Luca’s fists clenched on the table. ‘She is my mother,’ he said warningly. ‘I won’t hear a word . . .’
Behind him Freize tensed, readying himself for a fight but Ishraq stepped swiftly forwards, her hat pulled low over her eyes. ‘More wine, Sires?’ she lifted the bottle and deliberately clunked it against the back of Luca’s head in passing. ‘Sorry, Sir.’
‘Clumsy fool,’ Luca gasped, recovering himself. He took a breath and turned to Radu. ‘We won’t speak of my parents. You will not speak of my mother. Now, to business. The manuscript. You don’t object that my clerk’s lad makes a note of what we say?’
Radu shook his head. ‘Not at all.’ He looked at Ishraq who pulled out a stool to sit down, and dipped the quill in the ink. For a moment their eyes met: dark into dark. ‘Interesting boy,’ he said. ‘An Arab?’ He said a few rapid words in Arabic. Ishraq did not allow herself even a flicker of response, though he had said to her, ‘Are you an Arab boy? Do you want me to free you?’
‘Half-caste,’ Luca said indifferently. ‘The child of a slave.’
‘Does he understand Latin?’
‘No,’ Luca said. ‘Only enough to write what I say, that’s all he’s good for.’
‘You should teach him,’ Radu advised. ‘It’s amazing what a bright boy can learn.’
‘Were you a bright boy?’
Radu smiled. ‘My brother and I were more than bright, we were brilliant boys. Our father gave us to the Sultan as hostages for his alliance and though he did not intend it, he sent us to perhaps the only court in the world where we would be educated by the best in the world. We were raised with Sultan Murad’s son Mehmet, we were taught with him – five languages, mathematics, geography, philosophy – in short: the meaning of the world and how to describe it.’
‘And now?’
The smallest shadow crossed Radu Bey’s face – Ishraq saw it, but nobody else did. ‘My brother went home. He inherited my father’s throne and agreed to hold our homelands for the Ottoman Empire, but he was faithless and turned against us. He’s overthrown now – in exile, but he’ll be gathering an army I don’t doubt, and hoping to hold the frontier against us again. He is dead to me. I doubt I’ll ever see him again. He chose the wrong side. He is my enemy. Our fates have led us in opposite directions: he is a great Christian commander, and I am one of the greatest commanders that my friend the Sultan Mehmet can put in the field.’
‘And you carry manuscripts with you everywhere that you go? You study?’
‘I read, all the time, and then I read some more. This is the way to understanding. I believe that one day we will understand everything.’ He smiled. ‘Shall I read what Plato says about earthquakes? It’s translated from the Greek into Arabic. I’ll translate it as I read for you, as best I can.’
Carefully, he unwrapped the manuscripts that were written in beautiful Arabic letters on scrolls of vellum. Meticulously he spread them out, and with a glance at Ishraq, started to read. ‘Now, this is the bit you will find interesting: Here . . . he talks about a great island in the Atlantic, a huge country, bigger than Libya and Asia put together . . . and he says, hmm . . . “There occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea. For which reason the sea in those parts is impassable and impenetrable, because there is a shoal of mud in the way; and this was caused by the subsidence of the island.”’
‘Earthquake and the land sinking?’ Luca confirmed. ‘An army of men sinking down into the earth? A great island sinking down into the sea and then nothing but a shoal of mud where it had been?’
‘It sounds as if there was an earthquake so great that it swallowed up an army. An earthquake which caused the sea to drown a huge country.’ Radu read on. ‘Plato is telling of this because Socrates has been talking about an account of a city with earthquakes and floods.’ Radu’s smooth voice paused. ‘That’s about it.’
‘Earthquakes and floods? As if they come together?’
Radu nodded. ‘Also, one of our own Arabic thinkers suggests that the earthquake moves the land under the sea. If you can imagine it, the land beneath the sea rises up, and the water is forced to flow away from it.’
Luca made sure he did not look at Ishraq, who kept her head bowed over the paper, rapidly writing.
‘What else does he write about, Plato? What else does he say?’ Luca was transfixed.
‘He writes about everything, really.’ Radu saw Luca’s entranced face. ‘Ah, you must get hold of a manuscript and have a Greek translate it for you.’
‘I could learn Greek,’ Luca said eagerly. ‘If I were to have a manuscript in Greek I could understand it. I can learn languages quickly.’
‘Can you?’ Radu Bey smiled. ‘Then you should come to our library in Istanbul. There is so much there, I can’t begin to tell you. Plato, for instance, talks about all of the real world that can be observed. He is very interesting about things that he has seen and heard about.’
‘And?’
‘And he talks about the real world that sits behind the things that you cannot observe. That there is another reality we do not touch. A world that we can’t eat like food, a world that doesn’t trip us up, like rocks. There is a reality which is more real, that sits behind all this.’
‘So how would we ever see it?’
‘That’s the very thing. This is the unseen world behind the real one. We wouldn’t see it, we would only know it. We would understand it with our minds, not with grabbing hold of it and looking at it.’
‘The things that we can see and taste are of no help to understanding?’
‘They are shadows on the wall. Like a child making shapes in candlelight. The real thing is the candle, not the shadow. But all the child observes is the shadow.’
Luca looked at Radu as if he would lay hold of him and shake information out of him. ‘I want to understand!’
Radu wiped his mouth and then started to roll up the manuscript again. ‘Come to Istanbul,’ he offered. ‘Come with me now. There are students there who can speak in your language; they will take you into the library. You can read the documents we have, you can study. Are you a mathematician?’
‘No!’ broke from Luca in frustration. ‘Not as you would mean!’
Radu smiled. ‘Plato studied with his tutor Socrates, and in turn he taught Aristotle. You are not a mathematician yet because you have to try to understand things alone. This is not a single thing that you can learn. It is about a body of knowledge – one man builds on another man’s learning. You need to understand those who have gone before you – only then can you ask questions and learn yourself.’
Luca rose to his feet, his hands shook a little and he tucked them into his robe so that the sharp-eyed Ottoman soldier could not see that he was deeply tempted at the thought of a library of mathematical manuscripts. ‘This has been an interesting meeting for me; but I have to remember that you are the enemy of my faith, of my country, and of my family.’
‘It is so. But you could change your faith, and your country, and your family is anyway lost to you.’
‘I could not change my faith,’ Luca said shortly.
‘Perhaps all faiths are shadows on the wall,’ Radu Bey said crinkling his dark eyes as he looked up at Luca. ‘Perhaps there is a God like firelight, but all we can see is the shadows that we cast ourselves when we walk in front of the fire. Then we see great leaping shadows and think that this is God, but really it is only our own image.’
Luca’s eyes widened slightly. ‘I will pray for your soul,’ he said. ‘For that is terrible heresy.’
‘As you like,’ Radu Bey said with his handsome lazy smile. ‘Did you write it all down, boy?’
Ishraq kept her head down. ‘I did, milord.’
‘Heresy and all?’
Ishraq stopped herself from looking up and smiling into his warm dark face. ‘Yes, sir.’
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‘Well, leave your papers here and carry these to the ship for me,’ he said carelessly. He passed her the wrapped box of manuscripts and to Luca he extended his hand. They gripped each other, hand to elbow, and felt the power in each other’s arms.
‘You are too good to chase around a failing country asking ignorant people what is going wrong in their poor lives,’ Radu said quietly to Luca. ‘You are too intelligent to be employed studying the night-terrors of old ladies. I know your commander – he has pledged his life to the wrong side and he will find the price is too high. He will sell his soul, thinking that he is doing the work of God, but he will find the world changes and he is left far behind. Come on board with me now and we will sail for Istanbul, for the libraries and for the study you can do.’
Luca released him. ‘I keep faith,’ he said, a little breathlessly. ‘Whatever the temptation.’
‘Oh, as you wish,’ Radu Bey said gently, then turned and walked towards the ship.
Ishraq shot a quick glance at Luca, and at his nod, followed Radu Bey down the quayside carrying the box of manuscripts. Quietly, over his shoulder, the Ottoman threw a sentence to her in Arabic, ‘If you are a slave I will free you. Come down to the quayside at sunset and jump into the ship and we will take you away. If you are a girl, as I think, you will be safe. I give you my word. If you are a scholar, no – I know you are a scholar, girl or boy – you should come with me to Istanbul where you can study.’
Carefully, she said nothing.
‘Your master is a fool to choose ignorance over learning,’ he said. ‘He chooses to stay with the side which is losing. He chooses to stay with a God who can foresee only the end of days. Will you remember me, when you see me again?’
Startled, she blurted out in Arabic: ‘Yes!’
He turned and smiled at her, his heart-stopping good looks quite dazzling in the midday sunshine. ‘Remember me well,’ he said. ‘And when you see a man who reminds you of me – and I think you will see a man that you would take for my very twin brother – then remember that you are in the most terrible danger, and that you should come to me.’
‘I cannot come to you,’ she said, recovering herself and speaking in Italian. ‘Ever. Never.’
He spread his hands and made her a little smiling bow. ‘I think there will come a day when you pray to come to me,’ he said, and took the parcel from her hands and stepped down to the prow of his galley. ‘Sister mine, these Christians, are not half as kindly as they seem. I know this for I was born and bred by them, and abandoned by them, just as you have been.’
‘I’m not abandoned,’ she said, suddenly urgent that he should hear her. ‘Nobody abandoned me.’
‘They must have done,’ he said. ‘Your father must have abandoned you, or your mother. For here you are, with skin like honey and eyes like dates and yet you are in service to a Franj, and you don’t acknowledge your people, nor come home with us when we invite you.’
‘I’m with my people,’ she said stubbornly.
‘No, you’re not, they’re Franj – foreign to us.’
There was a little silence.
‘You are skilled,’ he said. ‘You’ve been well-taught; you walk like a fighter and you write like a scholar.’
She said nothing.
‘You are working for people who think that you are going to hell,’ he pointed out.
She handed the box to him and stepped off the raised deck to the quay.
‘When the day comes that you see a man who looks like me, you should turn your back on him and come to me,’ he repeated his warning. ‘Otherwise you will see terrible things, you will do terrible things, you will look into the abyss itself. You will start to believe that you are in the hell that these Christians have invented.’
She pulled her cap over her eyes, she turned her collar up, as if against rain, and she turned and walked away from him – though she would rather have been walking to him.
The village watched the Ottoman galley all day through the shuttered windows of the quayside houses, and from the arrow-slits of the fort, as the men planed the mast to fit, set it in the boat, rigged the stays and the sail, and then, finally, as they had promised, cast off at sunset and started to row out past the little fort and the dripping obstacle of the chain.
‘Stop that ship!’ The shout echoed in the narrow streets over the clatter of hooves as a horse and rider scrabbled down the cobbled steps towards the port. Luca whirled around, on guard against fresh danger.
‘Stop that ship! In the name of the Holy Father, stop it!’
After one moment of hesitation, Luca ran to the fort, waving his arms. ‘Stop the ship! Someone is coming!’
The horse burst from the shadow of the buildings, the rider bent low over his neck as the sparks flew from the horse’s hooves skidding on the stone cobbles. He flung himself to the ground and shouted, ‘I command you to stop it!’
The men spilled out from the fort, demanding to know what the matter was now.
The stranger threw himself at Luca. ‘Stop it! That ship is commanded by the greatest enemy to Christendom!’
‘How could we stop it?’ Captain Gascon demanded irritably. ‘It’s under sail and they are rowing? We have no way to stop it.’
The stranger stamped his feet in his rage. ‘That ship is commanded by a devil!’
‘The ship is gone,’ Luca exclaimed. ‘And, anyway they have no cannon here. We can’t bombard it. And it was under a flag of truce. Why d’you want it held? What is your authority?’
Then he saw the dark blue robe, the piercing black eyes inside the shadow of the hood, and realised they were terribly familiar. Brother Peter, beside him, dropped to one knee. ‘Milord,’ he said simply.
Luca hesitated. ‘Is it really you, my lord?’
The man looked past them both to the slave galley as the wind filled the sails and the rowers lifted their oars, and then shipped them. As if he were mocking them, the tall figure standing at the raised stern of the ship released a standard in gorgeous irridescent blues and greens with great golden eyes, a long ribbon of precious cloth of gold meticulously embroidered to look as if it were overlaid with peacock tails, the symbol of nobility in the Ottoman empire, the standard of a great man of a conquering country.
‘Was that Radu cel Frumos?’ the lord demanded. ‘Answer me! Damn you! Was that Radu cel Frumos?’
‘He called himself Radu Bey,’ Luca said carefully. A quick glance at Brother Peter, who was still on one knee, his hand on his heart, assured him that the furious hooded man, glaring after the vanishing ship, was the lord who had recruited him to the Order of Darkness. Luca knelt beside Peter and put his hand on his heart.
‘Greetings, lord.’
‘Get up,’ he spat, not even looking down at them.
‘I’m sorry that we didn’t know you wanted him detained,’ Brother Peter said quietly. ‘He was here with his ship after an accident with the mast. If we had known . . . But they were heavily armed, and we had no cannon or anything more than the local guard.’
‘You will know in future. If ever you meet him,’ Milord snatched his breath, and fought for patience. ‘If you ever meet him again, you are to entrap him if you can and send for me. If you cannot capture him then kill him outright. He is my greatest enemy. I will never forgive him for opposing me – at every turn he is my antithesis. He is second in command to Sultan Mehmet II. He breached the walls at Constantinople. He is head of their army. He is the worst enemy of Christendom that I can name. There is no one I would rather see captured than him. There is no one I would rather see dead at my feet. He is an agent of Satan. He alone is a sign of the end of days.’
Luca and Brother Peter exchanged one uncomfortable glance and rose to stand before him.
Out at sea the gorgeous flag dipped in ironic salute and was taken in. The three men watched the ship grow smaller and smaller as it went swiftly away on the darkening sea, and then the early evening twilight enveloped it.
‘So, he is gone lau
ghing at us,’ the lord said. ‘He treats us like land-bound fools shouting after a ship sailing away. But you will remember this. And next time – for there will be a next time – you will not let him treat you so.’
‘Never,’ Brother Peter assured him.
The lord took a moment to recover his temper. ‘I have read your report on the Children’s Crusade, and on the great wave,’ he said to Luca. ‘My path crossed with your messenger as I was riding here to see the Crusade set out. You can tell me more after dinner.’
‘It’s a poor inn,’ Luca warned him. ‘They are still repairing and drying out.’
‘No matter. Were you on your way to Split?’
Luca shook his head. ‘No, Milord. That side of the sea was even worse hit by the great wave than this has been. It’s destroyed. We can’t go that way; there are people fleeing from there to come here, poor as it is. We were going to write to you for new orders.’
The lord paused, thinking. ‘You can go overland, north towards Venice. There’s something I want you to look at there.’
He passed the reins of his horse to Freize without another word and turned and went into the inn.
‘Venice is it now?’ Freize asked the horse dourly. ‘Rides in here like one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and the other three are coming along behind in their own time, and tells us we’re going to Venice. Well and good. Well and good, and you and I are nothing but dumb animals as you know, and I should remember.’ He stroked the animal’s neck and the big head turned to gently sniff at him. ‘So do you know what he’s planning?’ Freize asked conspiratorially
He waited as if he really thought that the horse might speak to him. ‘Confidential?’ he said. ‘That’s understandable, I suppose. But never tell me that he doesn’t confide in you?’ When the horse was silent, Freize patted its side and undid the tight girth. ‘Ah well. A man who keeps a secret from his horse is a secretive man, indeed.’
In the inn, Ishraq and Isolde who had been watching from the tap room window as the ship set sail, melted away up to their room as the strange lord called for the innkeeper. He ordered a glass of wine and a fire lit in the dining room, commanded the best bedroom available for himself, refused completely to share with other travellers, agreed a price for his exclusive use, and then, finally, sat down in the great chair and pulled off his riding boots and said that he would dine alone, but that Luca and Brother Peter should come to him after dinner.