Stormbringers by Philippa Gregory

Author:Philippa Gregory
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780857077370
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK
Published: 2013-06-05T23:00:00+00:00

Isolde agreed that they should leave the following day but she could not bring herself to tell Luca. ‘Will you tell him?’ she asked Brother Peter. ‘I can’t bear to do it.’

He waited until the hour before dinner while they were all four sitting in the dining room before a smoky fire of damp wood, and then he said quietly, ‘Brother Luca, I think we can do nothing more in this town and I will send my report tomorrow. I will write that we can find no certain explanation for the wave, though some wild thoughts from pagan and heretical writers have been mentioned.’

Luca barely raised his head.

‘And I have found a master who will take us on his ship tomorrow. We can go after Prime.’

‘We stay,’ Luca said instantly. ‘At least for a few more days.’

‘We have a mission; and there is nothing more to be done here,’ Brother Peter repeated steadily. ‘We will send your report tomorrow, we can warn Milord and His Holiness that we have seen a powerful sign of the end of days. We can warn them that a previous earthquake was followed by a wave that was followed by the pestilence called the Black Death. But we serve no one by waiting here – and anyway, if a plague is coming we should leave.’

Isolde reached out and put her cool hand over Luca’s clenched fist as it lay on the table. ‘Luca,’ she said quietly.

He turned to her as if she might have answers to his agonising questions. ‘I can’t go,’ he said passionately. ‘I can’t just sail away from here as if nothing is wrong. I can’t just continue on. Freize came with me, he was following me on this quest. He would never have been here but for love of me. I don’t see how to do it without him. If I had been washed out to sea, he would not have left me. He would not have run for his safety and left me behind.’

‘He would want you to complete your mission,’ Isolde said, trying to comfort him. ‘He was so proud of you. He was so proud that you had been called to this work and that he could serve you.’

At the thought of Freize’s joyful boasting, Luca nearly smiled, but then he shook his head. ‘You must see, I have to stay here until . . .’

‘We will leave instructions and money that his body is to be buried if it is washed ashore,’ Ishraq said, surprising them all with the brisk clarity of her tone. ‘If you are thinking of that; we can provide for him, as you would wish. But I was speaking to one of the fishermen and he says there is a strong current a little further beyond the harbour and perhaps Freize and all the children have been washed far away. Their bodies may never be found. Perhaps we should think of them all as buried at sea. Brother Peter could bless the waves as we sail to Split.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.