should hold an inquiry into this strange and frightening flood then I will do so here.’

  The crowd rounded on their priest. ‘Call an inquiry!’ someone shouted. ‘Name the wicked ones!’

  Father Benito paused. ‘You want me to ask an Inquirer of the Holy Father’s own order to ask why the sea should surge into Piccolo?’ he asked sceptically. ‘Why don’t I ask him what makes rain? Or why thunder is so loud?’

  ‘You laugh at her grief?’ one of the wise women accused him, pointing to Mrs Ricci. ‘You won’t answer her? You won’t even hear us?’

  The angry murmur of the crowd rose into a roar of outrage. Father Benito saw that there was no reasoning with them like this. He glanced at Luca and surrendered. ‘Very well. As you wish. Brother Luca Vero – would you hold an inquiry? We should hear what these good women have to say. It will be better for us all if all the fears are spoken aloud and you can tell us if there was anything that we could have done to prevent the flood.’

  ‘There!’ Another of the wise women was triumphant. ‘We will name the guilty ones!’

  ‘I will inquire into the cause of this wave, and I will tell the Pope what I decide.’ Luca ruled. ‘If anyone has caused it, I will see that they are charged with causing such a disaster, and I will see that they are punished.’

  ‘Burned,’ Mrs Ricci insisted. ‘And the ashes blown away on the storm wind that they called up.’

  ‘I will see that justice is done,’ he promised, but his level tones only angered her more. She dived towards him and snatched at his hands, shouting furiously into his young face. ‘You know there are witches who call up storms? You know this?’

  Luca had to force himself not to flinch away from her. ‘I know that many people believe this. I haven’t found anyone guilty of such a thing myself. But I have read of it.’

  ‘Read of it!’ someone said scornfully. ‘You’ve just seen it happen! What book can tell you what has just happened to us? What book was ever written that speaks of a wave that destroys a town, on a sunny day? For no reason?’

  Luca looked around; the little crowd around them was steadily growing in number, as more and more people came up from the market square, and stepped out of the doorways of their houses. They were no longer pale with grief, shocked into silence; they were angry and becoming dangerous, looking for someone to blame for their tragedy.

  ‘I think there may be books which tell of this,’ he said carefully. ‘I have not read them myself, it is the wisdom of the ancients which the Arabs have in their libraries. This is something that we should understand, so as to make ourselves safe. I will consider carefully what you, and everyone else has to say. I will start my inquiry this afternoon, at the inn.’

  ‘You should start there indeed,’ one of the midwives from the church said pointedly. ‘That’s the very place to start. You could start in the inn, in the upper room, in the attic bedroom.’

  ‘What?’ Luca asked baffled at the sudden rise of hostility in her voice, at the meaning of her accusation.

  She raised a pointing finger. The crowd was silent, watching as she slowly turned around until she was facing Ishraq and Isolde, the little girl Rosa between them. At once there was a ripple of approval.

  ‘Name them!’ someone said.

  ‘Go on!’

  ‘Name the storm-bringers!’

  ‘The upper room,’ she said. ‘The safe room. Safe for them, up there, calling up a storm; calling up a terrible wave and then sailing up to perch on the roof like seagulls while the flood drowned us mere mortals beneath them.’

  ‘They didn’t fly up to the roof!?’

  ‘Didn’t they wait out the storm safe and high above the town?’

  ‘I can vouch for these two ladies,’ Luca interrupted. ‘I was on the roof myself.’

  ‘You said yourself that the Arabs knew how the waves were caused . . .’

  ‘I said they had the books, they are books from the ancients . . .’

  ‘She’s an Arab! Isn’t she? Does she know Arab learning? Does she know how to call up a wave?’

  Ishraq stepped forward to defend herself, her dark eyes blazing, as Luca put up his hand to command silence. ‘This young woman is well-known to me,’ he said. ‘She is in the household of the Lord of Lucretili, a Crusader Lord, a Christian Lord. There is no question that she could have done anything wrong. I can promise you . . .’

  There was a sudden swirl of seagulls, disturbed from feeding on the flooded rubbish of the town, and they spiraled upwards into the sky, screaming their wild calls, right above the heads of the crowd.

  ‘The souls of the drowned!’ someone exclaimed.

  Several women crossed themselves.

  ‘Calling for justice!’

  ‘I can promise . . .’ Luca went on.

  ‘You can’t,’ one of the wise women cut disdainfully through his speech. ‘For you don’t know the half of it. You were talking to Johann the Pilgrim, blind as a fool, when the two young women were outside the walls of the town calling up a storm in the green lake.’

  There was a murmur of real consternation. A woman drew back from Ishraq and spat on the ground before her. Half the women of the crowd crossed their fingers, putting their thumb between the second and third finger to make the old sign against witchcraft, making their hands into fists.

  ‘The green lake?’ someone demanded. ‘What were they doing there?’

  ‘What is this?’ Brother Peter asked stepping forward.

  The old woman did not retreat, but her friend joined her and they both stood beside Mrs Ricci, their faces contorted with hate. ‘We saw them,’ she said so loudly that the newcomers at the very back of the crowd could hear every word of her damning accusation. ‘We saw the two young women, dressed so dainty and looking so innocent. Slipping out of town as night fell and coming back all wet in darkness. They went to the green lake and summoned a storm at twilight. And the next day the wave came. The young women called the wave up that night, and next day the bad children led our children into its path.’

  ‘Of course we did not!’ Isolde burst out, looking round at the pinched angry faces. ‘You must be mad to think such a thing!’

  ‘Mad?’ someone shouted. ‘It is you that are mad to bring such a thing down on us!’

  ‘Calling up a storm in the green lake, leading our children out to drown. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” ’

  ‘Yes!’ a man shouted from the back of the crowd. ‘The Bible itself says: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!” ’

  The mass of people pressed closer to the two young women and the little girl between them. Rosa dived beneath Isolde’s cloak and clung around her waist, cr
ying for fear. Isolde was as white as the kerchief over her hair. Ishraq stepped in front of her, spread her hands, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to fight.

  Luca spread his arms, raised his voice. ‘These are my friends,’ he declared. ‘And we have lost our own friend to the sea, just as you have lost your dear ones. You cannot think that these young women would call up a wave that would drown our friend.’

  ‘I do think it,’ Mrs Ricci hurled the words at him. ‘We all think it. It is you who are misled. How will you hold an inquiry if you will not ask the most important questions? What were they doing in the lake?’

  Baffled, Luca turned to Isolde. ‘What were you doing in the lake?’

  She flushed red with anger that he should interrogate her before this crowd. ‘How dare you ask me?’

  His temper flared with his fear of the crowd. ‘Of course I ask you! Don’t be such a fool! Answer me at once! What were you doing?’

  ‘We were washing,’ she said, disdainful of him, of the crowd. ‘We went for a wash.’

  ‘Washing!’ the women scoffed. ‘In the green lake? As night fell? They are storm-bringers, you can see it in their faces.’

  There was a dangerous roar of agreement from the crowd and it encouraged the wise women on the attack.

  ‘You will name the storm-bringers?’ the woman pressed Luca. ‘These women who came with you, and the child who came later, their little accomplice? You will try all three of them?’

  ‘It was the children and the two women who called up the wave. That child would know. You must question her,’ a man commanded from the back of the crowd, his jacket dirty with sludge from baling out his house. ‘And we will burn all three of them together.’

  ‘Yes!’ a new woman agreed with him. ‘If they are guilty we will drown all three of them in our own harbour.’

  Rosa’s little hand clenched onto Isolde’s steady grip. ‘What are they saying?’ she whispered. ‘What do they think we have done?’

  ‘I assure you these women are innocent,’ Luca began. ‘And the child also.’