A Christmas Requiem

by S. J. Parris

  ‘We?’ I said.

  ‘Me. Porta. Fra Gennaro. It is not only yourself you endanger by your recklessness. I see you look surprised,’ he said, at my expression. ‘Do you really imagine I don’t know what goes on in my convent? You do not know how many times I have stood between you and the Inquisition, Bruno, defending you from the rumours that attach to your name. Two of our brothers killed in the last three years, both from good families, and both times it has been said that you knew more than you were telling about what happened. But I cannot speak up for you again without sacrificing my position – not after …’ He shifted his gaze pointedly away from me and allowed the sentence to hang, unfinished. I would probably never find out exactly what he knew of what had passed in Rome; he was well aware that the threat was more effective if he simply implied that I could have no secrets from him. I thought of all the times I had sensed that presence at my back, watching my every move. Had the prior sent someone after me, to make a report? I would not have put it past him. Or was the spy in the pay of one of the others he had mentioned – Rebiba, Agostino, the Pope himself? There was every chance that I had been followed to the Theatre of Marcellus that night, and that Renzo’s corpse would one day surface from that ravine to accuse me. But then, it was equally possible that there was no watcher in the shadows; that he was no more than a ghost conjured by my imagination, and that it was my curse to live with one eye over my shoulder, as all guilty men must.

  ‘You will not have to,’ I said, chastened.

  ‘See that I don’t. Conduct yourself as if your every move is being reported, because for all you know, it is. No unorthodox writings hidden in your cell.’ His gaze travelled almost imperceptibly to the rafters, just long enough to assure me that my hiding place was not as safe as I had believed. ‘No forbidden books. No more late-night meetings in the infirmary with Fra Gennaro. No sneaking out at night by the garden door.’

  ‘Not even to the Cerriglio?’ I asked.

  ‘Bruno, if I thought you were creeping out in search of women and dice, I would positively rejoice. But your transgressions are of a different nature, and endanger us both. You are excused matins tonight – you look as if you need some sleep.’

  ‘Most Reverend Prior, wait,’ I said, lunging at him and grabbing his sleeve as he turned to go. ‘Would you hear my confession?’

  He jerked his arm away as if I had scalded him.

  ‘No.’ He drew himself up to regain his composure. ‘No, I do not think that would serve either of us. Go into the church, confess your sins to God alone and find His forgiveness in your heart. He will hear you.’

  ‘Isn’t that what the Protestants do?’

  He pressed his lips together and raised his eyes as if summoning patience. ‘Sometimes, Fra Giordano, I can only assume God sent you here to test my faith.’

  ‘I will pray that you pass,’ I said, my eyes fixed on the floor.

  ‘Pray that we all pass,’ he muttered. But when I glanced up from under my lashes, it seemed to me that he was trying not to smile.

  I could not sleep. In the dead hours between compline and matins, while the convent was silent, I took myself to the church of San Domenico as the prior had advised, and knelt in front of the altar, the steps still wreathed with festive branches. My breath fogged in the chill air. I raised my eyes to the great crucifix above me, the wooden Christ with his skin white as milk, the gash in His side almost obscene in its gaping redness; but as I looked at Him, all I could see was Renzo’s naked body with its livid wound in the dark of the amphitheatre. It was said that St Thomas Aquinas, when he lived in our convent three hundred years earlier, had heard this painted Christ speak to him; pilgrims came by the dozen to kiss its feet. But if there was any truth in the legend, it seemed He had nothing left to say to me.

  I could not blame Him; I had killed a man, and I did not know how to reconcile this truth with the person I had believed myself to be. I found myself longing to speak not to Christ but to my father. I had seen little of him since I left home at fifteen to join the Dominicans, and the education he had wanted for me had only served to widen the distance between us. If I was honest – and it shamed me to think it – I had often dismissed him: what could he have to teach me, this old mercenary with no Greek or Latin? I had left him behind, and looked for substitute fathers whose learning I could emulate, like Gennaro and Porta. Now, I felt Giovanni Bruno was the only person who could understand what I had done, and give me the absolution I needed.

  In his absence I tried to pray, and the painted Christ looked mutely down with sorrowful eyes. I wondered how the Protestants managed, without confession and penance; how did they know they were forgiven? Was I forgiven? I recalled Renzo’s sword against my throat, and thought how easily I could have bled my life away in the dust of an ancient theatre. I thought of the Pope’s final words, clearly intended to carry: ‘that boy is headed for the pyre’. At that, I felt a sudden rush of anger. Who did he think he was, that jumped-up goatherd in a tiara, to lay bets on my future? He would not write my story. I would return to Rome one day, and prove him wrong.

  I stood and brushed myself down, defiant, tilted my chin at the painted Christ, and recited the Pater Noster backwards, just because I could. He didn’t say a word, as I knew He would not.

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  PROLOGUE

  17th July 1586

  Chartley Manor, Staffordshire

  Six gentlemen. Six of them, ready to undertake that tragic execution in her name. She smiles at the euphemism. But then: why not call it that? Elizabeth Tudor is a heretic, a traitor and a thief, occupying a throne she has stolen; dispatching her would be no regicide, but a just and deserved punishment under the law. Not the law of England, to be sure, but God’s law, which is greater.

  Mary sits at the small table in her room, in her prison, thinking, thinking, turning over and over in her mind the pages of the great ledger of injustices heaped against her. Eventually, she dips her quill in the inkpot. She wears gloves with the fingers cut off, because it is always cold here, in Staffordshire; the summer so far has been bleak and grey, or at least what she can see of it from her casement, since she is not permitted to walk outside. She flexes her fingers and hears the knuckles crack; she rubs the sore and swollen joints. A pool of weak light falls on the paper before her; she has havered so long over this reply that the candle has almost burned down, and she only has one left until Paulet, her keeper, brings the new ration in the morning. Sometimes he pretends to forget, just as he does with the firewood, to see how long she will sit in the cold and dark without protesting. And when she does ask meekly for the little that is her due, he uses it against her; charges her with being demanding, spoilt, needy, and says he will tell her cousin. But should a queen plead meekly with the likes of Sir Amias Paulet, that puffed-up Puritan? Should a queen be starved of sunlight, of liberty, of respect, and endure it with patience? Twenty years of imprisonment has not taught her to bear it any better, nor will she ever accept it. The day she bows to their treatment of her, she is no longer worthy of her royal title.

  She sets the quill down; she has worked herself into a fury and her shaking hand has spattered ink drops on the clean page; she will have to begin again, when she is calmer. She pushes back the chair and heaves herself with difficulty to her feet, wincing at the pain in her inflamed legs. Each step to the window hurts more than it did the day before; or perhaps she is imagining that. One imagines so much, cooped up here in these four walls. She smooths her skirts over her broad hips; and there is another injustice, that she should still be fat when she eats so little! She doesn’t trust the food they bring; one day, she is certain, she will eat or drink something and not wake up. That would suit her cousin Elizabeth very well, so she will not give her the satisfaction. And yet, Mary thinks, curling her lip at her rippled reflection in the dark of the
windowpane, she has grown heavy and lumpen on nothing but air, half-crippled by rheumatism, grey and faded, an old woman at forty-four. No trace left of the famous beauty that once drove men to madness. But Elizabeth is ugly too, she has heard; near-bald, teeth blackened, her skin so eaten away by the ceruse she uses to hide her age that she will not be seen by any except her closest women without a full mask of face-paint. There will be no children for her now; at least that is one contest that Mary can say she won, even if she hasn’t seen her son for nearly twenty years.

  She cups her hands around her face to peer out at the night, watching a barn owl ghosting over the moat, when there is a soft knock at the door. She starts, hastens back to the table to hide the papers, but it is only Claude Nau, her French secretary. He bobs a brief bow, takes in her guilty expression.

  ‘You are writing him a reply, Your Majesty?’

  ‘I am considering.’ She draws herself up, haughty. He is going to tell her off, she knows, and she has had enough of men speaking to her as if she is a child. She is Queen of Scotland, Dowager Queen of France, and rightful Queen of England, and they should not forget it.

  ‘I counsel against that.’

  She watches Nau; a handsome man, always quietly spoken, infuriatingly self-contained, even when she works herself into one of her fits of passion.

  ‘I know you do. But I make my own decisions.’

  ‘Majesty.’ He inclines his head. ‘I smell a trap.’

  ‘Oh, you will see conspiracies everywhere. Did you read what he promises, Claude? He has men to do the deed, and earnest assurance of foreign aid, and riders to take me to liberty. Everything is in place.’ She allows herself to imagine it, as she has so many times, crossing back to the window. ‘See, I have an idea’ – she taps the glass, excited – ‘if we know the exact date to expect him, we can have one of the servants start a fire in the stables. Everyone will rush out and in the commotion, Anthony Babington and his friends can break down my chamber door and whisk me away.’ She spins around, a wide, girlish smile on her face that fades the instant she sees his look. ‘What? You do not like my plan?’

  ‘It is a very good plan, Majesty. Only …’ He folds his hands.

  ‘Speak.’

  ‘We have heard such promises before. This Babington is proposing an assassination.’

  ‘Execution.’

  He waves a hand. ‘Call it what you will. But your own cousin. England’s queen. In your name.’

  ‘She is no queen.’

  He adopts the patient, pained expression that so irritates her. ‘Of course not. But if you agree to their proposal, if you so much as acknowledge it in writing, you make yourself an accessory to treason, and there is only one punishment for that offence.’

  ‘My royal cousin loves me too much to allow that.’

  ‘She loves you.’ Nau does not contradict her outright, but he allows his gaze to travel pointedly around the room in which she is held captive.

  Mary’s eyes flash; he has overstepped the mark. ‘Leave me.’ She flaps a hand to the door. ‘I have my letter to write. Come back in an hour and you can encrypt it.’

  ‘I implore you not to put anything on paper which would implicate you in this reckless business. Babington and his friends are impetuous boys. We would do better to proceed with caution, keep our options open.’

  ‘And I order you to get out. There is no we here, Claude. They are my options, and I will choose. Obey your queen.’

  Nau sighs audibly, bows, and backs out of the royal presence. When the door clicks shut behind him, Mary smiles, pleased with herself. She sits again at the table and dips her quill, but she cannot think how to begin. She wants Elizabeth to love her, it’s true. She wants Elizabeth dead. She wants only her freedom; she wants the throne of England. She is ill, and desperate, and ready to clutch at any straw Providence tosses her way.

  She glances up and sees her embroidered cloth of state hanging on the wall over her bed. Every time the snake Paulet comes into the room, he rips it down – she is not permitted the trappings of a queen, he says. And every time he leaves, her women patiently gather it up, mend the tears and hang it again. Now, this Babington is offering her the real prospect of seeing it where it belongs, above her throne at last. She has waited long enough. She is done with caution. What she wants at this moment, more than anything, is to win.

  She takes a fresh sheet of paper and writes the date: 17th July 1586. It is a letter that will kill a queen.

  England, 1586.

  A treasonous conspiracy …

  Giordano Bruno, a heretic turned spy, arrives in England with shocking information for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. A band of Catholic Englishmen are plotting to kill Queen Elizabeth and spring Mary, Queen of Scots, from prison to take the English throne in her place.

  A deadly trap …

  Bruno is surprised to find that Walsingham is aware of the plot and is allowing it to progress. He hopes that Mary will put her support in writing – and condemn herself to a traitor’s death.

  A queen in mortal danger …

  Bruno is tasked with going undercover to join the conspirators. Can he stop them before he is exposed? Either way a queen will die; Bruno must make sure it is the right one …

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  And, make sure you’ve read all the books in S.J. Parris’ series following Giordano Bruno

  BOOK 1

  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 …

  Click here to buy Heresy

  BOOK 2

  Autumn, 1583. Under Elizabeth’s rule, loyalty is bought with blood …

  An astrological phenomenon heralds the dawn of a new age and Queen Elizabeth’s throne is in peril. As Mary Stuart’s supporters scheme to usurp the rightful monarch, a young maid of honour is murdered, occult symbols carved into her flesh.

  The Queen’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, calls on maverick agent Giordano Bruno to infiltrate the plotters and secure the evidence that will condemn them to death.

  Bruno is cunning, but so are his enemies. His identity could be exposed at any moment. The proof he seeks is within his grasp. But the young woman’s murder could point to an even more sinister truth …

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  BOOK 3

  London, 1584. Giordano Bruno travels to Canterbury for love. But finds only murder …

  Giordano Bruno is being followed by the woman he once loved – Sophia Underhill, accused of murder and on the run. With the leave of the Queen’s spymaster, he sets out to clear Sophia’s name. But when more brutal killings occur a far deadlier plot emerges.

  A city rife with treachery. A relic steeped in blood.

  His hunt for the real killer leads to the shadows of the Cathedral – England’s holiest shrine – and the heart of a sinister and powerful conspiracy …

  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 …

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  BOOK 4

  August, 1585. England is on the brink of war …

  Sir Francis Drake is preparing to launch a daring expedition against the Spanish when a murder aboard his ship changes everything.

  A relentless enemy. A treacherous conspiracy.

  Giordano Bruno agrees to
hunt the killer down, only to find that more than one deadly plot is brewing in Plymouth’s murky underworld. And as he tracks a murderer through its dangerous streets, he uncovers a conspiracy that threatens the future of England itself.

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  BOOK 5

  PARIS, 1585

  A KING WITHOUT AN HEIR

  Heretic-turned-spy Giordano Bruno arrives in Paris to find a city on the edge of catastrophe. King Henri III lives in fear of a coup by the Duke of Guise and his fanatical Catholic League, and another massacre on the streets.

  A COURT AT WAR WITH GOD

  When Bruno’s old rival, Father Paul Lefèvre is found murdered, Bruno is drawn into a dangerous web of religious politics and court intrigue. And watching over his shoulder is the King’s mother, Catherine de Medici, with her harem of beautiful spies.

  A DEADLY CONSPIRACY IN PLAY

  When murder strikes at the heart of the Palace, Bruno finds himself on the trail of a killer who is protecting a terrible secret. With the royal houses of France and England under threat, Bruno must expose the truth – or be silenced for good …

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  About the Author

  No. 1 Sunday Times bestseller S. J. Parris is the pseudonym of the author and journalist Stephanie Merritt. It was as a student at Cambridge researching a paper on the period that Stephanie first became fascinated by the rich history of Tudor England and Renaissance Europe. Since then, her interest has grown and led her to create this series of historical thrillers featuring Giordano Bruno.

  Stephanie has worked as a critic and feature writer for a variety of newspapers and magazines, as well as radio and television. She has also written the contemporary psychological thriller While You Sleep under her own name. She currently writes for the Observer and the Guardian, and lives in Surrey with her son.