Sacrilege: A Novel

by S. J. Parris

  The girl blushed and giggled, but the laughter quickly faded on her lips as she turned back to the shuttered windows.

  “I hope nothing’s wrong. It’s not like him to be late. I’ve tried knocking, but there’s no reply and I can’t see a thing inside.” She bit her lip again.

  I pressed my face to the nearest window, shading my face as she had done. The shutters were old and it was just possible to glimpse the inner room through chinks and splits in the wood, but the shop was so dim I could barely make out the shape of the shelves lining the walls.

  “Sometimes he doesn’t hear if he’s in the back room with the stills all boiling and bubbling,” the girl continued, just as something caught my eye inside the shop: a pale shape on the floor. I squinted harder, closing my hands around my face to shut out every slant of daylight, and realised it was a book, lying faceup, its pages spread. It was not the only item on the floor either. Though I could not make out much, it looked as if the contents of the apothecary’s shelves had been scattered carelessly around the shop. Apprehension tightened in my chest.

  “Is there another entrance to the shop?” I asked. The words came sharper than I meant and I saw my own anxiety reflected in her face.

  “There is a yard, at the back,” she faltered. “It gives on to the back room and my uncle’s lodging above the shop. But why …?”

  “I think I should check. You wait here.”

  She nodded, her lips set with fear. I found a small alley running down the side of the shop next door; it led to a narrow lane behind the row of buildings on the High Street, their yards hidden by a brick wall perhaps six feet high. A small wooden gate in the wall proved locked from the inside, but it took little effort to climb and I dropped into the apothecary’s yard, one hand on my knife. The door to the back room of the shop was closed, the casements to either side intact. But when I tried the door it opened easily and I saw Fitch sprawled facedown in the room he had used as a distillery, a pool of blood congealed around his head.

  I took a deep breath. The room was stiflingly hot, despite the early hour, and ripe with the smell of blood and meat. Flies buzzed purposefully around the body, the sound intrusively loud in the stillness. I crossed the room slowly, absorbing the devastation. My feet crunched across broken glass; there had clearly been a struggle in the room, for the apothecary’s glass bottles were smashed across the floor, sticky patches of liquid visible on the boards where their contents had spilled. Blood was spattered across the walls in places, and smeared on the floorboards, as if Fitch had not simply fallen where he lay, but careened around the room spraying blood from his wound before dropping. An iron poker lay discarded a couple of feet from the body; was this the weapon that had struck him down, or had he tried to defend himself with it?

  I looked from the poker to the wide brick fireplace and understood the source of the room’s infernal heat: a few embers were still smoking in the hearth. I picked my way through the mess on the floor to take a look. A blackened pot hung over the fire on an iron spit. I picked up a small bellows that lay in the hearth and squeezed it towards the ashes; a faint red glow coughed into life for a moment before fading in a cloud of grey dust. It had been some hours since this fire was stoked; if the apothecary kept it burning in this room to make his infusions, he must have been killed the night before. I wiped the sweat from my brow with my sleeve, and shook my head, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of what I had walked into. I had come to investigate one murder and stumbled by chance upon another; now the law would require me to testify as the first finder of the body, and there could be no pretending otherwise, since the girl was waiting outside for me. But who could have wanted to kill the cheerful apothecary? He had not given the impression yesterday that he was a man with anything to fear.

  As I stood staring into the empty hearth, trying to decide how I should proceed, I noticed among the ashes a few scraps of burnt paper. Intrigued, I bent closer and realised that under the charred logs was a mass of blackened paper fragments; someone had clearly thrown a bundle of documents onto the fire not long before it was allowed to die. Most were reduced to ash, but one or two had fluttered to the back of the fireplace and escaped the worst of the flames. Pulling up my shirtsleeve, I reached in and hooked out the truant pages. They were badly burned around the edges, but in the centre some of the writing was still legible, through brown patches left by the heat and smoke. One appeared to be a page torn from the great ledger Fitch had used the day before when he recorded my purchase for his accounts. Almost none of the writing was left visible, though I could make out the line “mercury & antimony salts …” and beside it the name “Ezek. Syk …”

  The second surviving page was more interesting; I held it towards the window and tried to make sense of the words I read.

  “After Paracelsus,” it said, at the top, “according to his Archidoxes.” The next few lines had been rendered obscure by the fire. But beneath, the word “laudanum” stood out clearly, followed by what looked like instructions for a remedy. “Mixed with one part rosemary oil and one part good wine and distilled will bring on the sleep of Morpheus …” Again the writing disappeared, but below whatever had been scorched away I read the word “Belladonna.” Underneath, the author had underlined the following sentence twice, so heavily the quill had pierced the paper: “No more than eight grains diluted while under the influence, though double may be tolerated by… [these next two words were illegible]. Dosis sola facit venenum.”

  The dose alone makes the poison. I knew this maxim of Paracelsus, the great Swiss alchemist and physician who had died some forty years earlier; he argued that all substances were potentially beneficial, even those we call toxic, and that the art of medicine was in judging the quantity and exposure that would heal rather than kill. But he argued a lot more besides; in his alchemical studies, Paracelsus had been a student of the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian sage whose wisdom I had studied, though in Paris it had earned me a reputation as a sorcerer. Needless to say, the writings of Paracelsus had been forbidden by my order when I was still a monk and I had risked much to track them down and study them. I recalled paying a substantial sum of money to a black-market bookseller in Naples for a copy of the Archidoxes of Magic, a treatise on medicine and alchemy that drew on the movements of the planets and the secrets of astrology. It was not a work I would have expected to find in the shop of a provincial apothecary, but perhaps there was more to Fitch than had been apparent in his breezy, village-gossip manner.

  Nothing more could be made out; I turned the paper over but it offered no further clues. In the silence of the room I could hear the blood pounding in my ears as I struggled to make sense of the fragment. Holding it between my fingers as if it might crumble to dust at any moment, I forced my eyes back to the body on the floor.

  There was no need to move Fitch to see that his skull had been staved in, though the face and neck were also badly battered, suggesting his assailant had not felled him with the first blow. His limbs had already stiffened into grotesque contortions, one arm thrown forward next to the face. Crouching beside him, I closed my eyes for a moment and laid my fingertips on the sleeve of his shirt, hard and crusted with dried blood, as a mark of respect, trying to imagine the scene that must have ensued not long after I had bid him goodbye with a promise to return in the morning for his tonic. The killing seemed the frenzied work of a madman—Fitch must have been chased around his distillery, desperately trying to fight off his attacker—but the burnt pages in the fireplace suggested something different. Who had thrown them into the flames? Fitch, to prevent someone from seeing them, or whoever had struck him down?

  My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. I had forgotten the girl, Rebecca, waiting outside. Now I stepped carefully around the dead apothecary and through the narrow doorway into the shop. This room too was in a state of chaos, as I had seen through the shutters; books had been pulled from shelves and lay scattered about, and an earthenware jar, knock
ed to the ground, had broken to spill its contents—a pungent yellow powder—across the reeds that covered the stone floor. Empty spaces gaped on a number of the shelves where objects had evidently been hastily removed and not replaced.

  The knock came again and I heard the girl calling, “Hello?” Crossing to the front door, I found it locked, with the key still in the keyhole. Whoever had killed Fitch must have left through the back, then. But the door had not been forced; the apothecary must have opened it to his attacker. As I turned the key, my hand froze and my breath caught in my throat as I recalled the physician Sykes in his absurd plague mask, thundering in and demanding that Fitch lock up the shop to give him private audience.

  “Uncle William?” the girl asked from the other side of the door, her voice doubtful. I pulled it open just a fraction; as soon as she saw me, her lip trembled. “Where is he?”

  “You must go for a constable right away,” I said, keeping my voice low. A couple of goodwives with covered baskets had stopped in the street behind the girl and were watching the door with lively curiosity. “Don’t stop to speak to anyone—just bring him as fast as you can. Do you know where to find one?”

  “I want to see my uncle! What has happened?” She planted herself stubbornly on the threshold, her voice loud enough to attract further attention from passersby. I motioned with a finger against my lip.

  “I’m afraid your uncle has met with an accident.”

  “Oh, God!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and set up a wail that threatened to rouse the whole street.

  “Please—you must fetch a constable.” Perhaps the urgency in my voice lent it some authority; she stopped her noise abruptly, looked at me uncertainly for a moment, and nodded. “Bring him around the back,” I added, giving one sharp look to the staring women before closing the shop door and locking it again. Nothing draws a crowd like a violent death, and I felt the dead man deserved better than to be made into a spectacle for gawping market-goers.

  In the gloom, I bent to look at one of the books that had been thrown onto the floor. It was a volume of A New Herbal by William Turner, dog-eared and clearly well-used by a reader who had meticulously annotated and illustrated the margins of almost every page. Squinting, I held up the fragment of paper I had rescued from the embers against the book; the hand was the same as that of the notes scribbled on the pages, which it seemed reasonable to assume was that of Fitch himself. So the papers in the fire, with their curious reference to Paracelsus, had been written by the apothecary—but why had they been thrown into the flames? Without quite knowing why, I folded the charred paper and tucked it into the purse I carried at my belt.

  The smell of dead meat by now was almost overpowering; I decided to wait for the constable outside the back door. Still I found it hard to tear my eyes from the corpse. I had looked on violent death many times in my life, especially in the past couple of years, yet it never ceased to chill me, the fragility of our bodies, the way a life can be snuffed out quicker than a candle. Presently the sound of brisk footsteps interrupted this reverie, followed by a rap at the gate in the back wall. I hurried to open the latch and found myself face-to-face with the ginger-haired man whom I had noticed in the marketplace by the cathedral gate the previous evening. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to place me, stroking his pointed beard, then waved me aside.

  “Carey Edmonton, constable of this parish. An accident, the girl said?”

  “I didn’t want to alarm her. This was no accident—the apothecary has been murdered in his distillery.”

  The constable simply stared, as if he had not understood.

  “Murder? How do you know?”

  “Take a look.”

  He continued to regard me a moment longer, as if he was not certain whether to believe me, before asserting himself by brushing past and in through the open doorway, where he stopped abruptly as if slapped, gagging on the smell.

  “What in God’s name has happened here?” he whispered, almost to himself, his words muffled by the sleeve he pressed to his mouth. He took a step back and turned to me again, as if expecting me to make sense of the sight before him.

  “He was beaten to death, but it seems he put up a brave fight before he was felled. The street door was locked from the inside, but this back door was open, though the gate from the yard to the alleyway was padlocked from the inside.”

  Edmonton took his hand slowly from his mouth and stepped back into the yard, frowning as if noticing me properly for the first time.

  “How did you get in, then? And who the Devil are you to be poking around?”

  “My name is Filippo Savolino. I came as a customer—yesterday Master Fitch had promised me a remedy. I found the girl outside, anxious because she could get no reply, so I offered to see what was wrong. When I couldn’t open the gate, I climbed the wall.”

  He pulled at his beard again.

  “I see. I have seen you before, have I not? Loitering about the Buttermarket, as I recall.”

  “I was not loitering—I was on my way to visit my friend the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson at the cathedral,” I said, stung by his tone. “You will see a great disturbance in the shop,” I continued, trying to sound more placatory as I led him through to the front room. “It seems to me that whoever killed the apothecary was looking for something on his shelves.”

  “A robbery, then,” the constable said, as if the business required no further consideration. He glanced at the mess on the floor, set his jaw, and nodded to himself. “Since the plague fears in London, we have more than our share of vagabonds and beggars littering the streets. Probably one of them, looking for gold or whatever he could sell. I’ll have them rounded up—we’ll soon find the villain that did this.” He shot a brief glance back at the workshop and sniffed. “He was a good man, William Fitch, well liked by the townspeople. There’ll be a great deal of anger against the incomers for this.”

  “And yet it seems that Master Fitch readily admitted his attacker himself without suspicion, since the shop was locked from the inside, and there is no sign of force,” I said. “And see, here—it is mainly books and papers pulled from the shelves, as if the person was looking for something quite specific. I am not persuaded that this was an ordinary robbery.” I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should mention the appearance of Sykes the previous evening, but decided against it; the physician was clearly a prominent citizen of Canterbury and any suggestion that he might be implicated would only draw unwelcome attention to myself.

  The constable folded his arms across his chest and his moustache twitched as his lip curled into a sneer.

  “Oh, you are not persuaded? And who are you to offer opinions either way? Are you a parish constable? I think not. You are not even a parishioner.”

  I held up my hands as if to mitigate any offence.

  “I beg your pardon, Constable. I was only thinking aloud.”

  He grunted.

  “I shall want testimony from you and the girl. Where will I find you?”

  “At the Cheker of Hope.”

  “Good. Do not leave the city, Master …”

  “Savolino. I won’t.”

  He nodded curtly and gestured towards the back gate.

  “Now leave me to my job, if you please.”

  I bowed slightly and crossed to the door, with a last glance back at the workshop of the unfortunate apothecary. A more thorough search of the place would yield better evidence of the killer, I was sure, but I pulled the front door closed behind me, telling myself that it was no longer my business. I had enough to do to find one murderer, let alone another that had nothing to do with me, and it was only the merest chance that I had discovered the death of Fitch. And yet, as I emerged into the light of the High Street to see a little gaggle of interested observers gathered around the shopfront, I had to acknowledge that hiding that fragment of paper, with its mysterious reference to Paracelsus, was as good as admitting I could not let the matter go. The constable would find some hapless vagran
t to blame in order to satisfy the townspeople, who would cheer for his hanging, and all would be forgotten, while the murderer congratulated himself. This was what passed for justice, more often a question of avoiding public unrest than of discovering the truth. This is not your problem, I told myself again, but the apothecary’s murder troubled me, perhaps because the manner of it was so similar to the killing of Sir Edward Kingsley.

  I noticed the girl Rebecca at the heart of the crowd, wailing loudly and being comforted by the two stout women who had been watching earlier. No one paid me any attention, so I took the opportunity to slip away towards the weavers’ houses.

  A man in his fifties answered the door of the Fleury house. He had greying hair, a full moustache and wore a beaten expression, as if hardship and exhaustion had robbed him of any vital spirit. He looked me up and down, as if I were one more burden Fate had seen fit to lay on his shoulders.

  “Monsieur Fleury?”

  “I know who you are. Come inside.” He glanced along the lane to either side, but there was no sign of movement. “Is that blood on your stocking?” he asked as he closed the door behind me. The flatness of his tone suggested he was not especially interested either way. I glanced down; there was a streak of dark red on my ankle where I must have brushed against Fitch’s body.

  “I was—at the scene of an accident,” I said.

  Fleury shook his head.

  “I have seen enough blood spilled.” He took me by the sleeve and pulled me close, dropping his voice. “You must take her away. Do you understand? My son …” He faltered and shook his head again. “I got my family out of Paris alive while our friends and neighbours were butchered in their homes. I thought we would be safe in a Protestant country. But already we have lost one child. I will not see my son hanged as well. The girl should not be in my house. We tried to help her, but once is enough. She is dangerous.”

  “She is unlucky.”

  He set his jaw. “I say she is dangerous, monsieur. You know it and I know it. Only my son cannot see this, because he is young and she is beautiful. Perhaps you close your eyes to it as well, but I am old enough not to have this blindness.” He gave a great sigh that seemed to reverberate through his bones.