Philippa Gregory - Changeling

She rubbed her face with the corner of her apron. ‘I am Sara Fairley,’ she said. ‘Wife of Ralph Fairley. We have a good name in the village, anyone can tell you who I am.’

‘Would you bear witness against the werewolf?’

She gave him a faint smile with a world of sorrow behind it. ‘I don’t like to talk of it,’ she said simply. ‘I try not to think of it. I tried to do what the priest told me and bury my sorrow with the little shirt, and thank God for my second boy.’

Brother Peter hesitated. ‘We will certainly put it on trial and if it is proven to be a werewolf it will die.’

She nodded. ‘That won’t bring back my boy,’ she said quietly. ‘But I should be glad to know that my son and all the children are safe in the pasture.’

They rose up and left her. Brother Peter gave his arm to Isolde as they walked down the stony path, Luca helped Ishraq.

‘Why does Brother Peter not believe her?’ Ishraq asked him while she had her hand on his arm and was close enough to speak softly. ‘Why is he always so suspicious?’

‘This is not his first inquiry; he has travelled before and seen much. Your lady, Isolde, was very tender to her.’

‘She has a tender heart,’ Ishraq said. ‘Children, women, beggars, her purse is always open and her heart is always going out to them. The castle kitchen gave away two dozen dinners a day to the poor. She has always been this way.’

‘And has she ever loved anyone in particular?’ Luca asked casually. There was a big rock in the pathway and he stepped over it and turned to help Ishraq.

She laughed. ‘Nothing to do with you,’ she said abruptly. When she saw him flush she said, ‘Ah, Inquirer! Do you really have to know everything?’

‘I was just interested . . .’

‘No-one. She was supposed to marry a fat indulgent sinful man and she would never have considered him. She would never have stooped to him. She took her vows of celibacy with ease. That was not the problem for her. She loves her lands, and her people. No man has taken her fancy.’ She paused as if to tease him. ‘So far,’ she conceded.

Luca looked away. ‘Such a beautiful young woman is bound to . . .’

‘Quite,’ Ishraq said. ‘But tell me about Brother Peter. Is he always so miserable?’

‘He was suspicious of the mother here,’ Luca explained. ‘He thinks she may have killed the child herself, and tried to blame it on a wolf attack. I don’t think so myself; but of course, in these out-of-the-way villages, such things happen.’

Decisively, she shook her head. ‘Not her. That is a woman with a horror of wolves,’ she said. ‘It’s no accident she was not down in the village, though everyone else was there to see them bring it in.’

‘How do you know that?’ Luca said.

Ishraq looked at him as if he were blind. ‘Did you not see the garden?’

Luca had a vague memory of a well-tilled garden, filled with flowers and herbs. There had been a bed of vegetables and herbs near to the door to the kitchen, and flowers and lavender had billowed over the path. There were some autumn pumpkins growing fatly in one bed, and plump grapes on the vine which twisted around the door. It was a typical cottage garden: planted partly for medicine and partly for colour. ‘Of course I saw it, but I don’t remember anything special.’

She smiled. ‘She was growing a dozen different species of aconite, in half a dozen colours, and her boy had a fresh spray of the flower in his hat. She was growing it at every window and every doorway – I’ve never seen such a collection, and in every colour that can bloom, from pink to white to purple.’

‘And so?’ Luca asked.

‘Do you not know your herbs?’ Ishraq asked teasingly. ‘A great inquirer like yourself?’

‘Not like you do. What is aconite?’

‘The common name for aconite is wolfsbane,’ she said. ‘People have been using it against wolves and werewolves for hundreds of years. Dried and made into a powder it can poison a wolf. Fed to a werewolf it can turn him into a human again. In a lethal dose it can kill a werewolf outright, it all depends on the distillation of the herb and the amount that the wolf can be forced to eat. For sure, no wolf will touch it; no wolf will go near it. They won’t let their coats so much as brush against it. No wolf could get into that house – she has built a fortress of aconite.’

‘You think it proves that her story is true and that she fears the wolf? That she planted it to guard herself against the wolf, in case it came back for her?’

Ishraq nodded at the boy who was skipping ahead of them like a little lamb himself, leading the way back to the village, a sprig of fresh aconite tucked into his hatband. ‘I should think she is guarding him.’

A small crowd had gathered around the gate to the stable yard when Luca, Brother Peter and the girls arrived back at the inn.

‘What’s this?’ Luca asked, and pushed his way to the front of the crowd. Freize had the gate half-open and was admitting one person at a time on payment of a half-groat, chinking the coins in his hand.

‘What are you doing?’ Luca asked tersely.

‘Letting people see the beast,’ Freize replied. ‘Since there was such an interest, I thought we might allow it. I thought it was for the public good. I thought I might demonstrate the majesty of God by showing the people this poor sinner.’

‘And what made you think it right to charge for it?’

‘Brother Peter is always so anxious about the expenses,’ Freize explained agreeably, nodding at the clerk. ‘I thought it would be good if the beast made a contribution to the costs of his trial.’

‘This is ridiculous,’ Luca said. ‘Close the gate. People can’t come in and stare at it. This is supposed to be an inquiry, not a travelling show.’

‘People are bound to want to see it,’ Isolde observed. ‘If they think it has been threatening their flocks and themselves for years. They are bound to want to know it has been captured.’

‘Well, let them see it, but you can’t charge for it,’ Luca said irritably. ‘You didn’t even catch it, why should you set yourself up as its keeper?’

‘Because I loosed its bonds and fed it,’ Freize said reasonably.

‘It is free?’ Luca asked, and Isolde echoed nervously: ‘Have you freed it?’

‘I cut the ropes and got myself out of the pit at speed. Then it rolled about and crawled out of the nets,’ Freize said. ‘It had a drink, had a bite to eat, now it’s lying down again, resting. Not much of a show really, but they are simple people and not much happens here. And I charge half price for children and idiots.’

‘There is only one idiot here,’ Luca said severely. ‘And he is not from the village. Let me in, I shall see it.’ He went through the gate and the others followed him. Freize quietly took coins off the remaining villagers and opened the gate wide for them. ‘I’d wager it’s no wolf,’ he said quietly to Luca.

‘What do you mean?’

‘When it got itself out of the net I could see. It’s curled up now in the shadowy end, so it’s harder to make out, but it’s no beast that I have ever seen before. It has long claws and a mane, but it goes up and down from its back legs to all fours, not like a wolf at all.’

‘What kind of beast is it?’ Luca asked him.

‘I’m not sure,’ Freize conceded. ‘But it is not much like a wolf.’

Luca nodded and went towards the bear pit. There was a set of rough wooden steps and a ring of trestles laid on staging, so that spectators to the bear baiting could stand all around the outside of the pit and see over the wooden walls.