Dark Tracks

by Philippa Gregory

  “Ever done it before?” the lord asked him. “Ever talked a band of dancers into quietness?”

  “No,” Luca said. “I am a new Inquirer. I’d never even seen dancers before yesterday. My clerk Brother Peter thinks they are possessed.”

  The lord frowned, tipped his head on one side, and looked at Luca as if he were a colt in the field, a yearling that might make a good horse, or could remain skinny and irresolute.

  “Ever commanded men in battle? Seen any fighting?”

  Luca shook his head. “The Ottoman slavers raided my village when I was a boy, but I wasn’t there.”

  “Nobody would have fought them, anyway,” the lord commented shrewdly. “I’ve yet to see a Christian army stand before the infidel. If the young Count Vlad can make his men do it, way over in Wallachia, he will be the very first. God bless him and make him brutal. Constantinople only held out for so long because it couldn’t run away.”

  “They took my father and my mother,” Luca said stiffly. “I should have fought. If I had been there when they came, I think I would have fought them, for my mother’s life. I hope I would not have let them go without doing anything.”

  Lord Vargarten nodded, and dropped a hand on Luca’s shoulder in rough sympathy. “So it goes,” he said. “But the truth is that until today you have neither converted an enemy nor fought one?”

  “I have seen some strange things and reported on them. Terrifying things.”

  “But not a man of action.”

  “No,” Luca admitted.

  “Then take my word for it. It’s easier to drive someone away than talk to them. Almost anything is easier than talking honestly and openly to someone,” Lord Vargarten said bluntly. “My wife’s view that we should drown them in the river is one that most people would share, and it’s the quickest and simplest thing to do. And the end is certain and final—and, like most men, I like a final solution.”

  “But you are the lord of these people,” Luca said earnestly. “You have to do the right thing, not the certain thing.”

  The lord laughed shortly. “Where in the world have you come from? Where have you seen a man be a good lord against his own convenience and interest? Everyone does what is easiest and best for himself in this world, lords and beggars alike. Why should anyone do anything for anyone else?”

  “Because you are rich,” Luca said simply. “You have been educated. You have power. You have been blessed by God; you are like a shepherd with sheep. You have to lead them to safety. You owe them guidance in return for their service to you. Surely you want to be a good lord, not just a powerful one?”

  Lord Vargarten laughed shortly. “The people mean nothing to me, and most lords feel the same. They are like sheep, just as you say—the beasts that I shear for wool, the animals that I slaughter for meat. They are like the barley that I harvest for grain, or the earth that I plow. My tenants are my own, bought and sold with the land, and I keep them in their hovels as I keep my other beasts in the field or woods. When I die, my son will rule them, and my grandson will rule their grandsons. They are inherited with the fields, like ditches; they are my own, like my hounds.”

  “No, you are wrong—times are changing,” Luca persisted. “Since the Great Pestilence, people believe that they should be allowed to go where they want, and work as they wish. They want to work for themselves, and think for themselves and dream for themselves.”

  “Fools,” Lord Vargarten said shortly. “Why would anyone change anything to oblige them? I certainly won’t.” He gestured at the guards, who, though ragged and illequipped, were as ready as they were going to be. “While I can command a hundred men, there will be no changes in my lands. And I will always command a hundred men for there will always be a hundred ready to serve me, for no pay, for nothing more than their dinner—if only because their fathers served my father and their grandfathers served my grandfather, for no pay and nothing but their dinner, and these are fools who can imagine nothing else. I am their lord—d’you understand? They follow me so that they don’t have to think. They like a leader so that they don’t have to think for themselves. And I make sure that nobody like you ever comes here with your ideas from the outside world and encourages them to think anything different from me.”

  “You’re wrong,” Luca said again, earnestly. “People do want to think for themselves: there is the new learning, the new philosophies.”

  The lord laughed harshly, hawked and spat on the ground. “You’re a dreamer,” he said. “Some things are eternal. There is a master and a man; a man and his dog; these things will never change. Now, are you ready to ride with me and rid my town of these dancers?”

  “No,” Luca said boldly. “I have to insist. In the name of my holy Order and the Pope who commissioned me, I demand that you hold the dancers peacefully and let me speak with them. They must be given a choice to give up dancing before you drive them from the town.”

  “Priest, you are making a simple job ten times more difficult,” the lord complained. “And you said yourself, you know nothing about this. I can get the job done and finished by dinnertime and only a score of fools dead and none of us hurt. Who cares for them?”

  “I know,” Luca said with a smile. “But I have a lord too, and He said that though two sparrows are sold for a farthing not one of them falls to the ground without Our Father knowing it.”

  “Good God, what has that to do with anything?” his lordship demanded, irritated. “Sparrows? Who cares about sparrows?”

  “Christ the Redeemer cares about sparrows.”

  “I swear by the saints that He does not! Is it Sunday? Am I in church? Did the bell ring for Terce and I missed it?”

  Luca smiled. “Lord Vargarten, I am bound to ask that you make a simple job more difficult and not drive these poor people into the river, but let me try to persuade them to go to their homes. Let me see if God will show mercy and give them back their wits.”

  “Mount up!” the lord bellowed to those of his men who had horses. To Luca he said, “Come on then! See what you can do with these vermin before I whip them halfway to Vienna.”

  The peddler doubled back on himself, reentered through the open doorway to the inn, and ran up the deserted stairs to the girls’ empty bedroom. He ignored the lumpy saddlebags, but opened the long box at the foot of the bed and pushed aside their gowns and capes to see if there was anything laid beneath them. He ignored the chink of coins in one of the bags, but when he saw a glint of steel he gave a little grunt of satisfaction, and unwrapped and drew out Isolde’s father’s broadsword from its hiding place. He could not mistake it—Isolde’s brother had described it minutely to him: the ornate handle bolting the blade into the scabbard so that it could never be drawn without unlocking it with the missing key, the precious stones set deep.

  “I must have it,” Isolde’s brother, the new Lord Lucretili, had told him. “I cannot claim the lordship without it.”

  The peddler drew it from the box, closed the lid, and slid it into his backpack. It stood tall above his head, so he thrust it lower, until the bottom of the scabbard knocked against the back of his legs. Then, still unseen, he went quietly down the stairs, slipped out of the open door, and was lost among the dancers.

  The castle guard could hear the sound of music from the road outside the walled town before they even entered the gate. “Close up,” the lord said. “And if any one of you starts hopping about, the man next to him is to give him the butt end of a pike in his belly and then knock him out cold. Understand?”

  “Aye,” came the grim reply as the men moved closer, shoulder to shoulder. Riding behind the guard, Luca, Freize, and Brother Peter exchanged anxious looks.

  “As long as you don’t start dancing, then you and I are safe,” Freize said quietly to his horse, Rufino, who flicked a dark ear and seemed to agree. “I will sit tight up here, and you keep your four feet steady on the ground.”

  Lord Vargarten led the horsemen at speed, four abreast through the open gate, clatt
ering loudly up the cobbled streets and into the market square. “Get the fiddler,” he said to the man on his left. “And you get the drummer,” he said to the man on his right. “Silence the two of them, and we are safe.”

  They were not quick enough; at the first rattle of hooves as the troop burst into the square, the fiddler tucked his instrument under his arm and ran as fast as he could out of the far end of the town square, disappearing between the houses. Two men bent low over their horses’ necks and thundered after him, but then Luca heard them cursing and shouting as he had ducked down an alley, scaled the town wall, and got clean away.

  The drummer was not so quick; one horseman snatched him by the collar of his jacket and the other tore the drum from his neck, put a booted foot through it, and threw it down to splinter on the ground. The dancers, circling and jigging, wavered and lost their rhythm without the insistent, pounding beat, but, even so, they did not stop dancing. It was as if they could still hear the beat in their heads, as if their feet must still obey the haunting tune, even though the drummer howled for mercy and the fiddler was out of sight.

  “Herd them!” Lord Vargarten shouted at his men, using one hand to show them how to circle both sides of the square as if he were commanding his pack of hunting dogs. “Quickly.”

  The guard ran round the perimeter of the square, and then slowly came closer and closer. When they could link arms, they made a circle round the dancers and the dancers jigged and skipped closer and closer to each other until they were held, still dead-eyed and dancing, in the center of the town square, completely encircled by Lord Vargarten’s hard-faced men.

  “I could touch you and make you a dancer.” A man put his hand before one of the guardsmen who did not loosen his grip for a moment.

  “I wish you luck with that,” came the dour reply. “Ask my wife. I don’t dance, I do nothing but stamp, and, if you lay one finger on me, I’ll stamp on your head.”

  “Let us go!” one of the women wailed as she was being crushed in the middle. “We have to dance—you have to let us dance.”

  His lordship glanced over at Luca. “Time for your miracle, Priest. What have you got? Loaves and fishes? Walking on water? Raising a dead man? For I have captured your congregation and we are waiting for a magic trick. Save them and let us all go home in peace.”

  Luca looked back at Brother Peter for help. “Where’s the priest from the church?” he asked.

  The older man got down from his horse, handed the reins to a guardsman, and came toward Luca as he swung down from his saddle and handed his horse to Freize. “Perhaps he will come out when he hears the music has stopped,” he said.

  “We have to question them. We have to know why they are dancing,” Luca demanded urgently.

  “You can try,” Brother Peter said. “But look at them: they are beyond hearing us, I think.”

  Luca took hold of one of the younger men by the shoulders. “Where are you from?” he asked. “Why are you dancing?”

  The boy took hold of Luca’s hand in return and smiled blindly, without meaning; he danced around Luca as if he had not heard the words, bending under his arm as if Luca were his partner.

  “What is your name?” Luca demanded more urgently, holding him still again. “The name of your father? Of your village? Tell me one true thing about yourself.”

  The boy’s rapid steps checked only for a moment. “I am a dancer,” he said simply, and then he twisted from Luca’s grip and danced away.

  “Can we pray over them?” Luca demanded of his clerk. “Shall we get Lord Vargarten to drive them into the church?”

  “Better tell them that Lord Vargarten is going to drive them out of town and they could get hurt. Warn them.”

  Luca jumped up onto the steps of the obelisk that stood at the center of the square, so that everyone could see him. “Good people,” he said.

  “We are dancers!” a man cried out. “We are not your people!”

  “You must stop,” Luca said earnestly. “You offend the sight of God and trouble the people of this town. You have danced yourselves ill and you have danced yourselves tired; you must stop and return to your homes and live in peace before you dance yourselves to death. Come with me now into the church and we will pray for peace, before this great lord—Lord Vargarten—drives you off his lands, onward and onward, and you will never be able to rest. Stop this, come with me to the church and pray for peace for your souls and ease for your feet. God will lift this curse from you. I will help you.”

  “You are possessed by imps of Satan.” Brother Peter supplemented Luca’s appeal, his voice ringing out. “Poor sinners, you don’t know what you are doing nor how the Devil is working his way through you. Turn from him, stop dancing, and come to the church. You can be saved, you can be forgiven, you can be at peace.”

  Slowly, one of the women ceased to jig up and down and walked unsteadily, as if she had forgotten how to put one foot before another, away from the dancers.

  “Let her out,” Lord Vargarten commanded his men, who broke their circle and released her. Freize jumped down from his horse, hitched it to the wall, took her arm, and guided her toward the little church, and then stood back as the priest came timidly forward and took hold of her.

  “Come!” Luca said anxiously to the others. “You see, it can be done. That woman will go back to her ordinary life; she will be free of this madness. Step away from the dancers, come to the church, confess your sins, and be free.”

  Another woman slipped from the circle, and a man followed her, both walking unsteadily as if they were drunkards.

  “No!” shouted the youth who had danced with Luca. “We can’t stop. Nothing can stop us.”

  “Knock him down,” Lord Vargarten said quietly.

  “No!” Luca countermanded, but he was too late. A heavy mailed fist thumped into the young man’s temple and he went down in a moment. Not one of his dancing partners went to help him; the jigging feet kicked dust into his face and nobody even noticed.

  “Now listen to me!” Lord Vargarten raised his voice. “All of you. Enough of this. Go back to your homes. In a few minutes, I shall drive you from this town and all the way up the road until you are off my lands, and you can never come back again. You will be dancing, homeless beggars until you die of hunger on the road and the dogs will eat your bodies and your souls will dance in hell.”

  Half a dozen people crossed themselves and ducked beneath the linked arms of the soldiers and hurried to the church, some with an odd skip in their stride as they fought the temptation to dance. But, in the center of the ring of guardsmen, more than a dozen dancers still jigged on the spot, as if they could not stop their moving feet, and one of them raised the injured youth and danced with him though his head flopped to one side and blood oozed down his white face.

  “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti!” Luca implored them, raising his hand in a blessing. “Devils, I command you to be gone!”

  Still they kept dancing, white-faced, blank-eyed, with terrible, empty smiles on their faces, their heads cocked as if they could hear the rhythm of the broken drum or as if the runaway fiddler were still calling them.

  “That’s it,” Lord Vargarten decided. “You’ve done all that you could, Priest. You’ve saved a few, be glad of that. I’ve got no more time to waste. Put them out of the gate.”

  The men opened the circle and started to push the dancers toward the northern end of the square. Luca followed on foot. “Gently!” he warned. “Gently with them—they can’t help themselves.”

  The dancers skipped toward the north road, their weary feet slipping and sliding on the cobbles. Two of them dragged the wounded youth along with them, his head lolling like a drunk, and someone started to sing a shanty, a haunting, catchy chant. Then they were all dancing in time again, their ragged heads bobbing, their strained eyes rolling as they staggered along, trying to keep in step with the insistent, demanding tune.

  “Stop it!” Luca implored, following behind them. “
In the name of God, I forbid you from singing. Say your prayers instead. Say your prayers with me.”

  Nobody joined him in prayer; they went onward, following a woman, her fair hair wildly tossed over her face as she snapped her fingers to the beat of the song and stepped out.

  “Speed them up!” Lord Vargarten shouted at his guard. “Let’s get them out of here.”

  The men closed up and started to push at the slower dancers as they entered the narrow streets. Now the noise of the song echoed off the buildings, and above them people slammed shutters and cursed the dancers. Someone threw down kindling on their heads, another threw a bowl of slops. Luca, with Freize and Brother Peter at his side, walked behind Lord Vargarten’s horse and the mounted guard as they pushed the dancers through the gateway and out of the town. The road ahead narrowed to a stone bridge across a swiftly flowing stream, and the armed men thrust the dancers on and on. At the bridge, like driven beasts, they hesitated, as if they were afraid to cross the stream and go north.

  “Go on! Go on!” Luca shouted at Lord Vargarten, suddenly afraid that the man would follow his wife’s hard-hearted advice, and throw the dancers over the low parapet and into the deep torrent that swirled under the bridge. “Don’t stop.”

  “That one,” Lord Vargarten decided. He pointed at the young man who had called the dancers to keep dancing, before they had knocked him down. Two of the guardsmen pushed through the dancing crowd to get to him; they held him, his feet limp and his head lolling, as the lord rode up on his big black horse.

  “Into the water,” his lordship ordered.

  “No!” Luca shouted, but already the men had the half-conscious dancer balanced over the parapet on his back, his head dangling toward the river. Luca thrust his way through the other soldiers to grab the boy’s feet. “No! This isn’t the way to deal with them. He was leaving town—he’s going. He’s already taken a hiding. We don’t need to . . .”

  The young man regained consciousness, realized his danger, looked back up at Luca, and reached his hands toward him. “Save me!” he said. “Help me . . .”