Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) (21 page)

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.’

‘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?’