The Book of Whispers

by Kimberley Starr

  I tickle the back of his neck with my own sword. ‘Roll over.’

  He obeys me, revealing a white face between his raised hands. ‘Luca! I’m your cousin! I’d never really hurt you! Don’t kill me!’

  ‘Is Raymond dead? Bohemond?’

  Narlo’s jaw clenches as he shakes his head. I back away, kicking his dropped sword out of his reach. ‘Leave!’

  Narlo crawls away. He doesn’t stand until he’s reached the edge of the plaza. Then he runs.

  ‘Just like Thanatos,’ Suzan remarks.

  Looking around and unsure, Ramberti spies Narlo’s sword lying on the ground and scoops it up. ‘You’re as stupid as your cousin!’ he thunders. ‘I don’t need the Princes dead. I can see to that myself. I don’t need allies. I was on my own when I defeated your father.’

  Screams rip the air now, coming from Al Aqsa mosque. The pilgrims have broken in and are beginning the slaughter of Saracens seeking refuge. Ramberti planned this. Perhaps this was always how he intended to doublecross Thanatos—luring demons into human bodies then murdering them.

  Ramberti swings at me. I meet him with my sword.

  The clanging of steel against steel echoes through the stone square. For a few moments, he guides me back, then I win the upper hand and, for a while, it’s he who retreats.

  I remember the trick Ramberti pulled when he killed Father. I remember the way he feinted having been hurt, only to lunge forwards with a fatal thrust.

  I remember that move and wait for it. After a short parry, Ramberti seems injured. I pause. I let him pause. When he sweeps swiftly forwards with what he imagines to be the fatal thrust, I lunge forwards myself, startling him.

  He stumbles and falls, dropping his sword.

  ‘Surrender!’ I say.

  ‘No!’ Ramberti roars.

  I point my sword at his throat.

  ‘Luca!’ Suzan says. ‘This is enough! You’ve defeated him now. You don’t need to kill him. We’re not like Thanatos. We don’t have to be like Ramberti. You can let him live. He won’t be king now. Too many people know his plans. Raymond will hear about them.’

  Ramberti raises both hands.

  I look at Suzan. She’s serious.

  And she’s right. He’s an unarmed man, and Narlo is a liar. The Princes are still alive. What I need Ramberti to do is confess to the Princes that he killed Father—and to face their justice.

  I step back. Ramberti staggers to his feet. I wait for him to run like Thanatos, like Narlo. But instead, Ramberti twists, plunging for his discarded sword. Grabbing it in his long, outstretched arm he stands with a roar and lunges towards Suzan.

  ‘I’ll never surrender!’

  I have no choice. I hold my sword in the air and in one move, before he realises what’s coming, I leap between them and bring it straight down into Ramberti’s head.

  Suzan swings out of his reach. Ramberti falls to the ground, his skull split open. Narlo’s sword clatters after him.

  I drop my sword and pull Suzan into my arms.

  Screams from the mosque are quietening now. Pilgrims and Saracens alike run out into the square, covered in blood and shivering with horror. Many pilgrims still have swords and continue to slash at their Saracen victims.

  ‘God wills it,’ some of them say. They don’t sound convinced.

  ‘Thanatos has fled!’ I yell. ‘Ramberti is dead! You can stop!’

  ‘Come on, Luca,’ Suzan says, holding my hand in her own. ‘We can’t do anything here. That’s not demon violence. That’s people. We have to go and make sure Mattiolas and Serafina are still all right.’

  EPILOGUE

  Suzan

  A sevennight after Ramberti’s death, we’ve cleaned up and explained all we can. Chroniclers are recording their versions of our pilgrimage, ready to send out all over Christendom. Various Princes continue to argue about who will be king. This won’t be solved soon.

  One evening at vespers, Luca and I climb onto the rooftops and stand together looking out over the city. Buildings that pilgrims have claimed are beginning to look like homes. Repairs are being made. Already, many streets have been cleaned and now the only smoke comes from chimneys. Torches around the Dome of the Rock illuminate its gold until it looks like a small new sun.

  Ten thousand Saracen men, women and children who sought refuge were murdered in the mosque that day. Ten thousand. The number is impossible to comprehend. I know Luca bears a feeling of guilt, just as he bears a scar on his thigh from the battle where his father died. But there was no magic strong enough to stop the hatred that had built up over years on the road. Brother Bonaccorso does his best to argue that we stopped it being any worse. Our actions that day, he says, saved the lives of many thousands more. I want to believe him, to hope there’s a way to stop this happening again. But Thanatos is still out there, and we don’t know where. Other demons still live, ones who weren’t brought to Temple Knoll. There are still men whose greed will make them cruel. And there will be other times and other ways for people to use and doublecross each other. But we have put an end to it this time.

  Luca stands beside me and I feel his breath, breathing out, breathing in. I wonder where we go from here. Loving me could still be dangerous for Luca, but being apart won’t change how either of us feel. I trust that, whatever dangers threaten, we have a better chance of defeating them together.

  We’ve known so many extraordinary things. We’ve felt horror and love; we’ve travelled with demons and men from Cappadocia to the Askanian Lake to Jerusalem. I often think of the chapel singers with their soaring music. They proved how beautiful creation can be, even when it seems most lost. Their lyrics were small miracles, wondrous in their simple purity. The singers made the air vibrate with their song, with their story. There’s an eternity of a kind in words. Words whisper stories from one generation to another, from one people to another. My mother kept her language alive on the palm of my hand, with words that also connected me to Luca and his book and its powerful secrets. No wonder the Book of Whispers became so powerful. It is full of dreams and stories that need speaking.

  It told us the truth: being made of flesh, humans enjoy more than the sights and sounds that are all creatures of smoke know about the world. We can experience the feel of a cool breeze on a warm day, the touch of another’s hand, the warmth of another’s breath. We can smell roses blooming, the salt of the ocean. We can taste wine and oranges. We can hear the beauty of human voices lifted in song and feel the pressure of each other’s body in love. But when we’ve finished with all of it, the sights, the sounds, the taste, the pleasures of touch, we pay.

  We die. But what wonders we get to experience first!

  Luca told me once about a poplar in a field near his villa, leaning over his mother’s grave. I know he wants to go back, to see his sister Gemma and his stepmother, Anna, again, to meet his new baby brother or sister, to weep with the poplar. I hope to go with him, to see his home. Our new life is just beginning and the time for paying is a long way off. We have our lives, and the Book of Whispers, and the knowledge of how to read it. And we have the night and the stars over the moonlit city, and the hooting owl and the whispering wind, and we have each other. We stand side by side and his fingers close, warm and strong, around mine. When he holds me, his embrace is the entire world. This is enough.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Writing augmented history (history plus demons!) required dipping into a lot of books that I won’t name, mainly because of the liberties I took with dates and locations (as well as with demons!). But there is one book I’m particularly grateful to, and that’s Thomas Asbridge’s The First Crusade: A New History, which makes history as fascinating and readable as it should be. If you’re interested in the Crusades, I can’t think of a better place to start.

  The Book of Whispers is set during a historical period that has more than symbolic significance. Whenever contemporary politicians discuss crusading in the Middle East, this is what they’re talki
ng about—wars that began centuries before the invasion that Luca joins. Although Luca, like Suzan, is imaginary, there are elements of this novel that are not. There are mediaeval convents dug into rock beneath the fairy towers in Cappadocia. There was a battle at Dorylaeum, and it happened broadly as I described it, minus the demons. The Crusaders did disguise the number of ships they had as they crossed the Askanean Lake at Nicea to launch their invasion. They did lay siege on Antioch for months. Horrifyingly, they really did resort to cannibalism in Maarrat. There might not have been real demons, but there was real evil. If anyone ever looks for a lesson in this book, I hope they find it in my belief that there are steps we can all take to make changes that matter to the world; we can all be more accepting of other people and other cultures. Anyone can make a difference.

  I’m so thankful to Michael Heyward and the rest of the team at Text Publishing for the award of the Text Prize, which offers tremendous encouragement every year for young-adult fiction writers to get their manuscripts finished. I’m especially thankful to Alaina Gougoulis, whose guidance and ideas have resulted in a novel that is infinitely better than the manuscript I first submitted. Thanks to Imogen Stubbs for the gorgeous cover (I gasped when I saw it) and Simon Barnard for the map that helps bring Luca and Suzan’s journey to life.

  I’m also thankful to my fellow staff and the students at Viewbank College, who have asked about my progress in the editing process and kept my enthusiasm for the novel high with their eagerness to find out more about Luca and Suzan and their demons. Thanks are especially due to my family, to my boys Jake and Tom and Ben, to Nick and to my parents. I’m also so thankful for the members of my writing group, because writing groups keep writers sane. Alison Goodman, who provided such an enthusiastic quote, I’m particularly grateful to you. And I’m very grateful for the friendship of the following people who spent time discussing ideas and sharing general enthusiasm over the years it took me to write this: Lindy Cameron, Emilie Collyer, Cecilia Dart-Thornton, Demet Divaroren, Leslie Falkiner-Rose, Liz Filleul, Kylie Fox, Kelly Gardiner, Jacqui Horwood, Julia List, David Martin, Elise McCune, Karen McKenzie, Moss Merrilee, Amra Pajalic, Vikki Petraitis, Leigh Redhead, Tor Roxburgh and Amanda Wrangles. You’re all as much to blame for this as I am—without you I never would have got this finished.