Philippa Gregory - Changeling

Her face was as white as the wimple that framed it. She shook her head, her grey eyes wordlessly begging him to say nothing more. Luca looked at her, his young face grim. ‘I have to go on,’ he said, as if in answer to her unspoken question. ‘I was sent here to inquire and I have to go on. Besides, I have to know. I always have to know.’

‘There is no need . . .’ she whispered. ‘The wicked Lady Abbess is gone, whatever she did with the awl, with belladonna . . .’

‘I need to know,’ he repeated. The last object he brought out was the book of the abbey’s accounts that Freize had taken from her room.

‘There’s nothing wrong with the list of work,’ she said, suddenly confident. ‘You cannot say that there is anything missing from the goods listed and the market takings. I have been a good steward to this abbey. I have cared for it as if it were my own house. I have worked for it as if I were the lady of the house, I have been the Magistra, I have been in command here.’

‘There is no doubt that you have been a good steward,’ Luca assured her. ‘But there is one thing missing.’ He turned to the clerk. ‘Brother Peter, look at these and tell me, do you see a fortune in gold mentioned anywhere?’

Peter took the leather-bound book and flipped the pages quickly. ‘Eggs,’ he volunteered. ‘Vegetables, some sewing work, some laundry work, some copying work – no fortune. Certainly no fortune in gold.’

‘You know I didn’t take the gold,’ the Lady Almoner said, turning to Luca, putting a pleading hand on his arm. ‘I stole nothing. It was all the Lady Abbess, she that is a witch. She set the nuns to soak the fleeces in the river, she stole the gold dust and sent it out for sale to the gold merchants. As I told you, as you saw for yourself. It was not me. Nobody will say it was me. It was done by her.’

‘Gold?’ Lord Lucretili demanded in a stagey shout of surprise. ‘What gold?’

‘The Lady Abbess and her slave have been panning for gold in the abbey stream, and selling it,’ the Lady Almoner told him quickly. ‘I learned of it by chance when they first came. The inquirer discovered this only yesterday.’

‘And where is the gold now?’ Luca asked.

‘Sold to the merchants on Via Portico d’Ottavia, I suppose,’ she flared at him. ‘And the profit taken by the witches. We will never get it back. We will never know for sure.’

‘Who sold it?’ Luca asked, as if genuinely curious.

‘The slave, the heretic slave, she must have gone to the Jews, to the gold merchants,’ she said quickly. ‘She would know what to do, she would trade with them. She would speak their language, she would know how to haggle with them. She is a heretic like them, greedy like them, allowed to profiteer like they are. As bad as them . . . worse.’

Luca shook his head at her, almost as if he was sorry as his trap closed on her. ‘You told me yourself that she never left the nunnery,’ he said slowly. He nodded at Brother Peter. ‘You took a note of what the Lady Almoner said, that first day, when she was so charming and so helpful.’

Brother Peter turned to the page in his collection of papers, riffling the manuscript pages. ‘She said: “She never leaves the Lady Abbess’s side. And the Lady Abbess never goes out. The slave haunts the place.”’

Luca turned back to the Lady Almoner whose grey eyes flicked – just once – to the lord, as if asking for his help, and then back to Luca.

‘You told me yourself she was the Lady Abbess’s shadow,’ Luca said steadily. ‘She never left the nunnery: the gold has never left the nunnery. You have it hidden here.’

Her white face blanched yet more pale but she seemed to draw courage from somewhere. ‘Search for it!’ she defied him. ‘You can tear my storeroom apart and you will not find it. Search my room, search my house, I have no hidden gold here! You can prove nothing against me!’

‘Enough of this. My damned sister was a sinner, a heretic, a witch, and now a thief,’ Lord Lucretili suddenly intervened. He signed the contract for her arrest without hesitation, and handed it back to Brother Peter. ‘Get this published at once. Announce a hue and cry for her. If we take her and her heretic familiar, I shall burn them without further trial. I shall burn them without allowing them to open their mouths.’ He reached towards Luca. ‘Give me your hand,’ he said. ‘I thank you, for all you have done here. You have pursued an inquiry and completed it. It’s over, thank God. It’s done. Let’s make an end to it now, like men. Let’s finish it here.’

‘No, it’s not quite over,’ Luca said, detaching himself from the lord’s grip. He opened the gatehouse door and led all of them out to the yard where they were loading the coffin of the dead nun onto the black-draped cart.

‘What’s this?’ the lord said irritably, following Luca outside. ‘You can’t interfere with the coffin. We agreed. I am taking it to a vigil in my chapel. You cannot touch it. You must show respect. Hasn’t she suffered enough?’

The lay sisters heaved at the coffin, sweating with effort. There were eight of them hauling it onto the low cart. Luca observed, grimly, that it was a heavy load.

The lord took Luca firmly by the arm. ‘Come tonight to the castle,’ he whispered. ‘We can open it there if you insist. I will help you, as I promised I would.’

Luca was watching Freize, who had gone to help the lay sisters slide the coffin onto the cart. First he shouldered the coffin with them, and then nimbly climbed up into the cart, standing alongside the coffin, a crowbar in his hand.

‘Don’t you dare touch it!’ The Lady Almoner was on the cart, beside him, in a moment, her hands on his forearm. ‘This coffin is sanctified, blessed by the priest himself. Don’t you dare touch her coffin, she has been censed and blessed with sanctified water, let her rest in peace!’

There was a murmur from the lay sisters and one of them, seeing Freize’s determined face as he gently put the Lady Almoner aside, slipped away to the chapel where the nuns were praying for their departed sister’s soul.

‘Get down,’ the Lady Almoner commanded Freize, holding on to his arm. ‘I order it. You shall not abuse her in death! You shall not see her poor sainted face!’

‘Tell your man to get down,’ Lord Lucretili said quietly to Luca, as one man to another. ‘Whatever you suspect, it won’t help if there is a scandal now, and these women have borne too much already. We have all gone through too much today. We can sort this out later in my chapel. Let the nuns say farewell to their sister and get the coffin away.’

The nuns were pouring out of the chapel towards the yard, their faces white and furious. When they saw Freize on the cart, they started to run.

‘Freize!’ Luca shouted a warning, as the women fell onto the cart like a sea of white, keening high notes, like a mad choir turning on an enemy. ‘Freize, leave it!’

He was too late. Freize had got his crowbar beneath the lid and heaved it up as the first nuns reached the cart and started to grab at him. With a terrible creak the nails yielded on one side and the lid lifted up. Dourly triumphant, Freize fended off one slight woman, and nodded down at Luca. ‘As you thought,’ he said.

The first of the nuns recoiled at the sight of the open coffin and whispered to the others what they had seen. The others, running up, checked and stopped, as someone at the back let out a bewildered sob. ‘What is it now? What in the name of Our Lady is it now?’

Luca climbed up beside Freize, and the sight of the coffin blazed at him. He saw that the dead nun had been packed in bags of gold and one of them had split, showering her with treasure so that she appeared like a glorious pharaoh. Gold dust filled her coffin, gilded her face, enamelled the coins on her staring eyes, glittered in her wimple and turned her gown to treasure. She was a golden icon, a Byzantine glory, not a corpse.