Changeling (16 page)

In the cellar, the two young women were shrouded in darkness as if they were already in their grave. It was like being buried alive. They blinked and strained their eyes but they were blind.

‘I can’t see you,’ Isolde said, her voice catching on a sob.

‘I can see you.’ The reply came steadily out of the pitch blackness. ‘And anyway, I always know when you are near.’

‘We have to get word to the inquirer. We have to find some way to speak with him.’

‘I know.’

‘They will be fetching my brother. He will put us on trial.’

There was a silence from Ishraq.

‘Ishraq, I should be certain that my brother will hear me, that he will believe what I say, that he will free me – but more and more do I think that he has betrayed me. He encouraged the prince to come to my room, he left me no choice but to come here as Lady Abbess. What if he has been trying to drive me away from my home all along? What if he has been trying to destroy me?’

‘I think so,’ the other girl said steadily. ‘I do think so.’

There was a silence while Isolde absorbed the thought. ‘How could he be so false? How could he be so wicked?’

The chains clinked as Ishraq shrugged.

‘What shall we do?’ Isolde asked hopelessly.

‘Hush.’

‘Hush? Why? What are you doing?’

‘I am wishing . . .’

‘Ishraq – we need a plan, wishing won’t save us.’

‘Let me wish. This is deep wishing. And it might save us.’

Luca had thought he would toss and turn with the pain in his neck and shoulder, but as soon as his boots were off and his head was on the pillow he slipped into a deep sleep. Almost at once he started to dream.

He dreamed that he was running after the Lady Abbess again, and she was outpacing him easily. The ground beneath his feet changed from the cobbles of the yard to the floor of the forest, and all the leaves were crisp like autumn, and then he saw they had been dipped in gold and he was running through a forest of gold. Still she kept ahead of him, weaving in and out of golden tree trunks, passing bushes crusted with gold, until he managed a sudden burst of speed, far faster than before, and he leaped towards her, like a mountain lion will leap on a deer, and caught her around the waist to bring her down. But as she fell, she turned in his arms and he saw her smiling as if with desire, as if she had all along wanted him to catch her, to hold her, to lie foot to foot, leg against leg, his hard young body against her lithe slimness, looking into her eyes, their faces close enough to kiss. Her thick mane of blonde hair swirled around him and he smelt the heady scent of rosewater again. Her eyes were dark, so dark; he had thought they were blue so he looked again, but the blue of her eyes was only a tiny rim around the darkness of the pupil. Her eyes were so dilated they were not blue but black. In his head he heard the words ‘beautiful lady’ and he thought, ‘Yes, she is a beautiful lady.’

‘
Bella donna
.’ He heard the words in Latin and it was the voice of the slave to the Lady Abbess with her odd foreign accent as she repeated, with a strange urgency: ‘
Bella donna! Luca, listen! Bella donna!
’

The door to the guest room opened, as Luca lurched out of his dream and held his aching head.

‘Only me,’ Freize said, slopping warmed small ale out of a jug as he banged into the room with a tray of bread, meat, cheese and a mug.

‘Saints, Freize, I am glad that you waked me. I have had the strangest of dreams.’

‘Me too,’ Freize said. ‘All night long I dreamed that I was gathering berries in the hedgerow, like a gipsy.’

‘I dreamed of a beautiful woman, and the words
bella donna
.’

At once Freize burst into song:

‘Bella donna, give me your love –

Bella donna, bright stars above . . .’

‘What?’ Luca sat himself at the table and let his servant put the food before him.

‘It’s a song, a popular song. Did you never hear it in the monastery?’

‘We only ever sang hymns and psalms in the church,’ Luca reminded him. ‘Not love songs in the kitchen like you.’

‘Anyway, everyone was singing it last summer. Bella donna: beautiful lady.’

Luca cut himself a slice of meat from the joint, chewed thoughtfully, and drank three deep gulps of small ale. ‘There’s another meaning of the words
bella donna
,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t just mean beautiful lady. It’s a plant, a hedgerow plant.’

Freize slapped his head. ‘It’s the plant in my dream! I dreamed I was in the hedgerow, looking for berries, black berries; but though I wanted blackberries or sloe berries or even elderberries, all I could find was deadly nightshade . . . the black berries of deadly nightshade.’

Luca got to his feet, taking a hunk of the bread in his hand. ‘It’s a poison,’ he said. ‘The Lady Abbess said that they believed the nun was poisoned. She said they were cutting her open to see what she had eaten, what she had in her belly.’

‘It’s a drug,’ Freize said. ‘They use it in the torture rooms, to make people speak out, to drive them mad. It gives the wildest dreams, it could make—’ He broke off.

‘It could make a whole nunnery of women go mad,’ Luca finished for him. ‘It could make them have visions, and sleepwalk – it could make them dream and imagine things. And, if you were given too much . . . it would kill you.’

Without another word the two young men went to the guesthouse door and walked quickly to the hospital. In the centre of the entrance yard the lay sisters were making two massive piles of wood, as if they were preparing for a bonfire. Freize paused there, but Luca went past them without a second glance, completely focused on the hospital where he could see through the open windows, the nursing nuns moving about setting things to rights. Luca went through the open doors, and looked around him in surprise.

It was all as clean and as tidy as if there had never been anything wrong. The door to the mortuary was open and the body of the dead nun was gone, the candles and censers taken away. Half a dozen beds were made ready with clean plain sheets, a cross hung centrally on the lime washed walls. As Luca stood there, baffled, a nun came in with a jug of water in her hand from the pump outside, poured it into a bowl and went down on her knees to scrub the floor.

‘Where is the body of the sister who died?’ Luca asked. His voice sounded too loud in the empty silent room. The nun sat back on her heels and answered him. ‘She is lying in the chapel. The Lady Almoner closed the coffin herself, nailed it down and ordered a vigil to be kept in the chapel. Shall I take you to pray?’

He nodded. There was something uncanny about the complete restoration of the room. He could hardly believe that he had burst through that door, chased the Lady Abbess and her slave, knocked her to the ground and sent them chained into a windowless cellar; that he had seen them, bloodstained to their elbows, hacking into the body of the dead nun.

‘The Lady Almoner said that she is to lie on sacred ground in the Lucretili chapel,’ the nun remarked, leading the way out of the hospital. ‘Both for her vigil and her burial. The Lord Lucretili is to bring the special coffin carriage and take her to lie for a night in the castle chapel. Then she’ll be buried in our graveyard. God bless her soul.’

As they went past the piles of wood, Freize fell into step beside Luca. ‘Pyres,’ he said out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Two pyres for two witches. Lord Lucretili is on his way to sit in judgement, but it looks like they have already decided what the verdict will be and are preparing for the sentence already. These are the stakes and firewood for burning the witches.’

Luca reeled around, in shock. ‘No!’

Freize nodded, his face grim. ‘Why not? We saw ourselves what they were doing. There’s no doubt they were engaged in witchcraft, a Satanic Mass, or cutting up the body. Either way it’s a crime punishable by death. But I will say that your Lady Almoner doesn’t waste much time in preparation. Here she is with two bonfires ready before the trial has even started.’

The waiting nun tapped her foot. Luca turned back to her. ‘What are these wood piles for?’

‘I think we are selling the firewood,’ she said. ‘The Lady Almoner ordered the lay sisters to make two piles like this. May I show you to the chapel now? I have to get back to the hospital and wash the floor.’

‘Yes, I am sorry to have delayed you.’

Luca and Freize followed her past the refectory, through the cloisters to the chapel. As soon as the nun pushed open the heavy wooden door they could hear the low musical chanting of nuns keeping vigil over the body. Blinking, as their eyes were blinded by the darkness, they went slowly up the aisle until they could see that the space before the altar was covered with a snowy white cloth, and on the cloth lay a newly made simple wooden coffin with the lid nailed firmly shut.

Luca grimaced at the sight. ‘We have to see the body,’ he whispered. ‘It’s the only way we can know if she was poisoned.’

‘Rather you than me,’ Freize said bluntly. ‘I wouldn’t want to tell the Lady Almoner that I’m opening a sanctified coffin because I had a funny dream.’

‘We have to know.’

‘She won’t want anyone seeing the body,’ Freize whispered to Luca. ‘She was horribly cut up. And if those witches ate her flesh, then the poor girl will bleed when she is resurrected, God help her. The Lady Almoner won’t want the nuns to know that.’

‘We’ll have to get permission from the priest,’ Luca decided. ‘We’d better ask him, not the Lady Almoner – we’ll give him a request in writing. Peter can write it.’

They stepped back and watched the priest. He had a heavy silver censer that blew incense smoke all around the coffin. When the air was chokingly thick with the heavy perfume, he handed it to one of the nuns and then took the holy water from another and doused the coffin. Then he went to the altar and, turning his back on them all, he lifted his hands in prayer for their departed sister.

The two men bowed to the altar, crossed themselves, and went quietly out of the church. At once they could hear a commotion from the stable yard, the sound of many horses arriving, and the great gates being thrown open.

‘Lord Lucretili,’ Luca guessed, and strode back to the yard.

The lord, and patron of the abbey, was mounted on a big black warhorse, which pawed the ground, its iron horseshoes throwing sparks from the cobbles. As Luca watched he threw his red leather reins to his pageboy and jumped easily from the saddle. The Lady Almoner went up to him, curtseyed, and then stood quietly, her hands hidden inside her long sleeves, her head bowed, her hood modestly shielding her face.

Following Lord Lucretili into the courtyard came half a dozen men wearing the lord’s livery of an olive bough overlaid with a sword, signifying the peaceful descendant of a crusader knight. Three or four grave-looking clerks came in on horseback, then the Lord Abbot of Lucretili with his own retinue of priests.

As the men dismounted, Luca stepped forwards.

‘You must be Luca Vero. I am glad you are here,’ Lord Lucretili said pleasantly. ‘I am Giorgio, Lord Lucretili. This is my Lord Abbot. He will sit in judgement with me. I understand you are in the middle of your investigation here?’

‘I am,’ Luca said. ‘Forgive me, but I have to go to the visitors’ house. I am looking for my clerk.’

The Lord Lucretili intervened. ‘Fetch the inquirer’s clerk,’ he said to his pageboy, who set off to the visitors’ house at a run. The lord turned back to Luca. ‘They tell me that it was you who arrested the Lady Abbess, and her slave?’

‘His own sister,’ Freize breathed from behind. ‘Though I might remark that he doesn’t seem very upset.’

‘Myself, my clerk Brother Peter, and my servant Freize, together with the Lady Almoner,’ Luca confirmed. ‘Brother Peter and my servant put the two women in the cellar below the gatehouse.’

‘We’ll hold our trial in the first-floor room of the gatehouse,’ Lord Lucretili decided. ‘That way they can be brought up the ladder, and we’ll keep it all out of the way of the nunnery.’

‘I would prefer that,’ the Lady Almoner said. ‘The fewer people who see them, and know of this, the better.’

The lord nodded. ‘It shames us all,’ he said. ‘God alone knows what my father would have made of it. So let’s get it over and done with.’