Changeling (7 page)

Luca slept heavily; not even the church bell tolling the hour in the tower above his head could wake him. But, just when the night was darkest, before three in the morning, a sharp scream cut through his sleep and then he heard the sound of running feet.

Luca was up and out of his bed in a moment, his hand snatching for the dagger under his pillow, peering out of his window at the dark yard. A glint of moonlight shining on the cobblestones showed him a woman in white racing across the yard to scrabble at the beams barring the heavy wooden gate. Three women pursued her, and the old porteress came running out of the gatehouse and grabbed the woman’s hands as she clawed like a cat at the timbers.

The other women were quick to catch the girl from behind and Luca heard her sharp wail of despair as they grabbed hold of her, and saw her knees buckle as she went down under their weight. He pulled on his breeches and boots, threw a cape over his naked shoulders, then sprinted from his room, out into the yard, tucking the dagger out of sight in the scabbard in his boot. He stepped back into the shadow of the building, certain they had not noticed him, determined to see their faces in the shadowy light of the moon, so that he would know them, when he saw them again.

The porteress held up her torch as they lifted the girl, two women holding her shoulders, the third supporting her legs. As they carried her past him, Luca shrank back into the concealing darkness of the doorway. They were so close that he could hear their panting breaths, one of them was sobbing quietly.

It was the strangest sight. The girl’s hand had swung down as they lifted her; now she was quite unconscious. It seemed that she had fainted when they had pulled her from the barred gate. Her head was rolled back, the little laces from her nightcap brushing the ground as they carried her, her long nightgown trailing in the dust. But it was no normal fainting fit. She was as limp as a corpse, her eyes closed, her young face serene. Then Luca gave a little hiss of horror. The girl’s swinging hand was pierced in the palm, the wound oozing blood. They had folded her other hand across her slight body and Luca could see a smudge of blood on her nightgown. She had the hands of a girl crucified. Luca froze where he stood, forcing himself to stay hidden in the shadows, unable to look away from the strange terrible wounds. And then he saw something that seemed even worse.

All three women carrying the sleeping girl wore her expression of rapt serenity. As they shuffled along, carrying their limp bleeding burden, all three were slightly smiling, all three were radiant as if with an inner secret joy.

And their eyes were closed like hers.

Luca waited till they had sleepwalked past him, steady as pall-bearers, then he went back into the guesthouse room and knelt at the side of his bed, praying fervently for guidance to somehow find the wisdom, despite his self-doubt, to discover what was so very wrong in this holy place, and put it right.

He was still on his knees in prayer when Freize banged open the door with a jug of hot water for washing, just before dawn. ‘Thought you’d want to go to Prime.’

‘Yes.’ Luca rose stiffly, crossed himself, and kissed the cross that always hung around his neck, a gift from his mother on his fourteenth birthday, the last time he had seen her.

‘Bad things are happening here,’ Freize said portentously, splashing the water into a bowl and putting a clean strip of linen beside it.

Luca sluiced his face and hands with water. ‘I know it. God knows, I have seen some of it. What do you hear?’

‘Sleepwalking, visions, the nuns fasting on feast days, starving themselves and fainting in the chapel. Some of them are seeing lights in the sky, like the star before the Magi, and then some wanted to set off for Bethlehem and had to be restrained. The people of the village and the servants from the castle say they’re all going mad. They say the whole abbey is touched with madness and the women are losing their wits.’

Luca shook his head. ‘The saints alone know what is going on here. Did you hear the screams in the night?’

‘Lord save us, no. I slept in the kitchen and all I could hear was snoring. But all the cooks say that the Pope should send a bishop to inquire. They say that Satan is walking here. The Pope should set up an inquiry.’

‘He has done! That’s me,’ Luca snapped. ‘I shall hold an inquiry. I shall be the judge.’

‘Course you will,’ Freize encouraged him. ‘Doesn’t matter how old you are.’

‘Actually, it
doesn’t
matter how old I am. What matters is that I am appointed to inquire.’

‘You’d better start with the new Lady Abbess, then.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it all started as soon as she got here.’

‘I won’t listen to kitchen gossip,’ Luca declared haughtily, rubbing his face. He tossed the cloth to Freize. ‘I shall have a proper inquiry with witnesses and people giving evidence under oath. For I am the inquirer, appointed by the Pope, and it would be better if everyone remembered it. Especially those people who are supposed to be in service to me, who should be supporting my reputation.’

‘Course I do! Course you are! Course you will! You’re the lord and I never forget it, though still only a little one.’ Freize shook out Luca’s linen shirt and then handed him his novice’s robe, which he wore belted high, out of the way of his long stride. Luca strapped his short sword on his belt and notched it round his waist, dropping the robe over the sword to hide it.

‘You speak to me like I was a child,’ Luca said irritably. ‘And you’re no great age yourself.’

‘It’s affection,’ Freize said firmly. ‘It’s how I show affection. And respect. To me, you’ll always be “Sparrow”, the skinny novice.’

‘“Goose”, the kitchen boy,’ Luca replied with a grin.

‘Got your dagger?’ Freize checked.

Luca tapped the cuff of his boot where the dagger was safe in the scabbard.

‘They all say that the new Lady Abbess had no vocation, and was not raised to the life,’ Freize volunteered, ignoring Luca’s ban on gossip. ‘Her father’s will sent her in here and she took her vows and she’ll never get out again. It’s the only inheritance her father left her, everything else went to the brother. Bad as being walled up. And, ever since she came, the nuns have started to see things and cry out. Half the village says that Satan came in with the new abbess. Cause she was unwilling.’

‘And what do they say the brother is like?’ Luca asked, tempted to gossip despite his resolution.

‘Nothing but good of him. Good landlord, generous with the abbey. His grandfather built the abbey with a nunnery on one side and a brother house for the monks nearby. The nuns and the monks share the services in the abbey. His father endowed both houses and handed the woods and the high pasture over to the nuns, and gave some farms and fields to the monastery. They run themselves as independent houses, working together for the glory of God, and helping the poor. Now the new lord in his turn supports it. His father was a crusader, famously brave, very hot on religion. The new lord sounds quieter, stays at home, wants a bit of peace. Very keen that this is kept quiet, that you make your inquiry, take your decision, report the guilty, exorcise whatever is going on, and everything gets back to normal.’

Above their heads the bell tolled for Prime, the dawn prayer.

‘Come on,’ Luca said, and led the way from the visiting priest’s rooms towards the cloisters and the beautiful church.

They could hear the music as they crossed the yard, their way lit by a procession of white-gowned nuns, carrying torches and singing as they went like a choir of angels gliding through the pearly light of the morning. Luca stepped back, and even Freize fell silent at the beauty of the voices rising faultlessly into the dawn sky. Then the two men, joined by Brother Peter, followed the choir into the church and took their seats in an alcove at the back. Two hundred nuns, veiled with white wimples, filled the stalls of the choir either side of the screened altar, and stood in rows facing it.

The service was a sung Mass; the voice of the serving priest at the altar rang out the sacred Latin words in a steady baritone, and the sweet high voices of the women answered. Luca gazed at the vaulting ceiling, the beautiful columns carved with stone fruit and flowers, and above them, stars and moons of silver-painted stone, all the while listening to the purity of the responses and wondering what could be tormenting such holy women every night, and how they could wake every dawn and sing like this to God.

At the end of the service, the three visiting men remained seated on the stone bench at the back of the chapel as the nuns filed out past them, their eyes modestly down. Luca scanned their faces, looking for the young woman he had seen in such a frenzy last night, but one pale young face veiled in white was identical to another. He tried to see their palms, for the telltale sign of scabs, but all the women kept their hands clasped together, hidden in their long sleeves. As they filed out, their sandals pattering quietly on the stone floor, the priest followed them, and stopped before the young men to say pleasantly, ‘I’ll break my fast with you and then I have to go back to my side of the abbey.’

‘Are you not a resident priest?’ Luca asked, first shaking the man’s hand and then kneeling for his blessing.

‘We have a monastery just the other side of the great house,’ the priest explained. ‘The first Lord of Lucretili chose to found two religious houses: one for men and one for women. We priests come over daily to take the services. Alas, this house is of the order of Augustine nuns. We men are of the Dominican order.’ He leaned towards Luca. ‘As you’d understand, I think it would be better for everyone if the nunnery were put under the discipline of the Dominican order. They could be supervised from our monastery and enjoy the discipline of our order. Under the Augustinian order these women have been allowed to simply do as they please. And now you see what happens.’

‘They observe the services,’ Luca protested. ‘They’re not running wild.’

‘Only because they choose to do so. If they wanted to stop or to change, then they could. They have no rule, unlike us Dominicans, for whom everything is set down. Under the Augustinian order every house can live as they please. They serve God as they think best and as a result—’

He broke off as the Lady Almoner came up, treading quietly on the beautiful marble floor of the church. ‘Well, here is my Lady Almoner come to bid us to breakfast, I am sure.’

‘You can take breakfast in my parlour,’ she said. ‘There is a fire lit there. Please, Father, show our guests the way.’

‘I will, I will,’ he said pleasantly and, as she left them, he turned to Luca. ‘She holds this place together,’ he said. ‘A remarkable woman. Manages the farmlands, maintains the buildings, buys the goods, sells the produce. She could have been the lady of any castle in Italy, a natural Magistra: a teacher, a leader, a natural lady of any great house.’ He beamed. ‘And, I have to say, her parlour is the most comfortable room in this place and her cook second to none.’

He led the way out of the church across the cloister through the entrance yard to the house that formed the eastern side of the courtyard. The wooden front door stood open, and they went into the parlour, where a table was already laid for the three of them. Luca and Peter took their seats. Freize stood at the doorway to serve the men as one of the lay-woman cooks passed him dishes to set on the table. They had three sorts of roasted meats: ham, lamb and beef; and two types of bread: white manchet and dark rye. There were local cheeses, and jams, a basket of hard-boiled eggs, and a bowl of plums with a taste so strong that Luca sliced them on a slice of wheat bread to eat like sweet jam.

‘Does the Lady Almoner always eat privately and not dine with her sisters in the refectory?’ Luca asked curiously.

‘Wouldn’t you, if you had a cook like this?’ the priest asked. ‘High days and holy days, I don’t doubt that she sits with her sisters. But she likes things done just so; and one of the privileges of her office is that she has things as she likes them, in her own house. She doesn’t sleep in a dormitory nor eat in the refectory. The Lady Abbess is the same in her own house next door.

‘Now,’ he said with a broad smile. ‘I have a drop of brandy in my saddlebag. I’ll pour us a measure. It settles the belly after a good breakfast.’ He went out of the room and Peter got to his feet and looked out of the window at the entry courtyard where the priest’s mule was waiting.

Idly, Luca glanced round the room as Freize cleared their plates. The chimney breast was a beautifully carved wall of polished wood. When Luca had been a little boy his grandfather, a carpenter, had made just such a carved chimney breast for the hall of their farmhouse. Then, it had been an innovation and the envy of the village. Behind one of the carvings had been a secret cupboard where his father had kept sugared plums, which he gave to Luca on a Sunday, if he had been good all the week. On a whim, Luca turned the five bosses along the front of the carved chimney breast one after the other. One yielded under his hand and, to his surprise, a hidden door swung open, just like the one he’d known as a child. Behind it was a glass jar holding not sugared plums but some sort of spice: dried black seeds. Beside it was a cobbler’s awl – a little tool for piercing lace holes in leather.