Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (18 page)

‘Of course we did not!’ Isolde burst out, looking round at the pinched angry faces. ‘You must be mad to think such a thing!’

‘Mad?’ someone shouted. ‘It is you that are mad to bring such a thing down on us!’

‘Calling up a storm in the green lake, leading our children out to drown. “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

‘Yes!’ a man shouted from the back of the crowd. ‘The Bible itself says: “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”’

The mass of people pressed closer to the two young women and the little girl between them. Ree dived beneath Isolde’s cloak and clung around her waist, crying for fear. Isolde was as white as the kerchief over her hair. Ishraq stepped in front of her, spread her hands, balanced on the balls of her feet, ready to fight.

Luca spread his arms, raised his voice. ‘These are my friends,’ he declared. ‘And we have lost our own friend to the sea, just as you have lost your dear ones. You cannot think that these young women would call up a wave that would drown our friend.’

‘I
do
think it,’ Mrs Ricci hurled the words at him. ‘We all think it. It is you who are misled. How will you hold an inquiry if you will not ask the most important questions? What were they doing in the lake?’

Baffled, Luca turned to Isolde. ‘What
were
you doing in the lake?’

She flushed red with anger that he should interrogate her before this crowd. ‘How dare you ask me?’

His temper flared with his fear of the crowd. ‘Of course I ask you! Don’t be such a fool! Answer me at once! What were you doing?’

‘We were washing,’ she said, disdainful of him, of the crowd. ‘We went for a wash.’

‘Washing!’ the women scoffed. ‘In the green lake? As night fell? They are storm-bringers, you can see it in their faces.’

There was a dangerous roar of agreement from the crowd and it encouraged the wise women on the attack.

‘You will name the storm-bringers?’ the woman pressed Luca. ‘These women who came with you, and the child who came later, their little accomplice? You will try all three of them?’

‘It was the children and the two women who called up the wave. That child would know. You must question her,’ a man commanded from the back of the crowd, his jacket dirty with sludge from baling out his house. ‘And we will burn all three of them together.’

‘Yes!’ a new woman agreed with him. ‘If they are guilty we will drown all three of them in our own harbour.’

Ree’s little hand clenched onto Isolde’s steady grip. ‘What are they saying?’ she whispered. ‘What do they think we have done?’

‘I assure you these women are innocent,’ Luca began. ‘And the child also.’

‘Then try them!’ someone shouted.

‘You say that you are an inquirer – hold an inquiry!’

‘Right now!’

‘I will hold an inquiry,’ Luca tried to seize control of the angry crowd. ‘I will hold an inquiry this afternoon. A proper inquiry . . .’

‘Not this afternoon – now!’ the man with the dirty jacket shouted him down.

‘I’ll hold an inquiry,’ Luca insisted through gritted teeth. ‘A proper inquiry at the time that I appoint, and Brother Peter will write a report to the lord of our order and to the Holy Father. And you shall give evidence on oath of what you have seen –’ he glared at the angry women – ‘what you have really seen – not what you imagine. And if there has been any witchcraft or magic I will find it out and punish it.’

‘Even if she has seduced you with her witch skills?’ Mrs Ricci asked, her voice clear and accusing. ‘She, who crept into the men’s room in the night?’

Isolde’s cheeks burned red for shame, but it was Ishraq who stepped forward and spat out her reply. ‘There is no witch, and there is no seduction. There are friends and fellow travellers, Christians and pilgrims and a terrible, terrible tragedy which you make worse by your slurs and scandals. Let the inquirer hold his inquiry without fear or favour and we will all abide by his judgement.’

‘Right now, then,’ Mrs Ricci insisted.

‘Right now,’ Brother Peter conceded, frightened by the hostility and the numbers of the crowd. ‘We’ll go to the inn and meet in the dining room. I’ll get some paper and ink from Father Benito. We will hold an inquiry, as we are bound to do, and you shall have your say.’

The man in the dirty jacket suddenly lunged forwards, grabbed Luca by the jacket, thrust his big face forwards. ‘Right now!’ he shouted. ‘We said right now, we mean right now! Not down at the inn! Not when you have fetched paper! Not when you have whispered together and made up a story. Now! Justice for the drowned!’

Luca pushed him away but he was a strong, angry man, and he did not release his grip. Ishraq flexed her fingers and looked around as if to measure how many people might try to drag them down. Isolde saw from her face that she thought they would not escape a beating, perhaps worse. The two young women stood a little closer, knowing that they were hopelessly outnumbered.

‘Justice for the drowned!’ someone else shouted from the back and then there were more people, running up the narrow streets, shouting and catcalling. ‘Justice for the drowned!’

‘Right now,’ Luca offered. Gently he pushed the big man away, sensing that the whole crowd was on the edge of a riot. ‘Where? In the church?’

‘In the church,’ the big man agreed, and he released Luca and led the way to the church with half the village following, and the other half running through the streets to join them. He looked back at Brother Peter. ‘And you write it down, like you should,’ he insisted. ‘There’s ink and paper in the church. And if they are guilty you write down that they are to be given to us, the people of Piccolo, for us to do as we please.’

‘If they are guilty,’ Father Benito specified.

Ishraq took a look around, thinking that she and Isolde and Ree might be able to break away. Isolde took a firm grip of Ree’s hand, lifted the hem of her own long gown ready to run.

‘Not so fast,’ Mrs Ricci said with an evil smile. ‘You’re coming too. Don’t think you’ll get away again to bathe in the water and call down a wave from Hell on us poor Christians, you vile heretic and you vile witch and you vile child.’

Ishraq looked at her, the fury in her dark gaze veiled by her dark lashes, and the three of them submitted to being hustled into the church.

The people filed into the church, ranged around the stone walls and stood in a murmuring hush, waiting for what was to happen next. Luca took a seat in the choir stalls, Brother Peter on one side of him, Father Benito on the other, the witnesses, as they came up to make their statements took the front row of the opposing choir stalls, the light on the altar behind the rood screen shining warmly on them all. The hushed holiness of the place silenced the crowd but they were still determined to see justice done, and one after another, the villagers stepped up to the choir stalls and spoke of their experiences with the crusade and then with the flood.

They reported seeing the children begging and praying. They all agreed that Johann had preached of the end of days and had promised that they would be able to walk dry-shod to Jerusalem. They all reported that he had tempted them, by promising them sight of a beloved lost kinsman. People wept again as they said that Johann had spoken to them personally, described events that he could not possible have known unless he had been guided by the Devil himself, that they had been sure of him as an angel, now they knew he was accursed.

Brother Peter made notes, Luca listened intently, fearing more and more that some terrible wrong had happened in this town and that he had missed it. Remorsefully, he remembered coming into the town at dusk, after riding all day with Isolde, quite entranced by her, noticing nothing about the gateway, the harbour or the inn. He remembered saying goodnight to her on the stairs of the inn, thinking of nothing but the closeness of her and that if she had leaned a little nearer they could have kissed. He thought of the arrival of the children on the quayside and how he had looked up to see the two beautiful girls at their window as they had called down that hundreds of children were on the road; he had heard what they had said, but what he had seen was the two exquisite young women. He remembered warning Ishraq that she should not wear her Arab dress and how he had told her that her skin was the colour of heather honey. He knew now that he had been instantly and completely persuaded by Johann, that he had been determined to join the crusade to Jerusalem, hoping selfishly that he would see his parents again. Distracted, filled with sinful desire, obsessed with his own hopes and fears, Luca blamed himself for being quite blind to the events unfolding before his very eyes, and letting this town be washed through by the flood.

He should have been a Noah, he thought – he should have known that the flood was coming and prepared a safe haven. If he had been a true inquirer, and not a lovesick boy, he would not have been distracted and perhaps he would have seen something: a movement of the sea, the largeness of the moon – something that could have warned him of the disaster that was coming. Luca sat very still, listening intently, filled with shame at his own failure.

‘What about the young ladies?’ one of the midwives called from the body of the church. ‘You are asking about things that we know, that we all know. What about the young ladies and what they were doing?’

At once there was a murmur of suspicion and anxiety in the echoing chancel. ‘Call them. And have them answer to you.’

Wearily Luca rose to his feet and looked into the shadowy body of the church. ‘Lady Isolde, Mistress Ishraq!’ he called. He could see the girls coming slowly from where they had been kneeling at the back of the church and then the quiet patter of their leather slippers as they came up the stone-flagged aisle and hesitated. Solemnly, he waved them into the choir stalls opposite his seat, so that they should take their place like the other witnesses. He looked at them, and he knew he was looking at them as if they were strangers to him: strangers filled with the incomprehensible powers of women.

‘And the child,’ someone insisted. ‘The child who escaped the wave.’

Isolde bowed her head to hide her resentment, and went back down the aisle and returned with Ree holding her hand.

The two of them sat opposite him, in silence, Ree between them, their eyes on the floor. Luca remembered that when he first met Isolde she was accused of witchcraft and now she sat before him accused of the worst of crimes, once again. He could not help but feel a superstitious shiver that so much trouble seemed to swirl around her, though she always looked, as now, so shiningly innocent. He couldn’t help but think that a woman who was truly good would not have one slander against her name, let alone two. This woman seemed to attract trouble as iron bars sown in a field will attract a thunderstorm.

His anxiety about her strengthened his resolve to hold a proper inquiry. He dismissed his feelings for Isolde and stared at her critically, without affection, and tried to see her, as these people saw her: a strange, exotic and dangerously independent woman.

‘You have been accused of working as a storm-bringer,’ he said, his voice firm and level. ‘Both of you have been so accused, by people who say that you went out of the town as night was falling, to a place called the green lake and that there you called up a storm by splashing and making waves in the lake.’

The two young women looked at him in utter silence. Luca flushed as he imagined that he saw contempt in their level gaze.

‘What do you say?’ he asked them. ‘To these charges? I am bound to put them to you, you are bound to answer.’

‘They are unworthy of an educated man,’ Ishraq said icily. ‘They are the fears of fools.’

There was a buzz, like an angry swarm of bees, at the arrogance of her tone. One of the wise women looked around triumphantly. ‘Hear how she calls us fools!’

‘Even so,’ Luca said, irritated, ‘you will answer. And be advised not to abuse these good people. What were you doing at the lake?’

‘We went out of the town in the afternoon,’ Isolde spoke for them both, her voice very clear and steady. ‘We wanted to wash and the landlady didn’t have hot water for us, nor a bath that we could carry up to our room.’

‘Why would they want to wash? In November?’ one of the women said from the centre of the crowd standing before the chancel steps. People murmured in agreement. Ishraq looked around at them scornfully.

‘The stable lad had told us of a place where boys went swimming . . .’ Isolde went on.

‘So what young lady would go there?’ someone demanded. ‘What young lady would go where the boys go? These must be girls of bad repute, little whores.’

Isolde gasped at the word, and looked at Luca, expecting him to silence the shouts. He said nothing to defend her.

‘And the gatekeeper says they went out at night.’

‘It was afternoon,’ Isolde insisted.

Luca raised his hand on the groan from the crowd and the single shout: ‘Liar. Dirty liar!’

There was a scuffle at the doorway, as the door banged, and the porter from the west gate came into the church.

‘You tell him,’ they pushed him forward till he arrived before Luca, Father Benito, and Brother Peter,

‘You are?’ Brother Peter dipped his pen in the ink.

‘Porter. Gatekeeper Paolo. I saw the women, and I warned them to be back inside the gates before dusk,’ he said.

‘Was the sun setting as they left?’ Luca asked.

‘It must have been, for I warned them of the curfew.’

‘What did they say?’

‘They said they were going for a walk.’

‘Why should they lie?’ someone shouted. ‘If they were going for a wash? Why not say that?’

‘And they went out as night fell! Why would they do that?’

‘They went out as night was coming, so that no one could see them calling up a storm in the green lake!’

Luca looked at Isolde and saw defiance in her dark blue eyes. She looked as she did when he first met her, a woman against the world, despite her own desire to live at peace in her home. A woman driven to defiance. A woman with no trust in him, nor in any man: a woman at bay.

‘Tell these people,’ he said. Suddenly he broke into Latin, confident that she would understand him but few other people in the church would. ‘Please, please my dearest, trust us with the truth. Tell them that you would not call up a storm. Tell them that you are not a storm-bringer. Ishraq too. Just tell them. For God’s sake, Isolde, we are all in trouble here. I can only ask you questions – you have to save yourself. Tell them what you were doing.’