‘Little lord.’ Freize spread his hands apologetically. ‘You were going to burn two innocent women, caught up in the excitement of the moment. Would you have listened to me? No. For I am well-known as a fool. Would you have listened to them? No. For the Lady Almoner had turned your head and this lady’s brother was quick and ready with a torch. I knew you would thank me in the end, and here we are, with you thanking me.’
‘I don’t thank you!’ Luca exclaimed, angry beyond measure. ‘I should dismiss you from my service and charge you with interfering with a papal inquiry!’
‘Then the lady will thank me,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘And if she doesn’t, maybe the pretty slave will.’
‘She’s not my slave,’ Isolde said, quite at a loss. ‘And you will find that she never thanks anyone. Especially a man.’
‘Perhaps she will come to value me,’ Freize said with dignity. ‘When she knows me better.’
‘She will never know you better for you are about to be dismissed,’ Luca said furiously.
‘Seems harsh,’ Freize said, glancing at Brother Peter. ‘Wouldn’t you say? Given that it was me that stopped us from burning two innocent women, and then saved all five of us from the brigands. Not to mention gaining some valuable horses?’
‘You interfered with the course of my inquiry and released my prisoners,’ Luca insisted. ‘What can I do but dismiss you and send you back to the monastery in disgrace?’
‘For your own good,’ Freize explained. ‘And theirs. Saving you all from yourselves.’
Luca turned to Brother Peter.
‘But why did you fasten up the handcuffs after you had released them?’ Brother Peter asked.
Freize paused. ‘For confusion,’ he said gravely. ‘To cause more confusion.’
Isolde, despite her anxiety, choked back a laugh. ‘You have certainly caused that,’ she said. A small smile exchanged between them made Luca suddenly frown.
‘And do you swear you did this?’ he asked tightly. ‘However ridiculous you are?’
‘I do,’ Freize said.
Luca turned to Brother Peter. ‘This vindicates them from the charge of witchcraft.’
‘The report has gone,’ Brother Peter ruled thoughtfully. ‘We said that the captives were missing, accused of witchcraft, but that their accusers were definitely guilty. The matter is closed unless you want to reopen it. We don’t have to report that we met them again. It is not our job to arrest them if we have no evidence of witchcraft. We’re not holding an inquiry now. Our inquiry is closed.’
‘Sleeping dogs,’ Freize volunteered.
Luca rounded on him. ‘What in hell do you mean now?’
‘Better let them lie. That’s what people say. Let sleeping dogs lie. Your inquiry is completed, everyone is happy. We’re off on some other damn fool mission. And the two women who were wrongly accused are free as little birds of the air. Why make trouble?’
Luca was about to argue, but then he paused. He turned towards Isolde. After one powerful blue gaze that she had shot at Freize when he had confessed to releasing them, she had returned to studying her hands held in her lap.
‘Is it true that Freize released you? He let you go? As he says?’
She nodded.
‘Why did you not say so at once?’
‘I didn’t want to get him into trouble.’
Luca sighed. It was unlikely, but if Freize was holding to his confession and Isolde would offer no other explanation, then he could not see what more he should do. ‘Who is going to believe this?’
‘Better this, than you trying to tell everyone that we melted through leg-cuffs and handcuffs,’ she pointed out. ‘Who would believe that?’
Luca glanced at Brother Peter. ‘Will you write that we are satisfied that our servant released them, exceeding his duties but believing that he was doing the right thing? And that now we are clear that there was no witchcraft? And they are free to go?’
Brother Peter was wearing his most dour look. ‘If you instruct me so to do,’ he said pedantically. ‘I think there is more to it than your servant stepping out of his place. But since he always steps out of his place and since you always allow it, and since you seem determined that these women shall go free, I can write this.’
‘You will clear my name?’ Isolde pressed.
‘I will not accuse you of escaping by witchcraft,’ Brother Peter specified. ‘That’s all I am prepared to do. I don’t know that you are innocent of everything; but as no woman is innocent since the sin of Eve, I am prepared to agree that there is no evidence and no charge to set against you for now.’
‘It’s good enough,’ Luca ruled. ‘Anyway,’ he turned to Isolde, ‘what are you going to do now?’
She sighed. ‘I have been puzzled as to what I should do. But I think I will go to the son of my father’s friend, a man who was his constant companion on crusade, my godfather, I can trust him and he has a reputation for being a tenacious fighter. I will ask him to clear my name, and to ride with me against my brother. It seems he did all of this to steal my inheritance from me, to kill me. So I will take his inheritance from him. I shall take back what is mine.’
‘There is more than you know,’ Luca told her. ‘It is worse than you know. He had commanded the Lady Almoner to set the nuns to pan for gold in the stream in your woods.’
She looked puzzled. ‘Gold?’
‘It’s probably why your brother was determined to drive you out of the abbey. There may be a fortune in gold in the hills, draining out into the stream in dust.’
‘They were panning for gold?’
He nodded. ‘He was using the Lady Almoner to steal gold from your abbey lands. Now she is dead and you have run away, the abbey and the lands and the gold are all his.’
He saw her jaw harden. ‘He has won my home, my inheritance, and a fortune as well?’
Luca nodded. ‘He left the Lady Almoner to her death and rode away.’
She turned on Brother Peter. ‘But you didn’t charge him! You didn’t pursue him for all the sins since Adam! Though I am responsible for everything done by Eve?’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘He committed no crime that we saw at the time. Now he pans for his own gold on his own land.’
‘I will hold him to account. I will return and take back my lands. I am no longer bound by obedience to my father’s will when my brother is such a bad guardian of our family honour. I will drive him out as he drove me away. I will go to my godfather’s son and get help.’
‘Was your godfather a man of substance? Your brother has his own castle and a small army to command.’
‘He was Count Wladislaw of Wallachia,’ she said proudly. ‘His son is the new count. I will go to him.’
Brother Peter’s head jerked up. ‘You are the goddaughter of Count Wladislaw?’ he asked curiously.
‘Yes, my father always said to go to him in time of trouble.’
Brother Peter lowered his eyes and shook his head in wonderment. ‘She has a powerful friend in him,’ he said quietly to Luca. ‘He could crush her brother in a moment.’
‘Where does he live?’
‘It’s a long journey,’ she admitted. ‘To the east. He is at the court of Hungary.’
‘That would be beyond Bosnia?’ Freize abandoned any attempt at standing in silence by the door and came into the room.
‘Yes.’
‘Further east than that?’
She nodded.
‘How are two pretty girls like you and the slave going to make that journey without someone stealing from you . . . or worse?’ Freize asked bluntly. ‘They will skin you alive.’
She looked at Freize and smiled at him. ‘Do you not think that God will protect us?’
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.’
‘Then we will travel with companions, with their guards, wherever we can. And take our chances when we cannot. Because I have to go. I have no-one else to turn to. And I will have my re
venge on my brother, I will regain my inheritance.’
Freize nodded cheerfully at Luca. ‘Might as well have burned them when you got the chance,’ he observed. ‘For you are sending them out to die anyway.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous,’ Luca said impatiently. ‘We will protect them.’
‘We have our mission!’ Brother Peter objected.
Luca turned to Isolde. ‘You may travel with us under our protection until our ways diverge. We are on a mission of inquiry, appointed by the Holy Father himself. We don’t yet know our route but you may travel with us until our ways part.’
‘Very important,’ Freize supplemented, with a nod to the young woman. ‘We are very important.’
‘You can accompany us and when you find safe and reputable travellers on the road you can transfer to them, and travel with them.’
She bowed her head. ‘I thank you. I thank you for myself and for Ishraq. And we will not delay nor distract you.’
‘It is absolutely certain that they will do both,’ Brother Peter remarked sourly.
‘We can help them on their way at least,’ Luca ruled.
‘I should give you my name,’ the young woman said. ‘I am Lady Abbess no longer.’
‘Of course,’ Luca said.
‘I am Lady Isolde of Lucretili.’
Luca bowed his head to her, but Freize stepped forwards, bowed low, his head almost to his knees, straightened up and thumped his clenched fist against his heart. ‘Lady Isolde, you may command me,’ he said grandly.
She was surprised, and giggled for a moment. Freize looked at her reproachfully. ‘I would have thought you would have been brought up to understand a knight’s service when it is offered?’
‘He is a knight now?’ Brother Peter asked Luca.
‘Seems so,’ came the amused response.
‘Say a squire then,’ Freize amended. ‘I will be your squire.’
Lady Isolde rose to her feet and extended her hand to Freize. ‘You do right to remind me to respond graciously to an honourable offer of service. I accept your service and I am glad of it, Freize. Thank you.’
With a triumphant glance at Luca, Freize bowed and touched her fingers with his lips. ‘I am yours to command,’ he said.
‘I take it you will house and clothe and feed him?’ Luca demanded. ‘He eats like ten horses.’
‘My service, as the lady well understood, is that of the heart,’ Freize said with dignity. ‘I am hers to command if there is a knightly quest or a bold venture. The rest of the time I carry on as your manservant, of course.’
‘I am very grateful,’ Isolde murmured. ‘And as soon as I have a bold venture or knightly quest I will let you know.’
When Isolde entered the bedroom, Ishraq was sleeping, but as soon as she heard the soft footsteps, she opened her eyes and said, ‘How was dinner? Are we arrested?’
‘We’re free,’ Isolde said. ‘Freize suddenly told his master that it was he who released us from the cellar under the gatehouse.’
Ishraq raised herself up onto one elbow. ‘Did he say that? Why? And did they believe him?’
‘He was convincing. He insisted. I don’t think they wholly believed him but at any rate, they accepted it.’
‘Did he say why he confessed to such a thing?’
‘No. I think it was to be of service to us. And better than that, they have said that we can travel with them while our roads lie together.’
‘Where are they going?’
‘They follow orders. They go where they are told. But there is only one way out of the village so we will all go east for the time being. We can travel with them and we will be safer on the road than with strangers or alone.’
‘I don’t like Brother Peter much.’
‘He’s all right. Freize swore to be my knight errant.’
Ishraq giggled. ‘He has a good heart. You might be glad of him one day. He certainly served us tonight.’
Isolde stripped off the blue gown, and came in her chemise to the side of the bed. ‘Is there anything you want? A small ale? Shall I sponge your bruises?’
‘No, I am ready to sleep again.’
The bed creaked gently as Isolde got in beside her. ‘Goodnight, my sister,’ she said, as she had said almost every night of her life.
‘Goodnight, dearest.’
VITTORITO, ITALY, OCTOBER 1453
The little party lingered for two more days in the village while Ishraq’s bruises faded and she grew strong again. Isolde and Ishraq bought light rust-coloured gowns for travelling, and thick woollen capes for the cold nights, and on the third day they were ready to set out at sunrise.
Freize had pillion saddles on two of the horses. ‘I thought you would ride behind the lord,’ he said to Isolde. ‘And the servant would come up behind me.’
‘No,’ Ishraq said flatly. ‘We ride our own horses.’
‘It’s tiring,’ Freize warned her, ‘and the roads are rough. Most ladies like to ride behind a man. You can sit sideways, you don’t have to go astride. You’ll be more comfortable.’
‘We ride alone,’ Isolde confirmed. ‘On our own horses.’
Freize made a face and winked at Ishraq. ‘Another time, then.’
‘I don’t think there will be any time when I will want to ride behind you,’ she said coolly.
He unfastened the girth on the pillion saddle and swept it from the horse’s back. ‘Ah, you say that now,’ he said confidently, ‘but that’s because you hardly know me. Many a lass has been indifferent at first meeting but after a while . . .’ He snapped his fingers.
‘After a while what?’ Isolde asked him, smiling.
‘They can’t help themselves,’ Freize said confidentially. ‘Don’t ask me why. It’s a gift I have. Women and horses, they both love me. Women and horses – most animals really – just like to be close to me. They just like me.’
Luca came out to the stable yard, carrying his saddle pack. ‘Are you not tacked up yet?’
‘Just changing the saddles. The ladies want to ride on their own, though I have been to the trouble of buying two pillion saddles for them. They are ungrateful.’
‘Well, of course they would ride alone!’ Luca said impatiently. He nodded a bow to the young women, and when Freize led the first horse to the mounting block he went to Isolde and took her hand to help her up as she stepped to the top of the mounting block, put her foot in the broad stirrup and swung herself into the saddle.
Soon, the five of them were mounted and, with the other four horses and the donkey in a string behind them, they rode out onto the little track that they would follow through the forest.
Luca went first, with Isolde and Ishraq side by side just behind him. Behind them came Brother Peter and then Freize, a stout cudgel in a loop at the side of his saddle and the spare horses beside him.
It was a pleasant ride through the beech woods. The trees were still holding their copper-brown leaves and sheltered the travellers from the bright autumn sun. As the path climbed higher they came out of the woods and took the stony track through the upper pastures. It was very quiet; sometimes they heard the tinkle of a few bells from a distant herd of goats, but mostly there was nothing but the whisper of the wind.
Luca reined back to ride with the two girls and asked Ishraq about her time in Spain.
‘The Lord Lucretili must have been a most unusual man, to allow a young woman in his household to study with Moorish physicians,’ he observed.
‘He was,’ Ishraq said. ‘He had a great respect for the learning of my people, he wanted me to study. If he had lived I think he would have sent me back to Spanish universities, where the scholars of my people study everything from the stars in the sky to the movement of the waters of the sea. Some people say that they are all governed by the same laws. We have to discover what those laws might be.’
‘Were you the only woman there?’
She shook her head. ‘No, in my country women can learn and teach too.’
‘
And did you learn the numbers?’ Luca asked her curiously. ‘And the meaning of zero?’
She shook her head. ‘I have no head for mathematics, though of course I know the numbers,’ she said.
‘My father believed that a woman could understand as well as a man,’ Isolde remarked. ‘He let Ishraq study whatever she wanted.’
‘And you?’ Luca turned to her. ‘Did you attend the university in Spain?’
She shook her head. ‘My father intended me to be a lady to command Lucretili,’ she said. ‘He taught me how to calculate the profits from the land, how to command the loyalty of people, how to manage land and choose the crops, how to command the guard of a castle under attack.’ She made a funny little face. ‘And he had me taught the skills a lady should have – love of fine clothes, dancing, music, speaking languages, writing, reading, singing, poetry.’
‘She envies me the skills he taught me,’ Ishraq said with a hidden smile. ‘He taught her to be a lady and me to be a power in the world.’
‘What woman would not want to be a lady of a great castle?’ Luca wondered.
‘I would want it,’ Isolde said. ‘I do want it. But I wish I had been taught to fight as well.’
At sunset on the first evening, they pulled up their horses before an isolated monastery. Ishraq and Isolde exchanged an anxious glance. ‘The hue and cry?’ she muttered to Luca.
‘It won’t have reached here. I doubt your brother sent out any messages once he was away from the abbey. I would guess he signed the writ only to demonstrate his own innocence.’
She nodded. ‘Just enough to keep me away,’ she said. ‘Naming me as a witch and declaring me dead, leaves him with the castle and the abbey under his control, giving him the abbey lands and the gold. He wins everything.’
Freize dismounted and went to pull the great ring outside the closed door. The bell in the gatehouse rang loudly, and the porter heaved the double gates open. ‘Welcome, travellers, in the name of God,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How many are you?’
‘One young lord, one clerk, one servant, one lady and her companion,’ Freize replied. ‘And nine horses and one donkey. They can go in the meadow or in the stables as suits you.’