Changeling

  A quick tap of a finger on her cheek told her that Isolde was glad of it.

  ‘Well, then,’ Ishraq said. ‘I need to sleep. You go to dinner. See if you can get him to release us. And if he does that, see if you can make him give us some money.’

  ‘You think very highly of my powers of persuasion,’ Isolde said ruefully.

  ‘Actually, I do.’ Ishraq nodded as her eyes closed. ‘Especially with him.’

  Luca sent for Isolde at dinnertime, planning to question her privately as they ate together, but then he found that both Brother Peter and Freize intended to be in the room with them.

  ‘I shall serve the food,’ Freize said. ‘Better me than some wench from the inn, listening to everything you say, interrupting as like as not.’

  ‘While you are notably reticent.’

  ‘Reticent,’ Freize repeated, committing the word to memory. ‘Reticent. D’you know? I imagine that I am.’

  ‘And I shall take a note. This is still an inquiry for murder and witchcraft,’ Brother Peter said severely. ‘Just because we found them in yet more trouble, does not prove their innocence. Quite the opposite. Good women stay at home and mind their manners.’

  ‘We can hardly blame them for being homeless when their abbey was going to burn them for witches,’ Luca said irritably. ‘Or blame her for being expelled by her brother.’

  ‘Whatever the reason, she and her servant are homeless and uncontrolled,’ Brother Peter insisted. ‘No man rules them and no man protects them. They are certain to get into trouble and to cause trouble.’

  ‘I thought we had answered the questions of the abbey,’ Luca said, looking from one determined face to the other. ‘I thought we had concluded our inquiry and sent in our report? I thought they were innocent of most of the crimes? I thought we were satisfied as to their innocence?’

  ‘We were satisfied as to the drugging, the poisoning and the murder,’ Peter said. ‘Satisfied that the great crimes were performed by the Lady Almoner. But what were the two of them doing in the mortuary that night? Don’t you remember them tampering with the corpse, and the Lady Almoner saying they were having a Satanic Mass on the nun’s body?’

  Freize nodded. ‘He’s right. They have to explain.’

  ‘I’ll ask,’ Luca said. ‘I’ll ask about everything. But if you remember her brother coming in, secretly hand in glove with that woman, and his readiness to see his sister burn before him – you can’t help but pity her. And, anyway, if her answers are not satisfactory we can hand them over to the Lord Piccante who is the master here, and he can burn the two of them as the Lord Lucretili would have done. Is that your wish?’ He looked at their glum faces. ‘You want to see them dead? Those two young women?’

  ‘My wish is to see justice done,’ said Brother Peter. ‘Forgiveness is for God.’

  ‘Or I suppose we could just turn a blind eye and let them get away in the morning,’ Freize suggested, as he headed out of the room.

  ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Luca exclaimed.

  Just then, Isolde came down the stairs for dinner, wearing a gown she had borrowed from the innkeeper’s wife. It was made of some coarse material, dyed a dark blue, and on her head she had a cap like countrywomen wore. It showed the golden fold of her hair where she had it twisted back into a plait. Luca remembered the tumble of gold when he had tackled her in the stable yard and the scent of rosewater when he had held her down. In the simple outfit her beauty was suddenly radiant and Luca and even Brother Peter were tongue-tied.

  ‘I hope you are recovered,’ Luca muttered as he set a chair for her.

  Her eyes were downcast, her smile directed to her feet. ‘I was not injured, I was only frightened. Ishraq is resting and recovering. She will be better in the morning, I am sure.’

  Freize entered, banging the door, and started to slap down dishes onto the table. ‘Fricassée of chicken – they killed an old rooster specially. Stew of beef with turnip, a pâté of pork – I wouldn’t touch it myself. Some sausage which looks quite good and a few slices of ham.’ He went back out and came in again with more dishes. ‘Some marchpane from the local market which tastes almost like the real thing, but I wouldn’t swear to its youth; some pastries which the goodwife made herself, I saw them come out of the oven and I tasted them for your safety and approve them. They have no fruit here at all but some apples which are so green that they are certain to half-kill you, and some sugared chestnuts which they have saved for visiting gentry for a good year. So I would not answer for them.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Luca said to Isolde.

  ‘No,’ she said with a smile. ‘He is very engaging and probably truthful, which matters more.’

  ‘Some very good wine, that I took the liberty of tasting for you in the cellar, which would do my lady no harm at all.’ Freize was encouraged by Isolde’s praise into pouring the wine with a flourish. ‘Some small ale to quench your thirst that they brew here from the mountain water, and is actually rather good. You wouldn’t drink the water in any case, but you probably could here. And if you fancy a couple of eggs I can get them boiled or scrambled up as you wish.’

  ‘He likes to think he is devoted to my service, and really he is very good to me,’ Luca said in an undertone.

  ‘And moreover,’ Freize said, bearing down upon Isolde, ‘there is a nice sweet wine for your voider course, and some good bread coming out of the oven now. They don’t have wheat, of course, but the rye bread is sweet and light, being made with some kind of honey – which I established by a long conversation with the cook who is no other than the goodwife, and a very good wife, I would think. She says that the gown becomes you better than her, and so it does.’

  ‘But sometimes, of course, he is quite unendurable,’ Luca finished. ‘Freize, please serve the meal in silence.’

  ‘Silence, he says.’ Freize nodded at Isolde with a conspiratorial smile. ‘And silent I am. See me: utterly silent. I am reticent, you know. Reticent.’

  She could not help but laugh as Freize folded lip over lip, put all the remaining dishes on the table, bowed low, and stood with his back to the door, facing the room like a perfect servant. Brother Peter sat down and started to help himself to the dishes, with his manuscript beside him and his ink pot adjacent to his wine glass.

  ‘I see that you are questioning me, as well as feeding me,’ she said to Luca.

  ‘As the sacred Mass,’ Brother Peter answered for him. ‘Where you have to answer for your soul and your faith before you partake. Can you answer for your soul, my lady?’

  ‘I have done nothing that I am ashamed of,’ she said steadily.

  ‘The attack on the dead woman?’

  Luca shot a quelling look at Brother Peter but Isolde answered without fear. ‘It was no attack. We had to know what she had been given to eat. And by discovering that she had been poisoned we saved the others. I knew Sister Augusta, and you did not. I tell you: she would have been glad that we did that to her – after death – so that we could save her sisters pain in their lives. We found the berries of belladonna in her belly, which proved that the nuns were being poisoned, that they were not possessed or going mad as we all feared. I hoped we could have given you the berries as evidence and saved the abbey from my brother and the Lady Almoner.’

  Luca spooned the fricassée of chicken onto a big slice of rye bread and passed it to her. Daintily, she produced a fork from the sleeve of her gown and ate the meat from the top of the bread. None of them had seen such table manners before. Luca quite forgot his questions. Freize at the doorway was transfixed.

  ‘I’ve never seen such a thing,’ Luca remarked.

  ‘It’s called a fork,’ Isolde said, as if it were quite ordinary. ‘They use them in the court of France. For eating. My father gave me this one.’

  ‘Never eaten anything that couldn’t be speared on the tip of a dagger,’ Freize offered from the doorway.

  ‘Enough,’ Luca advised this most interfering servant.

  ‘Or sucked i
t up,’ Freize said. He paused for a moment, to explain more clearly. ‘If soup.’

  ‘“If soup!”’ Luca turned on him wrathfully. ‘“If soup!” For God’s sake, be silent. No, better still, wait in the kitchen.’

  ‘Keeping the door,’ Freize said, motioning that his work was essential. ‘Keeping the door from intruders.’

  ‘God knows, I would rather have an intruder, I would rather have a band of brigands burst in, than have you commenting on everything that takes place.’

  Freize shook his head in remorse and once again folded lower lip over upper lip to indicate his future silence. ‘Like the grave,’ he said to Luca. ‘You go on. Doing well: probing but respectful. Don’t mind me.’

  Luca turned back to Isolde. ‘You don’t need an interrogation,’ he said. ‘But you must understand that we cannot release you unless we are convinced of your innocence. Eat your dinner and tell me honestly what happened at the abbey and what you plan for your future.’

  ‘May I ask you what happened at the abbey? Have you closed it down?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I will tell you more later, but we left the abbey with the nuns in prayer and a new Lady Abbess will be appointed.’

  ‘The Lady Almoner?’

  ‘Dead,’ was all he told her. ‘Now you tell me all that you know.’

  Isolde ate a little more and then put the slice of bread to one side. Brother Peter served the ragout onto her slice of bread, and dipped his pen in the ink.

  ‘When I came to the abbey, I was grieving for my father and opposed to his wishes,’ she said honestly. ‘Ishraq came with me – we have never been parted since my father brought her and her mother home from the Holy Land.’

  ‘She is your slave?’ Brother Peter asked.

  Vehemently, Isolde shook her head. ‘She is free. Just because she is of Moorish descent everyone always thinks she is enslaved. My father honoured and respected her mother and gave her a Christian burial when she died when Ishraq was seven years old. Ishraq is a free woman, as her mother was free.’

  ‘Freer than you?’ Luca asked.

  He saw her flush. ‘Yes, as it turns out. For I was bound by the terms of my father’s will to join the abbey, and now that I have lost my place I am a wanted criminal.’

  ‘What were you doing with the body of Sister Augusta?’

  She leaned forwards, fixing her dark blue gaze on him. Luca would have sworn she was speaking the truth. ‘Ishraq trained with the Moorish physicians in Spain. My father took us both to the Spanish court when he was advising them about a new crusade. Ishraq studied with one of the greatest doctors: she studied herbs, drugs and poisons. We suspected that the nuns were being drugged, and we knew that I was having the most extraordinary dreams and waking with wounds in my hands.’

  ‘You had the stigmata on your own hands?’ Luca interrupted her.

  ‘I believed that I did,’ she said, suddenly downcast at the memory. ‘At first I was so confused that I thought the marks were true: painful miracles.’

  ‘Was it you that came to my room and showed me your hands?’

  Silently, she nodded.

  ‘There is no shame in it,’ Luca said gently to her.

  ‘It feels like a sin,’ she said quietly. ‘To show the wounds of Our Lord and to wake so troubled, after dreams of running and screaming . . .’

  ‘You thought it was the drug belladonna that made you dream?’

  ‘Ishraq thought it so. She thought that many of the nuns were taking the drug. Ishraq never ate in the refectory, she ate with the servants, and she never had the dreams. None of the servants were having dreams. Only the sisters who ate the refectory bread were affected. When Sister Augusta died so suddenly Ishraq thought that her heart had ceased to beat under the influence of the drug; she knew that if you have too much it kills you. We decided to open her belly to look for the berries.’

  Brother Peter shaded his eyes with his hands, as if he could still see the two of them, bloodied to the elbow, about their terrible work.

  ‘It was a very great sin to touch the body,’ Luca prompted her. ‘It is a crime as well as a sin to touch a corpse.’

  ‘Not to Ishraq.’ She defended her friend. ‘She is not of our faith, she does not believe in the resurrection of the body. To her it was no greater sin than examining an animal. You can accuse her of nothing but of practising the craft of medicine.’

  ‘It was a great sin for you,’ he persisted. ‘And surely unbearable? How could you – a young lady – do such a thing?’

  She bowed her head. ‘For me it was a sin. But I thought it had to be done, and I would not leave Ishraq to do it alone. I thought I should be . . .’ She paused. ‘I thought I should be courageous. I am the Lady Lucretili. I thought I should be as brave as the name I bear. And at least we saw the berries in her belly, dark specks of the dried berries.’ She put her hand into the pocket of her gown and brought out a couple of flecks of dark hard berries like peppercorns. ‘We found these. This is proof of what we were doing, and what we found.’

  Luca hesitated. ‘You took these from the dead woman’s belly?’ he asked.

  She nodded. ‘It had to be done,’ she said. ‘How else could we prove to you that the nuns were being fed belladonna berries?’

  Gingerly, Luca took them, and quickly passed them over to Brother Peter. ‘Did you know the Lady Almoner was working with your brother?’

  She nodded, sadly. ‘I knew there was something between them, but I never asked. I should have demanded the truth – I always felt that she . . .’ She broke off. ‘I didn’t know, I saw nothing for sure. But I sensed that they were . . .’

  ‘Were what?’

  ‘Could they possibly have been lovers?’ she asked, very low. ‘Is it possible? Or is it my jealous imagining? And my envy of her beauty?’

  ‘Why would you say such a thing? Of the Lady Almoner?’

  She shrugged. ‘I sometimes think things, or see things, or almost smell things, that are not very clear, or not apparent to others . . . in this case it was as if she belonged to him, as if she was . . . his shirt.’

  ‘His shirt?’ Luca repeated.

  Again she shook her head as if to shake away a vision. ‘As if his scent was upon her. I can’t explain better than that.’

  ‘Do you have the Sight?’ Brother Peter interrupted, staring at her over the top of his quill.

  ‘No.’ She shook her head in rapid denial. ‘No, nothing like that. Nothing so certain, nothing so clear. I would not attend to it if I did have, I don’t set myself up as some kind of seer. I have a sense of things, that is all.’

  ‘But you sensed that she was his woman?’

  She nodded. ‘But I had no evidence, nothing I could accuse her of. It was just like a whisper, like the silk of her petticoat.’

  A rumbling cough from the doorway reminded the men that it was Freize who had first noted the silk petticoat.

  ‘It’s hardly a crime to wear a silk petticoat,’ Brother Peter said irritably.

  ‘It was a suggestion,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘That she was not what she seemed, that the abbey under her command was not as it seemed. Not as it should be. But . . .’ She shrugged. ‘I was new to the life, and she seemed in charge of everything. I did not question her and I did not challenge her rule of the abbey at first. I should have done so. I should have sent for an inquirer at once.’

  ‘How did you get out of the cellar beneath the gatehouse?’ Brother Peter suddenly changed the course of questioning, hoping to throw her. ‘How did you get out and escape when there were handcuffs and leg-cuffs and the cellar was dug into solid stone?’

  Luca frowned at the harshness of his tone, but Brother Peter just waited for the answer, his pen poised. ‘It’s the major charge,’ he remarked quietly to Luca. ‘It’s the only evidence of witchcraft. The work of the slave is the work of a heretic, she is not under the command of the Church. The attack on the body is the other woman’s work also – we might think of it as evil but the heretic is no
t under our jurisdiction. The Lady Abbess has committed no crime, but her escape is suspicious. Her escape looks like witchcraft. She has to explain it.’

  ‘How did you get out?’ Luca asked her. ‘Think carefully before you reply.’

  She hesitated. ‘You make me afraid,’ she said. ‘Afraid to speak.’

  ‘You should be afraid,’ Luca warned her. ‘If you got out of the handcuffs and the cellar by magical means or with the assistance of the Devil then you will face a charge of witchcraft for that alone. I can acquit you of tampering with the dead woman, but I would have to charge you with invoking the Devil to aid your escape.’

  She drew a breath. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she started. ‘I can’t tell you anything that makes sense.’

  Brother Peter’s pen was poised over the page. ‘You had better think of something; this is the one remaining charge against you. Getting out of the manacles and through the walls is witchcraft. Only witches can walk through walls.’

  There was a terrible silence as Isolde looked down at her hands and the men waited for her answer.

  ‘What did you do?’ Luca said quietly.

  She shook her head. ‘Truly, I don’t know.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was a mystery.’

  ‘Was it witchcraft?’ Brother Peter asked.

  There was a long painful silence.

  ‘I let her out,’ Freize suddenly volunteered, stepping into the room from his post at the door.

  Brother Peter rounded on him. ‘You! Why?’

  ‘Mercy,’ Freize said shortly. ‘Justice. It was obvious they had done nothing. It wasn’t them panning for gold and swishing around in silk petticoats. That brother of hers would have burned her the moment he got his hands on her, the Lady Almoner had the pyres built ready. I waited till you were all busy in the yard, deciding what should be done, then I slipped down to the cell, released them, helped them up the ladder, got them into the stable yard on horses, and sent them on their way.’

  ‘You freed my suspects?’ Luca asked him, disbelievingly.