Heresy

by S. J. Parris

  "I believe it is a bad sort of place, sir. In any case, we students are not allowed to pass beyond the city walls. We would be severely disciplined if we were caught."

  "Really? But that is strange-I took a walk yesterday and I was sure I saw a young man in a scholar's gown passing through one of the gates."

  Thomas shrugged. "Probably one of the gentlemen commoners, then." His voice was not bitter, merely resigned, as if he had long ago accepted that the rich lived by different laws and it was fruitless to hope for change.

  "Like your master Gabriel Norris?" I asked.

  "I wish you would not call him my master, sir. I mean, he is, I suppose, but it is a humiliation to be reminded of it."

  He had stopped outside a whitewashed, two-storey building that fronted the High Street, its exterior obviously well cared for and clean. Inside, the taproom was just as neat and cheerful, everything that the Catherine Wheel was not, and a sharp savoury smell of roasting meat pricked our nostrils the moment we closed the door behind us. A smiling landlord, apron stretched tight across a belly so vast he looked as if he were near to giving birth, bustled over and ushered us to a table, at the same time reeling off a list of his dishes so varied that I had forgotten the first by the time he had finished. We ended by ordering some cheese and barley bread, with a pot of beer each. Thomas looked about him with as much disbelief and delight as if he had been suddenly given the freedom of the city.

  "Well, then, Thomas," I said, gently, "what is it you wish to confide?"

  Finally he raised his head and regarded me with a weary expression.

  "Three nights ago, the day I so shamefully accosted you in the quadrangle on your arrival, sir, I learned something about my father." He stopped with a heavy sigh just as a young potboy appeared with the tankards of beer and bread. I thought of Humphrey Pritchard and his snatches of Latin, and decided I must also find a way to speak with him again. Thomas had buried his face in his beer mug as if he had not had a drink in days. I waited for him to put it down before continuing as casually as I could with my questions.

  "You are in touch with your father, then?"

  "We write to each other," Thomas said, "though of course you may imagine our letters are all monitored, at the earl's request. My father resides at the English College of Rheims, where all the seminary priests are trained for the English mission, so any letters that come out of that place are deemed to be of great interest. And since I am assumed to share his views, they are waiting for me to betray myself in one of my letters to him. They watch me at every turn-everyone I meet or speak to. They will probably interrogate me about this"-he gestured to the table between us-"when they find out."

  "Who are 'they'?" I prompted, pausing to take a drink from my own cup. "Who intercepts your letters?"

  "The rector. And Doctor Coverdale. He wanted me sent down from the college after my father was exiled-he argued fiercely that allowing me to stay would imply that the college tolerated papists."

  His tone was resentful, but I watched his face carefully and could detect no sign that he knew the man he spoke of was recently dead.

  "But you are not a papist?" I prompted.

  "I am the son of one, so they assume my loyalty to England is compromised. Eventually the rector decided I could keep my place, but Coverdale argued that I should not continue at the expense of the college, so I lost my scholarship. I do not fool myself that the rector felt sorry for me-I suppose he must have thought my correspondence with my father would be useful." He gave a bitter little laugh. "It must be a terrible disappointment to them-he writes to me only of the weather and his health, and I write of my studies. We dare not say anything beyond that. And then it is rumoured that the Earl of Leicester has placed a spy in the college already, so fearful are they of the secret influence of papists."

  "A spy? Is there any truth in that?" I asked, leaning in more keenly.

  "I do not know, sir. But then, if he were any good as a spy, I should not know him, should I?"

  "So you do not share your father's faith?"

  Thomas met my eye with a level stare as if challenging me to contradict him.

  "No, sir, I do not. I spit on the pope and the church of Rome. But I have sworn so until I am hoarse with saying it, and still I am suspected, so what is the point?"

  I waited for a moment until he had finished chewing, watching him with my elbows propped on the table and my chin resting on my clasped hands. "What was it you learned of your father three days ago?" I asked. "Is he ill?"

  Thomas shook his head, his mouth bulging.

  "Worse than that," he said bitterly, when he could speak again. "He is-" He broke off, a piece of bread halfway to his mouth, looking at me then as if he had only just realised who I was. His anxious eyes flicked keenly over my face as he calculated whether or not I could be trusted. "You swear you will not repeat this to a soul?"

  "I swear it," I said, nodding sincerely and holding his gaze as steadily as I could manage.

  He considered for a moment, still searching my eyes, then nodded tightly.

  "My father will not return to England now or ever, even if Queen Bess herself were to write assuring him of his pardon."

  "But why not?"

  "Because he is happy," Thomas said, pronouncing the last word with undisguised anger. "He is happy, Doctor Bruno, because he has found his vocation. Sometimes I think he chose to be found out at Lincoln, so that he could finally confess his faith openly. When he writes to me now, he has to dictate the letters to a scribe. Do you know why?"

  I briefly shook my head and he continued, without waiting for an answer. "Because he was interrogated by the Privy Council. They had him hung by the hands from metal gauntlets so his feet could not touch the ground for eight hours at a time, until he passed out, and still he told them nothing. He has more or less lost the use of his right hand. But I think he would gladly have gone to his death at the time, believing himself a martyr. Three days ago, I learned that my father is to take vows as a Jesuit priest," he said, in a tone that sounded almost like wry amusement. "The Church will have him completely, and he will forget he ever had a wife or a son."

  "I am sure no father could do that," I said.

  "You do not know him," he said, setting his mouth in a grim line. "Ours is an old Catholic family, sir. But I ask you-how can a religion that talks of love at the same time urge men so cruelly to cast aside the natural ties of love and friendship? To martyr themselves for the promise of an unseen world, and leave their families grieving! I want no part of any God that demands those sacrifices."

  He had shredded what remained of his bread into tiny pieces with his agitated fingers as he spoke. He reached forward to take another hunk of bread and as he did so, the frayed sleeve of his gown fell back to reveal a soiled makeshift bandage around his wrist and the lower part of his right hand, blotched with brownish stains over which a few, fresher crimson spots had blossomed more recently.

  "What happened to your hand?" I asked.

  Immediately he tugged his sleeve down over the bandage and rubbed his wrist self-consciously. "It is nothing."

  "It does not look like nothing-it's bled badly. I could look at it if you like?"

  "Are you a doctor?" he snapped, withdrawing his arm hastily as if afraid I might tear the bandage off without his consent.

  "Only of theology," I admitted, "but I did learn a little of the art of making salves when I was a monk. It would be no trouble to examine it."

  "Thank you, but there is no need. It was just a foolish accident. I was sharpening Gabriel's razor for him and my hand slipped." He looked down and gave his whole attention to the bread as if the subject was closed. I felt myself tense, but tried to give no sign that I found his words significant.

  "Your friend Master Norris does not use the college barber, then?" I asked, in a neutral tone.

  Thomas ventured a smile. "He calls him the college barbarian. No, he prefers to do the job himself."

  "When did he ask you to shar
pen his razor?"

  Thomas thought for a moment.

  "It must have been Saturday, because he wanted to shave before the disputation."

  "And has it been in its usual place since then?"

  "I… I don't know, sir. I have not looked. Why would it not be?"

  He looked at me, his brow creased with curiosity, and I thought it best not to arouse his suspicions further.

  "I only wondered if Master Norris ever lent the razor to his friends."

  "Never, sir. He is careful with his possessions. Many of them are valuable, or else they came from his father."

  He didn't ask any further questions, but continued to regard me with curiosity. After we had sat for a little in silence, I put down my bread and wiped my fingers.

  "But this news of your father-you did not learn it directly from him, if his letters are intercepted. He would surely not have written of his plans to take holy orders."

  "No, he had another correspondent," Thomas said with his mouth full.

  "Had?"

  He stopped and his eyes flickered guiltily up toward mine as he realised his slip.

  "You mean Doctor Mercer?" I persisted. If he had learned the news three days ago, there could only be one person who now required the past tense.

  Thomas nodded. "They continued to write to each other. My father always confided more in Roger Mercer, they were the closest of friends."

  "But Mercer denounced him."

  "I don't think so. My father never knew who denounced him, but he was certain it wasn't Mercer. Mercer only testified against him at the trial."

  "Surely that would be enough to end a friendship. Your father must have an exceptional capacity for forgiveness."

  Thomas laid down his knife and was looking at me impatiently.

  "You don't understand, do you? This is exactly what I was saying about faith-the cause is always more important. The natural laws of friendship must be sacrificed. My father would not have expected Roger Mercer to do otherwise-and he would have testified against Roger if their positions had been reversed. Both had a greater loyalty. If Roger had spoken in his defence they would likely both have been imprisoned or exiled, and then who would be left to carry on the fight?"

  I stared at him. "You mean to say that Roger Mercer was also a Catholic?" I whispered.

  Thomas hunched lower over the table.

  "I suppose it will not hurt him now that I tell you," he said, "but please do not repeat it to anyone, I beg you. It could only hurt his family."

  "No, no, of course. But if Roger was a Catholic," I mused, my mind scurrying to catch up, "and your father was writing to him from Rheims, might he have confided details of the English mission? Might Roger even have played a part?"

  "I do not know the contents of their letters, sir," Thomas said, twisting uncomfortably in his seat. "Doctor Mercer only told me news he thought might affect me directly."

  "But was their correspondence not intercepted by the college authorities too? Did they not think it suspicious that Mercer continued to write to the man he had helped condemn?"

  "Doctor Mercer did not send his letters through the college post, sir." Thomas's voice was now barely audible. "He paid to send them privately, through someone in the town who had the means of carrying letters overseas."

  "Ah. A book dealer, perhaps?"

  "Perhaps. I did not ask-that was his business," Thomas said evenly, but his eyes were evasive. Then he suddenly leaned forward so that he was almost lying across the table and grabbed my sleeve. "I am not responsible for my father, sir, nor for any communications he may or may not have sent, as I have tried to tell everyone for the last year. I just want to live quietly, to leave Oxford and study the law at the Inns of Court in London, but I fear I shall never be allowed a career as a lawyer, nor any wife of good family, for as long as I am regarded as my father's son. Especially once he joins the Jesuits," he added, with an extra dose of self-pity. "For the Privy Council has spies even in the seminaries and will learn of it soon enough. Unless someone with influence will speak on my behalf."

  He looked at me with imploring eyes, but I looked back unseeing, my mind occupied elsewhere. If Edmund Allen was taking holy orders in Rheims, he must be in some way connected to the mission to England. That would certainly explain the ransacking of Mercer's room; Allen's letters to him, if they contained any such matter, might be evidence enough to condemn anyone associated with them. But that still did not explain why Roger had been killed. Had he threatened to betray the cause? Had he crossed someone? Did the letters between Roger Mercer and Edmund Allen name others who wanted to protect themselves at any cost? The "J" in his calendar on the day of his murder might very well stand for Jenkes, I reflected; anyone who could cut off his own ears without flinching surely wouldn't hesitate to remove a man who threatened his business-unless I was falling prey to Cobbett's legends. There were too many questions, while the possible answers were all frustratingly unclear. I put my head in my hands and stared at the table.

  "Are you all right, Doctor Bruno?"

  "I wondered if Mercer was killed by a Catholic," I murmured, barely aware that I had thought aloud and only belatedly looking up to find Thomas regarding me with an odd expression.

  "Doctor Mercer was killed by a dog," he reminded me.

  "Oh, come on, Thomas-do you believe that? How often have you known feral dogs to attack men in the streets of Oxford, never mind a locked garden?"

  "I do not know, sir," he said, avoiding my eye. "I only know what the rector told us. The door was left open, the dog wandered in."

  He made a show of looking into his empty tankard as if hoping more beer might appear if he only peered in hard enough.

  "Another drink, Thomas?"

  He nodded eagerly, and I summoned the serving girl to bring us another two pots of beer. When she had gone, I leaned across the table and waited for him to meet my eye.

  "Was this what you wanted to confide in me, that you could tell no one else, this news about your father?"

  Thomas resumed his scratching at the boards of the table.

  "That first day, when I thought you were Sir Philip," he said quietly, "you were kind when Rector Underhill tried to shame me. I thought-perhaps it was foolish, but I thought if you had the ear of men like Sir Philip, you might intercede for me."

  "What is it you wish me to say?"

  He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his eyes fixed on his hands. "I want to leave Oxford, sir. I am afraid. When my father was deprived, I was questioned twice by the Chancellor's Court. They would not believe that I knew nothing of his secret life, and the questioning was hard-they would not accept a word I said, they kept pressing me and pressing me on the same points until I found I was contradicting myself."

  I noticed his hands were shaking and his breathing had quickened; the memory was obviously difficult for him.

  "Did they use force?"

  "No, sir. But they argued as lawyers do, they twisted every answer I gave until it sounded like the opposite meaning, and I became so confused and afraid I found myself agreeing to statements that I knew were not true. It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself by mistake, sir. It was a horrible experience."

  "I can imagine," I said, with feeling, remembering the fear that had gripped at my guts when the abbot had told me I would be questioned by the Inquisition all those years ago. "And you are afraid you will be questioned again if it becomes known that your father is to become a Jesuit priest?"

  He nodded, finally looking directly at me. "If they refused to believe me before, how much worse will it be when they know he is part of the Jesuit mission? What if they take me to London for questioning? I have heard tales of what they do there to get the information they want. They can make you say anything."

  I remembered my conversation with Walsingham in his garden and shivered involuntarily. Thomas'
s narrow, pointed face was stretched tight with fear, his skin so pale that a tracery of blue veins stood out at his temples like a river delta inked on a map. There was no doubt that this fear was real and vivid.

  "The authorities would believe you know enough to make hard questioning worthwhile?" I asked.

  "I know nothing, sir!" he protested, his cheeks flaming again with emotion. "But I am not brave-I do not know what I might be capable of saying if they hurt me!"

  "Tell me the truth, Thomas," I said firmly. "I cannot help you if you do not. Are you afraid that you will betray your father's secrets, and the secrets of his confederates, if you are threatened with torture?"

  "I never wanted this knowledge, sir," he whispered, his voice cracking as he blinked back tears. "I told my father so, but he wanted me to share in it. He was determined to bring me to the Roman faith, he wanted me to go with him to France, so he wouldn't have to choose between his son and his church. I suppose he thought if he confided in me about his meetings, I would feel some complicity, some loyalty toward his friends. Instead I am trapped by all these secrets I never asked to be told. I am suffering for a faith I don't even share!" he cried, bringing his fist down on the table.

  "You have never thought of offering up these secrets voluntarily?" I ventured. "You must know the Earl of Leicester would surely reward anyone who could give him such information about the Catholic resistance in Oxford as you must have."

  Thomas stared at me as if it was taking him some time to process the meaning of my words.

  "Of course I have thought of it. Have you ever seen the execution of a Catholic in England, Doctor Bruno?"

  I confessed that I had not.

  "I have. My father took me to London to see the death of Edmund Campion and his fellow Jesuits, in December of 1581. I think he wanted me to understand what was at stake." He passed a hand across his brow and squeezed his eyes hard shut, as if this might blot out the scenes he had witnessed. "They were sliced open like pigs in the slaughterhouse and their guts torn from their living bodies, wound around a spindle to pull them out slower. You can hear them still crying out to God while their entrails are held aloft to please the crowd and their hearts thrown in the brazier. I could not bear to watch, Doctor Bruno, but I looked at my father's face and he was rapt, as if it were the most glorious spectacle he had ever witnessed. But I could not willingly deliver anyone to that fate. I don't want anyone else's blood on my hands, sir, I just want to be left alone!" His voice rose to a frantic pitch and he clutched at his bandaged wrist.