Stormbringers (Order of Darkness) by Philippa Gregory Page A

walk,’ Luca said to Isolde. ‘This is important.’
     
    ‘I don’t know . . .’ She hesitated.
     
    ‘Perhaps they can’t do it alone,’ Freize said. ‘I could go too. Perhaps I had better accompany them.’
     
    Luca gave him a long narrow gaze from his hazel eyes. ‘You go by boat as well?’
     
    ‘Just to help,’ Freize said. ‘And guard them.’
     
    ‘And so you go by comfort in the ship and escape a long and uncomfortable walk,’ Luca accused.
     
    ‘Why not?’ Freize asked him. ‘If my faithless heart is not in it? If I would only blunt your resolve with my sinful doubts? Better keep me out of it. Better by far that only those who have the vision should take the walk.’
     
    ‘Oh very well,’ Luca ruled. ‘Isolde, you and Ishraq and Freize will go by boat to Bari, take all the horses, and we will join you there within three days. Freize, you will keep the girls safe, and you will find ships that will take the children to Rhodes, agree a price, and take the papal letter of credit to the priest and to the moneylenders.’
     
    ‘I want to walk,’ Isolde demurred.
     
    ‘I don’t,’ Ishraq said frankly. ‘Freize is right, we’ll walk enough when we get there.’
     
    ‘So we are agreed,’ Brother Peter said. He opened his little writing desk and took out the papal letters. ‘These will draw on credit with the goldsmiths of Bari,’ he said. ‘They will no doubt be Jews, but they will recognise the authority; do the best you can to get a good price. They are a wicked people. They have a guilt of blood on their heads and will carry it forever.’
     
    Ishraq took the paper and tucked it in her sleeve. ‘And yet you are depending on their honesty and their trustworthiness,’ she observed tartly. ‘You are sending them a letter and expecting them to give you credit on that alone. You know that they will understand the authorisation and they will lend you money. That’s hardly wicked. I would have thought it was very obliging. The Pope himself is trusting them, they are doing the work that you allow them to do, they are doing it with care and good stewardship. I don’t see why you would call them wicked.’
     
    ‘They are heathens and infidels,’ Brother Peter said firmly.
     
    ‘Like me,’ she reminded him.
     
    ‘You are in service to a Christian lady,’ Peter avoided her challenge. ‘And anyway, I have seen that you are a good and loyal companion.’
     
    ‘Like the women of my race,’ she pressed. ‘Like the other infidels.’
     
    ‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘We’ll know more when we have landed in the Holy Land.’
     
    Isolde gave a little shiver of joy. ‘I can’t imagine it.’
     
    Ishraq smiled at her. ‘Me neither.’
     
     
     
    In the morning, after breakfast, the two girls, with the hoods of their capes pulled forward for modesty, came out of the inn door and walked along the quayside where Freize was loading the horses onto the ship which would take them south down the coast to Bari. Luca and Brother Peter went with them, Brother Peter carrying the precious manuscripts stitched into packages of oiled sheepskin against the damp, his writing box strapped on his back. On the quayside, amid the ships returning from their dawn fishing voyages, Freize was loading the donkey and the five horses.
     
    The gangplank was wide and strong from the quayside onto the deck of the boat, and the first three horses went easily across the little bridge and into their stalls for the journey. Ishraq watched as the last horse, Brother Peter’s mount, jibbed at the gangplank and tried to back away. Freize put a hand on its neck and whispered to it, a few quiet words, and then unclipped the halter so the horse was quite free. Brother Peter exclaimed and looked around, ready to summon help to catch a loose horse, but Luca shook his head. ‘Wait,’ he said. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’
     
    For a moment the horse stood still, realising that it had been loosed, and then Freize