Changeling Read online

  ‘Good, eh?’ Freize said, his voice as quiet and level as before. ‘Well, you’re a good beast. More tomorrow. Maybe some bread and cheese for breakfast. We’ll see what I can get you. Goodnight, beast – or what shall I call you? What name do you go by, little beast?’

  He waited, but the beast did not reply. ‘You can call me Freize,’ the man said gently to the animal. ‘And perhaps I can be your friend.’

  Freize swung his legs over to the safe side of the wall and jumped down, and the beast stood four-legged, listening for a moment, then went to the shelter of the furthest wall, turned around three times like a dog, and curled up for sleep.

  Ishraq looked up at the moon. Tomorrow it would be full and the villagers thought that the beast would wax to its power. What might the creature do then?

  A delegation from the village arrived the next morning saying respectfully but firmly that they did not want the inquiry to delay justice against the werewolf. They did not see the point of the inquirer speaking to people, and writing things down. Instead, all the village wanted to come to the inn at moonrise, moonrise tonight, to see the changes in the werewolf, and to kill it.

  Luca met them in the yard, Isolde and Ishraq with him, while Freize, unseen in the stable, was brushing down the horses listening intently. Brother Peter was upstairs completing the report.

  Three men came from the village: the shepherd boy’s father, Ralph Fairley; the village headman, William Miller; and his brother. They were very sure they wanted to see the wolf in its wolf form, kill it, and make an end to the inquiry. The blacksmith was hammering away in the village forge making the silver arrow even as they spoke, they said.

  ‘Also, we are preparing its grave,’ William Miller told them. He was a round red-faced man of about forty, as pompous and self-important as any man of great consequence in a small village. ‘I am reliably informed that a werewolf has to be buried with certain precautions so that it does not rise again. So to make certain sure that the beast will lie down when it is dead and not stir from its grave, I have given orders to the men to dig a pit at the crossroads outside the village. We’ll bury it with a stake through its heart. We’ll pack the grave with wolfsbane. One of the women of the village, a good woman, has been growing wolfsbane for years.’ He nodded at Luca as if to reassure him. ‘The silver arrow and the stake through its heart. The grave of wolfsbane. That’s the way to do it.’

  ‘I thought that was the undead?’ Luca said irritably. ‘I thought it was the undead who were buried at crossroads?’

  ‘No point not taking care,’ Mr Miller said, glowingly confident in his own judgement. ‘No point not doing it right, now that we have finally caught it and we can kill it at our leisure. I thought we would kill it at midnight, with our silver arrow. I thought we would make a bit of an event of it. I myself will be here. I thought I might hand over the silver arrow to the archer, and perhaps I might make a short speech.’

  ‘This isn’t a bear baiting,’ Luca said. ‘It’s a proper inquiry, and I am commissioned by His Holiness as an inquirer. I can’t have the whole village here, the death sentence agreed before I have prepared my report, and rogues selling seats for a penny.’

  ‘There was only one rogue doing that,’ Mr Miller pointed out with dignity. The noise of Freize grooming the horse and whistling through his teeth suddenly loudly increased. ‘But the whole village has to see the beast and see its death. Perhaps you don’t understand, coming from Rome as you do. But we’ve lived in fear of it for too long. We’re a small community, we want to know that we are safe now. We need to see that the werewolf is dead and that we can sleep in peace again.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir, but it’s thought that my first son was taken by the beast. I’d like to see an end to it. I’d like to be able to tell my wife that the beast is dead,’ Ralph Fairley, the shepherd boy’s father, volunteered to Luca. ‘If Sara knew that the beast was dead then she might feel that our son Tomas can take the sheep out to pasture without fear. She might sleep through the night again. Seven years she has wakened with nightmares. I want her to be at peace. If the werewolf was dead, she might forgive herself.’

  ‘You can come at midnight,’ Luca decided. ‘If it is going to change into a wolf then it will do so then. And if we see a change, then I shall be the judge of whether it has become a wolf. Only I shall make that judgement, and only I will rule on its execution.’

  ‘Should I advise?’ Mr Miller asked hopefully. ‘As a man of experience, of position in the community? Should I consult with you? Help you come to your decision?’

  ‘No.’ Luca crushed him. ‘This is not going to be a matter of the village turning against a suspect and killing him out of their fear and rage. This is going to be a weighing of the evidence and justice. I am the inquirer. I shall decide.’

  ‘But who is going to fire the arrow?’ Mr Miller asked. ‘We have an old bow which Mrs Louisa found in her loft, and we have restrung it, but there’s nobody in the village who is trained to use a longbow. When we’re called up to war we go as infantry with billhooks. We haven’t had an archer in this village for ten years.’

  There was a brief silence as they considered the difficulty. Then: ‘I can shoot a longbow,’ Ishraq volunteered.

  Luca hesitated. ‘It’s a powerful weapon,’ he said. He leaned towards her. ‘Very heavy to bend,’ he said. ‘It’s not like a lady’s bow. You might be skilled in archery, ladies’ sports, but I doubt you could bend a longbow. It’s a very different thing from shooting at the butts.’

  Freize’s head appeared over the stable door to listen, but he said nothing.

  In answer, she extended her left hand to Luca. On the knuckle of the middle finger was the hard callous, the absolute mark of an archer that identified him like a tattoo. It was an old blister, worn hard by drawing the arrow shaft across the guiding finger. Only someone who had shot arrow after arrow would have his hand marked by it.

  ‘I can shoot,’ she said. ‘A longbow. Not a lady’s bow.’

  ‘However did you learn?’ Luca asked, his hand withdrawing from her warm fingers. ‘And why do you practise all the time?’

  ‘Isolde’s father wanted me to have the skills of the women of my people, even though I was raised far from them,’ she said. ‘We are a fighting people – the women can fight as well as the men. We are a hard people, living in the desert, travelling all the time. We can ride all day. We can find water by smell. We can find game by the turn of the wind. We live by hunting, falconry and archery. You will learn that if I say I can shoot, I can shoot.’

  ‘If she says she can, she probably can,’ Freize commented from inside the stable. ‘I, for one, can attest that she can fight like a barbarian. She could well be a time-served archer. Certainly, she is no lady.’

  Luca glanced from Freize’s offended face, looming over the stable door, to Ishraq. ‘If you can do it, then I shall appoint you executioner and give you the silver arrow. It’s not a skill that I have. There was no call for it in the monastery. And I understand that no-one else here can do it.’

  She nodded. ‘I could hit the beast, though it is only a little beast, from the wall of the arena, shooting across to where it cowers, at the far side.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  She nodded with quiet confidence. ‘Without fail.’

  Luca turned to the headman and the two others. ‘I will watch the beast through the day and as the moon rises,’ he said. ‘If I see it transform into a full wolf I will call you, and in any case you can come at midnight. If I judge that it is a wolf in shape as well as nature then this young woman here will serve as executioner. You will bring the silver arrow and we will kill it at midnight, and you can bury it as you see fit.’

  ‘Agreed,’ the headman said. He turned to go and then he suddenly paused. ‘But what happens if it does not turn? If it does not become wolf? What if it remains as it is now, wolfish but small and savage?’

  ‘Then we will have to judge what sort of beast it is and what m