Changeling Read online

  ‘Good day to you,’ she said, looking from one to another. ‘What are you doing, Tomas, bringing such fine folks here? I hope he has been no trouble, sir? Can I offer you some refreshment?’

  ‘This is the man from the inn who brought the werewolf in,’ Tomas said breathlessly. ‘He would come to see you, though I told him not to.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told him anything at all,’ she observed. ‘It’s not for small boys, small dirty boys, to speak with their betters. Go and fetch a jug of the best ale from the still room, and don’t say another word. Sirs, ladies – will you sit?’

  She gestured to a bench set into the low stone wall before the house. Isolde and Ishraq took a seat and smiled up at her. ‘We rarely have company here,’ she said. ‘And never ladies.’

  Tomas came out of the house carrying two roughly carved three-legged stools and put them down for Brother Peter and Luca, then dashed in again for the jug of small ale, one glass and three mugs. Bashfully, he offered the glass to Isolde and then poured ale for everyone else into mugs.

  Luca and Brother Peter took their seats and the woman stood before them, one hand twisting her apron corner. ‘He is a good boy,’ she said again. ‘He wouldn’t mean to talk out of turn. I apologise if he offended you.’

  ‘No, no, he was polite and helpful,’ Luca said.

  ‘He’s a credit to you,’ Isolde assured her.

  ‘And growing very big and strong,’ Ishraq remarked.

  The mother’s pride beamed out of her face. ‘He is,’ she said. ‘I thank the Lord for him every day of his life.’

  ‘But you had a previous boy.’ Luca put down his mug and spoke gently to her. ‘He told us that he had an older brother.’

  A shadow came across the woman’s broad handsome face and she looked suddenly weary. ‘I did. God forgive me for taking my eye off him for a moment.’ At the thought of him she could not speak; she turned her head away.

  ‘What happened?’ Isolde asked.

  ‘Alas, alas, I lost him. I lost him in a moment. God forgive me for that moment. But I was a young mother and so weary that I fell asleep and in that moment he was gone.’

  ‘In the forest?’ Luca prompted.

  A silent nod confirmed the fact.

  Gently, Isolde rose to her feet and pressed the woman down onto the bench so that she could sit. ‘Was he taken by wolves?’ she asked quietly.

  ‘I believe he was,’ the woman said. ‘There were rumours of wolves in the woods even then, that was why I was looking for the lamb, hoping to find it before nightfall.’ She gestured at the sheep in the field. ‘We don’t have a big flock. Every beast counts for us. I sat down for a moment. My boy was tired so we sat to rest. He was not yet four years old, God bless him. I lay down with him for a moment and fell asleep. When I woke he was gone.’

  Isolde put a comforting hand on her shoulder.

  ‘We found his little shirt,’ the woman continued, her voice trembling with unspoken tears. ‘But that was some months later. One of the lads found it when he was bird’s-nesting in the forest. Found it under a bush.’

  ‘Was there any blood on it?’ Luca asked.

  She shook her head. ‘It was washed through by rain,’ she said. ‘But I took it to the priest and we held a service for his innocent soul. The priest said I should bury my love for him and have another child – and then God gave me Tomas.’

  ‘The villagers have captured a beast that they say is a werewolf,’ Brother Peter remarked. ‘Would you accuse the beast of murdering your child?’

  He expected her to flare out, to make an accusation at once; but she looked wearily at him as if she had worried and thought about this for too long already. ‘Of course when I heard there was a werewolf I thought it might have taken my boy Stefan – but I don’t know. I can’t even say that it was a wolf that took him. He might have wandered far and fallen in the stream and drowned, or in a ravine, or just been lost in the woods. I saw the tracks of the wolves but I didn’t see my son’s footprints. I have thought about it every day of my life; and still I don’t know.’

  Brother Peter nodded and pursed his lips. He looked at Luca. ‘Do you want me to write down her statement and have her put her mark on it?’

  Luca shook his head. ‘Later we can, if we think there is need,’ he said. He bowed to the woman. ‘Thank you for your hospitality, goodwife. What name shall I call you?’

  She rubbed her face with the corner of her apron. ‘I am Sara Fairley,’ she said. ‘Wife of Ralph Fairley. We have a good name in the village, anyone can tell you who I am.’

  ‘Would you bear witness against the werewolf?’

  She gave him a faint smile with a world of sorrow behind it. ‘I don’t like to talk of it,’ she said simply. ‘I try not to think of it. I tried to do what the priest told me and bury my sorrow with the little shirt, and thank God for my second boy.’

  Brother Peter hesitated. ‘We will certainly put it on trial and if it is proven to be a werewolf it will die.’

  She nodded. ‘That won’t bring back my boy,’ she said quietly. ‘But I should be glad to know that my son and all the children are safe in the pasture.’

  They rose up and left her. Brother Peter gave his arm to Isolde as they walked down the stony path, Luca helped Ishraq.

  ‘Why does Brother Peter not believe her?’ Ishraq asked him while she had her hand on his arm and was close enough to speak softly. ‘Why is he always so suspicious?’

  ‘This is not his first inquiry; he has travelled before and seen much. Your lady, Isolde, was very tender to her.’

  ‘She has a tender heart,’ Ishraq said. ‘Children, women, beggars, her purse is always open and her heart is always going out to them. The castle kitchen gave away two dozen dinners a day to the poor. She has always been this way.’

  ‘And has she ever loved anyone in particular?’ Luca asked casually. There was a big rock in the pathway and he stepped over it and turned to help Ishraq.

  She laughed. ‘Nothing to do with you,’ she said abruptly. When she saw him flush she said, ‘Ah, Inquirer! Do you really have to know everything?’

  ‘I was just interested . . .’

  ‘No-one. She was supposed to marry a fat indulgent sinful man and she would never have considered him. She would never have stooped to him. She took her vows of celibacy with ease. That was not the problem for her. She loves her lands, and her people. No man has taken her fancy.’ She paused as if to tease him. ‘So far,’ she conceded.

  Luca looked away. ‘Such a beautiful young woman is bound to . . .’

  ‘Quite,’ Ishraq said. ‘But tell me about Brother Peter. Is he always so miserable?’

  ‘He was suspicious of the mother here,’ Luca explained. ‘He thinks she may have killed the child herself, and tried to blame it on a wolf attack. I don’t think so myself; but of course, in these out-of-the-way villages, such things happen.’

  Decisively, she shook her head. ‘Not her. That is a woman with a horror of wolves,’ she said. ‘It’s no accident she was not down in the village, though everyone else was there to see them bring it in.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ Luca said.

  Ishraq looked at him as if he were blind. ‘Did you not see the garden?’

  Luca had a vague memory of a well-tilled garden, filled with flowers and herbs. There had been a bed of vegetables and herbs near to the door to the kitchen, and flowers and lavender had billowed over the path. There were some autumn pumpkins growing fatly in one bed, and plump grapes on the vine which twisted around the door. It was a typical cottage garden: planted partly for medicine and partly for colour. ‘Of course I saw it, but I don’t remember anything special.’

  She smiled. ‘She was growing a dozen different species of aconite, in half a dozen colours, and her boy had a fresh spray of the flower in his hat. She was growing it at every window and every doorway – I’ve never seen such a collection, and in every colour that can bloom, from pink to white to purple.’

&nbs