Changeling Read online

  ‘I shall say that your scholarship revealed to us what happened here,’ Luca said smoothly. ‘Among the other accounts that your scholars prepared, you brought us the classical story of Romulus and Remus, who were raised by a wolf and founded the City of Rome, our rock. You told us of other stories of children who had been lost in the forest and were found again, raised by wolves. Your library held these stories, your scholarship recognised them, your authority warned us what might have happened here.’

  The bishop paused, mollified, his rounded belly swelling with his vanity. ‘The people were waiting for an execution,’ he warned. ‘They won’t understand the miracle that has happened here. They wanted a death, you are offering them a restoration.’

  ‘That is the power of your authority,’ Luca said quickly. ‘Only you can explain to them what happened. Only you have the scholarship and the skill to tell them. Will you preach now? It is the theme of the Prodigal Son, I think: the return of the lost one whose father sees him afar off and runs to greet him, loving him dearly.’

  The bishop looked thoughtful. ‘They will need guidance,’ he considered, one plump finger to his lips. ‘They were expecting a trial to the death. They will want a death. They are a savage unlearned people. They were expecting an execution and they will want a death. The Church shows its power by putting evil-doers to death. We have to be seen to conquer over sin. There is nothing that brings more people to the church than a witch-burning or an execution.’

  ‘Your Grace, they are lost in the darkness of their own confusion. They are your sheep; lead them to the light. Tell them that a miracle has taken place here. A little child was lost in the wood, he was raised by wolves, he became like a wolf. But as your eminence watched, he recognised his mother. Who can doubt that the presence of a bishop made all the difference? These are an ignorant and fearful people but you can preach a sermon here that people will remember forever. They will always remember the day that the Bishop of Pescara came to their village and a miracle took place.’

  The bishop rose up and straightened his cape. ‘I will preach to them from the open window of the dining room,’ he said. ‘I will preach now, while they are gathered before me. I shall preach a midnight sermon, extempore. Get torches to shine on me. And take notes.’

  ‘At once,’ Luca said. He hurried from the room and gave the order to Freize. The balcony glowed with torchlight, the people, abuzz with speculation and fear, turned their faces upwards. As their attention went to the bishop, glorious in his purple cope and mitre at the window, Freize and Ishraq, Ralph Fairley and his younger son, unbarred the single entrance door into the arena, and went in to fetch Sara Fairley, her eldest son held tightly in her arms.

  ‘I want to take him home,’ she said simply to her husband. ‘This is our son Stefan, returned to us by a miracle.’

  ‘I know it,’ Ralph replied. His wind-burned cheeks were wet with tears. ‘I knew him too. As soon as he said “Mama”, I knew it. I recognised his voice.’

  Stefan could barely walk; he stumbled and leaned on his mother, his dirty head on her shoulder.

  ‘Can we put him on the donkey?’ Freize suggested.

  They lifted the panniers of wolfsbane from the donkey’s back but the herb was still in its mane and clinging to the animal’s back. Sara helped him up, and he did not flinch either at the touch of the herb or the smell of the flowers. Ishraq, watching quietly in the darkness, gave a quick affirmative nod.

  Freize led the donkey away from the village, up the twisting little steps, as Sara walked beside her son cooing soothingly to him. ‘Soon we will be home,’ she said. ‘You will remember your home. Your bed is just as it was, the sheets on the bed, the pillow waiting for you. Your little poppet Roos – do you remember him? – still on your pillow. In all these years I have never changed your room. It has always been waiting for you. I have always been waiting for you.’

  On the other side of the donkey, Ralph Fairley held his son steady, one hand on his little tanned leg, one hand on his scarred back. Ishraq and Isolde came behind with his little brother Tomas, his dog at his heels.

  The farmhouse was shuttered for the night, but they brought the wolf-boy into the hall and he looked around, his eyes squinting against the firelight, without fear, as if he could just remember, as in a dream, when this had been his home.

  ‘We can care for him now,’ Ralph Fairley said to the girls and Freize. ‘My wife and I thank you from our hearts for all you have done.’

  Sara went with them to the door. ‘You have given me my son,’ she said to Ishraq. ‘You have done for me what I prayed the Virgin Mary would do. I owe you a debt for all my life.’

  Ishraq made a strange gesture: she put her hands together in the gesture of prayer and then with her fingertips she touched her own forehead, her lips, and her breast, and then bowed to the farmer’s wife. ‘Salaam. It was you who did a great thing. It was you who had the courage to love him for so long,’ she said. ‘It was you who lived with grief and tried to bury your sorrow and yet kept his room for him, and your heart open to him. It was you that did not accuse the beast – when the whole village howled for vengeance. It was you who had pity for him. And then it was you who had the courage to say his name when you thought you faced a wolf. All I did was throw you down into the pit.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ Freize said. ‘You threw her down into the bear pit to face a beast?’

  Isolde shook her head, in disapproval, but clearly she was not at all surprised.

  Ishraq faced Freize. ‘I’m afraid I did.’

  Ralph Fairley, one arm around his wife, one around Tomas’s shoulders, looked at Ishraq. ‘Why did you do it?’ he asked simply. ‘You took a great risk, both with my wife’s life and with your own. For if you had been wrong, and she had been hurt, the village would have mobbed you. If she had died there, attacked by the beast, they would have killed you and thrown your body down for the wolf to eat.’

  Ishraq nodded. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘But in the moment – when I was sure it was your son, and I was certain they would order me to shoot him – it was the only thing I could think of doing.’

  Isolde laughed out loud, put her arm around her friend’s shoulders and hugged her close. ‘Only you!’ she exclaimed. ‘Only you would think that there was nothing to do but throw a good woman into a bear pit to face a beast!’

  ‘Love,’ Ishraq said. ‘I knew that he needed love. I knew that she loved her son.’ She turned to Freize. ‘You knew it too. You knew that love would see through the worst of appearances.’

  Freize shook his head, and stepped outside into the moonlight. ‘I’ll be damned,’ he said to the changing sky. ‘I will be damned and double damned if I ever understand how women think.’

  The next morning they saw the bishop leave in his pomp, his priests before him on their white mules, his scholars carrying the records, his clerks already writing up and copying his sermon on ‘The Prodigal Son’, which they said was a model of its kind.

  ‘It was very moving,’ Luca told him on the doorstep. ‘I have mentioned it in my report. I have quoted many of the passages. It was inspirational, and all about authority.’

  As soon as he was gone, they ate their own midday dinner and ordered their horses brought out into the stable yard. Freize showed Ishraq her horse, saddled and bridled. ‘No pillion saddle,’ he said. ‘I know you like to ride alone. And the Lord knows, you can handle yourself and, I daresay, a horse as well.’

  ‘But I’ll ride alongside you, if I may,’ she said.

  Freize narrowed his eyes and scrutinised her for sarcasm. ‘No,’ he said after a moment’s thought. ‘I’m just a servant, you are a lady. I ride behind.’

  His smile gleamed at the consternation on her face.

  ‘Freize – I never meant to offend you . . .’

  ‘Now you see,’ he crowed triumphantly. ‘Now you see what happens when you throw a good man down on his back on the cobbles – when you go tipping good women into bear pits. Too strong by h