Giordano Bruno 01 - Heresy

by S. J. Parris

  “Thomas, no!” Sophia cried, lurching at him, her hand outstretched. “You do not know what you do! Do not stand in our way now, it will do no good. You will not get what you want, and all will be lost.”

  The tall servant took a step closer to Thomas, who glanced at him for a moment before turning again to Sophia and laughing, his head thrown back, a wild, manic sound that echoed around the wooden timbers of the ceiling.

  “Sophia, Sophia,” he said, gently chiding as if speaking to a naughty child. “What lies have you been telling these good people? Have you persuaded Lady Tolling to help you escape so that you can join a French convent, because your family would persecute you for your conversion?”

  Sophia blanched; her face stiffened and I saw real fear in her eyes. She looked frantically at Lady Tolling and then I saw her legs tremble slightly, so that she stumbled; instinctively I moved to help her but Barton was between us in an instant, glaring at me, and I saw now that he carried an instrument that looked like a poker at his belt.

  “Come with us,” Thomas said, in a softer tone. “This will not end the way you hope, Sophia, you know in your heart it will not. He means to kill you.”

  Sophia shook her head furiously, her lips pressed tightly together.

  “You are blind and stubborn, Thomas, and you have ever been so!” she cried, taking a step toward him. “You have always acted impetuously, always convinced that you are right! But you are badly mistaken this time, as I have already tried to tell you.”

  Lady Tolling folded her arms impatiently and her glance flickered from Sophia to Thomas, but her voice remained steady. “What is this about? Who are these men, Sophia? Who means to kill her?”

  “He is deluded, my lady, his wits are troubled, he knows not what he says,” Sophia interrupted quickly, her throat tight with emotion.

  Thomas turned to face Lady Tolling with defiant eyes, apparently undaunted by her rank, the craven manner I had seen in Oxford entirely vanished.

  “Your visiting priest,” he said, enunciating the words precisely. “Father Jerome Gilbert.”

  If Lady Tolling was perturbed either by the accusation that she harboured a priest or that this same priest was bent on murder, she gave no sign of it, save for a small twitch of her mouth.

  “Well, then, let us ask him,” she said, her voice calm as ever, and she crossed the room in a rustling of satin and stepped into the small antechamber on the right-hand side, from which Sophia had entered. We caught a brief exchange of voices from within and almost immediately she returned, followed by the young man I had known as Gabriel Norris.

  He was dressed as usual in a well-cut doublet and breeches of sombre black, though evidently of costly fabric, and wearing good leather boots with a silver buckle, his blond hair swept back from his face. Handsome and self-possessed, he looked every inch the country gentleman’s son; no one passing him in the town or the colleges would have taken him for a secret missionary. He looked from Thomas to Sophia to me with a steady, careful gaze, then nodded slowly.

  “Well, then,” he said, spreading out his hands, palms up. “Let us say what needs to be said. Lady Eleanor, with the greatest respect, I would ask that you leave us. There are matters that must be resolved between old friends before any of us can go on.”

  Lady Tolling seemed unwilling to relinquish control of any drama to be played out under her roof.

  “Your safety, Father,” she murmured, glancing at me and Thomas. “These men have not even been searched.”

  “I know them,” Norris said, reassuringly. “All will be well.”

  When the door had closed behind her and the servant, Norris—or Jerome, as I supposed I must now call him—turned and fixed me with his clear green eyes.

  “Doctor Bruno,” he said, a puzzled frown etched in the space between his brows. “I had thought—”

  “You had thought Rowland Jenkes would have killed me tonight?” I offered.

  “Well, yes. Though I am not altogether surprised you shook him off—I told him you should not be underestimated. You are, after all, the man who escaped the Inquisition.” His mouth curved into the barest hint of a smile, showing his white teeth. “Have you and Thomas formed your own Anti-Catholic League?” He paused briefly to laugh at his own joke. His manner was oddly relaxed and easy, given the circumstances, and now that he was not playing up to his flamboyant alias, he spoke in a more measured, mature tone. When he turned again to look me directly in the eye I was reminded of Humphrey Pritchard’s words: that Father Jerome made you feel you were the only person in the world that mattered. “Well, then,” he continued, softly, “so you know the truth. Are you come to arrest me?”

  “I came because I believed Sophia was in danger,” I said, trying to return his look evenly, though there was something disconcerting about the intensity of his gaze. I determined I would not look away first.

  “From me?” he asked, as if the idea were absurd. “Why should I wish to hurt Sophia, who has so recently been received through my ministry into the one true Catholic Church?”

  “Your ministry? Is that what you call it?” Thomas burst out.

  “Because she carries your child,” I said simply.

  “Slander,” Jerome said, his eyes suddenly flashing with anger as he took a step toward me.

  “Did Thomas tell you that?” Sophia cried, her cheeks blazing. “You know that everything he says is a lie?”

  “No one told me,” I said, now lying myself to spare Cobbett. “I may have been a monk but I grew up in a small village—I know how to recognise such things.”

  Sophia said nothing, but pressed a hand over her mouth; Thomas smirked; Jerome sucked in his cheeks and appeared to be thinking.

  “You will understand better than anyone, I think, Bruno,” he said seriously, at length, “how a man may feel trapped by the strictures of his order. Yes, I sinned, but I would not commit a greater sin to cover it. Sophia will be conveyed in safety to Rouen, where she will be looked after until such time as I can join her.” His eyes flicked toward Sophia as he spoke and she looked up gratefully, but there was something evasive about the look that convinced me he was lying for her benefit.

  “I also know from experience, Father,” I said, “that the religious orders do not let go of their own so easily. Especially the Jesuits.”

  Jerome nodded as if he were reluctantly impressed. “Very good, Bruno, you have done your work thoroughly. Yes, I was ordained a Jesuit in Rome and joined the English mission through the seminary in Rheims. Thomas’s father brought me to Oxford—it was his role to coordinate the arrival of priests into Oxfordshire, find us safe houses, manage our provisions and disguises. The role Roger Mercer took over after Edmund’s exile. But you already know this, I presume.”

  “I have only recently begun to understand the connections,” I admitted. “Yours was a very good disguise.”

  “Disguise.” Thomas spat the word, his eyes cold. “It was no disguise at all. He carried himself as what he always was—the son of a wealthy family who ever expected others dance to his tune. Joining the Jesuits was just another means of adventuring, for him. His disguise, as you call it, was so natural a part of him that in the end it became all too easy for him to forget his mission.”

  Thomas glared pointedly at Sophia; Jerome at least had the grace to look sheepish.

  “And fall into temptation,” I mused, looking from Jerome to Sophia and remembering the Book of Hours the rector had found sewn into her mattress, with its suggestive, intimate dedication. “J.” Not Jenkes, then, but Jerome. So it must have been Jerome, too, that Roger Mercer had expected to meet in the grove on Saturday morning, when he met his violent death instead.

  “But Roger Mercer found you out,” I said, meeting the Jesuit’s level gaze as my chest suddenly tightened at the thought that I was standing mere feet from the killer. “And I had thought he was killed for those papers.”

  Jerome’s eyes widened instantly and he stepped forward, his air of amused complacency van
ished.

  “How do you know about the papers?” he demanded, looking genuinely shaken for the first time since our arrival.

  “I have seen them,” I said, managing to sound calmer than I felt.

  “Where?”

  “In the chest in your chamber. Where you hid them.”

  “In my—?” He swung around and stared at Thomas now in disbelief. “But you said—”

  “Roger Mercer caught them in the grove one night,” Thomas cut in, a note of spite in his voice. I noticed that his right hand was tucked inside his cloak. “Sophia used to steal the key from her father’s study at night. Mercer was appalled, as you may imagine. He came to our room the next day, exploding with rage. Reminded Father Jerome here how many Catholics in Oxford were risking their lives for his sake, and how he would not take the sacrament any longer from a priest living in mortal sin, and could not allow the others in their circle to do so unwittingly. Said he had no choice but to report Jerome to the Jesuit Superior.”

  “I have heard the Jesuits deal ruthlessly with those who stand in the way of their mission,” I said, taking a step back, but Jerome had turned his green eyes on Thomas. “They are as ready to kill for their faith as to die for it—as you have already shown.”

  “As I have shown?” Jerome looked back at me for a moment, then let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “I see—you have weighed up your evidence, Bruno, and concluded that I must be the Lincoln killer because I have the most to protect. Am I right?”

  “Roger Mercer threatened to expose your breach of chastity,” I said, grasping at facts that had seemed so self-evident a moment ago and now threatened to slip away from me. “You wanted him silenced.”

  “I do not deny that. I mentioned to Jenkes that Roger had been fed ill reports of me and his doubts threatened my safety—I expected Jenkes to have a quiet word in his usual way. But I made a mistake.” He paused to rake his smooth hair out of his face. “Perhaps you know the story of our Saint Thomas Becket, Bruno—our greatest Archbishop of Canterbury. It is said that King Henry the Second, in a moment of frustration, cried in the presence of his nobles, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ He meant it as a rhetorical question only, but they chose to understand it as an order—consequently Becket was run through with a sword while at prayer, to the king’s horror. That was my mistake. I muttered something similar over poor Roger Mercer, and my faithful servant here”—he cast a look at Thomas every bit as loaded with scorn as his voice—“chose to interpret that in his own way.”

  “I did not hear you object, Father,” Thomas said quietly. “You were pleased to have my help then.”

  Jerome shrugged, unabashed. “I do not deny that the thought of sparing myself—and Sophia—the disgrace Roger Mercer had threatened was attractive.” He turned back to me. “But since you seem to have appointed yourself constable and magistrate in this case, Bruno, you should look more closely at your evidence. Thomas is every bit as good a player as I am—it seems he had you cozened, at any rate. He may appear harebrained and nervous as a coney, but he is as shrewd as the Devil himself.”

  Thomas merely returned his stare, his face inscrutable.

  “He proposed that he would conjure a solution to our difficulty,” Jerome continued. “Those were his words. I accepted his offer and said I wished to know nothing more until it was done. So I had no idea he had persuaded the Nappers to help him steal a dog. I was on my way back from Mass that night when I heard the commotion in the grove and ran for my longbow. Only then did I learn what an elaborate display he had created.” He twisted his mouth in distaste.

  “But why?” I asked, turning to Thomas as I tried to revise all the conclusions I thought I had made. “What made you kill a man in such a manner, when you could not even be certain of the outcome?”

  “Martyrs,” Thomas spat, as though the very word disgusted him. “It is become their obsession. They all wanted to be martyrs for their faith, or at least they claimed they did. The highest glory.” His voice was rising to a manic pitch; he shook his head in fury. “Even my father seeks a martyr’s crown, it seems. What kind of a religion is that, Doctor Bruno, that makes men fall in love with death over life? Where is love, then? Where is human kindness?”

  I could have pointed out that a man who would set a starving hunting dog on his father’s closest friend may not be the best placed to talk of human kindness, but I kept silent. Thomas gestured at Sophia. “To have the love of a woman like Sophia, the prospect of new life in her womb—”

  “Thomas!” Sophia cried, stepping forward, but Jerome held out a hand to restrain her.

  “But this … creature”—Thomas exploded, stabbing a finger at Jerome—“throws it all aside, he saves all his desire for the executioner’s blade!” His pointing finger trembled with pent-up passion. “Well then, let them try martyrdom, I thought, see how they like it. The rector had just given a sermon on the death of Saint Ignatius. The teeth of wild beasts. It seemed as good a way as any to send Roger to meet his God.” He produced a strange, high-pitched laugh that chilled my blood. “After the pain my father suffered for his sake, it was the least he deserved.”

  An unnerving silence followed this outburst as the echo of his words died away. Sophia, Jerome, and I stared at Thomas in rapt horror for a moment.

  “And with every member of the college under increasing scrutiny, I was afraid my cover would be at risk. Which was your intention all along, was it not, my friend?” Jerome added softly, raising his head to look at Thomas, who only continued to return his stare, unblinking. I watched them both, still feeling all my nerves taut as a bowstring; I didn’t know if Thomas was more disturbing when he was pulsing with manic energy or in this strange new stillness, as if he were a cat waiting to pounce.

  “So you went to Mercer’s room to get your hands on those papers before Thomas did?” I asked, turning back to Jerome. He made a brief, impatient movement with his head.

  “I had no idea that Thomas knew about them. After Mercer threatened to expose me, I knew I would always be vulnerable while those letters—all Edmund Allen’s correspondence with Rheims about my mission, and the Regnans in Excelsis papal bull—were not in my own hands. But I barely had time to search his room before I saw you through the window, crossing the courtyard toward the tower staircase. I had to hide myself up on the roof of the tower before you came in. That was when I knew your true business in the college.” He nodded significantly, planting his hands on his hips.

  “I had no business,” I said, my heart pummelling at my ribs, “other than an interest in finding out how a man could have met such a horrific death—an interest none of his colleagues seemed to share. I only wanted to find some clue as to who he planned to meet and why he carried a full purse.”

  Jerome cast his eyes down, his face guilty for the first time.

  “Thomas asked only that I lure Mercer to the grove that morning. I had told him I felt I should return to France in the circumstances. I asked him to meet me to return some of the money he held for me on behalf of the mission so that I could travel.”

  “But then what of Coverdale?” I asked, looking from Jerome to Thomas. “Did he also find out about Sophia?”

  “You had better ask Thomas about Coverdale,” Jerome said, setting his jaw.

  “That snake,” Thomas whispered, his soft voice making me jump after his long silence. “Coverdale petitioned the rector for my removal from the college. He feared I knew too much and thought I would betray them out of revenge. The rector at least had some compassion and let me stay on, but it was Coverdale’s fault that I lost my scholarship and had to depend on his charity.” He jerked his head toward Jerome. “Well, James Coverdale learned what revenge looked like. He was ever a coward—he cried like a girl child when I showed him the razor, and pissed himself.”

  “So you decided to make a martyr of him too, because you despised his faith?”

  Thomas smiled, looking at me from the corner of his eye like a child caught out in s
ome mischief.

  “When Jerome sent me to take his longbow and arrows to the strong room, I had the idea of Saint Sebastian. I thought if the deaths looked like a pattern, it would frighten them even more. I asked Doctor Coverdale if I could speak privately with him later and he told me he would arrange to leave the disputation early. He feared I had come to bargain with him, but he never expected what happened next.” He was hugging himself tightly, rocking slightly, his mouth wide in a silent laugh. “I needed those letters too. That room used to be my father’s, remember? I knew if I could put them into the right hands, he would be finished.” He pointed again at Jerome with a flourish.

  “But I don’t understand,” I said. “If you wanted to expose Jerome, why not just tell the rector what you knew, long before this? You could have saved two innocent lives.”

  Thomas gave me a scathing look. “And lose my own? I took you for a clever man, Doctor Bruno. I was dependent on him—don’t you see that? I could do nothing until I was assured of another place by some means. And perhaps you do not know the laws of our land. To aid, comfort, or maintain a Jesuit is a felony, punishable by death. To live as his servant, to take his shilling, to maintain his disguise—what is that if not aiding? And if the law did not kill me, that whoreson Jenkes would have done it first if I betrayed Gabriel. Gabriel—ha! He even took the name of an archangel—is that not hubris?”

  “The face of an angel,” I murmured, echoing Humphrey Pritchard’s words. “But if someone else were to discover him, then you could not be implicated. All you had to do was point them in the right direction, with your quotations and your diagrams.” I let the words hang in the air. Thomas only looked at me, his teeth grinding together unconsciously. “And poor Ned? Did he also betray your father?”

  “Ned?” Sophia, who until now had been listening to Thomas’s confessions with an expression of increasing horror, suddenly reached out and clutched Jerome’s arm. “Little Ned Lacy, the Bible clerk? He is not dead too?”