The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  Satisfied the jockey is in good hands, Nicholas turns his attention to the body in the street. As he does so, a woman and a clutch of children break out of the crowd and fall upon the inert form lying on the cobbles, wailing and lamenting with piercing cries. The woman, stout and plump-cheeked, rolls the body onto its back. She cradles it in her muscular arms, turns her tear-drenched face to the opaque sky and begins to harangue an uncaring God.

  ‘Merciful Mother of Jesus,’ Bianca whispers at the same instant that Nicholas recognizes the dead man. ‘It’s one of Bruno’s people – it’s the goldsmith, Signor Bondoni.’

  40

  The people emerging from the mist, heading towards the Piazza dei Signori to watch the start of the parade, or to the Basilica of St Anthony to catch its end, barely notice the couple passing in the opposite direction towards the Borgo dei Argentieri, heads down, lost in their own thoughts.

  ‘Are you sure?’ says Nicholas for the third time in ten minutes.

  ‘As sure as I may be,’ Bianca replies wearily. ‘I asked everyone who was standing close to Bondoni the same thing. No one saw him pushed, certainly not by a man in a grey coat and a black cloth cap.’

  ‘But all eyes were on the horses and riders.’

  ‘Perhaps it really was just an accident, Nicholas. Every year someone gets injured – even killed – during these races.’

  Nicholas lets out a short, brutal laugh. ‘Mind you, with a wife who looked as though she would happily wrestle an armed brigand, and six children with mouths like hungry sparrowhawks, perhaps Bondoni stepped under the horses by choice.’

  Bianca rebukes him with a sharp look. ‘Nicholas! You of all people should not make light of the sin of self-destruction. Besides, she wasn’t his wife. Bruno said he has a mistress and six children.’

  ‘Well, there we are then. He was over sixty. Perhaps the poor man had an apoplexy and stumbled.’

  They walk on in silence for a while. Then Bianca says, ‘It wasn’t chance, was it?’

  ‘No, of course it wasn’t.’

  ‘Or suicide.’

  ‘Doubtful.’

  ‘So he was pushed?’

  ‘Very likely. First Matteo dead, now Bondoni. Who amongst Bruno’s little guild will be next?’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Bianca says. ‘If the assassin intends Bruno harm, why didn’t he take the opportunity when they passed each other on the bridge by the Porta Portello? And he’s had weeks in which to make an attack against you and me. I can see no common explanation anywhere.’

  ‘Nor I,’ Nicholas admits. ‘But one thing in certain: we must counsel Bruno to withdraw from the procession.’

  ‘Bruno – withdraw? He’ll never agree. He might be small in stature, but he has a great heart.’

  ‘Well, we cannot keep him in ignorance.’

  Bianca laughs. ‘Bruno would risk a whole army of assassins to march at the head of his Arte dei Astronomi. You know how much it means to him.’

  Nicholas shrugs in resignation. ‘There is someone else we should warn, too.’

  Bianca stops. The edge in her voice cuts through the mist like a sword through gossamer. ‘We promised each other, remember?’

  ‘I know, but—’

  ‘Nicholas! No more of this!’

  ‘Is that what you want of me: to leave her to her fate? Will your conscience lie easy if she is next?’

  An anger blazes in her amber eyes that Nicholas has never seen before. He could almost believe it murderous.

  ‘Enough!’ she cries, so loudly that heads turn. A passer-by frowns: a public altercation on a holy feast day – do some people have no respect? Relenting, Bianca takes Nicholas by the arm, her hand stroking his wrist in conciliation. She drops her voice. ‘That woman has done little but lecture us on fate since the day we met her. You have done all that could be asked of any compassionate man. I will not countenance you doing more. We have promised each other to forget her. Do you now break your oath?’

  He shakes his head like a scolded schoolboy and sighs. ‘Of course not. You are right. I have warned her. She chose not to listen. What more can I do?’

  Bianca releases his arm. As they set off again through the strange, ominous vapour that muffles their footsteps and robs those who pass of a distinct outline, she says softly, ‘We agreed: as if she had never existed.’

  ‘He went to the Podestà’s office, hours ago, Signora Bianca,’ Luca says as he brushes the creases out of the new livery that his master has provided for the procession: a tabard of lockram dyed midnight-blue, with a long-tailed star picked out in yellow thread arcing across the breast from shoulder to hip.

  ‘Did he go alone?’ she asks tentatively.

  ‘Alonso is with him.’

  ‘Did he say when he would return?’ she asks, casting a worried glance at Nicholas.

  ‘He will not return, Signora. He told me that once he’d done at the Palazzo del Podestà, he would send Alonso to summon the Arte dei Astronomi to assemble beneath his banner in the Palazzo dei Signori. If you need him, that’s where you will find him.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Absolutely. The Master will guard that banner with his life, lest the guild of shit-shovellers tries to move it to the back of the procession.’

  ‘Why would they do that, Luca?’

  ‘To usurp our rightful place in the parade, Madonna. That’s the sort of low-down trick the guild of night-soil removers always tries to play on holy days.’

  Rather than risk sending Luca into a panic, Nicholas waits until he and Bianca are alone in their chamber before he says, ‘I’ll go to the Palazzo dei Signori and warn Bruno to take care.’

  ‘Surely you don’t think this man will make an attempt on Bruno’s life in broad daylight, do you?’

  ‘But it isn’t broad daylight, is it?’ Nicholas points out. ‘And it will start getting dark before long.’

  ‘All the more reason for you not to go stumbling about a city you don’t know, Nicholas. Send one of the Corio cousins instead.’

  ‘They sit outside in the street all day playing dice. I can’t imagine they’ll suddenly discover alacrity.’

  ‘It may be a holy day, Nicholas, but this is still Padua. The cut-purses will be busy.’

  Nicholas’s eyes narrow. ‘I know what this is about: you want me not to go alone because you fear I’ll sneak away to see Hella Maas.’

  For a moment Bianca just glares at him. Then she purges herself with a stream of Italian vocabulary that Nicholas may not yet have learned, but whose coarse, contemptuous meaning is clear.

  He waits for her range to dissipate. Then, calmly, he asks, ‘What was it you said to her – when we saw her this morning preaching by that statue in the square?’

  ‘It is not important.’

  ‘Oh, but I think it is. What is it about Hella that still troubles you – even while you tell me we must forget her?’

  Tears begin to well in Bianca’s eyes. Her face twists in pain, becomes almost ugly. With a desperation in her voice that alarms him she says, ‘I’m trying to protect you, Nicholas – just as I protected you from yourself when I found you half-drowned by the river four years ago. Just as I have protected you from all the ills that have come upon us since, in your work for Robert Cecil. It is what we Caporettis do: protect those we love, whatever the cost to body or soul.’

  ‘I don’t know any Caporettis,’ he says. ‘I know only Bianca Merton. And I fear that some vile melancholy is stealing her from me.’

  She shakes her head wildly, as though trying to block out a scream that her ears cannot bear to hear. ‘No! It is not so,’ she sobs.

  Nicholas takes her in his arms, feeling the heave of her despair against his chest. He says, ‘I know what it was that Hella said to you on the Via Francigena.’

  He feels her body go still. She looks up at him, her eyes brimming.

  ‘She told you?’

  ‘Yes. And see for yourself: I am still here. The words she spoke had no more potency
to harm me than did the images on that painting in Den Bosch. I can hear the words – I can see the images – and I am not destroyed. We are not destroyed. They cannot harm us, not unless we let them. There is no curse that Hella Maas can lay upon us that would be worse for me than the curse of a life without you, whatever she has foretold.’

  There are two Biancas who lay their head against Nicholas’s chest. The first, Simon Merton’s daughter, allows the fear to drain out of her. She understands now, finally and completely, that his Eleanor and the child she carried are locked away securely in his past – a past that cannot now harm either of them. But the second, the daughter of Maria Caporetti, feels no such happy resolution. Because a Caporetti knows that regardless of what the new learning teaches, there are old fears – old curses – that can only be expunged by the old, reliable methods.

  The call to Vespers rings out from the bell towers of Padua, strangely muted in a mist that has, if anything, grown thicker with the onset of dusk. Torches are set, bonfires lit. Through the chamber window the evening air has a fiery hue to it, as if the city is being sacked. Shadows dance against the stucco walls of the house opposite as people pass below.

  ‘Look at me,’ Bianca says with a sad, disparaging laugh. ‘This fine new gown Bruno has bought for me – the lace around my neck is all damp.’

  ‘Even so, you will be the brightest star of the evening.’

  ‘It is a pity I may not march with you and Bruno in the procession. I should like that. If my parents’ ghosts are still here, they would be so proud. And I should like them to see my handsome English husband.’

  ‘Can you walk beside us in the crowd?’

  ‘I will try. The parade is always stopping and starting, so I should be able to keep up. And I know the route well. I know the shortcuts, if I need to use them.’

  ‘I’m going to leave now, to find Bruno. Are you ready?’

  Bianca sits up against the bolster. She studies his face carefully, almost as if she doubts her eyes. Then she lowers her head, almost evasively.

  ‘I need to rest a little longer. I’ll follow, with Luca. But promise me that you’ll take one of the Corio cousins. I know this city, remember?’

  Nodding his acquiescence, he says, ‘You’re tired – I understand.’

  She places a hand over her belly. ‘We are tired.’

  He rises, makes a gallant’s bow and – smiling – says, ‘Then I will see you in a while, in the Palazzo dei Signori… my ladies.’

  ‘I shall look out for you by Bruno’s banner, with its bright comet. A long-tailed star.’

  She leans up to bestow a gentle kiss upon his mouth. When he opens the door, she calls to him, ‘A comet is a portent, is it not?’

  He turns. ‘So it is said.’

  ‘Then I name Bruno’s comet as a portent of good fortune to come.’

  The door closes. She hears the soft fall of the latch. She waits until she hears voices below the window – Luca ordering one of the Corio cousins to accompany her husband. Cautiously Bianca leans out a little way and watches until the two shadowy figures have been consumed by the mist. Then she closes the shutters, tidies the trim of her gown, covers her face with a lace veil, throws a cloak across her shoulders and goes downstairs to the street door, where she too exchanges pleasantries with the two remaining Corio cousins.

  And then, rather than turn left to follow the general drift of people heading towards the Piazza dei Signori, she turns right – in the direction of the Porta Portello and the storehouse beyond.

  Time has begun to run again. The Arte dei Orologiai has sent its best artisans to repair the clock in the Piazza dei Signori. Around its face – the colour of a Paduan sky in summer and rimmed with the signs of the zodiac – the hour-hand restarts its sweep just as Nicholas arrives in the square. He is welcomed by the deep tolling of the tower’s bell.

  The piazza is filling up with people. In the mist they look like figures painted on a faded fresco, softened, indistinct. Torches bloom like fiery raindrops on glass, though it is not yet fully dark. In the centre of the square, set upon a trestle, a wooden replica of a Venetian galley awaits its bearers. When the parade begins, it will be carried to the Basilica of St Anthony, where the victory over the Turks will be commemorated and the banners of the Arti blessed.

  The Podestà’s men have organized things with practised efficiency. The banners have been set out for the guildsmen to muster beneath, the senior guilds directly beneath the triumphal arch of the clock tower, the rest in the order of march.

  It takes a while for the Corio cousin to help Nicholas locate Bruno’s banner – halfway down a side-street. Alone, Alonso holds onto it grimly as if he’s the sole survivor of a doomed last stand. Of Bruno himself, there is no sign. ‘No need to fear, Signor Shelby,’ Alonso says. ‘We have almost an hour before the procession will be fully assembled. He’ll get here in time.’

  ‘He’s probably in the piazza, trying to sell the Podestà a new clock,’ Nicholas says, trying hard not to let his concern show. ‘I’ll go and look for him.’

  As he sets off, the Corio cousin makes to follow. Nicholas raises a hand and smiles. ‘I’ll be fine. Stay here with Alonso, in case someone tries to steal the banner.’

  Re-entering the square, he walks among the swelling crowd, taking in the aroma of cooking meat from the vendors’ braziers. A corps of drummers in vividly striped tunics is practising its staccato tattoos. A nun pushes an old man in a wooden wheelbarrow, careless of who she barges aside in the effort to find a good spot. And all the while, more and more guildsmen in their fine livery gather to their banners like soldiers mustering for battle.

  Nicholas has almost completed two laps of the piazza without sight of Bruno when he hears a male voice call out, ‘Physician – heal thyself!’

  He turns and sees a familiar, bearded figure sitting on a bench, his back against the stucco wall, feet up on the table in front of him. He is waving a half-empty flask of wine at him, like a patient inviting him to check his urine for an imbalance of the humours.

  ‘Professor Galileo! Are you not marching with the rest of the learned gentlemen from the Palazzo Bo?’

  The mathematician swings his feet off the table. ‘Are you mad? An hour of being kicked in the heels to see some overfed priest bless a toy ship? Besides, they expect me to wear that ridiculous toga. If I don’t, they look down their noses at me and call me a peasant.’ He nods at the flask. ‘This is far better company. You look at a loss. Join me. I’ll call for another cup.’

  Nicholas comes to the conclusion that as the buchetta is close to the side-street where Alonso is guarding the banner, it is as good a place as any to keep a lookout for Bruno. With this thickening mist, he could wander the Piazza dei Signori for a week, pass him ten times and still not catch sight of him. Besides, he thinks, if two of its members have already been murdered, then the mathematician is as much in danger as any in the Arte dei Astronomi.

  ‘Just for a moment, Signor Galileo,’ he says, walking over. ‘Purely to rest my feet before the parade, you understand.’

  The bridge to the Porta Portello curves ahead of her into the darkening night. Torches set into the parapet turn the faces of Padua’s heroes into lurid carnival masks. On the far side, Bianca can see barely a hint of the squat stone gatehouse. The storehouse a little further along the bank is invisible. She hurries across, the soles of her shoes tapping out a metallic rhythm, like the workings of one of Signor Mirandola’s clocks.

  Reaching the far side, she breathes deeply to steady her resolve. She is determined to remain calm. Once more she commands herself not to scream, not to rail. Tell Hella to her face that you seek only to put aside what has passed between you. Then ask her to lift her curse.

  ‘And if she refuses? What then?’

  Bianca wonders where the question has come from. Because it seems not to have come from inside her head. She could swear it came out of the fog. And there is no mistaking whose voice it is: Maria Caporetti’s. It is her
mother’s voice.

  ‘What will you do then, my daughter?’

  ‘Then I will walk away,’ Bianca answers out loud. ‘I will seek out the apothecary, Tiziano. I will have him procure that cantarella we spoke of. Then I will do what we Caporettis have done down the long centuries, ever since we gave Agrippina the means to poison Claudius.’

  ‘Then be at peace, my daughter,’ says the voice.

  And then its echo fades, leaving Bianca to wonder if her mind – or the fog – is playing tricks with her. She turns along the canal bank. The water murmurs as it flows past, mocking her with teasing little sucks and gurgles, as though preparing to digest her. When a twig snaps underfoot, Bianca has to suppress the notion that Hella is pouncing from the night, arms outstretched to push her into the river.

  In their brief exchange beside the Gattamelata statue, they had agreed to meet outside the storehouse. But when it looms out of the fog, Bianca can see no trace of Hella. Looking upwards, she notices the glimmer of a torch or taper burning within.

  She tries the huge wooden main doors, but they are locked. Slipping cautiously down the side of the building, she finds the door there ajar.

  ‘Hella? Are you there?’ she calls out softly.

  Receiving no answer, she steps inside.

  Hella is waiting for her in front of the empty cradle of Bruno’s great sphere. In the light from a lantern set upon a stack of large iron cog-wheels, she stands legs akimbo, her plain hessian gown reminding Bianca of the tougher girls who lived around her family’s lodgings and used to challenge her to fight, calling her the bastard prodigy of a Paduan mother and a heretic foreigner. She has the same swagger, the same spoiling for a brawl. And she is as unlike the pious maid from Den Bosch as Bianca can imagine. She could almost believe the maid has been possessed.