Heresy

by S. J. Parris

  I had no chance to speculate further, however, as at that moment there was a great thundering of footsteps on the flagstones outside and the door to the porter's lodge crashed open with such force that it hit the wall behind and juddered so hard I feared it might splinter. In the doorway stood Walter Slythurst, shaking like an aspen leaf, his face so deathly white and his eyes protruding with such terror that you would have thought someone had a knife at his back. He looked thoroughly drenched and dishevelled, and was wearing a thick cloak and riding boots all spattered with mud. I remembered that he had been away overnight and wondered if he had been attacked on the road.

  "Fetch-" He choked, and the effort of speech made the veins in his neck stand out like knotted cords under the sallow skin. "Fetch the rector. The strong room-he must see this-horror-" Suddenly he leaned over and vomited on the stone floor, one hand grasping the wall to keep himself upright.

  Cobbett and I exchanged a glance, then the old porter began ponderously to heave himself out of the chair. I stepped forward; it was clear that the situation required more urgency than Cobbett could give it.

  "I will go for the rector," I said, "but what should I tell him has happened?"

  Slythurst shook his head frantically, his lips pressed into a white line as if he feared his stomach might rise again. He jerked his head toward Sophia.

  "A monstrous crime-one I cannot speak of before a lady. Rector Underhill must see-" He broke off again, his breath suddenly coming in jagged gasps as his knees buckled beneath him and he began shivering wildly as if it were the depths of winter. I had seen these effects of a severe shock before, and knew he must be calmed down.

  "Sit him down, get him a strong drink," I said to Cobbett. "I'll find the rector."

  "I can go for him if you like, he is at work in his study this morning," Sophia offered, rising quickly to her feet; as she stood, she clapped a hand to her brow and stumbled just as she had before. I caught her arm and she clutched my shoulder gratefully, then quickly withdrew her hand as a glance briefly passed between us acknowledging our moment of intimacy the night before. She leaned against the wall, but her face had turned almost as pale as Slythurst's. The rank stench of his vomit was rising in the small room, and, perhaps prompted by the smell, Sophia tried to reach the door, but had only partly opened it before she too leaned over and vomited in the doorway.

  Cobbett rolled his eyes mildly, as if this were all part of the job.

  "Will you take your turn too, Doctor Bruno, before I go for a pail of water?" he said wearily.

  In truth, I could feel my own stomach rising with the smell, and I was glad to get out.

  "Do not move-I will be back with the rector in a moment," I said, from the doorway.

  "No one must go near the tower," Slythurst croaked. His violent shaking was beginning to subside; Cobbett had produced one of his bottles of ale and poured the bursar a good measure in one of his wooden cups.

  My frantic hammering on the rector's door brought Adam the old servant running to open it; when he saw it was me, his face twisted into a sneer of open dislike.

  "Back again, Doctor Bruno?"

  "I need to see the rector urgently," I panted, ignoring his tone.

  "Rector Underhill cannot see you this morning, he is extremely busy. And the ladies are out," he added, with an emphasis that implied he knew just what I was after.

  "Christ's blood, man, did you not hear me? The matter is urgent-I will fetch him myself if I must." I shouldered my way past him through the dining room and thumped on the door of the study.

  "What is the meaning of this?" the rector blustered, throwing it open. "Doctor Bruno?"

  "He forced his way in, sir," Adam whined, waving his hands ineffectually behind me.

  "You must come immediately," I said. "Master Slythurst has discovered something in the strong room-he called it a monstrous crime. He was too much affected by what he saw-I was sent to bring you as a matter of urgency."

  The rector's eyes widened in fear and his jowls trembled. "A theft, you mean?"

  "I don't think so," I said, quietly. "A theft does not generally make a grown man heave up his breakfast. I guess Slythurst has seen something more…disturbing to make his stomach turn like that."

  The rector stared at me. "Not another-?"

  "We will not know, sir, until you come to investigate."

  Underhill nodded mutely, then gestured for me to lead the way.

  When we reached the west range, Slythurst was already waiting by the door to the subrector's staircase; some of the colour seemed to have returned to his cheeks but he had not yet regained his composure.

  "You must steel yourself, Rector," he said, his voice still hoarse. "I returned this morning from my business in Buckinghamshire-I left at first light and had only just now returned to college. I thought to take the revenues I had brought from our estates straight up to the strong room before I changed. I knocked for James but there was no reply, so I went to Cobbett for the spare key to his room. The inner door to the strong room was locked, as usual, but when I opened it, I found-" His eyes bulged again and he shook his head, his teeth firmly clenched.

  "Found what?" the rector asked, as if he did not want to be told the answer.

  Slythurst only shook his head and pointed to the stairwell. The rector turned to me awkwardly.

  "Doctor Bruno, perhaps you would-? You have shown us a clear head in such situations before."

  I nodded. The rector was a coward at heart, comfortable ruling his little domain of books, where men snipe at their enemies with rhetoric, but out of his depth when the violence became real. He clearly feared what he was about to witness; suddenly the funny little Italian was not so laughable, and he wanted me at his side. Slythurst gave me a sideways glance through narrowed eyes; it seemed that despite his shock, he had not forgotten his dislike of me and would have preferred me not to be included, but he was in no state to argue with the rector.

  The stairs creaked unexpectedly under my feet, making the rector jump. Though there was little light in the stairwell, I could make out marks on the threshold of Doctor Coverdale's room as I entered the door Slythurst had left open. Holding a hand out behind me, I bent to take a closer look and saw that the stains were smudged footprints leading out of the tower room. I touched a finger to one of the marks and it came away with a sticky, rust-coloured coating which, when I sniffed it, could only be blood, though it was not fresh. I turned to look at my companions with a grim expression; below me, the rector's round white face, pale as the moon in the shadowy stairwell, flinched but nodded me onward.

  The little door at the back of the tower room was also swinging open; inside it, I found a narrow spiral staircase barely wide enough for a man to pass, curving to the top of the tower. Halfway up there was a small arched doorway, whose studded oak door had been left ajar by Slythurst in his flight from the sight within. The smell of death was unmistakable now, stinging my nostrils as I approached the threshold; the rector gave a little cry of fright as he cowered behind me. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open and stepped into the college strong room. Immediately I gagged and cried out at what I saw, and felt the rector's hand grasp at the back of my jerkin as he jostled to see through the doorway. Here, then, was the answer to the mystery of what had happened to Doctor James Coverdale.

  The strong room seemed more claustrophobic than the subrector's room below it, though much of that had to do with the smell. The dimensions of the walls were almost the same, but the wooden-beamed ceiling was lower and the two windows, one facing into the quadrangle and the other toward St. Mildred's Lane, were smaller and narrower, a single perpendicular arch letting in little light on this overcast day. Along each wall stood a number of heavy wooden chests of varying sizes, all painted with heraldic devices, girded with iron bands, and fastened with formidable padlocks-the coffers containing the college revenues. To the left of the window that faced into the college was James Coverdale. His wrists had been bound together and tied ov
er his head to an iron bracket fixed into the wall for candles. He was naked except for his linen undershirt, and his head slumped so that his chin rested on his chest, which was drenched with blood, now matted and dried-he had not died in the past few hours, it seemed. But the most extraordinary aspect, the sight that had made me cry out in shock, was that he had been shot numerous times with arrows from a close range. Nine or ten stuck out from his torso at various points, giving him the appearance of a pincushion-or an icon. I knew immediately what I was witnessing; so, it seemed, did the rector, who tightened his grip on my sleeve so that I could feel his hand trembling. I glanced sideways at him as he stared in unblinking horror at the corpse of a second colleague in two days; his lips were working rapidly and I thought at first that he was uttering a silent prayer, until I realised that he was trying to speak but could not make his voice obey him. When eventually he managed to pronounce the word, it was the one that had leaped instantly to my own mind: "Sebastian."

  "Who is Sebastian?" said Slythurst impatiently. He was still lingering behind us on the stairs, his eyes averted, as if reluctant to enter the room a second time.

  "Saint Sebastian," I said quietly.

  The rector nodded absently, as if in a trance. "'He was commanded to be apprehended, and that he should be brought into the open field where, by his own soldiers, he was shot through the body with innumerable arrows,'" he recited hoarsely; I had no doubt that the words belonged to Foxe. "And look." He lifted a trembling hand and pointed. On the wall beside the window, raggedly traced with a finger dipped in the dead man's blood, was the symbol of a spoked wheel.

  "And there is the weapon," Slythurst said decisively, entering the room and pointing at the wall beneath the window, where a handsome carved English longbow, inlaid with green-and-scarlet tracery, had been left casually leaning beside an empty quiver decorated in similar fashion, as if the killer had placed it there calmly and carefully when his work was done.

  "But that is Gabriel Norris's longbow," the rector croaked in disbelief. "I told him to have it locked away here the other morning, after he shot the dog."

  "Then we have our killer," Slythurst asserted, nodding a full stop to his pronouncement.

  I took a couple of paces toward the body, crouching to peer up at the face.

  "These arrows did not kill him," I said.

  "Oh? You think he died of a fever?" Slythurst seemed to have regained his old manner remarkably quickly. I sensed his impatience with my presence in what he regarded as his domain.

  "Quiet, Walter," said Underhill sharply, and for once I was grateful to him. "Go on, Doctor Bruno."

  "His throat has been cut," I said, and clenching my teeth I grasped Coverdale's abundant hair and lifted the head so that the dreadful face was visible. The rector gave a little squeal into his handkerchief; Slythurst winced and turned away. The dead man's eyes were half closed, a rag stuffed into his mouth as a gag, and his throat had been sliced straight across. The wound pulled open as I lifted the head, and from its sticky edges I could see that the incision was a botched job, though it had, in the end, achieved its aim; his neck was scored with the nicks and scratches of aborted cuts, as if the killer had taken several attempts to hold his knife steady and in the right place, suggesting that he was not a practised assassin.

  "Who would have such a weapon?" the rector asked tremulously. "All the university men are forbidden to carry daggers in the city precincts-"

  "A razor could have done it," I said grimly. "Or a small knife, if it was sharp enough."

  "Then why shoot him like a boar afterward?" asked Slythurst, daring to step slightly nearer. "And the picture-is that a message?"

  "The rector has already told you," I said. "For show. This is a parody of the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, just as Roger Mercer's death was supposed to mimic the martyrdom of Saint Ignatius. I do not think you can pass this one off as an accident, Rector," I added, turning to Underhill, who had sat down heavily on one of the sturdy chests, his face in his hands.

  "What arrant nonsense!" Slythurst exclaimed, now fully over his initial shock, it seemed. "Roger is attacked by a dog and you read into that the mimicry of a martyrdom? What murderer would go to such lengths? I rather think your brain is fevered, Doctor Bruno. This, I grant you"-he gestured at the punctured corpse of James Coverdale hanging from the candle bracket-"is clearly some horrific violence against poor James by a madman, but these fanciful patterns will not help us catch a dangerous intruder! I can only guess that someone tried to break into the strong room, James tried to stop him, and this was the result."

  He paused, breathless, hands on his hips as if daring me to challenge this hypothesis.

  "A thief who stopped to paint pictures in a dying man's blood?" I said, returning his insolent stare. "And none of the doors have been forced, nor have these chests been tampered with. You said yourself that both the strong room and the door to the outer room were locked when you returned this morning," I reminded Slythurst. "Who would have had a key to the strong room?"

  "The three of us," Slythurst said, indicating the rector and the bloody corpse in the corner of the room. "Each of us has a key to open the strong-room door, but the principal coffers here have three padlocks apiece, so that the rector, the bursar, and the subrector must all be present to open them. We call them the chests of the three keys. The bulk of the college funds are kept in these. The trunks containing account books and deeds I can open alone."

  "A safeguard against embezzlement," the rector added.

  "So Doctor Coverdale must have unlocked the door himself and let the killer in," I mused, "and his killer could have locked it afterward using Coverdale's own key."

  "He must have been forced to open it at knifepoint by a robber," Slythurst speculated.

  "But that would have been fruitless if he could not then open the coffers on his own," I said.

  "A robber would not know that. Perhaps that's why he was killed," Slythurst said. "The thief flew into a rage because he did not believe James couldn't open the chest. That must be it!"

  He seemed remarkably keen to discount my theory that Coverdale's death was connected to Roger Mercer's, I thought, and wondered if that was just because he could not stand to concede that I might be right in anything or because it suited him to throw up a false trail. After all, he was one of the two people with a key to the strong room.

  "When were either of you last here?" I asked.

  Slythurst glanced anxiously at the rector, who appeared lost in his own thoughts and was making every effort to avoid looking at the body.

  "With respect, Doctor Bruno, have you been appointed to investigate this crime, that you should start questioning us as if you were the magistrate?"

  "Oh, just answer him, Walter, he is trying to help us," said the rector wearily, to my surprise. "For myself, I have not been up here since last Tuesday, when we took out the monies and papers for the college attorney. Is that right, Walter, was it Tuesday?"

  "That was the last time we were all here together," Slythurst agreed, shooting me a look of distaste. "I was last here on the evening of Saturday, just before the disputation, when James let me in to collect the papers I needed relating to the management of our estates in Aylesbury, together with some money for the journey and sundry expenses when I arrived. I left for Buckinghamshire first thing on Sunday morning and have not been near the strong room until my return just now, which you witnessed. There-am I in the clear?" he added, his eyes flashing with sarcasm.

  "That is not for me to say." I shrugged. "What time did you collect the papers on Saturday evening?"

  "Just before the disputation, I told you, so I suppose some time around half past four. I wanted to have everything in order for my journey the next day because I knew the dinner at Christ Church would end late and I did not want to have to disturb James when I returned." He flicked a brief glance then at Coverdale's bizarre corpse and lowered his head.

  I crossed the room back to the body with its protruding
arrows and considered it again from various angles, touching my finger to the bloodstains on the shirt, which left a thick residue.

  "This body could well have been here since Saturday night," I said. "The blood is dry and the stiffness that sets in after death has already passed-he is beginning to rot. If the weather had been warmer the decay would be more advanced, we would not be able to breathe in this room. But I have remembered something-Doctor Coverdale was summoned early from the disputation, one of the students brought him an urgent message. I wonder then if he was lured back to his death."

  "I do recall that he did not attend the dinner for the palatine that night," the rector murmured, "and I thought it strange because he had been looking forward to it-he likes to make an impression on men of state. Liked." He corrected himself quickly, shaking his head. "Oh, God in heaven!" It was a cry of genuine anguish, though not, I felt, of grief for his colleague, and his voice rose to a frantic pitch. "You are right, Doctor Bruno, we shall not be able to keep the manner of this death secret. There will be a full investigation, the coroner and the magistrate will be called-the college will be ruined! I can think of several of our benefactors who will not want their names associated with a place of such iniquity-they will withdraw funds and give them to other foundations less blighted by evil deeds. This is truly the work of the Devil! To make a mockery of the Christian martyrs in such monstrous fashion." He buried his face in his hands and I thought for a moment he was sobbing, but he was only trying to master his breathing.

  "Well, it is the work of someone who can wield a longbow," I said, pragmatically. "Though I think at this distance even I could hit a target that was tied to the wall and already dead, so we are not necessarily looking for someone with any great skill in archery. Whoever it was has staged this murder very carefully so that we would link it to the other."

  "So that you would link it," said the rector. "Foxe, the false martyrdoms-this is your theory, Doctor Bruno."