The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘You sincerely believe her life could be in danger?’ she asks when he has finished speaking.

  ‘Yes, Madonna. I thought at first he might have been an English bounty-hunter – that it was me he was following. Now I believe Signorina Maas is his intended quarry.’

  ‘Have you come to any conclusion as to why this man should want to harm her?’ Madonna Antonella asks.

  ‘I believe it has something to do with a crime she witnessed, in the Duchy of Brabant.’

  ‘A crime?’ Madonna Antonella echoes with a lift of her brow, as though crime is something indistinct and living only on the far edge of her memory. ‘What manner of… crime?’

  ‘A double murder, Madonna. A Catholic priest and a Spanish officer. I can only assume that the assassin believes Hella can identify him. Perhaps that is why he has followed her here. Perhaps he killed her friend Matteo Fedele whilst trying to force him to reveal where she is sheltering.’

  ‘Forgive me, Signor Shelby,’ she says, lifting a small silver bell from her desk. ‘Sometimes men come here trying to convince us they have their women’s interests at heart when in fact they seek only to regain their influence and dominion over them.’ She gives the bell one brisk shake. An elderly Beguine enters. ‘Is Sister Hella with us, Sister Giulia? Or is she at the Basilica, telling God how to behave?’

  ‘She is in the dormitory, Madonna – with Sister Carlotta,’ the Beguine says, casting a doubting look at Nicholas.

  ‘Then please be so kind as to bring her to me.’

  While he waits, Madonna Antonella asks him about the trials of life as a Catholic in a heretic land. Nicholas pilfers uncomfortable answers from his memory, things he’s heard Bianca and John Lumley say. Now, in Padua, they seem more damning to him than when first spoken in England, where he has never had to feign humility to keep himself safe, or deny his faith lest someone close proves not to be the friend they claimed, but an informer.

  When Hella arrives, she bows stiffly to Madonna Antonella. Nicholas is favoured with little more than mild curiosity.

  ‘This gentleman says he is an English physician, and that you spent some time together on the Via Francigena,’ Madonna Antonella says. ‘Is that true, Sister Hella?’

  ‘It is, Madonna Antonella,’ she says.

  ‘Do you wish to hear what he has to say to you? Do you trust him, child?’

  ‘With my life, Madonna Antonella. And even beyond it.’

  Satisfied that Nicholas is neither a vengeful lover nor a bullying relative, Madonna Antonella gestures to Nicholas to speak. He chooses English, for discretion. Immediately it proves to be a wise choice.

  ‘I need to talk with you,’ he says brusquely. ‘It is of some considerable import.’

  ‘Have you finally found the courage to cast off Bianca?’ she says coldly. ‘Have you come to take me away?’

  He cannot stop himself glancing at Madonna Antonella. To his relief, she has retreated into studying a leather-bound psalter.

  ‘I’ve come to warn you that you may be in grave danger.’

  Her smile is so weak it can live for no more than a moment. ‘We are all in danger, Nicholas. Haven’t I convinced you of that yet?’

  ‘Young Matteo Fedele is dead,’ he says brutally, seeing no gain in gentleness. ‘He was murdered.’

  He studies her face, expecting emotion. He sees none.

  ‘You don’t seem troubled by that. I thought you were close to him.’

  ‘I told you before, I only indulged the boy in order to stay close to you.’

  ‘Do you feel no pity?’

  She shrugs. ‘Why should I pity him, Nicholas? Matteo is at peace. He will remain at peace until the time comes when he faces what we must all face.’

  ‘Don’t you want to know who killed him?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Nicholas struggles to rein in his anger at her indifference, lest Madonna Antonella has second thoughts about letting an English stranger into her Beguinage.

  ‘It matters, Hella, because the man who killed him might think to play hazard with your life, too. I believe it was the same man I saw at Reims, and again at the hospice in the mountains. He wore a grey coat… black boots… a black cloth cap on his head. I am sure now that he spoke to you in the cathedral square when we joined the Via Francigena. But that morning we left the mountains you denied it, when I asked if you had seen such a person. So I ask again now, in a place of holiness where God hears every word: do you know why this man would follow you to Padua and murder Matteo Fedele?’

  Nicholas is aware that Madonna Antonella has put down her psalter and is regarding him with new-found suspicion. She can tell by the tone of his voice that his words to the maid are not words of reassurance.

  ‘I have told you before, I do not know this man, Nicholas. And I cannot imagine that he has come all this way to kill me.’

  ‘I fear he believes you recognized him in the cathedral at Den Bosch. I think he may be the man who killed Father Vermeiren and the Spaniard. Are you not at least afraid?’

  ‘I am not afraid to die, if that is what you mean. Like poor little Matteo, it would bring a period of peace before the Day of Judgement.’

  Stunned by her utter lack of emotion, Nicholas opens his mouth to protest. Madonna Antonella lifts a hand to stop him. She says, ‘Enough! I do not know what you are saying to Sister Hella, but it does not seem to me to be kind counsel. She will be safe enough here in the Beguinage; we are well used to dealing with men who have violence in their hearts towards the Sisters who have sought refuge here. We will look after her. You may rely upon it. Now, Dr Shelby, I think it best we consider this audience at an end.’

  Bianca Merton stands in the lane and looks up at the stuccoed wall of the house she was born in. Since she left, it has been painted a garish yellow. She knows her mother would be horrified.

  The wooden double doors on the ground floor are as crooked as she remembers them. She wonders what lies behind them now. In her childhood it had been sacks and crates of the herbs and spices Simon Merton imported from the lands of the Ottoman Turks. Above was the accommodation: two bedrooms, a living space and a kitchen. On the top floor her father had a curtained space where he set down on paper the strange notions he had about the world and the cosmos, notions that had eventually earned him a dank cell and the attention of the Inquisition. At the rear of the house her mother had a chamber with a table and a basin, where she could mix her balms and medicaments, her syrups and her poisons. Looking up at the little windows beneath the eaves, Bianca finds it almost amusing: the notion that her father’s harmless pursuits proved fatal, whereas her mother’s dangerous ones made her reputation.

  Taking Simon Merton’s silver Petrine cross from her gown, she holds it against her chest, the crucified figure of St Peter facing outwards, as though house and cross might somehow be united again, at least for a brief moment. Or is it, perhaps, an offering? A gift, to seek approval from her mother for what she intends to do? Then she turns and walks away.

  She does not go far. Just two lanes away, in the direction of the Piazza delle Erbe, she stops before a narrow shop front. It is a place so ancient that she imagines the first transactions here were made in Latin. Tentatively, as though afraid its substance is no more solid than her recollection of it, she pushes at the door.

  Inside, the shop is exactly as she remembers it, dark and reeking with heavy pungent scents. Moving further in, Bianca smiles with recollection, half-expecting to see the eyes of forest nymphs peeping at her from between the profusion of leaves, sprigs, bunches, roots, tubers and stems.

  ‘Signor Tiziano,’ she calls out. ‘It is I, Signorina Bianca.’

  At the back of the shop, as if emerging from a fairy glade, a very old man in a pale, discoloured cloth gown, tied at the waist with a cord, emerges. As he moves, Bianca hears the slow clack of wooden clogs on flagstones. She closes the distance, because she knows his eyesight is not good.

  ‘Is it really you – little Bianca C
aporetti?’ the apothecary says, reaching out to take Bianca’s hands in his. ‘Or am I dreaming?’

  ‘You never did call me by my father’s name,’ Bianca says with a gentle smile as she grasps what feels to her like two sprigs of dried reed wrapped in fragile parchment. ‘Why was that, Signor Tiziano?’

  ‘Because your mother was a Caporetti, and the Caporettis have been known in Padua since before the Venetians came here, before the Carrara even.’ The old man gives her a toothless grin. ‘Nothing against the Englishman, your father, of course. A good fellow; but he wasn’t one of us. Have you tired of his land, Daughter? I hear they are all heretics there. Is that why you have come home?’

  ‘Something like that, at least for a while.’

  She helps him back to his chair. They talk of old times, though Bianca is pretty sure that, for Tiziano, time was only young in her great-grandmother’s day. When they have reminisced enough, and he has recounted all those from the neighbourhood whose bones have been interred in her absence, she says, ‘If I was in need of cantarella, Signor Tiziano, could you provide a vial for me?’

  He peers at her, almost as though she is beginning to dissolve slowly before his watery old eyes, as if she has been nothing but an apparition from the moment she walked into his shop. ‘Cantarella,’ he says at length. ‘The Borgia poison.’

  ‘I’m only asking – for the present. But if other remedies for my… malady… don’t work, I might have to think again.’

  He gives a wise, slow nod. She hears the cartilage in his thin neck grind.

  ‘Is it for a man or a woman? The weight will matter.’

  ‘It is for a maid.’

  ‘You wish the consequences to be speedy? Or lingering?’

  ‘Oh, speedy,’ she says. ‘I am not a vindictive woman.’

  He smiles again. ‘They always said that crossing the Caporettis in love was never a wise idea.’ He raises Bianca’s hands to his mouth and bestows a dry kiss upon them with his ancient lips. ‘I always knew I was right to call you Caporetti. It is good to see you taking up your mother’s trade again.’

  38

  St Paul’s, London, 6th October 1594

  If Ned Monkton is awed by his surroundings, he shows no sign when the guards lead him into the Long Chapel of the old Norman cathedral of St Paul’s. He looks around at the unadorned stone and the simple furnishings with little more than mild interest. Watching from her place on the shadowed side-benches, Rose wonders if it is courage he is showing or a failure to understand the consequences of error. She can cry no more tears for him; her eyes are raw from two days with little sleep, schooling him in the one thing that stands between her husband and the gallows.

  Before bidding him farewell at the Marshalsea – harder even than she had expected – she handed him the clean shirt she had brought and checked him over for loose straw. Looking at him now, chained at the ankles and the wrists, she is pleased to see that his great auburn beard and his hair are as neat as they have ever been. First impressions are important, and never more so than when making a plea to escape the noose.

  Lumley’s tame chaplain is a stooped, sad little fellow. He looks to Rose like a country parson who’s attended too many funerals. Dressed in a formal clerical gown, with a broad flat cap across his head, he sits behind a table covered in ecclesiastical linen, flanked by his clerks. One of them reads the temporal charge, the verdict and the sentence. The other restates the plea of Benefit of Clergy made on Ned’s behalf by Lord Lumley, who observes silently from his place next to Rose. She wonders how she could bear this for a single minute if Lumley’s calming presence were not beside her.

  ‘Does the accused claim to be a member of the clergy?’ the chaplain asks Ned doubtfully.

  Ned looks to Lumley for guidance.

  ‘No, most reverend sir, Master Monkton is not of the clergy. But he is literate, and can therefore plead benefit of the same. That is the law, as amended by Her Grace the queen. I can confirm it with her, if you wish.’

  The chaplain smiles graciously. ‘That will be unnecessary, my lord. You are correct in your interpretation of the law. Let us proceed. Step forward, Accused.’

  Ned shuffles closer to the table. One of the clerks look up. Rose notices the sudden nervous jump of his Adam’s apple.

  ‘Here is the word of God,’ says the chaplain ominously, lifting a large heavy leather-bound Bible from the table. ‘Open it to Psalm fifty-one and prove your Benefit of Clergy.’ He offers the Bible slowly and with great dignity, as though offering a sacrifice at an altar.

  ‘Excuse me, most reverend sir,’ Lumley interjects with a discreet cough. ‘A word—’

  ‘My lord?’ the chaplain says, turning his head in Lumley’s direction.

  ‘That is a very large Bible, and the accused’s manacles will prevent him from opening it fully. I would like to offer the court my own, personal one.’ He holds it up, a neat little volume bound in calfskin, with worked brass cornerpieces. ‘I have taken the liberty of opening it to the appropriate place – for the court’s convenience.’

  ‘That is very generous of you, my lord,’ says the chaplain. With a wave of his hand, he dispatches a clerk to retrieve it. Rose can feel her heart thumping as the man carries Lumley’s open Bible towards Ned.

  And then the clerk stops.

  Rose knows by the hunching of his shoulders that something is troubling him. He turns to face the chaplain. He shows him the open pages.

  ‘As you may see, sir, it is a true Bible.’

  The chaplain leans forward to study the offering. Satisfied, he nods gravely.

  ‘But it should be presented shut,’ says the clerk.

  ‘Is that strictly necessary?’ Lumley enquires.

  The clerk’s eyes remain fixed upon the chaplain. ‘It has been known for an appellant who is illiterate to memorize the psalm, in order to deceive the court,’ he says.

  ‘Oh merciful Jesus,’ Rose whispers into her hand.

  ‘It is the law, my lord,’ the chaplain says to Lumley, with the faintest trace of an arched eyebrow. Then to the clerk, ‘Please be so kind as to continue, Master Broxton.’

  Her mouth as dry as dust, Rose stares helplessly as the clerk closes the Bible. The slap as the pages come together has a dreadful finality that makes her shudder. She can barely bring herself to watch as he hands the book to Ned, a smile of officious triumph dancing on his weak lips. She offers up a silent, desperate prayer. If God can’t hear me in this place, she thinks, there is no hope to be had anywhere.

  His great fiery face impassive, Ned Monkton takes the little book in his huge hands. He flips through the pages one way, then the other. Then he starts again at the beginning.

  ‘Is the accused having… difficulty… finding the correct psalm?’ the chaplain asks Ned.

  Ned does not answer. He carries on shuffling the pages. To Rose, the noise of the parchment turning sounds like the flapping wings of a vulture descending upon its prey.

  And then Ned stops. He opens the Bible to its full extent. To Rose’s mind, he seems to grow another couple of inches, dwarfing the trio behind the desk even more. He begins to speak, his voice clear and resolute:

  ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy great mercy… And according to the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my iniquity… Wash me yet more from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.’

  He never once stumbles. He doesn’t even appear to draw breath. His deep basso-profundo voice rolls around the chapel as though he were delivering a sermon to God Himself. After a few more lines, the chaplain says, ‘I think we have heard enough. The plea of Benefit of Clergy is accepted. The sentence of the ecclesiastical court is that the guilty man be removed to the Marshalsea prison to suffer a branding upon the thumb. After that, he is free to go.’

  Rose has never embraced a baron before, and it is likely Lord Lumley has never had a plump, curly-headed maid of the lower orders hurl herself upon him like a demented spaniel. But both put aside their social const
raints for just long enough to celebrate the joy of the moment.

  As Ned is led away, Rose calls out across the chapel, ‘Be brave, sweet!’ Then, as a practical afterthought, ‘If the hurt proves too much, I still have some of the balm we used for burns when the Jackdaw burned down.’

  ‘’Tis little but a trifle, Wife,’ Ned calls back with a grin. ‘A bee sting is worse.’

  As Rose and Lumley make to leave the benches, the chaplain comes over to speak with them.

  ‘A satisfactory outcome, I trust, my lord?’

  ‘We sought only justice, most reverend sir.’

  ‘The slate of our obligations to each other is wiped clean, I trust.’

  ‘Spotless.’

  The chaplain gives Lumley a wry smile. ‘I wouldn’t have taken him for such an educated man, my lord.’

  ‘It’s a common mistake.’

  ‘Well, from now on I shall presume that Ovid and Virgil are common fare amongst the reprobates on Bankside.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, reverend sir,’ says Lumley.

  The chaplain gives him the briefest hint of a knowing look. Then he says, ‘For such a fellow to read the fifty-first psalm so cogently is one thing, my lord. But to give a faultless translation in English of a text that was printed on the page in Latin – now, that truly is remarkable.’

  John Lumley waits until he and Rose are safely outside. A blustery wind tugs at the hem of his gown. There are goosebumps on Rose’s arms, but she’s too ecstatic to notice.

  ‘My dearest Rose, can you ever forgive me?’ Lumley says as he steers her through the St Paul’s churchyard towards Paternoster Row. ‘I almost undid everything.’

  ‘Why say you that, my lord?’

  ‘I thought I had it all in hand. I checked the width of his manacles before he was led before the court. I even put a little dab of gum arabic on the appropriate page of my Bible, so that he might find it, should the book be closed. But it had never occurred to me that you would school him in English, while my Bible is printed in Latin.’