Stormbringers

by Philippa Gregory

  ‘They honour their order before anything,’ Milord replied. ‘They will accept any target, of any faith, of any nation. They serve themselves, not religion or race.’

  ‘But why would this galley slaver want to kill you?’ Isolde asked, puzzled.

  He spoke to her directly for the first time. ‘He’s no galley slaver,’ he said. ‘He is one of the greatest men of the Ottoman Empire, he is commander of all the armies, he is head of the janissary soldiers, the elite fighting force. He’s the right-hand man of the Sultan Mehmet, who has just triumphed at Constantinople; they are sworn to each other for life. He stands for everything that I fight against – the victory of the Ottoman Empire over Christianity, the invasion of the Arabs across Europe, the rise of terror, the end of the world. That was the man you had here, and you let him go. Now he warns me that I will not be as lucky if I fall into his hands. He taunts me. This is a game to him. A game to the death. He will know I have commanded you to kill him. This is his way of telling me that he has ordered my death too.’

  There was a horrified silence.

  ‘What will you do, Milord?’ Luca asked quietly.

  The man shrugged, recovering himself. ‘I’ll go to Prime,’ he said. ‘Breakfast. Talk with you and Brother Peter, and go on my way. Continue my struggle. Fight for Christ.’

  ‘Will you defend yourself?’

  ‘If I can, for as long as I can. But this tells me that I will die. I won’t stop my work. I have sworn an oath to lead the Order of Darkness to guard against fear itself, and I will never give up.’

  Luca hesitated. ‘Should we not come with you? Should we not defend you against this threat? You should have someone with you all the time.’

  His voice was bleak. ‘It is a fight to the death,’ he said. ‘My death or his. And neither my death nor his death is as important as your mission. When I die, a new lord will take my place, you will still have work to do. For now, you go to Venice and trace the signs of the end of days. And I will keep myself as safe as I can.’

  He looked at the peacock badge in Luca’s hand. ‘Get rid of that,’ he said. ‘I can’t bear to see it.’

  Silently, Ishraq put out her hand and took it from him. Freize watched her as she tucked it into the pocket of her cape.

  The three men and Isolde went up the hill to the church. Freize saw them go from the inn doorway, as Ishraq started up the stairs to pack their few things ready to leave.

  ‘You didn’t hear anything, in the night, I suppose?’ Freize asked her neutrally.

  She turned on the stair, looked him straight in the face, and lied to him. ‘No. I slept through it all.’

  ‘Because he must have come up the stairs and stood on the landing floor just below your bedroom, and gone into the room beneath yours.’

  ‘Yes. But he went past the kitchen door too. Did you hear nothing?’

  ‘No. If he had killed the lord, it would have been most terrible. He is my lord’s commander. I am bound to defend him. Luca is bound to guard him.’

  ‘But whoever it was, didn’t kill him,’ she pointed out. ‘He never intended to kill him. He took him a message, he left the message, and went away again. It is Milord who speaks of death and threatens death. All I saw was a badge from a standard.’

  ‘A message from our enemy,’ Freize prompted her. ‘And not any old message. A death threat from our enemy.’

  ‘From your enemy,’ she said. ‘To the lord of your lord. But I don’t know that I like Luca’s commander very much. I don’t know that he is my friend. I don’t know if I am on his side. I don’t know that he is my lord. I don’t know if his enemy is my enemy. I don’t even know if he’s a very good lord to Luca. Perhaps you should think of that, before you ask me how I sleep?’

  The four walked back from Prime and they all ate breakfast in the inn kitchen while Milord ate alone in the dining room. When they had finished eating, the two young women went up to their attic bedroom to prepare for the journey.

  ‘What will you do with that?’ Isolde asked, seeing Ishraq put the gloriously embroidered peacock eye standard in the bottom of her little bag.

  ‘Keep it, I don’t know,’ she said.

  ‘Luca’s commander was very afraid,’ Isolde observed. ‘He wanted it out of his sight.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Perhaps you should burn it.’

  ‘Perhaps I will.’ Ishraq hesitated. ‘But I don’t understand why Luca’s lord was so troubled. He was unhurt, after all.’

  ‘If it was an Assasin who pinned it on his chest for a warning . . .’

  ‘It was no Assassin,’ she said. ‘It was Radu Bey himself, and Luca’s lord must have admitted him to his room in secret. For I saw Radu Bey come out. I myself let him out of the front door.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ Isolde asked.

  ‘Because Luca’s lord had met him in secret and then made up this story about an Assasin. I didn’t know what it meant. Now I doubt Luca’s lord.’

  ‘He is appointed by the Pope,’ Isolde pointed out.

  ‘That doesn’t make him a good man,’ Ishraq reminded her. ‘There are many appointed by the Pope who persecute and destroy. And there is more between him and Radu Bey than we know. And, as he left, Radu Bey warned me.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘He asked me had I ever looked in Milord’s face, and I said that he is always hooded and in shadow. And he laughed and said that a man of God does not work in darkness. He said that when I see his face I will understand more. He said . . .’ she broke off.

  ‘What?’ Isolde asked, lowering her voice as if she feared that Milord might be listening to them.

  ‘He said never to let him come too close.’

  ‘Why?’

  Ishraq shook her head. ‘He didn’t say. He said not to let him touch me. Not to let him . . .’ she hesitated. ‘Not to let him kiss me.’

  ‘He’s sworn to a monastic order!’ Isolde objected.

  ‘I know. But it wasn’t because it would be a sin,’ Ishraq tried to explain. ‘He said it as if . . . as if it would be dangerous. As if his touch might be . . . dangerous.’

  There was a frightened silence. Then Isolde shook her head. ‘We can trust no one,’ she said.

  ‘We can trust Luca, and Freize,’ Ishraq said. ‘We’re safe with them. And I know that Brother Peter is a good man. But I don’t trust Luca’s lord nor his Order.’

  ‘We can trust each other,’ Isolde suggested, tentatively. She stretched out her hand to her friend and Ishraq stepped into her embrace. For a moment they stood together, then Ishraq stepped back. ‘We can trust each other,’ Ishraq ruled. And we have to. For I think we are alone together in a very dangerous world.’

  After his breakfast, Milord came down to the inn kitchen and gave Brother Peter a set of sealed orders, and a heavy bag of cash. ‘And a note to the Jewish moneylenders in Venice,’ he said. ‘You will want for nothing while you search for the forgers.’ Brother Peter tucked the sealed orders into his jerkin; Freize rolled his eyes to heaven.

  ‘Will you guard the money for me, Freize?’ Brother Peter asked.

  ‘I’ll carry the orders too if you like,’ Freize grinned at him.

  ‘No. I don’t think that giving them to you would be to put them in safekeeping. I’ll keep the orders myself, and open them when I am commanded and not before. But I’d be glad to know that you were guarding the purse.’

  Freize nodded, secretly pleased at being trusted. As Brother Peter handed over the heavy purse of gold, the lord turned to Luca. ‘I’ll talk with you privately before I leave,’ he said, and led the way into the dining room.

  The stable lad was laying the fire. As the two men came in, he ducked his head in a bow and scuttled out. Luca closed the door behind him as the lord seated himself before the table, his back to the light, and gestured to the opposite chair. ‘You can sit,’ the lord said.

  Luca obeyed and waited.

  ‘You have seen a lot,’ the man said to him. ‘You have complete
d four inquiries and seen some of the horror and the strangeness of the world in these dangerous times. And you have looked without flinching.’

  ‘I flinched when I saw the wave,’ Luca confessed. ‘I was very afraid.’

  ‘Fear is not a problem. Fear before something that is truly fearful is what will keep you alive. I was afraid when I found Radu Bey’s badge on my heart pinned by an Assassin. There are fearful things in this world, objects of terror. What I cannot tolerate among the men of my Order is fear of things before they happen, fear of things because they might happen, fear of things that probably won’t happen. You don’t suffer from fears like that?’

  ‘I’m not afraid of shadows on the wall,’ Luca said.

  The dark eyes looked at him acutely. ‘What do you know of shadows on the wall?’

  ‘Radu Bey, the infidel lord said . . .’

  ‘Oh, he is well read indeed,’ the lord said crushingly. ‘I am sure we could all learn from him. He has had great teachers. He has given up his own soul, his immortal life so that he should know of this world. Look at his allies! He works with the Order of Assassins: what does that make him if not an Assassin himself?’

  Luca was immediately silent, as the lord recovered his temper.

  ‘No matter. He is not important to us now. I am watching you, Luca Vero, and I am encouraged by what I see.’

  Luca bowed his head, feeling absurdly pleased at the praise.

  ‘You are in obedience with my commands? You acknowledge the rule of the Order?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You understand the work that we are sworn to do, and you continue to do it?’

  Luca nodded.

  The lord drew his rosewood box towards him. ‘If you bare your arm, I will mark you with the first sign of the Order. As you progress I will complete the marks until the seal is completed, and then you will be a full member and may know me, know me by name, you will see my face, and you will know and work alongside other knights of the Order.’

  Luca hesitated; he had a strange reluctance to take the mark on his arm.

  ‘You don’t want to? You hesitate before this honour?’

  ‘Is this like priestly vows? For I am not sure that I am prepared.’

  The lord smiled. ‘No. Not really. Is that why you delay?’ He laughed to himself. ‘You are a young man indeed! No, in our Order you are not sworn to poverty – I am sending you to Venice as wealthy as a lord. You are not sworn to chastity – your private life is your own concern, between you and your confessor. I don’t concern myself with any sin or vice unless it affects your work for the Order.’

  Luca blinked.

  ‘Remember that you did not complete your novitiate. You are not bound by the vows of a priest; you can choose to take your vows later.’

  ‘I was not sure . . .’

  ‘My Order only requires obedience. You must be obedient to me and to my commands and to our mission, which is to guard the frontier of Christendom from the devil, the pagan and the heretic. You will be an inquirer and a servant of the Order. How you obey the commandments is between you and your confessor and God. Do you submit to the Order?’

  ‘Yes, my lord,’ Luca bowed his head.

  There was a small gleam of a smile, and then the hooded figure moved to the newly-lit fire and took a taper from the flame. One by one he lit all the candles in the room and carried each one of them to the table, so that they were shining on Luca as he sat in broad daylight. In the rosewood box the lord had a set of bronze instruments like a set of embroidery needles, and a small pot of what looked like black ink.

  ‘Bare your arm,’ he said quietly.

  Luca rolled back the sleeve of his robe, and stretched out his arm.

  The lord took up a needle, sharp as a stiletto blade. ‘Whether you find your father or not, you have a family in this Order,’ he said quietly. ‘Whether you speak with the Muslim lord or not, you have no lord but me. Whether you travel with the woman or not, your heart is given to your work and to the mapping of fears and the tracing of the end of days. Whatever else you see on your journey, my command is that you look into the very jaws of hell itself and tell me their measurements. Will you do this?’

  He pressed the point of the needle to Luca’s skin, inside the forearm, halfway between the crook of the elbow and the wrist, and Luca recoiled as he saw the blood well up and felt the sharp scratch.

  ‘I will,’ he gasped. He clenched his fist against the pain and watched as again and again the little blade cut and then scratched, opening up the skin, marking him lightly with a tickling sharp pain, making a shape, an unmistakable shape on the pale skin.

  The pain deepened, as the cuts took a form. It was the tail of the dragon, exquisitely drawn by a knife on soft flesh. That was all: the first marks of the Order, the scaley tail outlined in the scarlet of Luca’s blood.

  Luca looked at the drawing in blood, the detail in crimson, then the lord dropped his hooded head to Luca’s wound. Luca gasped as the lord’s soft mouth came down on his flesh. He felt the prickle of the stubble on his lord’s chin and upper lip, erotic as a kiss against his sensitive flesh. He felt the man’s teeth nibble the inside of his arm, felt the touch of his warm tongue on his raw skin. Luca felt the blood well into the lord’s mouth, as he sucked the flowing blood from the little wounds, then he felt the cool wetness of the man’s saliva as the lord raised his head and pulled his hood forwards over his face so that Luca only glimpsed for a moment his mouth, stained red, and the gleam of his black eyes.

  Without comment, the lord lifted his head and took a tiny brush, dipped it in the pot of ink, and painted, with meticulous accuracy, over the lines he had cut, the wounds he had sucked. Then, he took a linen napkin from inside the box and pressed it against the red marks, now darkened with black ink. He raised his head and looked into Luca’s face. The younger man was pale and his brown eyes were darkened, his breath quick and shallow. The two of them stood in silence, as if something very strange and powerful had taken place.

  ‘There,’ said the lord, quietly. ‘I have marked you with my symbol. I have tasted your blood. You begin to belong to the Order. You begin to be mine.’

  THE END

  AUTHOR NOTE

  I think any reader will be able to see the immense pleasure I have had in writing this book, which has given me the chance to imagine the characters of a wholly fictional story against an historical background. Luca, Freize, Isolde and Ishraq seem to be growing, almost of their own accord, into the people they will be later in the series. In this novel we see Freize’s courage and sense of humour coming to the fore, and also the complexity of Luca’s feelings: about his childhood, about his vocation, about the two young women.

  These two are becoming clearly differentiated individuals; I am getting more and more interested in where Ishraq’s questioning mind and Eastern background will take her, and the way Isolde’s sense of privilege and nobility is being tested by being endangered and frightened in the hard world she encounters. The discussion between the two young women about whether it is better to be free or to restrict your own behaviour in accordance with the conventions, is one that medieval people discussed, as have subsequent generations. The debate about appropriate behaviour for women continues to this day.

  This novel also sees the emergence of characters who are going to matter a lot in future episodes. Luca’s shadowy master is even more ominous in this story, though we see for the first time what his battle against the Ottoman Empire has cost him. We are going to see more of Milord and understand the deep enmity which will rob him of his compassion. His arch-enemy, and mirror image, is Radu Bey, a glamorous, powerful and thrilling character who is going to return in later stories and dazzles Luca and Ishraq with his learning and good looks.

  The legend of a children’s crusade is one that persisted throughout the medieval period and had its roots in the many short-lived musterings of young people and poor working people who were known as ‘boys’ or ‘girls’ regardless of their
ages. There were many instances of small armies of the poor and powerless who marched to a nearby town, attacked a ghetto, or besieged a church, and were soon disbanded or paid off. Historians now think that there was no major crusade by children to the Holy Land, but legends persist of such an expedition, and some people continue to believe that there were at least two significant attempts by children and young people to go to the Holy Land on crusade – and I draw on those here.

  The tidal wave that swept these children away is also fictional, but there was a tremendous earthquake, as Father Benito reports in this story, which was centred on Friuli in 1348, and indeed there has been another earthquake in that area in recent years. The philosophers of the period did not understand how an earthquake could cause a flood, but they did believe that it might cause the plague: the earthquake of 1348 released foul odours, and was followed by a terrible plague, as Father Benito tells Luca.

  People did indeed believe that storms could be called up by stormbringers, and that they went to secluded lakes and pools and splashed the water to summon storms. It is easy for us, who have the resources of scientific research and global communication, to wonder that people should believe in such fantasies; but for people whose lives were in danger almost all the time, it was easy to believe in unseen and threatening powers.

  At the end of this novel Milord gives the five travellers a new commission: they are to go to Venice, the great trading centre of the medieval world and try to trace a new currency. The story of this inquiry, Fools’Gold, will be the next book in the Order of Darkness series.

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