‘Praise be!’ someone said.
‘Amen,’ Isolde replied fervently.
‘Indeed,’ Freize said. ‘And bless the horse. For I would not have lived through that, but for the strength and wisdom of a dumb beast. So you tell me who is the wiser?’
Ishraq could see Brother Peter biting his tongue to stop himself replying that the horse, any horse, was undoubtedly wiser than Freize.
‘And then when we were sure we were on land again, and hoping that the sea was never coming back, I looked around me and found that they had all stayed together, like the sensible beasts they are; even the little donkey who likes to play the fool had stayed with us. I gathered up their halters and I climbed back on Rufino, without saddle or bridle, and, though we were all so weary, I rode a little way uphill, for though I could see the water was seeping away, I was still very afraid of it. As soon as I thought we were high enough and dry enough I told my five horses and the little donkey that we would spend the night and rest, and try for Piccolo in the morning.
‘Well, we were further away than I knew, for we have been walking all this long while back to you and I’ve seen many sad sights all along the way. Good houses ruined, good fields destroyed by salt, and more drowned animals and good people than I could bear to see. All the villages I passed by are filled with sad people seeking their own, and burying their dead. Everywhere I walked they asked me had I seen this child, or that woman, and I was sick to my heart that I had to say that I was alone in my ship like a poor ill-prepared Noah, and saw no one and nothing from the moment that the great wave came.
‘And I didn’t stop, except to sleep at nights, which I did once in a farmer’s damp barn, and once in a wrecked little inn, for I was so anxious to come back here and find you. All the way I have tormented myself that the wave was too fast for you and that I had saved five horses and a little donkey, God bless them; but lost the most precious man in the world to me.’ He looked at Luca. ‘Little sparrow. Did you perch all night on the roof?’
Luca laughed shakily. ‘I have been sick with grief for you. I thought you were dead for sure.’
Freize wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘I was a Noah,’ he said grandly. ‘A Noah of six beasts, and all of them geldings, so of no use to anyone. But I did ride my ark in a great flood. If I had not been so weak with fear I would have been impressed by the adventure. It was the strangest thing. And when I have stopped being so afraid of the memory it will make a very good story and I shall tell it at length. And when I have forgotten that I cried like a coward I shall give myself many good speeches and be the hero of my story. You have it now as it was – before improvements. You have it as a true history and not a poem. I am not yet a troubadour, I am a mere historian.’ He turned to Isolde. ‘And you, my lady? I have been fretting about you, without your squire at your side to guard you. You were not hurt?’
She gave him her hand and he kissed it. ‘I’m just so very pleased to have you with us again,’ she said simply. ‘We have all been praying for you. We had special prayers said for your deliverance, and every day we have been looking and looking out to sea.’
He flushed with pleasure at the thought of it. ‘And the horses are well,’ he assured her. ‘Shaken, of course, and tired – oh they are weary – poor beasts. I doubt they’ll go very willingly on board a ship again, but they are fit to travel.’ He turned to Ishraq. ‘And you were safe? You got quickly to the inn. I trusted you to see the danger and run. I knew you would understand.’
She nodded gravely at him. ‘Safe,’ she said.
‘And Brother Peter. I am glad to see you,’ Freize volunteered.
‘And I you.’ The clerk extended his hand and shook Freize’s hand with unmistakable warmth. ‘I have been afraid for you, on the flood. And I have missed you these last days. I have regretted some hard words that I said to you. I am more glad than I can tell you, to see you safe and back with us. I prayed for you constantly.’
Freize flushed with pleasure. ‘And the children of the crusade? Were they all lost? God bless them and take them into His keeping.’
‘Some were saved,’ Isolde said. ‘Saved by you. The ones that you warned and sent back to the village got as far as the church and were safe. They’re travelling home, while the little girl Rosa, with the hurt feet, who you sent back, is here and will serve as a kitchen maid at the inn. But many of them, most of them, were taken by the sea.’
‘It’s been a terrible disaster,’ Luca said quietly. ‘We buried some of them this afternoon. We were going to leave tomorrow. We would have left you messages, where to come. But now we’ll wait here a few more days, and you can rest.’
‘No, we can go. I can sleep on the ship,’ Freize said, ‘if someone can promise me that such a wave will never happen again. If you promise me that the sea will stay where it ought to be, I’ll get on board and sail tomorrow. I think God has sent me a sign that I will not die by drowning.’
Brother Peter shook his head. ‘Nobody knows what it means, or what caused it,’ he said, not looking at Ishraq. ‘So nobody can say if it will ever come again. But it has not happened in this generation, not even for a hundred years. We can only pray that it never happens again.’
‘Is there no way of knowing?’ Freize asked Luca. ‘I admit that I’d cast anchor more happily if there was any way of knowing for sure.’
Luca frowned. ‘It’s the very thing I have been puzzling about,’ he said. ‘The horses seemed to know.’
‘They did know,’ Freize said certainly. ‘And the kitten knew too.’
‘And there was a terrible noise, and the sea went out, drained away, before it came in.’
‘The wave itself didn’t rear up out of nothing,’ Freize was thinking out loud. ‘It was rolling in, as if it might have come from some distance, as if it might even have swelled and grown out at sea. If anyone had been far out at sea they might have seen it beginning.’
Luca nodded, and a few people crowded around Freize to ask more questions and he answered, pausing only to drink wine, happy to be in the middle of the crowd and the centre of attention. He did not speak again to Ishraq, nor she to him, until almost everyone had gone. Brother Peter was putting his cape around his shoulders to go up the hill to the church for the night service, and Luca, Isolde, and Freize were following him. Ishraq saw them out of the front door of the inn and was closing the door on the cold night air, as Freize turned back to speak to her.
‘You were safe?’ he asked. ‘I knew that you would get Isolde out of danger.’
‘I’m safe,’ she said. ‘But I was very afraid for you.’
He beamed. ‘Afraid for me? Well, we agree on that. I was afraid for myself.’
‘It was a brave thing to do – to go back to free the horses.’
He shook his head. ‘To tell you the truth, I don’t think I’d have done it if I’d known the wave was coming so quick. I’m no hero, though I am sorry to say it. Very sorry to have to confess it to you.’
‘I have something for you,’ she said smiling. ‘Hero or not.’
He waited.
From the inner pocket of her cape she produced the sleepy little kitten. Freize cupped his big hands and she put it gently into them. He took the kitten up to his face and inhaled the scent of warm fur, as the little thing stretched for a moment, and then wound its golden tail over its white nose and snuggled down clasped in his big hands.
‘You saved it for me?’
‘I woke in the night, last night, thinking of you and remembering it, and I got out of bed and went up the ladder to the roof in the darkness, and fetched it down from the chimney pot.’
‘You went up and down the roof in darkness?’
‘I should have remembered it before.’
‘Was it not dangerous?’
‘Nothing like you in the flood.’
‘You were thinking of me?’
‘Yes,’ she said frankly.
‘Worrying about me?’ he suggested
‘Yes.?
??
‘Perhaps crying for me? A little? When nobody was looking?’
She smiled a little, but she did not look away or pretend to shyness. She made a small nod of assent. ‘I cried for you and I told the whole village that I was sorry I had been unkind to you.’
‘Perhaps you were wishing that you had kissed an honest man when he asked you kindly, and not thrown him down in the mud, that time in Vittorito?’
Again, the tiny nod told him that she had thought very kindly of him and regretted the missed kiss.
‘You could always kiss me now,’ Freize suggested.
To his surprise, she did not refuse him, though he had expected her to box his ears for asking. Instead she stepped towards him and put one hand over the soft kitten in his cupped hands, as if to caress them both. She put her other hand on the nape of his warm neck, and drew his head down to her, and she kissed him, tenderly and fully on the lips so that he inhaled her breath, and tasted the soft dampness of the tender skin of her mouth.
Ishraq waited in their shared room for Isolde to come back from church and took her cape as she entered, and stood behind her as she sat on the wooden three-legged stool. Ishraq untied the ribbon in Isolde’s blonde hair and ran her fingers through the plaits, pulling them loose. Slowly, luxuriously, she combed the beautiful golden ringlets till they lay heavy and smooth over Isolde’s shoulders, and then plaited them back up for the night. The girls changed places and Isolde combed and then plaited her friend’s thick dark hair, twisting the curls around her fingers.
‘Isn’t it a blessing that he is safe?’ she said quietly, ‘I had lit half a dozen candles for him in the church and then I was able to give thanks.’
Ishraq bowed her head under the gentle caress. ‘Oh, yes.’
‘He came running after us up the hill to church and he looked filled with joy.’
‘Yes, I expect he did.’
‘Did you give him his kitten?’
Ishraq nodded.
‘Was he very pleased?’
‘Yes.’
Something in Ishraq’s reserve warned Isolde, who gave the fat dark plait a little admonitory tug. ‘What are you not telling me?’
Ishraq turned to face her friend. ‘How do you know that there is something that I am not telling you?’
‘Because his face was alight with joy. Because you are saying nothing – but you look the same as he did. So what passed between the two of you?’
Ishraq hesitated. ‘You won’t like it,’ she guessed.
‘Of course I won’t mind. Whatever it is. Why would I mind? Did he promise you his service for life, like he did to me?’
‘Oh no. He doesn’t think of me as a grand lady. He doesn’t want to be my squire. He asked me if I was sorry for throwing him down in the mud at Vittorito. And I said I was sorry.’
‘You apologised?’ Ishraq was amazed. ‘You never apologise!’
‘Well, I said sorry to him.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I said I wished that I had kissed him that time and not tripped him up.’
‘Ishraq!’ Isolde was playfully shocked. ‘What a thing to say to him! What can he have thought?’
‘Oh that was nothing. He asked me could he kiss me now?’
‘Well, he was bound to. And I hope you refused him kindly?’
‘Oh,’ Ishraq said nonchalantly. ‘I wanted to. So I kissed him.’
Isolde was genuinely shocked. She dropped the comb and stared at Ishraq’s reflection in the little mirror. ‘You kissed him?’
The girl nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, I did.’
‘How could you allow him? I know you were happy that he came back safely – we all are – but how could you forget yourself so? How could you permit him? A servant?’
‘I didn’t really allow him. I didn’t “permit him”, as you say.’
‘He never forced you?’ Isolde was horrified.
‘No! No! It was I who kissed him.’
This was even worse. ‘But Ishraq, your honour!’
The girl met her friend’s stunned gaze. ‘Oh! Honour!’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I suddenly felt, I suddenly thought, that nothing mattered more to me than that I had thought him dead, and that I was so happy that he was alive. I had thought he was lost and here he was – just as he had always been. And I was so glad of that – nothing else seemed to matter.’
Isolde shook her head. ‘If you were so happy for him, you could have given him a favour or a gift. You could have let him kiss your hand. But to lower yourself to kiss him! What about your honour as a lady?’
‘I am sick of all of this,’ Ishraq said impatiently. ‘Like in the church today – people doubting our reputation just because we were going to wash where the boys swim. As if all that matters is how a lady behaves around boys! I want my honour to be about me as a person, not me as an object with boundaries and gateways, as if I were a field – someone can touch my hand, someone can see my face, someone else can’t even speak to me. If my honour is a real thing then it can’t depend on whether a man sees my face, or touches my hand, or kisses my lips. If I am an honourable woman then I am an honourable woman like a man is an honourable man – whatever I wear, however I appear. It is about my respect for myself – not how the world sees me, not what events happen. I know that I am an honourable woman, I don’t stoop to sin, I don’t embarrass myself, I don’t do things that I know to be wrong. I know I am a good woman whether I wear a veil or keep my hair plaited out of sight. I felt that I could, in honour, give him the kiss that he once asked for, and that I wanted to do so.’
‘A lady should be untouchable until marriage,’ Isolde stated the absolute rule that they had both been taught from childhood. ‘Her husband should know that she has known no other man, that no other man has been closer to her than to kiss her hand. He must know that she has felt no desire, permitted no touch.’
‘It’s not true,’ Ishraq said roundly. ‘You are a lady, a great lady, and you will make a great marriage with some high lord. But you will have known love and you will have felt desire.’
‘I won’t!’ Isolde insisted. ‘I would never admit to it.’
‘But there is more to life than trying to fit inside men’s idea of an honourable woman!’ Ishraq exclaimed. ‘We didn’t come away from the castle and then run away from the nunnery to live as if we were still enclosed.’
Isolde was scandalised. ‘We should live as we were brought up to live! Not like loose women on the road, not as if we had no hopes of ourselves, no standards, no self-respect!’
‘Not me,’ Ishraq declared boldly. ‘I am out of the castle, I am out of the nunnery. I’m not going to wear a hood any more, I’m not going to wear a veil. I am going to dress as I please and do what I think right and I am going to kiss who I want to, and even lie with someone if I want to. My honour and my pride are in my heart, and not in what the world says.’
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 be
cause 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.’