‘They weren’t doing that,’ the boy said flatly. ‘They were just playing about and washing like girls. And anyway, it was the middle of the afternoon.’
‘The porter warned them of the curfew?’
‘He always warns everyone,’ the boy said to a murmur of agreement. ‘He always closes the gate early and he always opens it late. He never keeps time. He always does just what he wants and then tells all of us that we are too late or too early.’
Luca looked around the room, testing his sense that the people were satisfied, that he could declare the inquiry over. He saw the angry spiteful faces of Mrs Ricci and the two wise women, but he also saw the exhaustion in the other people, who were grieving for the children and the loves they had lost, and now felt that they had wasted their time, accusing girls who had done nothing more than walk out of town in the afternoon for a swim.
‘I am satisfied that neither the children of the pilgrimage nor these lady travellers did anything to summon the wave,’ he said. His words were greeted in silence, and then a sigh of agreement. ‘I shall so report,’ he said.
‘I agree,’ said the commander of the sea guard.
‘We agree,’ Father Benito said, rising to his feet and looking around his flock. ‘This is a sorrow which came upon us for no reason that we can yet understand. God forgive us and help us in the future.’
‘And the little girl?’ the landlady asked. She looked to where Isolde was holding Rosa’s hand. ‘She is cleared too?’
‘How can they all three be cleared?’ one of the midwives said irritably.
‘Because they are all three innocent,’ Luca said sternly. ‘There is no evidence against them.’
‘Rosa is innocent of everything,’ Isolde confirmed to the landlady. ‘Can we find a home for her? She is far from her village and all alone in the world.’
The villagers nodded and slowly filed from the church, some of them stopping to light a candle for loved ones who were still missing. Luca nodded to Brother Peter. ‘Perhaps give them all a glass of grappa down at the inn?’ he asked. ‘For good will?’
Brother Peter nodded and whispered the order to the innkeeper who bustled off with his wife. Brother Peter started to collect up his papers. There was a space and a silence for Luca and the two young women.
‘You’re cleared,’ Luca said to them both. ‘Again.’
They smiled a little ruefully. ‘We don’t seek trouble,’ Isolde said.
‘It seems to follow you.’
Ishraq heard the criticism in his voice. ‘If any woman steps outside the common way then she will find trouble,’ she said simply. ‘It does follow us. We have to fight it.’
‘You are thinking about the wave?’ Isolde asked Luca as he watched Brother Peter reading through his notes.
‘This is no report,’ Luca said, frustrated, flicking at the papers with his fingertips. ‘This is nothing. This is a village scandal, a few old women frightening themselves. But the question that they ask is the right one. What caused such a thing? What could make such a great wave happen? I can say that it was not you two – washing in a lake – but I can’t tell them what it was. And most importantly, I can’t tell them if it could happen again. Could it happen again? Tonight, even?’
Isolde crossed herself at once at the thought of such a terror, and Luca lowered his voice so the people leaving the church would not hear.
‘I have been thinking of this too, and I think it may have been an earthquake, the fall of a mountain or a mighty cliff, perhaps far far away,’ Ishraq said, surprisingly. ‘Perhaps it caused a wave, just one great wave, as a bowl of water will make waves and spill over, if you were to throw a stone into it.’
Brother Peter rose to his feet and smiled at the prosaic image, typical of a woman who cannot imagine the earth as void and empty, and darkness upon the face of the deep; and the spirit of God moving over the waters, as the Bible itself describes. ‘The ocean is not a bowl of water,’ he corrected her gently. ‘It does not move with waves because someone throws a stone. It is not rocked in a basin for you to wash dishes in.’
‘I am not saying that it is. But small things sometimes work the same way as larger. The wave may have been caused by an earthquake, a great falling of rock. Just as you can make a wave in a bowl of water if you throw in a pebble.’
‘That’s true,’ Luca said. ‘But what made you think of this?’
‘Plato describes the drowning of the country of Atlantis in just such a way,’ she said. ‘He says that a great earthquake caused a great wave which drowned the island.’
‘Plato?’ Brother Peter repeated sceptically. ‘How has a girl such as you read Plato? I’ve heard of him, but I’ve read nothing that he wrote. There are no copies of anything he wrote.’
‘No, not that you could read, not translated into Italian; but we Arabs have his books. A few of them have been translated from the Greek into Arabic. I read a little part of them in Arabic when I was in Spain, with Isolde and her father, and I was allowed to attend the university. Plato is a philosopher who talks about great mysteries such as the wave, and has strange understandings.’
‘You were privileged,’ Brother Peter said irritably, scooping up the papers and stoppering the bottle of ink. ‘A heretic and a woman to read such a thinker. You must take care that it does not strain your nature, putting too much pressure on you. Women cannot think of abstractions.’
She gave a small shrug. ‘My brain is well enough so far, though I thank you for your concern. At any rate, Plato says that the drowning of Atlantis might have followed a great movement of the earth. It made me think that this might be a natural occurrence, not an act of God, nor of the Devil, nor of storm-bringers – if there are such people. Perhaps it occurs naturally, from the world of nature. Though why God would make a world where such a thing could happen, is another question.’
Brother Peter knew himself to be on firmer ground. ‘Ah, you ask an important question. It is because the perfect world that God first made was destroyed by sin in the garden of Eden, when the woman ate the apple.’
Isolde exchanged a quick smiling glance with Luca. They both knew that Ishraq and Brother Peter would be quarrelling within a moment.
Ishraq looked at him quite blankly. ‘What is wrong with eating an apple?’
‘Because it does not mean an apple. The apple signifies knowledge.’
Luca winked at Isolde.
‘The woman wanted knowledge?’
‘Yes,’ Peter said, adopting his teacher’s voice. ‘But it was God’s will that the woman and her husband should be innocent of knowledge.’
Ishraq looked as if she did not need his instruction. ‘I would have thought an all-seeing God could have foreseen that a woman would want knowledge,’ she said. ‘Why should she not? Why should I not? Would any woman want to live in ignorance? Would any man? And what does it benefit God to have people so ignorant that they are like these poor peasants – believing that people call up storms and the Devil takes the time and the trouble to make them unhappy?’
Brother Peter was almost too irritated to speak. He picked up his papers, bowed to the altar and turned away. ‘There is no point trying to explain such things to you,’ he said. ‘You are a heretic and a girl.’ It would have been impossible to say which he thought was worse.
‘The Lord Lucretili believed that a girl could study, without straining her nature,’ Ishraq insisted. ‘Women like Hypatia of Alexandria taught Plato to her students without illness. So when Lord Lucretili was in Spain he sent me to study at the university of Granada. Education is important to us heretics. There are many Arab women who are educated. We Moors believe that a woman can study as well as a man. We do not think that it is godly for a woman to be an ignorant fool.’
‘But he did not send his daughter, Isolde, to learn heretic knowledge? He took care to protect her,’ Brother Peter said pointedly.
‘I wish he had!’ Isolde interrupted.
‘The lessons were in Arabic or Spanish,
’ Ishraq said. ‘Lady Isolde speaks neither. And besides, she was raised to be a Christian lady ruling her lands.’
‘But how would we ever find out?’ Luca asked, almost to himself, going down the aisle to the open doorway, and looking downhill to the harbour to the quietly moving sea with its ugly burden of wreckage. ‘How would we discover if the earth had moved and caused the wave? If it happened far out at sea, or even under the sea? If no one was there to see it happen? How could we ever discover the cause?’
Father Benito walked beside him. ‘You know, the people of the village tell a story of a great earthquake that threw down the harbour walls – all this was about a hundred years ago – and it was followed by a great wave that washed all the boats out to sea and destroyed all the houses two lanes back from the harbour. The bell tower of my own church was thrown down when the ground shook. It was rebuilt; we have the stonemason’s costs still in the church records. That’s how I know it to be true.’
Ishraq nodded towards Luca. ‘An earthquake followed by a wave,’ she remarked.
‘A hundred years ago?’ Luca pressed Father Benito. ‘Exactly a hundred?’
‘More,’ he said quietly. ‘The earthquake was in 1348. And after the wave the Black Death came to the village. First the ground shook, then the wave came, then the plague. God forbid that this wave brings the pestilence also.’
‘The Black Death?’ Brother Peter queried.
The priest nodded. ‘The quake was worst in Friuli, but they felt it as far away as Rome. It shook this village. I have the accounts of the church rebuilding, which is how I know the dates. It was almost impossible to get the stone masons to repair the tower, for within months of the wave, they were all dead of the Black Death.’
‘I shall write this in my report,’ Luca said. ‘Perhaps we should see it as a warning. Do you think you should store grain, and food? In case a pestilence follows this wave, as it did a hundred years ago?’
Father Benito crossed himself. ‘God forbid,’ he said. ‘For last time they had to dig great plague pits in the graveyard to take all the bodies. I wouldn’t want to have to open them again. They buried half the village, more than a hundred people, old and young. And the priest himself died. God spare me.’
‘God help us all,’ Luca said solemnly. ‘Perhaps this is, as they say, the end of days.’ No one answered him, and he turned and went down the hill to the quayside alone.
Brother Peter and the two young women watched him go. Father Benito murmured a blessing, closed the church doors, and went quietly away to his damp house.
Brother Peter sighed and led the way down the hill to the inn on the quayside. ‘I suppose we had better get a ship and move on,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here anymore. We’ll sail across to Split as we planned.’
‘Sail?’ Ishraq repeated ‘Go by sea?’
‘Are we giving up on Freize?’ Isolde asked bleakly. ‘Are we not looking for him any more, not waiting for him?’
‘We could leave a message for him, as to where to find us, if he were ever to return. But I can’t believe that he survived the flood,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘What would be the point of us waiting here?’
‘For fidelity!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘Because we can’t just go on!’
Ishraq shook her head. ‘No. We may as well leave. It does Luca no good to wait and watch here. We’ll have to find a boat and go on with our journey. Can you find someone to take us, Brother Peter? Would you like me to go and ask?’
‘A few ships came into port this morning, which seem to have escaped damage. I’ll find someone. Shall we set a time and go tomorrow?’
‘In the morning,’ Ishraq said. ‘I suppose you’ll all want to attend Mass before we sail. We can go after Prime.’
Brother Peter looked curiously at her as they went together down the cobbled steps. ‘Don’t you want to confess your soul and attend the service now that you have seen God work in such a mysterious way? Should you not turn to our God, now that you have been in such danger? I could explain our beliefs to you. I could convert you.’
Ishraq smiled at him, indifferent to his concern. ‘Ah, Brother Peter, I know you are a good man and would like to save my soul. I don’t know what caused the wave. I don’t know how I am going to find the courage to set out to sea; but it doesn’t inspire me to pray to your God.’
Isolde agreed that they should leave the following day but she could not bring herself to tell Luca. ‘Will you tell him?’ she asked Brother Peter. ‘I can’t bear to do it.’
He waited until the hour before dinner while they were all four sitting in the dining room before a smoky fire of damp wood, and then he said quietly, ‘Brother Luca, I think we can do nothing more in this town and I will send my report tomorrow. I will write that we can find no certain explanation for the wave, though some wild thoughts from pagan and heretical writers have been mentioned.’
Luca barely raised his head.
‘And I have found a master who will take us on his ship tomorrow. We can go after Prime.’
‘We stay,’ Luca said instantly. ‘At least for a few more days.’
‘We have a mission; and there is nothing more to be done here,’ Brother Peter repeated steadily. ‘We will send your report tomorrow, we can warn Milord and His Holiness that we have seen a powerful sign of the end of days. We can warn them that a previous earthquake was followed by a wave that was followed by the pestilence called the Black Death. But we serve no one by waiting here – and anyway, if a plague is coming we should leave.’
Isolde reached out and put her cool hand over Luca’s clenched fist as it lay on the table. ‘Luca,’ she said quietly.
He turned to her as if she might have answers to his agonising questions. ‘I can’t go,’ he said passionately. ‘I can’t just sail away from here as if nothing is wrong. I can’t just continue on. Freize came with me, he was following me on this quest. He would never have been here but for love of me. I don’t see how to do it without him. If I had been washed out to sea, he would not have left me. He would not have run for his safety and left me behind.’
‘He would want you to complete your mission,’ Isolde said, trying to comfort him. ‘He was so proud of you. He was so proud that you had been called to this work and that he could serve you.’
At the thought of Freize’s joyful boasting, Luca nearly smiled, but then he shook his head. ‘You must see, I have to stay here until . . .’
‘We will leave instructions and money that his body is to be buried if it is washed ashore,’ Ishraq said, surprising them all with the brisk clarity of her tone. ‘If you are thinking of that; we can provide for him, as you would wish. But I was speaking to one of the fishermen and he says there is a strong current a little further beyond the harbour and perhaps Freize and all the children have been washed far away. Their bodies may never be found. Perhaps we should think of them all as buried at sea. Brother Peter could bless the waves as we sail to Split.’
Luca rounded on her in anger. ‘You speak of his burial? The burial of my friend Freize? Blessing the waves? You have given him up for dead?’
She gazed at him steadily. ‘Yes, of course. Weren’t you thinking the very same thing, yourself? Isn’t it the very thing you have been afraid to think for days?’
He flung himself from the table and wrenched open the door. ‘You’re heartless!’ he flung at her.
She shook her head. ‘You know I am not.’
He paused. ‘How can you talk about blessing the sea?’
‘I thought you would want to say goodbye,’ she said.
‘How dare you say that I must think of this?’
‘It is your life’s work to think of difficult things.’
Isolde gasped and would have intervened but she saw the steady way that Ishraq held Luca’s angry glare, and she fell silent. Luca’s temper burned out as quickly as it had come. He breathed out a shuddering sigh, came back into the room and closed the door behind him and leaned back against it as if sorr
ow had weakened him.
‘You’re right of course,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I just don’t want it to be true. I’ll leave instructions with Father Benito in the morning and – Brother Peter, perhaps you will write to our monastery and tell them what has happened and ask them to tell his mother? I will write myself later . . .’
Isolde rose and put her hand in his; she laid her cheek against his shoulder. Brother Peter watched them without comment, though his expression was completely disapproving.
‘And we’ll take ship tomorrow,’ Ishraq pursued.
‘Ishraq!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘Be at peace! Leave him alone!’
Stubbornly, Ishraq shook her head. ‘Luca is not at peace,’ she said, nodding to him. ‘And you crying over him doesn’t help him at all. Better that we do something, rather than sit here mourning. In my religion Freize would have been buried by sunset on the day that he died. We’ll always remember him whether we take a ship to Split now or the day after. But,’ she nodded at Luca, ‘this is not a young man who should be left to mourn for a long time. He has had too many losses already. Grief must not become a habit for him.’
Isolde looked up into Luca’s strained face. ‘This is a hard counsel,’ she said.
‘She’s right,’ he said bitterly. ‘I can do nothing here but weep for him, like a girl. We’ll go tomorrow, after Prime.’
They went to their rooms to pack their things, but they had almost nothing to pack. Everything but the clothes they were wearing had gone down with the ship. They had bought new rough cloaks from the tailor in the little town but new boots or hats, or a writing box for Brother Peter, would have to wait till they got to a bigger town. The manuscripts which Brother Peter and Luca carried to advise them on legends, folklore and previous investigations were irreplaceable. They would have to buy new horses when they got to Split, and a new donkey to carry their goods.
‘How far do you think it is from Split to Buda-Pest?’ Isolde asked idly, looking out of the window of their bedroom. ‘I am so tired of travelling. I am so tired of everything. I wish we could just go home to my own home and live on my own lands, where I belong. I wish that none of this had happened.’
Order of Darkness Page 36
