The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘You have studied at a university?’ Bianca had said in awe, recalling how the professors at the Palazzo Bo in Padua had laughed at her own demand to study medicine there. She had tried to keep the envy from her voice, telling herself that she had, after all, been only eight years old at the time.

  ‘I learned English, Latin and Italian,’ Hella had told her. ‘I served the learned men there, and I listened closely to them. They let me read their books. But they would not let me graduate, because God made me out of the rib of Adam. They said it was not proper for one of my sex.’

  Bianca had immediately felt a measure of sympathy, bolstered by the fact that there had been not the slightest hubris in the maid’s voice. She might have been laying claim to nothing more than a minor talent with bodkin and thimble.

  Apart from her command of several languages, it also seems that Hella Maas can recite from Euclid’s Elements, name the attendants of the North Star, knows the magic contained in certain numbers and can discourse with confidence on the subject of Master Copernicus and his theory of the cosmos. ‘God blessed the women of my family with great gifts,’ she had announced.

  Watching her now, a driven zealot in a borrowed gown striding through the empty landscape as though in flight from an unseen enemy, it occurs to Bianca that at some point God changed his mind. He turned benevolence into punishment. Though how and for what sin, Hella Maas has yet to tell them.

  On Bankside, a new Jackdaw tavern is rising from the ashes of the old. The oak frame is up, the brick walls are complete, glaziers are busy setting the lozenges of glass into the lead frames, thatchers scramble over the joists with the confidence of mariners aloft in the rigging of a ship at sea.

  It is not the Jackdaw of old. How could it be? For a start, the walls are too straight. They do not sag under the weight of centuries of collected insobriety. Where the timbers were once smooth and darkened with the smoky patina of age, now they are new and honey-coloured, bearing the rough marks of sawtooth, chisel and adze. The only survivors from the original are the chimneys, the brewhouse in the yard where the mad-dog was made and the tavern’s painted sign, which once hung over the lane. True, it is a little scorched. But it survives. Rose and Ned have sworn not to hang it in place again until Bianca and Nicholas have returned from wherever it is they are now.

  The steady progress has enabled Ned to pursue the lead given to him by the wherryman, Giles Hunte. He has taken several trips across the river to the Blackfriars water-stairs. For hours at a time he has hung around the jetty, wandered up St Andrew’s Hill or into Thames Street, or through the lanes around Baynard’s Castle, ostensibly just another citizen fortunate to have time on his hands. But so far, he has caught not so much as a glimpse of his quarry.

  At first there were numerous occasions when his imagination toyed with him, causing his huge frame to stiffen momentarily as he noticed a bald man, a thin man, a patched jerkin, a pair of cheap woollen hose… But always the fellow he saw was too bald, or not bald enough; too thin, too fat, too young, too old. Now he has managed to chain his impetuosity a little.

  He has thought about giving up. Rose is uncomfortable with these journeys across the river. He knows how much she fears he will revert to his old ways, when he knew no other way of handling the world’s objection to him than prodigious quantities of ale and the use of his fists. But why, he wonders, would she think he might risk going back there? Especially now that Rose is sure she is with child.

  That in itself is miracle enough for him. There had been a time when Ned had only the dead for company, his only home the mortuary crypt at St Tom’s – where he worked for pennies as a porter. He had almost come to believe that God intended him to dwell apart from the living, that he should have no place in the world above ground. There is nothing he intends to do that will risk him being buried a second time.

  Just a few more visits, he tells himself as he walks back towards the Blackfriars water-stairs. Two… maybe three. Four at the outside. After all, the little arseworm can’t stay hidden for ever.

  15

  Reims, Northern France, 20th July 1594

  The flat marshes of Brabant have given way to the rolling verdancy of the Champagne. Two weeks have passed since Nicholas, Bianca and Hella Maas left Den Bosch. Two weeks of steady march, the long miles of chalky road and meadow path taken yard-by-yard. Two weeks of sleeping in the barns of farmers who think the door to heaven may open a little easier for them if they offer clean straw to the pilgrim, or in the cellars of the pious. They avoid the taverns. Nicholas doesn’t want to make it too easy for any Privy Council searcher already on their tail.

  Muscles are stronger now. Blisters are a weakness of the past to be laughed at. Feet have hardened, tendons toughened. Nicholas’s Italian is growing ever more confident, less needful of Bianca’s correction. He is a quick learner. She puts it down to his command of Latin, learned at school and honed during his medical studies at Cambridge, where it had been the predominant form of exchange. She must still speak slowly if he is to catch the full meaning of what she says, but her hardest task is not letting him see her smile when she hears her own tongue spoken with a Suffolk burr.

  They hear the bells of the cathedral of Our Lady long before they see the city walls. The slow reverence of their tolling echoes through the gentle valley. It is the accompaniment to the crowning of French kings, and a call to the weary pilgrim to rest awhile in shady cloisters. For Nicholas, the sound provides a welcome respite from a particularly difficult exercise in Italian pronunciation. Out ahead, Hella does not slow her march for an instant.

  They follow her at a distance, their boots and ankles floured with chalk dust. They are walking a path between endless rows of vines, the sky lapis-blue above them, the sun’s hot touch brushing their shoulders.

  ‘It’s as if she’s compelled to reach God before anyone else does,’ Bianca says, looking ahead to where their companion strides out in determined fashion towards the soft rise that will afford them their first sight of Reims.

  ‘Does she walk with such determination because she’s in a hurry to arrive,’ asks Nicholas, putting voice to a question he has often asked himself since they left Den Bosch, ‘or because she is trying to escape?’

  It is a puzzle both of them have yet to solve.

  Taciturn she might be, dourly pious without a doubt, but when they enter Reims, Hella also proves herself invaluable. With passable French being just one of her professed accomplishments, she finds them good lodgings, even negotiates a fair price – no mean achievement in a town where to tell someone you’re a pilgrim doubles the cost of anything.

  The chamber she finds them lies above a hostelry. It has three straw mattresses, each with a freshly washed sheet embroidered with images of the saints to inspire the weary pilgrim. There is a night-soil pot discreetly hidden behind a similarly embellished hanging. They may empty it themselves – free of charge – on the midden behind the house, or pay a sou to the owner’s grandmother to dispose of it for them. When the shutters are thrown back, there is a fine view from the window, across the busy square to the great cathedral of Notre-Dame de Reims.

  ‘I must offer my heart to the Lord,’ Hella announces, gazing rapturously at the two blunted spires and the gallery of stone kings who gaze down on the people below with a hauteur that only French monarchs could contrive.

  ‘I’ve no doubt He’ll be expecting it,’ mutters Bianca as the door closes, leaving her and Nicholas alone. ‘You haven’t given Him a moment’s rest since we left Den Bosch.’

  Knowing their journey along the Via Francigena will be long and full of peril, Nicholas decides it would be wise to seek advice. He knows exactly where to find it, even though he has never visited Reims before – the local office of the English College of Douai. Just to set foot in the place could be considered treason. The seminary trains English Catholic priests to infiltrate their homeland and spread the papist heresy. Robert Cecil will expect him to remember faces and names. The next morning, fo
llowing the directions the landlord of the hostelry has provided, he and Bianca make the short walk to the Basilica of Saint-Remi.

  The air in the cloisters is heavy with the scent of wild flowers and the murmuring of summer insects at their prayers. After a short wait, the stillness is broken by the soft slap of sandal leather on flagstones. A rotund little fellow with a tonsure comes pattering towards them like an exuberant puppy.

  ‘Father Reginald Peacham,’ he announces. ‘What a joy to meet you. English pilgrims are rare these days. Is it true? Is the persecution of the faithful really as bad as we hear?’

  ‘In June they executed the queen’s physician,’ Nicholas tells him, deciding, somewhat uncomfortably, that Lopez’s death is as good a means as any of establishing his trustworthiness. ‘That was when we decided we could suffer there no longer.’

  A nod of commiseration from Father Peacham, a momentary shadow cast across his otherwise-bright disposition. ‘Of course I shall do all in my power to help you. We wouldn’t want you taking a wrong turn and ending up in Muscovy, or Constantinople, would we?’ He beams at Bianca. ‘Lost souls, and all that.’

  Pleased with his little joke, Father Peacham sets off on a circuit of the cloisters, moving in joyous bounds and clapping his fleshy hands together when a smile isn’t up to the job. Every now and then he pauses in his monologue of directions, warnings and general advice to sniff the flowers. Try as he might, Nicholas can see not the slightest trace of a seditious agent of the Antichrist anywhere in the man. But that is how Robert Cecil and the Privy Council would view him. They would send this little packet of good-natured piety to the scaffold without a second thought.

  From Reims, Father Peacham explains, they will follow the road to Clairvaux Abbey, to the east of Troyes, then on to Besançon on the River Doubs. From there they will ascend into the hills and forests, before dropping again to the shore of Lake Geneva at Montreux. The greatest challenge will be the St Bernard Pass through the mountains – as high as the birds fly, says Father Peacham. From there they will descend into the valley of the River Po. Weariness and blisters will be the least of it, he warns. Two hundred leagues to St Peter’s – some eight hundred miles. There will be brigands and thieves, wolves and bears; high mountains where the weak may stumble or fall, where even the fit can be broken. But worst of all, says Father Peacham with a sudden wide smile, there may be other pilgrims who may prove to be tedious companions. We’ve already got one of those, Bianca wants to say. But she keeps her counsel.

  At this point Nicholas shuts his ears to Father Peacham’s trilling voice as he lists the Italian towns they must pass. Rome is of no concern to him. They’re not going there. But Bianca listens. She lets the names of the towns swirl around inside her head, familiar little echoes of her childhood, even though she hasn’t visited a single one of them: Aosta… Pavia… Lucca… Siena…

  ‘When do you plan to leave?’ Peacham asks when he’s offered up the last of his wisdom.

  ‘Tomorrow morning, at first light,’ Nicholas says.

  ‘So soon?’

  ‘It is a long journey. The sooner we start—’

  ‘Indeed,’ Father Peacham sighs, ‘but I confess it would have been good to hear a little news of home.’

  Nicholas gives a regretful smile. His desire to be away so swiftly has an ulterior motive. For all his bonhomie, Father Peacham cannot be unaware that the queen’s Privy Council sometimes sends agents to spy upon the priests of the English College, agents who pass themselves off as Catholics fleeing persecution. A spy would say he intended to stay awhile. A spy would seek to insinuate himself into one’s confidence, ferret out names, make a note of appearances, tease out intentions.

  ‘It is true that you have a long, hard road ahead of you,’ the Jesuit says. ‘I will pray that God finds time to smooth it a little.’

  ‘Thank you, Father,’ Bianca says softly.

  Peacham looks up at Nicholas, his face suddenly full of sadness. ‘The queen’s physician, you say – executed?’

  ‘Yes. There was a crowd.’

  He sighs again, this one a little more protracted, a little more heartfelt. ‘Even when we seek to give them bodily succour, they turn on us. It is a sign of just how much they have need of us to open their eyes.’

  Nicholas suddenly has the awful suspicion that Peacham intends to make the journey to England, to follow in the doomed footsteps of so many of his fellows. ‘I wouldn’t go over, if I were you,’ he says, before the words have even formed in his mind. ‘They have watchers at all the ports now. You’d be caught before you stepped ashore.’

  ‘If God calls, my son, we cannot refuse Him simply because the path might be rocky and sown with thorn bushes.’

  Nicholas has the sudden urge to shout at this gentle little man, ‘Don’t go! There is nothing for you in England but an agonizing and humiliating death. It’s not worth it.’ But he suspects Father Peacham has a martyr’s steeliness beneath his merry carapace.

  When Nicholas and Bianca come away from the Basilica of Saint-Remi, each has a map in their mind of the journey ahead. But it is not the same map. Each has a different destination. Bianca is heading home. Nicholas feels that he is walking further into exile.

  Returning to their lodgings, they see a group of pilgrims in plain smocks and broad-brimmed straw hats preparing to depart. Their faces glow with expectation. Most are of middling age, fleshy, prosperous men, the sort who’ve decided it might be time to gain a little favour with the Almighty before it’s too late and think the Via Francigena is the way to do it. They remind Nicholas of the churchwardens and sidemen at St Saviour’s, paragons of comfortable piety.

  Close by are two younger men, talking to the owner of the hostelry. Their heads turn as Nicholas and Bianca pass, their gaze more penetrating than merely curious. At once Nicholas feels a prickle of concern crawl over his skin. Are they pilgrims? Or something else? Why have they suddenly taken an interest in him?

  He considers the possibilities. Perhaps they’re from Father Peacham’s seminary, keeping an eye on the English pilgrims to make sure they are who they claim to be. Perhaps the ebullient little priest wasn’t as trusting as he appeared. There again, they could be agents of the Privy Council. The English Crown is bound to have its watchers in the city, because for every pilgrim Peacham sends along the Via Francigena, there will be several more being prepared to make a different pilgrimage: into England, carrying with them papist sedition. If that’s who they are, then news of an unknown Englishman and his wife appearing in Reims could reach Whitehall in a matter of days.

  Reaching the hostelry door, Nicholas nods to the owner. He confines his greeting to a mumbled grunt; no point in advertising his Englishness. Once inside, he positions himself behind Bianca and glances back. As he does so, he catches the pair in a clearly ribald exchange, their eyes firmly on Bianca’s back as she begins to climb the stairs. They hurriedly look away, but not before Nicholas spots the sudden blushing of their cheeks. Not spies then, merely two young fellows who’ve seen a comely woman walk past.

  ‘He was a sweet old fellow,’ says Bianca, climbing a few steps ahead of him.

  ‘Who, Peacham?’

  ‘I’d be happy if he were my priest. He seemed a goodly man.’

  ‘I just pray he doesn’t take it into his head to try to slip into England. He must know what will happen to him if he does. They’re bound to catch him eventually.’

  ‘Martyrs come in all shapes and sizes, Nicholas. But they share the same courage.’

  ‘He’d be throwing his life away, and for what end?’

  Bianca reaches the landing. She lifts the latch and opens the door to their chamber. ‘You’re of the queen’s faith, Husband,’ she says. ‘You’ve never had to—’

  On the far side of the room – not directly in her line of sight, for the ancient floor slopes unevenly, so that Bianca must drop her gaze a little – Hella Maas is on her knees by the window, gazing rapturously towards the cathedral.

  In t
he two weeks they have spent together on the road, Bianca has grown accustomed to the maid’s displays of relentless, doom-laden piety. She seems to fear that God will take it into His head to announce that today is Judgement Day unless she intercedes on humanity’s behalf every couple of hours. So it is not the sight of a penitent deep in prayer that stops Bianca in her tracks, it is what she holds in her hand: a silver crucifix of St Peter, raised to the window so that it gleams in the light, the upside-down torso offered to the cathedral across the square.

  It is Bianca’s Petrine cross.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ Bianca asks, too startled at first to be really angry. Then the realization strikes. ‘You’ve gone through my bags. Why?’

  Hella turns to her. She lowers her hands so that the saint’s nailed feet are pointing towards her, the transverse beam like a crossbow aimed at her heart.

  ‘I am praying for you, Bianca,’ she says, her face suffused with a frightening intensity. ‘You must be grateful. It is necessary.’

  Bianca is speechless. The cross is one of her most intimate possessions. It is her late father’s cross, one of the few remembrances she has of him. It is on its way home. And now it has been taken from its hiding place without so much as a please. She feels as though she has been robbed.

  ‘Of course it’s necessary to pray,’ she replies, almost biting her tongue. ‘But… but I can do it for myself, thank you.’ She walks forward and reaches out to take the cross from the kneeling girl.

  ‘It won’t be enough. You do know that, don’t you?’

  The statement has a coldness about it that chills Bianca to the bone.

  ‘If this is another of your warnings about the end of days, Hella, I think we have had one too many of them. It’s going to be a long enough journey, as it is. So from now on, Nicholas and I would be grateful if you would keep your peace on the matter. Now give me the cross.’