The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘I had thought to find the piece ready,’ Nicholas hears. ‘Why is it not packed up and ready?’

  ‘Bishop Gilburtus is protesting against its removal, Don Antonio. It has been part of the cathedral’s fabric since it was first painted.’

  ‘Protesting?’ the other man says. ‘The bishop should consider it an honour to be able to present it to His Imperial Highness, the archduke. Though I have to say, God alone knows why anyone would want to keep such a grotesque thing.’

  ‘It was painted by Hieronymus van Aken, a son of Den Bosch,’ Vermeiren is saying. ‘The lord bishop believes this is where it should remain.’

  ‘That is of no interest to my master,’ the Spaniard says dismissively. ‘If you wish this cathedral to remain a cathedral, and not become a byre for cattle, you will have your workmen cover it up and load it on the cart, so that I—’

  As the Spaniard stops mid-sentence, Nicholas hears more footsteps on the flagstones. Father Vermeiren calls out, reverting to Dutch, ‘Who are you? What do you want? Can you not see I am busy here?’

  The next moment comes a sound like someone crying out from a sudden attack of stomach cramp: a deep, groaning gurgling, followed immediately by the dull impact of a human body against hard stone. Then the sudden clatter of a steel blade on flagstones, followed by a single high-pitched scream – masculine – filled with agony.

  Behind the pillar, Nicholas reacts without thinking. His physician’s instincts overcome his desire to remain unseen. His legs move without the will’s command. As he steps out from the shadows of the stonework he is almost knocked off-balance by a man fleeing the chamber, disappearing into the dark body of the church.

  Now he can see that, besides himself, three people remain in the chamber. One of them is Father Vermeiren. He is lying on his back, one arm thrown out behind him, the other across his belly, his legs twisted sideways. His eyes stare sightlessly at the vaulted ceiling. By the amount of crimson spreading over the black cloth of his cassock, he appears to be in the process of transmuting into a cardinal before Nicholas’s eyes.

  The other man – portly, with a sunburnt face and neatly trimmed beard – lies close by, his head almost touching the priest’s. Nicholas can see by the yellow corselet and breeches, expensively slashed to show the silk lining, that he is no priest, but a Spanish officer. Like Vermeiren, his eyes are wide open. But there is still a measure of stunned life left in them, a guttering candle flame that looks moments away from extinction. His throat appears to have been slashed. The blood pumps thickly from a severed artery, anointing the flagstones. Close by lies a dagger, the blade the length of a man’s forearm. It is slick with blood.

  The third of this sanguinary trio is the only one very much alive.

  Nicholas is looking at a dark-haired young woman with a high, domed brow and eyes that seem almost too large for the face, though he puts this down to terror. Her plain cloth gown is liberally spattered with the gore the killer has so generously spread about the chamber. For a moment he can almost believe she is one of the tormented sinners, escaped from within the picture into the world of the as-yet-unjudged. She only makes her reality indisputable when she begins to scream.

  11

  For Nicholas, the next few minutes pass in a maelstrom that pushes the torments portrayed in the triptych out of his mind entirely. He has real horrors to attend to. Despite his best efforts to stem the blood pumping from the Spaniard’s throat, the man’s eyes slowly dull. Eventually they reflect nothing: no pain, no fear… no life.

  By then the chamber is full of people shouting in Dutch or Spanish. Save for Father Albani and Bianca, they achieve nothing other than stirring the chaos like witches around a cauldron. The captain of the Spanish garrison arrives, his sword drawn even in this house of God. Judging by his wild gesticulating and the whey-faced and trembling response it brings from the assembled priests and nuns, he appears to want to hang everyone from the trees around the Markt square. Nicholas, who has tended wounded Spaniards taken from the field of battle, shouts ‘Médico!’ at him, which at least delays their immediate lynching.

  Bianca and Father Albani are doing their utmost to soothe the terrified young woman in the blood-soaked kirtle. She has stopped screaming, but her crimson hands shake as though she’s contracted a severe case of the palsy.

  When it is clear that the Spaniard has passed beyond earthly help, Nicholas steps away from the two bodies. He turns to the captain and opens his bloody hands, shaking his head sadly to show he has done all he can. ‘Imposible… lo siento,’ he says regretfully. The man glares at him, his anger only slightly mollified.

  Freed from the need to fight for his patient, Nicholas sees a picture of the slaughter emerging in his mind. Father Vermeiren has been killed instantly, by a sudden knife thrust between the ribs and into the heart. The blow must have been unexpected, Nicholas thinks, because the priest’s hands are unbloodied, and there are no telltale rips on the sleeves of his gown, indicating that he tried to defend himself.

  The dead Spaniard seems to have been slashed across the throat, a sweeping arc of a blow that has torn through the larynx and the carotid arteries, also before he’d had a chance to act.

  The captain of the garrison begins yelling again. The rapidly changing expressions on his dark face are easy to read, even if his words – delivered in a strangely high-pitched tirade – are incomprehensible. He wants to know what Nicholas is doing here, what he has seen, what account he can give of the murders. But Nicholas has little more to give, even if he had the language.

  The man’s shouting subsides only when two deputies from the town assembly arrive, prosperous men with a civic solemnity about them that not even two bloodied corpses in their cathedral can shake. They escort Nicholas, Bianca and the bloodied, terrified apparition in the peasant’s gown down an echoing stone passage to a windowless storeroom. It is not exactly a dungeon, but with the iron grille that serves as a door closed behind them, it might as well be. The maid has started trembling again. Bianca calms her as best she can.

  One of the councillors holds aloft a tallow light, to study Nicholas’s face by. ‘Who are you?’ he asks in Dutch. ‘The captain said you are a physician, but I have never seen you before.’

  It seems to Nicholas that there is no profit to be had in lying. At least, not about his identity. ‘I am an Englishman. And this is my wife.’ He nods towards Bianca, who is clasping the maid to her breast, stroking her tangled hair like a mother with a child who’s woken from a nightmare. ‘We are refugees.’

  ‘Ah, you are the couple Meneer van der Molen brought us. We have heard of you,’ the other councillor says, as though observing some rare phenomenon of nature. He speaks good English – a wool merchant used to dealing with the heretics across the Narrow Sea, Nicholas guesses.

  ‘He told you?’ Nicholas asks, wondering if his trust in the owner of the fishing boat has been misplaced.

  ‘He did not have to. It is our job to know what occurs in our town. Why did you come?’

  ‘We fled out of England because I was denounced as a Catholic,’ Nicholas says, sticking to the story he and Bianca have contrived. ‘They accused an innocent old physician I knew of seeking to poison the queen. They tortured and executed him. I could have been next.’

  The burgher nods in sympathy. He says, ‘God will punish them, when He is ready. But it would appear you have inadvertently brought some of the heretics’ malevolence with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Nicholas asks.

  ‘The Protestant rebels in the northern states – I would hazard they are responsible for this.’ He regards the two corpses sadly. ‘It would not be the first time they have sent an assassin to murder a prominent Spaniard. But to commit sacrilege in God’s house, and slay an innocent priest while they do it: for that they will be damned to the eternal fires.’

  ‘Can you tell us what happened here?’ the councillor asks.

  ‘Not really. I didn’t see the actual attack,’ Nicholas says. I
t occurs to him that hiding in the shadows inside the little chapel might not look like the behaviour of an entirely innocent man. ‘I was merely taking a look at your fine cathedral while my wife was at confession.’

  The man nods. ‘So you cannot describe the assassin?’

  ‘Not really. A man pushed past me, but I didn’t get much of a look at him. Then I heard this poor girl screaming. As for the rest of it, well, the priest was clearly dead. I did all I could to save the other gentleman—’

  ‘He was more than just a gentleman; he was Don Antonio de Cantagallo, an officer in the household of the Archduke of Austria,’ the councillor says. ‘He had come from Antwerp to arrange the removal of that altarpiece.’ He looks at Bianca. ‘And your wife – she also saw nothing?’

  ‘I was at confession,’ Bianca says. ‘Ask Father Albani.’

  In the tallow light, Nicholas has the chance to study the maid a little more closely. Her trembling has ceased, but she keeps turning in the direction of the little slaughterhouse, as though she fears the killer might come after her to finish his task. Her face has a haunted look about it. The eyes fill their sockets like those of an injured animal, wide, hurt and uncomprehending; the narrow cheekbones below seem about to push through the skin. Her dark hair looks as if it’s been hacked with a blunt knife. To Nicholas, it is a face that a painter had intended to be beautiful, but while his back was turned some unseen hand had mixed a terrible wash of pain and solemnity into the colours.

  ‘Well, we know you well enough,’ the councillor says, coming nearer and ramming his thick hands into his hips like an angry parent.

  Bianca puts one defensive arm around the girl’s shoulders, pulling her closer.

  ‘You are the child who keeps frightening our citizens with what awaits them on the Day of Judgement,’ the burgher says, still speaking English, presumably for Nicholas’s benefit. ‘You’re the one who believes everything she sees in a painting. Did you come here to cause trouble for us with the Spanish, by defacing Master Hieronymus’s altarpiece?’

  The maid’s darting gaze comes to rest on the burgher, as if she’s seeing him for the first time. To the surprise of both Nicholas and Bianca, she answers in English that is even less accented than the councillor’s. ‘I came to ask Father Vermeiren to burn it, before the Spanish take it to Antwerp and infect the souls of even more of God’s innocent lambs.’

  ‘How very public-spirited of you. What happened, then?’

  ‘The rebel – he burst in… pushed me aside…’ She covers her eyes with her hands as though trying to block out the image. ‘He lashed out with his knife at the Spaniard. When… when Father Vermeiren tried to help him, the man thrust the blade into his breast.’ Inspecting her blood-smeared palms as though seeing them for the first time, she adds softly, ‘I tried to hold him up. I swear it, on all that’s holy. But he was too heavy. I had to let him go—’ She turns her face from the spread fingers as though blaming them for the failure.

  ‘Describe this man.’

  ‘I cannot.’

  ‘You cannot, or you will not?’

  ‘I saw only his eyes. The rest of his face was covered by a cloth.’

  ‘What was he wearing?’

  ‘I can’t recall.’

  ‘How convenient.’

  Tears turn the blood left by her palms into watery smears of crimson. ‘It… it all happened so suddenly. I was frightened – terrified.’

  ‘The girl is clearly distraught, Meneer,’ Nicholas says. ‘Would it not be kinder to allow her some time to recover her composure? And somewhere more comfortable. Surely there is no cause to keep us here.’

  The councillor is practised at turning down petitions and suits laid before the city assembly. He has a stock of gestures and expressions designed to garner sympathy, even while he disappoints. ‘Sadly, no,’ he says. ‘I cannot release you until our Spanish friends agree – not after His Imperial Highness the archduke loses one of his favourite officers to an assassin in our humble cathedral.’

  The councillor gives the barest hint of a bow of regret. Placing the tallow light on the floor, he gestures to his companion to follow. Closing the iron grille behind him, he leaves Nicholas, Bianca and the maid to whatever thoughts they are brave enough to conjure from the surrounding darkness.

  ‘The Spanish will hang us all,’ the young woman says resignedly, when the echo of the closing door has been subsumed by the ancient stones of the cathedral. ‘We’ll never leave here alive. You must tell them I’m innocent. Perhaps they’ll listen to a physician.’

  Trying to take her mind off her fear, Nicholas asks, ‘Where did you learn to speak our language, Mistress…?’

  ‘Maas. My name is Hella Maas,’ she says, drawing a bloodstained sleeve across her eyes even as she avoids his question. ‘And if I spoke only Dutch, I could warn only the Dutch.’

  ‘Warn them about what?’ Bianca asks. ‘Do you mean Spanish retribution for the assassination?’

  ‘I mean the day when we are all judged. The day we are condemned to everlasting torment.’

  It is said in such a matter-of-fact tone that she could be speaking of market day rather than Judgement Day.

  ‘Oh, you mean the triptych,’ Nicholas says, rather more sceptically than he intended. ‘I admit it was troubling, compelling even. But it is just a painting.’

  Hella says, ‘Do you not see now how dangerous it is, to have such things revealed? If you, a physician, can be drawn to such images, imagine what damage they might do to a soul that is less educated. That is why I have to warn the people of Den Bosch. Knowledge is not always a gift—’ She breaks off as they hear the sound of a key turning in a lock and the discordant, mournful cry of the iron gate opening.

  ‘Holy Mary, Mother of God, they have come to hang us, just as I said they would,’ Hella whispers.

  A single figure emerges out of the shadows, a rushlight clasped in one hand. The flames cast demon’s claw-marks across his face. For a moment Nicholas wonders if the maid is right and the captain of the garrison has sent a priest to give the condemned the Viaticum.

  But it is only Father Albani, come to tell Bianca that he has managed to convince the captain and the burghers that she and Nicholas are nothing but innocent passers-by, caught up in a wicked attack by a deranged Dutch rebel. Numerous people – from the Sisters lighting the candles in the cathedral, to worshippers approaching from the Markt square – all testify to a solitary man fleeing into a side-street. The Spanish are searching for him at this moment. So Nicholas and Bianca are free to go. So too is Hella Maas, although on the subject of the triptych it might be safer for everyone if she keeps her warnings to herself for a while. The Bishop of Antwerp will have enough on his mind, grieving for his murdered priest, without being troubled by an itinerant maid preaching the imminent arrival of the Last Judgement.

  And Father Albani has a warning, too, for Nicholas and Bianca.

  ‘When the archduke hears of this,’ he says in that Lombardy accent that tugs at her memories of home, ‘he will send his people here to investigate further. I would not care to be a foreigner – an outsider – when they come, no matter how innocent. Or from what persecution you happen to be fleeing.’

  In the Markt square the citizens of Den Bosch are gathering, attracted by the news. They come alone, in pairs, in little groups of friends and family, coalescing, separating, swirling like leaves carried on the surface of an eddying stream. Are the rumours true? Have the rebel provinces of the north sent an assassin to our peaceful town to commit murder? Is it true that Father Vermeiren lost his life wresting with the killer? Is there no abomination to which the heretic rebels of the north will not stoop? And now the Spanish have doubled the guard on the city’s gates. They will send inquisitors from Antwerp or Brussels. They will treat us like enemies instead of subjects.

  As Nicholas and Bianca descend the steps of the cathedral, Hella Maas close on their heels, they can already see Spanish soldiers stopping the younger men in the growing crow
d. They are aided by the Den Bosch watch. What is your name, young fellow? Are you a native of this place? Account for your movements in the past hour...

  ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ Nicholas says in a low voice. ‘We’ve found ourselves in the midst of an upturned wasps’ nest.’

  ‘They have no cause to blame us,’ Bianca protests. ‘You fought to save that Spaniard. We’re innocent.’

  ‘That’s of little comfort. Your handsome Italian priest was right. We can’t stay here – it’s out of the question. Think what would have happened if that Spanish captain had ordered a search of our room at the van der Molens’. If they’d found the wheel-lock pistol and Robert Cecil’s letter of safe-passage, then not even your Petrine cross would have been enough to save us from the gallows.’

  ‘I have no fear left to spare for that consideration, Nicholas,’ she says. ‘Inside, I’m still shaking from the thought that if the assassin hadn’t dropped his knife, he might have killed you, too.’

  As they cross the square, Bianca notices how people stare at Hella Maas. Even though Father Albani has managed to borrow a brown cloth gown from one of the Sisters to cover her bloodstained clothes, they still nudge each other, glower at her with cold, suspicious eyes.

  ‘I think you would be wise to stay off the streets,’ Bianca says to her. ‘Do you have a family you can go to?’

  ‘None. I am alone here.’

  ‘Where do you live?’ Nicholas asks. ‘We’ll walk with you. It might help.’

  ‘I live between the water and the sky,’ the maid says mysteriously.

  ‘You’ll have to be a little plainer than that,’ Bianca says.