The Heretic's Mark

by S. W. Perry

  Matteo Fedele is a gentle-looking lad of about seventeen, lean-hipped, with soft grey eyes and black hair swept back over the crown of his head and tied in a knot at the nape of his neck. The cleft in his upper lip gives him the air of a vulnerable child. Nicholas learns he is Galileo’s pupil, one of several who live in the house. Matteo has taken on some of his teacher’s rustic earthiness, but it sits uncomfortably on such a diffident character. He spreads the parchments that he brings with him over the bench in the courtyard with a flourish. On one, Nicholas sees clever drawings with Latin annotations: quadrants of cog-wheels; balances shown from above and from the side; coiled springs and levers; flywheels and drums wrapped with chain; sections of meridians with the lugs and holes intended to connect them – all clearly drawn for the instruction of the artisans who will carve, hammer or forge them. On another sheet he sees diagrams of the constellations shown from different latitudes; pictorial renderings of the zodiac; images of planets and stars, some with fiery tails drawn to show their movement through an imaginary heaven.

  Matteo Fedele beams with obvious satisfaction. ‘The ability to place the planets and the stars correctly in any quadrant of the heavens, and to show them accurately from any latitude, at any date, will make astrology and astronomy the foremost of all the sciences,’ he announces. Nicholas thinks it best not to tell him he hasn’t cast a horoscope when making a diagnosis since long before Eleanor died.

  ‘Imagine it, Nicholas,’ Bruno says proprietorially, ‘to be able to turn the engine through year upon year in a few cranks of a handle, and so be able to look into the future and say which day was auspicious and which was not; to establish if Church doctrine is correct in the matter of the earth’s place in the cosmos; perhaps even to foretell great events by the accurate positioning of the planets and the stars. What would a prince not pay for such a window through which to view God’s plan?’

  ‘The plan is certainly ambitious,’ Nicholas admits.

  ‘That dog Santucci’s sphere is astounding enough. But the Barrani sphere will have the men of the new learning beating a path to our door.’

  It is said in English. And as Bruno raises his wine cup again in a toast to the project, he does not glance at either Galileo or Matteo Fedele – leaving Nicholas to wonder just how many members of the Arte dei Astronomi know it is to be called the Barrani sphere.

  For the first time since their arrival in Padua, evening brings a cooling north wind that carries away the worst of the heat. Nicholas, Bruno and Bianca walk arm-in-arm back to the house in the Borgo dei Argentieri. Mellowed by wine and good company, Nicholas is in a happy, optimistic mood. Signor Galileo has promised to introduce him to the professor of anatomy at the university, the man the world of medicine knows as Fabricius, but whom the mathematician calls by his Italian name: Girolamo Fabrici.

  The offer has given him reason to think his stay in Padua might prove more beneficial than he’d thought. A few months’ study under the famous physician would give an insight into the latest advances in surgery. It would improve his Latin no end. And on his return to England it would give him a status that the College of Physicians would be unable to deny. As the trio enters the great square in front of the Basilica of St Anthony, Nicholas feels a sense of peace he hasn’t felt in all the long miles since Den Bosch.

  Ahead of him, the six domes of the basilica are washed with a pale-saffron light from the setting sun. Across the city, church bells ring out for Vespers. The sound echoes through the narrow streets, rolling around the church towers like a wave breaking against a sturdy harbour pile.

  And then Nicholas sees him. There – at that counter, the one that spans the narrow front between this lane and the next. The man in the grey coat!

  In the time it takes his eyes to settle on the figure inspecting the wares for sale – old lantern frames without the glass in them – Nicholas has already chided himself for being overly suggestible. But then he sees the awkward feigning of interest in the man’s exaggerated movements; and the trunk-hose showing above his broad-rimmed boots, and the black cloth hat he wears even though most men in the square are bare-headed in the warm evening air.

  ‘Hey, you!’ Nicholas shouts as he sprints towards the counter, leaving Bianca and Bruno to stare after him. ‘Hold a moment. I want to speak to you!’

  He hasn’t gone more than six paces before the man drops the lantern frame he was inspecting so unconvincingly and bolts round the corner into the adjacent lane.

  Nicholas reaches the counter in less than two tolls of St Anthony’s bell. Taking the corner into the lane the man has just vanished into, he stumbles. He throws out a steadying hand. Lantern frames clatter onto the cobbles. With a muttered apology to the counter owner – who stares at him in anger – Nicholas dives into the shadows after his quarry.

  He can see him ahead in the lane, dodging people as he tries to put distance between himself and his pursuer. Nicholas offers more breathless grunts of apology to passers-by as he weaves after him. He doesn’t know where the lane goes. But from the way the fellow keeps glancing to either side, evidently hoping for a crossroads that he can escape down, Grey-coat doesn’t know, either.

  Nicholas is almost brought to a halt by a matron in a colourful gown and wide-brimmed hat. She’s ushering two veiled daughters across the lane to inspect a shoe stall. She regards him with disgust; mutters something in Italian that is clearly not complimentary; shoos her daughters ahead of her to avoid the maniac gasping at her in a foreign tongue. Glancing over his shoulder, Nicholas sees Bruno and Bianca enter the lane, their bemused faces flushed with the effort of trying to catch up with him, frightened he’s taken leave of his senses. For an instant he considers abandoning the chase. But only for an instant.

  Reaching the spot where his quarry seemed to disappear, he sees the entrance to a narrow side-street. A fleeting glimpse of grey catches his eye. He follows. Within moments he is deep inside an unfamiliar part of the city, uttering breathless apologies – in Italian now – to everyone he barges past. He knows exactly how this would play out on Bankside: a foreigner racing through the lanes and alleys as though all the demons in hell were on his heels. The dangers inherent in what he’s doing are not lost on him.

  A few more paces and the man in the grey coat glances over his shoulder. Seeing that Nicholas is gaining on him, he sprints on past a small group of young men in bright hose and jerkins, then suddenly makes a dart to one side. Nicholas sees one half of a pair of embossed bronze doors swing open, shielding the man from his sight. When the door swings closed, he has gone.

  As Nicholas reaches the place, two of the young gallants pick that moment to step further into the lane. Nicholas cannons into one of them, stumbles, rights himself and once more offers an apology. Oblivious to the angry response he gets, he sees that the doors form the entrance to a small church. He throws yet another muttered apology at the young gallant rubbing his bruised arm, pulls open one of the heavy doors and goes inside.

  He has a sudden, unsummoned guilty recollection: of slipping late into one of Parson Olicott’s Sunday sermons at Barnthorpe. He’d been fifteen. His excuse, prepared behind the tithe barn even while Yeoman Deary’s oldest daughter was letting him insert a hand beneath her kirtle: It’s taken longer than I thought to sharpen the sickles.

  It takes a few moments for his sight to adjust to the darkness. For a while, all he can see is an inky blackness broken by slivers of golden light. What dominate his senses are the smell of incense and the chanting of pious voices.

  As his eyes become accustomed to the interior, a small congregation seated in wooden pews emerges from the darkness. At the far end of the church is a gilded altar. Behind it, a garishly pink Jesus hangs from His cross, His bowed wooden head surrounded by golden rays of painted sunlight. A priest in a black robe is pouring the blood of the living Christ into a silver cup. Once again Nicholas feels the shock that comes with proximity to a practice that almost everyone he knows in England would consider amongst the very wo
rst of blasphemies: the consumption of the real blood and flesh of their saviour. Just to be in this place would, for all but recusants like Bianca and John Lumley, put him in danger of damnation. But at this moment the safety of his eternal soul is of secondary importance to finding his quarry.

  His sight regained, Nicholas scans the congregation from his place at the back of the church. All he sees are shoulders and the backs of pious heads. None of the shoulders are grey. None of the heads wear a black cloth cap.

  He can recall little of the man’s features from the sighting at the hospice in St Bernard’s pass, but he can hardly demand that everyone turns towards him for inspection. Even less can he stride to the altar, push the priest out of the way and view them from the front. He sinks back against the doors, in the hope that no one will take too much of an interest in his arrival. The man will have to leave eventually.

  Unless, of course, there’s another way out. He searches the shadows either side of the candlelit altar. The priest’s softly spoken Latin sings to him like a dangerous lullaby: Suscipe, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus...

  As sure as he can be that there is no way of leaving the church other than through the doorway he came in by, Nicholas lets his eyes linger on the congregation, looking for someone sitting on his own – someone with a hint of the hunted about him.

  Three different men draw his attention. Each wears a jerkin or coat that might be grey. But it is too dark to be certain. If one of them is the fellow Nicholas has chased, he’s taken off his cap, out of respect for his surroundings. And there is no way of getting closer to any of them without drawing attention to himself.

  He feels the door move at his back. A glint of evening sunlight from the street, and Bianca is beside him. One or two of the congregation in the rear pews turn their heads and tut.

  ‘What in the name of Jesu are you doing?’ she whispers. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? You took flight as though the Devil was after you. You’ve left a trail of destruction and outraged Paduans all the way from St Anthony’s!’

  ‘Didn’t you see him – the fellow at the lantern stall?’

  ‘What fellow?’

  ‘The one in the grey coat and the black cap. The one from the monastery in the mountains – the one who’s been following us all the way from Reims.’

  ‘All I know, Nicholas, is that one moment I was talking to Bruno about finding him a wife, and the next my husband was off like a spaniel after a coney.’

  ‘He’s here. I chased him into this church.’

  Bianca, having forgotten herself in the heat of the moment, genuflects in the direction of the priest. Then, turning back to Nicholas, she says, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure the sun hasn’t fried your brains?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. He’s here. Or if he isn’t, there’s another way out of this church that I haven’t seen.’

  More heads turn towards them. More tutting.

  ‘Then the best thing we can do is to wait out there,’ Bianca says, tugging at his sleeve and nodding in the direction of the street, ‘before you bring down the wrath of Holy Mother Church upon our heads.’

  Reluctantly, Nicholas accepts the wisdom of her advice. Opening the heavy bronze door as quietly as he can, he follows her outside.

  Immediately the setting sun low over the rooftops opposite almost dazzles him. Human shapes are momentarily turned into hazy grotesques. He hears squealing and the thwack of cane on hide as someone drives a pig across his path, an indistinct blur of pink teardrops floating just above the cobbles.

  And then someone pushes him violently.

  As his eyes focus, he sees the young gallant he cannoned into on his way into the church. He has a look about him as sharp as the rapier he wears at his belt. One hand is held below his nose, flicking at his nostrils with a thumb in a gesture of contempt, the other already lifting steel from its scabbard. He lets loose a tirade in Italian too fast for Nicholas to fully catch, though the meaning is clear. Behind him, his companions are lending moral support by jeering and catcalling.

  On Bankside – Nicholas knows – fatal street fights can easily begin with an imagined insult, an inadvertent jolt, a misunderstood glance. He has no reason to think Padua is any different. He raises his hands and lowers his head apologetically, trying to defuse the situation.

  It doesn’t work. He finds himself staring at the rapier’s tip hovering barely a foot from his throat, brilliant beads of light reflected in the needle-sharp steel. And when his eyes are drawn along the blade to the youth who holds it, he can see in his eyes not sunlight, but murder. With his attention fixed on the sword point menacing his throat, Nicholas catches only the indistinct impression of movement to his left. One of the youth’s companions seems to be offering him something. Then the lad holding the rapier steps back.

  Now Nicholas can see that the second fellow is presenting him with the hilt of his own weapon, the curved knuckle-guard and the cross-quillons rising and falling like the head of a flower stirred by a gentle breeze as the supple steel of the blade flexes. Jesu, he thinks, they want me to fight a duel.

  ‘Forgive me, it was an accident. I intended no insult,’ he says lamely in Italian, knowing that if Padua is anything like London, a foreign accent will only make things worse. He makes a crossing motion of his hands to show he wants nothing to do with the rapier he’s being offered. ‘Spada… non posso…’ he manages, in a mangled effort to explain that he has little skill at swordplay.

  And then little Bruno Barrani is amongst them, roaring like a lion and letting fly a violent reprimand, though it’s delivered too speedily for Nicholas to catch more than a few words. He seems quite untroubled that he’s outnumbered, unarmed and a head shorter than any of the gallants. But the rapier comes down. The youth looks sullenly at Nicholas, calls him a foreign dog and then leads his companions resentfully to the other side of the street, where he glares at his lost opportunity like an alley cat deprived of its kill.

  Nicholas breathes again. ‘What did you say?’ he asks as Bianca hurries to his side.

  ‘I told them I’m a member of the Podestà’s council, and that duelling is forbidden in public. I told them if they persisted, they’d find themselves enjoying a spot of rowing – in the galleys.’

  ‘I think I owe you my life, Bruno,’ Nicholas says, realizing his hands are shaking.

  ‘Then my debt is cleared,’ Bruno says happily. ‘But I think we should go now.’

  ‘I can’t. He’s still inside that church.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fellow I was chasing. Didn’t you see him?’

  Bruno looks perplexed. ‘All I know is that you set off as though you’d caught sight of a tax collector. Who, in the name of the Holy Mother, were you chasing?’

  ‘Someone who’s been following us from Brabant. I think he may be in the pay of the English Privy Council. I have to wait for him to leave, so that I can confront him.’

  Bruno’s face darkens. ‘You’ve done enough confronting for one day. I don’t think you appreciate the situation. If you don’t leave now, that fellow with the rapier and his friends will track you down and throw you in the Bacchiglione in a sack weighted with rocks. And I’m not sure he was speaking in jest. If they get their blood hot again, I cannot guarantee I will be able to cool it a second time.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Bianca says, tugging at Nicholas’s sleeve. ‘I didn’t come all this way only to lose you in a silly street quarrel. Please.’

  Reluctantly, he turns away. As he follows Bruno back out of the lane he can feel malevolent stares burning into the nape of his neck. Angry gallants, drunk on pride, he can ignore. What troubles Nicholas more is the knowledge that with the appearance of Grey-coat in the city, the destination Bianca has brought him to is no longer the sanctuary either of them had imagined.

  ‘Now we know the truth. It wasn’t Hella Maas our friend was following, it was us. Me.’

  Nicholas cups the back of his head in his hands, splays his elbows and l
eans back on the bolster. It is midnight. Their chamber in the house in the Borgo dei Argentieri is in darkness, save for a single oil lamp burning on a clothes chest by the window. Outside in the street, revellers are making their way home to the accompaniment of someone playing a mandolin badly. It almost masks the sounds of Bruno’s contented snoring from the adjoining room.

  ‘He could have been following us all the way from Den Bosch,’ Bianca says, lying against him while she traces the contours of his shoulder with an index finger. ‘Perhaps it’s just a matter of chance that we didn’t see him until Reims.’

  Nicholas considers this awhile in silence. The list of possibilities is a short one. He says, ‘Either he’s a friend, sent by Robert Cecil to report on our whereabouts. Or he is an enemy, sent by the Privy Council for much the same reason.’

  ‘If he’s the former – a friend – why did he not stop when you called him? Why did he run?’

  ‘I cannot tell,’ Nicholas says with a shrug, ‘He certainly didn’t want to be caught.’

  ‘So he must be an enemy?’

  Nicholas lets out a long, slow exhalation. ‘Very probably.’

  ‘What if he’s not alone?’ Bianca asks.

  It is a question Nicholas has asked himself more than once, from the moment he spotted the man loitering so unconvincingly at the lantern stall. He imagines a dark night in the near future, Alonso or Luca – perhaps both – bribed to leave the street door unbolted. The soft scrape of covert boot-leather on the stairs. A sudden rush taking the sleeping victim before he knows what’s happening. Hands tied. Woollen cape thrown over the head to keep the cries of surprise to a minimum. A hurried bundling through the darkened streets to the Brenta canal and a waiting boat. Then the journey to the Venetian lagoon – barely twenty miles away – trussed up and gagged beneath some innocent-looking cargo. An English merchant barque moored there, primed to expect a last-minute addition to its load, an addition that must be carried home with all dispatch. It wouldn’t be the first time a perceived enemy of England has been snatched from what he imagined was a safe exile.