by S. J. Parris
“Oh, God, no.” My stomach lurched and I tasted bile. “You have not killed Harry?”
“Not yet. But he cannot be left at liberty to repeat your suppositions to Francis Walsingham or anyone else.” His voice was remarkably calm. But then a man who could drop a dismembered child out of a sack onto a rubbish heap must be unusually free of emotion. “Now then.” He looked from me to Sophia with lascivious anticipation. “What would give you the greatest suffering, Bruno—to watch me kill her first, or to die yourself knowing I mean to have some sport with her while you bleed your life out on the floor like a slaughtered calf?”
Sophia muffled a sob and pulled her shift tight around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest. I glanced over Samuel’s shoulder to where my knife lay; any attempt to lunge past him for it and he would stick his blade straight in me. My best hope was somehow to distract him and then to kick him in the arm holding the knife while his attention was divided. It was not the first time I had kept the threat of death at bay by talking; it was worth a try again.
“Why did you kill Sykes?” I blurted.
“What?” He sounded irritated by the question. “I did not kill Sykes, you fool.”
“Then who did?”
“You tell me.”
I stared at him, perplexed.
“I? What would I know? You killed him, surely, on Langworth’s order, like you killed Fitch.”
He made a small, impatient movement with his head.
“Fitch was becoming a problem. He didn’t know how to keep his mouth shut. When Sykes saw him talking to you that day, knowing who you were—we had to make sure he said nothing else.”
“So you killed him because of me?” I thought of the apothecary’s merry laugh.
“It would have happened sooner or later.”
“And Sykes?”
“I told you—I didn’t touch Sykes. Do not think to delay me with this. I will do what I came here to do.” He took a step closer to my side of the bed, his knife held out. I gathered my strength and kicked out at his hand, but he had anticipated the movement and circled it deftly away, the tip of the blade grazing my foot. “Save your energy for your prayers,” he said through his teeth, and took another step towards me, blade poised.
He was perhaps three feet away now; one good thrust and he could strike me from there: face, chest, stomach. In the dim light I saw the shine of his eyes as they flickered over me, anticipating the best spot for the first blow. Then, a sound, unexpected; I felt Sophia tense and sit up. Samuel must have heard it too; he hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, knife half raised, and almost turned. There was a movement, a slicing and a rush of air, then a sickening crack and he seemed to crumple like a straw effigy, first to his knees and then onto his side. Behind him, in the doorway, Harry stood in his nightgown, a poker clutched in his shaking hands.
“He would have killed you,” he mouthed, staring at Samuel’s prone form and his own makeshift weapon in amazement.
“I thought you couldn’t get up the stairs,” I said, feeling my own limbs beginning to tremble in the aftershock.
“Well, I can when I need to,” he said, transfixed by the scene in front of him, as if he could not quite believe it was his own doing. “I couldn’t sleep. I heard the key turning in the front door—my ears are still good, if nothing else. I knew it could only be him. He would have killed you,” he repeated, almost mechanically, and I realised he was justifying his actions to himself, reassuring his conscience, or his God, that he had had no choice.
Then, as suddenly as if he himself had been struck with a poker, his legs seemed to give way beneath him and he slumped against the wall, his free hand flapping in vain as if searching for his stick. Snapped out of my daze, I leapt across the bed and caught him under the arms before he fell, guiding him gently to sit on the bed. Sophia subsided into quiet sobs, her face pressed into her knees. I did not know which of them to comfort first.
“Let us thank God that we are all alive,” I said, exhaling slowly. “The question is—what do we do with him?”
We all looked at Samuel, who chose that moment to let out a guttural moan as blood bubbled from his nose. Sophia jumped back with another little scream.
“Better thank God that he is still alive too,” Harry muttered, but I could hear the relief in his voice. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He had feared the stain of murder on his soul.
“We must get him upright,” I said, picking up the knife that had fallen from Samuel’s hand. I shouldered him into a sitting position against the wall with a strange sense of familiarity; it seemed only moments since I had done the same for Nick Kingsley. “If they only knew—I haven’t murdered the man they claim I did, but I have nearly killed three others since I’ve been here.”
“I nearly killed this one, Bruno, don’t take all the glory.”
I looked at Harry and we both broke out laughing; after staring at us blankly for a moment, Sophia joined in and the three of us must have sounded like tavern drunks, doubled over and wiping tears from our faces in sheer relief, until Samuel groaned again, a throaty, bestial sound, and slid sideways.
“He must be kept safe somewhere until tomorrow,” I said, as if sobering up.
On the floor by the bed, Sophia had dropped the voluminous dress of Olivier’s grandmother; I found one of the underskirts made of a rough heavy linen and began to tear through it with Samuel’s knife, until I had cut it into long strips. With Harry holding Samuel’s body up, I bound the servant’s wrists tightly together behind him, did the same with his ankles, and tied three thick strips around his mouth.
“Can he breathe through that?” Harry asked, peering anxiously into Samuel’s unseeing face. “If his mouth is filled with blood?”
“We’ll have to take our chances. Come now, both of you—we’ll have to get him down the stairs and lock him in his own chamber. Keep him here until we are ready to have him fetched before the justice. And Langworth must not know Samuel was unsuccessful tonight, or he may try something else.”
Between us, Sophia and I manoeuvred Samuel’s limp body down the stairs to the first floor and into the small bedchamber he had used at the back of the house. It was plainly furnished, with no sign of personal belongings save a wooden chest in one corner, secured with a padlock. Sophia’s strength belied her slender frame, and we hauled Samuel until he was propped against a stool by the wall. I retied his hands around one leg of the stool; it was not fixed down, but it would make it harder for him to free himself. Harry took a ring of keys from his servant’s belt and clicked through them until he found the one he wanted. At the door, he paused to take a last, pitying look.
“Don’t be sentimental, Harry,” I warned, seeing his expression. “He meant to kill you after me.”
Harry sighed. “And yet he seemed a loyal servant for so many years.”
“Even while he was passing every detail of your business to Langworth for money. Come now,” I said, stifling a yawn, as Harry locked Samuel securely into the room, “I doubt we shall sleep more tonight. Let me warm some wine—we would all be glad of a drink.”
Downstairs, in the kitchen, when Sophia had returned to bed, Harry sat at the table swilling the dregs of his wine around the glass.
“You love that girl,” he remarked, not looking at me.
“I …” I looked away. It seemed fruitless to finish the sentence.
“Will you marry her? You should, you know,” he added, in a tone of mild reproach, when I did not reply.
“I have no means to support a wife, Harry. Besides, I don’t know if she would have me.” Even as I spoke, I felt I did know. Sophia did not want another husband. The point about Sophia, I wanted to tell him, was that you would never be sure you really had her. That was her appeal—beyond her beauty, it was this sense that she belonged wholly to herself, and always kept something in reserve. She was as elusive as the true meaning of that book upstairs in its wooden casket, and bred in me the same unsatisfied longing. But I was too tire
d to try and explain any of this.
“Even though she has married you in the sight of God?” He raised an eyebrow. Meaning, because I had taken her to my bed.
To my knowledge, Sophia had already married three men in the sight of God in that sense, and quite possibly more. For myself, I doubted God concerned Himself too far with such things; with Christendom still tearing itself apart over the true substance of a piece of bread and a glass of wine, did He really have time to count? I didn’t say this either. We sat in sympathetic silence, like two bruised survivors of a skirmish, until the dawn light filtered through the small casement and Harry suggested I heat a bowl of water for a shave.
Chapter 17
Sophia lay sleeping in a slant of sunlight, her lips parted, one hand slightly curled against the sheet beside her face like a child’s. I stood in the doorway, hardly liking to wake her, torn between the need for some words of comfort, some recognition of all that I was facing on her behalf, and the desire to leave her in what might be her last untroubled moments. If I was found guilty at the assizes, there would be no more bail, no avuncular generosity from the justice unless I could find a means to speak to him in private, but it would be easy for them to deny me that. I would be taken directly to the gaol to await my punishment and then it would only be a matter of time before she was found and sentenced, and Harry with her as an accomplice.
I stole across the room and slid the wooden casket containing the book from my leather satchel, all the while keeping my eyes fixed on Sophia. At least if the house was searched they would not find this. With my knife, I levered up the nails holding one of the floorboards next to the bed, so that I could prise it up far enough to slide the box into the cavity above the rafters. After it I pushed my purse containing what remained of my money, the fragments of the letters I had taken from Fitch’s hearth, Langworth’s keys, and the dead boy’s Saint Denis medal; those, too, needed to be kept safe until I could put them into the right hands, and I suspected anything I owned would be taken from me before the trial. Especially a weapon, I thought, reluctantly placing my bone-handled knife in its sheath on top of the casket and fitting the board back into place, its nails loosely resting in their holes.
I lowered myself onto the bed beside her and leaned my newly shaven cheek towards her face. She stirred; the long dark lashes fluttered and those leonine eyes slowly focused on me. Briefly she smiled, then it was as if a cloud passed overhead, driven by a strong wind, and her face altered as she recalled the day.
“Wish me luck,” I whispered, stroking a finger gently along the line of her collarbone. “Whatever happens, do not move from here until I come for you.”
“And if you cannot?”
“Then you wait for Harry.”
“Will he go to the courthouse with you?”
“I think he must. It would look odd if he stayed away, after he has paid my bail.”
Her eyes flickered to the door.
“The man downstairs …?”
“He is secure, don’t worry.” I glanced at the floor under the window. “Harry’s poker is still there, just in case.”
“Don’t joke about it, Bruno.” She placed her hand over mine. “You have risked your life for me.” Tears welled silver against her lashes. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
“When this is over, if we survive—perhaps there is something we could talk about.”
She rolled her eyes in mock resignation: of course, what else could a man want. I shook my head.
“Not that.” I smiled. “Although that too. But something else.”
“What?”
I hesitated. In the hour before dawn, when I had kept my silent vigil in the kitchen with Harry, I had weighed his words and almost persuaded myself it might be possible. With my pension from King Henri of France and the money I earned from Walsingham, might I not have enough to keep a wife, if we lived modestly? And if my book were presented to Queen Elizabeth, if she saw fit to patronise it, the sales might give me a steady income … I could live quietly, give up these misadventures I seemed to fall into as other men fall in and out of alehouses; write my books, keep an eye on the French ambassador for Walsingham, make a place I could call home. If, if, if. If Sophia would say yes.
“It will keep. Let us unravel this Gordian knot first.” I kissed her on the forehead and stood. At the door I paused. “Pray for me?”
She sat up and looked at me with a sad smile. “I don’t pray anymore, Bruno, and neither do you.”
“Still. Today of all days, it might be worth a try.”
* * *
AT SEVEN O’CLOCK, Harry stood in the hallway, fully dressed, considering his face in a small mirror that hung by the front door.
“You’ve not done a bad job,” he said, tilting his head to one side and rubbing his chin. “If needs must, you could scrape a living as barber.”
“It may yet come to that.” I looked at him. “And how do I look? Like a felon, or a friend to kings and courtiers?”
“One may be both,” Harry said, with a faint smile. “You still look like a handsome pirate, Bruno—I fear no barber can solve that for you. It’s something about your eyes.” Then his face grew serious. “I have been thinking. This business with Langworth and Becket and the dead boys—” He broke off and shook his head. “I fear it is too sensitive for the public assizes. You have not seen the way the crowds gather, as if it were for a bearbaiting. If they learn that the bones of their saint are still beneath the cathedral, there may be a riot. They could tear up the crypt in pursuit of him. And we are talking about matters of treason—the security of the realm. Matters that should reach Walsingham’s ears before anyone else’s.”
“Walsingham is not here.” I sighed. “I have done my best, Harry. Either my first letter has reached him or it has not.”
“We need to tell the justice who you are and what you are doing here,” Harry said.
“How am I to do that? They will hardly grant me a private audience with him.”
“No, but he might admit me. If I can get near him in time.”
A rap at the door, on the stroke of seven; Edmonton and his armed guards stood outside in the morning sun. The constable looked particularly pleased that he was finally allowed to do his job; he seized my sleeve and manhandled me down the step to the path. I pulled my arm free and he glared at me with distaste.
“You are a prisoner like any other today, sir,” he said, wrinkling his nose as if I still smelled of the gaol. “Any trouble and you will be clapped in chains until you stand at the bar, bail or no bail. And that includes speaking with disrespect to officers of the law.”
“I will walk with you to the gate,” Harry said, taking up his stick and casting a last anxious glance up the stairs before closing the door behind him. “Then I shall make my way to the courthouse, see if I can be admitted.”
At the gatehouse Edmonton stopped us and disappeared into Tom Garth’s lodge, leaving us with the guards on either side, their pikestaffs raised as if to look official.
“One thing I find curious,” I said, lowering my voice and leaning in to Harry while I had the chance. “Do you think Langworth meant for Nicholas Kingsley to be blamed for his father’s murder?”
“What makes you say that?” Harry whispered back.
“Tom Garth said the boy was convinced his father had sent for him that evening, while he was dining with the dean. But Nick wasn’t even admitted to the Archbishop’s Palace, so his father clearly didn’t. Was it Langworth who sent Nick a message in order that he would be seen in the cathedral precincts the night his father was killed?”
“Possible, I suppose. Although I don’t see that it helps you now.”
“If we could find the person who carried the message to Nick, he could say who sent him.”
“I fear you may be too late for that now, even if Nick Kingsley were inclined to help you.” He laid a hand on my arm. “God go with you, my boy. I wish I could accompany you all the way, but they will not walk at my pa
ce.”
“And I wish I did not have to leave you here with a fugitive and a would-be assassin,” I whispered in his ear as I embraced him. “And you have not even had your breakfast.”
He laughed. “I shall have to hope that French girl comes back. I might persuade her to fetch me some bread.”
“What French girl?” I said, drawing back and looking at him.
“The one that came yesterday morning when you were out. Came to see your friend upstairs,” he added, barely audible. “I didn’t like to let her in, but there was no one around to see, and she was very insistent.”
“Hélène?” I frowned. “Sophia didn’t mention it.”
“I don’t know her name. I recognised her though, nice girl. The minister’s daughter.”
“Minister?”
“Try not to repeat everything like a simpleton when you’re at the bar, won’t you? The Huguenot minister. I forget his name.”
I stared at him as if he had suddenly begun speaking the language of the Turks.
“But what did …?” I began, but Edmonton strode over and interrupted, his hands behind his back.
“Sorry to break up your sentimental farewell, gentlemen, but this prisoner must be taken without further delay. And since the people like to know that things are done properly in this town, I’m afraid you must walk through the streets as befits one charged with capital offences.” With a triumphant smile, he brought out a set of manacles from behind his back, joined with a thick chain.
I held out my hands without protest, still staring at Harry, my mind spinning so fast I barely felt the pinch and snap of metal around my wrists. It seemed to me that time had slowed to a trickle, so that I could see the earth turning moment by moment, all the pieces falling into place as if through water, one by one. A gull cried overhead and I looked up to see thin drifts of white cloud chased across a perfect blue sky. Now I understood—and I had to decide what I would do with that understanding. I turned as the guards nudged me towards the gate to see Harry leaning on his stick, his lips moving in what I supposed was silent prayer. In that moment I envied him the certainty of his faith; mine had shattered. I bowed my head and prepared to be led in chains past the jeering crowds.