The door was closed behind Sidney, who strode over and squeezed my shoulder. He looked as exhausted as I felt.
“Langworth is taken,” he said, throwing himself into a chair and clicking his fingers at one of the clerks for a glass of wine. “Found him in his house trying to light a bonfire of his letters. Thankfully he had not progressed very far-should be enough to make interesting reading. But the bad news is that Becket is gone.”
“Under the floor,” I said, “at the eastern end, between two marble columns. I can show you the place.”
“No need.” He twisted his mouth in distaste, though I could not tell if it was at the wine or the outcome. “We found the place. The coffin is empty. Not so much as a holy toenail to be seen.”
“Langworth has moved him, then. He will tell you where.”
Sidney gave a grim laugh.
“Let us hope. When he is in the Tower he will be encouraged to tell us all manner of things.”
I winced. “Langworth must have told someone. There are no more guardians left-Kingsley and Sykes are dead, Fitzwalter is arrested.”
“Unless Fitzwalter was not the fourth guardian,” Hale said. “He swears he knows nothing of any relics. Admits to taking bribes from Langworth and Kingsley to smooth their financial interests, but nothing more. Of course, Fitzwalter is a coward,” he added, pursing his lips in disapproval. “He will say anything to spare himself hard questioning. We may yet learn something of use.”
“So there could be another guardian,” I mused. “If Langworth will not talk, we may never know where Becket is buried.”
“Oh, he will talk eventually,” Sidney said, as if there could be no dispute. He threw back the last of his wine and stood. “The pursuivants are all over Langworth’s house-I should go and see what more they have found. Then, Bruno, you and I deserve the finest supper this town can provide. We have much to talk about.” He gave me a meaningful look, stretched his arms above his head and cracked his neck from side to side, then swept out of the door again.
“I’ll tell you another thing-it’s a damned shame the physician Sykes was killed before he could be questioned,” Hale remarked, reading over his notes. “Now that is a curious business. Was it Langworth’s doing, do you think, Bruno? Stop him talking? Seems bizarre, if it was. You’d have thought Sykes was essential to the whole miracle plot.”
I hesitated. No one had yet mentioned Sophia. That meant only one of two things; either she was still hidden at Harry’s, or she had taken her chance to escape while the whole town was gathered at the assizes.
“Sykes’s housekeeper kept his appointment book, apparently,” Hale continued, in a tone of mild curiosity. “He made a note of all his patients so that he wouldn’t miss a fee. He was supposed to see the Widow Gray the morning he died but he never got there. The housekeeper says someone came to the door crying that there was an emergency, begged him to go with her there and then. She says Sykes didn’t even stop to write down the name of the patient or pick up his jacket, just went out like that in his shirtsleeves, with his bag of remedies.”
“It was a woman? At the door?”
“The housekeeper didn’t see, but she says it sounded like a woman’s voice. Curious. Well,” he put the paper aside and looked up, his jowls creasing into a weary smile. “I cannot worry about that now. Let us hear your story, Doctor Bruno, as quick as you can make it, so I can get back to my adulterers and coiners. Justice will not wait.” He rolled his eyes. “You,” he barked at the clerk to his right. “Sharpen your quill for this man’s words.”
So I gave my deposition from the beginning; how I had come to Canterbury at Sophia’s request; how Walsingham had asked me to keep an eye on Langworth; how Sir Edward Kingsley had led me to the murdered boys and the plot to revive the cult of Becket. I did not mention at any point that Sophia had travelled to Canterbury with me. Hale interrupted only once.
“Where is she now? This woman-Kingsley’s wife?”
I paused, weighing up my answer. Was this a test? Had Harry already told them she was at his house? Would the men who came to take Samuel have found her? Lying to the justice would not serve me well; I had lied for Sophia once before and Walsingham had given me strong words for it.
“I don’t know,” I answered, truthfully.
His eyes rested for a moment on my face with a practised scrutiny, then he nodded for me to continue.
When I had told my story-as much of it as I felt necessary for a deposition-he folded his hands together and pushed his chair back.
“An audacious scheme,” he murmured, shaking his head. “You almost have to admire them for it. To revive the shrine of Saint Thomas with a miracle of resurrection-extraordinary presumption. Ha!” A sudden laugh erupted as if from deep in his chest, and his clerks echoed it with polite titters. “That a man should think to mock the powers of God Almighty. Beggars belief.”
“Your Honour, the Catholic Church has been doing this for years. Red powder you shake up to make the blood of Christ. Statues of the Virgin with mechanisms that make them weep on Good Friday. Man is ingenious when it comes to aping miracles.”
“And others are more than apt to believe in them. By God, Doctor Bruno-the longer I do this job, the more I feel nothing could surprise me when it comes to the baseness of human nature. It’s a wonder Our Lord bothers with us at all.” He stretched out his legs under the desk and leaned back. “I wish some miracle would relieve me of this day’s business. I will have two armed men escort you to Harry Robinson’s, in case the mob are still restless.”
The streets were lively with people; the town seemed to have given itself a day’s holiday in honour of the assizes. If the crowds had been disappointed at being deprived of a spectacle at the gallows, they seemed mollified by the drama of the queen’s own soldiers coming to town to arrest their canon treasurer. This time there were no flying vegetables as I passed along the High Street in the company of my guards, but I felt the stares as I passed, the muted whispering, as if I were somehow more dangerous now that they did not know what to make of me.
Harry opened the door and his face gave me the answer I needed. The guards took their place unquestioningly outside and I stepped into the hall.
“She was gone when I came back from seeing the justice this morning,” he said, leaning heavily on his stick.
I nodded, summoning all my remaining strength to keep my jaw tight, my face steady.
“I have not had a chance to thank you for that,” I said. “You must have almost killed yourself getting there in time.”
“I knew he would not leave his lodgings until the last minute. His assistants did not want to admit me but I told them the safety of the realm was at stake. I may have mentioned the Privy Council.” He shifted position and sucked in a sharp breath, his face pinched with pain.
“You should get some sleep, Harry,” I said. “You look exhausted.”
“My leg is bad today. I have not walked so fast nor up so many stairs for months, and I can’t remember the last time I nearly killed a man in the middle of the night.” He tried to laugh but it ended with another wince. “Did you know she would be gone?”
“I guessed.”
“But you don’t know where?”
I shook my head and leaned against the wall, the exhaustion of the day and the previous night settling on my shoulders like a lead cloak. She must have realised that there was little hope of her being able to claim her inheritance as Kingsley’s widow if no one could be found guilty of his murder; perhaps she suspected that I would eventually piece together the truth. But the killing of Sykes had not been part of her plan. Had Olivier decided on that course alone after Sophia had related to Hélène what I had told her about finding Denis’s body? I pressed my palm to my forehead. Like Tom Garth, Olivier had believed there was no justice for people like him under the law. He had dispensed his own hot-blooded justice to Edward Kingsley and to Sykes, and part of me understood how a man might be driven to that. I could tell Hale, have the hue
and cry sent after them, but what would it achieve, in the end, if they were caught and hanged for the murder of two men whose actions-some might argue-had deserved a sentence of death? I sighed. In Oxford, I had stopped Sophia from running away because I thought I was saving her life. This time, I would let her go. There was a kind of justice in that, I thought.
“This might give you some idea,” Harry said. I looked up to see that he was holding out a letter, folded in quarters, unsealed. “I have not read it,” he said, quickly. “It was left on your mattress.”
“Thank you.” I took the letter and turned it between my fingers. “I–I think I will read it in my room. You should lie down. You look terrible.”
“Sleep won’t cure that,” he said, with an attempt at a grin, and shuffled away to the parlour, his breath rasping in his chest with every step.
The room was as she had left it, the bedsheet crumpled so that I almost fancied I could see the imprint of her body in it. I sat down and opened the letter.
Dear Bruno
By the time you read this your trial will be over. I cannot help but believe it will go your way; you can talk your way out of anything. Besides, you have a knack for survival, as I do. I had hoped you could talk me out of a murder charge and into my inheritance, but I see now that this was too much to ask. My best hope is to begin again, with a new name. I am growing so practised at this that I hardly know who I am any-more; I invent myself from day to day. You understand this, I think. You have understood me better than anyone, so you will understand, I hope, that just as I no longer have faith in God, neither can I trust in any man. Please do not think I am oblivious to everything you have done for me, and why. I do not think I can love again. The part of me that knew how to love was destroyed when my son was taken from me. You will say that I betrayed you; I still say you betrayed me in Oxford. You will find this hard to believe after what I have done, but I will miss you.
Perhaps we will meet again-I would like to think so. I cannot help but feel our destinies are tangled together somehow. Though if we do, I imagine you will want to murder me.
Yours
S.
I let the letter fall to my lap. To kill her? No. Perhaps. I placed one hand on the sheet beside me, as it might still contain some trace of her, and wondered where she would have run to with no money, no possessions … Then I closed my eyes. A cold realisation crept over me; I crumpled the letter in my fist and hurled myself across the bed to the corner where I had prised up the floorboard. The nails lay loosely scattered. I dug my fingers in and pulled the board away, tearing my fingernails in my haste. The wooden casket was gone. So was my purse, though it was a small consolation to see that she had left my little knife. I drew it out, weighed it in my hands for a moment. With a raw moan of rage I took the stairs two at a time; it was not too late to find them. I would go to Sidney, get him to order out the hue and cry; with men on every road out of Canterbury it would take no time to run them to ground like foxes, leave them cowering in a corner, begging for mercy. If she thought she could betray me twice, she would learn that I was not another of her doe-eyed boys, to be used and thrown away as it suited her. She would learn…
I stopped at the front door. If the hue and cry caught them, they would die for certain. In my anger I might wish Sophia to pay for deceiving me, but with her life? To exchange two young lives for a book; could I live with myself? I leaned my forehead against the wall, pushed my hands through my hair, called down all the curses I knew in every language I had ever learned until they all merged into incoherent, racking sobs. I did not lift my face away from the wall even when I heard that familiar shuffle-and-drag and felt a hand rest on my shoulder.
Harry did not speak until I had exhausted myself into silence.
“You will mend, son,” he said, looking past me to the window. “I did. Safer, in the end, to travel alone.”
Chapter 18
Morning light in jewel-coloured patches on golden stone; the cool hush of the cathedral before Holy Communion. I stared at a bare patch of floor; the wavering shadows on an empty wall, and tried to picture Thomas Becket standing where I now stood, when he was just a man like any other, but perhaps more stubborn, before England turned him into a conjuring show encrusted with gold. When he looked towards that door on his left to see the knights thundering towards him, swords drawn, he could never have imagined how his death would ripple out through four hundred years of history.
“Pax vobiscum, Thomas,” I whispered. “Wherever you are.”
Sidney appeared at my shoulder.
“Praying to saints, Bruno? Do I need to call the pursuivants? We could make room for you in the cart beside Langworth if you’re slipping back into popery.”
I forced a smile and craned my neck up to the vaulted arches a hundred feet above, their tracery fanning out like some great stone forest in a legend.
“Do you think he’s still here somewhere?”
“Becket?” Sidney sniffed. “If he is, Langworth will tell us where. If not, the queen will speak directly to the archbishop, tell him to get down here and have some care for his See. They’ll have every last tomb in this place torn up, if that’s what it takes. She won’t want Becket lurking like a snake under a stone ready to jump up and bite her at any moment. Listen, Bruno.” He turned, suddenly serious. “The girl. If Walsingham should ask …”
After supper the night before, when the two of us had sat up late in Sidney’s room at the Cheker, I had told him about Sophia, Olivier, the book, Kingsley, Sykes. I had asked his advice.
“Let them go,” he had said, when he had heard me out. “No one should die for a book, Bruno-though I’ll wager you would, if it came to it. What will she do with it? She can’t read it, can she?”
“She will sell it,” I had replied. “And then there is no knowing whose hands it might fall into. It’s my own fault-I should not have told her it was valuable.”
“You should not have done a lot of things where she’s concerned,” he had said. “But it is done now. What matters is protecting you from Walsingham’s wrath. Her crime was not political, but he is scrupulous on points of law. He won’t like to think you let a murderer go free because your softer feelings mastered you.”
“Say only that she has gone her way,” I said now, looking back to the floor where Becket’s brains had once been scattered.
“I have been thinking,” he said, lowering his voice. “The servant Samuel will be in no state to contradict anything that is put to him. A confession will be eased from him as soon as he is fit to sign his own name. I don’t see why he can’t be made to confess to the murders of Kingsley and Sykes on Langworth’s orders as well as the apothecary. It would leave things tidy.”
“Falsify a confession?”
“He’s going to die anyway, Bruno, either at the end of a rope or from that crack in his skull Harry fetched him. Come on. It’s not as if we’d be condemning an innocent man.”
Seeing me hesitate, he clicked his tongue impatiently. “If you lose Walsingham’s trust, you lose any hope of a place at the English court. I cannot do it for you.”
I nodded. “I understand.”
“Good. That is settled, then. Take my advice now, Bruno, for what it is worth.” He took me by the shoulders and bent his knees to look me straight in the eye. “You have risked your life for her twice, and twice she has deceived you. Wherever she has gone, whoever she is with-forget her.”
I looked away.
“You think it is that simple?”
“No,” he said, suddenly vehement. “No, I don’t. Of course I don’t.” He let his hands fall abruptly and stalked off towards the door. After a few paces he turned back, his face full of an emotion I had not seen in him before. “Penelope Devereux,” he said, in a quieter voice.
“Who?”
“The one I can’t forget.”
I looked at him for a moment, the agitation in his face. I had read enough of Sidney’s poetry to know that the braggadocio covered finer fee
lings, but he had never spoken to me directly of any unrequited love.
“And where is she now?”
“Married to someone else. I can’t change that. Do what I did, Bruno. Write her a fucking poem and learn to live with it.”
“Will it help?”
“No.” He grinned, but there was still pain in his eyes. “But it fills up the time. Come, the horses are ready at the gatehouse. Let us shake the dust of this place off our heels. There have been no certified cases of plague in London, you know. Another two weeks and the court will return.”
“There is one thing I need to do before we leave,” I said. “Lend me one of your armed men, will you?”
The door of the weavers’ house was opened by Olivier’s father, who flinched when he saw me as surely as if I had struck him. I saw his eyes flit fearfully over my shoulder to where my companion stood at a discreet distance with his pikestaff.
“Non, monsieur,” he faltered, shrinking, and made as if to close the door in my face, but I stuck my foot in the gap and leaned in.
“Listen, Pastor Fleury,” I said, in French, “I know enough to put your whole family in front of the justice if I choose. He is still at the Cheker. You know the assize is not officially closed until he leaves town?”
“What do you want?” he asked, looking at my foot as if he would like to spit on it.
“I want to speak to Hélène.” I nodded over my shoulder to the guard. “He will stay out there.”
“For all the neighbours to see.” Fleury closed the door behind and heaved a great sigh. A lifetime of fear was written into the lines on his face; I was sorry to contribute further.
“I wish you no harm,” I said.
He looked at me with infinite pity.
“Monsieur, you are the kind who brings harm without meaning it. You and that girl. I will take you up to my daughter now, but please do not trouble us for long.”
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