The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘What will be required of my Ned?’ Rose asks doubtfully.

  ‘All he has to do is appear before the ecclesiastical court and recite the opening verses of the fifty-first Psalm, in Latin.’

  Expecting her face to lighten, all Lumley sees in her brimming eyes is more misery. Her chest heaves. She says, in a tortured voice, ‘But… but Ned cannot read, my lord. He ’as not the letters in his ’ead.’

  Lumley covers his nose and chin with one palm as he digests the news. ‘Can you read, Rose?’ he asks, looking at her over the tip of his fingers.

  ‘Yes, my lord – and write, too. Mistress Bianca gave me the skills.’

  ‘Do you possess a Bible, Rose?’

  ‘Of course, my lord,’ Rose snorts tearfully.

  ‘Then we had better pray that your Ned’s memory is as sharp as his temper.’

  34

  On the day of his meeting with Hella Maas, Nicholas leaves Bruno’s house on the Borgo dei Argentieri after breakfast. He has told Bianca that he is going to the Palazzo Bo, to attend another of Professor Fabrici’s lectures. A lie told in order to protect, he convinces himself, is hardly a lie at all. Bianca, suffering the indignities of the tailor who has come to check the measurements for the new gown that Bruno has insisted she have for the Feast of the Holy Rosary, seems barely interested in his explanation.

  He arrives at Galileo’s lodgings in the Borgo dei Vignali just as the bell in the nearby church tolls eight. The street door is open. Under the gaze of the pretty young woman watching from the first-floor window opposite, he enters.

  Professor Galileo is sitting in the courtyard, one knee providing support to a heavy leather-bound book on Euclid’s theorems by Benedetti, the other stuck out at a jaunty angle, the foot tucked round a leg of the chair. With his free hand, the mathematician is munching a peach.

  ‘Fortunate she’s a Beguine,’ he says, spitting out the stone, ‘or else the university’s rector might accuse me of running a bordello and rescind my appointment.’

  ‘Where is she?’ Nicholas asks, wondering if he dares ask Galileo for a cup of wine to fortify his resolve.

  ‘Inside, with Matteo. They’re working on something for Signor Purse. We think the Corio brothers might have erred: they’ve produced some cogs for the orbit of Saturn that will have it colliding with Jupiter after three revolutions, and that will never do.’

  ‘I will need privacy.’

  ‘You shall have it, Niccolò, never fear.’ He lays the book aside. ‘You’re lucky she’s here, mind.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Yesterday Matteo took her to the Palazzo Bo, to show her the work on the anatomy theatre that old Fabrici is spending all the university’s money on. I was beginning to wonder if they were coming back. I think Matteo is smitten. Odd choice, if you ask me. She’s too serious for my liking. A woman who can count is all well and good, but only if she smiles occasionally.’

  Galileo leads him up a flight of stairs to a plainly furnished chamber set back from the first-storey loggia. Matteo and Hella are stooped over a table on which Nicholas can see papers bearing calculations and diagrams. When the maid looks up, he thinks he detects a faint glint of satisfaction in her eyes, though her face remains still.

  ‘Matteo, I need some papers I left at the Palazzo Bo,’ Galileo says.

  The pupil begins to protest. ‘But, Maestro, I—’

  ‘I haven’t notated the other side of the equation yet. “Matteo, I need some papers” equals “Do as I command, or I’ll recommend to your father that you study theology instead of mathematics.” How would a chaste life in holy orders suit you?’

  When the professor and his pupil have gone, Nicholas says, ‘Walk with me awhile, Hella. I wish to speak plainly with you.’ He beckons her to follow him out onto the loggia that runs along all four sides of the house, a shady colonnade encompassing the courtyard below. He puts a hand to his mouth and gives a fast double cough, as though he has a diagnosis to deliver that might not be what the patient wishes to hear.

  But before he can start, Hella says, ‘I knew that eventually you would come after me, Nicholas.’

  ‘Come after you? What do you mean?’

  ‘It was inevitable.’ She gives him another of her mirthless smiles. ‘We are but opposite sides of the same card, you and I. And you want to know what is on its face: the Lovers or the Hangman.’

  ‘This is not a game, Hella. Not to me. Not now that you have hurt Bianca so.’

  ‘I am not responsible for your wife’s jealousy, Nicholas.’

  He manages to calm a sudden surge of anger. ‘She isn’t jealous – she’s frightened. And I want to know why.’

  ‘I have told you both: once something is known, it cannot then be unknown. In consequence, all that then befalls the discoverer is theirs to own.’

  He stops. ‘Listen to me, Hella. I’ve come here to try and help you.’

  ‘I do not need your help, Nicholas. I am not sickly.’

  ‘I think you are, in your heart. I believe the grief you have suffered – the loss of your sister and the others in your family – has brought a great melancholy upon you. I understand that. I, too, have chosen in the past to live in darkness rather than in light. But you were not to blame for what happened, whatever you have told yourself. You did not see the future any more than I did. You didn’t foresee what was going to befall those you loved. I didn’t foresee what was going to happen to my first wife and the child she was carrying, but in the pain that came afterwards, I too convinced myself that it was my fault, that there were signs I should have seen: warnings. But I was wrong. If there is a Purgatory, Hella, Bianca led me out of it. You, too, must seek the way out of the Purgatory you have built inside your mind. I can help you – if you let me.’

  Her eyes have been locked on his throughout. They have not faltered for a moment. ‘Why were you hiding in that chamber in the cathedral at Den Bosch, Nicholas?’

  Surprised, he asks, ‘What does it matter now?’

  ‘What was it you really feared?’ she persists. ‘Being discovered somewhere you shouldn’t have been? Or had sight of that painting driven you into the darkness?’

  ‘It is of no consequence now,’ he says, realizing that she is stealing the resolve from him.

  ‘I think you hid because, in your heart, you had gone into that chamber to seek knowledge of what lay within. I’ve told you before how dangerous that can be. Do not blame me for the consequences.’

  ‘And my coming here now – I suppose you could divine that, by the patterns of the arches in the arcades around the Palazzo Bo, in the lines of geese flying overhead or in the fall of the numbers you hold such store by?’

  ‘Don’t mock me, Nicholas.’

  ‘If you had any foreknowledge of why I have come here, it is only because you knew that eventually I would learn what it was you said to Bianca on the Via Francigena.’

  ‘She has told you?’

  ‘No. That is why I am here.’

  ‘Then you should look to your wife for the answer,’ she says airily. ‘Do not seek it from me.’

  He cannot stop himself reaching out to seize her arm. ‘What did you tell her? She thinks you have cursed her.’

  Hella pulls herself free. She stares back at him defiantly.

  ‘If I tell you, Nicholas, I warn you now: you will not be able to unhear my words. They will stay with you for ever.’

  ‘I have to know. I have to find a way to bring Bianca back to me.’

  Her eyes lift a little, staring out of the loggia as though seeking divine approval. ‘I told her that your baby will be stillborn. I told her that she will be barren thereafter. It is what I have seen. It is what Hannie has seen – my sister, my dead sister.’

  Nicholas thinks the floor of the loggia has given way. He feels as though he is plunging to destruction, that he will go on plunging – through the earth itself – in a descent that will never stop. The sensation is suddenly all too familiar to him. It is not a loggia in Padua he i
s falling from, but the wet planks of a Thames river stairs. It is not a warm morning in Italy, but a chill night in London, some four years ago. And it is not someone else’s actions that have made him fall, but his own. He is falling towards icy water, waiting for its cold embrace to drown out the voice of his dead wife, Eleanor, as she whispers in his head. She is pleading with him to perform a miracle with his physic – a miracle that will save her and the child she is carrying. And though in reality he knows she never spoke a word when she slipped towards oblivion, in his head he is waiting for the river to cleanse him of her accusing voice, cleanse him of all the useless knowledge that failed them both.

  And then he is no longer falling. He is lying in a sweat-stained bed in the attic of a Bankside tavern. His eyes are focusing on reality for the first time in days, trying to make out the features of a young woman who has just appeared in the doorway. She has strong, almost boyish features that narrow to a defiant chin. A face that could be stern, if it wasn’t for the generous mouth and the astonishingly brilliant amber eyes. Her hair is a rich ebony, burnished by a foreign sun. An exotic flower, he thinks, blooming in the wasteland that is his recent memory. ‘You’re awake,’ the young woman observes dispassionately in a faint accent he can’t quite place. ‘I imagine you must be hungry. Can you manage a little breakfast? There’s larded pullet. We have some baked sprats left over, too. I’ll have my maid Rose lay out a trencher...’

  As the image fades, Nicholas knows his resurrection is complete. Nothing Hella can say to him – nothing she can say to Bianca – can unlock the door he has chosen to close behind him.

  ‘How much hurt must you have suffered to be so cruel?’ he says, as gently as he can. ‘If that is the future you think you saw, why in the name of all that is holy did you not just keep your thoughts to yourself?’

  ‘You were sent to me, Nicholas,’ Hella says, as though trying to reason with a distracted child. ‘You were sent as confirmation that I am right. I knew it from the moment I saw you step out of the shadows in that chamber in the cathedral. That could not have been mere chance. If you had not wanted the knowledge, you would have remained in hiding.’

  He lets out a snort of derision. ‘It was chance. Nothing more. We shouldn’t even have been in Den Bosch. We were bound for Antwerp.’

  ‘But can’t you see the pattern, Nicholas? Every little piece falls into place when you look at the whole.’

  Unable to control the sudden wave of disgust that sweeps over him, Nicholas says coldly, ‘Take back the curse, Hella. Take it back! Or by God, I’ll finish what that Dutch rebel failed to.’

  But she doesn’t even blink. ‘No, you won’t, Nicholas,’ she says with frightening calmness. ‘You want to know if I’m right. You’re driven by the same appetite as I – to seek what lies behind the curtain. You’re not so much of a coward that you will turn away for fear of what you will find there. But I have looked already. I know I am already damned.’

  He turns and walks away towards the stairs.

  ‘You will come to me eventually, Nicholas,’ he hears her call out, even as he raises his hands to his ears. ‘Why do you think I am here in Padua? It isn’t to help Galileo and that fool Matteo with their calculations; it’s to be where you can find me. You will come back to me – it is written. The signs are all there, like the signs that foretell what is coming: the rains, the storms, the comets, the war, the pestilences… They are all telling us that time is running out.’

  He tries to shut out the sound of her voice as he goes. But her parting words are a cold breeze blowing in his ears.

  ‘Don’t delay, Nicholas. Don’t leave it too long. I cannot face what is coming alone. And there is very little time left.’

  35

  The Marshalsea Prison, Bankside, 2nd October 1594

  In the sickly grey light filtering through the rain that streams down the leaded-glass window, Rose Monkton eases herself out of her husband’s embrace. She can feel his reluctance to let her go, as though his great fingers are already beginning to stiffen after the long drop from the gallows.

  ‘How is your memory, ’Usband?’ she asks, taking stock of how he seems a little diminished since last she saw him. His great auburn beard will require a good trimming, she thinks. And he’ll need a clean linen shirt. The ecclesiastical court will take a lot of convincing, but it will be down to Ned alone to save himself.

  ‘My memory?’

  He seems confused by her question.

  ‘Yes, your memory. How is it?’

  ‘Have I forgotten something, Wife?’ he asks, perplexed. ‘I know it’s not our anniversary. An’ it’s not your birthday…’

  ‘No, ’Usband. You have forgotten nothing. It is a simple question. How good are you at remembering things?’

  ‘Why do you ask, Rose?’

  ‘I have been to see Lord Lumley. He says there is no hope for us – but one. He would have you plead Benefit of Clergy.’

  ‘He wants me to call a priest?’ Ned asks, misunderstanding her. ‘Does he think giving me papist absolution before I ’ang is going to help?’

  Rose looks horrified. ‘No, ’Usband. If you plead the Book, sentencing will fall to the Church authorities, not a temporal court. A first offence will be punished only with a branding upon the thumb – an M, to show you’ve been judged guilty of slaying a man – so that you cannot plead mercy again, should you commit another felony. Not that you did commit a felony – you’re innocent… I know that… but it’s the only way.’

  Ned lays a steadying hand upon Rose’s shoulder to stop her words running away with her. ‘Well, what’s a sore thumb, Wife, if it joins what has been torn asunder?’

  The tears begin to flow again. ‘Oh, but dearest Ned, it is not that easy. You must sermonize from the Bible – Psalm fifty-one – like you was a parson. An’ there’s you without the readin’…’

  Ned offers her a huge smile that stops the tears mid-flow.

  ‘So you want to know if my memory is up to learning what you will read out to me – is that it?’

  Rose snorts a rapid volley of watery breaths. ‘I… I lie abed at night, unable to sleep for weeping. I know Mistress Bianca thinks I’m an addle-pate an’ can’t keep one thought in my head longer than an ’eartbeat, but I ’ave tried so hard to think of a way of saving you from the noose. An’ now Lord Lumley offers this chance, but you can’t read. So I must read to you, an’ you must remember it, Ned – perfectly. If you gets it wrong, all is lost. And I know how hard remembering is. I fear you will forget.’

  Ned guides her to the mattress. He eases her down gently, her body folding compliantly to the pressure of his hands. He sits beside Rose, pulls her head into the cushion of his armpit.

  ‘There, sweet, there. Trouble yourself no more. You will sleep easy tonight.’

  She looks up at him. ‘How?’ she asks. ‘How shall I sleep, when all I think about is losing my Ned?’

  ‘Let me tell you of the time before I met you, Rose,’ he begins. She feels the great rumbling of his voice through his shirt, as it flows from the wellspring deep inside him. ‘You know well that I was a solitary man…’

  She nods.

  ‘My days and my nights were not spent like other men’s. I lived amongst the dead – in the mortuary crypt at St Tom’s hospital. You know that.’

  Another nod.

  ‘The dead were all I had for company. They were poor, for the most part: men, women, children… vagrants, vagabonds, outcasts… sailors drowned in the river… suicides destined to lie alone in unconsecrated ground. They were my only company. An’ when they left the crypt for a pauper’s grave – an unmarked pauper’s grave – they had only me to remember them, to mourn them. So I remembered their names. An’ if they had no name, why, I would give them one. An’ every day I would take a moment to speak those names – a score or so in a sitting – so that they would not be forgotten.’

  Ned pulls Rose even closer. She can smell his unwashed body and the musty smell of his linen shirt.
It is like a balm to her. He could be a father soothing his child to sleep, telling her a tale of knights and princesses, dragons and queens. She feels safe for the first time in weeks.

  ‘So fear not for my memory, Rose Monkton,’ he whispers softly as he kisses the top of her head, inhaling the clean scent of apple from the pomatum she uses to tame her wild curls, ‘’tis as sharp as it ever was.’

  As Bruno Barrani approaches the stone bridge to the Porta Portello in the early evening of the following day, his thoughts whine like the clouds of zanzare rising from the surface of the canal. And, like their bites, they cannot be ignored. Until the Podestà acceded to his request for the Arte dei Astronomi to take part in the great parade to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Rosary, he hadn’t appreciated how much there would be to consider.

  For instance: where in the parade should the Arte be permitted to march? At the front, naturally, Bruno had suggested boldly. The Podestà had laughed at that, pointing out that the vanguard was reserved for the most influential guild – the richest guild. The best Bruno had been able to screw out of the pompous old clown was a position in the rear third, between the water carriers and the basket weavers. That had stung. But he could live with it; next year, perhaps…

  Then there was the matter of a suitable banner. After much consideration, he had decided upon a field of dark-blue silk, with a pattern of stars woven out of gilded thread. It would be carried on a cross of spruce.

  Livery was something else he hadn’t thought about until now. The city’s newest company could not possibly march in its present attire. Look at the Corio brothers: they dress like bandits. Bondoni can’t afford to dress any better than a beggar, because his mistress and their six children leave him without so much as a scudo for clothes. So Bruno has had to pay through the nose to get them fitted out. And finding a tailor at this late hour who can stitch a straight seam has taken all his ingenuity. Still, he thinks, it will all be worth it when his own bust is placed with great ceremony upon the balustrade of this bridge, beside the other great men of Padua.