Brother Peter and the two young women watched him go. Father Benito murmured a blessing, closed the church doors, and went quietly away to his damp house.
Brother Peter sighed and led the way down the hill to the inn on the quayside. ‘I suppose we had better get a ship and move on,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing we can do here anymore. We’ll sail across to Split as we planned.’
‘Are we giving up on Freize?’ Isolde asked bleakly. ‘Are we not looking for him any more; not waiting for him?’
‘We could leave a message for him, as to where to find us, if he were ever to return. But I can’t believe that he survived the flood,’ Brother Peter replied. ‘What would be the point of us waiting here?’
‘For fidelity!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘Because we can’t just go on!’
Ishraq shook her head. ‘No. We may as well leave. It does Luca no good to wait and watch here. We’ll have to find a boat and go on with our journey. Can you find someone to take us, Brother Peter? Would you like me to go and ask?’
‘A few ships came into port this morning, which seem to have escaped damage. I’ll find someone. Shall we set a time and go tomorrow?’
‘In the morning,’ Ishraq said. ‘I suppose you’ll all want to attend mass before we sail. We can go after Prime.’
Brother Peter looked curiously at her as they went together down the cobbled steps. ‘Don’t you want to confess your soul and attend the service now that you have seen God work in such a mysterious way? Should you not turn to our God, now that you have been in such danger? I could explain our beliefs to you. I could convert you.’
Ishraq smiled at him, indifferent to his concern. ‘Ah, Brother Peter, I know you are a good man and would like to save my soul. I don’t know what caused the wave. But it doesn’t inspire me to pray to your God.’
Isolde agreed that they should leave the following day but she could not bring herself to tell Luca. ‘Will you tell him?’ she asked Brother Peter. ‘I can’t bear to do it.’
He waited until the hour before dinner while they were all four sitting in the dining room before a smoky fire of damp wood, and then he said quietly, ‘Brother Luca, I think we can do nothing more in this town and I will send my report tomorrow. I will write that we can find no certain explanation for the wave, though some wild thoughts from pagan and heretical writers have been mentioned.’
Luca barely raised his head.
‘And I have found a master who will take us on his ship tomorrow. We can go after Prime.’
‘We stay,’ Luca said instantly. ‘At least for a few more days.’
‘We have a mission; and there is nothing more to be done here,’ Brother Peter repeated steadily. ‘We will send your report tomorrow, we can warn Milord and His Holiness that we have seen a powerful sign of the end of days. We can warn them that a previous earthquake was followed by a wave that was followed by the pestilence called the Black Death. But we serve no one by waiting here – and anyway, if a plague is coming we should leave.’
Isolde reached out and put her cool hand over Luca’s clenched fist as it lay on the table. ‘Luca,’ she said quietly.
He turned to her as if she might have answers to his agonising questions. ‘I can’t go,’ he said passionately. ‘I can’t just sail away from here as if nothing is wrong. I can’t just continue on. Freize came with me, he was following me on this quest. He would never have been here but for love of me. I don’t see how to do it without him. If I had been washed out to sea, he would not have left me. He would not have run for his safety and left me behind.’
‘He would want you to complete your mission,’ Isolde said, trying to comfort him. ‘He was so proud of you. He was so proud that you had been called to this work and that he could serve you.’
At the thought of Freize’s joyful boasting, Luca nearly smiled, but then he shook his head. ‘You must see, I have to stay here until . . .’
‘We will leave instructions and money that his body is to be buried if it is washed ashore,’ Ishraq said, surprising them all with the brisk clarity of her tone. ‘If you are thinking of that; we can provide for him, as you would wish. But I was speaking to one of the fishermen and he says there is a strong current a little further beyond the harbour and perhaps Freize and all the children have been washed far away. Their bodies may never be found. Perhaps we should think of them all as buried at sea. Brother Peter could bless the waves as we sail to Split.’
Luca rounded on her in anger. ‘You speak of his burial? The burial of my friend Freize? Blessing the waves? You have given him up for dead?’
She gazed at him steadily. ‘Yes, of course. Weren’t you thinking the very same thing, yourself? Isn’t it the very thing you have been afraid to think for days?’
He flung himself from the table and wrenched open the door. ‘You’re heartless!’ he flung at her.
She shook her head. ‘You know I am not.’
He paused. ‘How can you talk about blessing the sea?’
‘I thought you would want to say goodbye,’ she said.
‘How dare you say that I must think of this?’
‘It is your life’s work to think of difficult things.’
Isolde gasped and would have intervened but she saw the steady way that Ishraq held Luca’s angry glare, and she fell silent. Luca’s temper burned out as quickly as it had come. He breathed out a shuddering sigh, came back into the room and closed the door behind him and leaned back against it as if sorrow had weakened him.
‘You’re right of course,’ he said. ‘You’re right. I just don’t want it to be true. I’ll leave instructions with Father Benito in the morning and – Brother Peter, perhaps you will write to our monastery and tell them what has happened and ask them to tell his mother? I will write myself later . . .’
Isolde rose and put her hand in his; she laid her cheek against his shoulder. Brother Peter watched them without comment, though his expression was completely disapproving.
‘And we’ll take ship tomorrow,’ Ishraq pursued.
‘Ishraq!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘Be at peace! Leave him alone!’
Stubbornly, Ishraq shook her head. ‘He’s not at peace,’ she said, nodding to Luca. ‘And you crying over him doesn’t help him at all. Better that we do something, rather than sit here mourning. In my religion Freize would have been buried by sunset on the day that he died. We’ll always remember him whether we take a ship to Split now or the day after. But,’ she nodded at Luca, ‘this is not a young man who should be left to mourn for a long time. He has had too many losses already. Grief must not become a habit for him.’
Isolde looked up into Luca’s strained face.
‘She’s right,’ he said bitterly. ‘I can do nothing here but weep for him, like a girl. We’ll go tomorrow, after Prime.’
They went to their rooms to pack their things, but they had almost nothing to pack. Everything but the clothes they were wearing had gone down with the ship. They had bought new rough cloaks from the tailor in the little town but new boots or hats, or a writing box for Brother Peter would have to wait till they got to a bigger town. The manuscripts which Brother Peter and Luca carried to advise them on legends, folklore and previous investigations were irreplaceable. They would have to buy new horses when they got to Split, and a new donkey to carry their goods.
‘How far do you think it is from Split to Budapest?’ Isolde asked idly, looking out of the window of their bedroom. ‘I am so tired of travelling. I am so tired of everything. I wish we could just go home to my own home and live on my own lands, where I belong. I wish that none of this had happened.’
‘You can’t wish to be back in the nunnery,’ Ishraq objected. ‘You can’t wish to be under the command of your brother.’
Isolde turned her face away and shook her head. ‘I wish I were a girl in my father’s care again,’ she said. ‘I wish I could be home.’
‘Well, Freize said that we would be about a week on the road,’ Ishraq replied trying to cheer her frie
nd. ‘And the only way to get your own home back is to get your godfather’s son to support you. It’s a long journey, but with luck it leads us home at last.’
Isolde turned into the room. ‘I don’t know how we’ll manage without him. I can’t imagine setting out on a journey without him.’
‘Without him complaining?’ Ishraq suggested with a faint smile. ‘Without him endlessly complaining about the road, and about the mission, and about Brother Peter’s secret orders?’
Isolde smiled. ‘We’ll miss all that,’ she said. ‘We’ll miss him.’
It was a quiet group that assembled for dinner. Much of the company had left the inn since the burial of the bodies of the children, and travellers on the coastal roads had heard of the disaster that had hit all the fishing villages along the coast and were skirting the blighted areas and travelling inland. Nobody had much appetite and there seemed to be nothing much to say.
‘Where is Ree?’ Isolde asked the landlady. ‘Is she in the kitchen with you?’
‘She’s worked like a little cook, and now she’s eating her dinner as good as gold,’ the landlady said, pleased. ‘That was a good thought of yours, my lady. That was kind Christian work.’
‘What did Lady Isolde do?’ Luca raised his head in momentary interest.
‘She took me to one side and she prayed with me and Ree together. She showed Ree my linen room and the child saw the beauty in it. She’ll make a good kitchen maid and a good housemaid. I was spared from the terror of the flood, locked safe in my linen room; I can’t help but warm to a girl who admires it. She can stay here with us. Lady Isolde has offered to pay for her keep for her first month and then she’ll earn her wages. I’ll look after her.’
‘That was well done,’ Luca said quietly.
Isolde smiled at him. ‘It wasn’t hard to see that they might help each other. And Ree will have a good home here and learn a trade.’
‘That’s good,’ Luca said, losing interest.
‘Split tomorrow,’ Brother Peter said, trying to be cheerful. ‘We’ll probably get in about dawn if we leave early.’
Isolde directed her words to Luca. ‘And then Zagreb.’
There was a clatter of noise in the stable yard and a cheerful ‘Halloo!’ from outside. It was an incongruous yell in a town gripped with mourning. The innkeeper opened the kitchen door and said, ‘Hush, don’t you know what has passed here? Keep the noise down. What do you want?’
‘Some service!’ came the joyous shout. ‘Some stabling for the bravest horses ever to swim for shore! Some dinner for a great survivor! Some wine to toast my health in! And news of my friends. The two beautiful lasses and the brilliant young man? And the sour-faced priest that travels with us? Are they here? Have they gone on? Swear to me that they are safe as I have been praying?’
Luca went white, as if he thought he was hearing a ghost and then he exclaimed, ‘Freize!’ and leapt up from the table, overturning his chair, and dashed down to the kitchen, and out through the back door to the stable yard.
There, standing at the head of his horse and holding the reins of four others, with the tired donkey behind them, was Freize: sea-stained and dirty, but alive. As he saw Luca outlined in the light from the kitchen, he dropped the reins and spread his arms. ‘Little Sparrow, thank God you’re safe! I have been riding for miles fretting about you.’
‘I! Safe! What about you?’ Luca yelled and catapulted himself into the arms of his boyhood friend. They clung to each other like long-lost brothers, slapping each other’s backs, Luca patting Freize all over as if to assure himself that he was alive. Freize caught Luca’s face in his hands, and kissed him roundly on both cheeks and then wrapped his arms around him again.
Luca thumped his shoulders, shook him, stepped back and looked at him and then hugged him again. ‘How ever did you—? How did—? I didn’t know where you were – why didn’t you run for the inn with us? I swear I thought you were right behind me – I’d never have left you on your own!’
‘Did you get up on the chimney like the kitten?’ Freize replied to the torrent of questions. ‘Are you all safe? The girls? Both girls?’
As the two young men spoke at once, Ishraq and Isolde came running out of the inn door and threw themselves on Freize, hugging and crying and saying his name. Even Brother Peter came out into the yard and thumped him on the back. ‘My prayers!’ he cried. ‘Answered! God be praised He has brought Freize back to us. It is a miracle like the return of Jonah onto dry land from the belly of the fish!’
Ishraq, tucked under Freize’s arm with Isolde clinging to his other side glanced up. ‘Jonah?’ she asked. ‘Jonah swallowed by a great fish?’
‘As the Bible tells us,’ Brother Peter said.
She laughed. ‘The Koran also,’ she said. ‘We call him Jonah or Yunus. He preached for God.’ She thought for a moment and then recited:
‘Then the big Fish did swallow him, and he had done acts worthy of blame.
Had it not been that he (repented and) glorified Allah,
He would certainly have remained inside the Fish till the Day of Resurrection.’
Brother Peter’s delight faded slightly. ‘It’s not possible,’ he said. ‘He was a prophet for God, our God.’
‘For our God too,’ Ishraq said, pleased. ‘Perhaps, after all, they are one and the same?’
The innkeeper paddled around the waters in his cellar for a special bottle of wine, two special bottles, three, as more and more people came to hear the extraordinary story and drink Freize’s health. Even those who had lost brothers or sons at sea were glad that at least one life had been spared. And his survival gave hope to those who were still waiting. The landlady brought some cheese and chicken to the table, some bread fresh-baked in the re-heated oven, and half the village piled in to watch the restored Jonah eat his dinner and hear how he had been saved from the terrible destruction.
‘I saw the wave and I was running for the inn after you when I heard the horses kicking down their stalls on the ship, so I ran back to them . . .’ Freize started.
‘Why didn’t you come with us?’ Isolde scolded him.
‘Because I knew that the little lord would care for you two, but there was no one to care for the horses,’ he explained. ‘I saw you set off at a run and I splashed across the harbour to where the boat was stranded. I got on board – Lord! the boat was sitting on the harbour floor – and I thought that I would set them free, let them run away, and catch them later. But as I was trying to get close enough to cut the ropes, talking to them and telling them all would be well, the world made me a liar indeed for I looked over the shoulder of the horse on the seaward side, and I saw the great wall of water, as high as a house racing towards us and already in the mouth of the harbour. I had seen it shining like a white wall, a long way off, but it came faster than I had dreamed.’
There was a little groan from the people who had lost their children, at the thought of the great wave. ‘I did nothing,’ Freize, admitted. ‘God knows, I was no hero. Worse than that. I ducked down between one horse and another and I fairly buried my face in Rufinos’s mane. I was so afraid I didn’t want to see what was coming. I thought it was my death coming for me, I don’t mind admitting. I could hear a great roar, like a beast coming for me. I closed my eyes and clung to a horse and cried like a baby.
‘I could hear it – dear God, a noise that I hope I never hear again – a grinding sliding screaming noise of the water storming towards me and eating up everything in its path. It hit the little ship like a hammer blow on a wooden box and threw us up in the air like we were a splinter. I had my arms around Rufino’s neck like a child crying on its mother’s lap. I’m not ashamed to say I was weeping in terror, as we went up and up and up. I could feel the moorings tear away, and I could feel the back of the boat stave in and next thing we were roaring away, boat and horses and me, with the wave rushing us inland like little ducks on a flood.’
‘What could you see? Did you see the children?’
‘God bless and keep them, I saw nothing but the sky and the land ahead of us and then the boiling water like a pan of grey soup, and I heard nothing but the roar of the waters and my own frightened cries. The horses wept in fear too, and the little donkey; we were seven sorry beasts, as we stormed over dry land, the world buckling and folding underneath us, and I thought the world had ended and it was another great flood and I, a failed Noah, with none of my kind on board, and no preparation done.’
He paused and nodded at Luca. ‘I really did think it the end of the world and hoped that somewhere you were safe and taking note.’
Luca laughed and shook his head, as Freize went on. ‘Then, and this was a bad moment, the wave sort of took a breath, like it was a living devil and thinking what would be the worst thing that it could do, and I felt the tide turn beneath what was left of the boat and we started to run back out to sea again, back the way we had come, but bumping and grinding against things that I could not even see, and crashing against things in the dark. That was a terrible moment; that was as bad as before, worse. I thought I would be halfway to Afric and on only half of a boat. Then the keel caught: I could feel it spin against something, and then it grounded and I was fool enough to hope that I would step out on dry land, when a rush of water hit us again and the boat tipped over, throwing us into the sea and into darkness and everything was rushing around me, and great trees were turning over and over crashing around my frightened head and I was never knowing whether I was upwards or downwards or simply drowned.
‘I kept tight hold of Rufino and I felt that he kept tight hold of me and that we were better when we shared our fears together. When the boat tipped over I was flung towards his back and gripped on like a child, legs around his belly, arms around his neck and whispered to him that he had better get us out of danger for I was no use to man nor beast, being a great coward.
‘When the boat had crashed it had smashed itself and so he was freed, all the horses’ tethers were free, and I could feel Rufino take great leaps as he swam in the flood. And glory to God and to the horse in particular that he bobbed and swam and struggled, and neighed out loud as if he was saying his prayers. I clung to him and sometimes he was washed from under me, and I was clinging to him and swimming beside him, but then I got my legs around him again, and then I felt him struggling in mud, not in water, and then I heard his hooves ring on stone, and though I had no idea where we were, at least I knew we were on land.’