‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said comfortably. ‘I was raised by my dark-skinned beautiful mother in a strange land to always be sure who I was – even if nobody else knew.’
‘A unicorn indeed,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Perhaps.’
‘You certainly have the air of a young woman who knows her own mind. It’s very unmaidenly.’
‘But of course, I do wonder what will become of us both,’ she conceded more seriously. ‘We have to find Isolde’s godfather’s son, Count Wladislaw, and then we have to convince him to order her brother to give back her castle and lands. What if he refuses to help us? What shall we do then? However will she get home? Really, whether she’s in love with Luca or not is the least of our worries.’
Ahead of them, Isolde threw back her head and laughed aloud at something Luca had whispered to her.
‘Aye, she looks worried sick,’ Freize remarked.
‘We are happy, inshallah,’ she said. ‘She is easier in her mind than she has been in months, ever since the death of her father. And if, as your Pope thinks, the world is going to end, then we might as well be happy today, and not worry about the future.’
The fifth member of their party, Brother Peter, brought his horse up alongside them. ‘We’ll be coming into the village of Piccolo as the sun sets,’ he said. ‘Brother Luca should not be riding with the woman. It looks . . .’ He paused, searching for the right reproof . . .
‘Normal?’ Ishraq offered impertinently.
‘Happy,’ Freize agreed.
‘Improper,’ Brother Peter corrected them. ‘At best it looks careless, and as if he were not a young man promised to the Church.’ He turned to Ishraq. ‘Your lady should ride alongside you, both of you with your heads down and your eyes on the ground like maidens with pure minds, and you should speak only to each other, and that seldom and very quietly. Brother Luca should ride alone in prayer, or with me in thoughtful conversation. And anyway, I have our orders.’
At once, Freize slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘The sealed orders!’ he exclaimed wrathfully. ‘Any time we are minding our own business and going quietly to somewhere, a pleasant inn ahead of us, perhaps a couple of days with nothing to do but feed up the horses and rest ourselves, out come the sealed orders and we are sent off to inquire into God knows what!’
‘We are on a mission of inquiry,’ Brother Peter said quietly. ‘Of course we have sealed orders which I am commanded to open and read at certain times. Of course we are sent to inquire. The very point of this journey is not – whatever some people may think – to ride from one pleasant inn to another, meeting women; but to discover what signs there are of the end of days, of the end of the world. And I have to open these orders at sunset today, and discover where we are to go next and what we are to inspect.’
Freize put two fingers in his mouth and made an ear-piercing whistle. At once the two lead horses, obedient to his signal, stopped in their tracks. Luca and Isolde turned round and rode the few paces back to where the others were halted under the shade of some thick pine trees. The scent of the resin was as powerful as perfume in the warm evening air. The horses’ hooves crunched on the fallen pine cones and their shadows were long on the pale sandy soil.
‘New orders,’ Freize said to his master Luca, nodding at Brother Peter, who took a cream manuscript, heavily sealed with red wax and ribbons, from the inside pocket of his jacket. To Brother Peter he turned and said curiously, ‘How many more of them have you got tucked away in there?’
The older man did not trouble to answer the servant. With the little group watching he broke the seals in silence and unfolded the stiff paper. He read, and they saw him give a little sigh of disappointment.
‘Not back to Rome!’ Freize begged him, unable to bear the suspense for a moment longer. ‘Tell me we don’t have to turn round and go back to the old life!’ He caught Ishraq’s gleam of amusement. ‘The inquiry is an arduous duty,’ he corrected himself quickly. ‘But I don’t want to leave it incomplete. I have a sense of duty, of obligation.’
‘You’d do anything rather than return to the monastery and be a kitchen lad again,’ she said accurately. ‘Just as I would rather be here than serving as a lady companion in an isolated castle. At least we are free, and every day we wake up and know that anything could happen.’
‘I remind you, we don’t travel for our own pleasure,’ Brother Peter said sternly. ‘We are commanded to go to the fishing village of Piccolo, take a ship across the sea to Split and travel onwards to Zagreb. We are to take the pilgrim road to the chapels of St. George and St. Martin at Our Lady’s church outside Zagreb.’
There was a muffled gasp from Isolde. ‘Zagreb!’ A quick gesture from Luca as he reached out for her – and then snatched back his hand, remembering that he might not touch her – betrayed him too.
‘We travel on your road,’ he said, the joy in his voice audible to everyone. ‘We can stay together.’
The flash of assent from her dark blue eyes was ignored by Brother Peter who was deep in the new orders. ‘We are to inquire on the way as to anything we see that is out of the ordinary,’ he read. ‘We are to stop and set up an inquiry if we encounter anything that indicates the work of Satan, the rise of unknown fears, the evidence of the wickedness of man, or the end of days.’ He stopped reading and refolded the letter, looking at the four young people. ‘And so, it seems, that since Zagreb is on the way to Buda-Pest, and since the ladies insist that they must go there to seek Count Wladislaw, that God Himself wills that we must travel the same road as these young ladies.’
Isolde had herself well under control by the time Brother Peter raised his eyes to her. She kept her gaze down, careful not to look at Luca. ‘Of course we would be grateful for your company,’ she said demurely. ‘But this is a famous pilgrims’ road. There will be other people who will be going the same way. We can join them. We don’t need to burden you.’
The bright look on Luca’s face told her that she was no burden; but Brother Peter answered before anyone else could speak. ‘Certainly, I would advise that as soon as you meet a party with ladies travelling to Buda-Pest you should join them. We cannot be guides and guardians for you. We have to serve a great mission; and you are young women – however much you try to behave with modesty you cannot help but be distracting and misleading.’
‘Saved our bacon at Vittorito,’ Freize observed quietly. He nodded towards Ishraq. ‘She can fight and shoot an arrow, and knows medicine too. Hard to find anyone more useful as a travelling companion. Hard to find a better comrade on a dangerous journey.’
‘Clearly distracting,’ Peter sternly repeated.
‘As they say, they will leave us when they find a suitable party to join,’ Luca ruled. His delight that he was to be with Isolde for another night, and another after that, even if it was only a few more nights, was clear to everyone, especially to her. Her dark blue eyes met his hazel ones in a long silent look.
‘You don’t even ask what we are to do at the sacred site?’ Brother Peter demanded reproachfully. ‘At the chapels? You don’t even want to know that there are reports of heresy that we are to discover?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Luca said quickly. ‘You must tell me what we are to see. I will study. I will need to think about it. I will create a full inquiry and you shall write the report and send it to the lord of our order, for the Pope to see. We shall do our work, as commanded by our lord, by the Pope, and by God Himself.’
‘And best of all, we can get a good dinner in Piccolo,’ Freize remarked cheerfully, looking at the setting sun. ‘And tomorrow morning will be time enough to worry about hiring a boat to sail across to Croatia.’
PICCOLO, ITALY, NOVEMBER 1460
The little fishing village was ringed on the landward side by high walls pierced by a single gate that was officially closed at sunset. Freize shouted up for the porter, who opened the shutter to stick his head out of the window and argue that travellers should show respect for the rules,
and might not enter the village after the curfew bell had tolled and the village gates closed for the night.
‘The sun’s barely down!’ Freize complained. ‘The sky is still bright!’
‘It’s down,’ the gatekeeper replied. ‘How do I know who you are?’
‘Because, since it’s not darkest night, you can perfectly well see who we are,’ Freize replied. ‘Now let us in, or it will be the worse for you. My master is an Inquirer for the Holy Father himself, we couldn’t be more important if we were all cardinals.’
Grumbling, the porter slammed the shutter on his window and came down to the gate. As the travellers waited outside, in the last golden light of the day, they could hear him, complaining bitterly as he heaved the creaking gate open, and they clattered in under the arch.
The village was no more than a few streets running down the hill to the quay. They dismounted once they were inside the walls and led the horses down the narrow way to the quayside, going carefully on the well-worn cobblestones.
They had entered by the west gate of the perimeter wall which ran all round the village, pierced by a little bolted doorway on the high north side and a matching door to the south. As they picked their way down to the harbour they saw, facing the darkening sea, the only inn of the village with a welcoming door standing wide open, and bright windows twinkling with candlelight.
The five travellers led their horses to the stable yard, handed them over to the lad, and went into the hallway of the inn. They could hear, through the half-open windows, the slap of the waves against the walls of the quay, and could smell the haunting scent of salt water and the marshy stink of fishing nets. Piccolo was a busy port with nearly a dozen ships in the little harbour, either bobbing at anchor in the bay or tied up to rings set in the harbour wall. The village was noisy even though the autumn darkness was falling. The fishermen were making their way home to their cottages, and the last travellers were disembarking from the boats that plied their trade crossing and recrossing the darkening sea. Croatia was less than a hundred miles due east and people coming into the inn, blowing on their cold fingers, complained of a contrary wind which had prolonged their journey for nearly two days, and had chilled them to the bone. Soon it would be winter, and too late in the year for sea voyages for all but the most fearless.
Ishraq and Isolde took the last private bedroom in the house, a little room under the slanting roof. They could hear the occasional scuffling from mice and probably rats under the tiles, but this did not disturb them. They laid their riding cloaks on the bed and washed their hands and faces in the earthenware bowl.
Freize, Luca and Brother Peter would bed down in the attic room opposite with half a dozen other men, as was usual when there were many travellers on the road and the inn was crowded. Brother Peter and Luca tossed a coin for the last place in the big shared bed and when Luca lost he had to make do with a straw mattress on the floor. The landlady of the inn apologised to Luca whose good looks and good manners earned him attention everywhere they went, but she said that the inn was busy tonight, and tomorrow it would be even worse as there was a rumour that a mighty pilgrimage was coming into town.
‘How we’ll feed them all I don’t know,’ she said. ‘They’ll have to take fish soup and bread and like it.’
‘Where are they all going?’ Luca asked, ashamed to find that he was hoping that they were not taking the road to Zagreb. He was anxious to be alone with Isolde, and determined that she should not join another party.
‘Jerusalem, they say,’ she replied.
‘What a journey! What a challenge!’ he exclaimed.
She smiled at him. ‘Not for me,’ she said. ‘It’s challenge enough making gallons of soup. What will the ladies want for their dinner?’
Freize, who sometimes served their dinner and sometimes ate with them, depending on the size of the inn and whether they needed help in the kitchen, was sent into the private dining room by the landlady and took his place with his friends at the table.
He was greeted with little smiles from both girls. He bowed to Lady Isolde and noticed that her blonde hair was coiled demurely under a plain headdress, and her dark blue eyes were carefully turned away from Luca, who could not stop himself glancing towards her. Brother Peter, ignoring everyone, composed a lengthy grace and Isolde and Luca prayed with him.
Ishraq kept her dark eyes open and sat in quiet thought while the prayer went on. She never recited the Christian prayers, but as Freize noted – peeking through his fingers – she seemed to use the time of Grace for her own silent thoughts. She did not seem to pray to her god either; as far as he knew, she carried no prayer mat with her few clothes and he had never seen her turn to the east. She was in this, as in so much else, a mystery, Freize thought, and a law to herself.
‘Amen!’ he said loudly, as he realised that Brother Peter had finally finished and that dinner might be served.
The innkeeper’s wife had excelled herself, and brought five dishes to the table: two sorts of fish, some stewed mutton, a rather tough roast pheasant, and a local delicacy, pitadine, which was a pancake wrapped around a rich savoury filling. Freize tried it in the spirit of adventure and pronounced it truly excellent. She smiled and told him he could have pitadine for breakfast, dinner and supper, if he liked it so much. The filling changed according to the time of day, but the pancake remained the same. There was coarse brown bread baked hot from the oven with local butter, and some honey cakes for pudding.
The travellers dined well, hungry from their long ride, and easy and companionable together. Even Brother Peter was so warmed by good food and the friendliness of the inn that he poured a glass of wine for the two young women and wished them, ‘Salute.’
After dinner the ladies rose and said goodnight, and Ishraq went up to the little bedroom while Isolde lingered on the stairs. Luca rose casually from the dining table, and, heading for the inn’s front door, happened to arrive at the foot of the stairs in time to say goodnight to her. She was hesitating on the first two steps, holding her lit candle, and he laid his hand over hers on the stair rail.
‘And so it seems we travel together for a little longer,’ he said tentatively, looking up at her.
She nodded. ‘Though I will have to keep my word to Brother Peter, and go with another party if we meet one,’ she reminded him.
‘Only a suitable one,’ he reminded her.
She dimpled. ‘It would have to be very suitable,’ she agreed.
‘Promise me, you will be very careful who you choose?’
‘I shall be extremely careful,’ she said, her eyes dancing, and then she lowered her voice and added more seriously, ‘I shall not readily leave you, Luca Vero.’
‘I can’t imagine parting from you,’ he exclaimed. ‘I really can’t imagine not seeing you first thing in the morning, and talking to you through the day. I can’t imagine making this journey without you now. I know it is foolish – it’s been only a few weeks, but I find you more and more . . .’
He broke off, and she came down one step of the stair, so that her head was only a little higher than his. ‘More and more?’ she whispered.
‘Essential,’ he said simply, and he stepped up on the bottom step so they were level at last. Tantalisingly, they were so close that they could have kissed if he had leaned only a little more, or if she had turned her face towards him.
Slowly, he leaned a little more; slowly, she turned . . .
‘Shall we plan our journey before we go to bed?’ Brother Peter asked drily from the doorway of the dining room. ‘Brother Luca? So that we can make an early start tomorrow?’
Luca turned from Isolde with a quiet exclamation. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course.’ He stepped back down to Brother Peter. ‘Yes, we should. Goodnight, Isolde.’
‘Goodnight,’ she said sweetly and watched him as he went back into the little dining room and shut the door. Only when he was gone did she put her hand to her mouth as if she had been longing for the kiss that could not happen on t
his night, and should never happen at all.
In the morning the quayside was alive with noise and bustle. The boats that had been out at sea since dawn were jostling for position in the port. The earliest arrival was tied up alongside the harbour wall, the others tied to it and the farthest ones throwing ropes at bow and stern and the fishermen walking on planks laid across one boat to another with huge round woven baskets of fish dripping on their broad shoulders till they reached the shore and stacked them in their usual place for the buyers to come and see what they had landed.
The air above the boats was filled with seagulls, circling and swooping for offcuts of fish, their cries and screams a constant babel, the flash of their white wings bright in the morning sunshine.
A little auction of the catch was taking place at the harbour wall, a man yelling prices to the crowd, who raised their hands or shouted their names when he reached a price that they could meet, with the winner going forward, paying up, and hefting the basket to their cart to take inland, or carrying it up the stone steps into the town, higher up the hill, to the central market.
Basket after basket heaped with shoals of sardines came ashore, the fish brilliantly shining and stippled black like tarnished silver, and the landlady of the inn walked along the quay with two baskets and had the lad from the stables carry them home for her. The other women of the town hung back and waited for the buyers to drive down the prices before they approached and offered their money for a single fish. Wives and daughters went to their boats and took the pick of their catches for a good dinner that night. Fishermen had sets of scales on the quayside and leaned from their boats to sling iridescent-scaled fish into the tray, holding up the balance to show to the waiting women, who then hooked the fish and dropped them into the bottom of their baskets.
Sleek cats wound their way around the legs of the buyers and sellers alike, waiting for the fish to be gutted and cleaned and scraps dropped down to them. In the sky above, the seagulls still wheeled and cried, the cold sunlight of the early morning shining on them as brightly as on the dazzling scales of the fish, as if the air, the land and the sea, were all celebrating the richness of the ocean, the courage of the fishermen and the profitable trade of Piccolo.
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