Sacrilege: A Novel

by S. J. Parris

She raised her head and answered with a defiant stare. I had placed myself to my advantage; to look at me she had to squint into the sunlight behind me.

  “Some service involving your son.” When she still didn’t answer, I decided to venture all. “A service not to him personally, but to the Church. A service to God. Was that how they sold it to you?”

  “Why should I tell you any of my business?” she said, but the fight had gone out of her voice and I knew my guess had struck home. I took the few steps across the room to stand close to her, so that I could drop my voice easily to make sure the boy did not hear.

  “Because those other boys who died, Alys—they died in preparation for this service that your son is to perform. They died because the men you are trusting with your son’s life don’t know what they are doing. Did they tell you what would be required of him?”

  She shook her head and her fingers fluttered to the gold medallion she wore around her neck.

  “Only that it would be to the glory of God and the”—she faltered—“the Church.”

  “By the Church they do not mean what the queen of England or the Archbishop of Canterbury mean by the same word, do they?”

  “You would have to ask them that question,” she flashed back, quick as blinking. “Tell me about these boys.” She lowered her voice and her eyes flickered to the door she had just closed, in case her son should hear. “What happened to them? How did they die?”

  “They were poisoned. One was a beggar child, the other a French boy they must have persuaded to go with them somehow. They died in the course of experimenting with a poison and its antidote. The poison would make the victim appear dead. The antidote, given some time later, was supposed to revive him. If it was successful, it would appear as if—”

  “As if he had been brought back from the dead,” she breathed. She looked up at me, her eyes bright with fear and wonder. “And they were of my boy’s age, you say?”

  “I am not an apothecary, but I understand the quantities of both substances would depend on the weight and age of the person taking them. They had to test whether their idea worked before they tried it out on a public stage, with their principal actor.” My gaze wandered to the door, where I suspected Matthias would be trying to listen.

  “But it didn’t work.”

  “No. There was no miracle for those boys.” I allowed a pause, while she pressed a sleeve to her mouth and cast about, as if unable to decide whether or not to sit. “Still—I’m sure they will do nothing without first practising on other children. They seem to have a knack of finding them.”

  “Oh, Jesus, no.” She drew breath. “They talked of a miracle. By the power of Saint Thomas, to restore the true Church. They said no harm would come to him, and after, my boy’s name would be written in the history books, when England was brought back to God.” She pulled again at her hair. “And then he said if I did not agree, I would have no more money.”

  “He? You mean Langworth?”

  I took the bitter expression that passed across her face as answer. She cupped her hand over her mouth for a moment, as if afraid too many words might spill out uncensored, then she clasped me by the wrist and led me to the window seat, where she pushed the bread aside and gestured to me to sit beside her. When she spoke, it was almost soundless, so that I had to lean in and watch the shape of her mouth, as the deaf do.

  “You are right to say that I dissemble. This”—she plucked at her widow’s clothes—“is a costume I have been obliged to wear these past twelve years, for a shred of respectability.” She sighed. “I was the youngest daughter of a county gentleman in Cambridgeshire with more family pride than income, who threw me out when I got with child. I tried to support us with sewing and little jobs but in the end I was forced to go to the cathedral in Ely and beg for alms. John Langworth was a canon there. He took a liking to me. I curse the day I ever knocked on that door, but what’s done is done.” She shrugged, as if the rest were obvious.

  “He made you his mistress?”

  “He paid for the boy’s education and a roof over our heads. Many are not so lucky. And he wouldn’t be the first churchman to keep a woman.”

  “That much is certain. But he is not the boy’s father?”

  “No. The man who sired Matthias is long gone. But since Langworth has paid for his upbringing, I suppose he has a claim to be something like a father. He brought us here with him when he was appointed canon six years ago.”

  That at least explained how Langworth could feel entitled to make use of the boy without any of the compunction a father might feel about gambling with his son’s life.

  “I have posed as a widow since my son was born,” she continued. “Gray is not even my real name, though Alys is.” She gave a little sad laugh, then looked up sharply, her face suddenly serious. “What can I do? I had no idea Matthias’s life was in danger, and if more children might die …” She bit at the skin around her fingers and I realised that beneath the cool poise I had admired from a distance lay a welter of fear and confusion, a life lived under the threat of destitution, at the mercy of someone else’s demands. She knew too well what it meant to live by dissembling.

  “Testify for me,” I whispered. “Tell the queen’s justice what you were asked to do.”

  “At the assizes? In a public courtroom?”

  “No. A written deposition. One you will swear by.”

  She shook her head.

  “My word against Langworth, Sykes, and Mayor Fitzwalter?” She snorted. “I would succeed only in stirring up their anger against me. And if I stand in their way, it is much easier to remove me than abandon their plans. And then what becomes of my son?”

  “Is that what happened to Sir Edward Kingsley? Did he threaten to stand in their way, in the end?” So the mayor was the fourth guardian. I absorbed this news with a level expression.

  “I don’t know what happened to Edward Kingsley,” she said, looking me right in the eye. “Though I don’t mourn him.”

  “Testify, Alys. Back me up with the truth, against their lies. You could be free of Langworth.”

  “You really think they would listen to us? A foreigner and a woman, against the mayor, a canon of the cathedral, and a physician?” She shook her head with a dry laugh, as if my naïveté amused her.

  I pushed my hands through my hair in frustration. This was Tom Garth’s attitude too; was justice so easily bought and sold in this town that no one dared stand up and speak the truth? Would it always be the same: corrupt and self-serving men exploiting those who had no voice, because they were comfortably sure they would never be challenged? Certainly it would, if no one had the courage to at least try and face them down.

  “I am not talking about justice as this town understands it,” I said softly. “There are those who will listen to me.”

  I stood and stretched in the dusty sunlight. The widow watched me, appraising; I saw how her eyes travelled over my body. Twelve years at the mercy of Langworth, I thought. God, it is a cruel thing to be born a woman.

  “Who are you?” she whispered.

  “Someone who wants to help you. Give it some thought, at least,” I said, turning to the door. “You could save yourself from Langworth. And your son from Saint Thomas.”

  “And who would provide for us then? Will you, Master Filippo, or whatever your real name is? I didn’t think so. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices.”

  “Would you sacrifice your son?”

  She stood too and looked at me, wrapping her arms around her chest as if hugging herself against a coming assault.

  “Thank you for helping us,” she said, in a tone of empty politeness. “You may see yourself out now.” And she watched me all the way to the door, her face guarded once more against any show of emotion. I had done my best, I thought, as I ran down the wide stairs and past the staring servant. I had no promise that she would help me, and if she chose to tell Langworth what I had just told her, he might well see fit to try and finish me off this very night, b
efore I had a chance to spill a word of it to the queen’s justice. I felt a tightness in my chest and throat; so much was still unknown, the outcome still uncertain. By tomorrow we would see how the cards would fall. For Sophia, Harry, and me, a bad hand could mean the difference between life and death.

  I walked back to the marketplace, emptying now as people made their way towards the cathedral to wait for divine service, baskets of goods hanging from their arms, jostling and chatting as they funnelled towards the gatehouse. I had just edged into the crowd when I felt a tug at my sleeve and turned to see Rebecca beside me, wide-eyed. In my brooding on my exchange with the Widow Gray, I had all but forgotten what I had asked the girl to find out for me. Her apprehensive expression gave me a terrible sense of foreboding; I beckoned her over to one side, out of the flow of people.

  “What you asked me to find out? It is the most curious thing, but not a few moments after you left the stall, one of the goodwives from the North Gate parish came bustling up to tell Mistress Blunt that apparently Doctor Sykes was called out at first light to the Kingsley house to attend the old housekeeper.” Her hand still rested on my sleeve and her eyes were bright with the excitement of sharing her news; now she adjusted her face to a more appropriately sombre mien. “It is the saddest thing, but it seems the old woman had a bad fall in the night. Down some steps to the cellar, so the goodwife said, though I don’t know where she had that from. But Doctor Sykes said there was nothing he could do to save her by the time he arrived.”

  “I’m sure he did his best,” I said, mechanically. I felt as if a stone had lodged in my chest. I had known Meg was in danger; I had heard Langworth as good as say that she knew too much. She had seen the beggar boy in the kitchen at St. Gregory’s; she could have said so in a courtroom. Now she could say nothing. If the fall—which I had no doubt was the result of Langworth’s visit last night—had not killed her outright, Sykes with his bag of potions would certainly have made sure of it, even as he pretended to try and save her. Just like Sarah Garth. But had I not tried to warn Meg, I argued with my conscience; what more could I have done, when she was as good as resigned to whatever befell her there?

  “It is so curious, though,” Rebecca was saying. “How did you know? To ask after old Meg, the very morning she died?”

  “Did you say anything to Mistress Blunt about that?” I asked, lowering my voice.

  “Not a word. But tell me. It is like you have the gift of seeing the future.” She smiled; this, I supposed, was meant as a compliment.

  Yet somehow I am always too late to save people from it, I thought. Old Meg would join the parade of accusing faces I saw sometimes in dreams, the people who had died because I had not been able to protect them, because I had not moved fast enough, or else as a direct result of my actions. “You cannot blame yourself,” Walsingham had told me once, and he knew all too well what it meant to have blood on his hands for the sake of a greater cause. “You cannot be everywhere and save everyone, Bruno,” he had said. “You must make your choices. Sometimes there will be casualties. This is a war, after all. We fight it with intelligence and ciphers and hidden writings delivered in the dead of night, but it is a war nonetheless, and sometimes it will exact a price.”

  “She had complained of feeling ill,” I said to Rebecca. “I was concerned for her. Perhaps she fainted and fell, poor thing.”

  “Hm.” I had expected her to press further as to how I had become so intimate with the old woman in only a few days, but her mind was elsewhere. “And I have more news—I am bound over to appear as a witness at your trial.”

  I looked at her. “You will speak the truth?”

  “Of course.” She looked indignant. “I mean to persuade them of your innocence. He was my uncle, after all, and if I don’t think you killed him, why should they?”

  I smiled, though I feared in her puppyish enthusiasm she might protest too much, which would be of no help to my case.

  “They sometimes try to put words in your mouth,” I said. “Watch out for that.”

  She looked scornful.

  “I would not fall for those tricks. Signor Savolino, do you mean to stay in Canterbury after the assizes?” She twined a strand of hair through her fingers as she asked this, sucking absently at the end of it like a child.

  “I shall decide that once I have learned whether they mean to put a rope around my neck.”

  “But your friends at court, they would not let that happen, for certain. Even Mistress Blunt thinks you are innocent,” she added, as if this were the decisive verdict. I smiled. As an eyewitness to the queen’s brocades, I was clearly now redeemed in Mistress Blunt’s eyes. If only the rest of Canterbury could be so easily persuaded.

  “They say the queen’s justice is expected this afternoon,” Rebecca said. “There is always quite a procession—everyone turns out along the High Street to watch him arrive. He will take the best rooms at the Cheker, they say, and all his clerks and servants too. Perhaps I may see you among the crowds later,” she added, looking up from under her lashes and twisting her hair. “You will want to see him in all his pomp?”

  “I suppose. It would be as well to see the man who holds my life in his hands.” I tried to keep my tone cheerful but I could not ignore the tightness in my chest. To unravel this unholy mess I must not rely on Canterbury justice, that much was clear. My fortunes, and those of Sophia and Harry, were truly in the hands of this unknown man riding in from London. I only hoped that he was not so easily corrupted—though my English friends’ reports of the legal profession did not inspire too much optimism on that count.

  I thanked Rebecca for her help and took my leave, pressing through the crowd towards Christ Church gate, unstrapping my knife from my belt and hiding it in my boot before I arrived so that Tom Garth would not confiscate it. After the previous night, I was not willing to enter the precincts without a weapon. I was anxious to be back at Harry’s. I had only a day to prepare the charges I wanted to bring against Langworth and Sykes and I needed to have them set out clearly if my story was not to sound even more improbable than it already did. Meg had been silenced, but there was still the old monk in the West Gate gaol—perhaps he could be made to testify to what he had seen. And there were the two buried bodies—the boy Denis and the one reckoned to be Thomas Becket—as evidence to my theory of the proposed miracle, even if the Widow Gray would not speak against Langworth. True, there was nothing to prove that he had killed Sir Edward Kingsley, but the fact that Kingsley had been on his way to Langworth’s house and that he had been killed by a crucifix that only someone with access to the crypt could have taken made it almost impossible to believe that anyone else could be guilty. Edward Kingsley must have crossed the treasurer, or threatened the plot in some way, and Langworth had decided to get rid of him. And yet unease continued to gnaw at my mind as I passed through the gatehouse into the precincts and took the path towards Harry’s house. Langworth was nothing if not subtle, and his friend Sykes was skilled in the use of poisons. If Kingsley had needed to be silenced, would the treasurer really have chosen to beat his former friend’s skull in with a crucifix right outside his, Langworth’s, house, in lieu of some less obvious means?

  These doubts were dispelled as I passed the conduit house and saw Langworth himself standing at Harry’s front door, gesticulating wildly and pointing up at the windows, the sleeves of his robe fluttering in the breeze like the ragged wings of a crow. Harry was planted staunchly before the closed door, hands crossed in front of him and leaning on his stick with an implacable expression. He looked up and met my eye with something between relief and exasperation as I slowed to a halt some yards away from them, my mouth dry.

  Though I was oddly relieved to see Langworth alive and apparently not too badly affected by my assault on him the night before, it was a relief that only lasted a moment. He turned and looked at me with such intense hatred that I found myself reaching instinctively towards my boot where my knife was hidden; I half expected him to hurl hims
elf at me right there, and I knew in that instant that he meant to see me dead one way or another. Instead he curled and uncurled his fists several times, mastering his fury, and the smirking scar at the corner of his mouth turned white as he pressed his lips together until he was sure he had regained control of himself. I noticed that inside the collar of his black canon’s robe he had wrapped a white linen scarf around his neck, presumably to hide the bruising.

  I swung the satchel to my back, suddenly conscious of the stolen book as if it was burning through the leather, and took a couple of measured paces towards them, trying to betray nothing with my face.

  “Ah, Doctor Savolino,” Harry called out in a breezy tone, though I could see from his face that he was weary of this business. “Canon Langworth has come with a most singular set of accusations against you.”

  “Really? Who have I murdered this time?” I smiled at Langworth; he needed a long moment of breathing through his nose and sucking in his cheeks before he was equal to replying.

  “I do hope your wit doesn’t desert you when you stand before a judge, sir,” he said, his voice so tight it sounded almost as if he were still being choked. “We are all looking forward to the performance. It is a charge of theft, as you well know.”

  “What I can’t make out,” Harry said, with the same forced cheeriness, “is what you are supposed to have stolen. It seems the canon treasurer cannot be specific on that count, which I can’t help feeling undermines the force of his accusation. With the greatest respect,” he added, with a small dip of the head to Langworth.

  “I believe my house has been broken into,” the treasurer said, fixing me with a hard stare. “Some personal items of value have been taken, as well as money. I believe it is also possible that the security of the cathedral treasury has been breached, which is a far graver matter.”

  “Indeed,” I said, nodding to show that I appreciated the gravity. “How much has been taken from the treasury?”

  “I—I am not certain yet,” he faltered. “But if money has been taken from God’s house, well, that would be a capital offence.”