Changeling Read online

  ‘Nothing down here,’ Freize observed.

  ‘Next we’ll search the Lady Abbess’s house,’ Luca ruled. ‘But first, I’ll check upstairs.’ He took the candle and started up the ladder. ‘You wait down here.’

  ‘Not without a light,’ pleaded Freize.

  ‘Just stand still.’

  Freize watched the wavering flame go upwards and then stood, nervously, in pitch darkness. From above he heard a sudden strangled exclamation. ‘What is it?’ he hissed into the darkness. ‘Are you all right?’

  Just then a cloth was flung over his head, blinding him, and as he ducked down he heard the whistle of a heavy blow in the air above him. He flung himself to the ground and rolled sideways, shouting a muffled warning as something thudded against the side of his head. He heard Luca coming quickly down the ladder and then a splintering sound as the ladder was heaved away from the wall. Freize struggled against the pain and the darkness, took a wickedly placed kick in the belly, heard Luca’s whooping shout as he fell, and then the terrible thud as he hit the stone floor. Freize, gasping for breath, called out for his master, but there was nothing but silence.

  Both young men lay still for long frightening moments in the darkness, then Freize sat up, pulled the hood from his head, and patted himself all over. His hand came away wet from his face; he was bleeding from forehead to chin. ‘Are you there, Sparrow?’ he asked hoarsely.

  He was answered by silence. ‘Dearest saints, don’t say she has killed him,’ he moaned. ‘Not the little lord, not the changeling boy!’

  He got to his hands and knees and crawled his way around, feeling across the floor, bumping into the heaped piles of cloth, as he quartered the room. It took him painful stumbling minutes to be sure: Luca was not in the storeroom at all.

  Luca was gone.

  ‘Fool that I am, why did I not lock the door behind me?’ Freize muttered remorsefully to himself. He staggered to his feet and felt his way round the wall, past the broken stair, to the opening. There was a little light in the front storeroom, for the door was wide open and the waning moon shone in. As Freize stumbled towards it, he saw the iron grille to the wine and ale cellar stood wide open. He rubbed his bleeding head, leaned for a moment on the trestle table, and went on towards the light. As he reached the doorway, the abbey bell rang for Lauds and he realised he had been unconscious for perhaps half an hour.

  He was setting out for the chapel to raise the alarm for Luca when he saw a light at the hospital window. He turned towards it, just as the Lady Almoner came hastily out into the yard. ‘Freize! Is that you?’

  He stumbled towards her, and saw her recoil as she saw his bloodstained face. ‘Saints save us! What has happened to you?’

  ‘Somebody hit me,’ Freize said shortly. ‘I have lost the little lord! Raise the alarm, he can’t be far.’

  ‘I have him! I have him! He is in a stupor,’ she said. ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Praise God you have him. Where was he?’

  ‘I found him staggering in the yard just now on my way to Lauds. When I got him into the infirmary he fainted. I was coming to wake you and Brother Peter.’

  ‘Take me to him.’

  She turned, and Freize staggered after her into the long low room. There were about ten beds arranged on both sides of the room, poor pallet beds of straw with unbleached sacking thrown over them. Only one was occupied. It was Luca – deathly pale, eyes shut, breathing lightly.

  ‘Dearest saints!’ Freize murmured, in an agony of anxiety. ‘Little lord, speak to me!’

  Slowly Luca opened his hazel eyes. ‘Is that you?’

  ‘Praise God, it is. Thank Our Lady that it is, as ever it was.’

  ‘I heard you shout and then I fell down the stairs,’ he said, his speech muffled by the bruise on his mouth.

  ‘I heard you come down like a sack of potatoes,’ confirmed Freize. ‘Dearest saints, when I heard you hit the floor! And someone hit me . . .’

  ‘I feel like the damned in hell.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘Sleep then, we’ll talk in the morning.’

  Luca closed his eyes. The Lady Almoner approached. ‘Let me bathe your wounds.’ She was holding a bowl with a white linen cloth, and there was a scent of lavender and crushed leaves of arnica. Freize allowed himself to be persuaded onto another bed.

  ‘Were you attacked in your beds?’ she asked him. ‘How did this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Freize said, too stunned by the blow to make anything up. Besides, she could see the open door to the storeroom as well as he, and she had found Luca in the yard. ‘I can’t remember anything,’ he said lamely and, as she dabbed and exclaimed at the bruises and scratches on his face, he stretched out under the luxury of a woman’s care, and fell fast asleep.

  Freize woke to a very grey cold dawn. Luca was snoring slightly on the opposite bed, a little snuffle followed by a long relaxed whistle. Freize lay listening to the penetrating noise for some time before he opened his eyes, and then he blinked and raised himself up onto his arm. He could not believe what he saw. The bed next to him was now occupied by a nun, laid on her back, her face as white as her hood, which was pushed back exposing her clammy shaven head. Her fingers, enfolded in a position of prayer on her completely still breast, were blue, the fingernails rimmed as if with ink. But worst of all were her eyes, which were horribly open, the pupils dilated black in black. She was completely still. She was clearly – even to Freize’s inexperienced frightened stare – dead.

  A praying nun knelt at her feet, endlessly murmuring the rosary. Another knelt by her head, muttering the same prayers. The narrow bed was ringed with candles, which illuminated the scene like a tableau of martyrdom. Freize sat up, certain that he was dreaming, hoping that he was dreaming, pinched himself in the hope of waking, and put his feet on the floor, silently cursing the thudding in his head, not daring to stand yet. ‘Sister, God bless you. What happened to the poor girl?’

  The nun at the head of the bed did not speak until she finished the prayer but looked at him with eyes that were dark with unshed tears. ‘She died in her sleep,’ she said eventually. ‘We don’t know why.’

  ‘Who is she?’ Freize crossed himself with a sudden superstitious fear that it was one of the nuns who had come to give evidence to their inquiry. ‘Bless her soul and keep her.’

  ‘Sister Augusta,’ she said, a name he did not know.

  He stole a quick glance at the white cold face and recoiled from the blackness of her dead gaze.

  ‘Saint’s sake! Why have you not closed her eyes and weighted them?’

  ‘They won’t close,’ the nun at the foot of the bed said, trembling. ‘We have tried and tried. They won’t close.’

  ‘They must do! Why would they not?’

  She spoke in a low monotone: ‘Her eyes are black because she was dreaming of Death again. She was always dreaming of Death. And now He has come for her. Her dark eyes are filled with that last vision, of Him coming for her. That’s why they won’t close, that’s why they are as black as jet. If you look deeply into her terrible black eyes you will see Death himself reflected in them like a mirror. You will see the face of Death looking out at you.’

  The first nun let out a little wail, a cold keening noise. ‘He will come for us all,’ she whispered.

  They both crossed themselves and returned to their muttered prayers as Freize shuddered and bowed his head in a prayer for the dead. Gingerly, he got up and, gritting his teeth against his swimming head, walked cautiously around the nuns to the bed where Luca still snored. He shook his shoulder: ‘Little lord, wake up.’

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t call me that,’ said Luca groggily.

  ‘Wake up, wake up. One of the nuns is dead.’

  Luca sat up abruptly then held his head and swayed. ‘Was she attacked?’

  Freize nodded at the praying nuns. ‘They say she died in her sleep.’

  ‘Can you see?’ Luca whispered.

  Freize shook