by S. J. Parris
Seeing me hesitate, he clicked his tongue impatiently. “If you lose Walsingham’s trust, you lose any hope of a place at the English court. I cannot do it for you.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. That is settled, then. Take my advice now, Bruno, for what it is worth.” He took me by the shoulders and bent his knees to look me straight in the eye. “You have risked your life for her twice, and twice she has deceived you. Wherever she has gone, whoever she is with—forget her.”
I looked away.
“You think it is that simple?”
“No,” he said, suddenly vehement. “No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” He let his hands fall abruptly and stalked off towards the door. After a few paces he turned back, his face full of an emotion I had not seen in him before. “Penelope Devereux,” he said, in a quieter voice.
“Who?”
“The one I can’t forget.”
I looked at him for a moment, the agitation in his face. I had read enough of Sidney’s poetry to know that the braggadocio covered finer feelings, but he had never spoken to me directly of any unrequited love.
“And where is she now?”
“Married to someone else. I can’t change that. Do what I did, Bruno. Write her a fucking poem and learn to live with it.”
“Will it help?”
“No.” He grinned, but there was still pain in his eyes. “But it fills up the time. Come, the horses are ready at the gatehouse. Let us shake the dust of this place off our heels. There have been no certified cases of plague in London, you know. Another two weeks and the court will return.”
“There is one thing I need to do before we leave,” I said. “Lend me one of your armed men, will you?”
* * *
THE DOOR OF the weavers’ house was opened by Olivier’s father, who flinched when he saw me as surely as if I had struck him. I saw his eyes flit fearfully over my shoulder to where my companion stood at a discreet distance with his pikestaff.
“Non, monsieur,” he faltered, shrinking, and made as if to close the door in my face, but I stuck my foot in the gap and leaned in.
“Listen, Pastor Fleury,” I said, in French, “I know enough to put your whole family in front of the justice if I choose. He is still at the Cheker. You know the assize is not officially closed until he leaves town?”
“What do you want?” he asked, looking at my foot as if he would like to spit on it.
“I want to speak to Hélène.” I nodded over my shoulder to the guard. “He will stay out there.”
“For all the neighbours to see.” Fleury closed the door behind and heaved a great sigh. A lifetime of fear was written into the lines on his face; I was sorry to contribute further.
“I wish you no harm,” I said.
He looked at me with infinite pity.
“Monsieur, you are the kind who brings harm without meaning it. You and that girl. I will take you up to my daughter now, but please do not trouble us for long.”
He led me to a small parlour on the first floor, where Hélène sat with her mother, dressed in mourning black. Madame Fleury rose when she saw me, her expression appalled, but she exchanged a glance with her husband and left the room. Hélène did not seem surprised to see me.
“I am glad you came.” Her voice was flat, her eyes calm. “I wanted to thank you. You found him.”
I bowed my head.
“I am so sorry, Hélène. If I could have spared you that—”
“No.” She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “Better to know. Now we can mourn him, and bury him. And I have this.”
She reached inside her collar and showed me the Saint Denis medallion on its chain. “You will think it strange that a Protestant should care about saint’s medals, I suppose?”
“If I am honest, it has not been the question uppermost in my mind.”
She smiled. “My best friend in Paris was a Catholic. She sent me this when Denis was born. I kept it for her sake. Now I wear it for him. My beautiful boy.” Her eyes filled with tears and she swiped them away with the back of her hand, as if she were tired of their interruption.
I looked at the medal glinting between her fingers.
“Did your brother give you that?”
She nodded.
“Before he left?”
Another nod.
“Where have they gone?”
“I don’t know.” Her eyes slid to the window.
“Hélène, please.” I knelt in front of her. “I need to know. They have taken something of mine … Sophia has taken something.”
She looked down at me, her liquid eyes full of sympathy.
“Your heart,” she said solemnly. “Ours too. My father can hardly bear it. My son dead, his own son gone.” She bit her lip and looked back to the window.
“At least Olivier gave you justice, of sorts. He could not have stayed, after what he did.”
Her face froze, shocked. “Do you—”
“Do I know? Yes. But no one else does. They will think Doctor Sykes was killed on John Langworth’s orders.” I paused, nodding to the window. “That little jetty at the back of your property must have been useful.”
She pressed her lips together. “Why would you keep our secret, monsieur? What do you gain?”
“Because …” I ran a hand through my hair. “Because I find that in my heart—what is left of it—I cannot condemn your brother for wanting justice.”
“Then I will tell you something else, monsieur,” she said, leaning down close enough that I could feel her breath on my face. “My brother put him in the boat, but he did not hold the knife.” She looked me straight in the eye when she said this, her face inches from mine, fire flashing in her look. No man should underestimate the ferocity of a mother, I thought. I imagined that fiery glare was the last thing Sykes saw as the light faded for him. Well, I could not pity him.
“And the stone? Whose idea was that, to reference the Scripture?”
She frowned.
“What Scripture?”
“The millstone.”
She looked blank. “It was not a millstone. It was just—a stone. To weight him down.”
I gave a wan smile. Sophia was right; sometimes things are no more than they appear. I stood, bowing my head in farewell.
“Goodbye, Hélène.”
“God will pardon me,” she said, defiantly. “It is the least He owes us.”
As I reached the door, she called me back.
“Monsieur? Olivier always used to say he would not be afraid to live in Paris. He was only a boy when the massacre happened, he thinks it would be different there now.”
I watched her as she twisted the medal between her fingers.
“Thank you.”
At the front door, Jacques Fleury leaned in and kissed me once on each cheek in the French manner.
“Do not think me discourteous, monsieur,” he said. He spoke as if every word required a supreme effort, as if it had to be dragged up from the depths of his being like a stone. “You gave us back our boy. For that I thank you. But please, monsieur, I ask you one favour.”
“What?”
“Do not come back to Canterbury.”
I smiled. “Have no fear on that score, Pastor Fleury. I will not look back.”
“Dieu vous garde, monsieur.”
“Et vous.”
From a room somewhere above, I heard the sound of a woman crying.
Epilogue
HAMPTON COURT PALACE
NEW YEAR’S DAY, 1585
“Viens.”
Michel de Castelnau, ambassador of France to the court of Queen Elizabeth, adjusted his silk doublet, arranged his short cape over his shoulder, and rolled his shoulders back, drawing himself up to his full height. He touched me lightly on the elbow and ushered me forward. I took a deep breath, pausing to tuck the book under my arm so that I could wipe my sweating palms on my doublet. My eyes remained lowered as protocol demanded, so that as the ambassador and I walked t
he length of the hall all I saw was the synchronised step of our leather boots across the flagstones, but I felt the many eyes trained on us, felt the hairs on my neck prickle at the sense of exposure, as if I were standing naked before the sceptical gaze of the highest nobles in England. All the while I reminded myself to breathe, slow and steady, and to concentrate only on not tripping or dropping the book. One of the court musicians picked out a tune quietly on a lute and from all around came the murmur of conversation and the whisper of rustling silks, but all I heard was the pounding of the blood in my own ears.
The queen kept the twelve days of Christmas at her palace of Hampton Court some miles to the west of London, on the banks of the river. Here the Great Hall was wreathed in garlands of holly, ivy, pine, and yew, and smelled of cloves, logs, and good beeswax; outside, in the damp air, the scent of spiced wine drifted into the courtyard from the kitchens and the light from the blaze of candles warmed the early dark. All across London there had been an edge of manic relief to the festive celebrations; plague had not, after all, come to London in the summer, the queen was still alive and well and England’s shores mercifully free from foreign invasion. None of the year’s dire forecasts had come to pass, and the city was determined to fete its own survival.
The queen’s own Christmas festivities were organized by the Earl of Leicester, Sidney’s uncle, and for her noblemen and ambassadors, attendance at Hampton Court during the season was not a matter of choice but of duty. The tradition of New Year gifts was more than a formality; for her courtiers, it presented an opportunity to make or mar their fortunes for the coming year, depending on whether or not their gift impressed her. Sidney was pleased with himself; over the past months, at various ambassadorial receptions and diplomatic meetings, he had managed to insinuate to Castelnau that the queen was curious to read my new book, until the ambassador had become convinced that presenting it to her was his own idea. Still eager to regain her favour, he had paid from his own pocket for the handsome black Morocco binding, with gilt edges and Elizabeth’s own coat of arms embossed on the cover in gold leaf, and had rubbed his hands with delight at the prospect of presenting me—and the book—at the New Year celebrations.
“She imagines herself a great champion of knowledge, the English queen,” he had said, tracing his fingers lovingly over the leather binding before we had set out that morning, “but she fills her court with peacocks in crimson silks. Now she shall see the calibre of philosophers France maintains.” I doubted he had actually read the book, but he was certainly pleased with its cover.
I felt his fingertips rest lightly on my back, guiding me as we neared the dais where the queen sat on a vast carved throne with her most favoured courtiers to either side and her maids seated at her feet on velvet cushions. From somewhere to my left, a stifled growl rumbled through the crowds, causing the few ladies present to squeal and the boy choristers of the Chapel Royal to gasp in excitement. Some foreign dignitary had seen fit to bring the queen a leopard for her exotic menagerie at the Tower and the poor beast now strained at its leash in a corner, its jaws bound tight with leather straps. The queen had declared herself delighted, but her eyes held a certain weariness; perhaps after twenty-five years on the throne, one has seen enough leopards. It had seemed dazed during its five minutes of royal favour; I guessed it had been given some kind of sedative which was now wearing off. Above all I pitied Master Byrd, the queen’s master of music, obliged to keep a choir of young boys focused on performing his new Christmas compositions while competing for their attention with a leopard.
Beside me, Castelnau’s steps halted. I followed his lead and we knelt, eyes still fixed to the ground. Ahead I could see the wooden scaffolding that supported the raised platform where she sat, appraising us.
“Rise,” she commanded, at length.
I stood slowly, knowing not to look up until I was addressed directly. I took in the vast skirt of plum-coloured velvet immediately in front of me, so dark it was almost black, with a central panel of intricate gold thread sewn with cherry-red garnets, tiny seed pearls, and lozenges of onyx that glittered blackly in the candlelight. I raised my head enough that my eyes were level with the white hands folded in her lap, heavy with gold rings and holding a fan of ostrich plumes, the handle decorated with the same stones in the same arrangement as those on her gown.
“Well, Monseigneur de Castelnau,” the queen said, raising her voice so the whole court could hear the amusement in her tone, “your counterpart from Bohemia brings me a leopard. Can you better that?”
“I hope so, Your Majesty,” Castelnau said, in the special ingratiating tone he reserved for diplomacy. “A leopard is a wonder of nature, it is true, but I bring you the wonders of the heavens.”
“An extravagant claim. And is this he?” The ostrich feathers waved in my direction. A ripple of laughter spread through the audience. I felt myself blush. Castelnau seemed unruffled.
“This, Your Majesty, is Doctor Giordano Bruno, author of the most original and provocative book to be published in Europe since the Pole Copernicus printed On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres.”
“He sounds more dangerous than a leopard. Come, Doctor Bruno—let me look at you.”
I swallowed hard, raised my head, and looked her in the eye for the first time.
She was fifty-one years old, but her face in its white mask of ceruse with pencilled brows and scarlet painted lips seemed ageless, like the face of a statue or a character in a classical play. It was a long face, stern and imperious, perched above its wide lace ruff, entirely fixed in its self-possession. Only the dark eyes betrayed the vivacity she was apparently famed for in her youth. They raked my face now as you might scan a page of text and returned to hold my gaze, steady and unblinking. According to Walsingham, it was she who had expressed a wish to see me in person after hearing about the events in Canterbury, and he, through Sidney, who had contrived this means of presentation without compromising my place in the ambassador’s household.
“I have heard of you. You are King Henri’s tame philosopher, are you not? The one who upsets the Catholic Leaguers and the learned doctors of the Sorbonne every time you open your mouth.”
“This is true, Your Majesty. In Paris, King Henri had to keep me muzzled like your leopard, lest I offend.”
She laughed.
“Perhaps I should try that with some of my courtiers. And is your book as radical as Copernicus?”
“More so, Your Majesty,” I said, stepping forward in my eagerness. “Copernicus did not follow his argument to its logical conclusion. If the Earth and the other planets revolve about the Sun, we may also posit that the fixed stars are not fixed. That is to say, there may be no limit to the universe. And who is to say there might not be other suns out there, with other worlds?”
From behind me, I heard disapproving intakes of breath. Queen Elizabeth only nodded, her jewels catching the light, and I thought suddenly of Mistress Blunt and Rebecca, and how much they would give to be standing in my place.
“Would they be identical to ours, do you suppose, these other worlds? What do you think, Robin?” She turned to her right, where the Earl of Leicester sat beside her on a carved chair several inches lower than her own. Another man might have been made awkward by this deliberate reminder of status, but Leicester, still impeccably handsome in his fifties, with his close-cropped grey hair and angular jaw, merely arranged himself across the chair, stretched out his long legs to the edge of the dais and smiled. “Would I still be queen?”
“Your Majesty—it is impossible to imagine a world in which you were not queen,” Castelnau cut in, with a sweeping bow.
“Really?” The queen arched one thin brow. “There are plenty of your countrymen in Paris, Michel, who, together with my cousin Mary, find it all too easy to imagine such a world.” Sycophantic laughter bubbled around us and died away. “Here, let me look. Robin, hold this.” She passed the ostrich fan to Leicester, who folded it in his lap. I caught his eye and he gave me
the briefest of nods. I wondered if he was remembering, as I was, the last time he and I had met in a royal palace, when one of the queen’s young maids of honour had been found murdered. The queen held her hands out for the book and I placed it into them, bowing as I did so. She laid her hands flat on the cover without opening it.
“But if the universe is infinite, sir—if we are but one world among many,” she said, in a softer voice, no longer performing for the crowd, “how do we understand our place in God’s design? What is our worth, if we are no longer the masterpiece of Creation?”
I hesitated; my answers to these questions were complex and, perhaps even to this intellectually curious woman, potentially heretical. I weighed my words carefully before responding.
“Does it not rather increase our worth when we consider the enormity of Creation with new eyes? To realise that we are no longer prisoners of a fixed order, but citizens of infinity?” I could have gone further, but there was a warning light in her eyes.
“The cosmos demands order, sir, just as society demands it. If people were no longer certain of their place in the grand design …” She left the thought unfinished, but I understood. If the Earth can be so easily deposed from the centre of the cosmos, if Man can lose the sovereignty over creation that the Holy Scriptures tell us he has by God’s gift, people might lose their respect for the divine order, and a real sovereign could be toppled with the same apparent insouciance.
“Nevertheless, I shall read your book with great interest, Doctor Bruno, and perhaps we shall have the opportunity to discuss it further. I should like that. Of course,” she added, her eyes glinting in the frozen white of her face, “you know Copernicus had the good sense to wait until he was dead before committing his theory to print.”
“He did not have the good fortune to live in Your Majesty’s more enlightened realm,” I countered, permitting myself a smile that was almost flirtatious. I had noticed the same tendency in Castelnau. Despite her age and the absence of beauty, she had a curious ability to inspire among her male courtiers the same desire to impress that beauty commands.
