He was answered by silence. ‘Dearest saints, don’t say she has killed him,’ he moaned. ‘Not the little lord, not the changeling boy!’

He got to his hands and knees and crawled his way around, feeling across the floor, bumping into the heaped piles of cloth, as he quartered the room. It took him painful stumbling minutes to be sure: Luca was not in the storeroom at all.

Luca was gone.

‘Fool that I am, why did I not lock the door behind me?’ Freize muttered remorsefully to himself. He staggered to his feet and felt his way round the wall, past the broken stair, to the opening. There was a little light in the front storeroom, for the door was wide open and the waning moon shone in. As Freize stumbled towards it, he saw the iron grille to the wine and ale cellar stood wide open. He rubbed his bleeding head, leaned for a moment on the trestle table, and went on towards the light. As he reached the doorway, the abbey bell rang for Lauds and he realised he had been unconscious for perhaps half an hour.

He was setting out for the chapel to raise the alarm for Luca when he saw a light at the hospital window. He turned towards it, just as the Lady Almoner came hastily out into the yard. ‘Freize! Is that you?’

He stumbled towards her, and saw her recoil as she saw his bloodstained face. ‘Saints save us! What has happened to you?’

‘Somebody hit me,’ Freize said shortly. ‘I have lost the little lord! Raise the alarm, he can’t be far.’

‘I have him! I have him! He is in a stupor,’ she said. ‘What happened to him?’

‘Praise God you have him. Where was he?’

‘I found him staggering in the yard just now on my way to Lauds. When I got him into the infirmary he fainted. I was coming to wake you and Brother Peter.’

‘Take me to him.’

She turned, and Freize staggered after her into the long low room. There were about ten beds arranged on both sides of the room, poor pallet beds of straw with unbleached sacking thrown over them. Only one was occupied. It was Luca – deathly pale, eyes shut, breathing lightly.

‘Dearest saints!’ Freize murmured, in an agony of anxiety. ‘Little lord, speak to me!’

Slowly Luca opened his hazel eyes. ‘Is that you?’

‘Praise God, it is. Thank Our Lady that it is, as ever it was.’

‘I heard you shout and then I fell down the stairs,’ he said, his speech muffled by the bruise on his mouth.

‘I heard you come down like a sack of potatoes,’ confirmed Freize. ‘Dearest saints, when I heard you hit the floor! And someone hit me . . .’

‘I feel like the damned in hell.’

‘Me too.’

‘Sleep then, we’ll talk in the morning.’

Luca closed his eyes. The Lady Almoner approached. ‘Let me bathe your wounds.’ She was holding a bowl with a white linen cloth, and there was a scent of lavender and crushed leaves of arnica. Freize allowed himself to be persuaded onto another bed.

‘Were you attacked in your beds?’ she asked him. ‘How did this happen?’

‘I don’t know,’ Freize said, too stunned by the blow to make anything up. Besides, she could see the open door to the storeroom as well as he, and she had found Luca in the yard. ‘I can’t remember anything,’ he said lamely and, as she dabbed and exclaimed at the bruises and scratches on his face, he stretched out under the luxury of a woman’s care, and fell fast asleep.

Freize woke to a very grey cold dawn. Luca was snoring slightly on the opposite bed, a little snuffle followed by a long relaxed whistle. Freize lay listening to the penetrating noise for some time before he opened his eyes, and then he blinked and raised himself up onto his arm. He could not believe what he saw. The bed next to him was now occupied by a nun, laid on her back, her face as white as her hood, which was pushed back exposing her clammy shaven head. Her fingers, enfolded in a position of prayer on her completely still breast, were blue, the fingernails rimmed as if with ink. But worst of all were her eyes, which were horribly open, the pupils dilated black in black. She was completely still. She was clearly – even to Freize’s inexperienced frightened stare – dead.