Heresy

by S. J. Parris

  "The altar," Underhill whispered, nodding toward it.

  I looked up and recoiled instantly; a dark red fleshy lump sat in the centre of the altar, blood seeping from it to form an ugly stain on the white cloth.

  "Oh, God," I breathed, for I knew what I was looking at. Gingerly I prised Ned's lower jaw open to reveal the stump of his tongue. The movement unleashed a fresh flow of blood down his chin and I jumped back instinctively, though I knew he could not possibly be alive.

  "This happened very recently," I observed, turning to the rector. He nodded, passing his hands over his face.

  "Ned came every day at around four to make the chapel ready for Evensong at five," he said, his voice still barely audible. "That is the Bible clerk's principal duty. Anyone would have known to find him here. The chapel is not kept locked. They must have hidden and waited for him. Poor boy." He shook his head. "But you see what they have done to him, Bruno?" He looked up at me expectantly.

  "Foxe again?"

  He gave a brief nod. "I believe it is meant to be Romanus. His martyrdom comes in Book One of Foxe, just after the story of Saint Alban that I recounted in chapel yesterday. Romanus's torturers mutilated him to stop him singing hymns, but when they cut wounds in his face, he thanked them for opening many more mouths with which to praise God."

  "They always had a ready wit, these saints," I said grimly.

  "So they cut out his tongue. Eventually they strangled him." Underhill made a strange noise like a hiccup, and clamped a hand over his mouth.

  I loosened the cloth of Ned's shirt that had bunched up around his neck; sure enough, his pale flesh was marked with dark bruises where fingers had gripped his throat.

  "They cut out his tongue to stop him talking," I mused, half to myself. Only a few hours earlier, Ned had told me what he had seen on Saturday evening. Had he died for that? I cast my mind back to our encounter after dinner on the way out of the great hall. Who could have overheard our conversation? Lawrence Weston? But the passageway had been thronged with students and Fellows sheltering from the rain; any one of them might have seen me handing Ned the shilling he never even got to spend. The idea that I might unwittingly have called down this vengeance on the poor boy seized me with horror for a moment, but my thoughts were interrupted by an impatient cough.

  "Now that Doctor Bruno has been good enough to give us his expert verdict," Slythurst said, his voice chilly with disdain, "perhaps I should alert the constables, Rector? Whoever did this cannot have got far in so short a time-if they put out the hue and cry now-"

  "He is most likely still here in the college," I said, turning to the rector. "If he is, he will barely have had time to wash the blood from his hands-you must gather the whole community in the great hall at once. Someone must have seen something."

  The rector nodded and turned to Slythurst. "Walter-go down and call all the students and Fellows together as Doctor Bruno suggests," he instructed. "Make sure everyone is present and comes just as he is-knock on every door, drag men from their rooms if you have to."

  Slythurst gave me one of his furious glares, but turned on his heel and left the chapel.

  "What did you do after you found the body?" I asked.

  "I… I cried out for help… I could not think clearly," he stammered. "Richard was in the library and came running across. Then I stayed with the body and he went to find Walter."

  "You were in the library all the time?" I asked, turning to Godwyn, who was still standing by the door in a state of some agitation.

  "Well, yes," he said, somewhat defensively, "I was working there all afternoon."

  I stared at him in disbelief. "And you heard nothing? While a boy was murdered just across the landing?"

  "The doors of the library and the chapel are both solid oak, Doctor Bruno," Godwyn said, his voice rising in protest. "I heard footsteps on the stairs earlier but I did not think that unusual. But I didn't hear a voice until Rector Underhill opened the chapel door and called out."

  I looked back at the body.

  "I suppose if someone lay in wait and surprised him, they could have strangled him before he had much of a chance to fight back or cry out." The thought offered a degree of comfort, but still I regarded Godwyn with suspicion. Did he know Ned had seen him meeting Jenkes outside the Divinity School?

  "Then he would have been dead before all this…?" The rector gestured to the boy's mutilated face.

  "Let us hope so," I muttered, rising to my feet.

  "But Ned," Godwyn said, looking down at the battered corpse, his brow crumpled as if the scene somehow did not make sense to him. "Why Ned?" He shook his head as if that might rid him of his confusion. I suddenly recalled something that Ned had told me in our fateful conversation earlier.

  "Did Ned also undertake duties in the library as well as the chapel?" I asked.

  Godwyn turned and looked at me sharply.

  "Sometimes he helped me out with small tasks," he said, his eyes guarded. "Matters of tidying and upkeep, generally-he did not handle the books. Why do you ask?"

  "Master Godwyn," I said, "someone was in the library on Saturday evening, while most of the college was out at the disputation, the evening James Coverdale was murdered. Ned heard them, but he didn't know who it was."

  Godwyn bit the knuckle of his thumb and regarded me anxiously.

  "Well, as I have told you, the Fellows all have their own keys. I suppose it is possible that someone came back early, but I have no idea. Or else…" He shot a furtive glance at the rector and allowed his sentence to trail away. I recalled what he had told me about Sophia using her father's key to access the library. Ned said he had heard a man's voice raised in anger, but who was that man speaking to? Godwyn's composure was clearly affected; I could not help wondering if Ned, in the course of his library duties, might have stumbled across Godwyn's cache of illegal Catholic books.

  "And you?" I asked, looking him directly in the eye. "You did not see anyone when you returned early?"

  "I?" Godwyn looked away, his large drooping eyes assuming a hurt expression. "I was at the disputation, Doctor Bruno." He shifted uncomfortably and folded his arms across his chest.

  "But you left early to meet someone, I understand."

  The rector looked up, mild surprise displacing the expression of weary despair on his face for a moment. Godwyn coloured violently and did not try to maintain his lie.

  "It's true-I slipped out at the beginning on a matter of personal business," he added, his voice growing strained. "Nothing to do with the college. But I did not return until just before six, when I found the library locked and empty, just as I had left it. That is the truth, before God, I swear it."

  I looked at Godwyn's hands as he twisted them, folding and unfolding his fingers. Broad hands, stained at the fingertips with ink, though not, as far as I could see, with blood. The rector looked from me to Godwyn as if he didn't know what to believe anymore.

  "Wait-what is that?" A heap of something dark had caught my eye by the foot of the altar. I bent to examine it; on closer inspection it appeared to be a pile of folded black cloth. Lifting it gingerly by one corner between my finger and thumb, I saw that it was a scholar's gown, frayed in the sleeves and sticky with fresh blood.

  "This trick again," I said, holding the gown up to show the rector. "This must be Ned's gown. The killer puts his victims' gowns on over his own clothes so that he can walk away without any noticeable trace of blood on him."

  The door creaked open and the three of us jumped, made skittish by our proximity to murder. Slythurst's rodent face appeared in the gap.

  "The college is assembled in the hall, Rector, whenever you are ready, though I'm afraid not everyone is accounted for." He glanced at me. "I cannot find William Bernard. Gabriel Norris and Thomas Allen do not appear to be in their room either. And John Florio has not been seen since this afternoon."

  The rector nodded and rose heavily to his feet.

  "Go on ahead, Walter, and you, Richard," he said. "I
will be with you in a few moments. After I have spoken to the men I am going to impose a curfew. Everyone is to remain in his rooms this evening, until we have had a chance to search the college."

  "Guests included, I presume?" Slythurst said, wrapping his arms around his torso.

  "Everyone," said the rector firmly. "Now, I would have a word with Doctor Bruno alone."

  Reluctantly, Slythurst followed Godwyn through the door. Underhill turned to face me, slowly, as if the effort cost him dearly, and I saw utter desolation inscribed in the lines of his face.

  "My daughter has not yet come home, Bruno."

  There was such finality in his voice that I too felt momentarily as though I would buckle under his despair, but I shook my head.

  "She must have gone to the house of a friend, perhaps. Is there no one you can think of?"

  He passed both hands over his face very slowly, then raised his eyes to mine.

  "Sophia did not have friends in the usual way. She refused the company of other young ladies of her age. If you had asked me a few days ago about her friends, I would have answered you that she had none I could name. But now-" He broke off and turned back to the window, as if something were luring him through the glass.

  "Now what? You have discovered something?"

  "I have been blind, Bruno. I failed both my children, just as I have failed the college."

  Though I could not help feeling that this was probably true, the sight of the man's distress moved me to cross the room and lay a hand on his shoulder.

  "You cannot blame yourself for these deaths. And Sophia will be found safe and well, you will see-even if I have to ride all night myself to find her."

  I had not meant to speak with quite so much passion; Underhill looked up at me with mild curiosity before the expression of misery returned.

  "It is kind of you to say so," he said, patting the hand I had placed on his shoulder as if to thank me for the gesture. "But you are wrong. When she did not return this afternoon I made a search of her room. Sewn into her mattress, I found this."

  He reached inside his doublet and retrieved a small book with a worn leather cover, which he handed to me. I flicked through a few pages and saw at once that it was a little Book of Hours, similar to the one I had seen in Jenkes's workshop, of a comparable age and workmanship though smaller and plainer. The pages were in good condition, and I could not see that any of the images of the saints or indulgences had been defaced. My heart grew heavier. For Sophia to have such an obviously Catholic book in her possession, guarded closely from her parents, could only signify one thing.

  "Look at the flyleaf," Underhill said, nodding toward the book.

  I turned to the inside front cover. On the flyleaf was a handwritten dedication of a verse from the Bible: "For wisdom is more precious than rubies, and nothing you desire can compare with her." Beneath this, the inscription read, in an elaborate, curlicued hand, "Ora pro nobis. Yours in Christ, J."

  Underhill watched me expectantly.

  "The verse is from Proverbs, is it not?" I said.

  "Do you not see?" he burst out, impatiently. "What is the Greek for wisdom? Sophia! A papist prayer book, with a dedication written for her. They have converted her, right under my nose, while I buried myself in my Foxe and strove to keep the peace here for Leicester!" He shook his head again and looked at the floor.

  "Rector Underhill-who has converted her?" I said sharply. "Who is this J-do you know? Whom are you protecting?"

  "No one but myself," he said sorrowfully, in a voice barely audible. "And my family-or so I thought. I could not have believed it would come to this."

  Jenkes, I thought grimly. Only he could have got his hands on such a beautiful French Book of Hours, and he had all but given himself away with his initial. I felt my hands clench around the book as I read the dedication again; the biblical verse was innocent enough, but there was something unpleasantly lascivious in the implication, if you substituted Sophia's name for the word "wisdom." The thought of Jenkes, with his pitted face and his scarred, earless head, giving Sophia such a private, intimate gift-which did indeed imply that she shared some sympathy for his faith-made my teeth clench. Then another thought struck me, freezing my heart for a moment: What if Jenkes was the danger of which she had spoken? What if she had been involved with him in some way and he had ended up threatening her? And was any of this connected to the mutilated corpse lying at the foot of the altar? My hand strayed to my belt, where I had tucked the little silver-handled knife he had given me; that night, I determined, I would have the truth from Jenkes, even if it meant he had to find himself on the wrong end of his own weapon. Underhill was looking up at me with sad, expectant eyes, as if waiting for me to prescribe a course of action.

  "Was James Coverdale a Catholic?" I asked abruptly.

  Underhill squeezed his hands together and nodded.

  "And you knew? Was that why you could not leave the sign of the Catherine Wheel there for the coroner to see?"

  The rector struggled with a sigh so great it threatened to burst his ribs, then looked at me with something like resignation.

  "I have always believed that if a man can hold his faith privately without it touching his politics or his work, that is a matter between him and God. I fear that is not a view held by many on the Privy Council, but I flatter myself it is closer to Her Majesty's own feelings." He leaned in toward me and lowered his voice. "But the rules are changing. Lord Burghley every day introduces new legislation regarding Catholics, so that it is now an offence to withhold information about known papists. A man can lose his property or find himself in gaol simply for failing to tell the authorities what he knows about his neighbours or colleagues, and everyone lives in fear of his friends." He shivered, and folded his hands.

  "So," I said slowly, trying to piece together his reasoning, "you do not want the truth about these murders to be made public because you are afraid someone is targeting the known Catholics in Lincoln College, and if this is discovered, Leicester may ask how so many could have remained here unmolested on your watch?" I said, my sympathy for him fast ebbing away. "You preferred to send the magistrate and the coroner chasing after stories of robbers and stray dogs so that the real killer was free to strike again." I gestured at Ned's body. "Perhaps you are secretly hoping he will finish the job and rid Lincoln of its stubborn Catholics without your losing face?"

  "God, no, Bruno-how could you think such a thing?" he cried, looking genuinely appalled. "You cannot think I would wish for any man's death? Why do you think I have not simply reported those Catholics within the college long before now? Of course I know who they are," he hissed, dropping his voice, "and for the most part they are good men who work well here, to my knowledge they are not plotting to overthrow Her Majesty or her government, and I knew what I would be handing them over to. But by not doing so I have risked losing everything."

  "And now someone is killing them off, one by one, according to the martyrdoms of the early church described by Foxe," I said, almost to myself, as I crossed the room to the fireplace. "But who-someone opposed to them, or one of their own? And why so elaborately, except to draw all eyes to Lincoln College and the punishment of its unrepentant Catholics? If we could only understand his motives, everything might become clear."

  "I did not want to credit your Foxe theory at first," Underhill said softly, raising his head. "I could not believe that anyone could contemplate something so barbaric and blasphemous, and neither did I want to acknowledge that my sermons on Foxe could in any way have inspired such diabolical acts. But you are right-it cannot be ignored any longer."

  "And this poor boy?" I looked back at Ned's ravaged face. "Was he one of them?"

  "Not to my knowledge," Underhill whimpered, allowing himself the most fleeting glance at the corpse on the floor. "He had no family of note, but he was the most dedicated student. I cannot imagine who would want to hurt Ned-it is truly evil." His shoulders convulsed.

  "I think Ned saw or heard so
mething he should not," I said grimly. "Have you informed the constables or the officer of the watch that Sophia is missing?"

  "No," he said, and hung his head again. "It is not dark yet-I suppose I have been hoping that she would return before supper, or at least before nightfall. My wife has taken to her bed-she is of course convinced that Sophia is dead or dying somewhere. She does not know about Ned yet. I am trying to take a more rational view, but it is not easy." He took a deep, steady breath, as if to demonstrate the struggle to master his weaker feelings.

  "If she has not come home by tomorrow morning, I will do everything in my power to help you find her, I swear," I said solemnly. The rector seemed about to reply, but I suddenly held up my hand for silence; from outside in the corridor I had caught a noise so slight it might only have been a rafter creaking, but to my taut nerves it sounded very like the tread of a foot on a floorboard. We waited for several moments, our breath held tight in our throats, but there was only the muted buzzing of an insect against the windowpane.

  "I must go to the hall and declare this latest tragedy to the community," Underhill said, taking the Book of Hours from my hand and replacing it inside his doublet. He ushered me through the door and bent to lock it behind us. "I think we cannot avoid calling in the constables now, since it seems the killer is indeed among us. But if you are questioned, Doctor Bruno, perhaps it would be prudent if we keep Foxe to ourselves," he added in a whisper.

  I nodded, and watched him descend the stairs, his shoulders bowed under a burden that I suspected he would never shake off.