Philippa Gregory - Changeling

‘So if you ask me what I want, I will tell you. All I want to do is to cry and sleep. All I want to do is to wish that none of this had ever happened. In my worse moments, I want to tie the rope of the bell in the bell tower around my throat and let it sweep me off my feet and break my neck as it tolls.’

The violence of her words clanged like a tolling bell itself into the quiet room. ‘Self-harm is blasphemy,’ Luca said quickly. ‘Even thinking of it is a sin. You will have to confess such a wish to a priest, accept the penance he sets you, and never think of it again.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘I know. And that is why I only wish it, and don’t do it.’

‘You are a troubled woman.’ He had no idea what he should say to comfort her. ‘A troubled girl.’

She raised her head and, from the darkness of her hood, he thought he saw the ghost of a smile. ‘I don’t need an inquirer to come all the way from Rome to tell me that. But would you help me?’

‘If I could,’ he said. ‘If I can, I will.’

They were silent. Luca felt that he had somehow pledged himself to her. Slowly, she pushed back her hood, just a little, so that he could see the blaze of her honest blue eyes. Then Brother Peter noisily dipped his pen in the bottle of ink, and Luca recollected himself.

‘I saw a nun last night run across the courtyard, chased by three others,’ he said. ‘This woman got to the outer gate and hammered on it with her fists, screaming like a vixen, a terrible sound, the cry of the damned. They caught her and carried her back to the cloister. I assume they put her back in her cell?’

‘They did,’ she said coldly.

‘I saw her hands,’ he told her; and now he felt as if he were not making an inquiry, but an accusation. He felt as if he were accusing her. ‘She was marked on the palms of her hand, with the sign of the crucifixion, as if she was showing, or faking, the stigmata.’

‘She is no fake,’ the Lady Abbess told him with quiet dignity. ‘This is a pain to her, not a source of pride.’

‘You know this?’

‘I know it for certain.’

‘Then I will see her this afternoon. You will send her to me.’

‘I will not.’

Her calm refusal threw Luca. ‘You have to!’

‘I will not send her this afternoon. The whole community is watching the door to my house. You have arrived with enough fanfare, the whole abbey, brothers and sisters, know that you are here and that you are taking evidence. I will not have her further shamed. It is bad enough for her with everyone knowing that she is showing these signs and dreaming these dreams. You can meet her; but at a time of my choosing, when no-one is watching.’

‘I have an order from the Pope himself to interview the wrong-doers.’

‘Is that what you think of me? That I am a wrong-doer?’ she suddenly asked.

‘No. I should have said I have an order from the Pope to hold an inquiry.’

‘Then do so,’ she said impertinently. ‘But you will not see that young woman until it is safe for her to come to you.’

‘When will that be?’

‘Soon. When I judge it is right.’

Luca realised he would get no further with the Lady Abbess. To his surprise, he was not angry. He found that he admired her; he liked her bright sense of honour, and he shared her own bewilderment at what was happening in the nunnery. But more than anything else, he pitied her loss. Luca knew what it was to miss a parent, to be without someone who would care for you, love you and protect you. He knew what it was to face the world alone and feel yourself to be an orphan.

He found he was smiling at her, though he could not see if she was smiling back. ‘Lady Abbess, you are not an easy woman to interrogate.’

‘Brother Luca, you are not an easy man to refuse,’ she replied, and she rose from the table without permission, and left the room.

For the rest of the day Luca and Brother Peter interviewed one nun after another, taking each one’s history, and her hopes, and fears. They ate alone in the Lady Almoner’s parlour, served by Freize. In the afternoon, Luca remarked that he could not stand another white-faced girl telling him that she had bad dreams and that she was troubled by her conscience, and swore that he had to take a break from the worries and fears of women.

They saddled their horses and the three men rode out into the great beech forest where the massive trees arched high above them, shedding copper-coloured leaves and beech mast in a constant whisper. The horses were almost silent as their hooves were muffled by the thickness of the forest floor and Luca rode ahead, on his own, weary of the many plaintive voices of the day, wondering if he would be able to make any sense of all he had heard, fearful that all he was doing was listening to meaningless dreams and being frightened by fantasies.

The track led them higher and higher until they emerged above the woodland, looking down the way they had come. Above them, the track went on, narrower and more stony, up to the high mountains that stood, bleak and lovely, all around them.

‘This is better.’ Freize patted his horse’s neck as they paused for a moment. Down below them they could see the little village of Lucretili, the grey slate roof of the abbey, the two religious houses placed on either side of it, and the dominating castle where the new lord’s standard fluttered in the wind over the round gatehouse tower.

The air was cold. Above them a solitary eagle wheeled away. Brother Peter tightened his cloak around his shoulders and looked at Luca, to remind him that they must not stay out too long.

Together they turned the horses and rode along the crest of the hill, keeping the woodland to their right, and then, at the first woodcutter’s trail, dropped down towards the valley again, falling silent as the trees closed around them.

The trail wound through the forest. Once they heard the trickle of water, and then the drilling noise of a woodpecker. Just when they thought they had overshot the village they came out into a clearing and saw a wide track heading to the castle of Lucretili which stood, like a grey stone guard post, dominating the road.

‘He does all right for himself,’ Freize observed, looking at the high castle walls, the drawbridge and the rippling standards. From the lord’s stables they could hear the howling of his pack of deerhounds. ‘Not a bad life. The wealth to enjoy it all, hunting your own deer, living off your own game, enough money to take a ride into Rome to see the sights when you feel like it, and a cellar full of your own wine.’

‘Saints save her, how she must miss her home,’ Luca remarked, looking at the tall towers of the beautiful castle, the rides which led deep into the forest and beyond to lakes, hills, and streams. ‘From all this wealth and freedom to four square walls and a life enclosed till death! How could a father who loved his daughter bring her up to be free here, and then have her locked up on his death?’

‘Better that than a bad husband who would beat her as soon as her brother’s back was turned, better that than die in childbirth,’ Brother Peter pointed out. ‘Better that than being swept off her feet by some fortune-hunter, and all the family wealth and good name destroyed in a year.’

‘Depends on the fortune-hunter,’ Freize volunteered. ‘A lusty man with a bit of charm about him might have brought a flush to her cheek, given her something pleasant to dream about.’

‘Enough,’ Luca ruled. ‘You may not talk about her like that.’

‘Seems we mustn’t think of her like a pretty lass,’ Freize remarked to his horse.