by SJ Parris
Ruggieri shivered and wrapped his Doctor’s robe closer around him, the empty mask swinging from his hand.
‘We do not usually hear you so quiet, Bruno. Is it because you dislike being told you are wrong?’
‘I was only wondering,’ I said, ‘why you are so certain she took her own life? Did she have particular cause that you know of?’
Catherine made a gesture that seemed to imply the question was redundant. ‘Young women. Thwarted affair of the heart or some nonsense. She would not be the first to fall into despair because a man had cast her aside.’
‘But you just said your women do not involve themselves with men except at your command,’ I said. Her eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered,’ I continued, keeping my tone light, ‘if perhaps it could have been because she was with child?’
The silence that followed this was so profound I could hear the ice cracking on the window panes.
‘What makes you say that?’ Catherine asked, in a voice like a knife on a whetstone.
I was about to answer, but at that moment King Henri burst in, distraught and dishevelled, his doublet unlaced and his cream silk stockings caked with mud. He threw himself to his knees beside Léonie’s body and manoeuvred her torso clumsily into his lap.
‘Mon Dieu,’ he moaned softly, rocking her back and forth, her head hanging limply in his arms like a grotesque doll. He repeated this lament, the words muffled as he pressed his lips against her hair. The rest of us stood awkwardly watching this performance until Catherine clapped her hands and ordered her son to get up.
‘Have you been drinking? You know what the physician said about your constitution – you are not supposed to touch wine. Put the girl down, Henri,’ she added briskly, as if talking to a dog, though the King appeared not to hear. He remained folded over Léonie’s body, his face wracked with pain, but I could not have said for certain whether it was grief or remorse. Henri was prone to dramatics either way.
‘I will speak to the King in private,’ Catherine announced. ‘Ruggieri – take Doctor Bruno to the library and keep him there until I send for you again. Have the servants bring you meat and drink. And you—’ she raised her walking stick and pointed it towards me with finality – ‘will not repeat to anyone what you said just now. If that idle speculation finds its way into common gossip, I will have you arrested for slander. Do you understand me?’
I nodded. I, too, would have liked to speak to the King in private, but there was no question of that at present. Catherine meant to manage this situation in her own way. I tried to catch Henri’s eye, but he would not raise his head from the corpse in his arms.
I followed Ruggieri along the corridors, empty now of guests but with a noticeable increase of armed guards, halberds bristling at every set of doors, though they parted swiftly for the astrologer as he strode towards them with his hand raised like Moses before the Red Sea. When we reached the library, he bade me take a seat at a table in front of the fireplace, on which large star maps and charts of the heavens lay unfurled, curling at the edges, held flat by several measuring instruments. Though the papers were upside down to me, I leaned across and peered at them with curiosity while he bustled about lighting a sconce of candles. It looked as if Ruggieri had been plotting a natal chart; the margins of the map were filled with gnomic scribbles in his cramped handwriting. In the top right-hand corner I saw that he had drawn the figure of a dolphin.
‘Whose chart?’ I asked, tapping the map.
He blew out the taper and leapt across with surprising speed, gathering the papers and rolling them tightly together. ‘No business of yours.’
The way he pursed his lips, all puffed up with the importance of his confidential knowledge, made me determined not to give him the satisfaction of pressing him any further. He paced behind my chair while I ignored him. ‘Whatever made you say the girl was with child?’ he asked, at last. I swivelled to face him.
‘You did not observe her during the masque tonight?’
He made a derisive noise. ‘I did not. I was in here all evening, working. I don’t need to see those girls writhing about. Give me a seizure, at my age.’
‘Nonsense. I knew a man in Nola older than you, fathered twins.’
‘Well. No idea of continence, you Nolans. What would I want with twins?’ He raised his hands in retreat, as if someone were threatening to hand him a pair. ‘Tell me about the girl, then. I have seen her recently – I did not remark that she had a big belly.’
‘Not especially big at this stage. But there was a tell-tale sign, visible only because her gown tonight was so thin. She had the line on her belly, though very faint – she was still in the early months.’
‘Line?’ He frowned.
‘The dark line that forms on the skin from the navel to the pubis. Have you not observed this in a woman expecting?’
‘I am not a midwife, Bruno,’ he said, with a little shudder of distaste. ‘Your experience of looking at pregnant women unclothed is clearly broader than mine, but then you are a Dominican. Ah. I see that amuses you.’
I could hardly tell him I was nodding because it was true that my only previous experience of seeing a pregnant woman naked had been as a young novice at the convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, though not in the way Ruggieri imagined.
‘Of course, I may be mistaken,’ I said, conciliatory. The suggestion that Léonie might have been pregnant had clearly caused Catherine further anxiety; I could guess why.
His shoulders relaxed. ‘You would do well to say so to the Queen Mother. Bad enough that this dreadful business has occurred during an event that was supposed to increase goodwill towards the royal family. She does not need you spreading malicious lies as well.’
‘Not lies. Merely speculation.’
‘Based on the scantest evidence and likely wrong, by your own admission. Like all your other theories, in your books which no one reads.’
I reminded myself silently not to rise to it. Fortunately I was distracted by the arrival of a boy in livery bearing a tray loaded with two plates of roast pheasant and large silver goblets of spiced wine. Ruggieri swept the remainder of his books from the table, not without a good deal of muttering, and the boy set the tray down with a bow, closing the door behind him.
Ruggieri and I looked at one another.
‘After you,’ I offered, indicating the plates.
‘But you are our guest,’ he returned, mirroring my gesture.
I smiled. ‘I find I am not hungry after all.’ It was a lie; my stomach growled, empty and sour from my earlier drinks, and the hot scent of roasted meat was making my gut cramp with hunger, but I would be a fool to ignore the advice I had given the King earlier, especially in these circumstances.
The old man gave one of his dry, rattling laughs. ‘Are you suspicious of our hospitality? Do you suppose she means to poison you?’
I said nothing. It was rumoured that Catherine had plotted to poison her own daughter not so long ago; she was more than capable of dispatching me without a second thought.
‘It is like a fairground riddle, is it not?’ Ruggieri continued, enjoying himself. ‘If I choose first, you will assume the other glass is poisoned. If I allow you to choose first, you will assume both are. If we were to drink at the same time, however—’
‘I don’t have time for your games,’ I said, irritated.
‘Pardon me, but you have all the time in the world. You are to remain Her Majesty’s guest here until further notice.’
I turned away and slumped back against the chair. ‘Drink or don’t drink, Ruggieri, it’s of no interest to me.’ I pressed my sleeve against my face to try and block out the scent of the meat.
‘Let this reassure you, then.’ He pulled up his chair again, picked up one glass and drank from it, followed by the other. He did the same with a piece of meat from both plates, smiling with what I assumed was meant to be encouragement, though it still looked menacing. Warily, after a few moments, I reached across and took one of the plat
es from his hand. The meat was tender and savoury, and I devoured it in a hurry.
‘There was a book,’ I said, licking the last of the juices from my fingers. His head snapped up, immediately alert. ‘About a year ago, Queen Catherine bought it from an English girl. I see you know the one I mean.’
He sat back, nodding. ‘Yes, I thought you might come sniffing after that sooner or later. The girl was keen to insist on her acquaintance with you. She seemed to believe that would lend the book veracity.’
‘And on the strength of that, Catherine bought it. Fifty écus, I heard.’
‘She asked me to examine it first, naturally,’ he said, ruffled. ‘I thought it might prove a worthwhile addition to her collection. I wanted to pay less but the girl bargained hard. You clearly schooled her well. I do wonder, though, that you should have allowed such a book out of your hands.’
I chose to ignore the implicit question. ‘You know what it is then.’
He folded his hands together on the table. His fingers were long and spindly with swollen joints, the tips stained purple from one of his concoctions, I presumed, though for a moment I had an image of him in his private room, picking through entrails to divine the future like an ancient Roman.
‘I can see what it purports to be. The lost book of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus. Last rumoured to have been stolen from a bookseller in Venice, though that was two decades ago. You will know, of course,’ he said, tapping a discoloured fingernail on the table as if instructing a child, ‘that that book was salvaged from the ruins of Byzantium and brought to Italy at the command of Cosimo de Medici. So, if it is the same one, it rightly belongs in the hands of his great-great-great-granddaughter. Though it is considered a dangerous book, and forbidden by the Church.’
‘Have you read it?’
He leaned forward, screwing up his face further to scrutinise me with his rheumy eyes, trying to divine whether I meant to catch him out.
‘Have you?’
I merely smiled in a manner I hoped he would find enigmatic. The truth was that the book had only been in my possession for less than a day before it was stolen from me (even now the memory of Sophia’s betrayal could make me grind my teeth involuntarily), but I already knew that the heart of it was written in a complex code as yet unbroken by scholars. Let Ruggieri believe I had cracked the encryption. Catherine would want to know the book’s content, after paying so much; it might enhance my value if she thought I was the only one who could read it. Besides, I felt confident that, given the time to make a proper study, I would succeed in deciphering the cramped handwriting that filled the ancient pages.
‘I would not profane its secrets by discussing them with a man such as you,’ he said loftily, after a hesitation long enough to reassure me that he had not managed to penetrate the book’s mysteries.
‘A man such as me?’ I laughed. ‘Oh, come, Ruggieri – if you did not have Catherine’s protection they would have burned you for a witch long ago. You call yourself a scholar, but you are little better than a village wise-woman. Love-philtres and divination by guesswork, that is the extent of your occult wisdom.’
He half-raised himself out of the chair, leaning on both hands across the table. ‘Do not think yourself so far above me, Giordano Bruno. For all your degrees in philosophy and theology, I know you have studied natural magic too. Why else would you want that book? And do not think to mock me – my prophecies have shaped this kingdom—’ He broke off suddenly, as if stricken by a terrible premonition, and stared at the rolled charts in his hand until I coughed, bringing him back to himself. He squinted hard at me. ‘We are two sides of the same coin, you and I. Look – we are even wearing the same costume tonight. People would be hard pressed to tell between us.’
‘If I had known, I would have worn something different. I would not wish to be mistaken for you,’ I said carefully. ‘By some woman you had made a tryst with, for instance.’
He gave a dry laugh. ‘Hardly a danger these days. I always come as the Doctor to a costume ball, everyone knows it. You should have recalled that. You being the one who professes the art of memory,’ he added, unable to resist the barb.
I was too preoccupied with the thought of my encounter with Léonie in the clearing to respond in kind. It had been almost completely dark, and I was standing outside the reach of her lantern; I could not know for certain whether she had seen my costume and spoken as she did because she had been waiting for a man dressed as the Doctor from the Commedia and assumed I was he. But it made no sense to think she had been expecting Ruggieri; he was Catherine’s man to the bone, he would be the last person to incite anyone to harm the King. I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes; I was tired and still blurry from drink, and my mind was making wild leaps without the aid of reason. I needed to rein it in and proceed logically.
‘Speaking of memory,’ I said casually, ‘do you remember the girl’s name? The one who sold you the book.’ I scratched at a splinter of wood on the table so as not to look overly interested.
‘She was trying to present herself as a boy, I recall. No one was fooled by that.’ He paused to pick a shred of meat from his remaining teeth. ‘When she finally admitted her deception, the name she gave was very ordinary. Something that made me suppose it was a false name too. Anne, perhaps? Jane? Mary?’
I tried to suppress my irritation. ‘Well, which?’
He shook his head. ‘I never had the benefit of your lessons in memory, of course,’ he said, with a malicious little smile. ‘Might have been Mary.’
‘And the surname?’ I asked, already knowing this was pointless.
‘Something like Gifford,’ he said, unexpectedly. ‘One of those peculiar English names.’
I sat up. ‘Mary Gifford. You are sure?’
‘Not how you knew her, I take it?’
‘She has had many names since I’ve known her.’
Ruggieri pulled at the points of his beard. ‘She sounds like a handful of trouble, Bruno. You must be made for each other.’
I stared into the fire, my thoughts scattered. Sophia Underhill. A boy called Kit. Mrs Kate Kingsley. And now Mary Gifford. At least I had a means to begin looking. Made for each other. There were times when I feared that might be true, and not in a comforting way.
Bells chimed the hour from a distant part of the palace. The candles burned low. I must have dozed a little, listening to the fading crackle of the fire and the sound of Ruggieri sucking the bones for the last scraps of meat. Eventually the chewing gave way to the rhythmic gargling of an old man’s snores. I roused myself and saw that he had fallen asleep, his head lolling on to his chest like a hanged man. I pushed my chair back and stood, as silently as possible. We were alone in the vast space of the library, wooden stacks filled with books stretching away into the darkness in both directions. I had no idea how much time had passed, but I decided that, whatever the consequences, I would rather not wait for Catherine’s summons. I picked up my mask from the table and tied it tight around my head again, flinching at the clamminess inside. Ruggieri might be deep in the arms of Morpheus but I supposed the guard was still outside and I was unarmed since the loss of my dagger. I cast around for anything I might use as a weapon and my eye fell on a poker in the fireplace. Tucking it behind my back, I tiptoed across to the door and turned the handle. Ruggieri shifted and snorted in his sleep; I froze, my throat tight, but he settled himself like an old dog and slumbered on. I slipped out, closing the door behind me and keeping my back pressed against it.
The guard looked surprised at my appearance; he gripped his halberd with both hands and demanded to know what I was about.
‘It is time for me to return to the Queen Mother’s apartments,’ I said.
He frowned. ‘I was given no orders.’
‘No, but I was. She told me to return at this hour.’
He glanced along the corridor to left and right, as if some explanation might be waiting. I suspected this one was not overburdened with wits.
> ‘We don’t want to keep her waiting,’ I added, with a warning note. ‘She will be angry if she hears you stopped me.’
He hesitated. ‘I will have to accompany you.’
‘Of course. Is it down here?’ I took a step forward in the wrong direction.
‘This way.’ He moved to usher me along, turning as he did so to point ahead; in the same moment I swung the poker with both hands to catch him on the back of the skull. He was a tall man, but not heavy; he fell on his face with a thud like a sack of flour dropped from a height, narrowly missing the blade of his weapon as he toppled forward. I murmured an apology as I fumbled at his belt for the short knife he carried there. It was a poor substitute for the beautifully crafted Damascus steel I had lost, but at least I felt a little better prepared. I ran along dim corridors where the sconces had burned down to one wavering flame on a mound of melted wax, winding my way through the now-deserted palace, keeping close to the walls, until a draught of cold air led me to a side door that opened on to the gardens.
A brittle dawn light was spreading slowly up from the horizon, the sky cold and smooth as glass, the air charged with the metallic taste of frost. A lone seagull drifted above me with a mournful cry, wings motionless, floating like a sheet of paper on the wind. Ahead, the gardens were emerging into a patchwork of shadows, the detritus of the night – abandoned masks, gloves, lanterns – outlined on the whitened grass. The bowl of the great fountain loomed out of the retreating darkness. The gardens too seemed abandoned; I guessed the night’s revellers had been packed off into boats before panic and scandal could spread too far.
