The Dead of Winter

by S. J. Parris

  It was equally fortunate that day that Ercole keeps a closer eye on me than I realised; suffice to say, I fought, I shouted, and I go to my marriage bed with my honour intact. I think it unlikely that that man will try to force his attentions on any other woman in future.

  If you are wondering about my wedding, I gave the matter long reflection and concluded that, while religious vows are for life, marriage is at best temporary, particularly if one’s husband is getting on in years and has a growth in his nether parts. (I have this on good authority from our family physician, who heard it from another physician, who heard it from the man who attends my future husband – apparently such growths, untreated, do not predict long life.) So perhaps, in time, I may find myself widowed – widowhood being, as I’m sure you know, the most desirable state a woman of my birth can aspire to: all the respectability of marriage without the burden of a husband. I feel certain that we will meet again; but I shall never forget how you sweetened my days of indecision. Think of me next time you go to the library – but not too much, because you must read Ficino, and all the rest. I expect great things of you, wolfhound. My uncle predicts that, one day, your name will be known in Rome, and Venice, and even in the northern lands of the Protestants – the very height of fame! – and his predictions are almost never wrong. I pray that all your studies in the art of memory will teach you not to forget me.

  Your vixen, F

  I held the letter to the candle flame when I had finished reading and found myself hoping, in a most un-Christian way, that her husband would not last long. The blue ribbon from her hair was hidden in the rafters, along with my secret writings. The prior still watched me with the sharp eyes of a raptor (with his black-and-white robe and his hooked nose, he would be a magpie, I decided, in Porta’s scheme of physiognomy), but it seemed that Fiammetta’s letter turning to ash in my hand marked the end of the business.

  In that, I was mistaken. Two months after Raffaele’s death, I was summoned to the prior’s chamber. I knocked and entered, to find the prior behind his wide desk. He seemed unusually apprehensive.

  ‘A visitor for you, Fra Giordano.’ He nodded to his right.

  In a chair by the hearth sat a stocky man with a bulbous nose and thick brows fixed in a permanent scowl. His complexion was choleric and tufts of hair sprouted from his ears; a wart protruded from his left cheek. I knew who he was; I had seen him at Raffaele’s funeral, where he had worn exactly the same expression of indignation. Looking at him close to, I could only think that Raffaele’s looks must all have come from his mother.

  ‘You can go now,’ he said to the prior, as if dismissing a servant.

  The prior bristled.

  ‘Don Umberto – if you wish to speak to one of my friars in my convent, I must insist that I am present—’

  ‘He can speak for himself, can’t he? I thought he was famous for it, this one. Or don’t you trust him?’

  ‘Naturally, but I—’

  ‘Then leave us,’ Don Umberto growled. I had never seen the prior subservient before, and I would have enjoyed the novelty if I had not been so terrified. The prior hesitated, then gave me a quick, curt nod and left the room. He would not have given in so easily, I was certain, if he had not been afraid he was on shaky ground with Raffaele’s father.

  The baron heaved himself up from the chair and crossed the room to the cabinet where the prior kept his decanters of Venetian crystal. I watched him, the way you watch an unpredictable dog. He was a short man, with a squat torso running to fat now, but I guessed that in his prime, when it was all muscle, he could have bested men a foot taller in a fist fight.

  ‘Your father is Giovanni Bruno of Nola?’ he said, his back to me.

  ‘That’s right, my lord.’

  He lifted the stopper from one bottle, sniffed the wine, made a face and poured some anyway.

  ‘I could have him sent to put down the Morisco rebellion in Granada,’ he said, off-hand, swirling the liquid in his glass. ‘The Spanish need reinforcements, those Moors are vicious fuckers. You’d likely never see him again.’

  I swallowed.

  ‘Why would you do that, my lord?’

  ‘Because I can. I have the viceroy’s ear.’ He turned to face me, his mouth a snarl. ‘Why was my son in Capodimonte?’

  I took a breath and concentrated on keeping my voice level. ‘I understand he was offering prayers to the Virgin, my lord.’

  He grunted. ‘You and I both know Raffi might have climbed a hill if he thought there was a virgin at the top of it, but not that kind. And since it’s a long way from any brothel, I have to ask myself, what was he doing there?’

  I didn’t know what to say. A silence unfolded. He pointed a hairy forefinger at me.

  ‘And now I’m asking you.’

  ‘I don’t know why you think I would know, my lord. He didn’t confide in me.’

  ‘No. He didn’t like you. Thought you were too clever. Was he right?’

  ‘I don’t know how one would measure an excess of cleverness, my lord.’

  ‘See, that’s the sort of thing, right there.’ He jabbed the finger in the air. ‘Answering back. Too clever to know your proper place. Raffi said you were a troublemaker. He said your memory games rely on black magic.’

  ‘That is untrue, my lord. The art of memory comes from our illustrious forebears, the Romans, who used—’

  ‘All right, I don’t want a lecture. There’s nothing illustrious in your ancestry, boy, I’ve checked. You’ve been up before the Inquisition already, haven’t you?’

  I bowed my head. ‘Once, but they found nothing—’

  ‘You don’t want to be hauled in front of them again, then. They don’t ask nicely the second time.’ His mouth twisted into a malicious smile.

  ‘My lord, I have done nothing wrong.’ I tried to keep the fear from my voice, but I could feel a line of sweat trickle between my shoulder blades; this man was a bully, as his son had been, but he had even greater power to make my life, and my family’s, miserable for his own amusement, if he chose.

  ‘Raffi may have been a bastard, but he was useful. I was fond of him, in a way. And I don’t believe he died of heat-stroke. This place’ – he waved his glass in the air, indicating the room; the wine sloshed over the rim and on to the prior’s good Turkey carpet – ‘is too pleased with its power. Your prior thinks he can’t be challenged.’

  ‘That is not my fault, my lord.’

  He stomped across the room to me, lip curled back over his teeth.

  ‘Someone in this convent knows the truth about my son’s death. And every one of his friends says he talked of you as his greatest enemy. He was obsessed with you, apparently.’

  I lowered my eyes again; it was hardly worth telling him that was not my fault either.

  ‘Did you kill him?’

  ‘What?’ I snapped my head up and stared at him, so taken aback that I forgot the correct address. ‘No. I was sick with a fever at the time – I was in the infirmary. There are witnesses.’ Whatever Gennaro had dosed me with, it had been a stroke of genius, though I wondered again at his foresight; had he already guessed that Raffaele would need to be silenced, if he had made a connection between me and della Porta?

  ‘Convenient. But you wouldn’t have needed to leave your bed, would you?’ He narrowed his eyes.

  ‘I don’t understand, my lord.’

  ‘Not if you killed him with witchcraft. They say a magician can send his spirit out to commit murder while he stays home with his feet up.’

  I gaped at him like a landed fish, but could find no words in my defence. My hands had begun to shake; I had to tuck them into the sleeves of my habit so that he wouldn’t see. His accusation was outlandish, but it could find purchase. This was a superstitious city, and public opinion was everything. If he repeated this belief that I killed his son by witchcraft enough times, in the right ears, he would need no evidence; the rumour alone would be sufficient to frighten the prior, who would sacrifice me in a heartbea
t to save San Domenico’s good name. My reputation as a rebel, my previous appearance before the Inquisitors, would all count against me. Naples may not have the Spanish version of the Inquisition yet, but the word of someone as powerful as Don Umberto could see me arrested and interrogated; he could easily find some other friar who disliked me enough to bear false testimony against me. Even so, through my fear, I registered that he had not mentioned della Porta. This could only mean that Raffaele had not told his father about my visits to Vomero either, otherwise Don Umberto would surely have stormed up there with his accusations.

  ‘I have never practised witchcraft,’ I managed eventually, dry-mouthed. ‘My lord. I am a student of theology.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ He threw back the last of the wine and wiped his chin. ‘Raffi said he thought you’d end up on the pyre, through your own stubbornness. Said you were the type.’ He poked his finger into my breastbone. ‘I will find out what happened to my son. And I will have justice for him, one way or another. You’d better learn to keep eyes in the back of your head, Giordano Bruno. I’ll be watching you.’ With that, he flung the empty glass into the fireplace for dramatic effect, and blazed out as it shattered.

  Perhaps Raffaele was right; perhaps I am the kind of man whose stubbornness will take him to the pyre. It seems to me that I am always half-listening for the knock on the door that announces the Inquisition. I make an outward show of obedience, but when I kneel to pray, I am hoping fervently for a time when men – yes, and women too, why not? – who seek knowledge and truth do not have to hide underground in fear of despots who cling to power by keeping people in the dark with their lies and worn-out superstitions. I pray I live long enough to see it.

  A CHRISTMAS REQUIEM

  Naples, December 1569

  When they told me the Pope wanted to see me, my first thought was that it must be a joke. My second was that it must be a trap.

  ‘For God’s sake, Giordano Bruno.’ The prior paced the good Turkey carpet in his study, hands clasped behind his back, black-and-white robes whisking about his legs so that he resembled a giant magpie. I knew then that the matter was serious; only extreme frustration could provoke the prior to take the name of Our Lord in vain. It happened a lot when he dealt with me. ‘Can you not comprehend what an honour this is for our convent? That His Holiness should condescend to show interest in a friar from San Domenico Maggiore – and you only twenty-one years old, and from a family of no distinction? It’s a mark of God’s favour, and your reluctance is nothing short of disobedience.’

  He stopped and fixed me with his corvine glare. I avoided his eye and looked instead at the hard December sky over Naples through the windows behind him.

  ‘Call it prudence, Most Reverend Prior,’ I said. ‘I can’t help wondering how His Holiness knows of me, and what he might have heard to prompt his interest.’

  ‘Oh, there is no mystery there,’ he said, resuming his steady steps. ‘Fra Agostino da Montalcino has the ear of one of the cardinals. It would seem you made a great impression on Fra Agostino during his recent visit to Naples, and he has been mentioning your name all over Rome. Word reached the Holy Father, and now here is your official invitation. I’m surprised you are not more animated by the prospect – I had thought you an ambitious young man.’ He arched one thin eyebrow as if challenging me to deny the charge.

  ‘Fra Agostino hates me,’ I said bluntly. ‘If my reputation in Rome is built on his reports, I’ll be walking straight into the arms of the Inquisition. And everyone knows Pope Pius V is …’ I let the sentence fall; even I had the sense not to insult the Pope to the prior of the most prestigious convent in Naples.

  ‘Zealous in his pursuit of purity,’ the prior finished for me. ‘Yes. Before he ascended the throne of St Peter, he was Grand Inquisitor. They say he still wears a hair shirt under his robes.’ The way he pursed his lips suggested that he considered such practices primitive, though he would never say as much. ‘And Fra Agostino did not hate you. He found you irritating, I grant, but he is hardly alone in that. It is entirely possible for someone to recognise and admire your intellectual gifts, Fra Giordano, even while finding you most infuriating in person.’

  I sensed we were no longer talking about Fra Agostino, so I changed the subject.

  ‘I had hoped to visit my family for the Octave of Christmas.’

  He made an exasperated noise and crossed to his desk, where he picked up and brandished the letter I had not been allowed to read.

  ‘This is not a suggestion, Fra Giordano.’ He flicked it with one finger. ‘It’s a summons. Pope Pius wants you to demonstrate your memory system. You are expected at the Vatican in time for the Christmas Masses. That is the end of the discussion. Your family will still be there next year in whatever godforsaken village you crawled out of when you joined the Dominican order.’

  ‘Nola,’ I muttered, drawing myself up. The prior, like all the senior brothers at San Domenico, was the younger son of a baron, raised in a palazzo until he exchanged the rich silks and servants of a nobleman for the rich silks and servants of a wealthy churchman. My hometown on the other side of Mount Vesuvius may have been small and rural, but it riled me to hear it insulted by a man who would never set foot there. ‘Makes the best olive oil in the kingdom.’

  He almost smiled. ‘I never heard of a village that didn’t claim that distinction. But you have left that life behind. Tell me – do you not wish to see the glories of Rome, make an impression on the most powerful men in Christendom?’

  I dipped my head in acknowledgement. ‘If I could be sure they were not going to burn me.’

  The prior rolled his eyes. ‘I would not send you if I thought that were likely,’ he said, smoothing the folded letter to a crisp edge between his fingertips. ‘Apart from anything else, it would reflect very badly on me. Just try not to do anything stupid.’

  I ran straight across the cloister to the infirmary in search of the wisest man in San Domenico. Fra Gennaro Ferrante was bent as usual over the workbench in his dispensary, mashing herbs to make a purgative for one of the elderly brothers whose kidneys were failing. At the sight of my face, he dismissed the young novice who was assisting him, as I once had, and wiped his hands on his apron.

  ‘But Fra Agostino hates you,’ he said, when I told him my news. ‘You made him look a fool in front of the entire convent by contradicting him in public.’

  I leaned back against the bench. ‘He made himself look a fool with his idiotic arguments. I merely pointed that out, in case anyone had failed to notice.’

  ‘Yes, and you had a church full of friars laughing at his expense. The head of the Dominican convent in Rome, Bruno, twenty years your senior, honouring us with an official visit, and some young upstart makes him a laughing stock in the middle of his sombre address?’ He shook his head. ‘If you did that to me, I would not respond by recommending you for preferment to the Pope.’

  ‘Perhaps Fra Agostino is a man of greater Christian charity than you, despite his stupidity.’

  ‘I doubt it. I saw his face when he stormed out.’

  ‘Then you agree that it must be a trap? I shouldn’t go?’

  He lifted a shoulder. ‘I don’t see that you have a choice. You can’t turn down the Holy Father. But you should not go alone. If you think religious politics in Naples is a nest of vipers, wait till you walk into the Vatican.’

  ‘You’ll come with me?’ I grasped at his sleeve, delighted; the prospect took on a different hue if Gennaro would be my companion. I had been to Rome only once, as a boy, and had hardly allowed myself to admit how much I wanted to see the Eternal City again, with its ancient ruins and new wonders of art and architecture. The prior was right; I was ambitious. But my ambitions did not tend in the right direction for a career in the Church. In Italy, it was acceptable to lust after wealth and power, even under such an austere pope as Pius V. What was not condoned was a desire for knowledge, for exploring beyond the limits of what the Church permitted us to know about the hea
vens, the earth, the human body, and my refusal to accept that the old ideas were true simply because it had always been so had already brought me the unwelcome attentions of the Inquisition.

  Gennaro laughed, and gestured to the tools of his trade lying on the workbench.

  ‘The prior would never allow me to go – I am needed here. But leave it with me. You will need powerful friends in Rome, if you have powerful enemies. I have an idea.’

  Two days later, the prior called me back to see him. He seemed less agitated this time; instead of pacing, he stood by the tall arched window in his office, looking out over the rooftops of the city towards the bay, while I hovered by the empty fireplace, uncertain as to whether I should sit without an invitation.

  ‘Do you know of Giambattista della Porta?’ he asked, turning swiftly to watch my reaction.

  I composed my face into what I hoped was a blank.

  ‘I have heard the name,’ I said carefully. Was this a trap? But if the prior had any reason to confront me about my association with della Porta, he could have done so long before now, I told myself. I clasped my hands together inside my sleeves to hide any tell-tale trembling.

  ‘Hm. Yes, he has a certain … reputation in Naples,’ the prior said, his lips tight. ‘But he is also a most generous benefactor to this convent.’

  ‘I – had no idea,’ I said. This, at least, was the truth.

  ‘Don Giambattista della Porta donates lavishly to San Domenico because we are the city’s Inquisitors, and for someone like him, it makes sense to keep the Inquisition on his side. Not that we can be bought, of course,’ he added quickly. ‘You know what is said of him, I presume?’

  His eyes fixed on mine; I gripped my hands tighter and fought not to swerve from that searching gaze.

  ‘I understand he is a patron of learning and a great collector of books.’