Beyond the Raging Flames (The Hermeporta Book 2)

by Hogarth Brown

  Not without concern had the Magistrate read the Papal sealed letter that Beppe had given to him with the Pope’s personal request for “…the full, and fiercest, stricture of Canon Law to be applied upon the proof of guilt…” But the Magistrate, no fan of the Pope, as in most cases he had seen on such matters, expected the evidence to be flimsy, and as yet no witnesses had come forward to denounce the girl in person. Grizelda's fingerprint and some tittle-tattle from Florence were all that condemned Illawara thus far: without proof of guilt there was no mandate for the Pope’s excessively harsh directive. ‘How do you plead’ said the magistrate with confidence. Illawara paused and took in a deep breath.

  ‘GUILTY’ she answered.

  The crowd, including the Magistrate, gasped with shock.

  ‘No, Illy!’ shouted Hermes, but it seemed his cry fell on deaf ears. Illawara ignored him. She closed her eyes for a moment, looked up and sighed. The crowd stood agog, and the Magistrate looked shaken to his core. Bianca almost collapsed, and Dondo struggled to hold her up. Hermes shook all over, unable to believe what she had said.

  The Magistrate composed himself, and with great effort pronounced the punishment. His voice wavered, sure that Illawara could not know the seriousness, in light of the Pope's letter, of what would happen to her. ‘You hereby admit, in this court of law, that you are a witch, and accept the charges of witchcraft that are laid against you.'

  'I do' she said. The Magistrate swallowed and shook his head as if he had to send his own granddaughter to the gallows. The words struggled out of his throat - every shred of his experience told him that Illawara was innocent of the charges laid against her. 'As a confessed agent and accomplice of the Devil, this court...' the Magistrate paused, 'in compliance with Canon Law, has no other choice but to condemn you to... burning at the stake until you're dead.’ A gale of shock engulfed the courthouse: people had never seen a magistrate be so strict with a witch, even if she confessed - many present knew they had done worse for power and money. A beating would be enough.

  Without flinching, Illawara accepted her sentence, and her shoulders eased with relief. ‘I hereby announce that no witnesses are required, as you have fully admitted to your crimes.' The Magistrate struggled to believe his own words, but it was his duty to adhere to the law as directed. 'As a confessed apostate of hell, you shall be burned at the stake until you are dead in three days hence. Your burnt corpse shall be drawn and quartered, and buried in unmarked graves outside of the city walls.’

  The crowd in the courthouse guffawed in shock. No one had burned at the stake since Giordano Bruno, and Italians, in every region, were divided over it - they saw hysterical witch burnings as a scourge for other countries, but not for Illawara, not for them, not for Padua - a university town of restraint and reason.

  Bianca entirely collapsed to the floor, a tearful Dondo unable to hold her up - so shaken he had become by grief. Hermes' mind reeled. He had so much to share with Illawara now that he could speak about their past, but in a matter of days, she would be dead. He stood numb with disbelief - unable to process the new reality.

  Unnoticed by all, Orsini’s henchman, like a spirit, slipped between the incredulous crowds of the courthouse to exit and leave the tumult behind. Beppe stood silent, struck dumb with remorse. He had expected a fight. He wanted to prove Illawara wrong - taunt, shame and attack her character. He entertained Grizelda as much for the flattery of her devoted attention as his desire for revenge. But Illawara's acceptance of the charges proved to him beyond doubt of her innocence. ‘What have I done?’ he whispered to himself, as his rage ebbed far away as the sea does before a Tsunami. The Inquisitor became dizzy and had to sit down.

  ‘Soon this will be over’ Illawara whispered to herself, ‘soon this will all be over.’

  Chapter 24

  Waiting

  Padua, mid-morning, Saturday the 16th of December 1611

  Cardinal Orsini paused to sniff at the air, before he passed through the kitchen and used the parlour door to exit the space and enter a small enclosed yard where he kept his loyal donkey, Gino. He walked over to the animal, tethered to a wall loop of iron, which turned towards him with affectionate interest, and nuzzled his hand as he stroked the animal on its brow.

  The donkey chewed with contentment at the handful of hay that Orsini offered him. The animal’s breath rose like plumes of white smoke in the chill air. Gino shivered. Without hesitation, Orsini walked into the shed to the side of the yard and retrieved the donkey blanket he kept there and returned to wrap Gino in the felt covering.

  'There, there, boy' he cooed as he used the straps on the blanket to tie the covering in place around the animal. He rubbed the donkey's back. 'It was cold last night, forgive me' he added, and Gino brayed and nodded his head as if to reply to his master. The Cardinal smiled and accepted the beast's reply.

  Cook had offered to buy the hay from the market earlier that morning - she being keen to leave the house after hearing so many startling sounds on the upper floors that disturbed her. Orsini murmured and fussed over the donkey, while playing with its ears, and eased into another smile. Then Illawara danced into his mind as he speculated on what may have transpired since her arrest. His Henchman was to bring him news from the courthouse yesterday. He had not slept well. Orsini then glanced at the caged doves in the yard, that both he and his friend, Adriano, were fond of, and walked over for a closer look. There they sat in their wooden cage huddled together, fluffed up, on their perches looking like pillow stuffing: the odd blink and some neighbourly grooming the only thing to differentiate the doves in their white mass. He picked up some grain from the feed, opened the cage door, and offered his palm to one of the birds happy enough to leave the group. A bold dove hopped onto his wrist and pecked at the grain.

  Orsini lifted his arm out of the cage and admired the bird as it fed. He stroked the dove on its head with tenderness: ‘You remind me of my darling’ he whispered in the dove’s ear, that paused between pecks as he talked, ‘when I free her, so I shall free thee.’ He then kissed the bird’s head before he returned it to its companions. The Dove fluttered back to its perch and snuggled itself amongst its neighbours to blend back into anonymity. The grain scattered across Orsini’s palm as he returned the uneaten seeds to the feed.

  Cook ducked back inside the kitchen, from where she spied, when she saw Orsini make a turn for the door.

  The Cardinal passed back through the kitchen, in silence, ignoring Cook who seemed absorbed with inspecting dried herbs and marched his way upstairs taking the steps two at a time.

  Without a word she stopped her pretence, skittered to the base of the stairs, and allowed her eyes, and then her ears, to follow Orsini as he ascended. Before long he emerged onto the roof terrace, somewhat out of breath, to face the elements that blew about up there. The wind began to stir and scratched at his neck while the clouds threatened rain. He shivered. Orsini approached the iron balustrade of the roof terrace and tried to avoid swooning when he took in the height of his elevation and clung to the twisted rail as if he were upon a tightrope. He tried to ignore the galloping of his heart, as he looked over the streets of Padua from his vantage point, and cast his eyes over the people that milled around below: each person occupied in their errands and thoughts.

  For some time the he stood and studied the crowds that huddled with resentment against the weather, but did the best they could with the conditions and one another. His head bobbed about, owl-like, as he scanned the populace. Dissatisfied with his search Orsini, with reluctance, let go of the rail and dashed for the stairs - as if the house would fall out under him.

  ‘Where is he?’ he grumbled, after unlocking his bedroom door, and returning from yet another of many recent vigils from the terrace. He paced around his room, ‘almost three days and not a word from him’ he added with a shrug of his arms. The Professor gave his captor an insipid look and shivered with the cold draft that Orsini had sucked down with him in his hurry upon the stairs. His leg
s were still bound, but this time with ankle straps and chains. Professor Sloane had neither strength nor inclination to attempt escape. He lay, as he had done, for the last two and a half days struck down with a syphilitic fever. Underneath the thick blanket, that Orsini had tossed over him, the Professor shivered and lay wet with sweat.

  ‘Please, I beg you’ he uttered, in wobbling voice, ‘let me have my case. I’m not well.’ The Cardinal had listened to what his captive had to say about himself, and the things contained in his case, but still did not want to believe what he heard - gripped by his own fears about the bizarre truths the Professor had shared with him.

  ‘Stop your simpering, Winston’ growled Orsini while pacing the room, ‘from you I’ve heard enough. You have the Pox, I can see that now, and it’s no less than you deserve.’ Winston wheezed and coughed, but Orsini scowled when he noticed that the Professor had not finished, and thus wasted, the soup that he had smuggled up for him from Cook. The Professor’s face trembled:

  ‘I think Illawara’s in great danger… and I need my strength to help her’ rasped the Professor. He gave out a sticky cough, full of mucous. Orsini spun round.

  ‘You think I don’t know the dangers that face her? I’m at my wit's end’ he said, wringing his hands, before he stopped pacing to shake his finger at the Professor. ‘You plead for the girl now, but what did you do to help or protect her when you could have?’ he said, stepping closer. ‘In her time of need, you either ran or walked the other way’ he spat, shaking a fist at the invalid. ‘It was easy for us to catch you because you were so absorbed in your own thoughts as they dragged the poor girl away - SHAME on your soul’ exclaimed the Cardinal with disgust, ‘if you weren’t so diseased and filthy I’d throttle you myself.’

  Sweaty, wan, limp, and yellow the Professor laid there and took his criticism with blank resignation.

  ‘I’ve failed her, I see it now’ he croaked, ‘it shouldn’t have come to this. I let fear get the better of me - I’ve never been ill like this before’ he said turning to Orsini hollow-eyed, ‘not once in my life…’

  The Cardinal scowled.

  ‘And what of it? Do you want me to write you a psalm of praise? Or write a lament? Or should I jump and prance for your salvation?’ The floorboards creaked as Orsini capered, for a moment, in an affectation of a merry dancer before he hissed: ‘I doubt the Devil himself would want you - for even Lucifer demands loyalty’ he said, pointing again. But still unspent in his vexations he continued, glancing toward a window as if in thought and strolling toward it. ‘If your fever doesn’t break you’re sure to die, and that’s what you deserve… then it will be over for you.’ Orsini toyed with the fabric of the curtain before turning back. ‘Look at you' he said pointing at the Professor with disgust, 'you look like a rotten plate of tripe. What a wretched thing you are - I say to hell with you: disease ravaged cur.’ Orsini shook himself, both repulsed and compelled by the man from the future that lay dying in his room.

  But yet Orsini could not rest, he knew to his guts that things had not gone well for Illawara. But his Henchman had become his ears and eyes for the outside world, and without him, Orsini felt deaf and blind. ‘Where IS the man?’ He said again, and paced the room once more, passing the windows, and fussing at the curtains that he left half open to allow in some sickly light. Outside it began to rain: cold, grey and morbid.

  ◆◆◆

  Lucia observed the Cardinal pace up and down his room as she watched him from the house opposite. She sneered. After arriving in Padua, Lucia had convinced the elderly man that dwelled in the house that she was on pilgrimage, and would need a room. Lucia had sensed that time and loneliness had taken their toll on her new host.

  With one look at Lucia, her host launched into his story of woe after she had introduced her false motives for seeking lodgings in his house. After an extended conversation, in the doorway, Lucia realised she could have said that she was one of his daughters he had lost - and almost be believed - for so lonesome he had become.

  Unwanted isolation: the surest solvent to erode the spirit. With protracted laments, poetic gestures, and sighs, he shared with Lucia, while he protected his doorway, that he had survived his wife and children as the plague had taken them all.

  ‘My dear’ he had said, after some time of talking himself out, ‘my youngest had fair hair just like yours.’

  There the old man stood like a heap of creased linen and looked up at the stranger through dry riverbed eyes. Silence fell between them. He waited as if in silent expectation. Then Lucia, intuiting - without another word - loosed her hair from its braids and let her locks tumble into the old man’s hands. He stood amazed, unaware of his own need, and stroked at the silken gold tresses as if transported by memory, and wept: his tears sluicing his furrowed wrinkles. Lucia had stood still and watched him. A vivid feeling of contentment and peace had seized the man as he remembered his happiness. He saw his wife combing out his favourite daughter’s golden hair before the black death had arrived to take them. The man had then moved aside, once recovered, and made much fuss of Lucia, refusing all offers of payment - her company compensation to him alone. It so lifted his spirits to have a reminder of his daughter in the house.

  Lucia glared at the Cardinal as she saw him walk past the windows of his room. Over the preceding days, she had kept watch on the house, and glimpsed moments, before his full fever, when the Professor had stood at times and shuffled around. But in not seeing him rise for a whole day, Lucia knew the man to be in the entire grip of the disease and fighting for his life. She had seen Cook come and go from the property opposite, recognising the woman from her crystal vision, as she brought back food and provisions from the markets. She did not see Orsini leave once, nor had she seen the return of his Henchman. She ruminated and then almost laughed with disdain: ‘so he keeps you in suspense’ she whispered to herself, as she watched the Cardinal pace up and down.

  In her room upon a small table that used to belong to her host’s wife, for the fourth time Lucia shuffled and then laid out her Tarot cards. She did not like what she saw. As with almost every recent draw of the cards, Lucia read strife: ‘swords for sorrow’ she muttered with discontent. With little variation, the cards offered the same answers to her questions. She sighed. Lucia interpreted, beyond doubt in the cards, that if she did not intervene soon, the Professor would die.

  ◆◆◆

  ‘If I perish, so will she’ said the Professor before heaving into a slippery cough, ‘you’ll need my help to rescue her.’ Orsini swiped his hand through the air in reaction to what he heard, but then stroked his palm down his face, and peered out of the window again - Lucia took a step back. The Cardinal then scratched his head before he gnawed at his fingernails.

  ‘Why should I believe you?’ he said, trying to ignore the churning angst that had begun to wrestle within him, ‘soon my man will bring back word of events, and how best I can intervene to stop all this. I’m powerful. I still have friends.’

  Winston shook his head, and it took effort.

  ‘Don’t trust him, your Eminence. He’s cruel. He thinks only of himself.’

  ‘Silence’ growled Orsini, ‘you have the tongue of the devil’, but the Professor carried on.

  ‘He comes to life when he’s harming, and you know this - I saw it in his eyes at the Uffizi, and here too. It’s your power he likes because it gives him power over others. There’s nothing in his heart but darkness’ said the Professor, almost surprised at the clarity that had begun to come to him as his life ebbed away.

  ‘The Devil lends you eloquence to corrupt my mind’ said Orsini, still pacing, ‘how cunning he is, how cunning’

  The Cardinal tried to shake off the words of the Professor.

  ‘I’m dying’ croaked Winston, his forehead sheened with sweat, ‘I know it now… I feel it. I’ve told so many lies in my life, but why would I lie about this? Why would I lie now? I think you love Illawara more than I do. That man knows it, and he waits, in
not coming to you, he waits for her to die.’

  ‘Silence, devil, be SILENT’ shouted Orsini, covering his ears - touched to the quick - but the Professor did not flinch: he lacked the strength.

  ‘Everything I’ve told you here is true’ he wheezed, ‘and you know it, and you feel it. I can see that now’ he said, his eyes glassy. ‘Please bring and open my case - it has the things in it I told you about: bring it to me, and I’ll let you see for yourself.’ Orsini glanced at the chest bolted to the floor, in which he had locked the Professor’s carry case, and bit into his knuckles.

  Chapter 25

  Rendezvous

  Padua, Monday late afternoon, the 18th of December 1611

  Since Illawara's court appearance, Antonio had moved at pace through the crowds of Padua, and frequented various properties, from large to small, in a quest for information - till his efforts got rewarded. Talk had become dominated by the prospect of a burning spectacle, and the hopes that Illawara could somehow escape her demise. Antonio walked with purpose through the winter rain that turned to sleet and ignored the whisperings and mutterings of the people. He focused his mind on his new tasks ahead.

  To those at home, including Hermes, he had made his excuses - unchallenged by Grizelda - and made his way to the grand properties beyond the fruit market, but near the Palazzo della Ragione. He moved down a side ally of a house with a proud facade and wrapped his knuckles upon the side door. A hatch opened in the wood, and the eyes of a manservant peeped out.

  ‘Signor Marino is expecting me’ said Antonio. The eyes blinked with recognition, and the door opened.

  ‘I think you know the way now, signore Marconi’ said the manservant, as he stepped aside to let Antonio in. He took off his cloak and tried to shake away the sleet that had begun to soak it.