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nearly a century ago and she was the child of my second wife. I had only one
son, who is now dead as I am dead. I had only the one daughter, my Agatha,
late in life. I loved her dearly for that my son had turned out to be a
bookworm, and showed no desire to live as a man should and wear the golden
spurs of knighthood."
The voice broke as if it was too painful to go on, and ceased. Indeed, in
spite of its hollow, forbidding quality, as if it was speaking from a distant,
vast and empty tomb, there was a pain to be heard in it that visibly touched
everybody listening in the room. It was as if the voice would weep, but could
not.
"Go on," commanded Jim, after some seconds.
"I loved her dearly," the voice went on, "until her age was of barely six
years. Then, one day when her nurse had taken her walking in the woods near to
our home, that same nurse came back without her, distraught, torn and bleeding
from deep cuts and slashes.
"It was then she told me she had lost my daughter. That a female troll had
sprung out from behind some bushes and snatched my daughter away, though the
nurse fought to hold her. But the troll was too strong, and she disappeared
carrying my little girl; and that was the last I saw of her."
The voice ceased again.
"Who then ?" said the Bishop, but in a muted voice, looking at the adult
Agatha Falon, expressionless, and motionless in her barrel chair against the
far wall.
"Can that nurse hear me now?" Jim asked the box. "If so, answer."
"I am here," came a thin and wailing voice like a small breeze lost among
dark trees in the distance.
"Then tell us how you came to lose young Agatha Falon to the troll," said
Jim.
"I will tell," said the thin voice. "I am Winifred Hustings, the daughter of
a poor knight, who on his death, my mother being dead, found a place and work
with Sir Blandys de Falon as nurse to his daughter. I died but two years
agone an old, old woman. But well I remember the day I took the child Agatha
walking in the near woods, the safe woods not far from the stout walls of the
home of the Falons. But in those woods, as we were passing some bushes, barely
in leaf for it was but the first of spring there leaped a female troll, as
large as I was, and tried to snatch Agatha from me. Agatha clung to my hand
and I tried to protect her. But the troll was stronger than I and her claws
and teeth were cruel. Before I knew it, she had gotten Agatha from me and was
gone; and I had only strength enough to get back with word of what had
happened to Sir Falon. Then I fell and was unconscious for some days.
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"For a long time after that I lay abed, for the wounds made by the troll
festered, and I was too weak to rise and do anything. When at last I was
recovered, I was put to some small duties having to do with ordering the
housekeeping of the castle for Sir Blandys's second wife, Agatha's mother, had
died in childbirth."
The nurse's voice died as if all the strength had gone out of it.
"And you never saw Agatha Falon again, either?" asked Jim.
"Oh, yes," said the thin voice of the nurse, "she came back two years later.
One morning as we opened the great gates in the main wall, there she was, with
hardly a rag of clothing on her, dirty, scratched, and hardly recognizable by
anyone but me. But I knew her. So we took her in, and cleaned her and cared
for her; but she could not or would not tell us where she had been all that
time, or what had happened to her."
"She couldn't even tell you?" said Jim. "Would she talk to her father about
it?"
"Sir Blandys would have nothing to do with her," said the voice of the nurse,
hopelessly. "He believed she was a changeling "
There was an indrawn breath from all in the room except Jim, Angie and
Carolinus.
" Not the girl we had lost two years before," the voice of the nurse went on.
"But he gave directions she was to be kept and cared for and brought up
exactly as if she had never left us; and all were forbidden on pain of death
from mentioning the fact that she had been missing those years though it was
known on his lands and possibly even further. But, with time, I think most
forgot, Sir Blandys died only four years after that, and everything fell into
the hands of the Lady Agatha's older brother; and she was all but ignored and
forgotten, and her story with her."
"Sir Blandys!" said Jim.
"I am here," said the voice of Sir Blandys.
"Why would you have nothing to do with your daughter after she came back?"
said Jim. "You said you loved her dearly."
"I loved her dearly but was this that came back to my gate my daughter? I did
not believe so. Two years had gone by. She was not the same. She was a
changeling, sent back by the troll that took her "
"And you actually had no more to do with her after she came back?" said Jim.
"After that," said the hollow voice of Sir Blandys, "I could not bear the
sight of what had been sent back to me. All that I had loved was gone. I did
not find it in this new creature that wore her shape. But, for the good of the
family name, I kept the fact of what she was secret. I gave orders that it be
kept secret. And secret it was kept from then on."
Sir Blandys's voice stopped.
"A changeling," said the Bishop in a low voice, looking at Agatha. "Lady
Agatha, on peril to your immortal soul, tell us the truth about what happened
after the troll took you!"
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