Changeling Read online

  ‘Little lord.’ Freize spread his hands apologetically. ‘You were going to burn two innocent women, caught up in the excitement of the moment. Would you have listened to me? No. For I am well-known as a fool. Would you have listened to them? No. For the Lady Almoner had turned your head and this lady’s brother was quick and ready with a torch. I knew you would thank me in the end, and here we are, with you thanking me.’

  ‘I don’t thank you!’ Luca exclaimed, angry beyond measure. ‘I should dismiss you from my service and charge you with interfering with a papal inquiry!’

  ‘Then the lady will thank me,’ Freize said cheerfully. ‘And if she doesn’t, maybe the pretty slave will.’

  ‘She’s not my slave,’ Isolde said, quite at a loss. ‘And you will find that she never thanks anyone. Especially a man.’

  ‘Perhaps she will come to value me,’ Freize said with dignity. ‘When she knows me better.’

  ‘She will never know you better for you are about to be dismissed,’ Luca said furiously.

  ‘Seems harsh,’ Freize said, glancing at Brother Peter. ‘Wouldn’t you say? Given that it was me that stopped us from burning two innocent women, and then saved all five of us from the brigands. Not to mention gaining some valuable horses?’

  ‘You interfered with the course of my inquiry and released my prisoners,’ Luca insisted. ‘What can I do but dismiss you and send you back to the monastery in disgrace?’

  ‘For your own good,’ Freize explained. ‘And theirs. Saving you all from yourselves.’

  Luca turned to Brother Peter.

  ‘But why did you fasten up the handcuffs after you had released them?’ Brother Peter asked.

  Freize paused. ‘For confusion,’ he said gravely. ‘To cause more confusion.’

  Isolde, despite her anxiety, choked back a laugh. ‘You have certainly caused that,’ she said. A small smile exchanged between them made Luca suddenly frown.

  ‘And do you swear you did this?’ he asked tightly. ‘However ridiculous you are?’

  ‘I do,’ Freize said.

  Luca turned to Brother Peter. ‘This vindicates them from the charge of witchcraft.’

  ‘The report has gone,’ Brother Peter ruled thoughtfully. ‘We said that the captives were missing, accused of witchcraft, but that their accusers were definitely guilty. The matter is closed unless you want to reopen it. We don’t have to report that we met them again. It is not our job to arrest them if we have no evidence of witchcraft. We’re not holding an inquiry now. Our inquiry is closed.’

  ‘Sleeping dogs,’ Freize volunteered.

  Luca rounded on him. ‘What in hell do you mean now?’

  ‘Better let them lie. That’s what people say. Let sleeping dogs lie. Your inquiry is completed, everyone is happy. We’re off on some other damn fool mission. And the two women who were wrongly accused are free as little birds of the air. Why make trouble?’

  Luca was about to argue, but then he paused. He turned towards Isolde. After one powerful blue gaze that she had shot at Freize when he had confessed to releasing them, she had returned to studying her hands held in her lap.

  ‘Is it true that Freize released you? He let you go? As he says?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Why did you not say so at once?’

  ‘I didn’t want to get him into trouble.’

  Luca sighed. It was unlikely, but if Freize was holding to his confession and Isolde would offer no other explanation, then he could not see what more he should do. ‘Who is going to believe this?’

  ‘Better this, than you trying to tell everyone that we melted through leg-cuffs and handcuffs,’ she pointed out. ‘Who would believe that?’

  Luca glanced at Brother Peter. ‘Will you write that we are satisfied that our servant released them, exceeding his duties but believing that he was doing the right thing? And that now we are clear that there was no witchcraft? And they are free to go?’

  Brother Peter was wearing his most dour look. ‘If you instruct me so to do,’ he said pedantically. ‘I think there is more to it than your servant stepping out of his place. But since he always steps out of his place and since you always allow it, and since you seem determined that these women shall go free, I can write this.’

  ‘You will clear my name?’ Isolde pressed.

  ‘I will not accuse you of escaping by witchcraft,’ Brother Peter specified. ‘That’s all I am prepared to do. I don’t know that you are innocent of everything; but as no woman is innocent since the sin of Eve, I am prepared to agree that there is no evidence and no charge to set against you for now.’

  ‘It’s good enough,’ Luca ruled. ‘Anyway,’ he turned to Isolde, ‘what are you going to do now?’

  She sighed. ‘I have been puzzled as to what I should do. But I think I will go to the son of my father’s friend, a man who was his constant companion on crusade, my godfather, I can trust him and he has a reputation for being a tenacious fighter. I will ask him to clear my name, and to ride with me against my brother. It seems he did all of this to steal my inheritance from me, to kill me. So I will take his inheritance from him. I shall take back what is mine.’

  ‘There is more than you know,’ Luca told her. ‘It is worse than you know. He had commanded the Lady Almoner to set the nuns to pan for gold in the stream in your woods.’

  She looked puzzled. ‘Gold?’

  ‘It’s probably why your brother was determined to drive you out of the abbey. There may be a fortune in gold in the hills, draining out into the stream in dust.’

  ‘They were panning for gold?’

  He nodded. ‘He was using the Lady Almoner to steal gold from your abbey lands. Now she is dead and you have run away, the abbey and the lands and the gold are all his.’

  He saw her jaw harden. ‘He has won my home, my inheritance, and a fortune as well?’

  Luca nodded. ‘He left the Lady Almoner to her death and rode away.’

  She turned on Brother Peter. ‘But you didn’t charge him! You didn’t pursue him for all the sins since Adam! Though I am responsible for everything done by Eve?’

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘He committed no crime that we saw at the time. Now he pans for his own gold on his own land.’

  ‘I will hold him to account. I will return and take back my lands. I am no longer bound by obedience to my father’s will when my brother is such a bad guardian of our family honour. I will drive him out as he drove me away. I will go to my godfather’s son and get help.’

  ‘Was your godfather a man of substance? Your brother has his own castle and a small army to command.’

  ‘He was Count Wladislaw of Wallachia,’ she said proudly. ‘His son is the new count. I will go to him.’

  Brother Peter’s head jerked up. ‘You are the goddaughter of Count Wladislaw?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘Yes, my father always said to go to him in time of trouble.’

  Brother Peter lowered his eyes and shook his head in wonderment. ‘She has a powerful friend in him,’ he said quietly to Luca. ‘He could crush her brother in a moment.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘It’s a long journey,’ she admitted. ‘To the east. He is at the court of Hungary.’

  ‘That would be beyond Bosnia?’ Freize abandoned any attempt at standing in silence by the door and came into the room.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Further east than that?’

  She nodded.

  ‘How are two pretty girls like you and the slave going to make that journey without someone stealing from you . . . or worse?’ Freize asked bluntly. ‘They will skin you alive.’

  She looked at Freize and smiled at him. ‘Do you not think that God will protect us?’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘My experience is that He rarely attends to the obvious.’

  ‘Then we will travel with companions, with their guards, wherever we can. And take our chances when we cannot. Because I have to go. I have no-one else to turn to. And I will have my re