Philippa Gregory - Changeling

Brother Peter ignored him completely. ‘Who next?’ he asked Luca.

‘The Lady Abbess,’ Luca ruled. ‘Then her servant, Ishraq.’

‘Why not see Ishraq first, and then we can hold her next door while the Lady Abbess speaks,’ Peter suggested. ‘That way we can make sure they don’t collude.’

‘Collude in what?’ Luca demanded, impatiently.

‘That’s the whole thing,’ Peter said. ‘We don’t know what they’re doing.’

‘Collude.’ Freize carefully repeated the strange word. ‘Col-lude. Funny how some words just sound guilty.’

‘Just fetch the slave,’ Luca commanded. ‘You’re not the inquirer, you are supposed to be serving me as your lord. And make sure she doesn’t talk to anyone as she comes to us.’

Freize walked round to the Lady Abbess’s kitchen door and asked for the servant, Ishraq. She came veiled like a desert-dweller, dressed in a tunic and pantaloons of black, a shawl over her head pinned across her face, hiding her mouth. All he could see of her were her bare brown feet – a silver ring on one toe – and her dark inscrutable eyes above her veil. Freize smiled reassuringly at her; but she responded not at all, and they walked in silence to the room. She seated herself before Luca and Brother Peter without uttering one word.

‘Your name is Ishraq?’ Luca asked her.

‘I don’t speak Italian,’ she said in perfect Italian.

‘You are speaking it now.’

She shook her head and said again: ‘I don’t speak Italian.’

‘Your name is Ishraq.’ He tried again in French.

‘I don’t speak French,’ she replied in perfectly accented French.

‘Your name is Ishraq,’ he said in Latin.

‘It is,’ she conceded in Latin. ‘But I don’t speak Latin.’

‘What language do you speak?’

‘I don’t speak.’

Luca recognised a stalemate and leaned forwards, drawing on as much authority as he could. ‘Listen, woman: I am commanded by the Holy Father himself to make inquiry into the events in this nunnery and to send him my report. You had better answer me, or face not just my displeasure, but his.’

She shrugged. ‘I am dumb,’ she said simply, in Latin. ‘And of course, he may be your Holy Father, but he is not mine.’

‘Clearly you can speak,’ Brother Peter intervened. ‘Clearly you can speak several languages.’

She turned her insolent eyes to him, and shook her head.

‘You speak to the Lady Abbess.’

Silence.

‘We have powers to make you speak,’ Brother Peter warned her.

At once she looked down, her dark eyelashes veiling her gaze. When she looked up Luca saw that her dark brown eyes were crinkled at the edges, and she was fighting her desire to laugh out loud at Brother Peter. ‘I don’t speak,’ was all she said. ‘And I don’t think you have any powers over me.’

Luca flushed scarlet with the quick temper of a young man who has been mocked by a woman. ‘Just go,’ Luca said shortly.

To Freize, who put his long face around the door, he snapped: ‘Send for the Lady Abbess. And hold this dumb woman next door, alone.’

Isolde stood in the inner doorway, her hood pulled so far forwards that it cast a deep shadow over her face, her hands hidden in her deep sleeves, only her lithe white feet showing below her robe, in their plain sandals. Irrelevantly Luca noticed that her toes were rosy with cold and her insteps arched high. ‘Come in,’ Luca said, trying to recover his temper. ‘Please take a seat.’

She sat; but she did not put back her hood, so Luca found he was forced to bend his head to peer under it to try to see her. In the shadow of the hood he could make out only a heart-shaped jaw line with a determined mouth. The rest of her remained a mystery.

‘Will you put back your hood, Lady Abbess?’

‘I would rather not.’

‘The Lady Almoner faced us without a hood.’

‘I was made to swear to avoid the company of men,’ she said coldly. ‘I was commanded to swear to remain inside this order and not meet or speak with men except for the fewest words and the briefest meeting. I am obeying the vows I was forced to take. It was not my choice, it was laid upon me by the Church. You, from the Church, should be pleased at my obedience.’

Brother Peter tucked his papers together and waited, pen poised.

‘Would you tell us of the circumstances of your coming to the nunnery?’ Luca asked.

‘They are well-enough known,’ she said. ‘My father died three and a half months ago and left his castle and his lands entirely to my brother, the new lord, as is right and proper. My mother was dead, and to me he left nothing but the choice of a suitor in marriage or a place in the abbey. My brother, the new Lord Lucretili, accepted my decision not to marry and did me the great favour of putting me in charge of this nunnery, and I came in, took my vows, and started my service as their Lady Abbess.’

‘How old are you?’

‘I am seventeen,’ she told him.

‘Isn’t that very young to be a Lady Abbess?’

The half-hidden mouth showed a wry smile. ‘Not if your grandfather founded the abbey and your brother is its only patron, of course. The Lord of Lucretili can appoint who he chooses.’

‘You had a vocation?’

‘Alas, I did not. I came here in obedience to my brother’s wish and my father’s will. Not because I feel I have a calling.’

‘Did you not want to rebel against your brother’s wish and your father’s will?’

There was a moment of silence. She raised her head and from the depth of her hood he saw her regard him thoughtfully, as if she were considering him as a man who might understand her.

‘Of course, I was tempted by the sin of disobedience,’ she said levelly. ‘I did not understand why my father would treat me so. He had never spoken to me of the abbey nor suggested that he wanted a life of holiness for me. On the contrary, he spoke to me of the outside world, of being a woman of honour and power in the world, of managing my lands and supporting the Church as it comes under attack both here and in the Holy Land. But my brother was with my father on his deathbed, heard his last words, and afterwards he showed me his will. It was clearly my father’s last wish that I come here. I loved my father, I love him still. I obey him in death as I obeyed him in life.’ Her voice shook slightly as she spoke of her father. ‘I am a good daughter to him; now as then.’

‘They say that you brought your slave with you, a Moorish girl named Ishraq, and that she is neither a lay sister nor has she taken her vows.’

‘She is not my slave; she is a free woman. She may do as she pleases.’

‘So what is she doing here?’

‘Whatever she wishes.’

Luca was sure that he saw in her shadowed eyes the same gleam of defiance that the slave had shown. ‘Lady Abbess,’ he said sternly. ‘You should have no companions but the sisters of your order.’

She looked at him with an untameable confidence. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I don’t think you have the authority to tell me so. And I don’t think that I would listen to you, even if you said that you had the authority. As far as I know there is no law that says a woman, an infidel, may not enter a nunnery and serve alongside the nuns. There is no tradition that excludes her. We are of the Augustine order, and as Lady Abbess I can manage this house as I see fit. Nobody can tell me how to do it. If you make me Lady Abbess then you give me the right to decide how this house shall be run. Having forced me to take the power, you can be sure that I shall rule.’ The words were defiant, but her voice was very calm.