The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  ‘So you’ve found the courage to come?’ Hella says. ‘I wasn’t sure you would.’

  ‘We agreed to it. We Caporettis keep our promises.’

  ‘What do you want of me, Bianca? I have things to do. Time is running out.’

  ‘So you keep telling us.’

  Hella allows herself a wry smile, the bestowing of respect on an adversary she might have misjudged.

  Bianca forces a stillness upon herself. ‘I have come to make amends,’ she says. ‘To ask you to lift the curse you have laid upon me.’

  ‘Have I cursed you? I don’t recall.’

  ‘In Reims, and upon the pilgrim road – you foretold a tragedy for Nicholas and me. I want you to renounce it. I ask you to take back your curse.’

  ‘And if I don’t?’

  Bianca tightens her jaw. Then I will ask Tiziano to make the venom linger in your body, so that my judgement is worse than any you might have seen in that painting, worse than any you already fear.

  ‘Or nothing,’ she says, as pleasantly as she can manage. ‘I ask simply as a woman who loves her husband and would see him happy.’

  Hella smiles. It is the coldest of any smile Bianca has yet seen her give.

  ‘Nicholas will be happy,’ she says. ‘Once he is with me.’

  ‘Is that what all this has been about?’ Bianca snaps. ‘All the cruel talk of dead children, stillbirth and barrenness? Was it all just to send me into a confusion, so that I would doubt myself? So that you could drive a shard of ice between me and the man I love?’

  Hella steps forward until she is close enough for Bianca to touch. Her pupils seem as large as golden florins, reflecting the lantern light. One corner of her mouth cracks open, like a pike about to snatch a minnow.

  And then Bianca hears a sudden movement behind her. A voice calls out, guttural and harsh. The words mean nothing to her. They are shouted in a language she cannot understand. She turns.

  Framed in the doorway is the figure of a man.

  A man in a grey coat.

  41

  ‘You seem untroubled by the thought of an assassin in this city,’ Nicholas says, surprised by Galileo’s airy dismissal of the warning he has just delivered. The mathematician has listened to his recounting of the death of the goldsmith Bondoni with little more than mild interest.

  ‘You have no proof that Bondoni was pushed. Every year someone gets hurt or killed in that horse race. I think you’re reading too much into it. And as for Matteo, he was a young fellow with a roving eye. This is Padua, Nicholas, feuds are our meat and drink. There’s always someone who thinks he has a legitimate quarrel with you – even if you’ve never met him before.’

  Nicholas remembers the altercation he’d had with the youth outside the church. Perhaps Galileo is right. ‘But what about the man in the grey coat that Bruno saw before he found Matteo Fedele’s body?’

  ‘A man in a grey coat – which, according to Signor Purse, had no bloodstains on it.’

  ‘Bianca and I were followed from Reims by such a man.’

  ‘That doesn’t make him an assassin, does it? Besides, why would anyone follow you and that comely wife of yours all the way from France and then start murdering associates of Signor Purse – in Padua? It makes no sense.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas confesses. ‘But I fear Hella could be in danger. Indeed, so could anyone in Bruno’s new guild. Speaking of Bruno, have you seen him of late?’

  ‘Not since this morning, but there’s nothing remarkable in that.’

  ‘I still think you should be careful.’

  Galileo studies the bottom of his empty wine cup. ‘I thought the English were supposed to be unexcitable fellows.’

  ‘Are you not troubled by the possibility I might be right?’

  The mathematician shrugs. ‘In all honesty, I have had little to do with Bruno’s wild scheme, other than to lend my name to it. It was Matteo who put in the hard effort. Besides, I’m accomplished at avoiding characters who wish me ill. I’ve been dodging my brother-in-law over my sister’s dowry for months. He still hasn’t caught me, and let me tell you: Signor Benedetto Landucci is a very persistent fellow.’

  ‘A dowry can’t stab you between the ribs, Signor Galileo.’

  Galileo gives a snort of appreciative laughter. ‘Maybe not, but I’m safe enough here. Who in their right mind would attack a peaceable fellow like me, in the middle of the celebrations of the Holy Rosary? Unless he was a creditor, of course. There’s a whole army of those.’ He sets down his cup. ‘Talking of credit, mine’s run out. Fancy more wine? I’ll pay you back tomorrow.’

  Exasperated by the mathematician’s sangfroid, but at the same time amused by his audacity, Nicholas calls to a waiting servant, orders another jug and pays for it. From across the Piazza dei Signori comes a sudden thunder of drums. Looking up, Nicholas sees the liveried bearers hoisting the Venetian galley aloft. He rises from the table.

  ‘Not going to help me drink it, Master Physician?’ Galileo asks in surprise.

  ‘I’m supposed to be marching with Bruno. I’ve probably missed him in this fog. He’ll be wondering where I am.’

  Galileo fills his cup and raises it in a toast. ‘You’re a good fellow, Niccolò – for an English heretic. But I think you’re seeing goblins hiding under tables.’

  ‘Perhaps I am,’ Nicholas says with a smile, though underneath he feels a sense of unease. ‘But I’d still counsel you to take care. There may be people here tonight more dangerous than brothers-in-law.’

  In the Piazza dei Signori and the adjoining side-streets the members of the city guilds have assembled beneath their banners. The sound of drumming fills the night. There is expectation in the foggy air. Nicholas is reminded of an army flushed with the thrill of conquest, preparing to march out for the final battle, exultant.

  He does not share this exhilaration. The hour has come, and still there is no sign of Bruno Barrani. Worse still Luca has arrived, and he has come alone. ‘But the Signora was not in your chamber,’ he protests, looking about uneasily as though he has mislaid something precious entrusted to his care. ‘I knocked, but she had gone. I assumed she had made her own way here.’

  ‘It’s not your fault, Luca,’ Nicholas says, taking in the faces gathered beneath the banner of dark-blue silk emblazoned with its shooting star. They drift across his vision like half-remembered acquaintances from the past: Alonso, Mirandola the clockmaker, Pasolini the carpenter, the Corio brothers, the engraver Carlo Pomponazzi, and a gaggle of accompanying apprentices and servants. There must be almost a score of them. But no Bruno. No Bianca. The unease he’d experienced when leaving Galileo Galilei in the Piazza dei Signori a few minutes ago suddenly has the weight of lead about it.

  The guild ahead of them in the procession is hoisting its banners and preparing to follow the sound of the drums. The crowd lining the walls breaks out into sporadic clapping and cheering. The Arte dei Astronomi must either march or stand down.

  In the event it is Alonso – entrusted by his master with the banner – who takes command. He has the little group form into an orderly file, two abreast. Then, as the guild in front begins to stride out, he calls out in what he imagines is the voice of a Caesar, ‘Astronomi – avanzare!’

  The only man not to obey is Nicholas. Wishing them well, he slips away into the crowd.

  At once he is jostled by bodies. He feels as though he’s jumped from the safety of a shore into waters whose depth he cannot judge. Although the throng is moving with him, it does so with a slow, jerky, hesitant progress. This far down the procession, the guilds are stopping and starting unpredictably. And he needs to hurry. He is sure now that something is terribly wrong.

  From his bench in the Piazza dei Signori the mathematician watches the vanguard of the march move off into the mist. The drummers raise their hands high in a blur as they hammer out a martial beat. Behind them comes a squad of the Podestà’s guard. Their breastplates of burnished steel reflect the numerous flaming torche
s, making them appear like a squad of small suns on the move. Behind them, the replica Venetian galley sways precariously on its way to do battle with the heathen Turk.

  Galileo pours himself another cup of the Englishman’s wine. And as he does so, a young maid barely out of her teens – dark-haired, plump and dressed in pious brown hessian – slips onto the bench beside him. She has a folded sheet of paper in her hand.

  ‘Are you Signor Galileo, the professor from the Palazzo Bo?’ she asks tentatively. She seems to be searching his face as though she thinks she might have met him before, but isn’t sure.

  ‘I am he… Sister. Who are you?’

  ‘My name is Carlotta.’

  ‘You look like a nun. I’m a little short on coin, if it’s charity you’re after.’

  ‘I’m not a nun. I’m a Beguine. And I have a letter for you.’

  ‘It’s not a bill for votive candles, is it – for my father’s soul?’

  ‘I have been instructed by Signor—’ Carlotta stops, as though trying to make sure she has the name right. ‘By Signor Barrani to give you this.’ She hands him the paper.

  ‘Why is Signor Purse entrusting his letters to a Beguine?’ he asks.

  Her reply sounds stilted, like a bad actor who has trouble memorizing lines. ‘He said… you would surely want to hear the news… but he was too busy at… the Palazzo del Podestà… to give it to you in person. It’s an errand. The payment will go to the poor.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it. Perhaps I should give up mathematics and take to delivering letters.’

  Unfolding the note, Galileo finds the misty twilight insufficient to read by. He moves across to a torch burning in its sconce against the wall.

  … a great purse full of His Serene Highness’s ducats has this day arrived from Venice… your labours on the sphere rewarded… wherein this very place I may see you soundly recompensed…. be there, when the bell in the clock tower strikes the said hour…

  Your friend and fellow seeker of knowledge,

  Signor Purse

  Galileo reads it a second time, to savour the meat of it and capture the detail that his first, hurried glances have missed. The hand is new to him. He cannot recall receiving a letter from Bruno Barrani before, and on reflection he wonders if perhaps the writing is a little too feminine to be his friend’s. But then Bruno is a small man and is as particular as a woman about his appearance. A measure of delicacy might be expected. And it is signed Signor Purse. By that measure alone, he can see no reason to suspect one of his pupils of playing a trick on him.

  Tucking the note into the sleeve of his tunic, Galileo Galilei walks back to the bench, ready to thank the messenger and explain – regretfully – that he cannot afford to tip her for her troubles.

  But when he reaches the spot, he finds she has not waited.

  The mist is thickening. Night has the upper hand now as Nicholas pushes on through the lanes towards the Borgo dei Argentieri. Soon he is all but alone. He passes only the occasional citizen late for the festivities and the odd scrawny, prowling cat. More than once he takes a wrong turning, straying down stuccoed canyons whose ends are lost in darkness. So far he has realized his error before becoming irretrievably lost. But the prospect of wandering into the heart of this vaporous labyrinth and losing all sense of place is frighteningly real to him. When he spots the two Corio cousins sitting on the cobbles outside the entrance to Bruno’s house, a flask of wine and a dice board lying beside them, he feels like a mariner who’s spotted land on the very day the food runs out.

  He asks, ‘Where is Signor Barrani? Have you seen him?’

  One of the cousins points back up the street. ‘He’s in the procession, Master.’

  ‘I’ve just come from there,’ Nicholas says, trying hard to stifle the fears that are marching inside him now with a din that would put the Piazza dei Signori to shame. ‘They started without him.’

  The man shrugs. ‘That’s what he said when he left. We haven’t seen him since.’

  ‘And Signora Bianca? You must have seen her leave. Which way did she go – towards the Piazza dei Signori?’

  The other cousin shakes his head. To Nicholas’s horror he points in the opposite direction – towards Porta Portello.

  Along the riverbank the mist has turned to fog. The narrow margin of black water that is visible to Nicholas is shot through with a golden weave from the torches burning here and there in their mounts. As he crosses the bridge, his fears rise up from the surface like monstrous sea creatures. He can think of only one place Bianca could have headed for in this quarter of the city: the storehouse. And he can think of only one reason for her visit. He sees again in his mind her brief exchange with Hella in the Piazza del Santo this morning, and he recalls only too clearly her refusal to reveal what had passed between them.

  The brickwork of the storehouse looms out of the fog, like the walls of a prison so grim that he cannot stop himself imagining the torturers at work within. The fact that he can see a glimmer of torchlight in the narrow window beneath the eaves gives him no comfort. A torturer needs enough light to work by, but not so much that he can see too deeply into his victim’s eyes. Unless, of course, he has no soul.

  The wide doors at the front look securely barred. Slipping down the side of the building, he sees the smaller door ajar. His heart pounding, his mind flinching at all the horrors presented to it by his imagination, he slips quietly around the door and inside. He is certain now that something very wrong has happened tonight, and that Hella is at the centre of it.

  What he sees confirms the very worst of his fears.

  Bianca is lying against the cradle of Bruno’s great sphere, clad in the pearl-coloured gown Bruno had brought her. Only it is no longer pristine. It is stained with blood. And looming over her is the man in the grey coat.

  42

  Nicholas is upon him even as the man turns, alerted by his footsteps and his sudden, agonized intake of breath. Indifferent to the near-certainty that the assassin has a blade, Nicholas hauls him off Bianca’s body, smashing his fist into his upturned, startled face. He doesn’t feel the damage done to his own knuckles. The rage, the despair, makes pain meaningless. He strikes again, driving the man down as though he would batter him into the very earth itself and bury him. He raises his fist to strike a third time, all restraint gone, only raw murder in his mind.

  And then Bianca’s voice stays his hand.

  ‘Nicholas, for the love of Jesu, leave Ruben be! You’re killing him.’

  His right elbow thrust out at an acute angle, his balled fist held at the instant before he smashes it home, Nicholas freezes. The man slithers away from him, groaning, his face bloodied.

  ‘Ruben?’ he repeats, confused beyond measure. ‘You know him?’

  ‘I do, now,’ Bianca says. ‘His name is Ruben Maas. He’s Hella’s brother – the priest. And he wasn’t trying to harm me. In fact I owe him my life.’

  For a moment Nicholas does not understand. Then he remembers the conversation he and Hella had in the forest outside Clairvaux Abbey, when she told him of the Spanish fury at Breda and the slaughter of her family: The day of the massacre I was with my twin brother, Ruben… I didn’t see him more than once or twice after that… He became a priest.

  Nicholas hauls the cowering Ruben to his feet. ‘Is this true?’ he asks, still half-consumed by a murderous anger.

  Ruben Maas answers in passable English, distorted only by a Dutch accent and the fact that blood from his nose and lips has found its way in no small quantity into his mouth.

  ‘Yes, it is true. I try my best to protect your woman. But I am not a man of action. I am a man of God. Violence does not come readily to me.’

  Nicholas fishes a kerchief from his doublet and hands it to the man to clean his face. ‘If you’re a priest, why aren’t you dressed like one?’

  Ruben tries to smile. ‘I have no stomach to be a martyr. I am a Lutheran. And while I may be a coward, I am no fool. Only a fool would flaunt his Protes
tant faith in a papist country.’

  Another fragment of the conservation in the Forest of Troyes comes back to Nicholas: He refused to countenance that God could be a Catholic, like the Spanish who had murdered our family…

  ‘Why have you been following us all the way from Reims?’ he asks.

  Ruben Maas lets out a bitter laugh that bubbles through the blood seeping from his mouth. ‘Reims? I’ve been following you from Den Bosch.’

  ‘But why?’

  The young priest struggles to force himself upright. Nicholas’s assault has taken the strength out of his legs. He sways precariously. Nicholas puts out a hand to steady him and Maas flinches, as though he anticipates another blow.

  ‘It’s alright,’ Nicholas assures him. ‘I will not strike you again. But tell me why you’ve been following us all this way.’

  Ruben Maas looks into Nicholas’s eyes with the pain of a man who knows he cannot meet the measure he has set for himself. He says, ‘Because I wanted to stop my sister from committing the sin of murder – again.’

  ‘Are you too elevated to march with us tonight, Professor Galileo?’ calls a voice teasingly from the Piazza dei Signori. ‘Is our company too dull for your exceptional mind? Or are you too drunk to walk in a straight line?’

  Looking up from his wine, the mathematician sees the procession has come to one of its frequent halts. Directly in front of him, grouped in an untidy gaggle around the university’s banner, are the senior men from the Palazzo Bo. In the fog, their black scholastic togas soften their outlines, making them look as though the darkness of the night has taken on a solid, human form. By the light of the torches their servants carry, he can see them grinning at him.