by S. J. Parris
“I was told it was a place one might go to meet … like-minded people,” I said quietly.
Jenkes nodded encouragingly. “Told by whom?”
“A contact.”
“In London or Oxford? Or abroad?”
“Oxford,” I said, without a pause.
“His name? Or hers,” he added, as an afterthought.
“I prefer not to say.”
“Then how am I to know you are not lying to me, Bruno?” he asked, his face now inches from mine, so that all his pox scars seemed magnified.
“He grew quickly intimate with young Allen, as I told you—they were seen together this morning at the Flower de Luce,” Bernard interjected from the other side of the room. Jenkes narrowed his eyes; I could almost see his calculations as he weighed this news.
“So Thomas Allen has been sharing his confidences with you, has he? I fear he may give you a bad impression of our little group, Bruno. Was it he who directed you to us?”
Realising that Thomas could be in danger if Jenkes believed he had been telling me Edmund Allen’s secrets, I knew I had to deny his involvement, even though I had no idea what effect my next words would have on the two men now watching me.
“It was not Thomas who suggested I visit the Catherine Wheel,” I said. “It was Roger Mercer.”
Jenkes frowned, letting go of my shoulder. He seemed genuinely wrong-footed.
“Mercer?”
“It is true that I saw him deep in conversation with Mercer in the courtyard, the night before Roger died,” Bernard confirmed. “I was watching from my window.”
“How did the Catherine Wheel enter your conversation?” Jenkes asked, pointing a long finger into my face.
I raised a hand and gently moved his finger aside before speaking. “I asked if he knew of any place in Oxford where I might hear Mass said.”
“You just asked? And he sent you to the Catherine Wheel, just like that?” Jenkes looked as though he could not decide whether to be incredulous or furious; he twisted his hands together until the knuckles cracked.
“He suggested I would find friends there, but that I should exercise discretion,” I said.
“Discretion—as if he knew the meaning of the word! He was ever a damnable fool. His loose tongue would have seen us all dead eventually. To tell a stranger, William, and one who travels with a royal party—can you credit it?” Jenkes wiped his brow with the back of his hand. “Though I was sorry to hear of his cruel death, of course.”
“It hardly matters now,” Bernard said, before piously adding, “God have mercy on his soul.”
Jenkes gave me another long, hard look, then appeared to decide in my favour.
“Well, then, Doctor Bruno—let poor Mercer be proved right. You have found yourself among friends. Come tonight—at half past midnight. Use the rear door, through the inn yard, not the street door. Humphrey will be there—say the password and he will admit you. Wear a cloak with a hood, keep it drawn over your face and take care you are not followed.”
“Will there not be watchmen at the north gate? Surely they will want to know my business at that hour.”
“Give them a groat and they will not give two shits for your business,” he said, his eyes flicking again to my belt. “But have a care for your purse walking the streets so late. Have you a weapon?”
I replied that I did not carry one. He picked up the little silver-handled knife from the workbench and held it out to me.
“Take it for tonight. It is only small but it cuts through leather well enough—I am sure it could do some damage if you were set upon. Better than an empty scabbard, anyway.”
“Thank you—but in any case I will not need my purse for such a meeting, will I?” I replied.
“Oh, but you must bring your purse tonight,” Jenkes said, his expression suddenly concerned; seeing my look of suspicion, he leaned in with a sly smile. “For I do not give away my books for nothing, Master Bruno, not even to my brother Catholics.”
My heart quickened. “Books?”
“You are interested in a book, are you not? A Greek book, brought out of Florence by Dean Flemyng a century ago, bequeathed to the library of Lincoln College, removed by our friend Doctor Bernard here during the purge by the Royal Commission of ’69. Am I correct?”
“Do you have this book?” I whispered, hardly daring to breathe.
He replied with the same slow, infuriating smile.
“I do not have it here. But I have held it in my hands, and I can direct you to it. I’m sure we can work out an arrangement that will suit us both, Doctor Bruno. Be sure to bring your purse.”
“You said the book did not exist,” I said, turning to Bernard with a note of triumph.
“I said so for the sake of those fools gathered around the rector’s table that night,” he said, dismissively. “It would have raised too many questions. Underhill is a puppet of the chancellor and the Privy Council—he would not know the value of such a book, but I did not wish to awaken his old anxieties. If he had his way, he would purge the library until there was nothing left upon the lecterns but the Bishops’ Bible and the volumes of Master Foxe.” For a moment I thought Bernard might spit on the floor, so bitter was the contempt in his voice as he spoke the name, but he restrained himself. I wondered what Jenkes had meant when he said that Mercer’s loose tongue would have had them all killed.
“We must not detain you any longer, Doctor Bruno,” Jenkes said, turning back toward the shop and reaching for the keys at his belt. “You will be wanting to catch up with your friend Florio. By the way—it goes without saying that you do not breathe a word of our conversation to anyone. I am the only one who can tell you who to trust in this town where matters of religion are concerned. You understand the dangers, I’m sure.”
I nodded, as he unlocked the door to the street and I saw with some relief that the rain had finally begun to thin.
I turned back to see him standing in the doorway, arms folded across his chest, with an air of satisfaction.
“And the book?”
“I will tell you all about the book when we next meet.”
“You have forgotten one thing,” I said, in a low voice. “The password.”
Jenkes’s pitted face creased into a lopsided smile.
“Why, you have already been told, Doctor Bruno,” he whispered, before mouthing the words, “Ora pro nobis.”
Chapter 15
Achill wind chivvied the dark rain clouds in drifts across the sky, revealing a higher layer of pearl-grey cloud as the rain thinned and finally ceased altogether. I walked through the muddy lanes back to Lincoln barely aware any longer of my damp clothes chafing at my skin, my head caught up in whirling thoughts. As I passed under the tower archway I heard the bell tolling its melancholy summons to Evensong, but I was unprepared for the sight that greeted me as I emerged into the quadrangle. Groups of students and Fellows stood huddled together around the entrance to the staircase that led to the library and the chapel, staring up at the windows, all seemingly transfixed by something. An eerie silence hung over the quadrangle, the men gathered there exchanging only muted whispers and frozen glances. The air was taut with unspoken fear. I slowed my steps and approached the nearest knot of students to find out the reason for this sombre congregation, when Richard Godwyn pushed his way through to greet me unsmiling, relief etched on his face.
“Doctor Bruno, the rector has been asking for you,” he said in a low voice. “Come.”
Taking me by the elbow, he guided me through the staring crowd to the entrance that led up to the library and chapel. At the foot of the stairs stood the stocky kitchen servant who had been set to guard the stairway to Coverdale’s room earlier; he glanced at us and nodded brusquely. Godwyn led the way up to the chapel and tapped gently on the door with his knuckles; it was opened immediately by Slythurst, who scowled at me, but stepped aside to let me pass. Instantly, I recognised the smell of blood. Rector Underhill rose from one of the wooden benches nearest the
door and clasped my wrists with both hands, staring into my eyes with desperation, his own red-rimmed above sunken cheeks.
“God is punishing us, Bruno,” he whispered, his voice cracked. “He is heaping burning coals on my head for my sins of omission. Even here, in our consecrated chapel.” He stepped aside, his grip still tight around my wrist, and I witnessed the cause of the rector’s latest distress. At the foot of the small altar a body lay slumped. I stepped slowly closer; blood was spattered across the rushes on the floor and up the white altar cloth, and even from the other end of the chapel I could see that the body had a shock of red hair.
“Nothing has been touched,” the rector croaked. “I wanted you to see. I came into the chapel just before five to prepare for Evensong and found …” His voice trembled and he sat back down heavily on a nearby bench.
I knelt by the body, my teeth tightly clenched. Ned, the young Bible clerk, lay on his back in his shirt and breeches, his eyes bulging unnaturally wide and protruding toward the ceiling in a fixed expression of terror. It took a moment before I realised why his stare was so hideous: his eyelids had been cut off. I bent closer, holding my breath in disbelief. This was not the only mutilation of the boy’s face; a wide gash had been cut down both cheeks, so deeply that the blade appeared to have pierced right through his face, and his mouth was swollen and bloodied, thick rivulets of blood coating his downy chin. The boy had barely been old enough to shave.
“The altar,” Underhill whispered, nodding toward it.
I looked up and recoiled instantly; a dark red fleshy lump sat in the centre of the altar, blood seeping from it to form an ugly stain on the white cloth.
“Oh, God,” I breathed, for I knew what I was looking at. Gingerly I prised Ned’s lower jaw open to reveal the stump of his tongue. The movement unleashed a fresh flow of blood down his chin and I jumped back instinctively, though I knew he could not possibly be alive.
“This happened very recently,” I observed, turning to the rector. He nodded, passing his hands over his face.
“Ned came every day at around four to make the chapel ready for Evensong at five,” he said, his voice still barely audible. “That is the Bible clerk’s principal duty. Anyone would have known to find him here. The chapel is not kept locked. They must have hidden and waited for him. Poor boy.” He shook his head. “But you see what they have done to him, Bruno?” He looked up at me expectantly.
“Foxe again?”
He gave a brief nod. “I believe it is meant to be Romanus. His martyrdom comes in Book One of Foxe, just after the story of Saint Alban that I recounted in chapel yesterday. Romanus’s torturers mutilated him to stop him singing hymns, but when they cut wounds in his face, he thanked them for opening many more mouths with which to praise God.”
“They always had a ready wit, these saints,” I said grimly.
“So they cut out his tongue. Eventually they strangled him.” Underhill made a strange noise like a hiccup, and clamped a hand over his mouth.
I loosened the cloth of Ned’s shirt that had bunched up around his neck; sure enough, his pale flesh was marked with dark bruises where fingers had gripped his throat.
“They cut out his tongue to stop him talking,” I mused, half to myself. Only a few hours earlier, Ned had told me what he had seen on Saturday evening. Had he died for that? I cast my mind back to our encounter after dinner on the way out of the great hall. Who could have overheard our conversation? Lawrence Weston? But the passageway had been thronged with students and Fellows sheltering from the rain; any one of them might have seen me handing Ned the shilling he never even got to spend. The idea that I might unwittingly have called down this vengeance on the poor boy seized me with horror for a moment, but my thoughts were interrupted by an impatient cough.
“Now that Doctor Bruno has been good enough to give us his expert verdict,” Slythurst said, his voice chilly with disdain, “perhaps I should alert the constables, Rector? Whoever did this cannot have got far in so short a time—if they put out the hue and cry now—”
“He is most likely still here in the college,” I said, turning to the rector. “If he is, he will barely have had time to wash the blood from his hands—you must gather the whole community in the great hall at once. Someone must have seen something.”
The rector nodded and turned to Slythurst. “Walter—go down and call all the students and Fellows together as Doctor Bruno suggests,” he instructed. “Make sure everyone is present and comes just as he is—knock on every door, drag men from their rooms if you have to.”
Slythurst gave me one of his furious glares, but turned on his heel and left the chapel.
“What did you do after you found the body?” I asked.
“I … I cried out for help … I could not think clearly,” he stammered. “Richard was in the library and came running across. Then I stayed with the body and he went to find Walter.”
“You were in the library all the time?” I asked, turning to Godwyn, who was still standing by the door in a state of some agitation.
“Well, yes,” he said, somewhat defensively, “I was working there all afternoon.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “And you heard nothing? While a boy was murdered just across the landing?”
“The doors of the library and the chapel are both solid oak, Doctor Bruno,” Godwyn said, his voice rising in protest. “I heard footsteps on the stairs earlier but I did not think that unusual. But I didn’t hear a voice until Rector Underhill opened the chapel door and called out.”
I looked back at the body.
“I suppose if someone lay in wait and surprised him, they could have strangled him before he had much of a chance to fight back or cry out.” The thought offered a degree of comfort, but still I regarded Godwyn with suspicion. Did he know Ned had seen him meeting Jenkes outside the Divinity School?
“Then he would have been dead before all this …?” The rector gestured to the boy’s mutilated face.
“Let us hope so,” I muttered, rising to my feet.
“But Ned,” Godwyn said, looking down at the battered corpse, his brow crumpled as if the scene somehow did not make sense to him. “Why Ned?” He shook his head as if that might rid him of his confusion. I suddenly recalled something that Ned had told me in our fateful conversation earlier.
“Did Ned also undertake duties in the library as well as the chapel?” I asked.
Godwyn turned and looked at me sharply.
“Sometimes he helped me out with small tasks,” he said, his eyes guarded. “Matters of tidying and upkeep, generally—he did not handle the books. Why do you ask?”
“Master Godwyn,” I said, “someone was in the library on Saturday evening, while most of the college was out at the disputation, the evening James Coverdale was murdered. Ned heard them, but he didn’t know who it was.”
Godwyn bit the knuckle of his thumb and regarded me anxiously.
“Well, as I have told you, the Fellows all have their own keys. I suppose it is possible that someone came back early, but I have no idea. Or else …” He shot a furtive glance at the rector and allowed his sentence to trail away. I recalled what he had told me about Sophia using her father’s key to access the library. Ned said he had heard a man’s voice raised in anger, but who was that man speaking to? Godwyn’s composure was clearly affected; I could not help wondering if Ned, in the course of his library duties, might have stumbled across Godwyn’s cache of illegal Catholic books.
“And you?” I asked, looking him directly in the eye. “You did not see anyone when you returned early?”
“I?” Godwyn looked away, his large drooping eyes assuming a hurt expression. “I was at the disputation, Doctor Bruno.” He shifted uncomfortably and folded his arms across his chest.
“But you left early to meet someone, I understand.”
The rector looked up, mild surprise displacing the expression of weary despair on his face for a moment. Godwyn coloured violently and did not try to maintain hi
s lie.
“It’s true—I slipped out at the beginning on a matter of personal business,” he added, his voice growing strained. “Nothing to do with the college. But I did not return until just before six, when I found the library locked and empty, just as I had left it. That is the truth, before God, I swear it.”
I looked at Godwyn’s hands as he twisted them, folding and unfolding his fingers. Broad hands, stained at the fingertips with ink, though not, as far as I could see, with blood. The rector looked from me to Godwyn as if he didn’t know what to believe anymore.
“Wait—what is that?” A heap of something dark had caught my eye by the foot of the altar. I bent to examine it; on closer inspection it appeared to be a pile of folded black cloth. Lifting it gingerly by one corner between my finger and thumb, I saw that it was a scholar’s gown, frayed in the sleeves and sticky with fresh blood.
“This trick again,” I said, holding the gown up to show the rector. “This must be Ned’s gown. The killer puts his victims’ gowns on over his own clothes so that he can walk away without any noticeable trace of blood on him.”
The door creaked open and the three of us jumped, made skittish by our proximity to murder. Slythurst’s rodent face appeared in the gap.
“The college is assembled in the hall, Rector, whenever you are ready, though I’m afraid not everyone is accounted for.” He glanced at me. “I cannot find William Bernard. Gabriel Norris and Thomas Allen do not appear to be in their room either. And John Florio has not been seen since this afternoon.”
The rector nodded and rose heavily to his feet.
“Go on ahead, Walter, and you, Richard,” he said. “I will be with you in a few moments. After I have spoken to the men I am going to impose a curfew. Everyone is to remain in his rooms this evening, until we have had a chance to search the college.”
“Guests included, I presume?” Slythurst said, wrapping his arms around his torso.
“Everyone,” said the rector firmly. “Now, I would have a word with Doctor Bruno alone.”