Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (23 page)

Isolde was genuinely distressed. ‘You can’t throw away your reputation, Ishraq. You can’t become a loose woman, a shamed woman.’

‘Nobody shames me,’ Ishraq said proudly. ‘But I will choose my own path and who I love and who loves me.’

‘When we were in church, before Luca, accused of being storm-bringers, we told everyone that we were women of good reputation!’ Isolde cried out. ‘It was one of the things that saved us. Everyone could see that we wouldn’t have gone running after boys to the green lake; everyone knew that we said that we were ladies of high regard, of good name. You risk everything if you behave lightly. It’s a terrible thing to do.’

‘We were saved in the church because the stable lad said that we had done nothing but swim,’ Ishraq argued. ‘All that about being the Lady of Lucretili might impress a few peasants but it means nothing. If the boy had not proved that we left the town gate in daylight and gone for a swim they would have burned us as storm-bringers whether we were virgins or not. We have to fight for our way in the world; nobody is going to give us safe conduct because we try to be ladylike.’

‘You won’t be a fit companion for me, and Luca would be horrified,’ Isolde stormed. ‘Luca does not want to travel with a girl who has lost her honourable name. He would not tolerate you in his presence, if he thought you were dishonoured. He would send you away if he knew you had kissed his servant.’

‘No he wouldn’t, for he knows what it is to want someone to hold you, to want the comfort of love. When he was in his sorrow on the quayside I held him in my arms.’

‘What?’ Isolde nearly screamed.

‘I held him for pity when he was weeping, and I was not shamed. He did not think I was dishonoured. I was not shamed when he kissed me.’

Isolde gasped. ‘He kissed you?’

‘Yes. He was not horrified. He didn’t think me dishonoured.’

‘He kissed your lips?’ Isolde’s voice was shrill.

‘No! Not like that! How can you think such a thing? He kissed me tenderly, gently, on my forehead.’

‘How do you mean?’

Ishraq was irritated. ‘What do you think I mean? He held my face in his two hands and he kissed me on my forehead, practically on my hood. I hardly felt it. It was almost on my hood.’

‘It can’t have been on your hood if you felt it! If it had been on your hood you would not have known he had done it. So was it on your forehead or your hood?’

‘What difference does it make? What difference does it make to you?’

‘Was it on your forehead?’

‘Why would it matter? He’s obviously in love with you. I held him in my arms like a sister, I held him while he wept for his friend, and then, when he came into the inn, he gave me a kiss of tenderness: we were both grieving for Freize.’

‘You were hardly grieving very much, if you were kissing another man.’

Ishraq looked incredulously at her friend, and then crossly got to her feet, pushing the stool out of the way under the bed. ‘What on earth is the matter with you about all this?’ she said rudely. ‘You are screaming like a stuck pig.’

‘I am so shocked by you!’ Isolde’s voice quavered as if she were about to cry.

‘Shocked by what? By my holding a young man in my arms who was grieving for his friend? Or by my kissing a young man when he had just come back from the dead?’

‘And him! How
could
he? How can we travel with them – how can we travel at all – if you are going to be like this? How can we face them tomorrow knowing that you have kissed not just one but both of them!’

Ishraq almost laughed and then looked again at Isolde’s distressed face, saw even in the flickering candlelight the shine of tears on her pale cheeks. ‘Why you’re crying! Isolde, this is ridiculous. What’s the matter with you? Why are you so upset?’

‘I can’t bear that he should kiss you!’ burst out the girl. ‘I hate it. I hate you for allowing it! I hate you!’

There was a stunned silence. Both girls were deeply shocked at the words.

‘This is about Luca. Not about me or Freize, not about my honour. It is about Luca.’

Isolde sat on the bed and put her face in her hands and nodded.

‘So you are in love with him,’ Ishraq observed coldly. ‘This is serious.’

‘No! Of course not! How can it possibly be?’

‘You are jealous that I held him in my arms, and that he took my face in his hands and kissed me on the forehead.’

‘Shut up!’ Isolde rounded on her friend in a fury. ‘I don’t want to hear about it, I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to have to imagine it, I wish you had not done it, and if you do it again – if you even think of doing it again – then we will have to part. I can’t stay with you if you are going to become some sort of . . .’

‘Some sort of what?’ Ishraq demanded icily.

‘Some sort of whore!’ Isolde spat out in her rage.

Ishraq was shocked into silence, then she got into bed, pulled up the covers of the bed as far as they would go, up to her chin and turned over as if ready for sleep. ‘If you were a man I would have thrown you down for saying such a name to me,’ she said to the limewashed wall. ‘But as it is, I see that you are a stupid jealous girl who fears that the man she loves is being taken from her.’

Isolde gasped, but could not deny it. She sat on the edge of the bed and put her face in her hands.

‘A jealous girl, a stupid girl,’ Ishraq went on bitterly, still with her back turned. ‘A girl truly dishonoured by thinking such things of her friend and saying such a word to her friend. And you are wrong, so wrong. I would not take the man you loved away from you, even supposing that he would be willing. I would not do such a thing to you, for I never forget that we love each other like sisters, and that our love should matter more than what we might feel for a man. A passing man,’ she said driving the point home, into the silence of the darkened bedroom. ‘A man that you met just a month ago. A man who is promised to a monastery and to an order and is not free to kiss anyone, anyway. A young man who probably cares for neither of us.

‘But you have put your stupid girlish feelings for him above your love for me. And then you accuse
me
of being dishonoured! And then you call
me
a foul name! You’re no sister to me, Isolde, though I have lived my life thinking of you as dearly as a sister. But at the first sight of a handsome young man you become a rival. A stupid rivalrous girl. You’re not fit to be my sister, you don’t deserve my love.’

She heard a sob behind her, but she refused to turn around.

‘And it is you who are dishonoured,’ she said fiercely. ‘For you are in love with a man who is not free, and who has not spoken to your family to ask for your hand in marriage. So you are a fool.’

She was answered by a little shaky gasp.

‘Goodnight,’ Ishraq said frostily, and closed her eyes and fell, almost at once, asleep, as Isolde got on her knees at the foot of the bed and prayed to God for forgiveness for the sin of jealousy, for speaking cruelly and wrongly to her dearest friend; and then – reluctantly – owning the truth to herself: she prayed for forgiveness for the terrible sin of desire.

In the morning the two girls were pointedly polite to each other, but hardly spoke at all. Luca and Freize, in the joy of being reunited, completely failed to notice the icy atmosphere. Brother Peter regarded the young women critically, and thought to himself that they were – like all women – as changeable as the weather, and as inexplicable. He would have thought they would be overjoyed to have the favourite Freize back with them again – but here they were sour-faced and silent. Why would God make such beings but for the trouble and puzzlement of men? Who could ever doubt that they were a lesser being to the men that God had made in His image and set over them for their guidance? What could he do but thank God for preserving him from their company by keeping him safe in a religion governed by men in an order exclusively male?

As Freize went down to the harbour to confirm the arrangements for them to sail, Luca, Brother Peter and Isolde went up the hill to the church for Terce, the third service of prayer in the day. Isolde made her confession to the priest and then kneeled in prayer, her face buried in her hands throughout the mass. When it was over, and the men had said farewell to Father Benito, she was still kneeling. They left her to follow them and walked back to the inn.

Freize greeted them on the threshold of the inn, his face grave. ‘We can’t take a ship to Split,’ he said. ‘I found a man who has just come from there. He’ll be the first of many. The town is all but destroyed, the country for miles around laden with broken boats and upturned trees, wrecked houses and drowned barns. The place was hit by a greater wave than we were; it is far worse than here. There’s no house standing for miles around, and nothing to eat that has not been spoiled with salt water. We can’t go to that coast at all.’

Luca shook his head at himself. ‘I should have thought of that! What a fool I am! Of course we won’t be the only town that had the wave. If the sea moved, then every town on the coast would have been affected.’ For a moment they could see him furiously thinking, then he turned to Brother Peter. ‘If we knew which town was worst affected then we would know which town was closest to the source of the wave,’ he said. ‘If Ishraq is right, and it
was
like a pebble in a bowl, then the wave is deepest nearest to where it starts and gets more and more shallow as it rolls away. If we knew where the wave was greatest we might at least discover where it came from.’

‘That’s true,’ Brother Peter said. ‘But . . .’

Suddenly, shockingly, the warning bell of the lookout on the harbour wall started to sound, a single jangling bell, an urgent clangour, terrible for the whole village, terrifying for those on the quayside.

‘Not again!’ Brother Peter exclaimed. ‘God save us from another wave.’

‘Where’s Isolde?’ Freize demanded urgently. ‘Where did you leave her?’

‘At the church,’ Luca shouted. ‘Get up there, get to higher ground!’

Everyone tumbled out of the inn, the innkeeper among them.

‘Why are they ringing the tocsin?’ Luca demanded of him. ‘Is it another wave?’

‘No!’ the innkeeper said. ‘Look, see they’re raising the signal.’ He yelled above the pealing bell, so the people clamouring in the yard could hear. ‘God bless us, it’s not a wave, it’s a slave galley. That’s the bell for the warning. That’s the bell that warns of a slave galley. They’ve raised the signal on the harbour fort. Don’t run for high ground. It’s not the sea, it’s a raid! Take your places! Guardsmen! Take your places in the fort!’

Luca’s face grew dark with anger. ‘A slave galley? Raiding now? When the people have just lost their children to the sea?’

At once the men of the village started to run to the squat little fort that guarded the harbour, shouting to each other that it was not a wave but the warning bell for a slave galley. The women raced for their homes calling for their children. They could hear doors slamming from all over the village as frightened families bolted themselves inside. Isolde came running down from the church. ‘Father Benito says there is a slave galley coming into port!’ she said breathlessly. ‘He saw it from the tower.’

They crowded into the inn where the innkeeper was lifting a formidable hand gun out of a cupboard, with a box of gunpowder. Freize stepped back from the dangerous-looking instrument. ‘Won’t that be too wet to fire?’

‘Couldn’t I dry it quickly on the fire?’ he asked.

‘No!’ Freize said hastily. ‘No! Much better not.’

Luca turned to the two young women. ‘You’d better go to your room and lock yourselves in. We’ll go down to the harbour fort and do what we can to stop them landing.’

‘The laundry room,’ the landlord advised. ‘Go with my wife and the little maid. You can mend laundry while you wait. Nobody will ever find you there.’

When the two girls were about to argue Luca raised his hand. ‘You can’t come with us. What if they were to see you and take you? Go and lock yourselves in as this good man says.’