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Heresy
S. J. Parris


A vivid and gripping historical thriller set in Elizabethan England introducing Giordano Bruno - philosopher, spy and hero of the stunning new novel SACRILEGE - for all fans of C.J.Sansom and The Name of the Rose.In Elizabeth’s England, true faith can mean bloody murder…Oxford, 1583. A place of learning. And murderous schemes.The country is rife with plots to assassinate Queen Elizabeth and return the realm to the Catholic faith. Giordano Bruno is recruited by the queen’s spymaster and sent undercover to expose a treacherous conspiracy in Oxford – but his own secret mission must remain hidden at all costs.A spy under orders. A coveted throne under threat.When a series of hideous murders ruptures close-knit college life, Bruno is compelled to investigate. And what he finds makes it brutally clear that the Tudor throne itself is at stake…Heretic, maverick, charmer: Giordano Bruno is always on his guard. Never more so than when working for Queen Elizabeth and her spymaster – for this man of letters is now an agent of intrigue and danger.









S. J. PARRIS

Heresy










Copyright (#ulink_9110b8e8-5148-5e32-a046-ca9f184ffc5f)


This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2010

Copyright © Stephanie Merritt 2010

Stephanie Merritt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Cover photographs © Shutterstock

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780007317707

Ebook Edition MARCH 2010 © ISBN: 9780007317684

Version: 2017-05-10


Table of Contents

Title Page (#u3b7bf730-36f2-59e0-ab23-3db4fe5deca9)

Copyright (#u73b87430-d043-5cf0-87d3-40102280e045)

Prologue: Monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, Naples 1576 (#uc3752c10-4b27-537c-95ca-662cfa3bce58)

Part One: London, May 1583 (#u033f4383-327a-5cb2-9650-721ec422f791)

Chapter One (#u564ae938-7885-561e-a09b-7674ad394693)

Part Two: Oxford, England, May 1583 (#u0d5ae04b-3ffd-546f-bcc9-7a72961db141)

Chapter Two (#ub63b99af-7c94-51f4-b690-41031177b5b3)

Chapter Three (#u468c7433-4446-5fd9-9a46-2538710547a1)

Chapter Four (#u23b883c4-627e-5ade-bdaa-c76ba93cd138)

Chapter Five (#udd21dec8-6255-5140-ab1d-07c6ddbc5bdb)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-One (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Twenty-Two (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue: London, July 1583 (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

Acknowledgements (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise for Heresy (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by S. J. Parris (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)




PROLOGUE (#ulink_6ae0adf2-e0a9-5273-a9f6-485091f44b75)

Monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, Naples 1576 (#ulink_6ae0adf2-e0a9-5273-a9f6-485091f44b75)


The outer door was thrown open with a crash that resounded along the passage and the floorboards shook with the purposeful marching of several pairs of feet. Inside the small cubicle where I perched on the edge of a wooden bench, taking care not to sit too close to the hole that opened over the cess pit beneath, my little candle flickered in the sudden draught of their entrance, sending wavering shadows growing and shrinking up the stone walls. Allora, I thought, looking up. They have come for me at last.

The footsteps halted outside the cubicle door, to be replaced by the furious hammering of a fist and the abbot’s throaty voice, strained beyond its usual placid tones of diplomacy.

‘Fra Giordano! I order you to come out this instant, with whatever you hold in your hands in plain sight!’

I caught a snigger from one of the monks who accompanied him, swiftly followed by a stern tutting from the abbot, Fra Domenico Vita, and could not help smiling to myself, in spite of the moment. Fra Vita was a man who, in the ordinary course of events, gave the impression that all bodily functions offended him mightily; it would be causing him unprecedented distress to have to apprehend one of his monks in so ignominious a place as this.

‘One moment, Padre, if I may,’ I called, untying my habit to make it look as if I had been using the privy for its proper purpose. I looked at the book in my hand. For a moment I entertained the idea of hiding it somewhere under my habit, but that would be fruitless – I would be searched straight away.

‘Not one moment more, Brother,’ Fra Vita said through the door, a quiet menace creeping into his voice. ‘You have spent more than two hours in the privy tonight, I think that is long enough.’

‘Something I ate, Padre,’ I said, and with deep regret, I threw the book into the hole, producing a noisy coughing fit to cover the splash it made as it fell into the pool of waste below. It had been such a fine edition, too.

I unlatched the door and opened it to see my abbot standing there, his heavy features almost vibrating with pent-up rage, all the more vivid in the gusting light of the torches carried by the four monks who stood behind him, staring at me, appalled and fascinated.

‘Do not move, Fra Giordano,’ Vita said tightly, jabbing a warning finger in my face. ‘It is too late for hiding.’

He strode into the cubicle, his nose wrinkled against the stench, holding up his lamp to check each of the corners in turn. Finding nothing, he turned to the men behind him.

‘Search him,’ he barked.

My brothers looked at one another in consternation, then that wily Tuscan friar Fra Agostino da Montalcino stepped forward, an unpleasant smile on his face. He had never liked me, but his dislike had turned to open animosity after I publicly bested him in an argument about the Arian heresy some months earlier, after which he had gone about whispering that I denied the divinity of Christ. Without a doubt, it was he who had put Fra Vita on my trail.

‘Excuse me, Fra Giordano,’ he mouthed with a sneer, before he began patting me up and down, his hands roaming first around my waist and down each of my thighs.

‘Try not to enjoy yourself too much,’ I muttered.

‘Just obeying my superior,’ he replied. When he had finished groping, he rose to face Fra Vita, clearly disappointed. ‘He has nothing concealed in his habit, Father.’

Fra Vita stepped closer and glared at me for some moments without speaking, his face so near to mine that I could count the bristles on his nose and smell the rank onions on his breath.

‘The sin of our first father was the desire for forbidden knowledge.’ He enunciated each word carefully, running his tongue wetly over his lips. ‘He thought he could become like God. And this is your sin also, Fra Giordano Bruno. You are one of the most gifted young men I have encountered in all my years at San Domenico Maggiore, but your curiosity and your pride in your own cleverness prevent you from using your gifts to the glory of the Church. It is time the Father Inquisitor took the measure of you.’

‘No, Padre, please – I have done nothing—’ I protested as he turned to leave, but just then Montalcino called out from behind me.

‘Fra Vita! Here is something you should see!’

He was shining his torch into the hole of the privy, an expression of malevolent delight spreading over his thin face.

Vita blanched, but leaned in to see what the Tuscan had uncovered. Apparently satisfied, he turned to me.

‘Fra Giordano – return to your cell and do not leave until I send you further instructions. This requires the immediate attention of the Father Inquisitor. Fra Montalcino – retrieve that book. We will know what heresies and necromancy our brother studies in here with a devotion I have never seen him apply to the Holy Scriptures.’

Montalcino looked from the abbot to me in horror. I had been in the privy for so long I had grown used to the stink, but the idea of plunging my hand into the pool beneath the plank made my stomach rise. I beamed at Montalcino.

‘I, my Lord Abbot?’ he asked, his voice rising.

‘You, Brother – and be quick about it.’ Fra Vita pulled his cloak closer around him against the chill night air.

‘I can save you the trouble,’ I said. ‘It is only Erasmus’s Commentaries – no dark magic in there.’

‘The works of Erasmus are on the Inquisition’s Index of Forbidden Books, as you well know, Brother Giordano,’ Vita said grimly. He fixed me again with those emotionless eyes. ‘But we will see for ourselves. You have played us for fools too long. It is time the purity of your faith was tested. Fra Battista!’ he called to another of the monks bearing torches, who leaned in attentively. ‘Send word for the Father Inquisitor.’

I could have dropped to my knees then and pleaded for clemency, but there would have been no dignity in begging, and Fra Vita was a man who liked the order of due process. If he had determined I should face the Father Inquisitor, perhaps as an example to my brethren, then he would not be swayed from that course until it had been played out in full – and I feared I knew what that meant. I pulled my cowl over my head and followed the abbot and his attendants out, pausing only to cast a last glance at Montalcino as he rolled up the sleeve of his habit and prepared to fish for my lost Erasmus.

‘On the bright side, Brother, you are fortunate,’ I said, with a parting wink. ‘My shit really does smell sweeter than everyone else’s.’

He looked up, his mouth twisted with either bitterness or disgust.

‘See if your wit survives when you have a burning poker in your arsehole, Bruno,’ he said, with a marked lack of Christian charity.

Outside in the cloister, the night air of Naples was crisp and I watched my breath cloud around me, grateful to be out of the confines of the privy. On all sides the vast stone walls of the monastic buildings rose around me, the cloister swallowed up in their shadows. The great façade of the basilica loomed to my left as I walked with leaden steps towards the monks’ dormitory, and I craned my head upwards to see the stars scattered above it. The Church taught, after Aristotle, that the stars were fixed in the eighth sphere beyond the earth, that they were all equidistant and moved together in orbit about the Earth, like the Sun and the six planets in their respective spheres. Then there were those, like the Pole Copernicus, who dared to imagine the universe in a different form, with the Sun at its centre and an Earth that moved on its own orbit. Beyond this, no one had ventured, not even in imagination: no one but me, Giordano Bruno the Nolan, and this secret theory, bolder than anyone had yet dared to formulate, was known to me alone: that the universe had no fixed centre, but was infinite, and each of those stars I now watched pulsating in the velvet blackness above me was its own sun, surrounded by its own innumerable worlds, on which, even now, beings just like me might also be watching the heavens, wondering if anything existed beyond the limits of their knowledge.

One day I would write all this in a book that would be my life’s work, a book that would send such ripples through Christendom as Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium had done, but greater still, a book that would undo all the certainties not only of the Roman Church but of the whole Christian religion. But there was so much more that I needed to understand, too many books I had yet to read, books of astrology and ancient magic, all of which were forbidden by the Dominican order and which I could never obtain from the library at San Domenico Maggiore. I knew that if I were to stand before the Holy Roman Inquisition now, all of this would be pricked out of me with white-hot irons, with the rack or the wheel, until I vomited my hypothesis out half cooked, whereupon they would burn me for heresy. I was twenty-eight years old; I did not want to die just yet. I had no choice but to run.

It was then just after compline; the monks of San Domenico were preparing to retire for the night. Bursting into the cell I shared with Fra Paolo of Rimini, trailing the cold of the night on my hair and habit, I rushed frantically about the tiny room, gathering what few belongings I had into an oilskin bag. Paolo had been lying in contemplation on his straw pallet when I flung the door open; now he propped himself up on one elbow, watching my frenzy with concern. He and I had joined the monastery together as novices at the age of fifteen; now, thirteen years later, he was the only one I thought of as a brother in the true sense.

‘They have sent for the Father Inquisitor,’ I explained, catching my breath. ‘There is no time to lose.’

‘You missed compline again. I told you, Bruno,’ Paolo said, shaking his head. ‘If you spend so many hours in the privy every night, people will grow suspicious. Fra Tomasso has been telling everyone you have some grievous disease of the bowel – I said it would not take long for Montalcino to deduce your true business and alert the abbot.’

‘It was only Erasmus, for Christ’s sake,’ I said, irritated. ‘I must leave tonight, Paolo, before I am questioned. Have you seen my winter cloak?’

Paolo’s face was suddenly grave.

‘Bruno, you know a Dominican may not abandon his order, on pain of excommunication. If you run away, they will take it as a confession, they will put out a warrant for you. You will be condemned as a heretic.’

‘And if I stay I will be condemned as a heretic,’ I said. ‘It will hurt less in absentia.’

‘But where will you go? How will you live?’ My friend looked pained; I stopped my searching and laid my hand on his shoulder.

‘I will travel at night, I will sing and dance or beg for bread if I have to, and when I have put enough distance between myself and Naples, I will teach for a living. I took my Doctor of Theology last year – there are plenty of universities in Italy.’ I tried to sound cheerful, but in truth my heart was pounding and my bowels were turned to water; it was somewhat ironic that I could not now go near the privy.

‘You will never be safe in Italy if the Inquisition name you as a heretic,’ Paolo said sadly. ‘They will not rest until they see you burned.’

‘Then I must get out before they have the chance. Perhaps I will go to France.’

I turned away to look for my cloak. There flashed into my memory, as clear as the day it was first imprinted, the image of a man consumed by fire, his head twisted back in agony as he tried in vain to turn his face from the heat of the flames that tore hungrily at his clothes. It was that human, fruitless gesture that stayed with me in the years afterwards – that movement to protect his face from the fire, though his head was bound to a stake – and since then I had deliberately avoided the spectacle of another burning. I had been twelve years old, and my father, a professional soldier and a man of orthodox and sincere belief, had taken me to Rome to watch a public execution for my edification and instruction. We had secured a good vantage point for ourselves in the Campo dei Fiori towards the back of the jostling crowd, and I had been amazed at how many had gathered to make profit from the event as if it were a bear-baiting or a fair: sellers of pamphlets, mendicant friars, men and women peddling bread and cakes or fried fish from trays around their necks. Neither had I expected the cruelty of the crowd, who mocked the prisoner with insults, spitting and throwing stones at him as he was led silently to the stake, his head bowed. I wondered if his silence were defeat or dignity, but my father explained that an iron spike had been driven through his tongue so that he could not try to convert the spectators by repeating his foul heresies from the pyre.

He was tied to the stake and the faggots piled around him so that he was almost hidden from view. When a torch was held to the wood, there was an almighty crackling and the kindling caught light immediately and burned with a fierce glow. My father had nodded in approval; sometimes, he explained, if the authorities feel merciful, they allow green wood to be used for the pyre, so that the prisoner will often suffocate from the smoke before he truly suffers the sting of the flames. But for the worst kind of heretics – witches, sorcerers, blasphemers, Lutherans, the Benandanti – they would be sure the wood was dry as the slopes of Monte Cicala in summer, so that the heat of the flames would tear at the offender until he screamed out to God with his last breath in true repentance.

I wanted to look away as the flames rushed to devour the man’s face, but my father was planted solidly beside me, his gaze unflinching, as if watching the poor wretch’s agonies were an essential part of his own duty to God, and I did not want to appear less manly or less devout than he. I heard the mangled shrieks that escaped the condemned man’s torn mouth as his eyeballs popped, I heard the hiss and crackle as his skin shrivelled and peeled away and the bloody pulp beneath melted into the flames, I smelled the charred flesh that reminded me horribly of the boar that was always roasted over a pit at street festivals in Nola. Indeed, the cheering and exultation of the crowd when the heretic finally expired was like nothing so much as a saint’s day or public holiday. On the way home I asked my father why the man had had to die so horribly. Had he killed someone? My father told me that he had been a heretic. When I pressed him to explain what a heretic was, he said the man had defied the authority of the pope by denying the existence of Purgatory. So I learned that, in Italy, words and ideas are considered as dangerous as swords and arrows, and that a philosopher or a scientist needs as much courage as a soldier to speak his mind.

Somewhere in the dormitory building I heard a door slam violently.

‘They are coming,’ I whispered frantically to Paolo. ‘Where the devil is my cloak?’

‘Here.’ He handed me his own, pausing a moment to tuck it around my shoulders. ‘And take this.’ He pressed into my hand a small bone-handled dagger in a leather sheath. I looked at him in surprise. ‘It was a gift from my father,’ he whispered. ‘You will have more need of it than I, where you are going. And now, sbrigati. Hurry.’

The narrow window of our cell was just large enough for me to squeeze myself on to the ledge, one leg at a time. We were on the first floor of the building, but about six feet below the window the sloping roof of the lay brothers’ reredorter jutted out enough for me to land on if I judged the fall carefully; from there I could edge my way down a buttress and, assuming I could make it across the garden without being seen, I could climb the outside wall of the monastery and disappear into the streets of Naples under cover of darkness.

I tucked the dagger inside my habit, slung my oilskin pack over one shoulder and climbed to the ledge, pausing astride the window sill to look out. A gibbous moon hung, pale and swollen, over the city, smoky trails of cloud drifting across its face. Outside there was only silence. For a moment I felt suspended between two lives. I had been a monk for thirteen years; when I lifted my left leg through the window and dropped to the roof below I would be turning my back on that life for good. Paolo was right; I would be ex communicated for leaving my order, whatever other charges were levelled at me. He looked up at me, his face full of wordless grief, and reached for my hand. I leaned down to kiss his knuckles when I heard again the emphatic stride of many feet thundering down the passageway outside.

‘Dio sia con te,’ Paolo whispered, as I pulled myself through the small window and twisted my body around so that I was hanging by my fingertips, tearing my habit as I did so. Then, trusting to God and chance, I let go. As I landed clumsily on the roof below, I heard the sound of the little casement closing and hoped Paolo had been in time.

The moonlight was a blessing and a curse; I kept close to the shadows of the wall as I crossed the garden behind the monks’ quarters and, with the help of wild vines, I managed to pull myself over the far wall, the boundary of the monastery, where I dropped to the ground and rolled down a short slope to the road. Immediately I had to throw myself into the shadow of a doorway, trusting to the darkness to cover me, because a rider on a black horse was galloping urgently up the narrow street in the direction of the monastery, his cloak undulating behind him. It was only when I lifted my head, feeling the blood pounding in my throat, and recognised the round brim of his hat as he disappeared up the hill towards the main gate, that I knew the figure who had passed was the local Father Inquisitor, summoned in my honour.

That night I slept in a ditch on the outskirts of Naples when I could walk no further, Paolo’s cloak a poor defence against the frosty night. On the second day, I earned a bed for the night and a half-loaf of bread by working in the stables of a roadside inn; that night, a man attacked me while I slept and I woke with cracked ribs, a bloody nose and no bread, but at least he had used his fists and not a knife, as I soon learned was common among the vagrants and travellers who frequented the inns and taverns on the road to Rome. By the third day, I was learning to be vigilant, and I was more than halfway to Rome. Already I missed the familiar routines of monastic life that had governed my days for so long, and already I was thrilled by the notion of freedom. I no longer had any master except my own imagination. In Rome I would be walking into the lion’s maw, but I liked the boldness of the wager with Providence; either my life would begin again as a free man, or the Inquisition would track me down and feed me to the flames. But I would do everything in my power to ensure it was not the latter – I was not afraid to die for my beliefs, but not until I had determined which beliefs were worth dying for.



PART ONE (#ulink_343c7d02-39b5-5852-87df-29f4f6355e6d)




ONE (#ulink_56e10d3c-8a99-5622-8df4-95d4a34d9004)


On a horse borrowed from the French ambassador to the court of Queen Elizabeth of England, I rode out across London Bridge on the morning of 20th May 1583. The sun was strong already, though it was not yet noon; diamonds of light scattered across the ruffled surface of the wide Thames and a warm breeze lifted my hair away from my face, carrying with it the sewer stinks of the river. My heart swelled with anticipation as I reached the south bank and turned right along the river towards Winchester House, where I would meet the royal party to embark upon our journey to the renowned University of Oxford.

The palace of the bishops of Winchester was built of red brick in the English style around a courtyard, its roof decorated with ornate chimneys over the great hall with its rows of tall perpendicular windows facing the river. In front of this a lawn sloped down to a large wharf and landing place where I now saw, as I approached, a colourful spectacle of people thronging the grass. Snatches of tunes carried through the air as musicians rehearsed, and half of London society appeared to have turned out in its best clothes to watch the pageant in the spring sunshine. By the steps, servants were making ready a grand boat, decked out with rich silk hangings and cushions tapestried in red and gold. At the front were seats for eight oarsmen, and at the back an elaborate embroidered canopy sheltered the seats. Jewel-coloured banners rippled in the light wind, catching the sunlight.

I dismounted, and a servant came to hold the horse while I walked towards the house, eyed suspiciously by various finely dressed gentlemen as we passed. Suddenly I felt a fist land between my shoulder blades, almost knocking me to the ground.

‘Giordano Bruno, you old dog! Have they not burned you yet?’

Recovering my balance, I spun around to see Philip Sidney standing there grinning from ear to ear, his arms wide, legs planted firmly astride, his hair still styled in that peculiar quiff that stuck up at the front like a schoolboy hastened out of bed. Sidney, the aristocratic soldier-poet I had met in Padua as I fled through Italy.

‘They’d have to catch me first, Philip,’ I said, smiling broadly at the sight of him.

‘It’s Sir Philip to you, you churl – I’ve been knighted this year, you know.’

‘Excellent! Does that mean you’ll acquire some manners?’

He threw his arms around me then and thumped me heartily on the back again. Ours was a curious friendship, I reflected, catching my breath and embracing him in return. Our backgrounds could not have been more different – Sidney was born into one of the first families of the English court, as he had never tired of reminding me – but in Padua we had immediately discovered the gift of making one another laugh, a rare and welcome thing in that earnest and often sombre place. Even now, after six years, I felt no awkwardness in his company; straight away we had fallen into our old custom of affectionate baiting.

‘Come, Bruno,’ Sidney said, putting an arm around my shoulders and leading me down the lawn towards the river. ‘By God, it is a fine thing to see you again. This royal visitation to Oxford would have been intolerable without your company. Have you heard of this Polish prince?’

I shook my head. Sidney rolled his eyes.

‘Well, you will meet him soon enough. The Palatine Albert Laski – a Polish dignitary with too much money and too few responsibilities, who consequently spends his time making a nuisance of himself around the courts of Europe. He was supposed to travel from here to Paris, but King Henri of France refuses to allow him into the country, so Her Majesty is stuck with the burden of his entertainment a while longer. Hence this elaborate pageant to get him away from court.’ He waved towards the barge, then glanced around briefly to make sure we were not overheard. ‘I do not blame the French king for refusing his visit, he is a singularly unbearable man. Still, it is quite an achievement – I can think of one or two taverns where I am refused entry, but to be barred from an entire country requires a particular talent for making yourself unwelcome. Which Laski has by the cartload, as you shall see. But you and I shall have a merry time in Oxford none the less – you will amaze the dullards there with your ideas, and I shall look forward to basking in your glory and showing you my old haunts,’ he said, punching me heartily again on the arm. ‘Although, as you know, that is not our whole purpose,’ he added, lowering his voice.

We stood side by side looking out over the river, busy then with little crafts, wherries and small white-sailed boats criss-crossing the shining water in the spring sun, which illuminated the fronts of the handsome brick and timber buildings along the opposite bank, a glorious panorama with the great spire of St Paul’s church towering over the rooftops far to the north. I thought what a magnificent city London was in our age, and how fortunate I was to be here at all, and in such company. I waited for Sidney to elaborate.

‘I have something for you from my future father-in-law, Sir Francis Walsingham,’ he whispered, his eyes still fixed on the river. ‘See what a knighthood gets me, Bruno – a job as your errand boy.’ He drew himself upright and looked about, shielding his eyes with his hand as he peered towards the mooring-place of our craft, before reaching for the oilskin bag he carried and pulling from it a bulging leather purse. ‘Walsingham sent this for you. You may incur certain expenses in the course of your enquiries. Call it an advance against payment.’

Sir Francis Walsingham. Queen Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary of State, the man behind my unlikely presence on this royal visitation to Oxford; even his name made my spine prickle.

We walked a little further off from the body of the crowd gathered to marvel as the barge was decked with flowers for our departure. Beside it, a group of musicians had struck up a dance tune and we watched the crowd milling around them.

‘But now tell me, Bruno – you have not set your sights upon Oxford merely to debate Copernicus before a host of dull-witted academicians,’ Sidney continued, in a low voice. ‘I knew as soon as I heard you had come to England that you must be on the scent of something important.’

I glanced quickly around to be sure no one was within earshot.

‘I have come to find a book,’ I said. ‘One I have sought for some time, and now I believe it was brought to England.’

‘I knew it!’ Sidney grabbed my arm and drew me closer. ‘And what is in this book? Some dark art to unlock the power of the universe? You were dabbling in such things in Padua, as I recall.’

I could not tell whether he was mocking me still, but I decided to trust to what our friendship had been in Italy.

‘What would you say, Philip, if I told you the universe was infinite?’

He looked doubtful.

‘I would say that this goes beyond even the Copernican heresy, and that you should keep your voice down.’

‘Well, this is what I believe,’ I said, quietly. ‘Copernicus told only half the truth. Aristotle’s picture of the cosmos, with the fixed stars and the six planets that orbit the earth – this is pure falsehood. Copernicus replaced the Earth with the Sun as the centre of the cosmos, but I go further – I say there are many suns, many centres – as many as there are stars in the sky. The universe is infinite, and if this is so, why should it not be populated with other earths, other worlds, and other beings like ourselves? I have decided it will be my life’s work to prove this.’

‘How can it be proved?’

‘I will see them,’ I said, looking out over the river, not daring to watch his reaction. ‘I will penetrate the far reaches of the universe, beyond the spheres.’

‘And how exactly will you do this? Will you learn to fly?’ His voice was sceptical now; I could not blame him.

‘By the secret knowledge contained in the lost book of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, who first understood these mysteries. If I can trace it, I will learn the secrets necessary to rise up through the spheres by the light of divine understanding and enter the Divine Mind.’

‘Enter the mind of God, Bruno?’

‘No, listen. Since I saw you last I have studied in depth the ancient magic of the Hermetic writings and the Cabala of the Hebrews, and I have begun to understand such things as you would not believe possible.’ I hesitated. ‘If I can learn how to make the ascent Hermes describes, I will glimpse what lies beyond the known cosmos – the universe without end, and the universal soul, of which we are all a part.’

I thought he might laugh then, but instead he looked thoughtful.

‘Sounds like dangerous sorcery to me, Bruno. And what would you prove? That there is no God?’

‘That we are all God,’ I said, quietly. ‘The divinity is in all of us, and in the substance of the universe. With the right knowledge, we can draw down all the powers of the cosmos. When we understand this, we can become equal to God.’

Sidney stared at me in disbelief.

‘Christ’s blood, Bruno! You cannot go about proclaiming yourself equal to God. We may not have the Inquisition here but no Christian church will hear that with equanimity – you will be straight for the fire.’

‘Because the Christian church is corrupt, every faction of it – this is what I want to convey. It is only a poor shadow, a dilution of an ancient truth that existed long before Christ walked the earth. If that were understood, then true reform of religion might be possible. Men might rise above the divisions for which so much blood has been spilled, and is still being spilled, and understand their essential unity.’

Sidney’s face turned grave.

‘I have heard my old tutor Doctor Dee speak in this way. But you must be careful, my friend – he collected many of these manuscripts of ancient magic during the destruction of the monastic libraries, and he is called a necromancer and worse for it, not just by the common people. And he is a native Englishman, and the queen’s own astrologer too. Do not get yourself a reputation as a black magician – you are already suspicious as a Catholic and a foreigner.’ He stepped back and looked at me with curiosity. ‘This book, then – you believe it is to be found in Oxford?’

‘When I was living in Paris, I learned that it was brought out of Florence at the end of the last century and, if my advisor spoke the truth, it was taken by an English collector to one of the great libraries here, where it lies unremarked because no one who has handled it has understood its significance. Many of the Englishmen who travelled in Italy were university men and left their books as bequests, so Oxford is as good a place as any to start looking.’

‘You should start by asking John Dee,’ Sidney said. ‘He has the greatest library in the country.’

I shook my head.

‘If your Doctor Dee had this book, he would know what he held in his hands, and he would have made this revelation known by some means. It is still to be discovered, I am certain.’

‘Well, then. But don’t neglect Walsingham’s business in Oxford.’ He slapped me on the back again. ‘And for Christ’s sake don’t neglect me, Bruno, to go ferreting in libraries – I shall expect some gaiety from you while we are there. It’s bad enough that I must play nursemaid to that flatulent Pole Laski – I’m not planning to spend every evening with a clutch of fusty old theologians, thank you. You and I shall go roistering through the town, leaving the women of Oxford bow-legged in our wake!’

‘I thought you were to marry Walsingham’s daughter?’ I raised an eyebrow, feigning shock.

Sidney rolled his eyes.

‘When the queen deigns to give her consent. In the meantime, I do not consider myself bound by marriage vows. Anyway, what of you, Bruno? Have you been making up for your years in the cloister on your way through Europe?’ He elbowed me meaningfully in the ribs.

I smiled, rubbing my side.

‘Three years ago, in Toulouse, there was a woman. Morgana, the daughter of a Huguenot nobleman. I gave private tuition to her brother in metaphysics, but when her father was not at home she would beg me to stay on and read with her. She was hungry for knowledge – a rare quality in women born to wealth, I have found.’

‘And beautiful?’ Sidney asked, his eyes glittering.

‘Exquisite.’ I bit my lip, remembering Morgana’s blue eyes, the way she would try and coax me to laughter when she thought I grew too melancholy. ‘I courted her in secret, but I think I always knew it was only for a season. Her father wanted her to marry a Huguenot aristocrat, not a fugitive Italian Catholic. Even when I became a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toulouse and finally had the means of supporting myself, he would not consent, and he threatened to use all his influence in the city to destroy my name.’

‘So what happened?’ Sidney asked, intrigued.

‘She begged me to run away with her.’ I sighed. ‘I almost allowed myself to be persuaded, but I knew in my heart that it would not have been the future either of us wanted. So I left one night for Paris, where I ploughed all my energies into my writing and my advancement at court. But I often wonder about the life I turned my back on, and where I might have been now.’ My voice trailed away as I lowered my eyes again, remembering.

‘Then we should not have had you here, my friend. Besides, she’s probably married to some ageing duke by now,’ Sidney said heartily.

‘She would have been,’ I agreed, ‘had she not died. Her father arranged a marriage to one of his friends but she had an accident shortly before the wedding. Drowned. Her brother wrote and told me.’

‘You think it was by her own hand?’ Sidney asked, his eyes dramatically wide.

‘I suppose I will never know.’

I fell silent then, and gazed out across the water.

‘Well, sorry about that,’ Sidney said after a few moments, clapping me on the back in that matter-of-fact way the English have, ‘but still – the women of King Henri’s court must have provided you with plenty of distractions, eh?’

I regarded him for a moment, wondering if the English nobility really did have as little fine feeling as they pretended, or if they had developed this manner as a way of avoiding painful emotion.

‘Oh yes, the women there were beautiful, certainly, and happy enough to offer their attentions at first, but I found them sadly lacking in worthwhile conversation,’ I said, forcing a smile. ‘And they found me sadly lacking in fortune and titles for any serious liaison.’

‘Well, there you are, Bruno – you are destined for disappointment if you seek out women for their conversation.’ Sidney shook his head briefly, as if the idea were absurd. ‘Take my advice – sharpen your wits in the company of men, and look to women only for life’s softer comforts.’

He winked broadly and grinned.

‘Now I must oversee the arrangements or we shall never be on our way, and we are to dine at the palace of Windsor this evening so we need to make good progress. They say there will be a storm tonight. The queen will not be present, naturally,’ he said, noting my raised eyebrows. ‘I’m afraid the responsibility of entertaining the palatine is ours alone, Bruno, until we reach Oxford. Steel yourself and pray to that universal soul of yours for fortitude.’

‘I would not be the one to boast, but my friends do consider me to be something of a poet, Sir Philip,’ the Palatine Laski was saying in his high-pitched voice, which always sounded as if he was voicing a grievance, as our boat approached Hampton Court. ‘I had in mind that if we tire of the disputations at the university’ – here he cast a pointed glance at me – ‘you and I might devote some of our stay in Oxford to reading one another’s poetry and advising on it, as one sonneteer to another, what say you?’

‘Then we must include Bruno in our parley,’ Sidney said, flashing me a conspiratorial grin, ‘for in addition to his learned books, he has written a comic drama in verse for the stage, have you not, Bruno? What was it called?’

‘The Torch-bearers,’ I muttered, and turned back to contemplate the view. I had dedicated the play to Morgana and it was always associated with memories of her.

‘I have not heard of it,’ said the palatine dismissively.

Before our party had even reached Richmond I found myself in complete agreement with my patron, King Henri III of France: the Palatine Laski was unbearable. Fat and red-faced, he had a wholly misplaced regard for his own importance and a great love of the sound of his own voice. For all his fine clothes and airs, he was clearly not well acquainted with the bath-house, and under that warm sun a fierce stink came off him which, mingled with the vapours from the brown Thames at close quarters, was distracting me from what should have been an entertaining journey.

We had launched from the wharf at Winchester House with a great fanfare of trumpets; a boat filled with musicians had been charged to keep pace with us, so that the palatine’s endless monologue was accompanied by the twitterings and chirpings of the flute players to our right. To add to my discomfort, the flowers with which the barge had been so generously bedecked were making me sneeze. I sank back into the silk cushions, trying to concentrate on the rhythmic splashing of the oars as we glided at a stately pace through the city, smaller boats making way on either side while their occupants, recognising the royal barge, respectfully doffed their caps and stared as we passed. For my part, I had almost succeeded in reducing the palatine’s babble to a background drone as I concentrated on the sights, and would have been content to enjoy the gentle green and wooded landscape on the banks as we left the city behind, but Sidney was determined to amuse himself by baiting the Pole and wanted my collaboration.

‘Behold, the great palace of Hampton Court, which once belonged to our queen’s father’s favourite, Cardinal Wolsey,’ he said, gesturing grandly towards the bank as we drew close to the imposing red-brick walls. ‘Not that he enjoyed it for long – such is the caprice of princes. But it seems the queen holds you in great esteem, Laski, to judge by the care she has taken over your visit.’

The palatine simpered unattractively.

‘Well, that is not for me to say, of course, but I think it is well-known by now at the English court that the Palatine Laski is granted the very best of Her Majesty’s hospitality.’

‘And now that she will not have the Duke of Anjou, I wonder whether we her subjects may begin to speculate about an alliance with Poland?’ Sidney went on mischievously.

The palatine pressed the tips of his stubby fingers together as if in prayer and pursed his moist lips, his little piggy eyes shining with self-congratulating pleasure.

‘Such things are not for me to say, but I have noticed in the course of my stay at court that the queen did pay me certain special attentions, shall we say? Naturally she is modest, but I think men of the world such as you and I, Sir Philip, who have not been shut up in a cloister, can always tell when a woman looks at us with a woman’s wants, can we not?’

I snorted with incredulity then, and had to disguise it as a sneezing fit. The minstrels finished yet another insufferably jaunty folk song and turned to a more melancholic tune, allowing me to lapse into reflective silence as the fields and woods slid by and the river became narrower and less noisome. Clouds bunched overhead, mirrored in the stretch of water before us, and the heat began to feel thick in my nostrils; it seemed Sidney had been right about the coming storm.

‘In any case, Sir Philip, I have taken the liberty of composing a sonnet in praise of the queen’s beauty,’ announced the palatine, after a while, ‘and I wonder if I might recite it for you before I deliver it to her delicate ears? I would welcome the advice of a fellow poet.’

‘You had much better ask Bruno,’ Sidney said carelessly, trailing his hand in the water, ‘his countrymen invented the form. Is that not so, Bruno?’

I sent him a murderous look and allowed my thoughts to drift to the horizon as the palatine began his droning recital.

If anyone had predicted, during those days when I begged my way from city to city up the length of the Italian peninsula, snatching teaching jobs when I could find them and living in the roadside inns and cheap lodgings of travellers, players and pedlars when I could not, that I would end up the confidant of kings and courtiers, the world would have thought them insane. But not me – I always believed in my own ability not only to survive but to rise through my own efforts. I valued wit more than the privileges of birth, an enquiring mind and hunger for learning above status or office, and I carried an implacable belief that others would eventually come to see that I was right; this lent me the will to climb obstacles that would have daunted more deferential men. So it was that from itinerant teacher and fugitive heretic, by the age of thirty-five I had risen almost as high as a philosopher might dream: I was a favourite at the court of King Henri III in Paris, his private tutor in the art of memory and a Reader in Philosophy at the great university of the Sorbonne. But France too was riven with religious wars then, like every other place I had passed through during my seven-year exile from Naples, and the Catholic faction in Paris under the Guise family were steadily gaining strength against the Huguenots, so much so that it was rumoured the Inquisition were on their way to France. At the same time, my friendship with the king and the popularity of my lectures had earned me enemies among the learned doctors at the Sorbonne, and sly rumours began to slip through the back streets and into the ears of the courtiers: that my unique memory system was a form of black magic and that I used it to communicate with demons. This I took as my cue to move on, as I had done in Venice, Padua, Genoa, Lyon, Toulouse and Geneva whenever the past threatened to catch up; like many religious fugitives before me, I sought refuge under the more tolerant skies of Elizabeth’s London, where the Holy Office had no jurisdiction, and where I hoped also to find the lost book of the Egyptian high priest Hermes Trismegistus.

The royal barge moored at Windsor late in the afternoon, where we were met by liveried servants and taken to our lodgings at the royal castle to dine and rest for the night before progressing to Oxford early the next day. Our supper was a subdued affair, perhaps partly because the sky had grown very dark by the time we arrived in the state apartments, requiring the candles to be lit early, and a heavy rain had begun to fall; by the time our meal was over the water was coursing down the tall windows of the dining hall in a steady sheet.

‘There will be no boat tomorrow if this continues,’ Sidney observed, as the servants cleared the dishes. ‘We will have to travel the rest of the way by road, if horses can be arranged.’

The palatine looked petulant; he had clearly enjoyed the languor of the barge.

‘I am no horseman,’ he complained, ‘we will need a carriage at the very least. Or we could wait here until the weather clears,’ he suggested in a brighter tone, leaning back in his chair and looking about him covetously at the rich furnishings of the palace dining room.

‘We have no time,’ Sidney replied. ‘Bruno’s great disputation before the whole university is the day after tomorrow and we must give our speaker enough leisure to prepare his devastating arguments, eh, Bruno?’

I turned my attention from the windows to offer him a smile.

‘In fact, I was just about to excuse myself for that very purpose,’ I said.

Sidney’s face fell.

‘Oh – will you not sit up and play cards with us a while?’ he asked, a note of alarm in his voice at the prospect of being left alone with the palatine for the evening.

‘I’m afraid I must lose myself in my books tonight,’ I said, pushing my chair back, ‘or this great disputation, as you call it, will not be worth hearing.’

‘I’ve sat through few that were,’ remarked the palatine. ‘Never mind, Sir Philip, you and I shall make a long night of it. Perhaps we may read to one another? I shall call for more wine.’

Sidney threw me the imploring look of a drowning man as I passed him, but I only winked and closed the door behind me. He was the professional diplomat here, he had been bred to deal with people like this. A great crack of thunder echoed around the roof as I made my way up an ornately painted staircase to my room.

For a long while I did not consult my papers or try to put my thoughts in order, but only lay on my bed, my mind as unsettled as the turbulent sky, which had turned a lurid shade of green as the thunder and lightning grew nearer and more frequent. The rain hammered against the glass and on the tiles of the roof and I wondered at the sense of unease that had edged out the morning’s thrill of anticipation. My future in England, to say nothing of the future of my work, depended greatly on the outcome of this journey to Oxford, yet I was filled with a strange foreboding; in all these rootless years of belonging nowhere, depending on no one but my own instinct for survival, I had learned to listen to the prickling of my moods. When I had intimations of danger, events had usually proved me right. But perhaps it was only that, once again, I was preparing to take on another shape, to become someone I was not.

I had been in London less than a week, staying as a guest of the French ambassador at the request of my patron, King Henri, who had reluctantly agreed to my plea to leave Paris indefinitely, when I received a summons from Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary of State. It was not the kind of invitation one declined, yet the manner of its arrival gave me no clue as to how a statesman of such importance knew of my arrival or what he wanted of me. I rode out the next day to his grand house on the prosperous street of Seething Lane, close by the Tower in the east of the City of London, and was shown through the house by a harried-looking steward into a neat garden, where box trees in geometric patterns gave way to an expanse of wilder grass. Beyond this I saw a cluster of low fruit trees in the full swell of their blossom, a magnificent canopy of white and pink, and among them, gazing up into their twisted branches, stood a tall figure dressed all in black.

At the steward’s nod, I stepped towards the man under the trees, who had turned to face me – or so I believed, for the late afternoon sun was slanting down directly behind him, leaving him silhouetted, a lean black shape against the golden light. I could not gauge his expression, so I paused a few feet away from him and bowed deeply in a manner I hoped was fitting.

‘Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your honour’s service.’

‘Buonasera, Signor Bruno, e benvenuto, benvenuto,’ he said warmly, and strode forward, holding out his right hand to clasp mine in the English style. His Italian was only faintly coloured by the clipped tones of his native tongue, and as he approached I could see his face clearly for the first time. It was a long face, made the more severe by the close-fitting black cap he wore over receding hair. I guessed him to be about fifty years of age, and his eyes were lit with a sharp intelligence that seemed to make plain without words that he would not suffer fools. Yet his face also bore the traces of great weariness; he looked like a man who carried a heavy burden and slept little.

‘A fortnight past, Doctor Bruno, I received a letter from our ambassador in Paris informing me of your arrival in London,’ he began, without preamble. ‘You are well known at the French court. Our ambassador says he cannot commend your religion. What do you think he could mean by that?’

‘Perhaps he refers to the fact that I was once in holy orders, or the fact that I am no longer,’ I said, evenly.

‘Or perhaps he means something else altogether,’ Walsingham said, looking at me carefully. ‘But we will come to that. First tell me – what do you know of me, Filippo Bruno?’

I snapped my head round to stare at him then, wrong-footed – as he had intended I should be. I had abandoned my baptismal name when I entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore and taken my monastic name of Giordano, though I had reclaimed it briefly while I was on the run. For Walsingham to address me by it now was clearly a little trick to show me the reach of his knowledge, and he was evidently pleased with its effect. But I recovered myself, and said,

‘I know enough to see that only a fool would attempt to hide anything from a man who has never met me, yet calls me by the name my parents gave me, a name I have not used these twenty years.’

Walsingham smiled.

‘Then you know all that matters at present. And I know that you are no fool. Reckless, perhaps, but not a fool. Now, shall I tell you what else I know about you, Doctor Giordano Bruno of Nola?’

‘Please – as long as I may be permitted to separate for your honour the ignominious truth from the merely scurrilous rumour.’

‘Very well, then.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘You were born in Nola, near Naples, the son of a soldier, and you entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in your teens. You abandoned the order some thirteen years later, and fled through Italy for three years, pursued by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. You later taught in Geneva, and in France, before attracting the patronage of King Henri III in Paris. You teach the art of memory, which many consider to be a kind of magic, and you are a passionate supporter of Copernicus’s theory that the Earth rotates around the Sun, though the idea has been declared heretical by Rome and by the Lutherans alike.’

He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, bemused.

‘Your honour knows much.’

He smiled.

‘There is no mystery here, Bruno – when you stopped briefly in Padua, you became friends with an English courtier named Philip Sidney, did you not? Well – he is shortly to marry my daughter, Frances.’

‘Your honour could not have found a worthier son-in-law, I am sure. I shall look forward to seeing him,’ I said, and meant it.

Walsingham nodded.

‘As a matter of curiosity – why did you abandon the monastery?’

‘I was caught reading Erasmus in the privy.’

He stared at me for a moment, then threw back his head and guffawed; a deep, rich sound, such as a bear might make if it could laugh.

‘And I had other volumes on the Forbidden Index of the Holy Office. They would have sent me before the Inquisitor, but I escaped. This is why I was excommunicated.’ I folded my hands behind my back as I walked, thinking how strange it seemed to be reliving those days in this green English garden.

He regarded me with an inscrutable expression and then shook his head as if puzzled.

‘You intrigue me greatly, Bruno. You fled Italy pursued by the Roman Inquisition for your suspected heresy, and yet you were also arrested and tried by the Calvinists in Geneva for your beliefs, is it not so?’

I tilted my head, half-assenting.

‘There was something of a misunderstanding in Geneva. I found the Calvinists had only swapped one set of blind dogma for another.’

Again he looked at me with something approaching admiration, and laughed, shaking his head.

‘I have never met another man who has managed to get himself accused of heresy by both the pope and the Calvinists. This is a singular achievement, Doctor Bruno! It makes me ask myself – what is your religion?’

There was an expectant pause while he looked at me encouragingly.

‘Your honour knows that I am no friend of Rome. I assure you that in everything my allegiance is to Her Majesty and I would be glad to offer her any service I may while I remain under her sovereignty.’

‘Yes, yes, Bruno – I thank you, but that is not an answer to my question. I asked what is your religion? In your heart, are you papist or Protestant?’

I hesitated.

‘Your honour has already pointed out that both sides have found me wanting.’

‘Are you saying that you are neither? Are you an atheist, then?’

‘Before I answer that, may I know what the consequences of my answer might be?’

He smiled then. ‘This is not an interrogation, Bruno. I only wish to understand your philosophy. Speak frankly with me, and I will speak frankly with you. This is why we are walking here among the trees, where we will not be overheard.’

‘Then I assure your honour that I am not what is usually meant by the word “atheist”,’ I said, fervently hoping that I was not condemning myself. ‘In France, and here in her embassy, I call myself a Catholic because it is simpler not to make trouble. But in truth, I do not think of myself as Catholic or Protestant – these terms are too narrow. I believe in a greater truth.’

He raised an eyebrow.

‘A greater truth than the Christian faith?’

‘An ancient truth, of which the Christian faith is one later interpretation. A truth which, if it could be properly understood in our clouded age, might enlighten men instead of perpetuating these bloody divisions.’

A pregnant silence fell. The sun was low in the sky now, and in the shade of the trees the air was growing cool. Birdsong became more insistent with the gathering dusk, and Walsingham continued to pace through the grass, the shoulders of his black doublet flecked with white petals of blossom that fluttered from the branches overhead.

‘Faith and politics are now one and the same,’ he went on. ‘Perhaps it was always so, but it seems to have reached new extremes in our troubled century, do you not think? A man’s religion tells me where his political loyalties lie, far more than his place of birth or his language. There are many stout Englishmen in this realm with a greater love for Rome than you have, Bruno, or than they have for their own queen. Yet, in the end, faith is not merely politics. Above all else it is a matter of a man’s private conscience, and how he stands before God. I have done things in God’s name that I must justify before Him at the last judgement.’ He turned and fixed me with an expression of sorrow then. When he spoke again his voice was quiet and expressionless. ‘I have stood by and watched a man’s beating heart ripped from his living body at my command. I have coldly questioned men as their limbs were pulled from their sockets on the rack, and the very noise of that is enough to bring your stomach into your mouth. I have even turned the wheels myself, when the secrets that might spill from a man’s lips as he stretched were too sensitive for the ears of professional torturers. I have seen the human body, made in the likeness of God, forced to the very limits of pain. And I have visited all these horrors and more on my fellow creatures because I believed that by doing so I was preventing greater bloodshed.’

He passed a hand across his forehead then, and resumed walking.

‘Our nation is young in the new religion, and there are many in France and Spain who, with the backing of Rome, seek to kill Her Majesty and replace her with that Devil’s bitch, Mary of Scotland.’ He shook his head. ‘I am not a cruel man, Bruno. It gives me no pleasure to inflict suffering, unlike some among my executioners.’ He shuddered, and I believed him. ‘Nor am I the Inquisition – I do not imagine myself responsible for men’s immortal souls. That I leave to those ordained to the task. I do what I do purely to ensure the safety of this realm and the queen’s person. Better to have one priest gutted before the crowds at Tyburn than he should go free to convert twenty, who might in time join others and rise up against her.’

I inclined my head in acknowledgement; he did not seem to expect debate. Beneath the largest and oldest tree in the orchard a circular bench had been constructed to fit around its trunk. Here Walsingham motioned to me to sit beside him.

‘You are a man who knows first-hand the persecutions Rome visits on her enemies. The streets of England would run with blood if Mary of Scotland found her way to the throne. Do you understand me, Bruno? But these conspiracies to put her there are like the heads of the Hydra – we cut off one and ten more grow in its place. We executed that seditious Jesuit Edmund Campion in ’81 and now the missionary priests are sailing for England by their dozens, inspired by his example of martyrdom.’ He shook his head.

‘Your honour’s task is not one I envy.’

‘It is the task God has given me, and I must look for those who will help me in it,’ he said simply. ‘Tell me, Bruno – does the French king provide for you, other than your lodgings at the embassy?’

‘He supports me rather with his good opinion than with his purse,’ I said. ‘I had hoped to supplement my small stipend with some teaching. To that end I planned to visit the famous University of Oxford, to see if they might have some use for me there.’

‘Oxford? Indeed?’ he said, a spark of interest catching in his eyes. ‘Now there is a place mired in the mud of popery. The university authorities make a show of rooting out those who still practice the old faith, but in truth half the senior men there are secret papists. The Earl of Leicester, who is its chancellor, makes endless visitations and orders enquiries, but they scurry away like spiders under stones as soon as he shines a light on them. Then, once our backs are turned, they go on filling the heads of England’s young men with their idolatry – the very young men who will go on to the law and the church, and into public life. Our future government and clergy, no less, being turned secretly to Rome under our very noses. Her Majesty is furious and I have told Leicester it must be addressed with more vigour.’ He pressed his lips together, as if to suggest things would not be so lax if he were in charge. ‘The place has become a sanctuary for those who trade in seditious books, and most of these missionary priests coming out of the French seminaries are Oxford men, you know.’ Then he thought for a moment, and moderated his tone. ‘Yes, you should go to Oxford. In fact, I shall be glad to recommend you if you wish to visit. There is much you might see of interest.’

He paused as if contemplating some idea, then his thoughts appeared to land briskly elsewhere.

‘When you told me you wished to serve Her Majesty in any way she saw fit to use you – was this offer sincere?’

‘I would not make such an offer in jest, your honour.’

‘Her Majesty has money in her treasury for those willing to be employed under my authority, to aid in protecting her person and her realm from her enemies. And she would show her gratitude by other means as well – I know how important patronage and preferment can be to you writers. This would be the greatest service you could perform for her, Bruno – living at the French embassy, you will be privy to a great many clandestine conversations, and anything you hear touching plots against Her Majesty or her government, anything that concerns the Scottish queen and her French conspirators’ – he spread his arms wide – ‘letters you may glimpse, anything that you think may be of interest, no matter how small, would be of great value to us.’

He looked at me then, eyebrows raised in a question.

I hesitated.

‘I am flattered that your honour shows such faith in me—’

‘You have scruples, of course,’ he cut in, impatiently. ‘And I would think the less of any man who did not – I am asking you to present a false face to your hosts, and an honest man should pause before taking on such a role. But remember, Bruno – whenever you feel the wrench between conscience and duty, your care should always be for the greater good. The innocent among them will have nothing to fear.’

‘It is not quite that, your honour.’

‘Then what?’ He looked puzzled. ‘Philip Sidney told me you were so much an enemy of Rome that you would gladly join the fight against those who would bring the Inquisition to these shores.’

‘I am an enemy of Rome, your honour, as I am opposed to all who would tell men what to believe and then execute them when they dare to question the smallest part of it.’

I was silent for a moment while he regarded me through narrowed eyes.

‘We do not punish men for their beliefs here, Bruno. Her Majesty once eloquently declared that she had no desire to make windows into men’s souls, and no more do I. In this country, it is not what a man believes that will lead him to the scaffold, but what he may do in the name of those beliefs.’

‘What he may do, or what he can be proved to have done?’ I asked pointedly.

‘Intent is treason, Bruno,’ he replied impatiently. ‘Propaganda is treason. In these times, even distributing forbidden books is treason, because anyone who does so does it with the intent of converting those into whose hands they place them. And converting the queen’s subjects means seducing their loyalties away from her to the pope, so that if a Catholic force invaded, they would side with the aggressors.’

We sat in silence for a moment, then he placed a hand on my arm.

‘Here in England, a man of progressive ideas such as yours, Bruno, may live and write freely, without fear of punishment. That, I presume, is why you came here. Would you have the Inquisition return to threaten those freedoms?’

‘No, your honour, I would not.’

‘Then you will consent to serve Her Majesty in this way?’

I paused, and wondered how my answer would change my fortunes.

‘I will serve her to the best of my ability,’ I replied.

Walsingham smiled broadly then – I caught the glint of his teeth in the dusk – and clasped my hand between both of his, the skin dry and papery.

‘I am exceedingly glad, Bruno. Her Majesty will reward your loyalty, when it has been proved.’ His eyes shone. Around us the garden was almost in darkness, though a few streaks of gold light still edged the violet banks of cloud behind the trees, and the air had grown chill, the plants releasing sweet scents into the evening breeze. ‘Come, let us go inside. What a poor host I am – you have not even had a drink.’

He rose, with an evident stiffness in his back and hips, and began making his way over the grass.

A servant had lit a series of small lanterns along each side of the path through the knot garden, so that as we approached the house our way was lit by two rows of flickering candles; the effect was charming, and as I took a deep breath of the evening air I felt again an intimation of new possibilities, a future that I could grasp. The long days of travelling through the mountains of northern Italy, staying in filthy roadside inns infested with rats, where I would force myself to keep awake all night with one hand on my dagger for fear of being murdered for the few coins I carried, seemed very far distant; I was entering the intelligence service of the Queen of England. Another of my life’s unexpected turns, but part of the great map of my strange journey through the world, I thought.

Walsingham halted just before the lanterns and leaned towards me.

‘I will arrange for you to meet with my assistant, Thomas Phelippes,’ he said. ‘He organises the logistics – devises ciphers, delivery points for correspondence, that side of business. He is the most skilled man in England for breaking codes. I hardly need to say that you should not breathe a word of our meeting to anyone except Sidney,’ he added, in a low voice.

‘Your honour, I was once a priest – I can lie as well as any man.’

He smiled.

‘I rely upon it. You could not have outwitted the Inquisition for this long without some talent for dissembling.’

So it was that I became part of what I later learned was a vast and complex network of informers that stretched from the colonies of the new world in the west to the land of the Turks in the east, all of us coming home to Walsingham holding out our little offerings of secret knowledge as the dove returned to Noah bearing her olive branch.

A sudden crack of thunder overhead jolted me out of memory, back to the room where I sat pressed up against the rain-slick window of a royal palace, watching a courtyard illuminated by sheets of light. In England I had hoped to live peacefully and write the books that I believed would shake Europe to its foundations, but I was ambitious and that was my curse. To be ambitious when you have neither means nor status leaves you dependent on the patronage of greater men – or, in this case, women. Tomorrow I would see the great university city of Oxford, where I must ferret out two nuggets of gold: the secrets Walsingham wanted from the Oxford Catholics, and the book I now believed to be buried in one of its libraries.



PART TWO (#ulink_388d10e9-f50f-52a9-8ac5-aae041c27592)




TWO (#ulink_817d9dd8-4348-5c57-b97b-988efe45c4a6)


We left for Oxford at first light the following morning on horses that Sidney procured from the steward at Windsor, fine mounts with elaborate harnesses of crimson and gold velvet, studded with brass fittings that jingled merrily as we rode, but we were undoubtedly a more solemn party than had set out the day before on the river amid music and gaily coloured pennants. The storm had broken but the rain had set in determinedly, the warmth had evaporated from the air and the sky seemed to sag over us, grey and sullen; it would have been impossible to travel by river without being half-drowned. The palatine was much quieter over breakfast and sat with his fingers pressed to his temples, occasionally emitting a little moan – Sidney whispered to me that this was the penance for a late night and prodigious quantities of port wine – and my mood was much improved accordingly. Sidney was cheerful, as his winnings from the night’s card games had grown steadily in direct proportion to the palatine’s drinking, but the weather had dampened our bright mood and we spent the first part of the journey in silence, broken now and again by Sidney’s observations of the road conditions or the palatine’s unapologetic belches.

To either side, the thick green landscape passed unchanging, bedraggled under the rain, the only sound the muted thud of hooves on the wet turf as Sidney drew his horse alongside mine at the head of the party and allowed the palatine to fall behind, his head drooping to his chest, flanked by the two bodyservants who attended him, their horses carrying the vast panniers containing Laski’s and Sidney’s finery for the visit. I had only one leather bag with a few books and a couple of changes of clothes, which I kept with me, strapped to my own saddle. By the middle of the afternoon we had reached the royal forest of Shotover on the outskirts of Oxford. The road was poorly maintained where it passed through the forest and we had to slow our pace so the horses would not stumble in the puddles and potholes.

‘So, Bruno,’ Sidney said, keeping his voice low, when we were out of earshot of the palatine and his servants, ‘tell me more about this book of yours, that has brought you all the way from Paris.’

‘For the last century it was thought lost,’ I replied softly, ‘but I never believed that, and all through Europe I met book dealers and collectors who whispered rumours and half-remembered stories about its possible whereabouts. But it was not until I was living in Paris that I found real proof that the book could be found.’

In Paris, I told him, among the circle of Italian expatriats that gathered around the fringes of King Henri’s court, I had met an aged Florentine gentleman named Pietro who never tired of boasting to acquaintances that he was the great-great-nephew of the famous book dealer and biographer Vespasiano da Bisticci, maker of books for Cosimo de’ Medici and cataloguer of the Vatican library. This Pietro, knowing of my interest in rare and esoteric works, recounted to me a story passed down to him by his grandfather, Vespasiano’s nephew, who had been an apprentice to his uncle in the manuscript trade during the 1460s, in the last years of Cosimo’s life. Vespasiano had assisted Cosimo in the collection of his magnificent library, making more than two hundred books at his commission and furnishing the copyists with classical texts, so that the book dealer became an intimate associate of the Medici circle, and in particular a friend of Marsilio Ficino, the great humanist philosopher and astrologer whom Cosimo had appointed head of his Florentine Academy and official translator of Plato for the Medici library. As Pietro’s grandfather, who was then the young apprentice, told it, one morning in 1463, the year before Cosimo died, Ficino came to visit Vespasiano at his shop, clearly in a state of some distress, clutching a package. He, Ficino, had already begun work on the Plato manuscripts when he had received word from his patron that he must abandon them and turn his attention as a matter of urgency to the Hermetic writings, which had been brought out of Macedonia some three years earlier by one of the monks Cosimo employed to adventure overseas in search of books from the libraries of Byzantium, but which had yet to be examined. Perhaps Cosimo knew he was dying and wanted to read Hermes more than he wanted to read Plato in the last days of his life, I can only speculate. In any case, the story goes that Ficino told Vespasiano, ashen-faced and trembling, that he had read the fifteen books of the Hermetic manuscript and knew that he could not fulfil his commission. He would translate for Cosimo the first fourteen, but the final manuscript, he said, was too extraordinary, too momentous in its import, to put into the language of men hungry for power, for it revealed the greatest secret of Hermes Trismegistus, the lost wisdom of the Egyptians, a secret that could destroy the authority of the Christian church. This book would teach men nothing less than the secret of knowing the Divine Mind. It would teach men how to become like God.

Ficino had brought this devastating Greek manuscript to the shop with him, carefully wrapped in oilskins; here he handed it over to Vespasiano, exhorting him to keep it safe until such time as they could decide what should be done with it while he, Ficino, would tell Cosimo that the fifteenth book had never been brought out of Byzantium with the original manuscripts. This was the plan, and the remaining books were duly translated; after Cosimo died the following year, Ficino and Vespasiano met to discuss the fate of the fifteenth book. Vespasiano saw the opportunity for profit and favoured selling it to one of the wealthy monastic libraries, where experienced scholars would know how to keep it safe from the eyes of those who might misinterpret or abuse the knowledge it contained; Ficino, on the other hand, had begun to regret his earlier delicacy and wondered whether it might not be better to translate the book after all, bringing its secrets into the light by revealing them first to the eminent thinkers of the Florentine Academy, the better to debate the impact of what was effectively the most blasphemous heretical philosophy ever to be uttered in Italy.

‘So who won?’ Sidney asked, forgetting to keep his voice down, his eyes gleaming through the stream of rainwater dripping from the peak of his cap.

‘Neither,’ I replied bluntly. ‘When they came to take the manuscript from the archive, they made a terrible discovery. The book had been sold by mistake some months before with a bundle of other Greek manuscripts that had been ordered by an English collector.’

‘Who?’ Sidney demanded.

‘I don’t know. Nor did Vespasiano.’ I lowered my eyes and we rode on in contemplative silence.

Here Pietro’s story ended. His grandfather, he said, knew no other details, only that an English collector passing through Florence had taken the manuscript and that Vespasiano was never able to trace it, though he tried through all his contacts in Europe until the end of his long life, in the dying years of the last century. It was little enough to go on, I knew; there had been numerous English collectors of antiquities and rare books travelling through Italy in the past century, and there was no knowing whether the man who had acquired such a book by accident might have sold it on or merely abandoned it to gather dust in some corner of a library, not realising what fortune had dropped into his hands.

‘Then why do you believe it is in Oxford?’ Sidney asked, after a while.

‘Process of elimination. The English collectors travelling through Europe in those years would have been educated men, probably wealthy, and I understand it is the custom of English gentlemen to leave books as a bequest to their universities, since precious few can afford to maintain private collections like your Doctor Dee. If the Hermes book ended up in England, it may well have found its way to Oxford or Cambridge. All I can do is look.’

‘And if you find it …?’ Sidney began, but he was interrupted as his horse suddenly shied sideways with a sharp whinny; two figures had appeared without warning in the middle of the road. We pulled our horses up briskly, the palatine and his servants almost running into the back of us as we looked down at two ragged children, a girl of about ten years old and a smaller boy, barefoot in the mud. The girl’s right cheek was livid with a purple bruise. She held out her small hand, palm upwards, and addressed herself to Sidney in an imploring voice, though her stare was one of pure insolence.

‘Alms, sir, for two poor orphans?’

Sidney shook his head silently, as if in sorrow at the state of the world, but reached at the same time for the purse at his belt and was drawing out a coin for the child when there came a sharp cry from behind us. I wheeled around just in time to see one of the palatine’s servants dragged from his horse by a burly man who had emerged silently, along with two others, from among the shadows of the trees to either side. The palatine gave a little shriek, but gathered his wits remarkably quickly and spurred his horse forwards into a gallop, crashing between Sidney and me and almost trampling the two children, who dived into the undergrowth just in time to watch him disappearing around the bend. I jumped from my horse, pulling Paolo’s knife from my belt as I launched myself at the back of one of the assailants, who was swinging a stout wooden staff at the second servant to knock him out of his saddle. Sidney took a moment to react, then dismounted and drew his sword, making for the men who were now trying to cut the straps holding the packs to the horses.

The man I had attacked roared and lashed at me as I clung to his arm, diverting his blow, so that the servant was able to urge the horse forwards, out of harm’s way; another of them ran at me with a crude knife, just catching me on the leg as I tried to kick him away. Incensed, I dropped to the ground and struck out towards him with my own knife but, distracted by a movement from the corner of my eye, I whipped around just in time to see the larger man lifting his stick to aim it at me; I thrust the knife upwards into the fleshy underside of his upper arm and he let out a howl of pain, his arm crumpling to his side as he clutched at the wound with his other hand. I took advantage of his lapse to drive my knife home again, this time into the hand that held the stick, which fell to the ground with a dull thud as I turned to face his friend, who crouched, holding out his rusted knife towards me, though with less conviction now. Shouting curses in Italian, I lunged at him but feinted, so that, wrong-footed, he slipped in a rut and fell to the ground, still flailing at me with the knife. I kicked him hard in the stomach, then stood astride him as he lay, doubled over and groaning, my blade against his cheek.

‘Drop your knife and get the hell back to where you came from,’ I hissed, ‘before I change my mind.’ Without a word, he stumbled to his feet, slipping again in his haste, and scurried away into the trees as a chilling scream rent the air; I looked up to see one of the men Sidney was fighting fall slowly to his knees as the poet withdrew his sword from deep in the man’s side. The remaining assailant looked for a moment with horror at his friend’s body slumped in the mud and scrambled for the undergrowth as fast as he could. Sidney wiped the sword on the wet grass by the side of the road and sheathed it, his breath ragged.

‘Is he dead?’

Sidney gave a dismissive glance over his shoulder.

‘He’ll live,’ he said, pressing his lips together. ‘Though he’ll think twice before he tries that trick again. This road is notorious for outlaws, we should have been better prepared. You acquitted yourself well, Bruno,’ he added, turning to me in admiration. ‘Not bad for a man of God.’

‘I’m not sure God counts me as such any longer. But I did not spend three years on the run through Italy without learning to defend myself.’ I cleaned Paolo’s knife on the wet grass, thanking my old friend silently for his foresight; it was not the first time this blade had kept me from danger.

Sidney nodded thoughtfully.

‘Now that I remember – when we were in Padua, you mentioned you’d had some trouble over a fight in Rome.’ He looked at me expectantly, a half-smile hovering on his lips.

I didn’t answer immediately, turning the knife in my hands as the rain continued to course down my neck inside my collar. This was one of the darker moments in my fugitive past that I would prefer to bury. In England I wanted to be known as the eminent philosopher of the Parisian court, not the man who lived underground, pursued through Italy on suspicion of heresy and murder.

‘In Rome, someone informed the Inquisition against me for money. But I had already fled the city when his body was found floating in the Tiber,’ I said quietly.

Sidney gave a sly smile.

‘And did you kill him?’

‘The man was a notorious brawler, I understand. I am a philosopher, Philip, not an assassin,’ I replied, sheathing the knife at my belt.

‘You are not a typical philosopher, Bruno, that much is certain. Well, I will hear more of this story later. I suppose we had better find the Pole,’ he said, suppressing a sigh.

The servant I had saved was still mounted, a little way ahead of us, holding with difficulty the reins of our two horses, who were stamping and snorting, their eyes rolling back in alarm; the other servant had taken a bad blow to the head as the robbers first sprang upon us, and he had to be helped back into his saddle, where he slumped forward and clung to the horse’s neck, his eyes unfocused. Fortunately we had fought them off before they had been able to sever the straps binding the horses’ panniers, but one hung precariously from its saddle and had to be retied before we could continue. We found the palatine cowering under a tree around the next bend; Sidney muttered an apology for the brutal interruption, though I could not help thinking that it was the Pole who should be apologising for his cowardice.

We rode on, bruised and bedraggled; though the cut on my thigh was only shallow, it stung as the wet cloth of my breeches chafed against it. I was more deeply shaken by the attack than I cared to let Sidney see; though it was true that my eventful past had taught me how to keep my wits in a fight, I had spent the past year in soft living at King Henri’s court, and my reactions felt slow and unpractised. The water drove relentlessly down my neck and into my eyes, and even when we reached the brow of Shotover Hill, which Sidney said should have afforded us a magnificent view over the city of Oxford, the curtain of rain all but obscured it from sight.

We descended towards the bridge that crossed the river by the College of St Mary Magdalen and saw that a small crowd had gathered there; as we drew closer Sidney announced that this was the delegation of university dignitaries and aldermen waiting to greet us. A rider had gone out from Windsor that morning to notify those preparing for the palatine’s visitation that we would not now be arriving by river, but so much of the road had become waterlogged that our progress had been slow, and it seemed the poor welcoming party had been waiting for us for some time in the rain, which now dripped from their velvet caps and the sleeves of their black and scarlet gowns.

The vice-chancellor stepped forward and introduced himself, bowing low and kissing first the palatine’s bejewelled hand and then Sidney’s; I saw his eyes widen at our bruised and dishevelled appearance, but he graciously made no mention of it. He explained that they would be guests at Christ Church College, the grandest of all the Oxford colleges and the one for which the queen herself had special charge; Sidney had himself been an undergraduate at Christ Church, so it was natural that he should return there. I was to be lodged separately, and here a round-faced, balding man stepped forward and extended his hand to me in the English fashion as he tried stoically to ignore the water streaming from the peak of his hat.

‘Doctor Bruno – I am John Underhill, Rector of Lincoln College. You are most welcome to Oxford and I hope you will do us the honour of accepting our hospitality at the college.’

‘Thank you, I am very grateful.’

‘You and I are to be adversaries in the disputation tomorrow night and will face each other across the floor of the Divinity School, but I hope that, until then, we may regard one another as friends.’ He smiled as he said this, but it died quickly on his lips.

So this was my Aristotelian opponent. He had a fussy air and there was something brittle about his expression of hospitality, but I was determined to make a good impression in Oxford, so I smiled broadly and shook his proffered hand.

‘I certainly hope so too, Doctor Underhill.’

We entered the city through the East Gate, a small barbican in the high walls that encircled the main body of the town, and as we passed under its battlements so a concert of musicians struck up, their instruments sounding bravely through the noise of rain and wind. The palatine roused himself from his sulk just enough to wave unenthusiastically as our party progressed along the High Street past rows of little timber-framed houses, which gave way as we neared the centre to the ornate blond stone façades of one or other of the colleges. Outside these stood groups of students of all degrees, decked out in their formal dress and shivering as they huddled under the eaves to salute us as we passed, flanked by the doctors and aldermen. At length we came to a halt beside a narrow street that turned off to the north, where I was informed I would depart with the rector. After I had dismounted and handed the care of my horse to a young groom, to be taken to the rector’s private stables, I walked across to Sidney, who reached down and clasped my hand.

‘I shall see you tomorrow for your moment of glory, Bruno,’ he said, smiling. ‘Do not let anything throw you off the scent – but spare a charitable thought for me at dinner.’ He nodded in the direction of the palatine, who was complaining loudly to one of the university officials about the advanced state of his saddle-sores. I would not be sorry to lose his company, though I was disappointed to be separated from Sidney. Tonight, however, I wished only to retire early and prepare myself for the public debate and knew I would not be best disposed for company; once the disputation was over and I had acquitted myself as best I could, I would be able to relax and enjoy the convivial atmosphere of the college hall, and turn my attention to my other missions.

The rector stood at the entrance to the narrow lane, his robe drenched, but smiling resolutely. I pulled up the collar of my cloak as we made our way along between buildings for a few yards, until the wall on our left rose up into a squat rectangular tower of that same buttery yellow stone. The rector pushed open a smaller wooden door the height of a man set into the heavy iron-studded timber of the high arched gateway and held it for me to pass through, followed by the servant who carried my bag.

‘I’m afraid that here I must relieve you of your dagger, Doctor Bruno,’ he said, apologetically, lowering his eyes to the sheath at my side. ‘It is one of the first laws of Oxford that no man may carry weapons within the university precincts. We must have a care for our young men’s persons as well as their minds and souls. Don’t worry, we will keep it quite safe for you.’ He gave a self-conscious laugh as I reluctantly unstrapped the knife and handed it over.

I stepped past him through an archway that led beneath the tower to a neat quadrangle paved with stone flags. The buttressed range immediately opposite the gatehouse tower I guessed to be the college’s hall, by its high mullioned windows and the smoke louvre in the centre of the roof. Ivy grew along the stonework there, though not on the ranges to my right and left. At the corners of each range in the quadrangle an archway led to a narrow passage. The rector appeared beside me and took off his sodden hat, passing a hand across his shiny pate.

‘Forgive my appearance, Doctor Bruno – this sudden regression to winter has taken us all by surprise, and just as we thought summer on its way. But that is what you must expect in England, I’m afraid. You must long for the blue skies of your native land.’

‘At times, though I must say that I find the weather of northern Europe suited to my temperament,’ I replied.

‘Ah. You are of a melancholy humour, then?’

‘Like all of us, Doctor Underhill, I am a mixture of contradictory elements. Equal parts earth and fire, melancholy and choler, I fear. But it is more that warmth and blue skies stir the blood, do you not think? I find it easier to write when I am not tempted to other pursuits.’

Underhill nodded doubtfully; he had the expression of a man whose blood had not been stirred in many years.

‘You are right, it is hard to bend the students to study during the summer months. Now – I have arranged a room for you in the south range, where you will be adjacent to my own residence.’ Here he waved a hand at the mullioned bay windows next to the hall. ‘And directly opposite, across the quad, you will find our very fine library, which you must feel free to make use of at any time.’

‘Have you many books?’ I asked, shaking the water from my cloak.

‘Some of the finest of any college,’ he said, swelling with a pride I could forgive, since it was on behalf of his manuscripts. ‘Largely works of scholastic theology, but the nephew of our founder, Dean Flemyng, left as a bequest to the college a remarkable collection of literary and classical texts, many of which he copied in his own hand. He studied in Italy, you know, and brought many manuscripts back from the corners of Europe at the end of the last century,’ he added.

‘Really? I should very much like to see your collection,’ I said, my pulse quickening. ‘Do you know if Dean Flemyng visited Florence at all during his travels? Around the 1460s?’

The rector gave a little swagger with his shoulders. ‘He certainly did – a number of books in our collection bear the inscription of the great Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Basticci, dealer to Cosimo de’ Medici, as I’m sure you know. Does this period particularly interest you?’

I took a deep breath, trying to keep my face neutral, and clasped my hands together so that their trembling would not betray my excitement.

‘You know, every Italian scholar must be fascinated by Cosimo’s library – at that time he had envoys travelling through all Europe and the Byzantine empire in search of undiscovered texts to augment his collection. I knew a descendant of Vespasiano once, in Paris,’ I added lightly. ‘I should be extremely interested to see which of these rare treasures Dean Flemyng brought back to Oxford with him, if I may.’

Was it my imagination, or did the rector look slightly uncomfortable?

‘Well, you must ask Master Godwyn, our librarian, to show you the collection – he will be delighted to share his knowledge, I’m sure. But for now you must be longing to change your clothes and take supper. And if you want to have a shave first –’ here he cast a critical eye over my hair and beard – ‘we have a barber in the college. The porter will let you know where to find him. Usually the senior Fellows and I dine in hall with the undergraduates, but it is a noisy affair and for your first evening in Oxford I thought you might prefer something more sedate. Therefore I would like to invite you to join my family and a few select guests to dine in my own lodgings, which you see there next to the hall, abutting the south range.’

‘Your family?’ I said, surprised. ‘You are not a bachelor, then?’

‘We are no longer a community of clerics here in Oxford, Doctor Bruno,’ he said with a modest laugh. ‘Priests of the Church of England may marry – in fact, Her Majesty positively encourages them to do so, to further distinguish themselves from those of the Roman faith – and likewise for the heads of colleges here, though I admit we are still very much in the minority. I suspect it is not a life to tempt many wives – university society is somewhat limited for ladies – but my dear Margaret is a rare woman and professes to have been happy enough here these past six years, excepting …’ Here he broke off and it was as if a cloud passed over his face, before he resumed, in a lighter tone. ‘She does not dine with us in hall, according to the regulations, so she is always delighted to be able to entertain guests in our own rooms. I shall go now and tell her you are arrived, and call a servant to show you to your room. Perhaps in an hour you would like to make your way over – just go through that right-hand archway beside the hall and you will see a wooden door off the passage.’

We had no sooner moved out from the shelter of the gatehouse arch to venture through the rain across the quadrangle than we were interrupted by an urgent cry.

‘Rector! Rector Underhill – wait, I pray you!’

From the north side of the quadrangle a figure was running towards us, a tattered black scholar’s gown fluttering behind him, with a paper in his hand which he brandished as if there were some imminent emergency. I noticed the rector’s face set tight for a moment in annoyance. The young man slid to a halt in front of us on the wet flagstones and I saw that he was perhaps twenty years of age, and very shabbily dressed, his shirt and breeches patched and his shoes thin and worn through at the toe. He looked from me to the rector with an expression of great anxiety and said, breathlessly,

‘Rector Underhill, is this your esteemed visitor from the court? I beg you, give me leave to speak to him.’

‘Thomas,’ the rector looked supremely irritated, ‘this is neither the time nor the place. Kindly show some decorum before our guest.’

To my surprise, the boy then turned to me, dropped to his knees there on the wet ground and clutched the hem of my cloak in one hand, pressing his scrap of paper into my hand with the other.

‘My lord, I beseech you, take pity on one whom God has forgotten. Give this letter to your uncle, I beg of you, and ask him to pardon my poor father and let him return, please, my lord, if you have any Christian compassion, grant me this favour and take his suit to the earl, tell him Edmund Allen repents of his sins.’

There was a wildness in his eyes, and his evident distress moved me. Guessing his misunderstanding. I laid a hand gently on his head.

‘Son, I would gladly help, but my uncle was a stonemason in Naples, I cannot imagine he would be much use to you. Come.’ I took his hand and helped him to his feet.

‘But …’ He started at my accent, then his face reddened violently and he looked at me in an anguish of confusion as he realised his mistake. ‘Oh. I beg your pardon, my lord. You are not Sir Philip Sidney?’

‘Alas, no,’ I said, ‘though I am flattered you should mistake us – he is a good half-foot taller than I, and six years younger. But I will see him tomorrow, most likely – is there some message I might convey to him?’

‘Thank you, Doctor Bruno, that is kind but it won’t be necessary, this is no more than an impertinent intrusion,’ the rector cut in brusquely. Then he turned to the boy with barely suppressed anger. ‘Thomas Allen, have some care for your manners. I will not have you assaulting guests of the college. Must you be disciplined again? Do not forget how fragile is your position here. Back to your studies, Master Allen – or else I’m sure you must have some servant’s duties to attend to. You will not trouble Doctor Bruno again during his stay, do you understand my meaning?’

The boy nodded miserably, lifting his eyes briefly to see if I was in agreement with the rector’s harsh words. I tried to convey my sympathy in my face.

‘And look to your dress, boy,’ the rector called after him as he sloped away, defeated. ‘You shame the college looking like a beggar as you do.’

The boy turned then, mustered what little scrap of dignity remained to him and said, with his head high,

‘I cannot afford new clothes, Rector Underhill, and you well know why, so do not ask me to apologise for what is no fault of my own.’ Then he disappeared into one of the staircases on the west range.

The rector stood looking after him for a moment, perhaps shamed by his own severity.

‘That poor boy,’ he said eventually, shaking his head.

‘Why poor?’ I asked, curious. ‘Who is he?’

‘Let us step inside your staircase here, it will not do for you to have another soaking,’ he said, motioning to the furthest archway on the south range. We ducked into its shadows out of the rain. ‘It is a sad story, that boy has suffered much for one so young. I am sorry you were troubled by him.’

I shook my head; I was intrigued by the boy’s words.

‘His name is Thomas Allen. His father, Doctor Edmund Allen, was a Doctor of Divinity here in Oxford and my sub-rector in the college last year.’

‘Are all the Fellows permitted to live with their families?’ I asked in surprise.

‘Not at all, only the heads of colleges. Edmund had moved away and taken a living at one of the London churches when he married. He only returned to Oxford after his wife died and Thomas, being then too young to matriculate, lodged with a family in the town.’ He shook his head again in a show of pious sorrow. ‘Edmund Allen was a good man – appointed by the Earl of Leicester himself, you know, as was I.’

‘The senior positions are not appointed through election by the Fellows?’ I asked, affecting innocence.

‘In normal circumstances, yes,’ he replied, looking embarrassed. ‘But there were many entrenched papists remaining in high office here – some of them appointed by Queen Mary herself and still unrepentant – so to weed them out, the earl began placing his own men to ensure loyalty to the English church, until such time as the canker of popery could be cut out altogether. I was his personal chaplain prior to my position here.’ He smiled, and couldn’t resist a little strut of pride.

‘And this was a popular choice among the senior university men?’

‘No, since you ask. But we must all rely on patronage, one way or another,’ he replied, somewhat ruffled. ‘Edmund Allen was also appointed by the earl at my recommendation – we had been undergraduates together here. So you may imagine our distress when it was discovered last year that he too was secretly practising the old religion – and not so secretly, neither, for he was discovered in possession of forbidden books and had for some time been corresponding with the Catholic seminaries in France.’

‘Is this a crime?’

‘If he could have been proven to have known about or aided the secret arrival of missionary priests from France, he would have been for the scaffold. But there was no evidence against him on that count, only hearsay, and no confession could be got from him under questioning.’

‘Was he punished?’

‘His questioning was hard, but his punishment light, in the circumstances,’ said the rector, pursing his lips. ‘The earl was outraged, as you may suppose – Allen was deprived of his fellowship immediately, but the earl is merciful and he was offered safe passage to leave the country, not to return on pain of imprisonment. He went to France and took up residence at the English College in Rheims.’

‘Rheims? I have heard of it. That was founded by a William Allen, was it not?’

‘A cousin, yes. They are one of the old Catholic families. But Edmund Allen’s son Thomas, whom you had the misfortune to encounter just now, was then in his first year as an undergraduate here. He did not follow his father into exile – Thomas wished to complete his studies, but there were many in the college who felt he should be expelled simply by connection with his father’s disgrace.’

‘It would seem harsh to punish a son for his father’s beliefs. Does he share them?’

‘One never knows. All students must swear the Oath of Supremacy acknowledging Her Majesty as the head of all religious authority in the realm, but you know as well as I that a man may sign a paper with his hand and hold something different in his heart. Thomas Allen was questioned hard about his doctrines, you may be sure.’ The rector nodded significantly.

‘He was tortured?’ I said, appalled.

The rector stared at me in horror.

‘Good God, no – do you think us barbarians, Doctor Bruno? It was merely questioning – though the manner of it was not pleasant, I will admit. He was pressed on points of theology even a Doctor of Divinity would find hard to answer, and every aspect of his responses held up to scrutiny. But his father’s expulsion had been so public that the college authorities had to be seen to be utterly scrupulous with the son – we could not be accused of turning a blind eye to a known papist in our midst.’

‘He passed the test, I gather, by his continued presence here?’

‘Eventually it was decided that he could stay on, but at his own expense – his scholarship was withdrawn.’

‘Did the family have means?’

The rector shook his head.

‘Almost nothing after Edmund had paid his fines for religious disobedience. Young Thomas has done what many poor scholars in the university must do – he pays his board by acting as a servant to one of the wealthy commoners – sons of gentry and nobles who pay to study here.’ The scornful curl of his lip expressed his opinion of these commoners.

‘So one moment this Thomas is a scholarship student, the son of the sub-rector, the next he is living on crumbs, a servant to one of his friends? A hard reversal of fortunes for any man, especially one so young,’ I said, with feeling.

‘Such is the way of the world,’ the rector said pompously. ‘But it is sad, he is a bright boy and always had a cheerful disposition. He might have done well in the world. Now he is as you saw him. He writes endless petitions to Leicester to pardon his father – I find them pushed through the door of my lodgings and my private office. I have told him I’ve done all I can with regard to the earl, but he only grows more determined. It has become an obsession with him and I almost fear he may lose his wits over it. And I do pity him, Doctor Bruno – you must not think me stony-hearted. There was even a time I considered he might be a suitable match for my own daughter – his father wanted him to go into the law and his prospects seemed fair. Our families had been friends, and Thomas was certainly much taken with Sophia.’

I wondered if having a daughter of marriageable age in this cloister of young men might account for the slightly harried expression that permanently troubled the rector’s face.

‘Was your daughter interested?’

The rector’s nose wrinkled.

‘Oh, she has ever been troublesome on the question of marriage. Girls have foolish notions of love – I should not have allowed her to read poetry so freely.’

‘She is educated, then?’

He nodded absently, as if his mind were elsewhere.

‘Both my children were close in age – barely more than a year between them – and I thought it unfair that my son should have lessons and my daughter be left only to sew. Besides, young John always had trouble keeping his mind on his books, I thought it would do him good to have to compete with his sister, for she was always the sharper of the two and he hated being bested by her. In that I was correct. But now it seems I have spoiled her for marriage – she loves nothing more than to dally in the library arguing ideas back and forth with the students when she has the chance, and is much too bold with her own opinions, which is hardly seemly in a lady and no gentleman wants in a wife. So it was all for naught.’

He turned his face away then and, with a great sigh, looked out towards some point across the courtyard.

‘Why for naught? Did your son not stick to his studies?’

His face convulsed, as if with a sudden bodily pain, and with some effort he answered,

‘My poor John died some four years past, God rest him – thrown from a horse. He would have been turning twenty-one this summer, he was of an age with Thomas Allen.’

‘I am sorry for your loss.’

‘As for Sophia,’ he continued briskly, ‘she was fond of Thomas and thought of him as a friend, but now I have not thought it proper that they should associate, given the reputation of his family. His prospects are much diminished, of course.’

‘Yet another loss for the boy, hard on the heels of so many others.’

‘Yes, it is a shame,’ the rector said, without much sympathy. ‘But come, we must not stand here gossiping like goodwives – the servant will show you to your room, where I trust a good fire will be blazing for you to dry your clothes. By Jesus, that wind has grown cold, it is more like November than May. I shall look forward to seeing you at supper.’

He shook my hand and I turned to follow the servant up the dim wooden stairway to my room.

‘Doctor Bruno,’ the rector called, as I was almost out of sight. I leaned back to see his face looking anxiously up at me. ‘Please, out of charity, I ask that you do not make any mention of Thomas Allen or what I have told you of my poor John at supper – my wife and daughter find both subjects quite distressing.’

‘You must not worry on that count,’ I replied, intrigued by the idea that in a short time I would meet this boldly opinionated daughter. The prospect of an intelligent young woman’s company made the idea of supper with the rector considerably more enticing than it had seemed before.




THREE (#ulink_12271a5e-4a52-5707-a4ff-33e5a553719e)


I dressed for dinner in a clean shirt with a plain black doublet and breeches and paused for a moment to consider myself in the mottled glass that had been left resting on my mantelpiece. My hair and beard were a little too long, it was true, and the weather had left them more unruly than usual, though I had long ago decided at the Parisian court that I had neither the time nor the vanity to compete with gentlemen of fashion in matters of dress. But at thirty-five, I thought, I could still make myself presentable. My reflection looked back from large dark eyes pooled in shadow; our scuffle on the road had left a graze on my cheek, but perhaps a young woman confined in a college cloister might find that intriguing. I knew that women found enough in my appearance to please them, even though I was no prospect for a serious attachment, having neither property nor title but only a dubious kind of fame to my name; for my part, I had made the most of such opportunities as came my way in Paris, but since Morgana’s death I had met no woman with equal wit and spirit to catch my heart as well as my eye. But the rector’s daughter sounded intriguing, and I must confess that the prospect of meeting her had piqued my interest, even though I knew I could hardly afford distractions in Oxford with so much at stake and so few days.

I grinned at my reflection in the glass, ran my hands through my hair and shook my head briefly at my own foolishness, before making my way down my staircase to the archway in the east range where I had been told I would find the rector’s lodgings. As I entered its shadows, my eye was caught by a glimpse of green from the other end of the passageway, which ran the width of the building; following it to the end I emerged through an open gate of iron bars into a walled garden at the back of the college, not over-cultivated but left as an orchard, the grass grown tall and thick with wild flowers under apple trees and wooden benches set at intervals along the path that ran around by the walls. In better weather this would be a pleasant place for scholars to sit and read, I thought, though it was empty now as the rain battered at the leaves. I returned to the passageway and found the door that proclaimed the rector’s name on a plaque, straightened my clothes, and prepared myself for my first taste of Oxford hospitality.

The first thing I noticed as I waited to be admitted was that the animated conversation I could hear from behind the door was pitched slightly too loud, in the way that men in a group will compete to outdo one another if they want to impress a woman. An old servant with a pinched face opened the door and showed me straight through into a fine high room with tall arched windows in two facing walls, the rest panelled in dark wood and hung with portraits and tapestries. Immediately I understood the source of this braggadocio. At the far side of a long table set with grand sconces of candles sat a young woman of about nineteen years, dressed in a plain dove-grey gown with a straight embroidered bodice and with her long dark hair unbound. Like the rest of the guests already seated, she stopped her conversation and turned her attention to me as I approached, her eyes skimming me up and down with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. This, then, was Sophia Underhill, and I understood her father’s urgent wish to marry her off; she had a striking, feline face with keen light brown eyes and her presence in the college must have proved a sore distraction for the young men trying to bend their minds to their books. The rector rose from his chair at the head of the table with bustling importance and reached out to shake my hand.

‘Welcome, Doctor Bruno, welcome to my table. Please be seated, and I shall introduce you to some of the college’s senior Fellows, and my family.’

He gestured to the seat on his left hand, which I was pleased to note was almost opposite his daughter’s. I nodded politely to her in greeting before glancing around at the rest of the guests assembled at the table. We were ten in number, all men dressed in academic gowns, with the exception of the girl and a tired-looking woman of middle years seated at the other end of the table, opposite the rector.

‘Allow me to introduce my wife, Mistress Margaret Underhill,’ he began, gesturing towards her.

‘Piacere di conoscerla,’ I said, bowing my head. The woman smiled weakly; despite her husband’s earlier words, she did not look especially delighted at the prospect of entertaining.

‘And my daughter Sophia,’ the rector continued, unable to keep the note of pride from his voice. ‘You see that I gave her the Greek name for wisdom.’

‘Then her suitors may truly call themselves “philosophers”,’ I replied, smiling at her. ‘Lovers of Sophia.’

There was a sharp intake of breath from her mother at the end of the table and a suppressed laugh from the men present, but the girl returned my smile and blushed pleasingly before lowering her eyes. The rector forced a smile.

‘Ah, yes, I was warned that the men of your country are experts in the art of flattering ladies,’ he said tightly.

‘Especially the monks,’ grunted the elderly man seated to the right of Sophia, and the guests all laughed.

‘Former monks,’ I said emphatically, holding the girl’s gaze. This time she did not look away, and something in the frankness of her look reminded me so sharply of Morgana that I had to catch my breath, caught off-guard by the resemblance.

‘I must protest in defence of my countrymen,’ declared the dark-haired young man seated to my immediate left, who did indeed look distinctly Italian, though he spoke with no trace of an accent. ‘My father’s countrymen, I should say. I do not know how we have come by this reputation among the English as great seducers – I have certainly not inherited any such talent, alas.’ He held out his palms in a gesture of defeat and the company laughed again. I suspected the young man of false modesty in this regard – he was blessed with handsome features and obviously dressed carefully, his beard and moustache neatly trimmed. He turned to me and extended a hand. ‘John Florio, son of Michelangelo Florio of Tuscany – I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Doctor Bruno of Nola. Your reputation precedes you.’

‘Which one?’ I said, to more laughter.

‘Master Florio is a greatly respected scholar and tutor of languages, as was his father,’ said the rector, ‘and he is engaged in compiling a book of proverbs from various countries. I am sure that later he will not hesitate to regale us with some.’

‘It is, and ever was, a woman’s fashion / To love a cross, and cross a loving passion,’ Florio said obligingly.

‘He speaks the truth,’ Sophia said, with feigned dismay, and Florio beamed at her.

‘Thank you,’ said the rector, his smile growing increasingly strained. ‘I must confess, Doctor Bruno, I did not know how easily you would converse in English and I thought you might feel more at home with a fellow Italian speaker to hand.’

‘That was kind of you,’ I said. ‘I learned my English from travellers and scholars over the years, but I fear it is unpolished.’

‘My father also fled Italy in fear of the Inquisition after he converted to Reform,’ Florio said eagerly, leaning in close. ‘He came to London, ended up in Lord Burghley’s household and was later Italian tutor to Lady Jane Grey and the Princess Elizabeth.’

‘Not such a cursed exile, then,’ I said.

‘Exile is always a curse,’ the elderly man next to Sophia cut in, with surprising vehemence. ‘A cruel fate to inflict on any man, do you not agree, Roger?’ Here he leaned around to glare at the man seated on the other side of Sophia, directly opposite me, a large, broad-featured man in his late forties, with a full beard just turning to grey and a ruddy complexion, who turned away uncomfortably. ‘Particularly on one’s friends,’ the old man added. A tense silence descended over the gathering.

‘My father was indeed fortunate in his patrons,’ Florio continued hastily, attempting to cover the interruption, ‘though we were exiled again from England when I was just an infant and Bloody Mary came to the throne.’

‘God rest her soul,’ interjected the elderly man, reverently. This time the rector moved to intervene.

‘Please, Doctor Bernard.’

‘Please what, Rector?’ Doctor Bernard gestured at me, his wild white hair fanning out around his head like the crest of a bird. ‘Must I guard my words for this renegade monk? Why – will he denounce me to the Earl of Leicester?’ He turned to look at me and I understood that, though he had few teeth left and must have been at least seventy, his rheumy eyes still saw shrewdly. The hollows of his face seemed more pronounced in the flickering shadows of the candlelight; it was a face to frighten children. ‘I was appointed by Queen Mary herself, thirty years ago now, when those of the new faith were almost purged altogether from the university, and here I have remained through the storms, though my friends are all long dead or deprived of office, and I have long since renounced the old ways.’ Here he laughed, as if in self-mockery, then pointed at me, suddenly grave. ‘But I think you are of the Catholic faith, are you not, Doctor Bruno?’

‘I am an Italian,’ I replied evenly, ‘raised in the church of Rome.’

‘Well, I’m afraid you will find no one to say the Roman Mass with you here, sir. There are no Catholics left in Oxford, oh no. No man here cleaves to the old faith.’ He shook his head solemnly, but his voice was filled with bitter sarcasm. ‘Here we all sign the Declaration of Belief to save our skins, and swear our oath to the English Church as we are commanded, for we are all obedient subjects, are we not, gentlemen?’

There was an awkward murmur of assent; I saw that the rector was growing agitated.

‘William, I beg you.’

‘So we all seem. But no man in Oxford is what he seems, Doctor Bruno, keep that in mind. Not even you, I suspect.’

I looked up and met Doctor William Bernard’s eye. This spiky and gnomic old man gave the distinct and alarming impression of being able to read the secret thoughts of others, and he was nearer to the truth than I liked, so I merely inclined my head and searched for a distraction as his pale grey eyes continued to bore into me. Fortunately, one was provided by the arrival of servants bearing plates laden with the first course: boiled capons with damsons and calves’-foot jelly accompanied by a good claret.

As they bustled around the table, heaping our plates from each dish, I leaned forward with the intention of engaging Sophia Underhill in conversation, but at the same moment the bearded man opposite addressed me, and I saw Florio take the opportunity to claim the girl’s attention.

‘Roger Mercer, Doctor of Divinity and sub-rector of the college,’ the bearded man said in a rich baritone, with an accent that I believed came from the west parts of England. He extended a hand across the table. ‘We are indeed glad to make your acquaintance, Doctor Bruno, and there has been much anticipation here for your disputation with the rector tomorrow night.’

‘Now, now, Roger,’ said the rector hastily, ‘there is to be no talk of any matter touching the disputation at table. My esteemed guest and I must preserve our arguments for the debating chamber, is that not so, Doctor Bruno? We must, as they say, keep our powder dry.’

I nodded my assent. Roger Mercer held up his hand in protest.

‘Fear not, Rector – I spoke only as a prelude to telling Doctor Bruno how I have been curious to meet him since I read his book, On the Shadows of Ideas, that was published in Paris last year.’

‘Did not the sorcerer Cecco d’Ascoli, who was burned for necromancy, make mention of a book with the same title, a book of forbidden magic which he attributed to Solomon?’ Doctor Bernard leaned around Sophia once more to make this interjection, his trembling extended finger pointing almost in her face, though aimed at me. She moved her chair backwards to accommodate him, flicking her hair over one shoulder while continuing her conversation with the irrepressibly enthusiastic Florio. From the odd phrase I could catch, he appeared to be treating her to further rhyming aphorisms. Reluctantly I turned my attention back to Bernard.

‘The book Cecco mentions has never been found,’ I said, raising my voice so that the old man might hear me clearly. ‘It seemed a shame to waste a good title, so I borrowed it. But mine is a treatise on the art of memory, based on the memory systems of the Greeks – no necromancy, gentlemen.’ I laughed, perhaps too hard.

Roger Mercer eyed me thoughtfully.

‘And yet, Doctor Bruno, your memory system makes use of images that seem to correspond precisely to the talismanic figures described by Agrippa in his De Occulta Philosophia, that he claims can be invoked in the rituals of celestial magic to draw down the powers of angels and demons.’

‘But these are images that correspond to the signs of the zodiac and the mansions of the moon, familiar to many mnemonic systems,’ I said, hoping not to betray my unease. ‘They are popular because they are based on regular numerical divisions, which aids in recall, but in the end they are merely images.’

‘Nothing is merely an image to the magician,’ Bernard snapped back. ‘All are signs pointing to hidden realities, as your title implies. Especially those images derived from the ancient astrology of the Egyptians – as Agrippa well knew, for he was quoting from his master, Hermes Trismegistus, who was condemned by St Augustine for summoning demons!’

His voice rose on this last word; a cold hand gripped the base of my spine. I drew myself up to answer, but before I could speak, Sophia Underhill pulled her chair nearer to the table, looked directly at me and asked, cutting off Florio in mid-sentence,

‘Who is Hermes Trismegistus?’

The company fell silent; all eyes turned to me.

‘I have read passing reference to his name in works of philosophy,’ she continued, with an innocence I did not quite believe, ‘but I can find none of his books in our library here, and I don’t have permission to enter the university libraries.’

‘Nor should you, since you are not a scholar,’ chided her father, looking around the table as if embarrassed by her boldness. ‘I permit you to improve your mind by reading in our library as long as you keep your studies to what is fit for a lady’s understanding.’

I felt he said this for the benefit of the company; Sophia appeared about to protest, but then swallowed her words into a petulant expression. Her mother tutted again, loudly.

‘You will find no works of Hermes the Thrice-Great in Oxford now,’ Bernard said in a sonorous voice, shaking his head. ‘Before, we had them – before the great purge of the libraries in ’69. Translated out of the Greek by the Florentine Ficino a century ago, at the dying request of Cosimo de’ Medici. You know Ficino’s version, Doctor Bruno?’

‘I have read Ficino’s translation,’ I said. ‘But I have also read the original Greek manuscripts, though the collection is incomplete. The fifteenth book was lost. Do you read Greek, Doctor Bernard?’

Bernard fixed me with those bright, accusing eyes.

‘Yes, I read Greek, young man, we are not all barbarians north of the Tiber. But the missing book is a myth – it never existed,’ he added briskly. Then he went on, in a softer tone, ‘I read Ficino too, when I was young, and Agrippa. There was not such a fear of the ancient writers then. But so many books are lost to us now, carried off by the tides of reform. Centuries of learning, burned to ashes.’ He tailed off and it seemed he had travelled deep into memory.

‘Doctor Bernard,’ said the rector, a warning note in his voice again, ‘you know very well that the Royal Commission of ’69 was sent to seek out heretical books acquired in the old monastic times, lest they infect the minds of our young men with their unholy ideas – a danger we senior Fellows must guard against still. I am sure you would not wish to disagree with such a prohibition.’

Bernard gave a short, croaking laugh. ‘Books prohibited to scholars? How then should men of learning sharpen their intellect, or learn to discern between truth and heresy? And do those who proscribe not have the wit to realise that forbidden books lure men more potently than the lewdest temptress?’ Here he cast a sideways glance at Sophia. ‘Oh yes – but a forbidden book will always find its way in through the cracks and the mouseholes, do you not know that, Rector? If one only knows where to look.’ He cackled to himself as if this were a great joke, and I noticed his fellow scholars were shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

‘What happened to the books that were purged from the libraries then?’ I asked, perhaps too urgently, for my question seemed to provoke a sudden hostility from Bernard; his eyes narrowed and he pulled himself stiffly upright.

‘It was a long time ago,’ he said brusquely. ‘Burned or taken away by the authorities – who knows? I am old now, and I have forgotten those days.’

He did not quite meet my gaze and I knew he was lying; a man who spoke so passionately about books one moment would surely have remembered a public bonfire of them, even if it had occurred many years ago. But if the forbidden books were not burned, they must have passed into someone’s hands, and I wondered if the old man knew whose.

‘Doctor Bruno, you have still not answered my question,’ Sophia cut in, leaning across to tap my hand while fixing me with her wide-set, tawny eyes. The hint of a smile played around her full mouth, as if she too knew a great joke and was considering letting us in on it. ‘Who was he?’

I took a deep breath, and returned her expectant gaze as steadily as I could, aware that the whole table had fallen silent, awaiting my answer, and that there was every chance my next words might be considered blasphemy.

‘Hermes Trismegistus, called the Thrice-Great, was an Egyptian high priest of great antiquity,’ I began, turning over a piece of bread in my fingers. ‘He lived after the time of Moses, long before Plato or Christ. Some say he was the Egyptian god Thoth, the divinity of wisdom. In any case, he was a man of unusual insight who achieved, through profound contemplation of the cosmos and experimentation with the properties of the natural world, the wisdom to unlock the secrets written in the book of nature and the heavens. He claimed to have entered and understood the Divine Mind.’ I paused. ‘He claimed he could become equal to God.’

Here there was a collective gasp from around the table; these men knew that this was indeed dangerous ground to tread, and I quickly added,

‘He is called the first philosopher, the first theologian, and he was also a prophet – Lactantius credited him with foretelling the advent of the Christian faith, in the very words of the gospel.’

‘And Augustine said he had his foreknowledge from the Devil,’ Roger Mercer said eagerly, his face reddening further as half-chewed meat fell from his mouth and lodged in his beard, though he appeared not to notice. ‘For does Hermes not write of how the Egyptians animated the idols of their gods in magical rites by calling down the powers of demons?’

‘I have never believed the account of the demons and the statues,’ I said lightly. ‘Men have always created mechanical toys and automatons and claimed to have endowed them with the gift of life, like the brazen head possessed by Roger Bacon that was reported to prophesy. But this is merely conjuring and skilled craftsmanship.’

‘Hermes Trismegistus was no magician, then?’ Sophia said softly, still looking at me. She seemed disappointed.

‘He wrote at length on the hidden properties of plants and stones and the arrangement of the cosmos,’ I replied. ‘There are some who call this alchemy or natural magic, and others who call it scientific enquiry.’

‘When it is done for the purpose of seeking forbidden powers, it is called sorcery,’ the rector put in, sternly.

‘But did he discover any magic that worked?’ she persisted, ignoring her father.

‘How do you mean, worked?’ I asked.

‘I mean, was he able to use this natural magic to influence the world – to change people’s thoughts or deeds, for example, and did he write of how it is done?’ Her eyes were bright and impatient now as she leaned closer.

‘Recipes for spells, you mean?’ I laughed. ‘I’m afraid not. The Hermetic magic, if you want to give it that name, is concerned with teaching the adept how to penetrate the mysteries of the universe through the light of the intellect. He cannot teach you how to make your sweetheart fall in love with you or keep him true – for that you had better consult some village wise-woman.’

There was some amusement at this from those at our end of the table, but the girl coloured violently and I suspected that my joke had accidentally struck the truth, so to cover her embarrassment I continued, hastily:

‘But the German alchemist Henry Cornelius Agrippa does speak of such things, in his treatise on the occult sciences that Doctor Mercer mentioned earlier. He writes that, as well as the celestial images used in magic, we may create our own fitting to our purpose. For example, he says that to procure love, we may create an image of people embracing.’

‘But how –’ Sophia began, just as the rector coughed loudly and the servants entered to clear away the first course.

‘Well, this has been a most illuminating discussion, Doctor Bruno – I knew your conversation and your unusual ideas would enliven our little college society,’ the rector said, patting me on the shoulder with considerable insincerity. ‘But I have devised that we should all change places for each course, so that you may become acquainted with some of the other important officials of the college. Much as I would like to continue with our theme …’ he added.

Now he rose from his seat and fussed around the table, officiously rearranging the seating plan so that I found myself at the opposite end, surrounded by the three men to whom I had not yet spoken. The servants brought in silver dishes steaming with richly scented beef and a stew of vegetables, and in the course of all this activity, the rector’s wife, who had barely spoken, took the opportunity to excuse herself with a headache, apologising profusely to me for being such a poor hostess. She seemed a melancholic and sickly woman, but I recalled what the rector had told me about their son; I had seen such symptoms previously in women who had lost a child, often years after the death, as if the mind itself had taken some wasting sickness from which it could not recover, and I felt profoundly sorry for her. It was hard to credit that such a forlorn creature could have been the author of the lively girl at the other end of the table.

The second half of the meal passed with considerably less interest than the first, now that I had been removed from Sophia’s company. My new dining companions introduced themselves: opposite me sat Master Walter Slythurst, the college bursar, a bony, thin-lipped man of my own age with narrow, suspicious eyes and lank hair that fell in curtains around his face. Beside him was Doctor James Coverdale, a plump man of about forty with a great sweep of dark hair, a close-cropped beard and an air of complacency, who explained that he was the proctor, the official responsible for the students’ discipline. To my right was Master Richard Godwyn, the librarian, who appeared older, perhaps fifty, and whose large, drooping features reminded me of a bloodhound, as though his skin were too big for his face, though his gloomy countenance was transformed when he allowed a brief smile to illuminate it as he shook my hand. All were courteous enough, but I could not help but wish I had been allowed to continue my discussion with Sophia. It was clear that the tenor of our conversation had angered her father; she was now seated next to him, on the same side of the table as me, so that I could not see her without rudely leaning around my neighbour Godwyn and drawing attention to myself.

‘I fear you have had to suffer the sharp end of William Bernard’s tongue up there, Doctor Bruno,’ said James Coverdale, leaning across the table.

‘He seems disappointed with the world as he finds it,’ I observed, checking to see that Bernard had been moved far enough away to be out of earshot.

‘It is often the way with old men,’ Godwyn said, with a sombre nod. ‘He has weathered a great many changes in his seventy winters, it cannot be easy.’

‘If he continues to speak his mind as plainly among the undergraduates as he does among his fellows, he will soon go the way of his friend,’ said Slythurst, in a clipped tone that suggested he would not be displeased at such an outcome. I do not like to judge men on appearance and so little acquaintance, but there was something about the bursar that did not invite respect. He had been staring at me intently from the moment I sat down, and I sensed that the look was not friendly.

‘His friend?’ I asked.

Coverdale sighed.

‘It is a sorry business, Doctor Bruno, and a source of shame to the college – the former sub-rector, Doctor Allen, was deprived of office last year after he was discovered to have …’ he hesitated, looking for a diplomatic expression ‘… perjured himself in swearing the Oath of Supremacy. It seemed he was still a devout communicant of the Roman Church.’

‘Really? How was he discovered?’

‘Denounced by an anonymous source,’ Coverdale said, as if relishing the intrigue. ‘But when his room was searched, he was found in possession of a quantity of banned papist literature. And of course the sub-rector holds the second highest office in the college, and is in charge whenever the rector is absent, so you may imagine the scandal. A number of us here had to testify against him in the Chancellor’s Court.’

‘The university holds its own legal sessions to enforce discipline,’ explained Godwyn the librarian in a lugubrious tone. ‘Though in a matter of such import the Privy Council also took an active interest. The Earl of Leicester – our chancellor, you know – has repeatedly charged the heads of colleges to rid themselves of all suspicion of popery so the rector had to be seen to strike swift and hard against Allen.’

‘Doctor Underhill was formerly the Earl of Leicester’s own chaplain, as he has no doubt boasted to you already,’ added Slythurst. ‘He could not have pardoned Allen and kept his own position.’

‘Yet Allen hoped for a pardon,’ Coverdale interjected. ‘And for better loyalty from his friends. In that he was badly disappointed.’

‘I think the rector did his duty with a heavy heart, James,’ Godwyn said, with a meaningful look at Coverdale. ‘Indeed it grieved all of us to have to bear public witness to his errors.’

‘Roger Mercer gave his testimony quickly enough,’ said Coverdale, glancing with barely concealed anger down the table to where Mercer was laughing merrily with Florio. I saw Slythurst roll his eyes, as if he had heard this grievance many times before. ‘And he was supposed to be Allen’s closest friend. Still, he got his thirty pieces of silver, did he not?’

‘Silver?’ I asked.

‘His testimony was crucial to condemning Allen, and for that he was given Allen’s position when he was deprived,’ Coverdale said bitterly.

‘Perhaps I should clarify for Doctor Bruno that, traditionally, it is the proctor who succeeds as sub-rector, just as the sub-rector goes on to become rector,’ Godwyn explained. ‘This is the way it has always been done – there is a congregation of the Fellows, of course, but the vote is really a formal seal of approval on the established succession.’

‘But since the present rector was placed here by the Earl of Leicester, to do his bidding,’ Coverdale hissed, hunching down in his seat so that he would not be heard, ‘he shows scant regard for tradition and appoints those he finds most pliable. And we all know why Leicester forced through Underhill’s election,’ he added significantly.

‘James,’ said Slythurst, a warning in his voice.

‘I understood it was to enforce propriety in religion,’ I said. ‘Cut out the canker of popery.’

‘Oh, that is the official reason.’ Coverdale waved a dismissive hand. ‘But the college owns substantial manors and parcels of profitable farmland in Oxfordshire, you understand – many of which are now leased at a most advantageous rate to friends of Leicester, are they not, Master Bursar?’

‘You forget yourself, James,’ Slythurst said smoothly. ‘Doctor Bruno here is a friend of the Earl of Leicester.’

‘Indeed, I have never met him,’ I said hastily. ‘I merely travel with his nephew.’

‘In any case,’ Coverdale continued, warming to his theme, ‘the college loses valuable profit and must struggle to make ends meet by admitting legions of these so-called gentlemen commoners – paying students who have neither the inclination nor the talent to be scholars and gad about the town wenching and gambling and bringing the university into disrepute.’

‘This is not an appropriate subject for the supper table,’ said Slythurst, in a voice thick with cold anger, bringing down his palm flat against the board just firmly enough to signal his displeasure. ‘There is nothing improper about those leases, moreover the disbursal of college funds can be of no interest to our guest. A little discretion, if you please, gentlemen.’

The Fellows looked down, embarrassed; an uncomfortable silence loomed.

‘Doctor Coverdale,’ I said, turning to the proctor with a diplomatic smile, ‘you were telling me about the trial of Edmund Allen – please do go on.’

Coverdale exchanged a look with Slythurst that I could not read, then folded his hands together.

‘I was saying only that Mercer’s testimony against Allen carried great weight in the trial, not least because he was Allen’s closest confidant. The rector needed Mercer’s cooperation, and in return he was given Allen’s position.’

‘Which should have been yours,’ I prompted.

Coverdale placed a plump hand on his breast and assumed a face of unconvincing modesty.

‘It is not for my own merits that I say an injustice has been done, Doctor Bruno,’ he said, ‘but for the violation to tradition. This university is founded on tradition, and if individuals feel that they are not obliged to respect it because their personal patronage carries more weight, the fabric of our community will crumble.’

‘Edmund was friend to many of us,’ Godwyn said, with an air of regret. A sombre mood had fallen on our group as once again I heard Sophia, Florio and Mercer erupt into laughter. ‘He was greatly liked by the undergraduates, too – it was a pity that he could not in his heart renounce the errors of his old beliefs.’

‘Exile seems a harsh punishment for owning a few books,’ I ventured, helping myself to more beef and onions.

‘He was lucky to leave England with his guts still inside his belly,’ said Slythurst dispassionately. ‘Less favoured men have had harder punishments for less. You of all people, Doctor Bruno, should know that heterodoxy in religion is a most grave sin, against God and the established order.’ He looked at me pointedly.

‘It was not just the books,’ Godwyn interrupted, in a confidential tone. ‘He was suspected of being a courier for his cousin, William Allen, at the English seminary in Rheims. They took him to London and questioned him under cruel torture, but he never said a word and in the end they sent him abroad. Poor Edmund.’ He shook his head sadly and drained his cup.

‘I met his son today,’ I remarked, tearing another piece of bread.

Coverdale rolled his eyes.

‘Then I pity you,’ he said. ‘No doubt he was begging you to carry pleas to the court for his father’s pardon?’ Without waiting for an answer, he clicked his tongue angrily. ‘That boy should never have been allowed to stay on after his father’s disgrace. Thomas Allen holds dangerous beliefs, mark my words. Though I could not persuade the rector to act on my advice – he is too soft-hearted with that boy.’

I could not help thinking that if the rector’s treatment of Thomas Allen was evidence of soft-heartedness, the boy’s life must be harsh indeed.

‘Once again, it behoves me to say that I do not think our eminent guest has travelled all the way here to listen to us griping about college matters,’ Slythurst interrupted in a voice smooth as ice. He tucked a limp strand of hair behind his ear and turned to me, smiling with his teeth. ‘Tell us, Doctor Bruno, something of your travels in Europe. I understand you have taught at many of the famous academies across the continent. How do you find Oxford by comparison?’

Returning his smile with equal insincerity, for the remainder of that course, and the almond custard and jellied fruits that followed, I told them of my wandering years as the candles burned lower, leaving out what I thought politic and subtly flattering my new companions with what they wanted to hear – namely, that none of the European universities could hold a candle to the great scholarship and wisdom of the men of Oxford.

‘How long do you stay in Oxford, Doctor Bruno?’ asked Coverdale, sitting back in his chair and wiping his lips as the servants cleared away the last plates and cups.

‘I believe the palatine, in whose party I travel, intends to stay a week,’ I said.

‘Then I hope you will attend chapel with us here in the college. The rector is delivering a most erudite series of sermons on John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments, are you familiar with it?’

‘The Book of Martyrs? Naturally,’ I replied, suspecting that this was some sort of test. ‘Many consider it a most inspiring work.’

‘Doctor Bruno is not genuine in his admiration, I fear,’ said Slythurst, glancing from me to his colleagues. ‘I never met a Catholic yet who admired Foxe’s dreadful accounts of what was done to the Protestant martyrs.’

‘Does he not also give many examples of Christian martyrs from the earliest centuries of the faith, when Christians suffered at the hands of pagans and unbelievers, before we began persecuting one another?’ I replied. ‘And are these not martyrs whom all Christians may honour, and whose sufferings may remind us of a time when we lived in unity?’

‘That was not Foxe’s intention,’ Slythurst began, but Coverdale interrupted.

‘Well said, Bruno. Believers on both sides have suffered for Christ, and only He knows who shall stand with Him at the Last Judgement.’

‘That is the first time I have ever heard you advocate tolerance, James,’ Slythurst said, his eyes narrowing even further. Coverdale ignored the provocation.

‘Let us have some more wine here, ho!’ he cried to a serving boy, clapping his hands. I declined another glass, for I wanted to reflect on my notes for the disputation before I went to bed and needed to keep a clear head.

By the time the meal was over, it was fully dark outside the windows and the guests all rose, taking their leave with much handshaking and compliments to the rector on the food, which I understood had been greatly superior to the usual fare of the college hall supper. The Fellows all shook my hand warmly, repeating their welcome to Oxford and wishing me a good night’s rest in anticipation of the great disputation the following day, which they were all, they said, much looking forward to. Richard Godwyn invited me to make use of the library whenever I chose, for which I thanked him, John Florio expressed in perfect Italian his eager hopes that we might spend some time together before I left, and even Doctor Bernard rose unsteadily and clasped my fingers between his two bony hands.

‘Tomorrow night, Sorcerer,’ he hissed, with a toothless grin, ‘you will contradict their pious certainties, and I shall be there in the front row applauding you. Not because I support your heretical notions, but because I admire men who are not afraid. There are too few left in this place.’

Here he glanced pointedly at the rector, who affected not to notice. Only Slythurst did not trouble himself to express a welcome; he merely acknowledged me with a curt nod as he disappeared through the doorway, and only then because I caught him looking at me with those cold eyes. I felt again his dislike of me, though I tried not to view it as a personal slight; I noticed that he left without saying goodnight to his colleagues either, and surmised that he was one of those men, common enough among academics, who was simply not blessed with an easy social manner.

When I said goodnight to Sophia, she extended her hand demurely and I kissed it respectfully under her father’s watchful eye, but he was then distracted by Doctor Bernard loudly fretting about where he had left his coat, and while the rector was reassuring Bernard that he had not brought any coat, Sophia leaned close to me and laid a hand on my arm.

‘Doctor Bruno, I should very much like to continue our earlier conversation – you remember? The book of Agrippa? Perhaps when the disputation is over, you may have more leisure to talk. I can often be found in the college library,’ she added. ‘My father allows me to read there in the mornings and the early evenings, when most of the scholars are attending lectures and disputations.’

‘So that you do not distract them from their books?’ I whispered back. She blushed, and gave me a knowing smile.

‘But you will come? There is much I would ask you.’

She looked up at me with a surprising urgency in her eyes, her hand lingering on my arm; I nodded briefly as her father appeared at her shoulder and looked at me enquiringly. I shook his hand, thanked him for the meal and bade the company good night.

I was glad to emerge into the cool of the passageway; the rain had stopped and the night air smelled fresh and inviting after the heavy warmth of the rector’s lodgings. I thought I might walk in the orchard garden to clear my head and digest before retiring, but before I reached the end of the passageway I realised that the iron gate had been closed. When I tried the ring set as a handle, I found it was firmly locked.

‘Doctor Bruno!’ called a voice behind me, and I turned to see Roger Mercer standing at the other end of the passage, by the rector’s door. He took a few paces towards me. ‘You wished to take a turn in the Grove?’ He gestured towards the closed gate.

‘Is this not permitted?’

‘The Grove is for the use of the Fellows only,’ he said, ‘and only we and the rector have keys. It is kept locked at night, for fear the undergraduates would make use of it for all manner of improper trysts. No doubt they find alternative places, if they can slip past the main gate,’ he added with an indulgent smile.

‘They are not allowed out of the college at night?’ I asked. ‘That does seem a hard confinement on men in the prime of youth.’

‘It is meant to teach them self-discipline,’ Mercer said. ‘Most of them find ways around the rules, though – I know I did at their age.’ He chuckled. ‘Cobbett the porter is a good old man, he’s been here for years, but he is willing to look the other way for a few coins if the young ones come back from town after the gates are locked. He likes a drink, too, Cobbett – sometimes I think he conveniently forgets to lock the gate altogether.’

‘Does the rector not discipline him?’

‘The rector is severe in some matters, but in others he shows a shrewd understanding of how best to manage a community of young men. A rod of iron is not always the wisest course – sometimes good leadership is a matter of knowing when to turn a blind eye. Young men will go to taverns and whorehouses whether we like it or no, and the greater the force used in prohibition, the greater the allure.’

‘As Doctor Bernard said about forbidden books,’ I mused.

Mercer glanced at me sideways as we emerged from the other end of the passage into the open courtyard, where the clock on the north range proclaimed the hour to be almost nine.

‘You must excuse Doctor Bernard some of his harshness,’ he said, apologetically. ‘He has had to change his religion three times under four different sovereigns. He was ordained priest in his youth, you know, before the queen’s father broke with Rome. But he grows more and more outspoken of late, and I begin to suspect that he suffers that affliction of old men, where he is sometimes lost in memory and not clear to whom he speaks.’

‘He seemed lucid enough to me. But angry.’

‘Yes.’ Mercer sighed. ‘He is angry – at the world, the university, at what has been demanded of him and at himself for what he has done. And you must be wondering at his anger towards me.’ He glanced at me again, almost timid.

‘He spoke bitterly of exile.’

‘He meant the trouble last year over our sub-rector, Edmund Allen, I expect you have heard. William was close to him, as was I, but I was obliged to testify against him to the Chancellor’s Court for certain matters regarding his religious practices. William considers this an unforgivable betrayal.’

‘And you?’ I asked softly.

Mercer gave a small, bitter laugh.

‘Oh, I acted according to my duty and to save my skin, and now I have the sub-rector’s gown and his well-appointed room in the tower. William was right. I betrayed a friend. But I had no choice, and neither did he. You see the life we have here, Bruno?’ He gestured at the windows of the rector’s lodgings, still glowing with amber light from the candles. ‘It is a good life, a comfortable life for a scholar – we are sheltered in many ways from the world. And I – I am not fitted for any work but the life of books and learning, I lack the worldly ambition to push myself forward. If I had not publicly condemned my friend for his perfidy in religion, I would have shared his fate and lost everything. And at that point his fate was not known – the Privy Council allowed the university to conduct his trial, but there was every chance the matter would be handed to them and Edmund might have been facing a worse punishment than exile.’ He shuddered. ‘So I am not proud of my actions, no, but William Bernard has no right to rail against me. When Her Majesty took the throne and ended her sister Mary’s brief reconciliation with Rome, there was a great purge in the university – all the Catholic Fellows and heads of colleges appointed by Mary were deprived of office unless they renounced the pope’s authority and swore the Oath of Supremacy. William swore it quickly enough, and that oath bought him twenty-five peaceful years in this place, while his more steadfast friends were scattered to the four winds.’

‘And yet, in the winter of his life, it seems clear enough to anyone listening that his heart returns to the old faith.’

‘I think, as he nears death, he grows less concerned with the fate of his body and more fearful for his soul,’ Mercer said. ‘Perhaps if we all saw our death so close at hand, we might choose a different course, but alas, while we breathe our fears are all for our poor, weak flesh and our worldly status.’

‘Perhaps so. But it is the son who seems to suffer it most,’ I observed.

‘You have met Thomas? That poor boy. He is a very able scholar, you know. At least, he was.’ Mercer ran both hands over his face as if washing it, a gesture of hopelessness. ‘I have known him since he first came to Oxford at fifteen – before his father left for Rheims, he charged me to care for Thomas like a father in his absence. Edmund understood why I had to act as I did – he forgave me. But Thomas will not forgive me for my part in Edmund’s trial. I have tried to help him – with such gifts of money as are in my power, I mean – but he would rather humiliate himself slaving for that young peacock Norris than accept a penny. When I pass him in the courtyard he does not even acknowledge me, but I feel the hatred burning in him like a furnace.’

‘That is hard,’ I said. ‘But he is young, and the passions of the young are often as brief as they are fierce. Perhaps he will forgive you in time.’

I bowed then and moved towards my staircase, keen to get to work before the hour grew too late. Mercer stepped towards me and grasped my hand.

‘I hope we will have a chance to talk further, Doctor Bruno,’ he said. ‘I am truly glad to have met you, and I hope I did not sound too sanctimonious in my disapproval this evening when we spoke of Agrippa and the Hermetic treatises.’

‘Oh, I am quite used to disapproval,’ I said, waving away his apology with a smile.

‘You mistake my meaning. The rector is a pious man and, as I say, he can be severe when he chooses – it is prudent for those whose position depends on his good opinion to express views that accord with his own when at his table. But I have long had a great interest in these works – as a scholar, I mean, for I believe that one can study the occult philosophies objectively yet still remain a good Christian. Is it not so, Bruno?’

‘Ficino thought so,’ I replied. ‘And I hope he was right, Doctor Mercer, else I am damned.’

‘Please – call me Roger,’ he said warmly. ‘Well, I shall look forward to our next discussion on these matters.’

With that, he bowed and strode away across the courtyard. I turned towards my room just as fat drops of rain began once more to fall from a brooding sky.




FOUR (#ulink_9fd7bebb-8237-5a24-8c0e-3265ea31e455)


I read and revised my notes for the disputation until my lamp burned out, and afterwards I slept fitfully; the room was cold and the rain lashed hard against the panes as the timbers creaked. So it was that when I was disturbed by a great noise during a brief slumber I was at first not sure if it was morning or merely a hallucination of my confused dreams. Gradually, though, the noise became more insistent, and as I awakened to see that it was not yet dawn, I realised that the infernal riot outside my windows was the frenzied sound of a barking dog. I pulled the sheet closer around me, cursing the rector or whomever had thought to keep such a feral animal in the college grounds and curled up in the hope of recovering my ruined sleep, when a second sound joined that bestial dawn chorus, one that I have never forgotten and still, sometimes, hear in dreams. It was the blood-chilling scream of a human being in pain and mortal terror, and it rose in pitch and agony as the creature’s barking grew wilder and more vicious.

As the horror of those combined sounds dispelled the last vapours of sleep, I realised that someone not far from my windows was in fear of their life; I supposed it must be some intruder, surprised perhaps by a watchdog, but I could not ignore it, so I hastily pulled on my breeches and a shirt and set out to find the source of this consternation and see if I might offer assistance.

I emerged from my staircase into the shadowy courtyard; the heavy clouds were broken with veins of pale light and the rain, for the moment, had abated, leaving behind a silvery mist that hung thick in the morning air so that I could barely make out the clock on the north range opposite and had to step forward to read its hands: almost five. The dreadful noise of the hound continued and from other staircases around the main courtyard figures appeared through the vapour as young men, with hose pulled on under their nightshirts and hair disarrayed, timidly gathered in groups, whispering to one another, unsure whether to come any closer. The din was unmistakeably coming from the passageway in the east range that led to the rector’s lodgings and the Grove, the Fellows’ garden I had explored the previous evening. Gathering my wits, I ran the length of the passage to the iron gate, where I found two young men pulling at the handle, to no avail, and peering into the misty depths of the garden. Hearing my footsteps, they turned, their faces ashen.

‘Someone is in there, sir, with a wild beast!’ cried the taller. ‘I had just risen to wash when I heard his cries, but from here we can see nothing.’

‘We do not have a key!’ the other said frantically. ‘Only the senior men do, and the door is fast.’

‘Then we must wake one of the senior men,’ I said, wondering how the rector, whose lodgings must have windows on to the garden, could possibly be sleeping through this tumult. ‘You must know where their rooms are – quick, go and wake anyone who could open the gate. Is there another entrance?’

‘Two, sir,’ said the tall student, terrified, while his friend scuttled away up the passage in search of help. ‘Another gate like this from the passage at the other end of the hall, by the kitchens, and a door in the garden wall from Brasenose Lane, but they are all locked at night.’

‘Well, the man in there must have got in somehow,’ I said, urgently, as a throttled voice unmistakeably cried, ‘Jesu, save me! Holy Mother, save me!’ Another scream rent the air, followed by mangled cries for help, then a ferocious growling and a truly inhuman sound, a strangled gurgling that seemed to last for minutes. A small crowd of curious and agitated undergraduates was forming behind us when I heard the rector’s voice crying, ‘Let me through, I say!’

His face was puffy and bleary with sleep, a coat thrown over his nightgown, and he carried in his hand a bunch of keys. He started when he saw me.

‘Oh – Doctor Bruno – what is this ungodly disturbance? Who is within – can you see anything? I tried to look from my windows, but the mist and the trees hide all else from sight.’

‘I can see nothing, but it seems that a wild animal is savaging someone in the garden. He must be helped, and quickly!’

The rector stared at me as if I had just told him a herd of cows had flown over the college; then he collected himself and stepped towards the gate with his keys, but just as suddenly he stopped and turned back to me, his face tight with fear. The terrible snarling and barking continued within, but the human sounds had tailed off. I feared the worst.

‘But – but then it would be folly to enter without a weapon if a wild dog is on the loose!’ the rector stammered. ‘It must be killed – someone must fetch the constable or a serjeant-at-arms, who can bring a crossbow. One of you – quickly!’ he snapped at the crowd of half-dressed boys who stood at the end of the passageway, staring, open-mouthed. ‘Go for the constable – immediately!’ They all looked at one another before a couple of them ran out to the courtyard.

‘Could we not find a stick or a poker, anything? We must go in, Rector – I fear we may already be too late for the poor wretch trapped in there,’ I urged, holding out a hand for the keys.

The rector looked around in panic.

‘But – how could there be a dog in the garden?’ he asked, as if to himself, his brows knit in perplexity.

‘Is it not a watch dog, to keep out intruders?’ I asked, now puzzled myself. ‘Could it not be some thief who has scaled the wall, perhaps?’

‘But there is no watch dog,’ the rector said, his voice tight with panic. ‘The porter has a dog, but it is an old, blind creature that has only the use of three legs and it sleeps in his lodge by the main gate. No one else in college is permitted to keep an animal.’ He shook his head, unable to make sense of the evidence of his own ears; the beast in the garden went on making its hellish noise.

‘Step aside there,’ said a calm voice behind us, and the gaggle of students crowded in the passageway parted to reveal a tall young man with shoulder-length fair hair, dressed incongruously in a fine doublet and breeches, black silk slashed to show a rich crimson lining and topped with an elaborate ruff, looking for all the world as if he were off to a dance or a playhouse in London, not hastily risen like the rest of us in all the confusion. In one hand he carried an English longbow, of the kind the nobility use for the hunt, taller than himself and ornately carved with gilded inlays and green and scarlet tracery. In the other he held a leather quiver of arrows decorated with the same design of curlicued vines and gilt leaves.

‘Gabriel Norris!’ exclaimed the rector, staring at the longbow. ‘What is this?’

‘You must open the gate, Doctor Underhill,’ commanded the young man, ‘there is no time to lose, a man’s life is in danger.’

He spoke in measured tones, despite the urgency of the situation, as if he and not the rector held the authority here; half-dazed, the rector unlocked the gate and the young man stepped through, fitting an arrow to his bow as he did so. I followed him hesitantly, and the rector fell in behind me, keeping close to the wall.

The mist hung heavily between the twisted trunks of the apple trees, playing tricks on my eyes with its shifting shapes. Stepping cautiously through the blue shadows, I glimpsed suddenly towards the furthest north-east corner the movement of a large, long-legged dog – by its shape a wolfhound of sorts, I thought, though I could not see clearly. I kept close to the wall as this Gabriel, conspicuous in his gaudy clothes, advanced in steady paces towards the animal, which was still growling and shaking between its teeth a limp black object at its feet. As I moved closer, the mist thinned and I was able to see the animal clearly; its jaws were bloody and daubed with shreds of torn flesh. My heart sank then and my stomach convulsed, for I knew we were too late. The young man paused a few paces away; the dog, catching a scent or a sound, paused in the mauling of its prey and raised its head. For the briefest moment, its snarling ceased and it made a movement towards the young man; as it did so, he let the arrow fly. He was a good shot, despite the thick air, and the animal crumpled to the ground as the arrow-head tore through its neck.

As soon as it fell, Gabriel dropped his bow and we both rushed to the black heap that lay up against the wall, beside the animal’s corpse. It was the body of a man, lying face down, his black academic gown spread out around him, the grass all torn and soaked with a quantity of blood around the body. I helped Gabriel roll the man over, and cried out suddenly in shock. Here was Roger Mercer, his head bent at a hideous angle, eyes staring to the sky, his throat quite torn out – a flap of flesh hung open, raw tissue protruding from the wound. Instinctively I reached out to staunch the blood that still seeped down his neck and breast, but it was too late – the eyes were motionless, fixed forever in a stare of terror. Gabriel Norris jumped back from the bloody corpse, checking anxiously to see that he had got no gore on his clothes, as if this were his only concern. Preening little peacock, I thought in disgust – then remembered where I had heard his name before; Mercer himself had referred to him the night before in exactly the same terms. I crouched in disbelief by the body, taking in the ravaged hands – two of the fingers near bitten off where he had tried to fight the animal away – the chunks of flesh torn from the legs and ankles where it had dragged him to the ground, that horrifically mauled gullet.

The rector came cautiously towards us, a handkerchief clutched over his mouth.

‘Is he …?’

‘We came too late, God have mercy on his soul,’ I said, more from custom than piety. The rector moved close enough to identify the mutilated body of the man who had sat at his right hand only the night before at dinner, and was immediately sick. The young man called Gabriel seemed to have recovered himself, and was probing the corpse of the dog with his toe.

‘A giant of a beast,’ he said, with a note almost of pride, as if he were displaying it as a hunting trophy. Peering more closely, it struck me: hunting was the apt image.

‘This is a hunting dog,’ I said, kneeling beside it. ‘And look, here.’ I pointed to where its ribs protruded painfully under its wiry grey pelt. ‘See how thin it is – it looks as if it was starving. And look at its leg.’ A ring of raw flesh ran around the top of the dog’s left hind leg where the skin had been brutally chafed by a tether of some kind. The fur around the wound was patchy and torn, as if the dog had tried repeatedly to tear off its fetter with its own teeth. ‘It has been chained up, I think – you see? No wonder it went so crazed.’

‘What was it doing in the garden, though?’ the young man asked, looking at me expectantly. ‘And why was Doctor Mercer here with a dog?’

‘Perhaps he was walking his dog and it suddenly turned on him – dogs are sometimes unpredictable,’ I suggested, unpersuaded by my own hypothesis.

‘But Roger didn’t have a dog,’ the rector said in a weak voice, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘I told you – no one in the college, save the porter, is allowed to keep an animal. No – no, gentlemen, there is nothing to see here!’ he cried suddenly, as the scholars began crowding through the narrow gate into the garden, intent on seeing the spectacle. ‘Back to your rooms, all of you! Chapel at six as normal – back to your rooms and make yourselves ready, I say!’

The students reluctantly turned and shuffled back through the gate, casting glances over their shoulders and murmuring among themselves in animated tones. The rector turned then to the young man, who stood contemplating the corpses, the quiver still dangling from his shoulder; an expression of disbelief spread over the rector’s face, as if he were only now seeing the young man clearly for the first time.

‘Gabriel Norris!’ he exploded, flapping a hand frantically. ‘What in God’s name are you wearing?’

Norris looked down at his flamboyant doublet and hose, then shifted his feet as if embarrassed.

‘I think now is not the time, Doctor Underhill,’ he began, but the rector cut him off.

‘You know perfectly well the Earl of Leicester’s edict about the rules of dress for undergraduates! And I am charged with enforcing it – would you have us both disciplined by the Chancellor’s Court, after all that has happened?’ His face had turned the shade of beetroot, his voice strangulated; I could not help but think that this was an overreaction, in the circumstances. ‘No ruffs, no silks, no velvets, no cuts in doublet or hose!’ he continued, his pitch rising with every item. ‘And no weapons! You deliberately flaunt every rule laid down regarding apparel! This is a community of scholars, Master Norris, not some ball at court for you to flaunt your wealth!’

The young man pursed his lips and looked surly. Even in this attitude of petulance, I saw that he was exceptionally handsome and was clearly used to having his own way.

‘This community of scholars could not do without my wealth, as you well know, Rector. And you overcharge us as it is – I am forced to eat like a pauper here, must I also dress like one?’

The rector, chastened, lowered his voice.

‘You must dress as the Earl of Leicester deems fitting for an Oxford man,’ he said. ‘Now please make haste and change – if you are reported we will both be in trouble and how shall I explain …?’ He broke off there, looking around him helplessly at the two bodies, and I saw that his hands were shaking badly; I suspected he was in shock.

Gabriel Norris looked at me for a moment, as if reluctant to leave the scene of his heroism, then perhaps thought better of it and with some haste picked up his bow and turned to go.

‘Master Norris!’ the rector called after him.

The young man turned defiantly.

‘Yes, Rector?’

‘A longbow? Why in the Lord’s name do you even have a bow and arrows in college?’

Norris shrugged.

‘My father left it to me. It is a keepsake. Besides, hunting for sport is permitted to those commoners who have a licence.’

‘It is not permitted to keep a longbow in college rooms,’ the rector said weakly.

‘If I had not had it in college, you would have had to wrestle that dog with your bare hands, Rector,’ Norris replied drily. ‘But I do not expect you to thank me.’

‘Nevertheless, Master Norris, I insist that you take it to the strongroom in the tower where it can be held for safekeeping. Ask Master Slythurst or Doctor Coverdale to lock it away for you. Today, please!’ he added, as Norris disappeared through the open gate.

The rector took a deep breath and then his legs seemed to buckle under him; I offered my arm and he leaned on me gratefully.

‘Rector Underhill,’ I said gently, indicating Mercer’s body, ‘a man has died in a horrific accident, and we must try to understand how this could have come to pass. If indeed it is an accident,’ I added, for the circumstances troubled me the more I looked for an explanation.

The rector stumbled then, and almost fell against me, his face blanched.

‘Dear God, you are right, Bruno. The reports will spread like wildfire among the students. But how can it be explained? Unless …’ There was terror in his face and I felt sorry for him; his calm, ordered little kingdom upended in a few minutes.

‘Well, let us look for the most likely causes first,’ I said. ‘If there are no dogs in the college save the porter’s old hound, this one must have found its way in from the outside, most likely through this gate.’

‘Yes – yes, that’s it, some feral stray, found its way in through the gate.’ The rector grasped at the suggestion gratefully.

Mercer had fallen and been savaged only yards from the wooden gate into the lane behind the college, but when I went to try the handle, it was locked fast. The rector stood as if transfixed by the bodies of the hunter and his prey. On the back wall nearby I noticed a scrap of black material spiked on the edge of a brick; below this spot the grass was churned to mud with boot and paw prints, and splashed liberally with Mercer’s blood.

‘It looks as if he tried to scale the wall, poor man,’ I said, half to myself. ‘That would account for the mauling of his legs. But it is twice the height of a man – why did he not simply run towards the gate to escape? Unless the dog was between him and the gate, meaning it must have come in from outside. But then, how is the gate locked?’

I glanced at the rector, who remained immobile, then I ran to try the second gate into the college, from the passage that ran between the hall and the kitchens. This too was locked. How, then, I puzzled, had the dog entered the garden? And how, for that matter, had Roger Mercer?

I walked back to where the bodies lay.

‘Is it possible,’ I ventured, as the reality of what I had seen began to solidify in my mind, ‘that someone could have let the dog in deliberately?’

The rector turned to look at me incredulously.

‘As a prank, you mean?’

‘Hardly a prank. Whoever unleashed a half-starved hunting dog must have known it could kill.’ I knelt down by Mercer’s mauled body and patted the pockets.

‘Doctor Bruno!’ the rector exclaimed. ‘What are you about? The poor man is still warm, if you please.’

Roger Mercer had been fully dressed, despite the early hour; in one of the pockets sewn into his breeches I found what I had been looking for.

‘Here,’ I said, holding up two iron keys attached to a single ring, one much larger than the other. ‘Is one of these a key to the garden?’

The rector took the ring from my hand and examined the keys against the light.

‘Yes, the larger would open any of the three gates.’

‘Then either he let himself in and locked the gate behind him, or someone locked the gate through which he entered once he was inside,’ I reasoned. ‘Either way, he was trapped in here with a savage dog.’

‘But we still don’t know how the dog got in,’ the rector said, uncomprehending.

‘Well, we know it didn’t jump the wall, and it didn’t let itself in and lock the gate after it.’ I looked him directly in the eye as I spoke, waiting for understanding to take effect.

The rector clutched my arm, his face twisted with panic; I could smell the bile on his breath.

‘What are you saying, Bruno? That someone let that dog in and then closed every means of escape?’

‘I can’t see another explanation,’ I said, looking again at the dog’s fearsome teeth, through which its limp tongue now lolled, spittle hanging in tendrils from its jaws. Norris’s arrow stuck upright from its gullet. ‘Someone who knew Doctor Mercer would come here at this hour. But surely he never suspected any harm would come to him, else he would have armed himself.’

Then I remembered Mercer’s strange remark the previous night, about how we might all live differently if we saw death approaching. I had dismissed it, but had he been revealing that he feared for his life? Unhappy coincidence only, I guessed; besides, he had spoken confidently of attending the disputation, and of conversing with me later. I felt a sudden awful sorrow; though I hardly knew the man, he had seemed warm and genuine, and I had stood by only minutes ago and listened to him die. To think that he might have been saved if I had acted quicker, if someone had had a key, if Norris had arrived sooner with his bow. One moment of indecision decides a man’s fate, I thought, and realised that I too was trembling.

‘Was it perhaps his regular practice to walk in the garden so early?’ I asked. ‘I mean, could someone have known to expect him here?’

‘The Fellows often like to read in the quiet of the Grove,’ the rector said. ‘Though not usually at this hour, I grant you – it is too dark. The undergraduates usually rise at half past five to make themselves ready before chapel at six – morning service is compulsory. There is rarely a soul abroad in the college any earlier, not even the kitchen servants. I confess I have never walked in the garden at such an hour so I could not say if any of my colleagues had the habit of doing so.’

As I bent again to Mercer’s body, separating the bloodied and torn clothes to see if anything on his person might explain his presence in the Grove so early, I remembered how he had joked about the garden being popular for trysts. Had he been expecting someone who never came, or who came and brought death with them? He carried no book, but a bulge inside his doublet suggested a hidden pocket; reaching in, I withdrew a fat leather purse that jingled with coins.

‘If his purpose was a quiet, contemplative walk before sunrise, surely he would not have needed to bring this,’ I said, untying the purse and showing the rector its contents. The English coins meant nothing to me, though there were clearly a lot of them, but the rector’s eyeballs bulged at the sight.

‘Good God, there is at least ten pounds here!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why would he carry such a sum?’

‘Perhaps he expected to meet someone to whom he owed money.’

‘And knowing he would be here, they set a dog on him!’ he exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘Revenge for a bad debt, that must be it.’

I shook my head.

‘Then why is the money still in his pocket? If someone had wished to harm him for failure to pay a debt, surely they would have made sure to take the money first?’

‘But who would ever have meant to harm Roger?’ asked the rector in despair.

‘I cannot say. But a wild dog does not get into an enclosed garden through locked gates by accident.’ I brushed down my clothes, realising that they were now stained with Mercer’s blood. ‘I suppose now that this terrible thing has happened, Rector, you will want to cancel the disputation this evening?’

The rector’s face filled with fear again.

‘No!’ he said fiercely, gripping my shoulders. ‘The disputation must go ahead. We cannot allow this incident to disrupt a royal visitation – can you imagine the consequences, Doctor Bruno? Especially if it were rumoured to be –’ he glanced around before whispering the word – ‘deliberate. The college would be tainted and my reputation with it, and we have already had so much trouble here lately, I fear Leicester’s displeasure more than I can tell you.’

‘But a man has been brutally killed – perhaps murdered,’ I protested. ‘We cannot go about our business as if nothing has happened.’

‘Shh! For the love of Christ, do not repeat that dreadful word murder, Bruno.’ The rector looked frantically about the garden and lowered his voice, though we were alone. ‘We will have it announced that this was a tragic misfortune – we shall say …’ he paused briefly to compose his story ‘… yes, we shall say that the garden gate was left open and a stray dog got in and attacked Roger, who had got up early to pray and meditate in the Grove.’

‘Will this be believed?’

‘It will if I say it was the case – I am the earl’s appointed rector,’ said Underhill, a touch of his old pomposity returning. ‘Besides, it was dark and misty and no one saw clearly.’ There was a hardness in his face now, and desperation; I saw then his determination to preserve the college’s good name at any price, and imagined this same ruthlessness must have ruled him during the trial of the hapless Edmund Allen.

‘But the locked gates—’ I protested.

‘Only you and I know about the locked gates, Bruno. I see nothing to be gained from mentioning them at present, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘What about the porter? Will he not remember checking the gates at night?’

The rector gave a dry laugh.

‘I see you are not acquainted with our porter. A clear head and a sharp memory are not his strong points. If I say a gate was left open, he could not for certain claim otherwise. No, I think this is our safest course.’

Seeing my look of concern, he squeezed my shoulder and added, in a lighter tone, ‘If all suspicion is hushed up, it will be the easier to investigate what really happened here this morning. But if there is a great fuss, and all Oxford is abuzz with the idea that Lincoln is a place of savage murder, the perpetrator – if indeed there is a perpetrator – will surely disappear in the hubbub. If justice is to be served, we do best not to shout this tragedy from the tower. I would be most grateful for your help in this matter, Doctor Bruno.’

I was not sure whether he meant the matter of disguising the truth or of uncovering it, but I was sorely troubled by the thought that I may well have been the last person to see Roger Mercer alive, and that whoever had planned his vicious end was at that moment at liberty somewhere in Oxford, perhaps exulting in his success. The rector’s cold briskness had shocked me, too; his human response to his colleague’s awful death seemed swallowed up in fear for his office.

The sky had grown paler and the mist was thinning, lingering only in ragged shreds among the trees. The two corpses in the dewy grass had acquired a stark solidity with the grey light. The rector glanced up anxiously.

‘Dear God – it is almost time for chapel! I must be there to speak, reassure the community. Already the story will be growing.’ He twisted his fingers together until the knuckles turned white, speaking as if to himself. ‘First I must order the kitchen servants to bring a sack for that carcass. It cannot stay here.’

I stared at him, appalled, until he noticed my expression.

‘The dog, Bruno! But you are right – the coroner must be fetched before the body can be removed. Oh, there is too much to do! I will have to ask Roger—’ Then he clapped his hands to his mouth and turned back to look at the corpse, as if only now comprehending the loss of his deputy.

‘Oh, God,’ he whispered. ‘Roger is dead!’

‘That’s right,’ I said, watching him absorb the truth of it.

‘But then – this means there will have to be another congregation, another election for sub-rector, and there is no time to convene – but in the meantime I must have someone to act under me, and that will occasion all the usual petty jealousies and ill-feeling, just when we do not need them – oh, how could this have come to pass?’ Trying to contain his mounting fears, he turned to me with an earnest expression, his hands flapping helplessly at his sides. ‘Doctor Bruno – this is a dreadful thing to ask of a guest, I know, but would you stay with poor Roger’s body until the coroner can be brought? I must make the sad announcement of this morning’s events in chapel in such a way that quiets the reports of it, if that is possible. Keep the students out – we do not want them crowding in here to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity as if it were a bear-baiting.’

‘Of course I will stay,’ I said, hoping my vigil would not be a long one; though I am not superstitious about the dead, the empty stare of Roger Mercer’s sightless eyes seemed to accuse me for my failure to help him. Our fears are all for our poor, weak flesh, he had said the night before. Now he had looked that fear full in the teeth; I still remembered his cracked voice crying to Jesus and Mary to save him.

The rector scuttled off across the grass in the direction of the courtyard, and I was left alone with the bodies and my whirling thoughts. While I waited for them to settle into some semblance of order, I bent again to Mercer’s corpse and lifted what remained of his tattered gown to cover his ravaged face. Superstition says that the eyes of a murder victim retain the image of his killer, but as I looked at Mercer’s terrified stare for the last time I thought: if such foolishness were true, would I see the image of the great dog? But the fact of the locked gates stubbornly persisted; the dog was not Mercer’s true killer, only his agent. I moved again from the sub-rector’s body to the dog’s to examine it. It was a huge brute, the height of a man’s waist upright with a long, narrow head. I noted again how thin it was, though it did not look otherwise abused. Whoever had loosed this dog in here must have planned the event carefully, increasing the force of the attack by keeping it desperately hungry for some days beforehand, by the look of it. And Mercer’s heavy purse – which the rector had taken – suggested he had been expecting to meet someone to effect some kind of transaction. But if the money had been at the centre of some dispute in which Mercer had fallen out with someone so badly that they could wish to kill him, I could not fathom why the purse had been left. It would seem that the money had been less of a priority than the sub-rector’s death, though it must have been key to the meeting he anticipated.

I considered again the layout of the garden. It was abutted on the north side by the kitchen part of the way, though I could see no door from the kitchens into the garden. On three sides it was enclosed by a wall at least twelve feet high, and on the fourth it adjoined the east range of the college, the side of the quadrangle that housed the hall and the rector’s lodgings. I presumed Mercer had entered the garden through one of the two passageways either side of the hall, letting himself in with his own key. Had he then locked the gate behind him, so as not to be disturbed, or had someone waited for him to enter before locking the door from the college side, leaving him unwittingly shut in? Could that have been the same person who then opened the gate from the lane through which the dog – presumably muzzled until the last moment – had been released, locking that behind the animal? But it would have taken a good few minutes to run out of the main gate and around the side of the building, and anyone doing so would have been seen by the porter – assuming he had been awake.

From the courtyard a bell tolled dismally to rally the scholars to chapel, where the rector would spread his benign reassurance and dispel the young men’s more lurid imaginings. As I rose to my feet, I wondered idly if James Coverdale would finally achieve his ambition of becoming sub-rector, and a thought struck me like a cold blade. The rector had asked, rhetorically, who would want to harm Roger Mercer, and I had replied that I had no idea. But now that I considered the proposition I realised that even I, a stranger who had not been in the college one full day, had already encountered two people who apparently hated him. Might there not be more? Perhaps one of them tried to extort money from him and decided instead to kill him. I had found him a genial enough man, but it seemed his part in the trial of the unfortunate Edmund Allen had aroused resentment; who was to say how many other enemies he might have made? But these resentments must have simmered for a long time; why wait until the week of a royal visitation to act on them? Unless—

I was interrupted in my pursuit of this new trail by the sight of a figure running towards me through the trees from the direction of the college; I stepped forward in the hope that the coroner had arrived to relieve me of my duties, and was surprised to recognise Sophia Underhill, dressed in a thin blue gown with a shawl around her shoulders, her hair flying out behind her. She halted a few yards away, looking equally surprised to see me.

‘Doctor Bruno! What – what are you doing in here?’

‘I was – waiting for your father,’ I said, taking another step towards her in the hope of guiding her away from the two corpses.

‘They said Gabriel Norris shot down an intruder,’ she said, her face flushed with the drama of the moment. ‘Is he still here?’ Her eyes were bright with eager anticipation as she looked around wildly, but I noticed she was twisting her hands together in agitation in the same manner as her father.

‘Not quite.’ I almost smiled; despite the rector’s best efforts, it seemed the tale was already growing in the telling. ‘You have not spoken to your father?’

‘He is at morning prayers in chapel – I heard the news from two scholars who were running there late,’ she said, peering past me to where the shapes lay in the dense grass. ‘Of course we heard all the noise from our windows but I never imagined – is that the thief’s body there?’ She seemed keen to take a look; I planted myself firmly in her path.

‘Please, Mistress Underhill, you must keep back. It is not a sight you should see.’

She tilted her head and stared at me defiantly.

‘I have seen death before, Doctor Bruno. I have seen my own brother with his neck broken, do not treat me like one of these pampered ladies who has never been out of a parlour.’

‘I would not dream of it, but this is worse,’ I said, holding my arms out absurdly as if this might obscure the sight. ‘Well, not worse than one’s brother, I don’t mean – I mean only, it is very bloody, not something a woman should see. Please trust me, Mistress Underhill.’

At this she snorted, and placed her hands on her hips.

‘How is it that men think women are too frail to look on blood? Do you forget we bleed every month? We push out babies in great puddles of gore, do you imagine we hide our eyes when we do that, in case it offends our delicate senses? I promise you, Doctor Bruno, any woman can look on blood with more fortitude than a soldier, though men think we must be treated like Venice glass. Do not be one more who wants to wrap me up in linen and keep me in a box.’

I was surprised by the ferocity of her argument, and conceded that she had a point; even so, I had been charged with protecting Mercer from prurient eyes, so I stepped forward again until I was standing directly in front of her, only a few inches away. It was disconcerting to find that she was almost as tall as me.

‘I would not dream of it. Nevertheless, Mistress Underhill, I beg you not to go any closer – this body is badly mutilated. I fear it would be distressing, however strong your constitution.’

She stood her ground for a moment longer, and then her instinctive propriety dictated that she step back. The defiant expression was replaced by one of anxious curiosity.

‘What happened, then?’

‘A man was savaged by a wild dog. Norris shot the dog, not the man.’

Her brow creased.

‘A dog? In the garden? Wait –’ she shook her head, flustered, as if she had her questions all in the wrong order. ‘Which man?’

‘Roger Mercer.’

‘Oh, no. No!’ she repeated, one hand clasped to her mouth, the other to her breast. ‘No!’ Her eyes darted about wildly, resting nowhere, then she sank slowly to the ground, her skirt billowing around her, her hand still pressed to her mouth; I was unsure if she was about to cry or faint, but her face was drained of all colour. ‘Oh God, it can’t be.’

I crouched beside her and laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.

‘I am sorry. You were fond of him?’

She looked up at me with a fleeting expression of puzzlement, then nodded emphatically.

‘Yes – yes, of course – this is my home, the senior Fellows here have been like family to me these past six years,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘I cannot believe something so horrible could happen here in college, just below our windows too. Poor, poor Roger.’ She glanced past me to the heap in the grass and shuddered. ‘If only …’ she broke off, pressing the edge of her thumb to her mouth again.

‘If only?’ I prompted.

But she merely shook her head and cast her eyes around again frantically. ‘But where is Master Norris?’

‘Your father sent him to change. His attire was apparently unsuitable.’

She gave a soft, indulgent laugh then and I felt a sudden unexpected pang of jealousy. Was she fond of the dandyish young archer?

‘A dog, though?’ she mused, running her hands through her hair as if thinking aloud, her expression troubled again. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘The gate to the lane must have been left open during the night – it looks as if some stray found its way in and was so starving it would set upon anything,’ I said, as evenly as I could.

Sophia’s eyes narrowed.

‘No. That gate is never unlocked. Father is paranoid about vagabonds and trespassers getting in at night, or undergraduates using it to meet the kitchen girls – he checks it every evening at ten before he retires. He would no more forget the gate than he would forget his prayers or his work. That cannot be.’

‘Perhaps he left that task to the porter last night, as he had to attend to our supper,’ I suggested, thinking how absurd it was that I should be defending the improbable falsehood when I wanted to compare her suspicions with my own. ‘I hear the porter is an unreliable old drunk.’

She looked at me then as if she were disappointed in me.

‘Cobbett is an old man, yes, and he likes a drop now and again, but he has been at the college since he was a boy and if my father had entrusted him with such a task he would rather die than let the rector down. He may be only a servant to you, Doctor Bruno, but he is a kind old man and does not deserve to be spoken of with contempt.’

‘I am truly sorry, Mistress Underhill,’ I said, chastened. ‘I did not mean—’

‘You had better call me Sophia. Whenever I hear Mistress Underhill called, I look around for my mother.’

‘Your mother did not hear the commotion this morning?’

‘I don’t know, she is in bed.’ Sophia sighed. ‘She is in bed most of the time, it is her chief occupation.’

‘I think she carries a great weight of sadness since your brother’s death,’ I said gently.

‘We all carry a great weight of sadness, Doctor Bruno,’ she snapped, her eyes flashing. ‘But if we all hid under the counter pane pretending the sun no longer rose and set, the family would have fallen apart. What do you know of my brother’s death, anyway?’

‘Your father made a brief account last night. It must have been unbearable for you.’

‘It would be unbearable to lose a brother in any case,’ she said, in a milder tone. ‘But I was given unusual liberties while John lived, because he spoke up for me, he insisted that I should be his companion in all his pursuits and treated as his equal. Without him, I am forced to behave like a lady and I must confess I do not take to it at all.’

She laughed unexpectedly then and I was greatly relieved, but her laughter trailed off into silence and she began plucking at the grass distractedly.

‘I suppose your disputation today will be postponed because of this?’ she asked, gesturing vaguely towards the mound of Roger Mercer’s body as if she did not much care either way.

‘No indeed – your father is determined not to disappoint the royal guest. We shall go ahead as planned, he says.’

Her face lit up with anger again – her temper was as changeable as the weather over Mount Vesuvius, it seemed – and she rose to her feet, brushing down her dress with quick, furious strokes.

‘Of course he does. No matter that someone has died, terribly – nothing must interrupt college life. We must all pretend nothing is amiss.’ Her eyes burned with fury. ‘Do you know, I never saw my father shed one tear when my brother John died, not one. When they brought him the news, he just nodded, and then said he would be in his study and was not to be disturbed. He didn’t come out for the rest of that day – he spent it working.’ She spat this last word.

‘I have heard,’ I said hesitantly, ‘that Englishmen find this mask necessary to hide what they feel, perhaps because it frightens them.’

She made a small gesture of contempt with her head.

‘My mother hides in her sheets, my father hides in his study. Between them, I am sure they have almost managed to forget they had a son. If only they did not have the inconvenience of my presence to remind them.’

‘I am sure that is not the case—’ I began, but she turned away and set her mouth in a terse line. ‘What is this work in which your father buries himself?’ I asked, to break the silence.

‘He is writing a commentary on Master Foxe’s Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days,’ she said, with some disdain.

‘Ah, yes – the Book of Martyrs,’ I said, remembering that someone at dinner had mentioned the rector preaching on this subject. ‘Does it need a commentary? Foxe is quite prolix enough on his own, as I recall.’

‘My father certainly thinks so. Indeed, my father thinks its need for a commentary is more pressing than any other business in the world – except perhaps his endless meetings of the College Board, which are nothing but an excuse for gossip and back-biting.’ She pulled a handful of leaves from the branch overhead with special vehemence as she said this, then lifted her head to look at me. ‘These are supposed to be the cleverest men in England, Doctor Bruno, but I tell you, they are worse than washerwomen for the pleasure they take in malicious talk.’

‘Oh, I have been around enough universities to know all about that,’ I smiled.

She seemed about to say more, but there was a noise from the direction of the courtyard, where two sturdy men in kitchen aprons approached.

‘I had better go,’ Sophia said, glancing once more with a fearful expression at the corner where the bodies lay. ‘I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the disputation, Doctor Bruno. I am not permitted, but I should have liked to see you best my father in a debate.’

I raised an eyebrow in mock surprise, and she smiled sadly.

‘No doubt you think that disloyal of me. Perhaps it is – but my father has such fixed ideas about the world, and its ordained order, and everyone’s place in that order, and sometimes I think he believes these things only because he has always believed them and it is less trouble to go on the same way.’ She bit anxiously at the knuckle of her thumb. ‘I would just dearly love to see someone shake his certainties, make him ask himself questions. Maybe if he can accept even the possibility that there might be a different way of ordering the universe, he might learn to see that not everything in that universe has to stay as it has always been. That is why I want you to win, Doctor Bruno.’ With these last words she actually gripped my shirt and gave me a little shake. I nodded, smiling.

‘You mean that if he can be convinced that the Earth goes around the Sun, he might also be persuaded that a daughter could study as well as a son, and that she might be allowed to choose her own husband?’

She blushed, and returned the smile.

‘Something like that. It seems you are as clever as they say, Doctor Bruno.’

‘Please, call me Giordano,’ I added.

She moved her lips silently, then shook her head. ‘I cannot say it properly, my tongue gets all tangled. I shall just have to call you Bruno. Win the debate for me, Bruno. You shall be my champion in this joust of minds.’ Then she lowered her eyes to the bloodstained grass and her smile quickly faded. ‘Poor Doctor Mercer. I cannot believe it.’

She cast a long look at the mounds of the bodies beneath the trees, her expression unreadable, then turned and ran lightly over the grass towards the college, throwing me a last glance over her shoulder as the burly man who now drew level with me lifted up a capacious sack and said,

‘Right, matey – where’s this dog wants buryin’ then?’




FIVE (#ulink_d5ce6345-9d6e-55d0-9da2-b882f726440f)


Relieved of my last duty of care to poor Roger Mercer by the arrival of the coroner, who came accompanied by the bustling figure of Doctor James Coverdale – the latter hardly bothering to disguise his self-importance in being asked to officiate over the removal of his one-time rival – I left the Grove gratefully and hurried through the passageway to the main courtyard. Chapel was over and groups of undergraduates in their billowing gowns stood about in animated discussion, many of them apparently thrilled to be so near to such calamity, even as they pressed hands to their mouths and opened their eyes wide in horror.

It was only just seven o’clock but I felt I had been awake most of the night; I wanted nothing more than to return to my chamber, change my clothes and try to recoup some of the sleep I lacked, before attempting to order my mind in time for the evening’s disputation – an event which held little savour for me now. My shirt and breeches were stained with Mercer’s blood, a fact Coverdale had taken pleasure in pointing out as I took my leave of him and the coroner. ‘You’d better find some clean clothes, Doctor Bruno,’ he had said, with a levity that seemed out of place, ‘or people will think you the killer!’

I surmised that he was displeased to find me already on the scene, and had made an idle joke to puncture any illusion of my usefulness, but as I glanced around the courtyard at the scene of excited consternation, I wondered why he had used the word ‘killer’, even in jest, if it had been given out officially that the sub-rector’s death was a tragic accident? Perhaps I was giving undue weight to thoughtless words; in any event, he was right about my clothes, I thought, looking down at my breeches and holding the fabric out to see the extent of the bloodstains. As I did so, I felt something in the pocket and realised that I was still carrying the keys I had taken from Mercer’s body; I must have tucked them away in my own breeches without thinking.




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