The lord smiled. ‘No. Not really. Is that why you delay?’ He laughed to himself. ‘You are a young man indeed! No, in our Order you are not sworn to poverty – I am sending you to Venice as wealthy as a lord. You are not sworn to chastity – your private life is your own concern, between you and your confessor. I don’t concern myself with any sin or vice unless it affects your work for the Order.’

Luca blinked.

‘Remember that you did not complete your novitiate. You are not bound by the vows of a priest; you can choose to take your vows later.’

‘I was not sure . . .’

‘My Order only requires obedience. You must be obedient to me and to my commands and to our mission, which is to guard the frontier of Christendom from the devil, the pagan and the heretic. You will be an inquirer and a servant of the Order. How you obey the commandments is between you and your confessor and God. Do you submit to the Order?’

‘Yes, my lord,’ Luca bowed his head.

There was a small gleam of a smile, and then the hooded figure moved to the newly-lit fire and took a taper from the flame. One by one he lit all the candles in the room and carried each one of them to the table, so that they were shining on Luca as he sat in broad daylight. In the rosewood box the lord had a set of bronze instruments like a set of embroidery needles, and a small pot of what looked like black ink.

‘Bare your arm,’ he said quietly.

Luca rolled back the sleeve of his robe, and stretched out his arm.

The lord took up a needle, sharp as a stiletto blade. ‘Whether you find your father or not, you have a family in this Order,’ he said quietly. ‘Whether you speak with the Muslim lord or not, you have no lord but me. Whether you travel with the woman or not, your heart is given to your work and to the mapping of fears and the tracing of the end of days. Whatever else you see on your journey, my command is that you look into the very jaws of hell itself and tell me their measurements. Will you do this?’

He pressed the point of the needle to Luca’s skin, inside the forearm, halfway between the crook of the elbow and the wrist, and Luca recoiled as he saw the blood well up and felt the sharp scratch.

‘I will,’ he gasped. He clenched his fist against the pain and watched as again and again the little blade cut and then scratched, opening up the skin, marking him lightly with a tickling sharp pain, making a shape, an unmistakable shape on the pale skin.

The pain deepened, as the cuts took a form. It was the tail of the dragon, exquisitely drawn by a knife on soft flesh. That was all: the first marks of the Order, the scaley tail outlined in the scarlet of Luca’s blood.