‘It is so. But you could change your faith, and your country, and your family is anyway lost to you.’
‘I could not change my faith,’ Luca said shortly.
‘Perhaps all faiths are shadows on the wall,’ Radu Bey said, crinkling his dark eyes as he looked up at Luca. ‘Perhaps there is a God like a burning torch, but all we can see is the shadows that we cast ourselves when we walk in front of the flame. Then we see great leaping shadows and think that this is God, but really it is only our own image.’
Luca’s eyes widened slightly. ‘I will pray for your soul,’ he said. ‘For that is terrible heresy.’
‘As you like,’ Radu Bey said with his handsome lazy smile. ‘Did you write it all down, boy?’
Ishraq kept her head down. ‘I did, milord.’
‘Heresy and all?’
Ishraq stopped herself from looking up and smiling into his warm dark face. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Well, leave your papers here and carry these to the ship for me,’ he said carelessly. He passed her the wrapped box of manuscripts and to Luca he extended his hand. They gripped each other, hand to elbow, and felt the power in each other’s arms.
‘You are too good to chase around a failing country asking ignorant people what is going wrong in their poor lives,’ Radu said quietly to Luca. ‘You are too intelligent to be employed studying the night-terrors of old ladies. I know your commander – he has pledged his life to the wrong side and he will find the price is too high. He will sell his soul, thinking that he is doing the work of God, but he will find the world changes and he is left far behind. Come on board with me now and we will sail for Istanbul, for the libraries and for the study you can do.’
Luca released him. ‘I keep faith,’ he said, a little breathlessly. ‘Whatever the temptation.’
‘Oh, as you wish,’ Radu Bey said gently, then turned and walked towards the ship.
Ishraq shot a quick glance at Luca, and at his nod, followed Radu Bey down the quayside carrying the box of manuscripts. Quietly, over his shoulder, the Ottoman threw a sentence to her in Arabic, ‘If you are a slave I will free you. Come down to the quayside at sunset and jump into the ship and we will take you away. If you are a girl, as I think, you will be safe. I give you my word. If you are a scholar, no – I know you are a scholar, girl or boy – you should come with me to Istanbul where you can study.’
Carefully, she said nothing.
‘Your master is a fool to choose ignorance over learning,’ he said. ‘He chooses to stay with the side which is losing. He chooses to stay with a God who can foresee only the end of days. Will you remember me, when you see me again?’
Startled, she blurted out in Arabic: ‘Yes!’
He turned and smiled at her, his heart-stopping good looks quite dazzling in the midday sunshine. ‘Remember me well,’ he said. ‘And when you see a man who reminds you of me – and I think you will see a man that you would take for my very twin brother – then remember that you are in the most terrible danger, and that you should come to me.’
‘I cannot come to you,’ she said, recovering herself and speaking in Italian. ‘Ever. Never.’
He spread his hands and made her a little smiling bow. ‘I think there will come a day when you pray to come to me,’ he said, and took the parcel from her hands and stepped down to the prow of his galley. ‘Sister mine, these Christians are not half as kindly as they seem. I know this for I was born and bred by them, and abandoned by them, just as you have been.’
‘I’m not abandoned,’ she said, suddenly urgent that he should hear her. ‘Nobody abandoned me.’
‘They must have done,’ he said. ‘Your father must have abandoned you, or your mother. For here you are, with skin like honey and eyes like dates and yet you are in service to a Franj, and you don’t acknowledge your people, nor come home with us when we invite you.’
‘I’m with my people,’ she said stubbornly.
‘No, you’re not, they’re Franj – foreign to us.’
There was a little silence.
‘You are skilled,’ he said. ‘You’ve been well-taught; you walk like a fighter and you write like a scholar.’
She said nothing.
‘You are working for people who think that you are going to hell,’ he pointed out.
She handed the box to him and stepped off the raised deck to the quay.
‘When the day comes that you see a man who looks like me, you should turn your back on him and come to me,’ he repeated his warning. ‘Otherwise you will see terrible things, you will do terrible things, you will look into the abyss itself. You will start to believe that you are in the hell that these Christians have invented.’
She pulled her cap over her eyes, she turned her collar up, as if against rain, and she turned and walked away from him – though she would rather have been walking to him.
The village watched the Ottoman galley all day through the shuttered windows of the quayside houses, and from the arrow-slits of the fort, as the men planed the mast to fit, set it in the boat, rigged the stays and the sail, and then, finally, as they had promised, cast off at sunset and started to row out past the little fort and the dripping obstacle of the chain.
‘Stop that ship!’ The shout echoed in the narrow streets over the clatter of hooves as a horse and rider scrabbled down the cobbled steps towards the port. Luca whirled around, on guard against fresh danger.
‘Stop that ship! In the name of the Holy Father, stop it!’
After one moment of hesitation, Luca ran to the fort, waving his arms. ‘Stop the ship! Someone is coming!’
The horse burst from the shadow of the buildings, the rider bent low over his neck as the sparks flew from the horse’s hooves skidding on the stone cobbles. He flung himself to the ground and shouted, ‘I command you to stop it!’
The men spilled out from the fort, demanding to know what the matter was now.
The stranger threw himself at Luca. ‘Stop it! That ship is commanded by the greatest enemy to Christendom!’
‘How could we stop it?’ Captain Gascon demanded irritably. ‘It’s under sail and they are rowing? We have no way to stop it.’
The stranger stamped his feet in his rage. ‘That ship is commanded by a devil!’
‘The ship is gone,’ Luca exclaimed. ‘And, anyway they have no cannon here. We can’t bombard it. And it was under a flag of truce. Why d’you want it held? What is your authority?’
Then he saw the dark blue robe, the piercing black eyes inside the shadow of the hood, and realised they were terribly familiar. Brother Peter, beside him, dropped to one knee. ‘Milord,’ he said simply.
Luca hesitated. ‘Is it really you, my lord?’
The man looked past them both to the slave galley as the wind filled the sails and the rowers lifted their oars, and then shipped them. As if he were mocking them, the tall figure standing at the raised stern of the ship released a standard in gorgeous irridescent blues and greens with great golden eyes, a long ribbon of precious cloth of gold meticulously embroidered to look as if it were overlaid with peacock tails, the symbol of nobility in the Ottoman empire, the standard of a great man of a conquering country.
‘Was that Radu cel Frumos?’ the lord demanded. ‘Answer me! Damn you! Was that Radu cel Frumos?’
‘He called himself Radu Bey,’ Luca said carefully. A quick glance at Brother Peter, who was still on one knee, his hand on his heart, assured him that the furious hooded man, glaring after the vanishing ship, was the lord who had recruited him to the Order of Darkness. Luca knelt beside Peter and put his hand on his heart.
‘Greetings, lord.’
‘Get up,’ he spat, not even looking down at them.
‘I’m sorry that we didn’t know you wanted him detained,’ Brother Peter said quietly. ‘He was here with his ship after an accident with the mast. If we had known . . . But they were heavily armed, and we had no cannon or anything more than the local guard.’
‘You will know in future.
If ever you meet him,’ Milord snatched his breath, and fought for patience. ‘If you ever meet him again, you are to entrap him if you can and send for me. If you cannot capture him then kill him outright. He is my greatest enemy. I will never forgive him for opposing me – at every turn he is my antithesis. He is second in command to Sultan Mehmet II. He breached the walls at Constantinople. He is head of their army. He is the worst enemy of Christendom that I can name. There is no one I would rather see captured than him. There is no one I would rather see dead at my feet. He is an agent of Satan. He alone is a sign of the end of days.’
Luca and Brother Peter exchanged one uncomfortable glance and rose to stand before him.
Out at sea the gorgeous flag dipped in ironic salute and was taken in. The three men watched the ship grow smaller and smaller as it went swiftly away on the darkening sea, and then the early evening twilight enveloped it.
‘So, he is gone laughing at us,’ the lord said. ‘He treats us like land-bound fools shouting after a ship sailing away. But you will remember this. And next time – for there will be a next time – you will not let him treat you so.’
‘Never,’ Brother Peter assured him.
The lord took a moment to recover his temper. ‘I have read your report on the children’s crusade, and on the great wave,’ he said to Luca. ‘My path crossed with your messenger as I was riding here to see the crusade for myself. You can tell me more after dinner.’
‘It’s a poor inn,’ Luca warned him. ‘They are still repairing and drying out.’
‘No matter. Were you on your way to Split?’
Luca shook his head. ‘No, Milord. That side of the sea was even worse hit by the great wave than this has been. It’s destroyed. We can’t go that way; there are people fleeing from there to come here, poor as it is. We were going to write to you for new orders.’
The lord paused, thinking. ‘You can go overland, north towards Venice. There’s something I want you to look at there.’
He passed the reins of his horse to Freize without another word and turned and went into the inn.
‘Venice is it now?’ Freize asked the horse dourly. ‘Rides in here like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and the other three are coming along behind in their own time, and tells us we’re going to Venice. Well and good. Well and good, and you and I are nothing but dumb animals as you know, and I should remember.’ He stroked the animal’s neck and the big head turned to gently sniff at him. ‘So do you know what he’s planning?’ Freize asked conspiratorially.
He waited as if he really thought that the horse might speak to him. ‘Confidential?’ he said. ‘That’s understandable, I suppose. But never tell me that he doesn’t confide in you?’ When the horse was silent, Freize patted its side and undid the tight girth. ‘Ah well. A man who keeps a secret from his horse is a secretive man, indeed.’
In the inn, Ishraq and Isolde, who had been watching from the taproom window as the ship set sail, melted away up to their room as the strange lord called for the innkeeper. He ordered a glass of wine and a fire lit in the dining room, commanded the best bedroom available for himself, refused completely to share with other travellers, agreed a price for his exclusive use, and then, finally, sat down in the great chair and pulled off his riding boots and said that he would dine alone, but that Luca and Brother Peter should come to him after dinner.
‘Who is he?’ Isolde took Brother Peter by the arm as he bowed his way out of the dining room, and closed the door on the stranger with an air of relief.
‘He is the lord commander of our Order.’
‘What’s his name?’
‘I cannot tell you that.’
‘What is his authority, then?’
Brother Peter looked almost afraid. ‘He is high in the counsels of the Holy Father,’ he said. ‘He is trusted with discovering the end of days. The Order walks on the frontier of this world and the next, patrolling the frontier of the Christian and the infidel worlds. There is no man in greater danger. There is no man more fearless.’
‘Is he wealthy?’
‘Of course.’
‘How many men does he command?’
‘Nobody but him knows. And only he knows.’
‘How long have you worked for him?’
Brother Peter thought. ‘Many years,’ he said.
‘What is the name of the Order?’
‘Some people call it the Order of Darkness,’ he said cautiously.
‘Is that the name he calls it?’
He smiled. ‘I don’t know what he calls it.’
‘So it has another name?’
‘Probably many.’
‘Is Luca sworn to it?’ she asked. ‘Sworn as a celibate soldier, or Inquirer, or whatever it is?’
‘Not yet,’ he paused. ‘You have to serve, you have to prove your worth, and then you are sworn to it,’ he said. Unaware of what he was doing, he touched his hand to his upper arm.
‘They mark you?’ she guessed acutely.
His hesitation told her that she was right.
‘Show me,’ she said instantly.
He hesitated.
‘Why would you not show me? Are you ashamed of your loyalty?’
‘Of course not!’ he said, stung. Carefully, he rolled up his sleeve and on his upper arm, inscribed into his flesh in a tattoo, he showed her the sign of the Order.
She was silent as she looked at it, the dragon eating its tail, the symbol of eternity and the suggestion of circularity – a fear that feeds on itself. ‘Is Luca marked like this? Has the lord had him scarred too?’
‘No. Not yet.’
‘Will he have to swear himself to the Order and then be marked?’ she asked, knowing the ways that men bind themselves to each other.
His silence told her that she had guessed correctly.
‘Brother Peter. I am asking you this in very truth, not as an inquisitive girl; but as a soul in waiting for the Holy Kingdom. Luca is one of the special children of God: do you not think that he should be free in the world? Don’t you think that he should be free to travel and study and call no man master? Don’t you think that he is a special young man with a purity of vision and a wisdom that should not be bound to any other man? Don’t you think that he is gifted and that he should be free?’
He shook his head. ‘You might think that. You might think that he should be free to study and learn, hone his skills, but these are not ordinary times. If these were ordinary times I might agree with you but these are the end of days. The Order may save us from the end of days or it may guide us through to whatever happens beyond the end. The Order needs men like Luca. He understands things at first sight. He can calculate with numbers as quickly as most men can form words. He may have the gift of tongues and be able to speak any language. Don’t you distract him or try to lead him away. He is vital to the work of the Order. I have seen many Inquirers and never one who understands as quickly and compassionately as Luca Vero.
‘You have asked me many questions and I have answered you so that I can tell you this: the work of the Order is the saving of the world itself. It could not be more important. The only thing you should do is to help Luca in his work for the Order. Anything else is the work of Satan. Remember it.’
She bowed her head. He had a moment’s fierce joy that she listened to his instruction. ‘I know there is nothing more important than his work,’ she said humbly. ‘And besides, I don’t have any influence over him.’
Brother Peter nodded, and went upstairs to find Luca.
Luca and Brother Peter spruced themselves up in the attic bedroom as well as they could, given that all the clothes they had were those they were wearing during the flood or had since bought from the limited stores of the tailor of Piccolo.
Luca took his boots down to the kitchen to beg for some oil to polish them. ‘I’ll meet you in the dining room,’ Brother Peter promised. ‘It will look better if we arrive after each other, than if we go in together. Will you tell our lord that you spoke w
ith the infidel?’
‘Why not?’
The clerk shrugged. ‘Clearly, my lord is no friend to him. The moment that he saw him he called for us to arrest him.’
‘The infidel knew the history of the wave. I had to ask him about it. I had to be able to report what might have caused it.’
‘Will you tell Milord that I would not come with you to write down what the infidel said?’
‘If he asks me directly. But I thought you were obeying your conscience? I would have thought you would have been proud to tell him that you refused to speak with his enemy?’
Again Brother Peter shrugged. There was no way of telling whether he would be commended for his discretion in avoiding the infidel, or condemned for failing to do his duty as Luca’s clerk.
‘This is nothing!’ Luca asserted. ‘Whether we spoke to him or we avoided him is nothing to the rest of it! We nearly died. We saw the crusade. We were on our way to Jerusalem, walking on the bed of the sea. We were driven back by a wave as big as a church steeple that drowned everything in its path. Extraordinary things are happening all around us nearly every day.’
Brother Peter heaved up a pair of ill-fitting breeches and fastened the rope from his gown around them to hold them up around his thin hips. ‘I’ve never known him come out from Rome to an inquiry before,’ he confessed. ‘It makes me nervous.’
Luca hesitated. ‘He has never come out to meet an Inquirer at his work before?’
‘Never.’
‘Why would he come for me?’
‘That’s what I am asking myself.’
Freize was to serve the dinner and was in the kitchen, helping the flustered landlady spoon up a meat stew onto trenchers of dark bread. Ishraq and Isolde were to dine in their room. ‘I’ll carry up the food for the ladies,’ Freize offered.
‘I’ve come down for it,’ Ishraq said from the doorway. ‘And I’ll bring the things down again. I knew you would be busy in the kitchen.’
Order of Darkness Page 42
