Order of Darkness

by Philippa Gregory

  Freize was strolling through the bustle of the quayside, sniffing the pungent scent of fish, marsh and salt, pulling off his cap to the prettier of the fish wives, stepping around the boxes of fish and the lobster pots, relishing the noise and the joy and the vitality of the port. He revelled in being far from the quiet solitude of the monastery as he made his way through the crowd to find a ship that would take them due east, to the port of Split. He had spoken to one master already and wanted to find another to compare the price. ‘Though I don’t doubt they’ll have seen me coming and fixed the price already,’ he grumbled to himself. ‘A party on the road from Rome, two beautiful ladies and an Inquirer of the Church – bound to put the price up. Not to mention Brother Peter’s long face. I myself would charge double for him, for the sheer misery of his company.’

  As he paused, looking around him, a ginger kitten came and wound herself around his ankles. Freize looked down. ‘Hungry?’ he asked. The little face came up, the tiny pink mouth opened in a mew. Without thinking twice, Freize bent down and lifted the little animal in one hand. He could feel the little ribs through the soft fur. It was so small its body fitted in his broad palm. It started to purr, its whole body resonating with the deep, happy sound. ‘Come on then,’ Freize said. ‘Let’s see what we can find for you.’

  In a corner of the harbour, seated on a stone seat and sheltered from the cold morning wind by a roughly built wall, a woman was gutting her fish and throwing the entrails down on the floor where they were snatched at once by bigger cats. ‘Too big for you,’ Freize remarked to the kitten. ‘You’ll have to grow before you can fight for your dinner there.’ To the woman he said, ‘Bless you, Sister, can I have a morsel for this kitten here?’

  Without raising her head she cut a little piece off the tail and handed it up to him. ‘You’d better have deep pockets if you’re going to feed stray cats,’ she said disapprovingly.

  ‘No, for see, you are kind to me, and I am kind to her,’ Freize pointed out, and sat beside her, put the little cat on his knee, and let her eat the tail of the fish, working from plump flesh to scaly end with remarkable speed.

  ‘Are you planning to sit around all day looking at a kitten? Do you have no work to do?’ she asked, as the kitten sat on Freize’s knee and started to wash her paws with her little pink tongue.

  ‘There I am! Forgetting myself!’ Freize jumped to his feet, snatching up the kitten. ‘I have work to do and important work it is too! So thank you, and God bless you, Sister, and I must go.’

  She looked up, her face criss-crossed with deep wrinkles. ‘And what urgent work do you do, that you have the time and the money to stop and feed stray kittens?’

  He laughed. ‘I work for the Church, Sister. I serve a young master who is an Inquirer for the Pope himself. A brilliant young man, chosen above all the others from his monastery for his ability to study and understand everything – unknown things. He is an Inquirer, and I am his friend and servant. I am in the service of God.’

  ‘Not a very jealous God,’ she said, showing her black teeth in a smile. ‘Not a God who demands good time-keeping.’

  ‘A God who would not see a sparrow fall,’ Freize said. ‘Praise Him and all the little beings of His creation. Good day.’

  He tucked the kitten in his pocket where she curled around and put her paws on the top seam so that her little head was just poking out and she could see her way as they went through the crowd to where the fishermen were spreading out their nets for mending, taking down sails and coiling ropes on the ships.

  At last Freize found a master who was prepared to take them across the sea to the town of Split for a reasonable fee. But he would not go until midday. ‘I have been fishing half the night, I want my breakfast and dry clothes and then I’ll take you,’ he said. ‘Sail at noon. You’ll hear the church bells for Sext.’

  They shook hands on the agreement and Freize went back to the inn, pausing at the stables to order the grooms to have the horses ready for sailing at midday. It seemed to him that the crowds at the quayside had grown busier, even though the market had finished trading. At the inn, there were many young people at the front door, peering into the hallway, and in the stable yard about a dozen children were sitting on the mounting block and the wall of the well. One or two of them had hauled up the dripping bucket from the well and were drinking from their cupped hands.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ he asked a group of about six boys, none of them more than twelve years old. ‘Where are your parents?’

  They did not answer him immediately, but solemnly crossed themselves. ‘My Father is in heaven,’ one of them said.

  ‘Well, God bless you,’ Freize said, assuming that they were a party of begging orphans, travelling together for safety. He crossed the yard and went into the inn through the kitchen door, where the landlady was lifting half a dozen good-sized loaves of rough rye bread from the oven.

  ‘Smells good,’ Freize said appreciatively.

  ‘Get out of the way,’ she returned. ‘There is nothing for you until breakfast.’

  He laughed and went on to the small stone hall at the entrance of the inn and found Luca and Brother Peter talking with the innkeeper.

  Luca turned as he heard Freize’s step. ‘Oh, there you are. Are there many people outside?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s getting crowded,’ Freize replied. ‘Is it a fair or something?’

  ‘It’s a crusade,’ the innkeeper explained. ‘And we’re going to have to feed them somehow and get them on their way.’

  ‘Is that what it is? Your wife said yesterday that she was expecting some pilgrims,’ Freize volunteered.

  ‘Pilgrims!’ the man exclaimed. ‘Aye, for that was all that someone told us. But now they are starting to come into town and they say there are hundreds of them, perhaps thousands. It’s no ordinary pilgrimage, for they travel all together as an army will march. It’s a crusade.’

  ‘Where are they going?’ Brother Peter asked.

  The innkeeper shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Their leader walks with them. He must have some idea. I have to go and fetch the priest; he will have to see that they are housed and fed. I’ll have to tell the lord of the manor; he’ll want to see them moved on. They can’t come here, and besides, half of them have no money at all; they’re begging their way along the road.’

  ‘If they are in the service of God then He will guide them,’ Brother Peter said devoutly. ‘I’ll come with you to the priest and make sure that he understands that he must offer them hospitality.’

  Luca said to Freize, ‘Let’s take a look outside. I heard they are going to Jerusalem.’

  The two young men stepped out of the front door of the inn and found the quayside now crowded with boys and girls, some of them barefoot, some of them dressed in little more than rags, all of them travel-stained and weary. Most were seated, exhausted, on the cobblestones; some of them stood looking out to sea. None were older than sixteen, some as young as six or seven, and more of them were coming in through the town gate all the time, as the gatekeeper watched in bewilderment, racking his brains for an excuse to close the gate and shut them out.

  ‘God save us!’ Freize exclaimed. ‘What’s going on here? They’re all children.’

  ‘There’s more coming,’ Isolde called from the open window above them. She pointed north, over the roofs of the little town where the road wound down the hill. ‘I can see them on the road. There must be several hundred of them.’

  ‘Anyone leading them? Any adult in charge?’ Luca called up to her, completely distracted by the sight of her tumbled hair and the half-open collar of her shirt.

  Isolde shaded her eyes with her hand. ‘I can’t see anyone. No-one on horseback, just a lot of children walking slowly.’

  Almost under their feet a girl of about nine years old sat down abruptly and started to sob quietly. ‘I can’t walk,’ she said. ‘I can’t go on. I just can’t.’

  Freize knelt down beside her, saw that her feet were b
leeding from blisters and cuts. ‘Of course you can’t,’ he said. ‘And I don’t know what your father was doing letting you out. Where d’you live?’

  Her face was illuminated at once, sore feet forgotten. ‘I live with Johann the Good,’ she said.

  Luca bent down. ‘Johann the Good?’

  She nodded. ‘He has led us here. He will lead us to the Promised Land.’

  The two young men exchanged an anxious glance.

  ‘This Johann,’ Luca started, ‘where does he come from?’

  She frowned. ‘Switzerland, I think. God sent him to lead us.’

  ‘Switzerland?’ exclaimed Freize. ‘And where did he find you?’

  ‘I was working on a farm outside Verona.’ She reached for her little feet and chafed them as she spoke. At once her hands were stained red with her blood but she paid no attention. ‘Johann the Good and his followers came to the farm to ask for food and to be allowed to sleep in a barn for the night, but my master was a hard man and drove them away. I waited till he was asleep and then my brother and I ran away after them.’

  ‘Your brother’s here?’ Freize asked, looking round. ‘You have an older brother? Someone to look after you?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, for he’s dead now. He took a fever and he died one night and we had to leave him in a village; they said they would bury him in the churchyard.’

  Freize put a firm hand on Luca’s collar and pulled him back from the child. ‘What sort of fever?’ he asked suspiciously.

  ‘I don’t know, it was weeks ago.’

  ‘Where were you? What was the village?’

  ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t matter, I am not to grieve for I will see my brother again, when he rises from the dead. Johann said that he will meet us in the Promised Land where the dead live again and the wicked burn.’

  ‘Johann said that the dead will rise?’ Luca asked. ‘Rise from their graves and we will see them?’

  Freize had his own question. ‘So who takes care of you, now that your brother is dead?’

  She shrugged her thin shoulders, as if the answer must be obvious. ‘God takes care of me,’ she said. ‘He called me and He guides me. He guides all of us and Johann tells us what He wants.’

  Luca straightened up. ‘I’d like to speak with this Johann,’ he said.

  The girl rose to her feet, wincing with the pain. ‘There he is,’ she said simply, and pointed to a circle of young boys who had come through the town gate all together and were leaning their sticks against the harbour wall and dropping their knapsacks down on the cobbles.

  ‘Get Brother Peter,’ Luca said shortly to Freize. ‘I’m going to need him to take notes of what this lad says. We should understand what is happening here. It may be a true calling.’

  Freize nodded, and put a gentle hand on the little girl’s shoulder. ‘You stay here,’ he said. ‘I’ll wash your feet when I get back and find you some shoes. What’s your name?’

  ‘Rosa,’ she said. ‘But my feet are all right. God will heal them.’

  ‘I’ll help Him,’ Freize said firmly. ‘He likes a bit of help.’

  She laughed, a childish giggle at his impertinence. ‘He is all powerful,’ she corrected him gravely.

  ‘Then He must get extra help all the time,’ Freize said with a warm smile to her.

  Luca stood watching the child pilgrims as Freize jogged up the narrow street from the quayside to the market square, where the church stood, raised above the square by a flight of broad steps. As Freize went upwards, two at a time, the door of the church above him opened, and Brother Peter came out.

  ‘Luca needs you,’ Freize said shortly. ‘He wants you to take notes as he speaks to the youth who leads the pilgrims. They call him Johann the Good.’

  ‘An inquiry?’ Brother Peter asked eagerly.

  ‘For sure, something strange is going on.’

  Brother Peter followed Freize back to the quayside to find it even more crowded. Every moment brought new arrivals through the main gate of the town and through the little gate from the north. Some of them were children of nine or ten, some of them were young men, apprentices who had run from their masters, or farm boys who had left the plough. A group of little girls trailed in last, holding hands in pairs as if they were on their way to school. Luca guessed that at every halt the smaller, weaker children caught up with the others; and sometimes some of them never caught up at all.

  Brother Peter spoke to Luca. ‘The priest is a good man and has money to buy food for them, and the monastery is baking bread and the brothers will bring it down to the market to give to them.’

  ‘It seems to be a pilgrimage of children led by a young man,’ Luca said. ‘I thought we should question him.’

  Brother Peter nodded. ‘He might have a calling,’ he said cautiously. ‘Or he might have been tempted by Satan himself to steal these children from their parents. Either way, the Lord of our Order needs to know. This is something we should understand. We should inquire into it.’

  ‘He says that the dead will rise,’ Luca told Peter.

  The rising of the dead was a key sign of the end of days: when the graves would give up their dead and everyone would be judged.

  Brother Peter looked startled. ‘He is preaching of the end of days?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Luca said grimly.

  ‘Which one is he?’

  ‘That one, called Johann,’ Luca said, and started to make his way through the weary crowd to the boy who stood alone, his head bowed in prayer. ‘The girl called him Johann the Good.’

  There were so many children coming through the gate and down to the quayside now, that Luca could only wait and watch as they passed. He thought there were seven hundred of them in all, most of them exhausted and hungry, but all of them looking hopeful, some of them even inspired, as though driven by a holy determination to press on. Luca saw Freize take Rosa to the inn kitchen to bathe her feet, and thought that there must be many girls like her on the march, barely able to keep up, with no-one looking after them, driven by an unchildlike conviction that they were called by God.

  ‘It could be a miracle,’ Brother Peter said uncertainly, struggling through the sea of young people to get to Luca’s side. ‘I have seen such a thing only once before. When God calls for a pilgrimage and His people answer, it is a miracle. But we have to know how many there are, where they are going, and what they hope to achieve. They may be healers, they may have the Sight, they may have the gift of tongues. Or they might be terribly misguided. Milord will want to know about their leader, and what he preaches.’

  ‘Johann the Good,’ Luca repeated. ‘From Switzerland, she said. That’s him there.’

  As if he felt their gaze upon him, the youth waiting at the gate as his followers went past, raised his head and gave them a brilliant smile. He was about fifteen years old, with long blond hair that fell in untidy ringlets down to his shoulders. He had piercing blue eyes and was dressed like a Swiss goatherd, with a short robe over thick leggings laced criss-cross, and strong sandals on his feet. In his hand he had a stick, like a shepherd’s crook, carved with a series of crucifixes. As they watched, he kissed a cross, whispered a prayer, and then turned to them.

  ‘God bless and keep you, Masters,’ he said.

  Brother Peter, who was more accustomed to dispensing blessings than receiving them, said stiffly, ‘And God bless you too. What brings you here?’

  ‘God brings me here,’ the youth answered. ‘And you?’

  Luca choked on a little laugh at Brother Peter’s surprise at being questioned by a boy. ‘We too are engaged on the work of God,’ he said. ‘Brother Peter and I are inquiring into the well-being of Christendom. We are commissioned by the Holy Father himself to inquire and report to him.’

  ‘The end of days is upon us,’ the boy said simply. ‘Christendom is over, the end of the world has begun. I have seen the signs. Does the Holy Father know that?’

  ‘What signs have you seen?’ Luca asked.

  �
�Enough to be sure,’ the lad replied. ‘That’s why we are on our journey.’

  ‘What have you seen?’ Luca repeated. ‘Exactly what?’

  Johann sighed, as if he were weary of miracles. ‘Many, many things. But now I must eat and rest and then pray with my family. These are all my brothers and sisters in the sight of God. We have come far, and we have further still to go.’

  ‘We would like to talk with you,’ Brother Peter said. ‘It is our mission to know what things you have seen. The Holy Father himself will want to know what you have seen. We have to judge if your visions are true.’

  The boy nodded his head as if he were indifferent to their opinion. ‘Perhaps later. You must forgive me. But many people want to know what I have seen and what I know. And I have no interest in the judgements of this world. I will preach later. I will stand on the steps of the church and preach to the village people. You can come and listen if you want.’

  ‘Have you taken Holy Orders? Are you a servant of the Church?’ Brother Peter asked.

  The boy smiled and gestured to his poor clothes, his shepherd’s crook. ‘I am called by God, I have not been taught by His Church. I am a simple goatherd, I don’t claim to be more than that. He honoured me with His call as He honoured the fishermen and other poor men. He speaks to me Himself,’ the boy said simply. ‘I need no other teacher.’

  He turned and made the sign of the cross over some children who came through the gate singing a psalm and gathered around him to sit on the stone cobbles of the quay as comfortably as if they were in their own fields.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like to come into the inn and break your fast with us?’ Luca tempted him. ‘Then you can eat, and rest, and tell us of your journey.’

  The boy considered them both for a moment. ‘I will do that,’ he said. He turned and spoke a quick word with one of the children nearest to him and at once they settled down on the quayside and unpacked their knapsacks and started to eat what little they were carrying – a small bread roll and some cheese. The other children, who had nothing, sat dully where they were, as if they were too tired for hunger.