There was a terrible silence. Luca could see the haunted faces of all the women staring blankly at him and for a moment he thought that they were indeed so sick from the drug that they would take him and Freize and Brother Peter and tear them to pieces. He took hold of the side of the cart with one hand, so that no-one could see it shaking, and he pointed his other hand at the Lady Almoner. ‘Get down from the cart,’ he said. ‘I am taking you to Rome to answer for your crimes against your sisters, against the Lady Abbess, and against God.’
She stayed where she was, high above him, and she looked at the nuns, whose faces turned obediently towards her. She said three short terrible words. ‘Sisters! Kill him!’
Luca whirled around, pulling his dagger from his boot, and Freize jumped down to stand alongside him. Brother Peter moved towards them, but in a second the three men were surrounded. The nuns, pale and dull-faced, formed themselves into an unbreakable circle, like a wall of coldness, took one step towards the three men, and then took another step closer.
‘St James the Greater protect me,’ Freize swore. He raised his crowbar, but the nuns neither flinched nor stopped their steady onward pace.
The first nun put her hand to her head, took hold of her wimple, and threw it down on the ground. Horridly, her shaven head made her look like neither man nor woman, but a strange being, some kind of hairless animal. Beside her the next nun did the same, then they all threw their wimples down showing their heads, some cropped, some shaven quite bald.
‘God help us!’ Luca whispered to his comrades on either side of him. ‘What are they doing?’
‘I think—’ Brother Peter began.
‘Traitor!’ the nuns whispered together, like a choir.
Luca looked desperately around, but there was no way to break out of the circle of women.
‘Traitor!’ they said again, more loudly. But now they were not looking at the men, they were looking over the men’s heads, upwards, to the Lady Almoner high on the hearse.
‘Traitor!’ they breathed again.
‘Not me!’ she said, her voice cracked with sudden fear. ‘These men are your enemies, and the witches who are fled.’
They shook their bald heads in one terrible movement, and now they closed on the cart and their grasping hands reached past the men, as if they were nothing, reached up to pull the Lady Almoner down. She looked from one sister to another, then at the locked gate and the porteress who stood before it, arms folded. ‘Traitor!’ they said and now they had hold of her robe, of her silk petticoats beneath her robe, and were pawing at her, shaking her gown, pulling at her, grasping hold of the fine leather belt of her rosary, gripping the gold chain of keys, bringing her to her knees.
She tore herself from their grip and jumped over the side of the cart to Luca, clinging to his arm. ‘Arrest me!’ she said with sudden urgency. ‘Arrest me and take me now. I confess. I am your prisoner. Protect me!’
‘I have this woman under arrest!’ Luca said clearly to the nuns. ‘She is my prisoner, in my charge. I will see that justice is done.’
‘Traitor!’ They were closing in steadily and fast; nothing could stop them.
‘Save me!’ she screamed in his ear.
Luca put his arm in front of her but the nuns were pressing forwards. ‘Freize! Get her out of here!’
Freize was pinned to the cart by a solid wall of women.
‘Giorgio!’ she called to Lord Lucretili. ‘Giorgio! Save me!’
He shook his head convulsively, like a man in a fit, flinching back from the mob of nuns.
‘I did it for you!’ she cried to him. ‘I did it all for you!’
He turned a hard face to Luca. ‘I don’t know what she’s saying, I don’t know what she means.’
The blank-faced women came closer, pressing against the men. Luca tried to gently push them away but it was like pushing against an avalanche of snow. They reached for the Lady Almoner with pinching hands.
‘No!’ Luca shouted. ‘I forbid it! She is under arrest. Let justice be done!’
The lord suddenly tore himself away from the scene, strode past them all to the stables, and came out at once on his red-leather caparisoned horse with his men-at-arms closed up around him. ‘Open the gate,’ he ordered the porteress. ‘Open the gate or I will ride you down.’
Mutely she swung it open. The nuns did not even turn their heads as his cavalcade flung themselves through the gate and away down the road to his castle.
Luca could feel the weight of the women pressing against him. ‘I command . . .’ he started again, but they were like a wall bearing down on him, and he was being suffocated by their robes, by their remorseless thrusting against him as if they would stifle him with their numbers. He tried to push himself away from the side of the cart; but then he lost his footing and went down. He kicked and rolled in a spasm of terror at the thought that they would trample him, unknowingly, that he would die beneath their sandalled feet. The Lady Almoner would have clung to him but they dragged her off him. Half a dozen women held Luca down as others forced the Lady Almoner to the pyre that she herself had ordered them to build. Freize was shouting now, thrashing about as a dozen women pinned him to the floor. Brother Peter was frozen in shock, white-robed nuns crushing him into silence, against the side of the cart.
She had ordered them to make two high pyres of dry wood, each built around a central pole, set strongly in the ground. They carried her to the nearest, though she kicked and struggled and screamed for help, and they lashed her to the pole, wrapping the ropes tight around her writhing body.
‘Save me!’ she screamed to Luca. ‘For the love of God, save me!’
He had a wimple over his face so he could not see, he was suffocating on the ground under the fabric, but he shouted to them to stop, even as they took the torch from the gatehouse porteress, who gave it silently to them, even as they held it to the tarred wood at the foot of the pile, even as she disappeared from view in a cloud of dark smoke, even as he heard her piercing scream of agony as her expensive silk petticoats and her fine woollen gown blazed up in a plume of yellow flames.
The three young men rode away from the abbey in silence, sickened by the violence, glad to escape without a lynching themselves. Every now and then Luca would shudder and violently brush smuts from the sleeves of his jacket, and Freize would pass his broad hand over his bewildered face and say, ‘Sweet saints . . .’
They rode all the day on the high land above the forest, the autumn sun hard in their eyes, the stony ground hard underfoot, and when they saw the swinging bough of holly outside a house that marked it as an inn they turned their horses into the stable yard in silence. ‘Does Lord Lucretili own this land?’ Freize asked the stable lad, before they had even dismounted.
‘He does not, you are out of his lordship’s lands now. This inn belongs to Lord Piccante.’
‘Then we’ll stay,’ Luca decided. His voice was hoarse; he hawked and spat out the smell of the smoke. ‘Saints alive, I can hardly believe we are away from it all.’
Brother Peter shook his head, still lost for words.
Freize took the horses to the stables as the other two went into the taproom, shouting for the rough red wine of the region to take the taste of wood smoke and tallow from their mouths. They ordered their food in silence and prayed over it when it came.
‘I need to go to confession,’ Luca said, after they had eaten. ‘Our Lady intercede for me, I feel filthy with sin.’
‘I need to write a report,’ Brother Peter said.
They looked at one another, sharing their sense of horror. ‘Who would ever believe what we have seen?’ Luca wondered. ‘You can write what you like: who would ever believe it?’
‘He will,’ Brother Peter said. It was the first time he had owned his fealty to the lord and the Order. ‘He will understand. The lord of the Order. He has seen all this, and worse. He is studying the end of days. Nothing surprises him. He will read it, and understand it, and keep it under his hand, and wait
for our next report.’
‘Our next report? We have to go on?’ Luca asked disbelievingly.
‘I have our next destination under his own seal,’ the clerk said.
‘Surely this inquiry was such a failure that we will be recalled?’
‘Oh no, he will see this as a success,’ Brother Peter said grimly. ‘You were sent to inquire after madness and manifestations of evil at the abbey and you have done so. You know how it was caused: the Lady Almoner giving the nuns belladonna so that they would run mad. You know why she did it: her desire to win the place of the Lady Abbess for herself and grow rich. You know that Lord Lucretili encouraged her to do it so that he could murder his sister under the pretence that she was a witch and so gain her inheritance of the abbey and the gold. It was your first investigation, and – though I may have had my doubts as to your methods – I will tell my lord that you have completed it successfully.’
‘An innocent woman died, a guilty woman was burned by a mob of madwomen, and two women who may be innocent of theft but who are undoubtedly guilty of witchcraft have disappeared into thin air, and you call that a success?’
Brother Peter allowed himself a thin smile. ‘I have seen worse investigations with worse outcomes.’
‘You must have been to the jaws of hell itself, then!’
He nodded, utterly serious. ‘I have.’
Luca paused. ‘With other investigators?’
‘There are many of you.’
‘Young men like me?’
‘Some like you, with gifts and a curiosity like you. Some quite unlike you. I don’t think I have ever met one with faerie blood before.’
Luca made a quick gesture of denial. ‘That’s nonsense.’
‘The master of the Order picks out the inquirers himself, sends them out, sees what they discover. You are his private army against sin and the coming of the end of days. He has been preparing for this, for years.’
Luca pushed back his chair from the table. ‘I’m going to bed. I hope to heaven that I don’t dream.’
‘You won’t dream,’ Brother Peter assured him. ‘He chose well with you. You have the nerves to bear it, and the courage to undertake it. Soon you will learn the wisdom to judge more carefully.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he will send you to the frontier of Christendom, where the heretics and the devils muster to wage war against us and there are no good people at all.’
The women rode side by side, with their horses shoulder to shoulder. Now and then Isolde would give a shuddering sob, and Ishraq would put out a hand to touch her fists, clenched tightly on the reins.
‘What do you think will become of the abbey?’ Isolde asked. ‘I have abandoned them. I have betrayed them.’
The other girl shrugged her shoulders. ‘We had no choice. Your brother was determined to get it back into his keeping, the Lady Almoner was determined to take your place. Either she would have poisoned us, or he would have had us burned as witches.’
‘How could she do such a thing – the poisoning, and driving us all mad?’
Ishraq shrugged. ‘She wanted the abbey for herself. She had worked her way up, she was determined to be Lady Abbess. She was always against you, for all that she seemed so pleasant and so kind when we first got there. And only she knows how long she was plotting with your brother. Perhaps he promised her the abbey long ago.’
‘And the inquirer – she misled him completely. The man is a fool.’
‘She talked to him, she confided in him when you would not. Of course he learned her side of the story. But where shall we go now?’
Isolde turned a pale face to her friend. ‘I don’t know. Now we are truly lost. I have lost my inheritance and my place in the world, and we have both been named as witches. I am so sorry, Ishraq. I should never have brought you into the abbey, I should have let you return to your homeland. You should go now.’
‘I go with you,’ the girl said simply. ‘We go together, wherever that is.’
‘I should order you to leave me,’ Isolde said with a wry smile. ‘But I can’t.’
‘Your father, my beloved lord, raised us together and said that we should be together always. Let us obey him in that, since we have failed him in so much else.’
Isolde nodded. ‘And anyway, I can’t imagine living without you.’
The girl smiled at her friend. ‘So where to? We can’t stay on Lucretili lands.’
Isolde thought for a moment. ‘We should go to my father’s friends. Anyone who served with him on crusade would be a friend to us. We should go to them, and tell them of this attack on me, we should tell them about my brother, and what he has done to the abbey. We should clear my name. Perhaps one of them will restore me to my home. Perhaps one will help me accuse my brother and win the castle back from him.’
Ishraq nodded. ‘Count Wladislaw was your father’s dearest friend. His son would owe you friendship. But I don’t see how we’d get to him, he lives miles away, in Wallachia, at the very frontier of Christendom.’
‘But he’d help me,’ Isolde said. ‘His father and mine swore eternal brotherhood. He’d help me.’
‘We’ll have to get money from somewhere,’ Ishraq warned. ‘If we’re going to attempt such a journey we’ll have to hire guards, we can’t travel alone. The roads are too dangerous.’
‘You still have my mother’s jewels safe?’
‘I never take off the purse. They’re in my hidden belt. I’ll sell one at the next town.’ Ishraq glanced at Lady Isolde’s downturned face, her plain brown gown, the poor horse she was riding and her shabby boots. ‘This is not what your father wanted for you.’
The young woman bowed her head and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand. ‘I know it,’ she said. ‘But who knows what he wanted for me? Why would he send me into the abbey if he wanted me to be the woman that he raised me to be? But somewhere, perhaps in heaven, he will be watching over me and praying that I find my way in this hard world without him.’
Ishraq was about to reply when she suddenly pulled up her horse. ‘Isolde!’ she cried warningly, but she was too late. A rope that had been tied across the road to a strong tree was suddenly snatched tight by someone hidden in the bushes, catching the front legs of Isolde’s horse. At once the animal reared up and, tangled in the rope, staggered and went down on its front knees, so that Isolde was flung heavily to the ground.
Ishraq did not hesitate for a moment. Holding her own reins tightly she jumped from the horse and hauled her friend to her feet. ‘Ambush!’ she cried. ‘Get on my horse!’
Four men came tumbling out of the woods on either side of the road, two holding daggers, two holding cudgels. One grabbed Isolde’s horse, and threw the reins over a bush, while the other three came on.
‘Now, little ladies, put your hands in the air and then throw down your purses and nobody will get hurt,’ the first man said. ‘Travelling on your own? That was foolish, my little ladies.’
Ishraq was holding a long thin dagger out before her, her other hand clenched in a fist, standing like a fighter, well-balanced on both feet, swaying slightly as she eyed the three men, wondering which would come first. ‘Come any closer and you are a dead man,’ she said briefly.
He lunged towards them and Ishraq feinted with the knife and spun round, slashed at the arm of another man, and turned back her fist flying out to crunch against the first man’s face. But she was outnumbered. The third man raised the cudgel and smashed it against the side of her head, she went down with a groan, and Isolde at once stepped over her to protect her, and faced the three men. ‘You can have my purse,’ she said. ‘But leave us alone.’
The wounded man clapped his hand over his arm and cursed as the blood flowed between his fingers. ‘She-dog,’ he said shortly.
The other man gingerly touched his bruised face. ‘Give us the purse,’ he said angrily.
Isolde untied the purse that hung at her belt and tossed it to him. There was nothing in it but a few penni
es. She knew that Ishraq had her mother’s sapphires safe in a belt tied inside the bodice of her tunic. ‘That’s all we have,’ she said. ‘We’re poor girls. That’s all we have in the world.’
‘Show me your hands,’ said the man with the cudgel.
Isolde held out her hands.
‘Palms up,’ he said.
She turned her hands upwards and at once he stepped forwards, twisted her arms behind her back, and she felt the other man rope her tightly.
‘Lady’s hands,’ he jeered. ‘Soft white hands. You’ve never done a stroke of work in your life. You’ll have a wealthy family or friends somewhere who will pay a ransom for you, won’t you?’
‘I swear to you that no-one will pay for me.’ Isolde tried to turn but the ropes bit tight into her arms. ‘I swear it. I am alone in the world, my father just dead. My friend is alone too. Let me . . .’
‘Well, we’ll see,’ the man said.
On the ground Ishraq stirred and tried to get to her feet. ‘Let me help her,’ Isolde said. ‘She’s hurt.’
‘Tie them up together,’ the man said to his fellows. ‘In the morning we’ll see if anyone is missing two pretty girls. If they aren’t, then we’ll see if anyone wants two pretty girls. If they don’t, we’ll sell them to the Turks.’ The men laughed and the one with the bruised face patted Isolde’s cheek.
The chief hit his hand away. ‘No spoiling the goods,’ he said. ‘Not till we know who they are.’ He heaved Ishraq to her feet and held her as she too was roped. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled to Isolde.
‘Give me water for her,’ Isolde commanded the man. ‘And let me bathe her head.’
‘Come on,’ was all he said to the others and led the way off the track to their hidden camp.