‘This is an easy guess in a port,’ Ishraq muttered to Isolde and got a burning look in reply.
‘I see a boy, a youth, learning that his father has been taken by the infidels themselves. They came at night in their terrible galleys and stole away his father, his mother, and everything they owned, and that boy wants to know why. That boy wants to know how. That boy will spend the rest of his life asking questions.’
Freize, who had been with Luca in the monastery when the Abbot had called him out of chapel to tell him that there had been an Ottoman slaving raid and his mother and father were missing, exchanged one level look with Luca. ‘Odd,’ was all he said.
‘A youth who has lost his father without explanation will ask questions for all his life,’ Johann stated.
Luca could not take his eyes from the young preacher; it was as if the boy was describing him, as if he knew Luca at the deepest level.
‘I can answer his questions,’ the boy reassured the crowd, his voice sweet as if he were quite entranced. ‘I can answer that boy who asks, “where is my father?” “Where is my mother?” God will tell me the answers. I can tell you now, that you will hear your father, I can tell you how to hear his voice.’
He looked over towards Isolde who was hidden among the village women, all dressed alike, with her hood completely covering her shining blonde hair. ‘I can tell you how to claim your inheritance and sit in your father’s chair where he wants you to be. I can tell you how to return home.’
A little cry broke from Isolde, and Luca checked himself from moving towards her.
‘Come with us,’ the boy said quietly. ‘Come to Jerusalem where the dead will rise and your fathers will meet you. Come with me, come with all of us and we will go to Jerusalem and the world will have no end and your father will put his hand on your head with a blessing once more, and you will feel his love and know you are his child.’
Isolde was openly weeping, as was half the crowd. Luca gulped down his emotion, even Freize knuckled his eyes. Johann turned to the priest. ‘Now we will pray,’ he said. ‘Father Benito will hear confession and pray with us. May I confess, Father?’
The priest, deeply moved, nodded, and led the way into the darkness of the church. Most of the crowd knelt where they stood and closed their eyes in prayer. Isolde dropped to her knees on the dirty cobblestones of the market and Ishraq stood beside her, almost as if she would guard her from this revelation, from grief itself. Freize, looking over, met Ishraq’s steady dark gaze and knew himself to be shaken and puzzled by what they had heard.
‘He knows things that we didn’t tell him,’ Luca said in a rapid undertone to Brother Peter. ‘He knows things that are impossible that he should know other than by revelation. He spoke of me, and of my childhood, and I had said nothing of either to him. He spoke of the Lady Isolde and he hasn’t even seen her. Nobody in this village knows anything about any of us.’
‘Would Freize . . .’ Brother Peter asked doubtfully.
Freize shook his head. ‘I’m not the one who gives breakfast to boys begging on the harbour wall,’ he said loftily. ‘And I don’t gossip. I haven’t said one word to him that you have not heard. If you ask me, he made a few lucky guesses and saw the response he got.’
‘You wept,’ Luca said bluntly.
‘He said things that would make a stone weep!’ Freize returned. ‘Just because it makes you cry, doesn’t mean that it’s true.’
‘To speak of an Ottoman raid to me?’ Luca challenged him. ‘That’s not a guess. To speak of Isolde driven from her castle? That’s no wild guess, there is no way that he would think of it, no way that he could know such things. He knew nothing of her, she kept out of his way. And yet he spoke of her father laid on a cold bier and her brother stealing her inheritance.’
‘I believe he is inspired,’ Brother Peter agreed, overruling Freize’s scepticism. ‘But I shall ask the priest for his opinion. I shall ask him what Johann tells him.’ He glanced into the shadowy interior of the church where the priest was kneeling on one side of a carved wooden screen and Johann was kneeling on the other side, reverently whispering his confession with his fair head bowed.
‘Johann’s confession must be secret,’ Luca remarked. ‘Between him, the priest and God.’
Brother Peter nodded. ‘Of course. But Father Benito is allowed to give me an impression. And as soon as I have spoken with him I shall send our report to Rome. Whether the boy is a visionary or a fraud I should think that Milord will want to help this. It could be very important. It is a crusade of its own making, a rising up of the people. It’s much more powerful than the lords ordering their tenants to war. It is the very thing that the Pope has been calling for and getting no response. It could change everything. As Johann goes through Italy he could gather thousands. Now I have seen him preach I understand what he might do. He might make an army of faith – unstoppable. Milord will want to see that they are fed and shipped to the Holy Land. He will want to see that they are guarded and have arms.’
‘And he spoke of fathers,’ Luca went on, indifferent to Brother Peter’s plan for a new great crusade. ‘He spoke of me, and my father. He spoke of Isolde and her father. It was not general, it was not ordinary preaching. He spoke of Isolde, he spoke of me. He knew things he could not know except by a genuine revelation.’
‘He is inspiring,’ Brother Peter conceded. ‘Perhaps a visionary indeed. Certainly he has the gift of tongues – did you see how they listened to him?’
Luca made his way through the praying crowd to Isolde and found her on her knees with Ishraq standing over her. When she crossed herself, and looked up, he gave her his hand and helped her to her feet.
‘I thought he was speaking of me,’ he said tersely. ‘And of the loss of my father.’
‘I am sure he was speaking of me,’ she agreed. ‘Speaking to me. He said things that only one who had been at the castle, or who had been advised by God could know. He was inspired.’
‘You believe him?’
She nodded. ‘I do. I have to believe him. He could not have guessed at the things he said. He was too specific, it was too vivid a vision.’
He offered her his arm, and she put her hand in the crook of his elbow and they walked together down the narrow steps to the quayside inn. Freize and Ishraq followed them in sceptical silence, the little ginger kitten skipped along behind them, following Freize.
‘I don’t see you weeping?’ Freize remarked to the young woman at his side.
‘I don’t cry easily,’ she said.
‘I cry like a baby,’ Freize confessed. ‘He was inspiring. But I don’t know what to think.’
‘He could have said that stuff anywhere,’ Ishraq said roundly. ‘Every port on the coast will have women who have lost a father. Most villages will have someone cheated of their inheritance.’
‘You don’t believe he is inspired by God?’
She gave a short laugh and risked the confession: ‘I’m not even sure about God.’
He smiled. ‘Are you a pagan indeed?’
‘I was raised by my mother as a Muslim, but I have lived all my life in a Christian household,’ she explained. ‘I was educated by Isolde’s father the Lord of Lucretili to be a scholar and to question everything. I don’t know what I believe for sure.’
Ahead of them Luca and Isolde were talking quietly together.
‘I have missed my father more than I would have believed,’ Luca confided. ‘And my mother . . .’ He broke off. ‘It was not knowing that has been so dreadful. I didn’t know what happened when they were kidnapped and I still don’t know if they are alive or dead.’
‘They sent you to the monastery?’ she asked.
‘They were convinced that I was a boy of extraordinary abilities and that I had to be given a chance to be something more than a farmer. They had their own farm, and it gave us a good living, but if I had inherited it after them and stayed there, then I would have known nothing more than the hills around my home and the weather. I
would have done nothing but keep the farm after their death and handed it on to my son. They wanted me to be able to study. They wanted me to rise in the Church. My mother was convinced that I was gifted by God. My father just saw that I could understand numbers quicker than the merchants, speak languages almost at the first hearing. He said that I must be educated. He said that they owed it to themselves to give me a chance.’
‘But could you see them again? After they put you into your novitiate?’
‘Yes. Bless them, they came to the abbey church most mornings, twice on Sundays. I would see them standing at the back and looking for me, when I was a choir boy too small to see over the choir stall. I had to stand on a kneeler so that I could see them in the congregation. My mother came to visit me every month and always brought me something from home, a sprig of lavender or a couple of eggs. I know how much she missed me. I was her only child. God Himself only knows how much I missed her.’
‘Did she not want to keep you at home, despite your father’s ambition?’ Isolde asked, thinking of the delightful boy that Luca must have been.
He hesitated. ‘There was something else,’ he admitted. ‘Another reason for them to send me away. You see – they were quite old when they had me. They had prayed for a son for years and God had not given them a child, so there were many people in the village who were surprised when I was born.’
‘Surprised?’ she queried. The cobblestones were slippery; she skidded for a moment and he caught her up. The two of them paused as if struck by the other’s touch, then they walked together, in step, their long stride matching easily together.
‘To tell you the truth, it was worse than that,’ Luca said honestly. ‘I don’t like to speak of it. It was an awful time. The village said that I was a changeling, a child given to my parents, not made by them. People said that they had found me on their doorstep, or perhaps in the woods. People called me a f . . .’ He could not bring himself to say the word. ‘A f . . .’
‘A faerie child?’ she asked, her voice very low, conscious of his painful embarrassment.
He nodded as if he were confessing to a crime.
‘There’s no shame in that,’ she said stoutly. ‘People say the most ridiculous things, and ignorant people long to believe in magic rather than an ordinary explanation..’
‘We were shamed,’ he admitted. ‘There was a wood near to our house, on our own land, that they called a faerie wood. They said that my mother had gone there, desperate to have a child, and that she had lain with a faerie lord. They said that she gave birth to me and passed me off to my father as a mortal boy. Then, when I grew up and could learn languages, and understand numbers in the blink of an eye, they all said that it proved that I had wisdom beyond the making of mortals.’
Isolde’s face was filled with pity as she turned to the handsome young man. ‘People can be so cruel. They thought you the child of a faerie lord?’
He turned his head away and nodded in silence.
‘And so your parents sent you away? Just because you were such a clever boy? Because you were gifted? Because you were so good-looking?’
‘I thought then that it was a curse and not a gift,’ he admitted. ‘I used to stand beside my father when he was seated by the fire and he would put his arm around me, and take coins from his pocket and ask me to calculate the value if he spent half of them, if he spent a third, if he put half out at interest and earned fifteen per cent but lost the other half. And always I was right – I could just see the answers as if written on the air, I could see the numbers as if they were shining with colours, and he would kiss my forehead and say “my boy, my clever boy”, and my mother would say “he is your boy” as if it should be repeated, and he should be reassured.
‘And then, one summer, strangers came to the village, a travelling troupe of Egyptians, and I went down to see them with the other village children and I heard them speaking amongst themselves. The children laughed at them, and someone threw a stone; but one of the gypsies saw me watching them and said something aside to me, and I answered him – I had their language in a moment, the very moment that I heard it. That was the end of it really. Next morning we found a thick ring of salt, all around the farmhouse, and a horseshoe at north, south, east and west.’
‘Salt?’
‘A faerie can’t cross iron and salt. They thought that they would imprison me. That decided it. My parents were afraid that they would trap me inside the house and then burn the house down.’ He shrugged. ‘It happens. People are afraid of what they cannot understand. It was not that they did not respect my father. But I did not have playmates among the village children, I was never quite like them, I could never talk easily with them. I could not fit with them. I was different and we couldn’t deny it any more. My mother and father agreed that it was too dangerous for me to be in the outside world and they sent me to the monastery for safety.’
‘Did you fit there?’ she asked, thinking of her own experience in the nunnery where she had been isolated and alone but for Ishraq, another outsider.
He shook his head. ‘Freize took a liking to me,’ he smiled. ‘He was the only one. He was the kitchen boy and he used to steal food to feed me up. And as soon as they taught me to read and calculate I started to ask questions.’
‘Questions?’
He shrugged. ‘I couldn’t help it. But it turned out that most questions are heresies.’
‘And then the Ottoman slaving galleys took your mother and father?’ Isolde prompted him quietly.
Luca sighed, as if he still could not bear to think of it. ‘You know, it’s been four years now, but I think of them every day . . . I have to know if they survived the raid. If they are alive I should save them. They did everything for me. I want to see them again. And if I am too late and they are dead, then I should honour their deaths and see them properly buried. If Johann is right and they will rise again in Jerusalem then I feel as if I have to go with him. It’s like a calling; a sacred duty.’
Isolde flushed a warm rose colour. ‘You’re not thinking of going to Jerusalem?’
Reluctantly, Luca nodded. ‘Part of me feels that I should go on with my quest. I have been commanded by Milord and licensed by the Pope, I have only just started . . . but if I can get permission from the lord of our order, I feel that I should go. I feel as if Johann spoke to me and promised me that I would meet my parents in Jerusalem. What calling could be greater than to see them again, before the end of all the world? At the very moment of the end of the world?’
They arrived at the quayside and turned towards the inn, dawdling to prolong their time together.
‘I’m going to go too,’ Isolde said fervently. ‘I won’t go to Hungary, not now that I have heard this. I carry the death of my father like a wound. It is terrible to me. Every day I wake up and I think I am in my old bedroom at Lucretili and he is alive, and every day I have to remember that he is dead, and I have lost my home and I am half-lost myself. If I could only see him again! Just once. I would go anywhere for that chance.’
‘You really think you will see him again in Jerusalem? You believe Johann?’
‘While he was speaking I was certain of it – but now – when you ask me like that, of course I’m not so sure.’
She paused, and they stood together: her hand on his arm, the seagulls crying over their heads, and the boats beside them, bobbing at anchor. A pale moon started to lift in the twilight of the winter afternoon and lay a silver path across the sea.
‘I know it sounds so incredible. And yet – you are here, commanded by the Pope because he believes that the end of days is coming. The Pope himself thinks it could be any day now. We all know that the dead will rise on Judgment Day . . .’ She puzzled over it, then put her hand to the neck of the plain gown as if to feel the pace of her heart. It was as if the steady beat reassured her: ‘Why should it not be true? I believe Johann has a vision. This must be a sign. It has to be a sign. I’m going to Jerusalem and I pray that I will meet my father
there, among the risen dead, and that he will forgive me for failing him. And he will tell me how I can win back my home.’
Moved by her grief, Luca reached out his hand and touched her shoulder, and then, more daringly, put the back of his hand against the smooth line of her chin. As soon as she felt his gentle touch on her skin, he felt her tremble. For a moment she stood quite still and then, with an inarticulate murmur, she moved aside.
‘Why do you say that you failed him?’ he asked very quietly.
‘When my father was dying my brother told me that he didn’t want me to see him in pain and despair. I believed him, and I prayed in the chapel while my father died alone. When I discovered that my brother had lied to me and stolen my inheritance, I feared that he had lied to my father about me too. What if my father died asking for me, but my brother told him that I would not come? I cannot bear to think of that.’
Her voice was choked with tears. She cleared her throat.
‘Why did you trust your brother?’ Luca asked Isolde gently. ‘Why did you not defy him at once?’
Her beautiful mouth twisted. ‘I was raised to be a lady,’ she said bitterly. ‘A lady should be above lies and deceit, she is honourable and trustworthy. A lady plays her part in the world with honour, and trusts a man to play his. I believed my brother to be an honourable man, the son of a great lord, raised to be as good a man as my father. It has taken me a long long time to see him as a thief. It took me long enough to understand that I had to choose my own life, find my own road. I could not trust his honour. I could not wait to be rescued.’
They resumed their slow walk towards the inn, Isolde’s hand tucked in the crook of Luca’s arm, their steps matched. ‘D’you really think your father will rise from the grave?’ he asked her, curiously.
‘I don’t know how such a thing could be; but now I can’t help but think it. How could Johann look at me, and describe my father? How could he speak of a cold bier in a chapel if he was not seeing, with the eyes of God, my own father’s bier in our cold chapel? He must know the unknown things, see things that we are blind to.’