by S. J. Parris
Here between the buildings it was pitch-black. I felt my way along the wall to the carved stone of the shallow porch. The rain was beginning to soak through Harry’s cloak and the first rivulets were trickling down my neck as I fumbled at my belt for the bunch of keys. But I could not find the latch and my fingers scrabbled frantically across the pitted wood of the door, slick with rainwater streaming down its surface, as I searched for the keyhole, cursing under my breath. It was only at the moment of another apocalyptic crack overhead, accompanied by a flash that lit the scene in its strange bluish glare, that I was able to see clearly enough to insert the first key. Prompted by some instinctive unease, I glanced quickly over my shoulder and thought for a moment I saw a figure outlined against the archway that led through to the cloister, someone dressed like me in a hooded cloak. I froze, all my senses prickling, straining for any sound over the dying rumble of thunder and the constant battering of the rain, but no movement came. The lightning had lasted only a fraction of a moment and I told myself it must have been my fevered imagination, seeing shapes in shadows. The second key I tried fitted the lock and turned smoothly, and I gave a small exclamation of triumph as the treasury door opened to me with a portentous creak.
I dropped back the dripping hood of Harry’s cloak and took out one of the candles tucked into my doublet. Here inside the building was only the silence and the peculiar musty smell of damp stone; in the chill I shivered as I struggled to strike the tinder. After some efforts I had the candle lit, and holding it up could see that I was in a stark, high-ceilinged room, with a stone floor and walls, unadorned except for the shelves of ledgers and scrolls neatly arranged under the windows. There were two broad desks standing at right angles to each other in one corner and to the left of these, a low wooden door set into the wall. I turned slowly, shielding the flame with my hand, searching the walls and floor for some evidence of an opening to the vault I had seen marked on the map. If the map was right, the vault was built under the treasury and connected with the crypt through its southern wall. So the entrance should be somewhere along the wall of the treasury that backed onto the cathedral, to my right. As I walked, I could hear the drip of water from the cloak’s hem and the sound of my wet boots on the flagstones; I had to hope the trail would dry quickly or it would be immediately clear that an intruder had entered.
The southern wall of the treasury held no bookshelves; instead there was a wide brick-lined fireplace. I leaned in and attempted to look up the flue, but the candle’s light was too feeble to illuminate much beyond my own height. Looking down, I saw that the hearth had been carefully swept; it was clearly some time since a fire had been lit there. The entrance to the vaults had to be concealed somewhere inside the fire-place; I could see no other place that would make sense. It was just a question of finding it. Crouching, I moved farther in and began to press my fingers along the brickwork. On the right-hand side, I thought I felt a seam that suggested the outline of a doorway, but in that light it was impossible to see. I continued to push at the bricks with no success and a growing anxiety. If I could not find the entrance to the vault, there was no way of reaching Sophia before the dean came to open up the crypt in the morning, and even if I did locate it, the night was short—I still had to find Sophia and get her back to Harry’s before dawn crept across the sky, and that was without the task I had set myself of searching for Becket’s bones.
I took a deep breath to calm my racing pulse; if I allowed my fears to overcome me now I would not be able to think clearly and everything would be forfeit. As I tried to settle my thoughts, another burst of thunder exploded like cannonfire above me, rattling around the walls, as the lightning whitewashed the room so that all was hard-edged light and shadow, and in that moment there flashed before me on the stage of my memory the image of another such brick wall, in a house I had seen in Oxfordshire. There a concealed entrance had been built on a pivot operated by pressing one of the flagstones on the floor. Hopeful again, I half stood so that I could try the same here by pushing my weight onto my heel. Nothing happened. Gathering all my determination, I tried the same with the next flagstone along and heard a distinctive click, as the wall I was leaning on shifted almost imperceptibly. I pressed against it with my shoulder and the wall swung soundlessly inwards on its hinges, more lightly and easily than I had expected; the outward layer of brick was just to disguise a wooden door panel that had been built into the fireplace. In front of me the candle illuminated a flight of spiral steps curving downwards into darkness. With great relief, and no small sense of triumph, I began my descent, pulling the doorway closed behind me.
So this was Langworth’s secret vault that allowed him into the crypt unseen, I thought, as I felt my way down the narrow stairs. That first day when he had appeared to Harry and me as if from one of the tombs, he must have come through this entrance. With his house positioned almost next to the treasury, it would be easy for him to visit the crypt at night, unseen by any of the other residential canons. The door in the fireplace had opened smoothly, as if it was well-used. I guessed that Langworth must visit his hidden treasure frequently.
The staircase opened out into an underground vault that was perhaps half the size of the treasury building above, dank with the smell of mould. I reached out to the wall to guide myself and my fingertips met something cold and slimy. I recoiled in haste, and held the candle up to see dark green moss growing on the stones. At intervals iron rings were fixed into the stone, rusting and leaving an orange-brown trail that bled into the green. I recalled that the map said the place had once been used as a prison. I shuddered to think of it, and thought of the frayed rope in the underground tomb at St. Gregory’s, where those poor boys must have been kept while Sykes carried out his experiments on them as if they were no more than mice. I determined that, for the sake of those children, I would find the evidence to convict Langworth and Sykes and make sure no more boys had to see the inside of that tomb.
Opposite the staircase was a low iron-clad door; locked, naturally, though as I had hoped the last untried key of Langworth’s fitted and turned stiffly. The door opened inward and I slipped through into another dark space, where almost immediately I walked into a solid object so unexpectedly that I nearly dropped the candle. Fortunately I managed not to exclaim aloud, and held the flame up so that I could see a wooden panel some eight feet high fitted over the niche where the door to the vault entered the crypt to conceal the entrance. A few moments of impatient searching revealed a latch hidden on the inside of the panel; when pressed, it swung outward on its hinges, allowing me to pass into what I now realised was one of the small chantry chapels of the crypt. I pushed the panel shut behind me. In the wavering light I saw that the side facing outwards showed a handsome painting of the Nativity—and stepped forward into the dark.
In the depths of the night, the empty crypt with its forest of columns and endlessly repeating arches seemed more menacing than before, and more vast. After a few steps I paused to get my bearings, alert for any sound that would betray the presence of another person, but all I could hear was the rasp of my own breathing and the intermittent rumble of thunder from outside, sounding far distant, as if I were hearing it from underwater. As I advanced, I realised I was parallel with the small altar I had seen on my first visit, the one that lay at the heart of the crypt, flanked by stone tombs. Was Becket hidden somewhere here? I moved closer until the candlelight caught the silver crucifix in the centre of the altar cloth. I picked it up and weighed it in my right hand. Though the cross itself was no more than eighteen inches high, the base was square and solid and certainly heavy enough to crack a man’s skull if brought down with sufficient force.
I tried to picture that night: Sir Edward Kingsley walking back from the Archbishop’s Palace on the north side of the cathedral, towards Langworth’s house. Someone waiting in the shadows as he passed the treasury building; a step forward, and a single blow to the back of the head would have been enough to fell him, but it would have been g
rowing dark. Whoever struck him must have been very sure of his aim. And then, according to the reports, the killer had continued to bludgeon Kingsley as he lay there, until his skull was almost destroyed and his brains spilled over the ground like the cathedral’s famous martyr. A murder fuelled by hatred or vengeance, not merely the need to dispatch someone because they presented an inconvenience. Or at least made to appear that way. I looked down at the crucifix, puzzled. A tall strong man like Tom Garth might wield such an object efficiently as a weapon, but how would Tom have smuggled it out of the crypt before the dean locked up for the night?
I thought I heard a noise beyond me, somewhere in the eastern end of the crypt. Replacing the crucifix, I moved as quickly as the darkness allowed towards the part that Langworth had made sure to tell us was cordoned off and used for storage. Now that I remembered that encounter, it seemed to me obvious that he was deliberately directing us away from that part of the crypt; here, then, I would begin my search.
At the eastern end the crypt appeared to open up, the ceiling vaults were higher and the broad stone columns gave way to delicate pillars, spaced more widely and made—I noticed as I drew nearer—of a glossy polished marble. The floor was piled with chests, wooden crates, and the skeletal outlines of broken furniture. There were small chapels built off to each side and they too were filled with unwanted or forgotten items. It was from one of these that I heard the sound again; a kind of scratching, like the movements of a rat. I held up the candle; its flame was burning lower now, elongating as I tilted it to avoid the hot wax dripping down my wrist.
“Sophia?”
No response; just the scratching noise again.
“Are you here? It is I.” I moved closer to the source of the noise, tripping as I did so on some box I had not seen, sending it into a pile of crates with a terrifying clatter. “Merda!” I stooped to rub my injured toe and heard a muffled laugh from the far corner of the chapel. “Where are you, damn it?”
“Bruno? Is it really you?”
From the mass of objects heaped up by the disused altar, a shape detached itself and approached, picking its way carefully through the debris. Bundled into a bulky cloak, the figure stopped in front of me and drew back its hood.
I swear she had never looked more beautiful to me; the sweet relief on her face when she saw me, after what must have been hours of fear alone in the dark; her fragility in that moment, the tears that sprang involuntarily to her eyes as they searched my face. Was that the moment when I knew I loved her, and would do whatever it took to make her love me? Perhaps; all I know is that when she threw herself on me and clung around my neck as if she would never let go, I felt I would have willingly endured any amount of time in that filthy gaol cell for the glory of feeling how much she needed me in that moment.
“Oh God, Bruno, I thought you would never come,” she murmured against my neck, and then a great sob welled up within her and erupted into my shoulder.
I felt her thin shoulders shaking as she gave vent to the tension and fear that must have been building during her hours of hiding in the darkness, not knowing who would find her first. I held her until her silent cries subsided as she pressed herself fiercely against me, and I don’t remember how it happened but suddenly her open mouth found mine and I was kissing her as I had once kissed her in Oxford, but this time she did not pull away. Instead she responded, as hot and hungry as I, knotting her fingers into the hair at the back of my neck to pull me closer; I felt the wetness of the tears on her face and the wetness of her mouth, and I was still holding the candle precariously away from us in my right hand, my arm outstretched, while with my left I scrabbled at the fastening of her cloak. As it fell to the floor I pulled at the strings that held the bodice of the rough dress she wore underneath and slipped it from one shoulder; she arched backwards with a soft moan as I bent my head to take her small breast in my mouth, and at that moment I heard, unmistakably, the sound of footsteps on stone.
We froze. It was Sophia who reacted first, while I stood, helpless, dazed by desire; she blew out the candle and grabbed at her cloak, pulling me by the other hand back to her hiding place behind the altar. But I was afraid we had made enough sound to draw the attention of whoever was down here. Sophia sank to the floor, her back against the altar; I felt her trembling beside me. Trying to regain my wits and silence my ragged breath, I shuffled into a position where, by craning my neck, I could just about see through the piles of boxes into the main body of the crypt. The wavering light of a lantern crept along the floor. I slid a hand into my boot and drew out my knife.
The footsteps grew closer, then stopped, as if the person was looking around. After a few moments the light moved away a little distance. Perhaps he had not heard us after all and was searching another part of the crypt. I continued to move cautiously towards the entrance to the chapel. From here I could see that it was Langworth, his gaunt black figure outlined against the glow of the lamp, pacing slowly, turning, his right hand held out before him holding something—what? He turned again and I saw it clearly; he had a dagger too. My stomach tightened; I would wager he knew how to use it. He paused, seeming to sniff the air like a dog and I froze, expecting that at any moment he would turn in my direction with his light and see me crouching on the threshold of the chapel. But instead his behaviour was more curious. He stopped between two of the delicate marble columns and genuflected, making the sign of the cross before kneeling with his back to me and lowering his face close to the stone floor, as if he was examining it. He set the lantern on the ground beside him and pressed both hands to the stones, feeling his way along. I watched him for a moment, intrigued, before I realised this was my best chance.
Rousing myself, I leapt to my feet and ran towards him. His head jerked up at the sound but he was not quick enough and I hurled myself at his kneeling form, throwing him to the ground. He lashed out with his dagger as I did so, catching me along the length of my left forearm, but in an instant I had my own knife to his throat and I grasped his wrist with my other hand, forcing him to drop his weapon.
“What will you do, Giordano Bruno—murder me here, on hallowed ground?” he hissed, as I pressed his head against the cold stone. “You think even your puppet master Walsingham could protect you from the consequences of that?”
“Did you think twice before you murdered in a place of sanctuary?”
He let out a hollow laugh, though it emerged strangled by the angle of his head. I had him pinned facedown against the stones, one hand holding his head, the other keeping my knife point at his throat, yet I had the strange sensation that he was not afraid of me.
“I have killed no one,” he said, with remarkable calm.
“What about Edward Kingsley?”
Again, that sardonic laugh, as if my ignorance amused him.
“Edward Kingsley was my friend. I am the very last person who would have had an interest in his death. In fact, it has caused me nothing but inconvenience. And sorrow, naturally,” he added, as an afterthought. “The only person whose blood I should not be sorry to have on my hands is yours.”
“You are very free with your threats for a man with a knife to his throat,” I said, nettled.
“You will not kill me. You cannot. You must present me to Walsingham alive so that I can be questioned in the Tower, is it not so? We both know you would not be forgiven for destroying such a valuable source of information. Besides, you need someone to answer for Kingsley’s murder at the assizes or his wife cannot be found innocent, and that is your whole purpose here, is it not?” The scar at the edge of his lips curved into a lascivious smirk. “I have no intention of letting you hand me to the queen’s torturers, by the way. Henry Howard warned me you were slippery, but I have allies in this town and you have none.”
I took a deep breath, keeping my knife steady. He was right; I could not kill him, here or anywhere, and if I hurt him it would only strengthen the case against me at the coming trial. I dug my knee harder into his back and he winced sharpl
y, but would not give me the satisfaction of crying out.
“Where is Thomas Becket?” I hissed in his ear.
“Dead and gone,” he said, but I noticed his eyes flicker towards the place he had just been examining.
“You lie.”
By way of answer he laughed softly. My patience snapped; transferring my knife to my left hand, I hooked my right arm around his throat so that his Adam’s apple fitted in the crook of my elbow and began to squeeze gently. The movement took him by surprise and he tried to cry out but I was already crushing the breath from him. I could feel my arm trembling as I increased the pressure; I had learned this trick in Rome, where I had also learned that if you misjudge the timing by even a heartbeat it can be fatal. In barely a moment, Langworth’s eyes began to bulge and cloud over and his body went limp under me. I lowered him to the floor and tucked my knife away, heart thudding against my ribs. When I looked up, Sophia was standing beside me, her eyes wide with fear.
“Christ’s blood, Bruno, have you killed him?”
“I hope not.” I reached under Langworth’s slumped form and pressed my hand to his chest. At first I feared my gamble had not paid off, but after a moment’s groping I found the faint flutter of his heart. “No, thank God. He has passed out, but I don’t know how long before he comes round. We have to work quickly. Take this.” I handed her Langworth’s lantern. “See if there is anything stored in that side chapel we could use as a lever.”
I took the tinderbox and my spare candle from inside my doublet. When it was alight, I melted a little wax on the floor and stood the candle upright. Though the light was poor, I could make out traces on the flagstones where Langworth had been kneeling, the outline of an oblong shape where the stone felt of a different texture. He had made the sign of the cross here; his piety had given him away.
There was a narrow gap between the flagstones and I tried to prise one by inserting my fingers but it was too heavy. Impatiently, I watched Langworth’s face for flickers of life as I waited for Sophia to return. After a moment she appeared, triumphant, holding a rusting shovel in one hand and the light in the other.
