Changeling Read online

  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.’

  Two black-plumed horses pulled a cart into the yard, and stood waiting. ‘For the coffin,’ the lord explained to Luca. To the Lady Almoner he