Changeling Read online

  Table of Contents

  A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part One

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Part Two

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  A selection of titles by Sarah Rayne

  BLOOD RITUAL*

  DEVIL’S PIPER*

  THE BURNING ALTAR*

  THORN: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

  WILDWOOD: AN IMMORTAL TALE*

  PROPERTY OF A LADY

  THE SIN EATER

  *Originally published under the pseudonym of Frances Gordon

  CHANGELING

  AN IMMORTAL TALE

  Sarah Rayne

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This title first published in 1998 by HEADLINE BOOK PUBLISHING a division of Hodder Headline PLC 338 Euston Road, London NW1 3BH

  eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn House Digital an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 1998 by Frances Gordon

  The right of Frances Gordon to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0068-6 (epub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  PART ONE

  There was once a miller who had a very beautiful daughter of whom he was so vain and proud, that one day he boasted how she could spin gold out of straw . . .

  German Popular Stories, Translated from the Kinder und Haus-Marchen, collected by M. M. Grimm from oral tradition, 1823

  Chapter One

  Tod Miller was uneasily aware that he might have got himself into a potentially embarrassing situation.

  The trouble was that the dream was within reach again; the dream that had been so dazzling and that had seemed so promising twenty years ago, but that had somehow tarnished over, was within his reach again. It was hovering like a will o’ the wisp on the horizon once more, and Tod was damned if he was going to let it turn to dross in his hands this time.

  Rebirth. That was not too strong a word, because it was what was happening here in this over-furnished room with the myopic, balding-pated little man seated behind the enormous desk. He forced himself to pay attention to Gerald Makepiece’s squeaky excitement: something about how it was going to be a new venture for Makepiece to be financing a West End musical, something else about how Makepiece was going to find it all so very interesting. How Gerald knew all about Mr Miller’s earlier fame because of some local company having put on an amateur performance of the Dwarf Spinner. Tod at once assumed his expression of polite and interested sincerity, although amateurs were always reviving the Dwarf Spinner and none of them ever really managed to convey the creeping menace of the story, or the gargoyle evil of the dwarf-magician who spun the straw into gold and extorted the terrible pledge of the gift of the heroine’s first-born child.

  ‘Really a very effective story,’ little rabbity Makepiece was saying. ‘It’s the old Grimm’s fairytale, isn’t it? Rumpelstiltskin. My word, I did enjoy it, Mr Miller.’

  Tod smiled faintly and looked at his fingernails.

  ‘Of course, they didn’t do the final scene on stage, you understand. The one where—’

  ‘The dwarf tears himself into two pieces in a tantrum,’ finished Tod. ‘No. Amateurs never do.’

  ‘Well, no. Quite. But how you ever conceived of such a thing I can’t imagine.’

  Tod made a faint deprecatory gesture with his hands.

  ‘Well now,’ said Gerald, happily, ‘to our muttons, as the French say. Time to talk about this matter of money, Mr Miller.’

  ‘Ah yes, the sordid subject of coinage.’ Tod thought it would be overdoing it to pinch the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, but he managed to convey high-minded disinterest.

  Gerald assumed a businesslike manner and said, ‘Exactly how much would be necessary to finance an entire show, Mr Miller?’

  ‘Are we talking about the whole shooting match, Mr Makepiece?’ Tod knew perfectly well that they were, but it was as well to get things straight at the outset. He said, ‘You do mean the entire works? From first read-through to opening night? Theatre rental, sets, designers, costumes, cast, rehearsal rooms, orchestra, publicity—’

  ‘Oh yes.’ Little Makepiece was fairly wriggling in his seat with delight, as if the words that Tod had plucked more or less at random were a magical invocation. ‘Yes, I do mean all those things. How much would they all cost?’

  Tod told him.

  It would be too much to have said that Makepiece blenched, since he was of a putty-coloured complexion to begin with. But the albino-rabbit-lashes certainly blinked several times. Tod waited. Fiscally speaking, he was prepared to haul down his flag a bit, but he was not going to make the first move.

  Mr Gerald Makepiece did a few sums on a minute calculator, muttering as he did so. At last he beamed and said, ‘I think that amount might be possible, Mr Miller. Yes, I think that subject to a couple of trivial conditions, it might be perfectly possible.’ He tapped the end of his pen thoughtfully on the desk-top. ‘You could write the music and the – what is it called? – the term you use for the story and the dialogue in a musical?’

  ‘The book,’ said Tod.

  ‘Oh yes, the book. You could do it all?’

  Tod felt a sudden lurch of panic, treacherously mingled with rising excitement, and Makepiece said happily, ‘Well, that’s a ridiculous question, isn’t it? I’m talking to the man who wrote the Dwarf Spinner.’

  He beamed and Tod said, ‘Quite. Yes, of course I could do it.’

  The pity was that he had had to come out of London, to this cold, ugly northern town, to revive his beautiful dream. The tragedy was that so many people would know it.

  This was not good. Tod knew what they said about him these days: there’s Tod Miller, they said. Good old Toddy. Bit of a failure, poor old chap. Bit of a back number. Wrote that brilliant pop musical in the sixties and then never wrote another thing. His wife died and
he dropped into obscurity. Makes his living writing baked-bean ditties and jingles for cheese biscuits now, and segues for local radio. No one’s supposed to know, but everyone does. Very sad. There’s a grown-up daughter as well, rather a stunner by all accounts.

  It was a pity that the biscuit and baked-bean adverts had become public knowledge, although there was nothing shameful about them. It was honest work and it was not unrewarding, and a man had to eat. A man had to provide for his only daughter, as well. It had not been easy either, what with Aine having died when Fael was barely five, what with Fael crashing her own car eighteen months ago, and her injuries taking so very long to heal. A man was entitled to feel a bit aggrieved over losing his wife to a jack-knifing oil tanker on the Ml and his daughter to a wheelchair.

  The trouble was that when you had been the toast of London’s theatreland for a season and when you had even had your own affectionate soubriquet – ‘Hot Toddy’, they had called him – you were entitled to want to keep the beans and biscuits quiet. Tod wanted to be remembered for the Dwarf Spinner: the dark gutsy musical of the Grimm Brothers’ fairy story, rather than as the man responsible for the Beany Boppers’ Beanfeast (‘Bop your way to high-fibre bean-health’), or somebody-or-other’s Spreadi-Crackers-and-Rolls: ‘“Stilton Squares and Cheddar Snaps. Edam Sticks and Gouda Baps”, sung by your own, your very own, Miss Camembert Crumpet . . .’ (Wearing a cheese-cloth bikini and sporting a stick of celery in each hand.)

  Tod was not really ashamed of the Crumpet, who had earned him a reasonable living over the last couple of years. But it was hardly opera bouffe. It was hardly Gilbert & Sullivan or Gershwin or Andrew Lloyd-Webber either, and Tod was worthy of higher things. In his most cherished press-cutting, a critic had actually likened the Dwarf Spinner’s final scene to the scene in Marlowe’s Dr Faustus where the devils drag Faust down to hell to tear him apart and claim his soul. ‘Both present the same phenomenal problems in staging,’ he had said. ‘But both are such dazzling pieces of theatre that every possible effort should be made to overcome the problems. I hope that in years to come, people won’t flinch from staging the Dwarf Spinner’s closing scene on technical grounds, as they do from Faustus’s. Because while one must have every sympathy with the difficulties, it would be a great pity if this remarkable piece of Grand Guignol theatre should be lost.’

  It was an even greater pity that the Dwarf Spinner’s acknowledged creator – the man who had almost been compared to Marlowe, for goodness’ sake! – was reduced to such embarrassing straits to earn his living! But it was all about to change. Tod could refer to the Crumpet and the Beany Boppers with a deprecatory shrug now. Mere froth and fluff. One had actually rather enjoyed working in that side of the business. And all the while the frustrations and the shabbinesses – the pitying kindnesses of the last twenty years would be sloughing away. Rebirth.

  He beamed at little Gerald Makepiece and waited to learn what the trivial conditions attached to this financial arrangement might be.

  Whatever they were, he would meet them.

  Fael Miller finished playing the Chopin Nocturne which had suited her mood this morning. It might as easily have been Cole Porter or Brubeck or Lennon & McCartney (she did a terrific moody blues version of ‘Hey Jude’), but it happened to have been Chopin. Professor Roscius, who had taught her music all those years ago, had said that to do justice to the filigree quality of Chopin’s work the pianist needed extreme depth and breadth of soul. He had had a way of painting wonderful word pictures about music and composers, as well as imbuing his pupils with his own passion for music. Once Fael had got past the adolescent stage of being secretly in love with him, which was a stage most of his female pupils went through, she had learned a great deal from him, before he went back to Ireland and died there. She did not think she had any more depth and breadth of soul than anyone else, but she enjoyed playing Chopin and remembering what the professor had said about Chopin’s music.

  She closed the lid of the piano and wheeled the chair into the kitchen. It was unlikely that her father would get back to London in time for lunch; in fact it was unlikely that he would be back for supper. It was anybody’s guess how long he would be in Yorkshire.

  As Fael heated soup and buttered a roll to go with it she hoped that Tod was not doing something squirm-making or outrageous or both in Yorkshire. He could sometimes be hugely embarrassing, button-holing people in a bluff confiding manner and outlining plans to them for spectacular new shows which they did not want to hear about. He did it with visitors to the house as well, and he even did it in restaurants, interrupting people who did not want to be interrupted. Sometimes it was obvious that they were with companions they ought not to be with, and you could see them flinching. It was dreadful to feel so embarrassed by your own father, and it was appalling to want to disassociate yourself from him at those times.

  But the times when he acknowledged his failure and talked about his inadequacies were worse, because that was when he drank himself into a black depression and said the world was against him and he might as well be dead, and in any case he was the victim of jealous conspiracies and envious hatred. Quite often Fael ended up shouting that Tod was childish and egocentric and plain bloody maudlin on these occasions, and then Tod stormed crossly about the house slamming doors and ringing people up to tell them how he was misunderstood by everyone, even his own daughter, and how it was sharper than a serpent’s tooth to nurture a thankless child.

  It was a relief to be spared all that for a couple of days, especially since there was this afternoon’s concert at the Disabled Children’s Clinic, which was an important event for the clinic. Fael had got involved while undergoing the physiotherapy that was gradually helping her to walk again: it was a very long job indeed and it was exhausting at times, but at least she could get across a room with only a stick now, although anything beyond that was still impossible, and stairs were hopeless.

  But a few weeks ago one of the physiotherapists had asked whether she might like to help with the disabled children, and one thing had led to another and Fael had found herself enjoying it. She liked trying to make the children take part in ordinary activities: there were some very sad cases, but there were some very intelligent children as well, and it was terrific to see them responding. She read to them a couple of times a week and played the piano for singing sessions, and encouraged them to write stories which they had to read aloud. Quite often she illustrated the stories by playing the piano – there were always bits of Prokofiev that could be used, or the pieces Debussy had written for his daughter, or Leopold Mozart’s Toy Symphony or the Nutcracker Suite. There were pop songs and TV jingles as well. Two of the children were having piano lessons as a result and three more were learning the recorder.

  Today they were going to act out Peter and the Wolf which Fael had adapted, producing a simplified version. Parents and family were coming and staff from other parts of the clinic as well, and everyone was looking forward to it. Fael was looking forward to it as well. She was going to wear a black silk jacket and tight black trousers with high black boots with a silver stripe down the side. She mostly wore boots, because people tended to admire the boots rather than wonder embarrassedly about her legs. There was nothing much wrong with the shape of her legs, as it happened. She thought there was nothing much wrong with the rest of her either.

  The trivial condition that Gerald Makepiece had referred to was not trivial at all.

  Tod, who simply wanted to get out of this slab-faced town and back to London with Gerald Makepiece’s assurance (written assurance, it had better be) folded in his wallet, thought that trivial was the last word you would use.

  ‘Not a leading part, you understand,’ little Makepiece said, tripping over his words with excitement, pouring Tod a glass of sherry from a decanter behind his desk. Sherry at eleven o’clock in the morning? Nobody drank sherry in the morning these days, for God’s sake. Tod downed it anyway.

  ‘Ah. Not a leading part?’


  ‘Oh no. One wouldn’t want to be thought guilty of nepotism.’ Makepiece looked properly shocked. ‘Not that she isn’t perfectly capable, of course, although she’ll tell you she’s a little rusty. But I shouldn’t take any notice of that if I were you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Oh no. She’s really done some very good stuff – you might like to see some of her press cuttings . . .’ Little Makepiece lost himself amid a welter of half-sentences and excitement.

  Tod said, ‘A – hum – a lady friend, is this?’ Makepiece did not look as if he had the balls for that kind of thing, but you never knew.

  ‘Oh no, I’m talking about my wife,’ said Gerald, proudly.

  ‘Ah. Oh, yes I see.’

  ‘She was professional, you know. A singer. Light opera and musical comedy mostly – do they still call it that? And she was doing very well, but when we got married eighteen months ago – I should explain she’s a little younger than I am – she gave up her career, even though I said it wasn’t necessary.’

  Tod thought: back row of the chorus in a touring production of the Mikado. Voice like a corncrake and a barmaid’s disposition.

  ‘A touring production of lolanthe,’ said Makepiece. ‘Only a chorus role, you understand, but a voice like an angel, and a generous disposition.’

  Near enough. Tod said, politely, ‘I shall be interested to meet her.’

  Gerald Makepiece was pleased that Mia had dressed with care for the lunch with Tod Miller. Of course, she had an eye for colour, and she really looked very smart in the fur coat that it had been Gerald’s delight to buy for her. He had been a little surprised at the request: he had thought ladies did not care to wear fur these days because of conservation and save-the-seals and so on, but Mia had said, no, it was perfectly acceptable providing the fur was not cheap.

  And of course she knew just what to say to Tod Miller, both of them having been in theatrical circles, although it was a pity that Miller did not seem to know any of the people Mia was mentioning. Gerald beamed all through the lunch which was at the Royal on account of wanting to properly impress their guest. A proper lunch they had, with different sauces served with the entree and the steak, and a good burgundy to drink. Mia enjoyed burgundy; she said you could tell a gentleman by the wine he drank. Tod Miller clearly enjoyed burgundy as well, because he drank quite a lot of it and they had to order a second bottle and then a third. Gerald did not grudge a drop, because this was the man who would give Mia her great breakthrough. Miller had a couple of large brandies afterwards as well. Of course, people in the theatre world did drink quite a lot.