Changeling (25 page)

At sunset on the first evening, they pulled up their horses before an isolated monastery. Ishraq and Isolde exchanged an anxious glance. ‘The hue and cry?’ she muttered to Luca.

‘It won’t have reached here. I doubt your brother sent out any messages once he was away from the abbey. I would guess he signed the writ only to demonstrate his own innocence.’

She nodded. ‘Just enough to keep me away,’ she said. ‘Naming me as a witch and declaring me dead, leaves him with the castle and the abbey under his control, giving him the abbey lands and the gold. He wins everything.’

Freize dismounted and went to pull the great ring outside the closed door. The bell in the gatehouse rang loudly, and the porter heaved the double gates open. ‘Welcome, travellers, in the name of God,’ he said cheerfully. ‘How many are you?’

‘One young lord, one clerk, one servant, one lady and her companion,’ Freize replied. ‘And nine horses and one donkey. They can go in the meadow or in the stables as suits you.’

‘We can put them out on good grass,’ the lay brother said, smiling. ‘Come in.’

He welcomed them into a big yard and Brother Peter and Luca swung down from their saddles. Luca turned to Isolde’s horse and held up his arms to lift her down. She smiled briefly and gestured that she could get down on her own, then swung her leg and, lithe as a boy, jumped to the ground.

Freize went to Ishraq’s horse and held out his arm. ‘Don’t jump,’ he said. ‘You’ll faint the moment you touch the ground. You’ve been near to fainting any time this last five miles.’

She gathered her dark veil across her mouth and looked at him over the top of it.

‘And don’t look daggers at me either,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘You’d have done better behind me with your arms around my waist and my back to lean on, but you’re as stubborn as the donkey. Come on down, girl, and let me help you.’

Surprisingly, she did as he suggested and leaned towards him and let herself fall into his arms. He took her gently and set her on her feet with his arm around her to keep her steady. Isolde went to her and supported her. ‘I didn’t realise . . .’

‘Just tired.’

The porter gave them a light to the guesthouse, indicated the women’s rooms on one side of the high wall and the entry to the men’s rooms on the other. He showed them the refectory and told them that they might get their dinner with the monks after Vespers, while the ladies would be served in the guesthouse. Then he left them with lit candles and a blessing.

‘Goodnight,’ Isolde said to Luca, bowing her head to Brother Peter.

‘I’ll see you in the morning,’ Luca said to both women. ‘We should leave straight after Prime.’

Isolde nodded. ‘We’ll be ready.’

Ishraq curtseyed to the two men and nodded at Freize.

‘Pillion saddle tomorrow?’ he asked her.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Because you were overtired with the ride today?’ Freize said, driving the point home.

She showed him a warm frank smile before she tucked her veil across her face. ‘Don’t gloat,’ she said. ‘I’m tired to my very bones. You were right, I was wrong, and foolishly proud. I’ll ride pillion tomorrow and be glad of it; but if you mock me I will pinch you every step of the way.’

Freize ducked his head. ‘Not a word,’ he promised her. ‘You will find me reticent to a fault.’

‘Reticent?’

He nodded. ‘It is my new ambition. It’s my new word: reticent.’

They left immediately after Prime and breakfast, and the sun was up on their right-hand side as they headed north. ‘Thing is,’ Freize remarked to Ishraq quietly as she rode behind him, seated sideways, her feet resting on the pillion support, one hand around his waist, tucked into his belt, ‘thing is, we never know where we are going. We just go along, steady as the donkey, who knows no more than us but plods along, and then that pompous jackal suddenly brings out a piece of paper and tells us we are to go somewhere else entirely and get into God knows what trouble.’

‘But of course,’ she said. ‘Because you are travelling as an inquiry. You have to go and inquire into things.’

‘I don’t see why we can’t know where we are going,’ Freize said. ‘And then a man might have a chance of making sure we stopped at a good inn.’

‘Ah, it is a matter of dinner,’ she said, smiling behind her veil. ‘I understand now.’

Freize patted the hand that was holding his belt. ‘There are very few things more important than dinner to a hardworking man,’ he said firmly. Then, ‘Hulloah? What’s this?’

Ahead of them in the road were half a dozen men, struggling with pitchforks and flails to hold down an animal which was netted and roped and twisting about in the dirt. Freize halted and Isolde, Luca and Peter pulled up behind him.

‘What have you got there?’ Luca called to the men.

One of the men broke from the struggle and came towards them. ‘We’d be glad of your help,’ he said. ‘If we could rope the creature to two of your horses we’d be able to get it along the road. We can’t get forwards or backwards at the moment.’

‘What is it?’ Luca asked.

The man crossed himself. ‘The Lord save us, it is a werewolf,’ he said. ‘It has been plaguing our village and forests every full moon for a year but last night my brother and I, and our friends, and cousin, went out and trapped it.’

Brother Peter crossed himself, and Isolde copied him. ‘How did you trap it?’

‘We planned it for months, truly months. We didn’t dare to go out at night – we were afraid his power would be too strong under the moon. We waited till it was a waning moon when we knew that his power would be weakened and shrunken. Then we dug a deep pit on the track to the village and we staked out a haunch of mutton on the far side. We thought he would come to the village as he always does and smell the meat. We hoped he would follow the track to the meat and he did. We covered the pit with light branches and leaves, and he didn’t see it. It collapsed beneath him and he fell in. We kept him there for days, with nothing to eat so he weakened. Then we dropped the nets on him and pulled them tight and hauled him out of the pit. Now we have him.’

‘And what are you going to do with him?’ Isolde looked fearfully at the writhing animal, laden with nets, struggling on the road.

‘We are going to cage it in the village till we can make a silver arrow, as only a silver arrow can kill it, and then we are going to shoot it in the heart and bury it at the crossroads. Then it will lie quiet and we will be safe in our beds again.’

‘Pretty small for a wolf,’ Freize observed, peering at the thrashing net. ‘More like a dog.’

‘It grows bigger with the moon,’ the man said. ‘When the moon is full it waxes too – as big as the biggest wolf. And then, though we bolt our doors and shutter our windows, we can hear it round the village, trying the doors, sniffing at the locks, trying to get in.’

Isolde shuddered.

‘Will you help us get it to the village? We’re going to put it in the bear pit, where we bait the bears at the inn, but it’s a good mile away. We didn’t think it would struggle so, and we’re afraid to get too close for fear of being bitten.’

‘If it bites you, you turn into a werewolf too,’ a man said from the back. ‘I swore to my wife that I wouldn’t go too close.’

Freize looked across their heads at Luca, and at a nod from his master, got down from his cob and went to the bundle in the road. Under the pile of nets and tangles of rope he could just see an animal crouched down and curled up. A dark angry eye looked back at him; he saw small yellow teeth bared in a snarl. Two or three of the men held their ropes out and Freize took one from one side and then one from the other side and tied them to two of the spare horses. ‘Here,’ he said to one of the men. ‘Lead the horse gently. Did you say two miles to the village?’

‘Perhaps one and a half,’ the man said. The horse snorted in fear and sidled as the bundle on the road let out a howl. Then the ropes were tightened and they set off, dragging the helpless bundle along behind them. Sometimes the creature convulsed and rolled over, which caused the horses to jib in fear and the men leading them had to tighten their reins and soothe them.

‘A bad business,’ Freize said to Luca as they entered the village behind the men, and saw the other villagers gather around with spades and axes and flails.

‘This is the very thing that we were sent out to understand,’ Brother Peter said to Luca. ‘I shall open a report, and you can hold an inquiry. We can do it here, before continuing with our journey and our mission. You can find what evidence there is that this is a werewolf, half-beast, half-man, and then you can decide if it should be put to death with a silver arrow or not.’

‘I?’ Luca hesitated.

‘You are the inquirer,’ Brother Peter reminded him. ‘Here is a place to understand the fears and map the rise of the Devil. Set up your inquiry.’

Freize looked at him; Isolde waited. Luca cleared his throat. ‘I am an inquirer sent out by the Holy Father himself to discover wrong-doing and error in Christendom,’ he called to the villagers. There was a murmur of interest and respect. ‘I will hold an inquiry about this beast and decide what is to be done with it,’ he said. ‘Anyone who has been wronged by the beast or is fearful of it, or knows anything about it, is to come to my room in the inn and give evidence before me. In a day or two I shall tell you my decision, which will be binding and final.’

Freize nodded. ‘Where’s the bear pit?’ he asked one of the farmers, who was leading a horse.

‘In the yard of the inn,’ the man said. He nodded to the big double doors of the stable yard at the side of the inn. As the horses came close, the villagers ran ahead and threw the doors open. Inside the courtyard, under the windows of the inn, there was a big circular arena.

Once a year, a visiting bear leader would bring his chained animal to the village on a feast day and everyone would bet on how many dogs would be killed, and how close the bravest would get to the throat of the bear, until the bear leader declared it over, and the excitement was done for another year.

A stake in the centre showed where the bears were chained by the leg when the dogs were set on them. The arena had been reinforced and made higher by lashed beams and planks so that the inner wall was nearly as high as the first-floor windows of the inn. ‘They can jump,’ the farmer said. ‘Werewolves can jump, everyone knows that. We built it too high for the Devil himself.’

The villagers untied the ropes from the horses and pulled the bundle in the net towards the bear pit. It seemed to struggle more vigorously and to resist. A couple of the farmers took their pitchforks and pricked it onwards which made it howl in pain and snarl and lash out in its net.

‘And how are you going to release it into the bear pit?’ Freize wondered aloud.

There was a silence. Clearly this stage had not been foreseen. ‘We’ll just lock it in and leave it to get its own self free,’ someone suggested.

‘I’m not going near it,’ another man said.

‘If it bites you once, you become a werewolf too,’ a woman warned.

‘You die from the poison of its breath,’ another disagreed.

‘If it gets the taste of your blood it hunts you till it has you,’ someone volunteered.

Brother Peter and Luca and the two women went into the front door of the inn and took rooms for themselves and stables for the horses. Luca also hired a dining room that overlooked the bear pit in the yard and went to the window to see his servant, Freize, standing in the bear pit with the beast squirming in its net beside him. As he expected, Freize was not able to leave even a monster such as this netted and alone.

‘Get a bucket of water for it to drink, and a haunch of meat for it to eat when it gets itself free,’ Freize said to the groom of the inn. ‘And maybe a loaf of bread in case it fancies it.’

‘This is a beast from hell,’ the groom protested. ‘I’m not waiting on it. I’m not stepping into the pit with it. What if it breathes on me?’

Freize looked for a moment as if he would argue, but then he nodded his head. ‘So be it,’ he said. ‘Anyone here have any compassion for the beast? No? Brave enough to catch it and torment it but not brave enough to feed it, eh? Well, I myself will get it some dinner, then, and when it has untied itself from these knots, and recovered from being dragged over the road for a mile and a half, it can have a sup of water and a bite of meat.’