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 little 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 realized 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 got up 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 dryly from the doorway of the dining room. ‘Brother Luca? Do you not think we should plan our journey 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 this 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 came down and bought 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 fathers’ boats and took the pick of their catches for a good dinner that night. Individual fishermen had sets of scales on the quayside and leaned from their boats to sling iridescent-scaled fish into the tray, holding 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.
Freiz
e 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 timekeeping.’
‘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 small girl 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 little feet were bleeding 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.’
Stormbringers Page 2