Sacrilege: A Novel

by S. J. Parris

  “Like a heretic,” I said, softly.

  “Like a heretic.” She fixed me with a meaningful look.

  I stepped back, rubbing my hand across the growth of stubble on my chin and shaking my head.

  “You want me to go to Canterbury and find the killer?”

  “If you could do it in Oxford, why not in Canterbury?” She sounded petulant, and I was reminded, despite her weight of experience, how young she still was.

  “It’s not quite as simple as that. I can’t just take off across the country—I would need permission …” But as I considered the possibility, I felt my blood quicken with the prospect of it: a change of scene, a new challenge, and the ultimate prize of freeing Sophia from a sentence of death.

  “Permission?” She looked scornful.

  “From the ambassador. As a member of his household, out of courtesy I must consult with him before I go anywhere. And with the diplomatic situation so fraught at the moment, he may be reluctant to let me leave.” But it was not the ambassador’s permission I was concerned about. I sincerely doubted whether my real employer would want me away from the embassy at such a time.

  “You are not the ambassador’s ward, Bruno. You are a grown man, or so I thought. Well, it doesn’t matter, then.” She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and started walking briskly away towards the narrow bridge; I watched her for a moment, before hurrying to catch her up.

  “Wait!” I had to work hard to match her determined stride, but on the bridge I caught her by the sleeve. “I have said I will help you, and I meant it. I will see if this can be arranged. But it will be difficult—I would have no authority to undertake an investigation of any kind in Canterbury, and you said yourself how they are suspicious of foreigners there.”

  “You could pretend to be a visiting scholar,” she said brightly. “They have a fine library in the cathedral precincts, I am told. Please, Bruno? You are all the hope I have now.” Her eyes widened, and the pleading in them was in earnest. “If you don’t help me, no one will.”

  She looked down at her boots, shamed by her own helplessness; Sophia, whose independent spirit chafed at being beholden to a man, any man. She kicked at a small stone, her arms wrapped again around her chest, as if to protect herself from further hurt. It was a gesture that clutched at my heart, and I knew that, whatever the obstacles, I must find a way to help her. If nothing else, it would assuage the lingering sense of guilt that still needled me over my actions in Oxford, and the fear that I had somehow been the indirect cause of everything that had happened to her since. I owed her a debt, I believed, and she had counted on my conscience.

  “Very well then. Santa Maria!” I grabbed at my hair with both hands in a gesture of mock exasperation that made her laugh. “You would wear down a stone, Sophia. But what will you do, if I get myself to Canterbury?”

  “I will come with you, of course.” She looked nonplussed.

  “What? And how are you going to do that? You are wanted for murder.”

  “I wouldn’t venture into the city, obviously. I will stay as a boy, and you can say I am your apprentice.”

  “Travelling scholars don’t have apprentices.”

  “Your scribe, then. Or servant, it doesn’t matter. But you will need me there, Bruno, to point you in the right direction—I know the city and I can direct you to Sir Edward’s associates. We could find lodgings somewhere on the edge of town. I could keep out of sight.”

  Her face was animated now, her eyes bright and eager. We could find lodgings? Was she proposing that we share rooms together? I looked at her doubtfully, but I could find no trace of teasing in her eyes, only earnest hope. Perhaps she believed her disguise was good enough to convince both of us that she really was a boy. Was that the kind of friendship she envisaged between us, despite the fact that in Oxford I had once been so bold as to kiss her, and she had responded? I wished I had a better sense of how she regarded me.

  It would be an enormous risk for her, returning to the city where, even with her cropped hair and dirty clothes, there was every chance of being recognised as the murdered magistrate’s wife. On the other hand, she was right: I would fare better with someone to guide me around the city of Canterbury, and what would she do otherwise in London, alone and friendless as her money rapidly ran out? At least if she came with me I could do my best to take care of her—and the thought of spending days in her company, reviving the conversations we had enjoyed in Oxford, was more than I had dared to hope for, even if, for now, she saw me only as a trusted friend. Until that morning, I had thought she was dead to me, and I knew that I could not abandon her to circumstance again.

  “Let me see if I can make arrangements,” I said.

  “Good. But we must leave soon. Because of the assizes.”

  “The assizes?”

  “Yes. Once a quarter a judge comes from London to try all the criminals taken since the last session, the cases too serious for the local justice. The next one is due in early August. If you were to find the real killer by then, he could be tried at the assizes and I would be free.”

  “You don’t ask much, do you?”

  Outside the Hanging Sword, we parted company, I assuring her that I would secure permission from the ambassador as soon as possible, and warning her in the meantime to keep her money close about her person and not to walk around the streets of London after dark.

  “But I have this,” she said, pulling aside the front of her jerkin to reveal a small knife buckled to her belt.

  “That will come in very handy if you should need to peel an apple. But I don’t suggest you try your hand at any tavern brawls with it,” I said.

  She smiled, and her face seemed more relaxed.

  “I’d prefer not to.”

  We stood awkwardly for a moment, uncertain of how to say goodbye. Sophia seemed less stooped, less diminished, as if a weight had lifted from her. “Thank you, Bruno,” she said, checking in both directions to see that the street was empty before leaning in and giving me an impulsive hug. “You are a true friend. One day I will find a way to repay you.”

  I could only blink and smile stupidly as she stepped back and turned away towards the tavern. I moved to cross the street towards Salisbury Court, wondering what on earth I had undertaken.

  “Ciao, Kit,” I called, glancing over my shoulder to see her pause at the tavern door. She lifted a hand in farewell, then executed a mock bow.

  She moves too much like a woman, I thought, watching the way she snaked her narrow hips to one side to avoid a man coming out as she slipped through the doorway. This Kit will need some lessons on being a man, if we’re not to be arrested. Before that, though, I needed to find a way to make this madcap plan palatable to the two men whose authority I must respect while I live in London: Michel de Castelnau, the French ambassador, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s principal secretary. Both were certain to be opposed. I sighed. Sophia might imagine that a man enjoys the freedoms she lacks, but we are all beholden to somebody, in the great chain of patronage and favour that stretches all the way up to the queen herself; and even she is not truly free, as long as she lives in fear of the assassin on the stairs, like the poor Prince of Orange.

  Chapter 3

  Canterbury?” Sir Francis Walsingham fairly spat the word across the room. “What on earth for?”

  “To travel,” I said lamely. “I was thinking that I have been in England over a year now and I have seen so little of the country …” Walsingham gave me a long look and the words dried up. Since I had agreed to work secretly for Queen Elizabeth’s master of intelligence the previous spring I had become skilled at dissembling to everyone around me, but there was no point in lying to Walsingham. Those calm, steady eyes gave you the impression they could penetrate lead. Many a suspected conspirator against the queen had cracked and confessed under that gaze before they were even shown the inside of the Tower of London, with its ingenious array of instruments to assist confession.

  “P
ilgrimage, is it? Following the example of your patron?” He raised a sardonic eyebrow and tapped the rolled-up letter I had brought from the French ambassador Castelnau on the edge of his desk for emphasis.

  Leaning against the mantelpiece, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and avoided his eye.

  “It’ll be a book,” Sir Philip Sidney observed from his perch on the window seat, where he sat with one of his long legs bent up on the cushions, the other stretched out before him. He had barely aged since I first met him in Padua, I thought; especially when clean-shaven, as he was today, he could pass for nineteen, ten years younger than his true age, with his fair hair that always stuck up in a tuft at the front, no matter how he tried to tame it, and the bright blue eyes that lit up his handsome face whenever he sensed adventure. He was wearing only a lace-edged shirt with his breeches instead of the usual starched ruff that was the fashion among the young men at court, and without his stiff brocaded clothes he seemed less self-conscious. “Bruno wouldn’t rouse himself unless it was in pursuit of a book.” He waited until I glanced up and gave me a broad wink.

  “Or a woman?” Walsingham looked back to me and I could almost fancy a hint of amusement in the twitch of his mouth.

  “I understand the cathedral is very fine,” I said.

  “The oldest in England,” Sidney said. “But I don’t believe you’ve developed a sudden fascination for architecture, Bruno. Come on—what’s really tempting you to Canterbury?”

  I hesitated; Walsingham grew impatient.

  “Never mind the cathedral—what are we going to do about this?” He brandished the letter again, a shadow of irritation flitting across his face.

  We were gathered in the principal secretary’s private office at his country home in Barn Elms, some miles along the Thames to the west of the City of London. Since Sidney had married Walsingham’s daughter the previous autumn, the young couple had lived at Barn Elms, Sidney’s finances being too precarious to support a household of his own at present. From my point of view, the situation was ideal—I could visit my friend and arrange meetings with Walsingham at the same time without arousing the French ambassador’s suspicions unduly, though I know it chafed at Sidney to be living in such close quarters with his in-laws.

  Behind the wide oak desk, Walsingham sat back and folded his hands together, his gaze focused on the empty fireplace as if deep in thought. Despite the warmth of the day, he wore his customary suit of plain black wool and the small black skullcap that always made him look a little severe. His was a strong face, with wisdom and sadness written into its lines and the pouches beneath his eyes; there were moments when those eyes seemed to contain the weight of all the kingdom’s strife. This was not far from the truth. Walsingham and the intelligence he gathered from his network of informers all over Europe were the queen’s last defence against the myriad plots on her life and the security of England. At fifty-two, Walsingham’s hair and beard were almost entirely grey now; only his black eyebrows served as a reminder of how he must have looked in his youth. Over the past year I had grown to respect this rational, sober man above any other, though I also feared him a little.

  The letter that had so infuriated him contained a grovelling apology from Castelnau on behalf of King Henri of France, who said he could not receive Sidney as a guest in Paris as he was unfortunately about to go on a pilgrimage to Lyon.

  “Her Majesty will be livid,” Sidney remarked. “I’m quite piqued about it myself—I fancied a trip to Paris.” He leaned back into the patch of sun that spilled through the diamond-paned glass and clasped his hands behind his head.

  Walsingham frowned.

  “Henri of France is weak, though this is not news to us. He knew Her Majesty was not sending Sidney on a social call, but to persuade him to commit French troops to a joint intervention in the Netherlands. I suppose Castelnau thought we would be less likely to shout at you, Bruno?”

  “I believe that was his reasoning, Your Honour.”

  “Well, he can explain himself to the queen face-to-face in due course. France cannot dither on the fence for much longer.” He shook his head. “This war against the Spanish in the Netherlands has been a bloody mess for the last twenty years, but the queen is now seriously considering an offer of troops to help the Protestant rebels. If Henri had any conscience he would do the same. Especially since it was his idiot brother who made the situation a hundred times worse,” he added, regarding me darkly from under his brows as if I were somehow implicated.

  “My uncle the Earl of Leicester has long argued for an English military intervention to aid the Dutch rebels,” Sidney said, sitting forward with sudden vigour and clenching his fists. “And I would go with him in an instant. Teach those Spanish curs a lesson they won’t forget.”

  Walsingham looked up sharply. “Don’t be too hasty, Philip. That war could easily rumble on for another twenty years, with thousands more deaths on each side. In my opinion, it can’t be won, except with a concerted effort by united Protestant forces from all across Europe, and I see little prospect of that.”

  Sidney sat back, chastened, and I wondered if Walsingham had interpreted his eagerness for a military adventure as a personal slight, a desire to escape his domestic life here at Barn Elms. Moments passed in silence, the only sound a persistent fly buzzing against the window. I watched the sunlight cast patterns on the wooden boards, broken by flickering shadows from the leaves of the trees outside, and waited for someone to speak.

  “God’s death!” Walsingham cried suddenly, slamming his fist down on the desk so that his tortoiseshell inkwell rattled and Sidney and I started out of our private thoughts. “The Prince of Orange has just been shot on his own stairs as he left his dinner table. Can you imagine how this news has shaken Her Majesty? You will not see her show it in public, but she no longer sleeps. She knows Philip of Spain means her to be next.” He took a deep breath and passed a hand over his head as if smoothing his thoughts, looking from me to Sidney like a schoolmaster. “The Catholic forces in Europe are gaining strength. If Spain regains control of the Netherlands, the Protestants there will be massacred. And then Spain will turn his attention to England. Who will France support when that day comes? King Henri must talk to us, he cannot hide his head in his rosary beads forever.” He pounded his fist on the table again and glared at me, as if he held me responsible for the French king’s havering. “Sidney and I saw Saint Bartholomew’s Day in Paris with our own eyes, you know,” he added, more quietly. “Little children and their grandmothers cut down with swords in their own homes. A thousand lifetimes would not be enough to forget such sights.” He closed his eyes, and his features seemed weighed down by sorrow.

  Sidney and I glanced at each other; it was rare to see Walsingham ruffled by foreign affairs. Part of his incomparable value to Elizabeth was his faultless composure in any situation. Walsingham is frightened, I thought, and the realisation made me feel for a moment as if the ground had shifted beneath my feet, just as I felt as a child when I first saw my soldier father afraid. The murder of the Prince of Orange had struck at the English government in its tenderest spot. This thought brought me back to the other murder that had preoccupied my thoughts for most of the night.

  “I could meet him in Lyon, when his pilgrimage is finished,” Sidney offered, resting his feet on the window seat and pulling his knees to his chest, the way a child would sit. “It would be no great trouble to journey to Lyon instead.”

  Walsingham looked at him again with a sceptical frown. I was certain that he heard, as I did, the note of longing in Sidney’s voice. My friend itched for the life of travel and adventure he had known in his youth; the longer he stayed cooped up at Barn Elms and the court, the quicker he would be to volunteer for any mission that offered different horizons, even if it meant going to war.

  Walsingham stood, making a show of sorting the papers on his desk into two piles and arranging them neatly side by side.

  “Well, we will put that to Castelnau when I
summon him to an audience with the queen. Tell him to give it some thought, Bruno. Meanwhile, I am intrigued to hear about your pilgrimage. What attraction can Canterbury hold for you, hmm?”

  I hesitated again. There was a risk in telling Walsingham the truth; he might forbid me outright, for any number of reasons, and to make the journey against his express wishes would result in my being dismissed from his service, which I could not afford either in terms of income or patronage. But there was a greater risk in not telling him, since he would discover the truth anyway; no one kept secrets from Walsingham, not even the king of Spain or the pope himself. So I stepped forward, as if taking my place on a stage, and gave them a brief précis of the story Sophia had told me, leaving out any details that I thought might compromise her. When I had finished, Sidney was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at me with new admiration, while his father-in-law looked fiercer than ever.

  “I remember the rector’s daughter,” Sidney said, with a lascivious grin. “You sly dog, Bruno.”

  Walsingham’s face remained serious. “You have had your head turned by this woman before, I think, Bruno. What proof have you that she didn’t murder her husband?”

  I spread my hands wide. “No proof except her word, Your Honour. But I am willing to take the risk.”

  “So I see. But I’m not sure that I’m willing for you to put yourself in that position.” He cupped his chin in his hand, his long fingers stretched across his mouth as he continued to regard me with a thoughtful expression. It was a familiar gesture of his, one he employed when he was weighing up a situation, as if his hand were a mask to hide any telltale emotion. “There was some doubt over her religion, as I recall?”

  I paused briefly before looking up and meeting his eye.

  “I assure you that she follows no unorthodox religion now, Your Honour.” I refrained from adding that she followed no religion at all.