by S. J. Parris
"Keep an eye on that fellow," Sidney whispered. "Most likely he is another of the Jesuits, or a supporter, come to give comfort in the last hour. Gilbert marked him out to catch the handkerchief."
"Should we follow him?" I asked anxiously. Sidney shook his head.
"Walsingham will have men in the crowd to shadow all those who dive for relics of his clothes and any other such business." He stopped suddenly; Jerome was being held up while the executioner climbed into the cart and fastened the noose about his neck before attaching it to the crossbeam and checking it was secure. I realised that the two men were still standing either side of him because he could not support himself, and my jaw clenched tight; he must have been racked so severely that his legs were beyond use.
"What have they done to his hands?" I whispered to Sidney, indicating the mass of congealed blood as Jerome lifted a hand feebly to try and push his matted hair from his face.
"Torn out his fingernails," Sidney said, his voice tight, and I could not read anything beneath his outward composure.
A portly man dressed in royal colours stepped onto the scaffold and unfolded a piece of parchment.
"Jerome Gilbert, Jesuit," he declaimed in a clear voice that carried across the silent crowd, "you have been found guilty on four counts of murder and of seducing the people away from the queen's allegiance, of plotting with others in Rheims and Rome to assassinate the queen, and of being privy to plans of foreign invasion. What say you?"
With enormous effort, the noose still slack around his neck, Jerome summoned what little strength was left in his ravaged body, raised his head, and replied in a surprisingly strong voice, "I am guilty only of trying to bring wandering souls back to their Maker. I pray God forgive all those who have been accessory to my death. God save the queen." Here his eye roved the crowd again and came to rest on me; for a moment we held each other's gaze and he added, his solemn voice carrying over the clearing, "One day you will stand where I stand."
"Silence!" called the official, thinking this a threat to the English Protestants, but I was gripped by a terrible shudder; I could not escape the chilling sense that he had been speaking directly to me. I recalled his words in the hide at Hazeley Court: "You and I are similar men…you go to your death defiant, as I will when the appointed time comes." He had been right about himself, at least, I thought; though his beautiful face had been destroyed by the torturers and he could not stand unaided, in these last moments he was magnificently, fiercely defiant.
The official regarded him with distaste as the assembled throng held its breath.
"As a convicted traitor, your sentence is clear. You are to be hanged by the neck and let down alive; your privy parts cut off, for you are unfit to leave any generation after you; your entrails to be taken out and burned in your sight; your head, which imagined the mischief, to be cut off; and your body divided in four parts, to be disposed of at Her Majesty's pleasure. And may God have mercy on your soul."
Jerome flung his head back so that the summer rain, now falling steadily, filled his eyes and mouth as he cried out to the heavens, "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum!"
And the horses were whipped, and the cart drew away, leaving him writhing on the end of the rope.
He was barely conscious when they cut him down and the two burly men dragged him up the steps to the scaffold. This at least seemed a mercy, I thought, until the executioner flung a pail of cold water into his face and he choked back into a semblance of life, spluttering and flailing wildly as he was lifted to the executioner's table and his clothes stripped from him. As Sidney had predicted, a number of people in the crowd threw themselves forward to try and snatch a piece of the martyr's clothing, and the men with pikes moved in forcibly to push them away from the scaffold.
Like many another man in the crowd, I had to turn away as the executioner raised his knife to slice off Jerome's genitals, but the howl that rent the still air brought tears to my eyes even as the crackle as his severed flesh was thrown into the cauldron made my stomach rise. Yet in that moment, perhaps the most horrific spectacle I had witnessed in my life, I thought of Sophia. "Unfit to leave any generation behind you"-and yet somewhere in Kent a child of his was growing toward the light, a child that would never know the truth about its father but would carry his beauty into the future. I wondered again, for the thousandth time since my return from Oxford, if I had been right to listen to Thomas Allen's frenzied accusations. Would Jerome really have had Sophia killed, or might they both even now be alive and well in France if I had not interfered?
"He would have had you killed, Bruno-remember that," Sidney said in my ear, as if he had read my thoughts. "But he was a damned fine card player," he added, barely audible, and I realised that beneath his professional soldier's demeanour, he too was deeply affected by this death. I nodded heavily, and raising my head at that moment I caught sight of Walsingham, mounted on a black horse on the other side of the crowd, his face set grimly as he watched the butchery on the scaffold. As the executioner plunged his knife into Jerome's breastbone to rip him open, and his dying screams echoed to the blank white sky, Walsingham turned and caught my eye across the heads of the people who stood in terrible, threatening silence. He nodded, once, as if in approbation, then turned his attention back to the scaffold as Jerome's head was held aloft to no other sound than the soft chafing of the wind in the leaves and the persistent drumming of the warm rain.
"TAKE ANOTHER DRINK, Bruno-you look as if you need it." Walsingham reached over and poured me a glass of wine but my throat closed as I lifted it to my face. I could not scour the smell of blood and burning flesh from my nostrils, and though Walsingham's wife had offered us food, I had found myself unable to eat anything.
Now we sat in his private study in his country house at Barn Elms, some miles to the west of London. The sky was still overcast and the room close and gloomy with its dark-wood panelling and narrow windows. Sidney stood looking out over the garden, his hands clasped behind his back. He had been unusually subdued since the execution, and we had ridden down to Mortlake in almost total silence, each wrapped in his own thoughts. Now Walsingham sat opposite me with his chin resting on his hands, studying me carefully.
"You did well, Bruno," he said at length, stretching out his legs in front of him. "The queen has been told of your part in stopping another would-be assassin. It may be that at some time in the future she will feel it appropriate to express her gratitude in person."
"I would be honoured," I said, running my tongue around dry lips.
"Something troubles you," he said gently. I glanced at Sidney but his back was still turned. "You may speak freely here, Bruno," Walsingham prompted, when I did not reply.
"Did you really believe he was guilty of plotting to kill the queen?" I asked.
He looked at me with great heaviness in his eyes for a long time without speaking, and I remembered how he had spoken at our first meeting of the weight of his responsibility to the kingdom.
"No, I did not," he said eventually. I saw Sidney snap his head around and rest himself on the window seat, watching with interest.
"The copy of the Regnans in Excelsis papal bull was old-I do not think Jerome Gilbert brought it with him. Besides, the missionaries do not carry any item that would compromise them, by order of the Jesuit Superior-Gilbert would not have been so careless. It may have belonged to Edmund Allen or one of the other Fellows. It hardly matters now."
"And you know he did not murder the two Catholic Fellows and the boy at Lincoln College?"
"I know that too."
"Then"-I looked up at him, seeking reassurance-"he was executed for crimes he did not commit."
"Her Majesty's government does not persecute anyone for his faith alone," Walsingham said, with a trace of impatience. "That is the official line, and it is important that the people are reminded of that often, or we shall only make more martyrs. If they believe that these Jesuits are willing to murder for their faith, it helps our cause imm
easurably."
"Then all is propaganda," I said, wearily.
"This is principally a war of loyalties. We must persuade the people that their allegiance is best placed with us, by whatever means we can fashion. You saw their response today, did you not? Usually when the head is struck off, a great cry goes up from the crowd of 'Traitor! Traitor!' for they have their sport. But with this Gilbert they witnessed it in complete silence, and that must be a serious cause for concern for the Privy Council. It means the crowd did not approve of what was done today, they found it too barbaric. One more like that and they will turn against us." He shook his head. "I have suggested on numerous occasions that they should hang until they are dead, but I have been shouted down. Perhaps now the council will see reason."
"It is a brutal way to die," I agreed.
Walsingham rounded on me, his face agitated. "Worse than the burnings and massacres they inflict on Protestants? In any case, you told me you saw him kill the boy, Thomas Allen, in cold blood, and you were certain he meant to kill the girl too, though she was with child. And Philip says he would have killed you. So he was not an innocent man, Bruno. Do not pity him on that account."
"No." I acknowledged this by lowering my eyes.
"It is a hard thing to witness," Walsingham said more gently, laying a hand briefly on my arm. "No doubt you think me barbaric for insisting you watch. But I warned you that entering Her Majesty's service would not be an easy path to tread. I needed you to see that for yourself."
"He died well," Sidney cut in abruptly, as if he had been dwelling on it all this time. "With dignity."
"He bore himself with fortitude in the Tower as well," Walsingham agreed, a note of respect in his voice. "They trained him well in Rheims to endure pain. We did not get one name from him, despite long hours of work."
I winced to remember Jerome's bloody fingers and tried not to think of what more "work" might have been carried out on him.
"What will happen to Sophia?" I asked hesitantly, attempting a sip from my glass.
"Underhill's daughter? At the end of her confinement, when she is strong again, she will be questioned." Seeing my expression, he added, "It is my belief she will talk willingly, just as she gave up those letters. But she may have other names we can usefully add to those provided by you and Walter Slythurst."
He fixed me then with an intense look and I dropped my gaze to the floor; I wondered if Sidney had told him about my covering for Sophia over the letters, or if he knew that I had withheld certain names when he debriefed me after my return from Oxford. Perhaps he would have got those same names-Richard Godwyn, Humphrey Pritchard, the Widow Kenney-from Slythurst or Underhill when he questioned them, but I doubted it.
"Oh, please-this Slythurst is useless," Sidney said scathingly, rousing himself from his perch and striding across the room to pour a glass of wine. "He missed the priest right under his nose and tried to hand Bruno over to the pursuivants. Do not give him another penny, I say."
Walsingham sighed. "He was not the most efficient of my Oxford informers," he acknowledged. "He offered his services a couple of years ago to get himself out of debt. He exposed Edmund Allen by very crude means, but that only served to make the other Lincoln College papists yet more hugger-mugger. He is too greatly disliked by his colleagues ever to gain their confidence, so that all his intelligence was largely guesswork based on tavern gossip. In fact, I had warned him that he could not continue in my service without some news of more note just before you arrived-perhaps that was why he was so keen to prove himself by pointing the finger at any suspect."
"It might have helped if I had known he was your man," I said, trying to keep the reproach from my voice. "I thought him the killer at first."
"Better we all guard our secrets, Bruno. He could have turned out to be the killer. I would not have wanted your judgment wrongly coloured by sympathy." Walsingham smiled, but I thought I caught a warning note in his tone.
"That will not happen, Your Honour," I murmured, not quite meeting his eye.
"I trust it will not," he said brightly. "For now, Bruno, I need you back in the French embassy. I hear worrying reports out of Paris that the Guise faction is newly strengthened and plotting against our realm. Place yourself close to the ambassador and see what you can find."
"I will, Your Honour, to the best of my ability," I assured him.
"And now," he said, rising slowly to his feet, "Philip has some news I hope you will find welcome."
He looked expectantly to Sidney, who hooked an arm about my shoulders.
"My old tutor, John Dee, has expressed great interest in making your acquaintance, Bruno, and in showing you the treasures of his library. His house at Mortlake lies not a mile from here, and I am to take you this afternoon, if that pleases you."
"If it pleases me?" For the first time in days I felt myself stirring back into life. Though Sidney had called Jerome Gilbert's execution my triumph, since my return from Oxford I had felt no sense of achievement. In fact, I had felt nothing but intense melancholy at the thought of so many lives wasted for so little, and even my books had failed to animate me. I thought often of Sophia and how her life might be unfolding, and I had begun to fear I might no longer be capable of taking pleasure in anything. Now the prospect of Doctor Dee's library, and the slender chance that he might have some clue as to who had robbed him of the lost book of Hermes Trismegistus all those years ago, pricked my curiosity once more.
Sidney took up his cloak as Walsingham crossed to me, grasping my hand between his, those unfathomable eyes probing mine.
"You have proved your mettle, Bruno," he said, a note of fatherly pride in his voice. "Philip told me you risked your own life to bring this priest to justice and the Privy Council is grateful. I hope ours will be a long and happy association."
I thought it politic not to tell him that I had actually risked my life for a book and a girl. Since I had returned with neither, I thought, I may as well claim it was all for the English state, so I accepted his praise with a sober nod as Sidney held the door open for me. If any good had come from the bloody events I witnessed in Oxford, it had been to convince me that, now more than ever, Christendom desperately needed a new philosophy, one that would draw us together as we passed from the shadows of religious wars into the enlightenment of our shared humanity and shared divinity. It would fall to me, Giordano Bruno of Nola, to write the books that would light this fire in Europe, and with Walsingham's help, I planned to put them into the hands of a monarch with a mind equal to understanding them. When I wrote to Sophia to tell her of Jerome's courage, I would also impress upon her that it was not too late to hope for a better world.
Acknowledgments
I am extremely grateful to Professor Paul Langford, present rector of Lincoln College, Oxford, for his kind hospitality and to the other Lincoln fellows who generously allowed me to poke around their beautiful buildings and gave their time to answer my questions.
My thanks also to Gemma Tuxford and Giovanni Tepedino for all their help with Italian translations. Any mistakes remaining are my own.
S J Parris
***
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