Changeling

THE CASTLE OF LUCRETILI, JUNE 1453

At about the time that Luca was being questioned, a young woman was seated in a rich chair in the chapel of her family home, the Castle of Lucretili, about twenty miles north-east of Rome, her dark blue eyes fixed on the rich crucifix, her fair hair twisted in a careless plait under a black veil, her face strained and pale. A candle in a rose crystal bowl flickered on the altar as the priest moved in the shadows. She knelt, her hands clasped tightly together, praying fervently for her father, who was fighting for his life in his bedchamber, refusing to see her.

The door at the back of the chapel opened and her brother came in quietly, saw her bowed head and went to kneel beside her. She looked sideways at him, a handsome young man, dark-haired, dark-browed, his face stern with grief. ‘He’s gone, Isolde, he’s gone. May he rest in peace.’

Her white face crumpled and she put her hands over her eyes. ‘He didn’t ask for me? Not even at the end?’

‘He didn’t want you to see him in pain. He wanted you to remember him as he had been, strong and healthy. But his last words were to send you his blessing, and his last thoughts were of your future.’

She shook her head. ‘I can’t believe he would not give me his blessing.’

Giorgio turned from her and spoke to the priest, who hurried at once to the back of the chapel. Isolde heard the big bell start to toll; everyone would know that the great crusader, the Lord of Lucretili, was dead.

‘I must pray for him,’ she said quietly. ‘You’ll bring his body here?’

He nodded.

‘I will share the vigil tonight,’ she decided. ‘I will sit beside him now that he is dead though he didn’t allow it while he lived.’ She paused. ‘He didn’t leave me a letter? Nothing?’

‘His will,’ her brother said softly. ‘He planned for you. At the very end of his life he was thinking of you.’

She nodded, her dark blue eyes filling with tears, then she clasped her hands together, and prayed for her father’s soul.

Isolde spent the first long night of her father’s death in a silent vigil beside his coffin, which lay in the family chapel. Four of his men-at-arms stood, one at each point of the compass, their heads bowed over their broadswords, the light from the tall wax candles glittering on the holy water that had been sprinkled on the coffin lid. Isolde, dressed in white, knelt before the coffin all night long until dawn when the priest came to say Prime, the first office of prayers of the day. Only then did she rise up and let her ladies-in-waiting help her to her room to sleep, until a message from her brother told her that she must get up and show herself, it was time for dinner and the household would want to see their lady.

She did not hesitate. She had been raised to do her duty by the great household and she had a sense of obligation to the people who lived on the lands of Lucretili. Her father, she knew, had left the castle and the lands to her; these people were in her charge. They would want to see her at the head of the table, they would want to see her enter the great hall. Even if her eyes were red from crying over the loss of a very beloved father, they would expect her to dine with them. Her father himself would have expected it. She would not fail them or him.

There was a sudden hush as she entered the great hall where the servants were sitting at trestle tables, talking quietly, waiting for dinner to be served. More than two hundred men-at-arms, servants and grooms filled the hall, where the smoke from the central fire coiled up to the darkened beams of the high ceiling.

As soon as the men saw Isolde followed by the three women of her household, they rose to their feet and pulled their hats from their heads, and bowed low to honour the daughter of the late Lord of Lucretili, and the heiress to the castle.

Isolde was wearing the deep blue of mourning: a high conical hat draped in indigo lace hiding her fair hair, a priceless belt of Arabic gold worn tightly at the high waist of her gown, the keys to the castle on a gold chain at her side. Behind her came her women companions, firstly Ishraq, her childhood friend, wearing Moorish dress, a long tunic over loose pantaloons with a long veil over her head held lightly across her face so that only her dark eyes were visible as she looked around the hall.

Two other women followed behind her and as the household whispered their blessings on Isolde, the women took their seats at the ladies’ table to the side of the raised dais. Isolde went up the shallow stairs to the great table, and recoiled at the sight of her brother in the wooden chair, as grand as a throne, that had been their father’s seat. She knew that she should have anticipated he would be there, just as he knew that she would inherit this castle and would take the great chair as soon as the will was read. But she was dull with grief, and she had not thought that from now on she would always see her brother where her father ought to be. She was so new to grief that she had not yet fully realised that she would never see her father again.

Giorgio smiled blandly at her, and gestured that she should take her seat at his right hand, where she used to sit beside her father.

‘And you will remember Prince Roberto.’ Giorgio indicated a fleshy man with a round sweating face on his left, who rose and came around the table to bow to her. Isolde gave her hand to the prince and looked questioningly at her brother. ‘He has come to sympathise with us for our loss.’

The prince kissed her hand and Isolde tried not to flinch from the damp touch of his lips. He looked at her as if he wanted to whisper something, as if they might share a secret. Isolde took back her hand, and bent towards her brother’s ear. ‘I am surprised you have a guest at dinner when my father died only yesterday.’

‘It was good of him to come at once,’ Giorgio said, beckoning the servers who came down the hall, their trays held at shoulder height loaded with game, meat, and fish dishes, great loaves of bread and flagons of wine and jugs of ale.

The castle priest sang grace and then the servers banged down the trays of food, the men drew their daggers from their belts and their boots to carve their portions of meat, and heaped slices of thick brown bread with poached fish, and stewed venison.

It was hard for Isolde to eat dinner in the great hall as if nothing had changed, when her dead father lay in his vigil, guarded in the chapel by his men-at-arms, and would be buried the next day. She found that tears kept blurring the sight of the servants coming in, carrying more food for each table, banging down jugs of small ale, and bringing the best dishes and flagons of best red wine to the top table where Giorgio and his guest the prince picked the best and sent the rest down the hall to those men who had served them well during the day. The prince and her brother ate a good dinner and called for more wine. Isolde picked at her food and glanced down to the women’s table where Ishraq met her gaze with silent sympathy.

When they had finished, and the sugared fruits and marchpane had been offered to the top table, and taken away, Giorgio touched her hand. ‘Don’t go to your rooms just yet,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you.’

Isolde nodded to dismiss Ishraq and her ladies from their dining table and send them back to the ladies’ rooms, then she went through the little door behind the dais to the private room where the Lucretili family sat after dinner. A fire was burning against the wall and there were three chairs drawn up around it. A flagon of wine was set ready for the men, a glass of small ale for Isolde. As she took her seat the two men came in together.

‘I want to talk to you about our father’s will,’ Giorgio said, once they were seated.

Isolde glanced towards Prince Roberto.

‘Roberto is concerned in this,’ Giorgio explained. ‘When Father was dying he said that his greatest hope was to know that you would be safe and happy. He loved you very dearly.’

Isolde pressed her fingers to her cold lips and blinked the tears from her eyes.

‘I know,’ her brother said gently. ‘I know you are grieving. But you have to know that Father made plans for you and gave to me the sacred trust of carrying them out.’

‘Why didn’t he tell me so himself?’ she asked. ‘Why would he not talk to me? We always talked of everything together. I know what he planned for me; he said if I chose not to marry then I was to live here, I would inherit this castle and you would have his castle and lands in France. We agreed this. We all three agreed this.’

‘We agreed it when he was well,’ Giorgio said patiently. ‘But when he became sick and fearful, he changed his mind. And then he could not bear for you to see him so very ill and in so much pain. When he thought about you then, with the very jaws of death opening before him, he thought better of his first plan. He wanted to be certain that you would be safe. Then, he planned well for you – he suggested that you marry Prince Roberto here, and agreed that we should take a thousand crowns from the treasury as your dowry.’

It was a tiny payment for a woman who had been raised to think of herself as heiress to this castle, the fertile pastures, the thick woods, the high mountains. Isolde gaped at him. ‘Why so little?’

‘Because the prince here has done us the honour of indicating that he will accept you just as you are – with no more than a thousand crowns in your pocket.’

‘And you shall keep it all,’ the man assured her, pressing her hand as it rested on the arm of her chair. ‘You shall have it to spend on whatever you want. Pretty things for a pretty princess.’

Isolde looked at her brother, her dark blue eyes narrowing as she understood what this meant. ‘A dowry as small as this will mean that no-one else will offer for me,’ she said. ‘You know that. And yet you did not ask for more? You did not warn Father that this would leave me without any prospects at all? And Father? Did he want to force me to marry the prince?’

The prince put his hand on his fleshy chest and cast his eyes modestly down. ‘Most ladies would not require forcing,’ he pointed out.

‘I know of no better husband that you might have,’ Giorgio said smoothly. His friend smiled and nodded at her. ‘And Father thought so too. We agreed this dowry with Prince Roberto and he was so pleased to marry you that he did not specify that you should bring a greater fortune than this. There is no need to accuse anyone of failing to guard your interests. What could be better for you than marriage to a family friend, a prince, and a wealthy man?’

It took her only a moment to decide. ‘I cannot think of marriage,’ Isolde said flatly. ‘Forgive me, Prince Roberto. But it is too soon after my father’s death. I cannot bear even to think of it, let alone talk of it.’

‘We have to talk of it,’ Giorgio insisted. ‘The terms of our father’s will are that we have to get you settled. He would not allow any delay. Either immediate marriage to my friend here, or . . .’ He paused.

‘Or what?’ Isolde asked, suddenly afraid.

‘The abbey,’ he said simply. ‘Father said that if you would not marry, I was to appoint you as abbess and that you should go there to live.’

‘Never!’ Isolde exclaimed. ‘My father would never have done this to me!’

Giorgio nodded. ‘I too was surprised, but he said that it was the future he had planned for you all along. That was why he did not fill the post when the last abbess died. He was thinking even then, a year ago, that you must be kept safe. You can’t be exposed to the dangers of the world, left here alone at Lucretili. If you don’t want to marry, you must be kept safe in the abbey.’

Prince Roberto smiled slyly at her. ‘A nun or a princess,’ he suggested. ‘I would think you would find it easy to choose.’

Isolde jumped to her feet. ‘I cannot believe Father planned this for me,’ she said. ‘He never suggested anything like this. He was clear he would divide the lands between us. He knew how much I love it here; how I love these lands and know these people. He said he would will this castle and the lands to me, and give you our lands in France.’

Giorgio shook his head as if in gentle regret. ‘No, he changed his mind. As the oldest child, the only son, the only true heir, I will have everything, both in France and here, and you, as a woman, will have to leave.’

‘Giorgio, my brother, you cannot send me from my home?’

He spread his hands. ‘There is nothing I can do. It is our father’s last wish and I have it in writing, signed by him. You will either marry – and no-one will have you but Prince Roberto – or you will go to the abbey. It was good of him to give you this choice. Many fathers would simply have left orders.’

‘Excuse me,’ Isolde said, her voice shaking as she fought to control her anger, ‘I shall leave you and go to my rooms and think about this.’

‘Don’t take too long!’ Prince Roberto said with an intimate smile. ‘I won’t wait too long.’

‘I shall give you my answer tomorrow.’ She paused in the doorway, and looked back at her brother. ‘May I see my father’s letter?’

Giorgio nodded and drew it from inside his jacket. ‘You can keep this. It is a copy. I have the other in safe-keeping; there is no doubt as to his wishes. You will have to consider not whether you will obey him, but only how you obey him. He knew that you would obey him.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I am his daughter. Of course I will obey him.’ She went from the room without looking at the prince, though he rose to his feet and made her a flourishing bow, and then winked at Giorgio as if he thought the matter settled.

Isolde woke in the night to hear a quiet tap on her door. Her pillow was damp beneath her cheek; she had been crying in her sleep. For a moment she wondered why she felt such a pain, as if she were heartbroken – and then she remembered the coffin in the chapel and the silent knights keeping watch. She crossed herself: ‘God bless him, and save his soul,’ she whispered. ‘God comfort me in this sorrow. I don’t know that I can bear it.’

The little tap came again, and she put back the richly embroidered covers of her bed and went to the door, the key in her hand. ‘Who is it?’

‘It is Prince Roberto. I have to speak with you.’

‘I can’t open the door, I will speak with you tomorrow.’

‘I need to speak to you tonight. It is about the will, your father’s wishes.’

She hesitated. ‘Tomorrow . . .’

‘I think I can see a way out for you. I understand how you feel, I think I can help.’

‘What way out?’

‘I can’t shout it through the door. Just open the door a crack so that I can whisper.’

‘Just a crack,’ she said, and turned the key, keeping her foot pressed against the bottom of the door to ensure that it opened only a little.

As soon as he heard the key turn, the prince banged the door open with such force that it hit Isolde’s head and sent her reeling back into the room. He slammed the door behind him and turned the key, locking them in together.

‘You thought you would reject me?’ he demanded furiously, as she scrambled to her feet. ‘You thought you – practically penniless – would reject me? You thought I would beg to speak to you through a closed door?’

‘How dare you force your way in here?’ Isolde demanded, white-faced and furious. ‘My brother would kill you—’

‘Your brother allowed it,’ he laughed. ‘Your brother approves me as your husband. He himself suggested that I come to you. Now get on the bed.’

‘My brother?’ She could feel her shock turning into horror as she realised that she had been betrayed by her own brother, and that now this stranger was coming towards her, his fat face creased in a confident smile.

‘He said I might as well take you now as later,’ he said. ‘You can fight me if you like. It makes no difference to me. I like a fight. I like a woman of spirit, they are more obedient in the end.’

‘You are mad,’ she said with certainty.

‘Whatever you like. But I consider you my betrothed wife, and we are going to consummate our betrothal right now, so you don’t make any mistake tomorrow.’

‘You’re drunk,’ she said, smelling the sour stink of wine on his breath.

‘Yes, thank God, and you can get used to that too.’

He came towards her, shrugging his jacket off his fleshy shoulders. She shrank back until she felt the tall wooden pole of the four-poster bed behind her, blocking her retreat. She put her hands behind her back so that he could not grab them, and felt the velvet of the counterpane, and beneath it the handle of the brass warming pan filled with hot embers that had been pushed between the cold sheets.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘This is ridiculous. It is an offence against hospitality. You are our guest, my father’s body lies in the chapel. I am without defence, and you are drunk on our wine. Please go to your room and I will speak kindly to you in the morning.’

‘No,’ he leered. ‘I don’t think so. I think I shall spend the night here in your bed and I am very sure you will speak kindly to me in the morning.’

Behind her back, Isolde’s fingers closed on the handle of the warming pan. As Roberto paused to untie the laces on the front of his breeches, she got a sickening glimpse of grey linen poking out. He reached for her arm. ‘This need not hurt you,’ he said. ‘You might even enjoy it . . .’

With a great swing she brought the warming pan round to clap him on the side of his head. Red-hot embers and ash dashed against his face and tumbled to the floor. He let out of a howl of pain as she drew back and hit him once again, hard, and he dropped down like a fat stunned ox before the slaughter.

She picked up a jug and flung water over the coals smouldering on the rug beneath him and then, cautiously, she kicked him gently with her slippered foot. He did not stir, he was knocked out cold. Isolde went to an inner room and unlocked the door, whispering ‘Ishraq!’ When the girl came, rubbing sleep from her eyes, Isolde showed her the man crumpled on the ground.

‘Is he dead?’ the girl asked calmly.

‘No. I don’t think so. Help me get him out of here.’

The two young women pulled the rug and the limp body of Prince Roberto slid along the floor, leaving a slimy trail of water and ashes. They got him into the gallery outside her room and paused.

‘I take it your brother allowed him to come to you?’

Isolde nodded, and Ishraq turned her head and spat contemptuously on the prince’s white face. ‘Why ever did you open the door?’

‘I thought he would help me. He said he had an idea to help me then he pushed his way in.’

‘Did he hurt you?’ The girl’s dark eyes scanned her friend’s face. ‘Your forehead?’

‘He knocked me when he pushed the door.’

‘Was he going to rape you?’

Isolde nodded.

‘Then let’s leave him here,’ Ishraq decided. ‘He can come to on the floor like the dog that he is, and crawl to his room. If he’s still here in the morning then the servants can find him and make him a laughing-stock.’ She bent down and felt for his pulses at his throat, his wrists and under the bulging waistband of his breeches. ‘He’ll live,’ she said certainly. ‘Though he wouldn’t be missed if we quietly cut his throat.’

‘Of course we can’t do that,’ Isolde said shakily.

They left him there, laid out like a beached whale on his back, with his breeches still unlaced.

‘Wait here,’ Ishraq said and went back to her room.

She returned swiftly, with a small box in her hand. Delicately, using the tips of her fingers and scowling with distaste, she pulled at the prince’s breeches so that they were gaping wide open. She lifted his linen shirt so that his limp nakedness was clearly visible. She took the lid from the box and shook the spice onto his bare skin.

‘What are you doing?’ Isolde whispered.

‘It’s a dried pepper, very strong. He is going to itch like he has the pox, and his skin is going to blister like he has a rash. He is going to regret this night’s work very much. He is going to be itching and scratching and bleeding for a month, and he won’t trouble another woman for a while.’

Isolde laughed and put out her hand, as her father would have done, and the two young women clasped forearms, hand to elbow, like knights. Ishraq grinned, and they turned and went back into the bedroom, closing the door on the humbled prince and locking it firmly against him.

In the morning, when Isolde went to chapel, her father’s coffin was closed and ready for burial in the deep family vault – and the prince was gone.

‘He has withdrawn his offer for your hand,’ her brother said coldly as he took his place, kneeling beside her on the chancel steps. ‘I take it that something passed between the two of you?’

‘He’s a villain,’ Isolde said simply. ‘And if you sent him to my door, as he claimed, then you are a traitor to me.’

He bowed his head. ‘Of course I did no such thing. I am sorry, I got drunk like a fool and said that he could plead his case with you. Why ever did you open your door?’

‘Because I believed your friend was an honourable man, as you did.’

‘You were very wrong to unlock your door,’ her brother reproached her. ‘Opening your bedroom door to a man, to a drunk man! You don’t know how to take care of yourself. Father was right, we have to place you somewhere safe.’

‘I was safe! I was in my own room, in my own castle, speaking to my brother’s friend. I should not have been at risk,’ she said angrily. ‘You should not have brought such a man to our dinner table. Father should never have been advised that he would make a good husband for me.’

She rose to her feet and went down the aisle, her brother following after her. ‘Well anyway, what did you say to upset him?’

Isolde hid a smile at the thought of the warming pan crashing against the prince’s fat head. ‘I made my feelings clear. And I will never meet with him again.’

‘Well, that’s easily achieved,’ Giorgio said bluntly. ‘Because you will never be able to meet with any man again. If you will not marry Prince Roberto, then you will have to go to the abbey. Our father’s will leaves you with no other choice.’

Isolde paused as his words sank in, and put a hesitant hand on his arm, wondering how she could persuade him to let her go free.

‘There’s no need to look like that,’ he said roughly. ‘The terms of the will are clear, I told you last night. It was the prince or the nunnery. Now it is just the nunnery.’

‘I will go on a pilgrimage,’ she offered. ‘Away from here.’

‘You will not. How would you survive for one moment? You can’t keep yourself safe even at home.’

‘I will go and stay with some friends of Father’s – anyone. I could go to my godfather’s son, the Count of Wallachia, I could go to the Duke of Bradour . . .’

His face was grim. ‘You can’t. You know you can’t. You have to do as Father commanded you. I have no choice, Isolde. God knows I would do anything for you, but his will is clear, and I have to obey my father – just as you do.’

‘Brother – don’t force me to do this.’

He turned to the arched wall of the chapel doorway, and put his forehead to the cold stone, as if she was making his head ache. ‘Sister, I can do nothing. Prince Roberto was your only chance to escape the abbey. It is our father’s will. I am sworn on his sword, on his own broadsword, to see that his will is done. My sister – I am powerless, as you are.’

‘He promised he would leave his broadsword to me.’

‘It is mine now. As is everything else.’

Gently she put her hand on his shoulder. ‘If I take an oath of celibacy, may I not stay here with you? I will marry no-one. The castle is yours, I see that. In the end he did what every man does and favoured his son over his daughter. In the end he did what all great men do and excluded a woman from wealth and power. But if I will live here, poor and powerless, never seeing a man, obedient to you, can I not stay here?’

He shook his head. ‘It is not my will, but his. And it is – as you admit – the way of the world. He brought you up almost as if you had been born a boy, with too much wealth and freedom. But now you must live the life of a noblewoman. You should be glad at least that the abbey is nearby, and so you don’t have to go far from these lands that I know you love. You’ve not been sent into exile – he could have ordered that you go anywhere. But instead you will be in our own property: the abbey. I will come and see you now and then. I will bring you news. Perhaps later you will be able to ride out with me.’

‘Can Ishraq come with me?’

‘You can take Ishraq, you can take all your ladies if you wish, and if they are willing to go. But they are expecting you at the abbey tomorrow. You will have to go, Isolde. You will have to take your vows as a nun and become their abbess. You have no choice.’

He turned back to her and saw she was trembling like a young mare will tremble when she is being forced into harness for the first time. ‘It is like being imprisoned,’ she whispered. ‘And I have done nothing wrong.’

He had tears in his own eyes. ‘It is like losing a sister,’ he said. ‘I am burying a father and losing a sister. I don’t know how it will be without you here.’