Changeling (13 page)

They rode in silence, Freize shaking his head over the loss of his imaginary fortune, Luca raging at being played as a fool. As they drew near to the nunnery, Luca tightened his reins and pulled his horse up until Freize drew level. ‘You truly think it is her? Because she struck me as a most unhappy woman, a grieving daughter – she was sincere in her grief for her father, I am sure of that. And yet to face me and lie to me about everything else . . . do you think she is capable of such dishonesty? I can’t see it.’

‘They might be doing it behind her back,’ Freize conceded. ‘Though the madness in the nunnery is a good way of keeping strangers away. But I suppose she might be in ignorance of it all. We’d have to know who takes the gold to be sold. That’s how you’d know who was taking the fortune. And we’d have to know if it was going on before she got here.’

Luca nodded. ‘Say nothing to Brother Peter.’

‘The spy,’ supplemented Freize cheerfully.

‘But tonight we will break into the storeroom and see if we can find any evidence: any drying fleeces, any gold.’

‘No need to break in, I have the key.’

‘How did you get that?’

‘How did you think you got such superb wine after dinner?’

Luca shook his head at his servant, and then said quietly, ‘We’ll meet at two of the clock.’

The two young men rode on together and, behind them, making no more sound than the trees that sighed in the wind, the slave Ishraq watched them go.

Isolde was in her bed, tied like a prisoner to the four posts, her feet strapped at the bottom, her two hands lashed to the two upper posts of the headboard. Ishraq pulled the covers up under her chin and smoothed them flat. ‘I hate to see you like this. It is beyond bearing. For your own God’s sake tell me that we can leave this place. I cannot tie you to your bed like some madwoman.’

‘I know,’ Isolde replied, ‘but I can’t risk walking in my sleep. I can’t bear it. I will not have this madness descend on me. Ishraq, I won’t walk in the night, scream out in dreams. If I go mad, if I really go mad, you will have to kill me. I cannot bear it.’

Ishraq leaned down and put her brown cheek to the other girl’s pale face. ‘I never would. I never could. We will fight this, and we will defeat them.’

‘What about the inquirer?’

‘He is talking to all of the sisters, he is learning far too much. His report will destroy this abbey, will ruin your good name. Everything they tell him blames us, names you, dates the start of the troubles to the time when we arrived. We have to get hold of him. We have to stop him.’

‘Stop him?’ she asked.

Ishraq nodded, her face grim. ‘We have to stop him, one way or another. We have to do whatever it takes to stop him.’

The moon was up, but it was a half moon hidden behind scudding clouds and shedding little light as Luca went quietly across the cobbled yard. He saw a shadowy figure step out of the darkness: Freize. In his hand he had the key ready, oiled to make no sound, and slid it quietly in the lock. The door creaked as Luca pushed it open and both men froze at the sound, but no-one stirred. All the narrow windows that faced over the courtyard were dark, apart from the window of the Lady Abbess’s house, where a candle burned, but other than that flickering light, there was no sign that she was awake.

The two young men slipped into the storeroom and closed the door quietly behind them. Freize struck a spark from a flint, blew a flame, lit a tallow candle taken from his pocket, and they looked around.

‘Wine is over there.’ Freize gestured to a sturdy grille. ‘Key’s hidden up high on the wall, any fool could find it – practically an invitation. They make their own wine. Small ale over there, home-brewed too. Foods are over there.’ He pointed to the sacks of wheat, rye and rice. Smoked hams in their linen sleeves hung above them, and on the cold inner wall were racks of round cheeses.

Luca was looking around; there was no sign of the fleeces. They ducked through an archway to a room at the back. Here there were piles of cloth of all different sorts of quality, all in the unbleached cream that the nuns wore. A pile of brown hessian cloth for their working robes was heaped in another corner. Leather for making their own shoes, satchels, and even saddlery, was sorted in tidy piles according to the grade. A rickety wooden ladder led up to the half-floor above.

‘Nothing down here,’ Freize observed.

‘Next we’ll search the Lady Abbess’s house,’ Luca ruled. ‘But first, I’ll check upstairs.’ He took the candle and started up the ladder. ‘You wait down here.’

‘Not without a light,’ pleaded Freize.

‘Just stand still.’

Freize watched the wavering flame go upwards and then stood, nervously, in pitch darkness. From above he heard a sudden strangled exclamation. ‘What is it?’ he hissed into the darkness. ‘Are you all right?’

Just then a cloth was flung over his head, blinding him, and as he ducked down he heard the whistle of a heavy blow in the air above him. He flung himself to the ground and rolled sideways, shouting a muffled warning as something thudded against the side of his head. He heard Luca coming quickly down the ladder and then a splintering sound as the ladder was heaved away from the wall. Freize struggled against the pain and the darkness, took a wickedly placed kick in the belly, heard Luca’s whooping shout as he fell, and then the terrible thud as he hit the stone floor. Freize, gasping for breath, called out for his master, but there was nothing but silence.

Both young men lay still for long frightening moments in the darkness, then Freize sat up, pulled the hood from his head, and patted himself all over. His hand came away wet from his face; he was bleeding from forehead to chin. ‘Are you there, Sparrow?’ he asked hoarsely.

He was answered by silence. ‘Dearest saints, don’t say she has killed him,’ he moaned. ‘Not the little lord, not the changeling boy!’

He got to his hands and knees and crawled his way around, feeling across the floor, bumping into the heaped piles of cloth, as he quartered the room. It took him painful stumbling minutes to be sure: Luca was not in the storeroom at all.

Luca was gone.

‘Fool that I am, why did I not lock the door behind me?’ Freize muttered remorsefully to himself. He staggered to his feet and felt his way round the wall, past the broken stair, to the opening. There was a little light in the front storeroom, for the door was wide open and the waning moon shone in. As Freize stumbled towards it, he saw the iron grille to the wine and ale cellar stood wide open. He rubbed his bleeding head, leaned for a moment on the trestle table, and went on towards the light. As he reached the doorway, the abbey bell rang for Lauds and he realised he had been unconscious for perhaps half an hour.

He was setting out for the chapel to raise the alarm for Luca when he saw a light at the hospital window. He turned towards it, just as the Lady Almoner came hastily out into the yard. ‘Freize! Is that you?’

He stumbled towards her, and saw her recoil as she saw his bloodstained face. ‘Saints save us! What has happened to you?’

‘Somebody hit me,’ Freize said shortly. ‘I have lost the little lord! Raise the alarm, he can’t be far.’

‘I have him! I have him! He is in a stupor,’ she said. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Praise God you have him. Where was he?’

‘I found him staggering in the yard just now on my way to Lauds. When I got him into the infirmary he fainted. I was coming to wake you and Brother Peter.’

‘Take me to him.’

She turned, and Freize staggered after her into the long low room. There were about ten beds arranged on both sides of the room, poor pallet beds of straw with unbleached sacking thrown over them. Only one was occupied. It was Luca – deathly pale, eyes shut, breathing lightly.

‘Dearest saints!’ Freize murmured, in an agony of anxiety. ‘Little lord, speak to me!’

Slowly Luca opened his hazel eyes. ‘Is that you?’

‘Praise God, it is. Thank Our Lady that it is, as ever it was.’

‘I heard you shout and then I fell down the stairs,’ he said, his speech muffled by the bruise on his mouth.

‘I heard you come down like a sack of potatoes,’ confirmed Freize. ‘Dearest saints, when I heard you hit the floor! And someone hit me . . .’

‘I feel like the damned in hell.’

‘Me too.’

‘Sleep then, we’ll talk in the morning.’

Luca closed his eyes. The Lady Almoner approached. ‘Let me bathe your wounds.’ She was holding a bowl with a white linen cloth, and there was a scent of lavender and crushed leaves of arnica. Freize allowed himself to be persuaded onto another bed.

‘Were you attacked in your beds?’ she asked him. ‘How did this happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ Freize said, too stunned by the blow to make anything up. Besides, she could see the open door to the storeroom as well as he, and she had found Luca in the yard. ‘I can’t remember anything,’ he said lamely and, as she dabbed and exclaimed at the bruises and scratches on his face, he stretched out under the luxury of a woman’s care, and fell fast asleep.

Freize woke to a very grey cold dawn. Luca was snoring slightly on the opposite bed, a little snuffle followed by a long relaxed whistle. Freize lay listening to the penetrating noise for some time before he opened his eyes, and then he blinked and raised himself up onto his arm. He could not believe what he saw. The bed next to him was now occupied by a nun, laid on her back, her face as white as her hood, which was pushed back exposing her clammy shaven head. Her fingers, enfolded in a position of prayer on her completely still breast, were blue, the fingernails rimmed as if with ink. But worst of all were her eyes, which were horribly open, the pupils dilated black in black. She was completely still. She was clearly – even to Freize’s inexperienced frightened stare – dead.