The Dead of Winter: Three gripping Tudor historical crime thriller novellas from a No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling fiction author

by S. J. Parris

  ‘But that’s the point,’ I said, animated now and leaning forward so that my mouth was almost at his ear. ‘If Porta’s studies of ancient magic give him access to supernatural powers, we would not need a strong sword arm. That’s why he wants to probe those mysteries.’

  He reined the horse to a standstill so abruptly that its hooves skidded on the loose stones and I almost flew off the back.

  ‘Never repeat that.’ He spoke as if reprimanding a child. ‘We are not a ragtag of amateur alchemists, dabbling in witchcraft for a hobby. No one is summoning supernatural powers, do you hear me? We are men of science, concerned with natural magic only. We seek to understand better the mysteries of Creation, for which purpose God gave us the faculty of reason and enquiry. I want no talk of demons, or spells, or witches’ unguents, or any such wise-woman quackery. Is that clear?’

  ‘But I thought—’

  ‘Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes.’ I sat back, chastened, and fell silent for a full minute. He nudged the horse with his heels and it resumed its pace with a whinny of protest.

  ‘But think about it,’ I said, bouncing forward again to speak in his ear, ‘Porta wants to learn how to manipulate and harness the powers of the natural world. Consider Vesuvius, for example, or, or – I don’t know – lightning. If, let’s say, you could harness the power of lightning – which must be possible – and direct it straight on to the viceroy’s palazzo, his entire household would be burned to a cinder in an instant, it would be greater than any cannon—’

  ‘Bruno.’ Gennaro sounded weary, but I thought I could see the gleam of a smile in the dark. ‘Drink less of the coca tea next time. You talk quite enough as it is.’

  A faint glimmer of dawn light showed along the horizon by the time we arrived back at San Domenico. I was not remotely tired – I felt I could have run ten times around the cloisters – but I bounded up the stairs to the dormitory to mull over everything I had heard in the privacy of my cell, before the bell for lauds. I shut the door silently behind me and ripped off my habit and undershirt, then poured water into a basin from the pitcher on my washstand and vigorously splashed my face and neck to sluice off the dust and sweat of the road.

  ‘Busy night?’ said a voice, from the shadows in the corner.

  I leapt a foot in the air with an emphatic curse, sending the basin crashing to the floor. My eyes had adjusted to the dark well enough to make out a figure lolling on my bed. Fra Raffaele da Monte, propped on one elbow as if he were posing for a painter, just asking to have that knowing half-smile knocked off his face. What animal would Porta identify him with, I wondered, as we stared at one another. Some kind of spoiled, indoor cat, but one with a temper, preening itself while it watched for the moment to scratch your face.

  I swore at him again for good measure, my heart thudding against my ribs as if I had run the whole distance back from Vomero. I breathed deep to steady myself; he had me at a disadvantage, but I would only make it worse by reacting without thinking, that was what he wanted. It was then that I remembered I was naked, and grabbed at a linen towel to tie around my waist. He laughed, but there was menace in it.

  ‘How long have you been in here?’ We were not permitted locks on the doors of our cells; why would we need them, when the whole point of religious life was that we lived in community, and none of us should have secrets from his brothers? Of course, those with money fitted locks to protect their gold candlesticks and fine jewellery and the senior brothers turned a blind eye, but with my reputation, if I had attempted the same it would have been taken as a sign that I had something to hide.

  Raffaele shrugged. ‘Since I saw you were not at matins. Where have you been?’

  ‘Whoring.’ I turned away to pick up the bowl from the floor so that he would not see my face.

  ‘With anyone else, I might believe that, but we all know you’re too good for the girls at the Cerriglio.’

  ‘They are not the only girls in Naples.’ It was true that I did not keep company with the Cerriglio whores, though they liked to tease me about it and tried to entice me with special offers, to the frustration of my friends. But my father had told me so many lurid tales of comrades afflicted by the pox that the fear kept me out of brothels for the most part, which I suppose was my father’s purpose.

  ‘A lot of us wonder if you even have a taste for girls at all,’ Raffaele said, winding a tassel of his belt around his finger. ‘Since it’s well known you’re Gennaro’s catamite. I saw you leaving with him before midnight. Does he pimp you out to his rich patients now? I hear some of the barons will pay good money for willing boys from the provinces.’

  ‘That’s right. Your father paid me handsomely. He ought to, for the kind of filthy perversion he likes.’

  ‘I should punch you for that,’ he said lazily, without troubling to move. I was on the balls of my feet in an instant, fists raised.

  ‘Come on, then.’

  He laughed again. ‘Calm down, soldier boy. Whatever you’ve been up to tonight, it’s left you very over-excited. I know Gennaro’s not interested in your little provincial arsehole. There’s something else goes on between you and him – always whispering together in the infirmary. I wonder if it’s to do with heretical books. That’s the sort of thing that gets you hard, isn’t it?’ I willed myself not to answer back.

  Fra Raffaele did not like me. He was not alone in that; I had acquired a reputation for intellectual arrogance that was, I admit, not entirely undeserved. Even as a novice I had struggled to conceal my impatience with the slowness of my fellow students, and on occasion had found it necessary to correct the teacher when he made a mistake with his Greek or Latin; this, combined with my growing notoriety for unorthodox questions, meant that I was not popular with certain of my brothers. I had bested Raffaele in a debate once when I was still a novice; not merely won the argument, but demolished every one of his points, leaving him speechless with the audience’s laughter ringing in his ears. He was five years my senior and had never forgiven me the humiliation.

  He swung his legs over the edge of my bed and sat up. He was another in whom good looks had bred superiority rather than decency, I thought. His father was Don Umberto da Messina, a local baron with a prominent seat on the city council, but Raffaele was a bastard, and although his father provided him with a generous allowance, he had not given the boy his name, a slight which Raffaele carried on his young shoulders like the leaden cloaks Dante imagines for the proud in the Inferno. Even so, Raffaele considered his father’s blood to set him above those of us whose line was not so illustrious, however legitimate. Don Umberto had grown rich from his willingness to support the Spanish, and there were those who feared Raffaele operated as a spy within San Domenico, ready to report any whispers of heresy that could be used against the convent. His eyes and skin were dark, even for a Neapolitan; his full lips and curls led some to speculate that his mother had been a Moorish slave, though anyone who said so in earshot of Raffaele or his friends could expect to go home with a broken nose.

  He rested his elbows on his knees, locked his fingers together and looked at me just as the prior did when considering an appropriate punishment.

  ‘You have too many secrets, Giordano Bruno.’ He ran his thumbnail along his teeth. ‘I suppose you think they give you a tiny scrap of power?’

  ‘My secrets are all in your head,’ I said, pretending to occupy myself with tidying the bowl and water jug so I did not have to meet his eye; in my agitated state, I was finding it hard not to rise to his provocations, and I could not risk giving him any reason to report me to the prior. ‘Though I am flattered you take such an interest in my activities. I have absolutely no interest in yours.’

  There was a pause while he tried to work out whether he had been insulted. ‘Tread carefully, soldier boy. Your position here is precarious, for all your supposed brilliance, and you know it. The prior has his eye on you, and so do I.’ He pushed himself to his feet. ‘No one will care how many psalms you can rec
ite backwards if your name brings San Domenico into disrepute.’

  ‘My name brings nothing but glory to the order.’ I assumed the stance of an orator to show that I was not entirely serious, but he did not smile.

  ‘I’m going to find out what you and Gennaro are involved in. Then I’ll decide whether to drag your name through the dirt. Remember who and what you are.’ He fixed me with his most intimidating stare. I confess; I would have given a great deal at that moment for the ability to direct a blast of lightning at him. Instead I laughed in his face.

  ‘I’m the son of a humble soldier from Nola, Brother, how could I forget? But at least I have his name.’

  I thought for a moment that he might hit me, but he mastered himself and shouldered past, snatching the towel from my waist and whipping me around the back of the legs with it on his way. I yelped, and cursed after him as the door slammed. I supposed this was what came of being raised in a community of men; he still behaved like a schoolboy at the age of twenty-five. But I wished I had not attracted his enmity; I did not like the idea that he was watching me, just as I had discovered this new portal to a world of forbidden knowledge. I wondered if I should warn Gennaro.

  After Raffaele’s threat, I checked carefully when I left San Domenico the following afternoon, but I was certain as I could be that no one had seen me leave. I had asked Gennaro to excuse me from my appointed work with him in the dispensary, and to cover for me if anyone asked. He pursed his lips, but did not argue; he must have guessed at my purpose, and reasoned that he was hardly in a position to stop me, having brought me to Porta in the first place. I did not have permission to borrow a horse from the prior’s stable, nor did I have money to hire one, so I walked the long, steep road to Vomero under the relentless sun, one hand on the knife at my belt; the journey took the best part of an hour. When I reached the door set into the cliff below Porta’s villa, I faltered. Was anyone expecting me? If there was no reply, I could hardly present myself at the main door of the house. Perhaps the invitation had been only a courtesy, and not really intended; I feared I might be turned away. But I struck the door with the same pattern of knocks that Gennaro had used the night before, and when it cracked open after a few minutes, I realised I did not know the password.

  ‘I was here last night,’ I stammered. ‘He told me to come back, to use the library.’

  The door opened wide enough for me to pass into the welcome cool of the passageway. The servant Ercole admitted me with a nod, and I followed him through the chambers from the night before, where he offered me the chance to wash my face and hands in the underground spring. He did not speak a word to me as we passed along another network of tunnels on the other side of the meeting room. The final passage ended in a flight of stone steps; at the top he unlocked a door into an unmarked room inside the villa. Looking back, I saw that as he closed this door, it blended seamlessly into the painted wooden panelling of the wall, so that from inside you would never guess it existed.

  ‘Don Giambattista is away,’ Ercole said, as he led me down a richly decorated corridor and pushed open another door at the end. ‘But he says you may stay in the library as long as you wish.’

  I craned my head up to look around the room we had just entered. It was two storeys high with a mezzanine gallery running around three sides, accessed by a spiral staircase, with arched windows at intervals filling the space with light. The domed ceiling was painted with allegorical scenes of the goddess Athena, and every wall was packed with shelves of books and parchments; my mouth hung open as I approached the first stack, hardly knowing where to start. But I was quickly disappointed; there was nothing to see but expensive editions of the most respectable books: Aquinas, Aristotle, Saint Augustine.

  Behind me, Ercole gave a discreet cough.

  ‘Upstairs. Come.’

  I followed him to the gallery. At the far end, where the window allowed a view over the city and the bay beyond, he reached his hand into a stack of books. I could not see what he did, but I heard a satisfying mechanical click, and the entire shelf stack swung out towards me on a pivot so well engineered that it moved almost silently. I stared at Ercole and he nodded me through the gap that had opened. Here, inside, was a room under the eaves with no windows, containing further shelves of books and a writing table. I blinked, trying to adjust to the gloom. Ercole followed me, and from somewhere in his clothes he brought out a tinderbox and lit a series of lamps in alcoves between the stacks.

  ‘Enjoy your studies, sir,’ he said. Like all good servants, he was impeccably polite, and inscrutable. ‘There is a jug of fresh spring water on the table in case you are thirsty. Please keep it away from the books. My master has taken the liberty of selecting a few volumes he thinks may be of interest to you. When you have finished here, pull the lever inside the shelf.’

  With that, he left me in this darkened cave of treasures and the entrance closed behind him.

  I took a long draught of cold water straight from the jug and began to look around Porta’s secret library. Here was every volume on the Inquisition’s Index of Forbidden Books, a trove of all the authors I had longed to read and feared I might never be allowed to set eyes on. It was only as I spoke the titles aloud, in awe, that I fully understood the weight of the trust he had placed in me. Owning any one of these books would be enough to see him interrogated; even his wealth and family name would not protect him from the consequences of a whole library full, if anyone should report him. I realised again what an extraordinary and dangerous undertaking the Academy was. To have brought together all those like-minded men, each determined to further the boundaries of knowledge in his own field, and maintain their work in defiance of the Church and the Inquisition was no small matter. What might we achieve, through mutual encouragement and challenge? We could become like those adventurers who crossed an ocean, driven only by their faith that there was more to the world than had yet been seen, and were rewarded with new continents! Since my earliest memories I had been consumed by a great hunger to find out what lay beyond the horizon, in every sense. Finally, in being invited to the Academy, I had found a place where that desire was no longer considered sinful, or disobedient, or wrong. Determined to prove to Porta that I was worthy of the confidence he had placed in me, I turned my attention to the pile of books on the writing table, all concerned with the art of memory and its occult uses.

  Perhaps half an hour passed; I was so immersed in Cornelius Agrippa’s De Occulta Philosophia, parsing each sentence twice over so I might have it by heart, that I did not even hear the bookshelf swing open.

  ‘Who are you?’ said a woman’s voice, sharply.

  I jerked my head up, taken aback; she was standing by the entrance to the secret room, like a saint in a painting, her long hair gold in the lamplight. I guessed her to be about my own age, though she moved with a self-possession I could not hope to emulate. Because she was very beautiful, I fixed my gaze on the book to stop myself staring.

  ‘Fra Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your service,’ I said, darting a glance at her face. She eyed my habit.

  ‘A Dominican. I did not expect that. I am Fiammetta della Porta. He didn’t tell me anyone was here.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Your husband invited me to use the library today …’ The sentence tailed off as her face softened into a grin.

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Don Giambattista. You are not his – lady?’ I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks.

  ‘I’m his niece.’ She turned away and idly began to run her finger along the spines of the books in front of her. ‘And you are his latest protégé, I suppose.’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’ The way she said it needled me; I wanted to believe that Porta had seen something special in me, not that I was one more in a line of promising young men he chose to patronise. I wondered if this was the niece whose character had transformed for the better after discovering that she was beautiful.

  ‘Well, he must admire you, if he’s let you in here,’ she sa
id. ‘Not many get to see the holy of holies. What animal does he say you are? No – let me guess.’ She came closer and peered at my face. I felt my colour rising under her intense stare. ‘Hm. A wild dog, am I right?’

  I nodded slowly. It seemed my resemblance to a dog was universally agreed upon. ‘He said a wolfhound. He’s taught you well.’

  ‘I know what he looks for. What do you think he says of me?’ She twirled a full circle on the spot so that I could admire her from all angles. I considered, with a quick glance at the door in the hope that someone might appear and save me from having to answer; there was significant potential to cause offence here. This Fiammetta was small in stature, and slender; her face a pale perfect oval, with a high forehead and pointed chin, her features neat but unremarkable. It was her eyes that gave her face beauty; they were wide and expressive, bright with the promise of mischief, and the same clear tawny gold as her uncle’s; I should have spotted the family resemblance straight away. I racked my brains for some creature that would flatter her, when she tossed her loose, curly hair back and breathed impatiently through her nose.

  ‘A horse,’ I said, and immediately wished I could take it back.

  ‘A horse? Well, thank you.’ But she was smiling. ‘What kind? A carthorse? Or do you mean a mule, perhaps, or a donkey?’

  ‘No, I – I was thinking of a thoroughbred,’ I said, desperately trying to retrieve the situation, ‘like those Andalusian pure breeds that are taught to dance in the viceroy’s processions, they’re very elegant—’

  ‘Oh, I’m a dancing horse now? That makes all the difference. You should stop there before you dig yourself any deeper, Brother. What are you reading?’

  ‘Agrippa,’ I said, relieved to change the subject, though I expected the name to mean nothing to her.