‘It was very moving,’ Luca told him on the doorstep. ‘I have mentioned it in my report. I have quoted many of the passages. It was inspirational, and all about authority.’

As soon as he was gone, they ate their own midday dinner and ordered their horses brought out into the stable yard. Freize showed Ishraq her horse, saddled and bridled. ‘No pillion saddle,’ he said. ‘I know you like to ride alone. And the Lord knows, you can handle yourself and, I daresay, a horse as well.’

‘But I’ll ride alongside you, if I may,’ she said.

Freize narrowed his eyes and scrutinised her for sarcasm. ‘No,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘I’m just a servant, you are a lady. I ride behind.’

His smile gleamed at the consternation on her face.

‘Freize – I never meant to offend you . . .’

‘Now you see,’ he crowed triumphantly. ‘Now you see what happens when you throw a good man down on his back on the cobbles – when you go tipping good women into bear pits. Too strong by half, is what I would say. Too opinionated by half, is what I would propose. Too proud of your opinion to make any man a good sweetheart or wife. Bound to end in a cold grave as a spinster, I would think. If not burned as a witch, as has already been suggested.’

She raised her hands as if in surrender. ‘Clearly I have offended you—’ she began.

‘You have,’ Freize said grandly. ‘And so I shall ride behind, like a servant, and you may ride ahead, like an opinionated overly powerful lady, like a woman who does not know her place in the world, nor anyone else’s. Like a woman who goes chucking men onto their backs, and women into bear pits, and causing all sorts of upset. You shall ride ahead, in your pomp, as vain as the bishop, and we know which of us will be the happier.’

Ishraq bowed her head under his storm of words, and mounted her horse without replying. Clearly, there was no dealing with Freize in his state of outrage.

Isolde came out of the inn and Freize helped her into the saddle and then Luca came out followed by Brother Peter.

‘Where to?’ Ishraq asked Luca.

He mounted his horse and brought it alongside hers. ‘Due east, I think,’ he said. He looked to Brother Peter. ‘Isn’t that right?’

Brother Peter touched the letter in his jacket pocket. ‘North-east it says on the outside of the letter, and at breakfast tomorrow, at Pescara, if we get there, God willing, I am to open our orders.’

‘We will have another mission?’ Luca asked.

‘We will,’ Brother Peter said. ‘All I have is the directions to Pescara, but I don’t know what the instructions will say nor where they will take us.’ He looked at Isolde and Ishraq. ‘I take it that the ladies will be travelling with us to Pescara?’

Luca nodded.

‘And leaving us there?’ Brother Peter prompted.

‘Can’t go soon enough for me,’ Freize said from the mounting block as he tightened his girth and got on his horse. ‘In case she takes it into her head to throw me into a river – or into the sea when we get there, which clearly she might do if she takes it into her own wilful head.’

‘They will leave us when they find safe companions,’ Luca ruled. ‘As we agreed.’ But he brought his horse alongside Isolde and reached out to put his hand on hers, as she held her reins. ‘You will stay with us?’ he asked quietly. ‘While our roads go together?’

The smile that she gave him told him that she would. ‘I will stay with you,’ she promised. ‘While our roads lie together.’

The little cavalcade of Luca and Isolde, Brother Peter and Ishraq, with Freize behind them, surrounded by his beloved extra horses, clattered out of the gateway of the inn, not yet knowing where they were going, nor what they had to do, and headed north-east for Pescara – and for whatever lay beyond.


AUTHOR NOTE