Copyright

Harper

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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2012

Copyright © Stephanie Merritt 2012

Cover photographs © Angelo Hornack/Alamy [seal]; Shutterstock [blood]

Stephanie Merritt asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Excerpt from Giordano Bruno novel four © Stephanie Merritt 2012

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction.

The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

EPub Edition © April 2012 ISBN: 9780007317790

Version: 2019-10-11

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Map

Sacrilege

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Canterbury

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Keep Reading …

About the Author

Also by S. J. Parris

About the Publisher

SACRILEGE

ONE

I knew that I was being followed long before I saw or heard my pursuer. I felt it by some instinct that by now had been sharpened by experience; a shifting of the air, a presence whose movements invisibly shadowed my own. Someone was watching me and had been for several days: from the mouths of alleyways, from behind pillars or walls, amid the crowds of people, carts and animals that thronged the narrow streets of London or out among the river traffic. At times I even sensed eyes on me in the privacy of my room at Salisbury Court, though that was surely impossible and could only have been the tricks of imagination.

It was the twenty-third day of July, 1584, and I was hurrying to deliver my new book to my printer before he left London for the rest of the summer. A merchant ship from Portugal had recently docked at Tilbury, at the mouth of the River Thames. Plague was raging in Lisbon and the crew had been forcibly quarantined; despite these measures, rumours that the infection had begun to claim English victims were spreading through the city quicker than the disease itself ever could. Outbreaks of plague were common enough during London summers, I had been told, and any Londoner with the means to move to healthier air was packing as fast as they could. At the French embassy, where I lived as the Ambassador’s house-guest, whispers of the black plague had sent the household into such a frenzy of imagined symptoms that the Ambassador had dispatched his private secretary to enquire about country houses in the neighbourhood of the Palace of Nonsuch, Queen Elizabeth of England’s summer residence.

Fear of the plague had only added to tensions at the embassy in the past few days. Our peace had been shattered the previous week by the arrival of the news from the Netherlands that William the Silent, Prince of Orange, had been assassinated, shot in the chest on the staircase of his own house in Delft by a man he knew and trusted. I imagined that in all the embassies of the Catholic and Protestant powers throughout the greatest cities of Europe, men and women would be standing much as we did when the messenger arrived, speechless in the face of an act whose repercussions would shake the world as we knew it. The shock and fear occasioned by the deed were still palpable in the streets of London; not that the English people gave two figs for William himself, but it was well known that the Catholic King Philip II of Spain had offered a reward of twenty-five thousand crowns for his murder. And if one Protestant ruler could be knocked down as easily as a skittle, there was no doubt that Queen Elizabeth of England would be next on Philip’s list. The sense of foreboding was all the greater at Salisbury Court because William’s assassin had been a Frenchman.

John Charlewood, my printer, had his lodgings at the Half-Eagle and Key in the street known as Barbican, just to the north of the city wall. He also had a press nearby at the Charterhouse, the old Carthusian monastery which had been converted into a grand private residence, but I refused to visit his business premises; the Charterhouse was now owned by Thomas Howard, half-brother to the young Earl of Arundel. I had made enemies of the Howards – the most powerful Catholic family among the English nobility – the previous autumn and preferred to avoid the possibility of running into any one of them. This amused Charlewood, but he never asked questions; he was sufficiently eccentric himself to tolerate the apparent caprices of others, or else shrewd enough to realise that, in these days of tangled loyalties, it is often safer not to know another man’s business.

The sun was already high when I set out from Salisbury Court with a leather satchel containing my manuscript pages slung around my back. Sharp diamonds of light glinted from the windows of the buildings on Fleet Street, mostly printers and taverns that served the nearby law courts. As I walked, my feet scuffed up clouds of dust from the cobbles; occasionally I had to step aside to avoid a heap of fresh horse dung, but elsewhere the heat had hardened older piles into dry, straw-scattered crusts. The smell of rotting refuse and the sewage stink of the Thames weighed down in the still air; I pressed the sleeve of my linen shirt over my nose and tried to breathe through my mouth. The sun beat hard on a street that was curiously quiet. The law terms had finished now, so Fleet Street was missing the bustle of the Inns of Court, yet one would have expected more traffic on the main thoroughfare from Westminster to the City of London. I glanced around. Perhaps people were staying indoors for fear of the plague; perhaps they had all left for the countryside already, and the few souls remaining at the embassy were unwittingly living in a ghost town. This thought made me impatient; life was so fraught with natural hazards and those we invite on our own heads that if you were to spend your life hiding from the prospect of trouble, you would never leave your chamber. I should know, having spent the past eight years on the run through Europe with danger’s cold breath constantly at my neck, ever since the night I fled from my monastery in Naples to escape the attention of the Inquisition. Yet my life had been fuller, more vivid and infinitely more precious to me during those eight years, when I had come close to losing it several times, than in the thirteen years I had lived safe inside the sacred walls of San Domenico Maggiore.

I had just crossed Fleet Street and turned into Shoe Lane when I saw it: a disturbance at the edge of vision, brief as a blink, and then it was gone. I whipped around, my hand flying to the hilt of the bone-handled dagger I had carried at my belt since the night I became a fugitive, but the lane was almost empty. Only an old woman in a thin smock walked towards me, her back bent under the weight of her basket. She chanced to glance up at that moment and, seeing me apparently reaching for my knife, dropped her goods and let out a scream that echoed across the river to Southwark and back.

‘No, no – good madam, don’t be alarmed.’ I held my hands out, palms upwards, to show my innocence, but hearing my accent only made things worse; she stood rooted to the spot, shrieking all the louder about murdering Spanish papists. I tried to make soothing noises to quieten her, but her cries grew more frenzied, until the door of a neighbouring house opened and two men emerged, blinking in the strong light.

‘What gives here?’ The taller glared at me from beneath one thick eyebrow. ‘Are you all right, goodwife?’

‘He went for his knife, the filthy Spanish dog,’ she gasped, clutching at her chest for good measure. ‘He meant to cut out my heart and rob me blind, I swear it!’

‘I am sorry to have caused you any alarm.’ I held up my empty hands for the men to examine. ‘I thought I heard someone following me, that is all.’ I glanced up and down the street but there was no sign of movement apart from the shimmering heat haze that hovered over the ground up ahead.

‘Oh yeah?’ He tilted his chin at me and gave a little swagger. ‘Likely story. What business have you here, you Spanish whoreson?’

‘Stand back, Gil, he might be one of them with the plague,’ his companion said, half-hovering behind the big man’s shoulder.

‘Have you come here bringing plague on us, you filth?’ the man named Gil demanded, his voice harder, but he took a step back nonetheless.

I sighed. Most Englishmen, I have discovered, know of only two other nations, Spain and France, which their mothers used interchangeably to frighten them as children. This year it was the turn of the Spanish. With my dark hair and eyes and my strange accent, I found myself accused several times a week of wanting to murder honest English folk in their beds in the name of the pope, often while I was simply walking down the street. In some ways, London was the most tolerant city I had ever had the good fortune to visit, but when it came to foreigners, these islanders were the most suspicious people on earth.

‘You are thinking of the Portuguese. I am neither Spanish nor Portuguese – I am Italian,’ I said, with as much dignity as I could muster. ‘Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your service.’

‘Then why don’t you go back there!’ said the rat-faced fellow, glancing up at his friend for approval.

‘Aye. Why do you come to London – to murder us and make us bow down to the Pope?’

‘I could not very well do both, even if I wanted,’ I said, and quickly saw that humour was not the means to disarm him. ‘Listen, good sirs – I meant no offence to anyone. May we all now go on our way?’

They exchanged a glance.

‘Aye, we may …’ said the big man, and for a moment I breathed a sigh of relief. ‘When we have taught you a lesson.’

He thumped one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand; his friend cackled nastily and cracked his knuckles. With a reflex quick as blinking, my knife was out again and pointed at them before either of them had even stepped forward. I did not spend three years on the road in Italy without learning how to defend myself.

‘Gentlemen,’ I said, keeping my eyes fixed on them both as I shifted my weight on to my toes, primed to run if need be. ‘I am a resident of the embassy of France and as such a guest of Queen Elizabeth in your country and under her protection. If you lay a finger on me, you will answer directly to Her Majesty’s ministers. And they will know where to find you.’ I nodded towards the house behind them.

They looked uneasily at one another. The smaller one appeared to be waiting for his companion’s verdict. Finally the bigger man lowered his hands and took a pace back.

‘Piss off then, you pope-loving shit. But stay away from this street in future, if you have a care for your pretty face.’

Relieved, I sheathed my knife, nodded, straightened my shoulders and walked on, bowing slightly to the old woman, who had stooped to gather up her fallen wares. I almost offered to help, but the force of her glare was enough to keep me moving on. I had barely walked ten paces when something whistled past my left ear and clattered on to the ground. I leapt aside; just ahead of me a stone the size of a man’s fist was rolling to a standstill in the dust. Whipping around, I saw the two men cackling as they stood together, legs planted firmly astride, arms folded. With more bravado than I felt, I seized my knife again and made as if to come back for them; they faltered for a moment, then the smaller one tugged his friend by the sleeve and both retreated hastily to their house.

I put away the knife once more, wiping the sweat from my upper lip. My hands were shaking and I could feel my heart hammering under my ribs; those two louts had meant to frighten me, but they could not have known how well they had succeeded. Last autumn, I had almost been killed by just such an attack, a rock hurled at my head with no warning, out of the night. If I had become more skittish since then, it was not without reason. I looked around, still taut with fear, one hand laid protectively over my bag. The old woman had almost reached the far end of the street; otherwise there was no sign of life. But I thought I knew who was stalking me through the streets of London; I had been half-expecting him since last year. And if I was right, he would not be satisfied until I was dead.

‘Giordano Bruno! Come in, come in. What’s happened, man? You look as if you’ve seen the Devil himself.’ Charlewood flung open the door of his lodgings, took in my appearance with one practised glance, and gestured for me to come inside. ‘Here – I will have the housekeeper bring us something to drink. Are you in trouble?’

I waved his question aside; he called down the corridor while I went through into his front parlour and began the task of unpacking my manuscript from its satchel and linen wrappings.

‘Well?’ He followed me in, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. ‘Is the masterpiece finally ready? We don’t want to keep Her Majesty waiting, do we?’ He grinned, stroking his pointed beard.

What I liked most about Charlewood was not his willingness to print and distribute books of radical and potentially inflammatory ideas, nor that he was well travelled, spoke several languages and had a much broader mind than many of the Englishmen I had met; it was the fact that he was an unapologetic rogue. A slightly built man of about forty-five, with reddish hair and mischievous eyes, Charlewood so crackled with restless energy that he seemed barely able to stand still for five minutes together, and was constantly picking, fiddling, hopping from one foot to another, tugging at his sleeves or his beard or the little gold ring he wore in his right ear. He cared nothing for what was said about him and he was as unscrupulous as the business required; more than once he had been in trouble for printing illegal copies of books to which he had no licence, and he was happy to dress up any book with invented credentials if he thought it would help the sales. But to his authors he was always loyal, and he was fiercely opposed to any censorship of books; on that point, we agreed wholeheartedly. His latest innovation was to publish works by Italian authors for what was still a small but elite aristocratic readership in England. I had been introduced to him by my friend Sir Philip Sidney, the unofficial leader of the little group of liberal-minded intellectuals at Queen Elizabeth’s court who gathered to read one another’s poetry and discuss ideas that many would regard as unorthodox or even dangerous. It was Sidney who had told Charlewood that the Queen was interested in reading my work-in-progress; naturally the printer saw an opportunity for his own advancement and had gone so far as to create a fictitious Venetian imprint to add authenticity. Queen Elizabeth was fluent in Italian, as she was in many of the languages of Europe, and was reported to possess a formidable intellect and an unusual appetite for new and experimental ideas in science and philosophy, but even her broad mind might baulk at the audacity of my latest work. I looked at the carefully written pages in my hands and wondered if Charlewood really had any idea of what he was undertaking.

Laying aside the linen cloth that had wrapped the manuscript, I handed him the bundle, bound with a silk tie. He accepted it reverently, smoothing the topmost page with the palm of his hand.

‘La Cena de le Ceneri. The Ash-Wednesday Supper.’ He looked up, his brow furrowed. ‘We might need to work on the title, Bruno. Make it a little more …’ He waved his fingers vaguely in a circular motion.

‘That is the work’s title,’ I said firmly.

He grinned again, but did not concede anything.

‘And will it be wildly controversial? Will it set the cat among the pigeons in the academies?’

‘You are hoping the answer will be “yes”, I can see,’ I said, smiling.

‘Well, of course,’ he said, loosening the tie that held the pages. ‘People love the thought that they are reading something the authorities would rather they didn’t see. On the other hand, a royal endorsement …’

‘She has not said she will endorse it,’ I said, quickly. ‘She has only expressed an interest in reading it. And she doesn’t yet know of its contents.’

‘But she must know of you by reputation, Bruno. The whispers that followed you from Paris …’ His eyes glinted.

‘And what whispers are those, John?’ I asked, feigning innocence, though I knew perfectly well what he was talking about.

‘That you dabble in magic. That you are neither Catholic nor Protestant, but have invented your own religion based on the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians.’

‘Well, I have been excommunicated by the Catholic Church and imprisoned by the Calvinists, so I suppose that much is true. But it would take a man of extraordinary arrogance to dream of creating his own religion, would it not?’ I raised an eyebrow. One corner of his mouth curved into a smile.

‘That is why I can believe it of you, Bruno,’ he said, giving me a long look from under his brows. He tapped the pages with the back of his hand. ‘I will take this with me to Suffolk to read over the next few weeks. There will be no business done in London anyway until this blasted heat abates and the plague threat is over. But come the autumn, we will produce a book that will cause the biggest stir in Europe since the Pole Copernicus dared to suggest the Earth is not the centre of God’s creation. Let us hope no one else is assassinated in the meantime to steal its thunder. Agreed?’

He held out his hand and I shook it in the English fashion. The door creaked open and his housekeeper appeared, head lowered, carrying a tray with an earthenware pitcher and two wooden cups, which she placed on the oak dresser that stood against the back wall of the room. Charlewood laid my manuscript on a stool and crossed to the dresser.

‘Here, Bruno.’ He poured a cup of small beer and passed it to me. ‘This weather, the dust sticks in your throat, does it not? It is a little early for good wine, but let us drink to a successful partnership. The manuscript is not your only copy, I trust?’

‘No.’ I took a welcome sip of beer. Though warm, it was at least fresh-tasting. ‘I made another which I have locked up at home.’

‘Good. Keep it safe. I will guard this with my life, but with so many travelling out of London at this time, there are plenty of cutpurses and bandits on the roads. You do not mean to stay in London, do you?’

‘The Ambassador would like to move the household near to the court if he can find somewhere. I am in no hurry to leave.’ I shrugged. ‘I see no evidence of plague.’

Charlewood shook his head.

‘By the time you’ve seen the evidence, it’s too late. Take my advice – get out of the city. We cannot have you struck down at – what age are you now?’

‘Thirty-six.’

‘Well, then. You want to be alive to present this book to the Queen in person, don’t you? And the next one, and the next. A dead author is no use to me.’

I laughed, but my mind flashed back to that stone rolling in the dust at my feet and the unseen presence that had been haunting my steps for the past days. If my pursuer had his way, I would be lucky to see the autumn, plague or no plague.

I left Charlewood’s house with a lighter heart, encouraged by his enthusiasm. The streets around the Barbican were still unusually empty, the sun overhead bleaching colour from the red-brick houses that lined the roads. Behind the rows of chimney stacks, the sky was a deep cloudless cobalt, almost as blue as the skies I remembered from childhood over the village of Nola, at the foot of Monte Cicada. I had not known England was capable of such a sky. My shirt stuck to my back with sweat and I loosened the lacing of it at the collar as I walked, glad that I had always avoided the English fashion for wide starched neck-ruffs; the young dandies at court must be desperately uncomfortable in this heat.

As I crossed Aldersgate Street and was about to turn into Long Lane, I sensed it again: a flicker of a shadow, the merest hint of a sound. I spun around, hand to my knife, and for the first time I caught a glimpse of him, perhaps fifty yards away, just before he vanished between two houses. I had no time to make out more than a tall, thin figure, but my blood boiled and before I had given thought to my actions I was hurling myself after him, feet pounding through the dust; if I must fight, so be it, but I would not be made to live this way any longer, always looking over my shoulder, feeling vulnerable at every corner like a hunted creature.

Slipping into the alley where he had disappeared, I spotted the fellow running out of the far end, heading northwards up Aldersgate Street. I forced my legs to a faster pace; I may not be excessively tall like some of these Englishmen, but I am lean and wiry and can move at a clip when I choose. Emerging from between houses, I saw him clearly and realised with a sinking feeling that he was heading towards the Charterhouse. But I was too fired up and too determined to shake him out of this cowardly pursuit to worry about Howards.

As I drew closer, he scuttled out of sight around the corner, keeping close to the boundary wall that enclosed the maze of old buildings. All I had seen of him was that he wore a brown jerkin and breeches and a cloth cap pulled down low over his ears, but even at a distance he didn’t look like the man I had expected to see, the one I feared was after me – unless the man in question had lost a lot of weight since the previous autumn.

I had no time for such considerations, though; as I rounded the corner, my quarry was attempting to scale a low wall that separated the lane from Pardon Churchyard, the old plague burial ground that formed part of the Charterhouse lands. He threw himself over; I scrambled up in pursuit, landed on the other side and then I had a clear view of him across the graveyard, with no more buildings to hide behind. He moved nimbly, dodging tussocks of grass and the crumbled remains of old headstones, aiming for the wall on the far side and the backs of the houses on Wilderness Row. With one determined burst of speed, I gained on him enough to grab at his jerkin before he reached the wall. He twisted away, the fabric slipped from between my fingers; my foot turned on a rabbit hole in the bank and I almost fell, but just as he jumped for the wall, I threw myself at him, caught his leg and pulled him to the ground. He fought viciously, lashing out with his fists, but I was the stronger, and once I had him by the wrists it was no great effort to pin him face down in the grass and keep him there by kneeling astride him until his struggle subsided and he lay still.

His cap had come off in the tussle but he pressed his face into the grass; I grasped him roughly by the hair and pulled his head up so that I could see his face. I was not sure which of us cried out the louder.

‘Gésu Cristo! Sophia?’ I looked down, incredulous, into the face of the girl I had known, and briefly fancied myself in love with, more than a year ago in Oxford. I barely recognised her, and not just because her hair was cut short like a boy’s. She had grown so thin that all the bones of her face seemed sharper, and those wide tawny eyes that had been so bewitching were now ringed with dark circles. She muttered something I couldn’t make out, and I leaned closer.

‘What?’

‘Get off my hair,’ she hissed, through her teeth.

Startled, I realised I was still gripping her hair in my fist. I released her and her head sank back to the grass, as if it were too heavy to hold up.

‘Sophia Underhill,’ I repeated in a whisper, hardly daring to speak her name aloud in case she should vanish. ‘What the Devil …?’

She twisted her face to look up at me, blinked sadly and looked away.

‘No. Sophia Underhill is dead.’

TWO

We walked side by side down Long Lane towards Smithfield Market. She said nothing, her boy’s cap pulled low over her eyes once more, and I did not press her. She seemed so dramatically altered since I had last seen her, waving goodbye to me from an upstairs window in her father’s lodgings, that I could only guess at the circumstances that might have brought her to London in such a state. But I knew that bombarding her with questions would be the surest way to make her retreat from me. I stole a sideways glance as we walked in search of a tavern; her beauty seemed undiminished, even enhanced by her gauntness, because it lent her an air of fragility. I had to remind myself that in Oxford Sophia had not shared my feelings; her heart had been entangled elsewhere. Yet she had come to London to seek me out, or so it appeared. I could only be patient and wait to hear her story, if she was inclined to tell it.

As we neared the marketplace, the bleating and bellowing of livestock rose into the air with the sharp tang of animal dung, fermenting in the heat. Fear of plague had not stopped the business of commerce here, and we made our way around the edge of the pens where cattle and sheep jostled in their confinement and pressed up to the fences, snuffling frantically, while farmers and butchers bartered and haggled over prices. Sophia covered her mouth and nose with her sleeve as we passed the animals; I was more intent on watching where I was putting my feet. At the entrance to St Sepulchre’s Lane, which the market traders called Pie Corner, gaudy painted tavern signs hung from the houses and a couple of girls waited listlessly in the shade, trays of sweating pies slung around their necks. I indicated the tavern on the corner, under the sign of the Cross Keys. On the threshold, Sophia hesitated and laid a hand on my arm.

‘My name is Kit,’ she whispered. ‘I am come to London to look for work, if anyone asks.’

I stopped, my hand on the door, and stared at her, searching her face. These were the first words she had spoken since announcing her own death in the churchyard. She looked back at me with earnest eyes and in that moment I recognised her haunted, fugitive look and cursed myself for being so stupid. She was on the run from something, or someone; this was why she was disguised as a boy. I knew that look only too well; once I had spent three years travelling through Italy under a different name. I understood what it meant to be a fugitive: always moving on, never trusting a soul, never knowing if the next town where you stopped for food or shelter might be the place they finally caught up with you. I nodded briefly, and held the door open for her.

‘Well, come on then, Kit. You look as if you need feeding up.’

The tavern was a functional place, catering for the needs of the market traders; the tap-room smelled as strongly of animals as the square outside, but I found the corner of a bench by a window and ordered some barley bread and a jug of ale. I leaned back against the wall and watched Sophia as she hunched into herself, tugging her dirty cap further down and glancing around nervously. When the bread arrived, she tore into it as if she had not eaten in some time. I sipped my ale slowly and waited for her to speak.

‘Forgive me,’ she said with her mouth full, wiping crumbs away with the back of her hand. ‘I have forgotten all my manners, as you see. Whatever would my father say?’

There was no mistaking the bitterness in her tone. Her father, the Rector of Lincoln College, had disowned her when he discovered she was with child, and sent her to live with an aunt in Kent; this was the last I had heard of her. When I left Oxford she had given me the aunt’s address and asked me to write, but I had never received any reply.

‘I wrote to you,’ I said, eventually. She looked up and met my gaze.

‘I wondered if you did. I had no letters. I expect she burned them all.’ Her voice was flat, as if this no longer mattered.

‘Your aunt?’

She nodded.

‘Do you hear from your parents?’

She stared at me for a moment, then gave a snort of laughter.

‘You are joking, I suppose?’

I both wanted and did not want to ask her about the child. She would have expected it in November, so it must be eight months old by now. If it had lived.

‘Why did you say you were dead?’ I asked, when it became apparent that she was not going to elaborate. She gestured to her clothes.

‘Look at me. This is who I am now. The girl you think of as Sophia Underhill no longer exists. She was a fool anyway,’ she added, with venom. ‘A naïve fool, who believed that books and love were all she needed in life. I am glad she is dead. Kit has no such illusions.’

I was shocked by the force of grief and anger in her words, but on reflection I should not have been. She was only twenty and already life had dealt her some cruel blows: her beloved brother had died young, the father of her child was also dead, and her family had abandoned her. A sudden image flashed into my mind, of Sophia running towards me across a garden in Oxford, her long chestnut hair flying out behind her, laughing, eyes bright, hitching up the skirts of her blue dress as she ran. She had been well educated, beyond what was expected of a young woman of her status; her father had planned a respectable marriage for her. But her independent spirit and determination to shape her own life had brought her, in the end, to this.

‘You didn’t need to skulk around in the shadows after me, you know,’ I said gently, as she ripped into another hunk of bread. ‘You could have just knocked on my door.’

‘On the door of the French embassy? You think they would have received me? Invited me to dinner, perhaps?’ She swallowed her mouthful and fixed her eyes on the table. ‘In any case, I didn’t know if you would want to see me. After everything that happened.’ She did not look at me, and her words were barely audible, the scorn melted away. ‘I told you, I never had any letters from you. I wanted to find out about your situation before I made myself known. I – I was afraid you might not want to know me.’

‘Sophia –’ It took a supreme effort of self-control not to reach across the table and take her hand in mine. The ferocity of her warning look confirmed that this would not have been welcome. I was finding it difficult to remember that she was supposed to be a boy. ‘Sorry – Kit. Of course I would not have turned you away. Whatever help you need – if it is in my power to give –’

‘You might feel differently when you know the truth,’ she mumbled, picking at a splinter of wood on the tabletop.

I leaned closer.

‘And what is the truth?’

She looked up and met my eye with a flash of her old defiance.

‘I am wanted for murder.’

A long silence followed, filled by the clatter and hubbub of the tap-room and the farmyard noises and shouts from beyond the window. Motes of dust rose and fell in the sunlight that slanted across our end of the table. I continued to stare at Sophia and she did not look away; indeed, I could swear there was a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. She seemed pleased with the effect of her announcement.

‘Who did you murder?’ I asked, when I could bear the silence no longer.

‘My husband,’ she replied, without hesitation.

‘Your husband?’

She smiled briefly. It did not touch her eyes.

‘Yes. You did not know I’d got myself a husband, did you?’

I could only go on staring in amazement.

‘You are thinking that I don’t waste any time, eh? Barely finished pushing out one man’s child before I’ve married another?’

‘I thought no such thing,’ I said, uncomfortably, because the idea had fleetingly crossed my mind.

‘My aunt sold me like a piece of livestock.’ She gestured towards the window. ‘Like one of those poor bleating beggars in the pens.’

‘So you murdered him?’ In my efforts to keep my voice down, it came out as a strangled squeak.

Sophia rolled her eyes.

‘No, Bruno. I did not. But someone did.’

‘Then who?’

This time she could not disguise the impatience in her voice.

‘I don’t know, do I? That’s what I want to find out.’

I shook my head, as if to clear it. ‘Perhaps you had better tell me this story from the beginning.’

She nodded, then drained her tankard and pushed it towards me. The ale was not strong, but drinking it fast had brought a flush of colour to her hollow cheeks.

‘I’ll need another drink first.’

‘There is no use in dwelling on all that happened before you left Oxford,’ she began, when a fresh jug of ale had been brought and she had finished a second piece of bread. I muttered agreement, avoiding her eye. I wondered if she remembered the night I had kissed her, or if that memory was buried in all that had happened after. I remembered it still, as sharply as if it had been a moment ago.

‘My father sent me away to my aunt in Kent, as you know. My mother cried when I left and promised it was only for a season, until my disgrace, as she put it, was past, but I could see by my father’s face that she was fooling herself. The stain to his reputation and his standing in the town was more than his pride could bear. I truly believe he would rather I had died than brought him a bastard grandchild.’

‘He as good as said so to me,’ I recalled.

‘Well, then. I was under no illusion when I set out to Kent in the company of one of my father’s servants. I had been cast off by my family for good and I had no idea what my future was to hold. It was several days hard riding and I was near four months with the child by then. I was ill the whole way and I feared …’ She looked down at the table, suddenly bashful. ‘I knew so little of such matters, I feared the rough journey would dislodge it before its time. Stupid.’ She shook her head, embarrassed.

‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘It would be an unnatural woman who did not worry about the safety of her unborn child.’

‘It turns out they are tougher than you think, these creatures,’ she said, allowing herself a soft smile. ‘In any event, I was safely delivered to my aunt – my father’s elder sister, so you may imagine she took the insult to his honour very much to heart. She was widowed, with modestly comfortable means, and she made sure that I was adequately fed and housed for the duration of my confinement. But it came at a price. The state of my immortal soul was her real project.’ She grimaced, and paused to take another gulp of ale. ‘I was allowed no books except the Bible and a book of prayer. Naturally, I was not permitted to step outside the house – she had told her neighbours that I was sickly and likely to die and that she was nursing me through my last months. Whether they believed her, I have no idea, but I was shut in my room whenever she had visitors.’

‘You were not moved to any religious feeling, despite your aunt’s efforts?’

She snorted and tossed her head in a way that reminded of how she was before, when she still had long hair to toss.

‘I told you, Bruno – I am done with religion, of any stripe. If there is a God, I am sure He must look with despair on His representatives, endlessly bickering over trifles. For myself, I would rather live without it.’

‘That makes you a heretic,’ I said, suppressing a smile.

She shrugged.

‘If you say so. It does not seem to have done you any harm.’

‘Oh, Sophia. Sorry – Kit. How can you say that? Do not take me as your model. I can never return to my home because I am called a heretic, you know this.’

‘Neither can I,’ she said, pointedly. ‘We are in the same boat, you and I, Bruno. We both live in exile now.’

I was tempted to detail for her all the ways in which our situations could not be compared, but I wanted to hear the rest of her story.

‘So your aunt was determined to make you repent …?’

‘I never knew how much my father had told her of the circumstances that brought me to her house. She was certainly of the belief that I had been wilful and disobedient and had made my long-suffering family pay the price for my dishonour. And she made it very clear that I would have no choice about the life I lived from then on, if I expected to be given food and shelter.’ She stopped abruptly, looked away to the window and swallowed hard. I sensed we were nearing the heart of her story; she had kept up the careless bravado convincingly so far, but I noticed she had barely mentioned the child. Perhaps she found it too painful to talk about.

‘Her plan was this,’ she continued, when she had taken another drink. ‘That I should wait out my confinement in her house, hidden away, stuffing my head with Bible verses day and night. Then, when the child was born, if it was healthy and a boy, it would be adopted by a couple of some standing in a neighbouring town who could not have a child of their own. She had it all worked out, it seems, and I am certain that money changed hands, though I never saw a penny of it. But she was very insistent that a boy would be the best outcome for all concerned – as if I could influence what was in my belly.’

‘And if it was a girl?’

‘I suppose they would have found a place for her, somewhere. There’d have been less reward, though.’

‘But it was a boy?’

Finally she looked up and met my eye.

‘Yes. I had a son. And he was healthy – so I was told. I only held him for a few minutes. They didn’t even let me nurse him. She said it was best that my body did not get used to him, nor him to me. Someone came at night to take him away, under cover of darkness. Those people – the people that bought him – they had a wet nurse ready, I’m told. So I’m sure he was well looked after.’

Here her voice cracked a little; I wanted desperately to reach out for her hand, but she held herself proud and upright, and simply clenched her jaw together until the danger of showing emotion had passed.

‘I don’t remember much about those days, to tell you the truth, Bruno. I was in a lot of pain while my body recovered from the birth, but that was nothing compared to the blackness that descended on me after they took him away. I had always believed I was someone who could bear grief with fortitude – I had done so in the past – but this was different. I could not eat or sleep nor even cry. All I was good for was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling and wishing it would all come to an end somehow. At first my aunt was terrified I had taken an infection and would die – she had the physician out to me every day, at her own expense, and she had to pay extra for his discretion. I foolishly imagined she was doing this out of genuine concern and a sense of family duty.’

‘It must have been terrible.’

She shrugged again.

‘I suppose it was. But I had reached a point where I no longer cared what happened to me. I could feel nothing – not hope, nor fear, nor anger. Only blankness. I thought my life was over. I might as well have taken my chances being drowned on a boat to France.’

She held my gaze steadily as she said this, and although she had spoken the words gently, they cut to my heart. The previous spring, Sophia had been all set to flee Oxford for the Continent; it was my actions that had prevented her. I had intervened because I believed – with good reason, I still felt – that by stopping her flight I was saving her life, and that of her child. Over the months since then I had thought of her often and wondered how her life had unfolded as a result of my interference; I remained sure that I had done the right thing, but there was always room for a sliver of doubt. I feared, however, that even now she clung to her romantic hopes, and blamed me for stealing from her the future she had planned.

‘But then your child would not have lived,’ I said softly.

She lowered her eyes and picked another splinter from the tabletop.

‘True enough. And he is alive and well, somewhere, I trust. I hope they are kind people,’ she added, with sudden force. ‘I wish I could have seen them, to know what they are like.’ Her voice shook again, and she wiped her eye brusquely with her sleeve.

‘They must have wanted a child very badly, whoever they were. I’m sure they will treat him like a little prince.’

She looked up, her lashes bright with tears, and forced a smile.

‘Yes. I’m sure you are right. So I lay there in the dark, day after day, until eventually the bleeding stopped and the milk dried up, and my body was my own again. I’m sorry if this detail offends you, Bruno, but it is a messy and unpleasant business, being a woman.’

I spread my hands out, palms upward.

‘It is difficult to offend me. But I am sorry to hear you suffered.’

She watched me for a moment, her expression guarded. Did she blame me for her suffering?

‘The physician came and bled me daily, which only made me weaker, but he could find nothing wrong. Of course, once my aunt was satisfied that I had no bodily affliction, she concluded it was just monstrous idleness and warned me repeatedly that as soon as I was able I would be expected to take on some of the household chores. Hard work was the best cure for melancholy, in her view.’ The note of bitterness had crept back. She took a deep breath, steadied herself, and continued. ‘One morning I woke – I think it was around the feast of St Nicholas – with the sun streaming in through the shutters, and for the first time in weeks I felt like getting up. It was still early and the household was asleep, so I put on some clothes, wrapped myself in a woollen cloak and went outside. My aunt lived on the outskirts of a small town with rolling countryside all around, and in the early morning sun, all laced with frost, the view was so beautiful it took my breath away. I walked for an hour, got myself lost a couple of times, but although I almost wore out my poor exhausted body, I felt I was coming back to life.’ She smiled briefly at the recollection. ‘My aunt was furious when I returned – I think she feared I’d run away. She railed at me: what if the neighbours had seen me in that state, looking like some wild woman of the woods? She had a point; I had not washed in weeks and I was thin as a wraith. In any case, she made me undress and looked me over thoroughly, as you would with a horse, then she heated water to bathe me and spent a long time untangling my hair and washing it with camomile. I was surprised, as you might imagine – she was not usually given to such extravagance. She fed me well that evening and told me I was welcome to walk in the countryside if I chose, so long as I stayed away from the town and one of her housemaids accompanied me. So over the next few weeks, this is what happened. I recovered my strength, and something of the balance of my mind, or at least I learned to lock away my pain where it could not be seen and appear human again on the surface. But I was suspicious of my aunt’s changed attitude – she seemed almost indulgent towards me, and I knew enough of her to doubt that this was prompted by affection. She had also taken to locking me in my room at night.’

‘What happened to the household chores she had threatened?’

‘Naturally, I wondered. Until the child was born, I was protected, because they needed me. I had tried not to think too much about what my life would be once I’d served my purpose – I supposed that at best she would use me as some kind of cheap servant in return for a roof over my head. I expected her to hand me a broom the moment I was on my feet again, but instead, she started coming to my room in the evenings to comb out my hair – it was still long then,’ she said, rubbing self-consciously at the back of her neck – ‘and smooth scented oil into my hands. Not what you’d usually do for someone you mean to do laundry or wash floors.’

‘She had something else in mind.’

Sophia nodded, her mouth set in a grim line.

‘I found out a few days before Christmas. She came into my room one morning with a blue gown. It was beautiful – the sort of thing I used to wear …’ She broke off, turning away.

I remembered how she used to dress in Oxford; her clothes were not expensive or showy, but she wore them with a natural grace that cannot be purchased from a tailor, and always managed to look elegant. Very different from the dirty breeches, worn leather jerkin and riding boots she was dressed in now.

‘I hadn’t thought I cared about such trifles any more,’ she continued, ‘but when she laid it out on the bed, I couldn’t conceal my pleasure. She told me it was an early Christmas present, and for a moment I really thought I had misjudged her, that there was a buried vein of human kindness under that crusty surface. I was soon disabused of that, of course.’

I was about to reply when the serving girl appeared at our table to enquire whether we wanted any more of anything. I asked for cold meat, more bread and another jug of ale; Sophia’s tale clearly demanded some effort and I felt she should keep her strength up. When the food had been brought and she had helped herself to the cold beef, she wiped her mouth on her sleeve and resumed her story.

‘She made me put the dress on and turn around for her. She seemed satisfied with the result. When she had pinched my cheeks hard to put colour in them, she stood back, looked me up and down and said, “You shall do very well, as long as you keep your mouth shut. Only speak if he asks you a question, and then make sure it’s a ‘Yes, sir’ or a ‘No, sir’. Understood?” When I asked who she meant, she merely tutted and shoved her sour old face right up to mine. “Your husband,” she said.’

‘I imagine you took that well,’ I said, breaking off a piece of bread, a smile at the corner of my lips.

‘I screamed blue murder,’ Sophia said, a grin unexpectedly lighting her face. ‘I’d have bolted if she hadn’t locked the door. As it was, she had to slap me around the face twice before I would be quiet. Then she sat me down on the bed and made me listen. “Do you know what you are?” she asked me. “You’re a filthy whore, that’s what, with no respect for God nor your family. Plenty in your situation have no one to look out for them, and they end up making their living on the streets, which is no more than you deserve. But you can thank Providence that I have found a better arrangement for you. A decent man, respectable, with a good income, has agreed to take you to wife. You can change your name and leave your whole history behind you. You’re still young and can be made to look pretty. All you have to do is be obedient and dutiful, as a wife should be. If you’d learned those qualities as a daughter, your life might have been very different now,” she added, just to twist the knife. “What if I don’t like him?” I asked. She slapped me again. “It’s not for you to like or dislike, hussy,” she said. “You can marry Sir Edward Kingsley and live in comfort, with the good regard of society, or you can make your own way. Beg for bread or whore for it, I care not. Because if you mar this on purpose, girl, after everything I have done for you, don’t expect me to feed and clothe you for one day more.” So saying, she locked me in the room and told me I had until the afternoon to make my choice.’

‘Sir Edward Kingsley?’ I rubbed my chin. ‘A titled man. You’d think he’d have his pick of women – no offence, but why would he choose a wife whose history could bring him disgrace, if it were to become known? What did he get from the bargain?’

Sophia’s face set hard.

‘Control, I suppose. He got a wife who was young and pretty enough – though that’s all gone now,’ she added, passing a hand across her gaunt cheek.

‘Not at all,’ I said, hoping it did not sound insincere. A flicker of a smile crossed her lips.

‘The fact that I had a past to hide appealed to him,’ she continued. ‘He thought it would be a way of keeping me bound to his will. He imagined I would be so grateful to have been saved from a life on the streets that I would put up with anything, not daring to complain. Absolutely anything.’ She fairly spat these last words. ‘Of course, I didn’t learn any of this until after we were married. He could be very charming in company.’

‘So you agreed to marry him?’

There was a long pause.

‘Don’t look at me like that, Bruno. What choice did I have? I had nothing left – nothing. You of all people should understand that. The hot-headed part of me thought of running away, of course. But perhaps having the child had changed me.’ Her voice grew quieter. ‘I knew it would be hopeless – I had seen beggar women and whores in the street, I knew I would not survive long like that. Besides, I had formed an idea – you will think it foolish …’ She looked at me tentatively.

‘Try me.’

‘I thought that one day, when he was older, he might somehow be able to find out my name and come looking for me.’

‘Who?’

‘My son, of course. I had this idea that, when he grew, he would realise he did not look like the people he believed to be his parents, and then the truth would come out, and he might want to learn of his real mother. I didn’t want him to find me dead or living in a bawdy-house if that day came. And this Sir Edward seemed affable enough, when he came to visit. The way my aunt fawned on him, you’d have thought he was the Second Coming. So I made my choice. I would swallow my pride and marry a man I did not care for. I would not be the first woman to have done that, in exchange for security and a house to live in.’

She fell silent then, and picked at her bread.

‘Tell me about this Sir Edward Kingsley,’ I prompted, when it seemed she had become sunk in her own thoughts.

‘He was twenty-seven years older than me, for a start.’ She curled her lip in distaste. I tried to look as sympathetic as I could, bearing in mind that I was a good sixteen years her senior and had once desired her myself. And did still, if I was honest, despite the alteration in her. I could not help wondering how she would feel about that; would the idea prompt the same disgust that she expressed at the thought of this ageing husband?

‘He was a magistrate in Canterbury,’ she continued. ‘Do you know the city?’

‘I have never been, but of course I know it by reputation – it was one of the greatest centres of pilgrimage in Europe, until your King Henry VIII had the great shrine destroyed.’

‘The shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, yes. But the cathedral dominates the city even now – it is the oldest in England, you know. I suppose it would have been a pleasant enough place to live, in different circumstances.’

‘What was so wrong with your situation, then?’

She sighed, rearranging her long limbs on the bench in an effort to find a more comfortable position, and leaned forward with her elbows on the table.

‘Sir Edward was a widower. He had a son of twenty-three from his first marriage, Nicholas, who still lived at home. They didn’t get along, and he resented me from the outset, as you may imagine. But that was nothing compared to my husband. Sir Edward was of the view that behind closed doors a wife ought to combine the role of maid and whore, to save him paying for either, and do so meekly and gratefully. And if I was stubborn, which was his word for refusing his demands, he whipped me with a horsewhip. In his experience, he said, it worked just as well on women.’

She kept her voice steady as she said this, but I noticed how her jaw clenched tight and she sucked in her cheeks to keep the emotion in check. I shook my head.

‘Dio mio, Sophia – I can’t imagine what you have been through. Was he a drinker, then?’

‘Not at all. That made it worse, in a way. There are those who will lash out in a drunken rage – that is one kind of man, and they will often repent of it bitterly the next day. My husband was not like that – he always seemed master of his actions, and his violence was entirely calculated. He used it just as he said, in the same way that you would beat an animal to break it through fear.’

‘Did anyone know how he was treating you?’

‘His son knew, I am certain, but we detested one another. And there was a housekeeper, Meg, she’d been with Sir Edward for years – I’m sure she must have known, though she never spoke of it. She was afraid of him too. But she showed me small acts of kindness. Other than that, I only had one friend I could confide in.’

‘And I suppose she could do little to help you.’

‘He,’ she said, and took another long draught of her ale. Immediately something tensed inside me, a hard knot of jealousy I had no right to, and for which I despised myself. Of course it was absurd to think that Sophia could have lived for months in a new city without attracting the attention of some young man, but whoever this friend was, I resented his invisible presence, the fact that he had been there to comfort her. Had he been a lover? On the other hand, I tried to reason against that voice of jealousy, where was he now, this friend? Had she not found her way to London, in her hour of desperation, in search of me? I composed my face and attempted to look disinterested.

‘He, then. He could not help?’

She shook her head. ‘What could anyone have done? Olivier listened to me, that was all.’

Was it really, I thought, and bit the unspoken words down. I felt as if I had a piece of bread lodged in my throat.

‘Your husband did not mind you having friends who were …?’ I left the sentence hanging.

‘French?’

‘I was going to say, men.’

Sophia’s teasing smile turned to scorn.

‘Well, of course he would, if he’d known. He didn’t even like me to leave the house, but fortunately he was out so often at his business that I sometimes had a chance to slip away on the pretext of some chores. Olivier was the son of French weavers – his family came as refugees to Canterbury twelve years ago, after the massacre of Saint Bartholomew’s Day.’

I shivered, despite the stuffy air; the mention of that terrible event in 1572, when the forces of the French Catholic League rampaged through the streets of Paris, slaughtering Protestant Huguenot families by the thousand until the gutters ran scarlet with their blood, never failed to chill me to the bones. The memory of it was kept fresh in England, as a warning of what could be expected here if a Catholic force were ever to invade.

‘I had heard that many Huguenots came to England to escape the religious persecution,’ I said.

‘Canterbury is one of their largest communities. They are really the best of people,’ she added warmly, and instantly I disliked this Olivier all the more.

‘But tell me how your husband died, then,’ I said, wanting to change the subject.

Sophia passed a hand across her face and held it for a moment over her mouth, as if gathering up the strength for this part of the story. Eventually she laid her hands flat on the table and looked me directly in the eye.

‘For six months, I endured this marriage, if that is what you want to call it. I was known as Kate Kingsley, and my official history was that my father, a distant cousin of Sir Edward’s, had recently died, leaving me an orphan with a useful parcel of land in Rutland. I suppose he thought that was far enough away that no one would be likely to check. When I appeared with him in public, I was demure and well turned-out, which was all anyone seemed to expect of me. And at home, I was regularly beaten and forced to endure what he called my wifely duty, which he liked to perform with violence, though he was always careful never to leave marks on my skin where it might show.’ She flexed her hands, trying to keep her expression under control.

‘How did you bear it?’

She shrugged.

‘It is surprising how much you can bear, when you are obliged to – as you must know, Bruno. My greatest fear was that I would get another child, he forced himself on me so often, and I knew I could never love any child of his. With every month that passed, I worried my luck would not hold. Lately I had started to think about running away. Olivier was going to help me.’

I’m sure he was, I thought, uncharitably.

‘Did your husband suspect?’

‘I don’t think so. He was always preoccupied with his own business. In fact, from the first days in that house, I’d begun to notice odd things about my husband’s behaviour.’

‘Aside from his violent streak, you mean?’

‘Odder than that, even. He was often out of the house at strange hours, leaving in the dead of night and returning towards dawn. Once I asked him where he’d been when he got into bed with the cold air of night still on him, and he fetched me such a slap to my jaw that I feared I would lose a tooth.’ She rubbed the side of her face now at the memory of it. ‘After that, I always pretended to be asleep when he came in.’

‘So he was a man with secrets. Women, do you suppose?’

She shot me a scornful look.

‘When he had a whore ready at his disposal in the comfort of his own home, at no extra charge?’ She shook her head. ‘I told you, my husband didn’t like to part with money if it could be avoided. No, there was something else he was up to, but I never found out what. Underneath the house there was a cellar that he always kept locked, with the key on a chain at his belt. And sometimes his friends would come to the house late at night.’ Her face darkened. ‘By his friends, I mean some of the most eminent men of the city. My husband was a lay canon at the cathedral, as well as being magistrate, so he was a person of influence. They would shut themselves in his study and talk for hours. Once I tried to listen at the door, and it seemed they were arguing among themselves, but I could not stay long enough to hear anything useful – the old housekeeper found me there in the passageway and shooed me off to bed. She said Sir Edward would kill me if he caught me there, truly kill me, and she had such fear in her face that I believed it was a serious warning, honestly meant.’ She paused to take another bite of bread. ‘But two weeks ago he had been up to the cathedral, to a meeting of the Chapter, as he often did, and afterwards he was to take his supper with the Dean. He never came home.’

‘What happened?’

‘One of the canons appeared at my door, about nine o’clock at night, with two constables. He had found Edward’s body in the cathedral precincts. He must have been on his way home when he was attacked.’

‘How did he die?’

‘Struck down with a heavy weapon from behind, they said, and beaten repeatedly while he lay there until his skull smashed. They said his hands were all broken and bloodied, as if he’d been trying to cover his face.’ She pressed her lips together. ‘I wasn’t sorry – the man was a brute. But it must have been a dreadful way to die. His brains were all spilled over the flagstones, they told me.’

‘His brains …’ The detail sounded familiar, as if I had heard the description before, but I could not place it. ‘You did not have to see it, I hope?’

‘No, they took the body away. It was a vicious act. The killer must have been someone who violently hated him.’

‘Were there people who hated him that much?’

‘Apart from his wife, you mean?’ She gave me a wry glance.

I acknowledged the truth of this with a dip of my head. ‘But you said no one knew how he treated you in private. So how did they come to suspect you?’

She poked at a piece of bread and leaned in.

‘I had the wit to realise when the canon came that if I didn’t give him a good show of shock and grief he would find that curious, to say the least. He handed me the sword that my husband had been wearing, still sheathed, and his gold signet ring, all daubed in blood. I played the distraught widow, thinking that would make them go away.’

‘I find it hard to imagine you in that role,’ I said, with a fond smile. She almost returned it.

‘Oh, you would be surprised, Bruno, how convincing I can be. He said the body had been taken to the coroner and asked if I wanted someone to sit with me that night, to save me being alone. I thanked him and said I had old Meg, the housekeeper, for company – that was stupid of me, because it was Meg’s day off and she had gone to visit a friend, but I just wanted him to go so I could stop pretending to cry and enjoy an untroubled night’s sleep. I could hardly explain to him that I wanted more than anything to be left on my own, for once.’

‘Did he know you were lying?’

‘Not at the time. He went away, and perhaps an hour later my husband’s son, Nicholas, came home, with the smell of the alehouse on him. The constables had found him in there with his friends and given him the news. He was cursing and shouting at me in his drunken rage that it was all my doing. He said nothing had gone right in that house since the day his father brought me into it.’ She paused, and I saw the anger flash across her face before she mastered it. ‘Then – well, I’ll spare you the details. Suffice to say, he thought he could take his father’s place in the marriage bed.’

‘Holy Mother!’ I drew a hand across my mouth and felt my other fist bunch under the table.

‘Don’t worry, I fought him off.’ She gave a brief, bitter laugh. ‘I was damned if I was taking that from the son as well. Fortunately, he was too drunk to put up much of a fight. But he was sober enough to be angered by the refusal. He told me I would get what was coming to me, gave me a slap for good measure, and stumbled and crashed his way to his own room.’

‘What did he mean by that threat?’

‘I hardly dared sleep that night – I thought he might come in and attack me while I lay in my bed. But I heard him leave the house early, at first light. I fell asleep again and the next I knew, old Meg the housekeeper was shaking me awake, whispering frantically that I had to run.’

‘Run? Why?’

‘She’d met the cathedral gatekeeper on her way back to the house. He’d come to find her, to say that the constables had discovered evidence at the scene to arrest me for the murder of my husband and were on their way round. I barely had time to get dressed. Fortunately I knew where my husband kept his strongbox.’

‘In his mysterious locked cellar?’

She shook her head.

‘No. Whatever was in there, it was not money. He kept that in various chests in the room he called his library, and the keys were hidden in a recess in the chimney breast. I took two pursefuls of gold angels, which was all I could carry, and fled through the kitchen yard.’

‘So …’ I sat back, feeling almost breathless at the pace of her tale. ‘Where did you go? What was this evidence – did you ever find out? Surely this Nicholas had something to do with it?’

‘One question at a time, Bruno. I ran through the back streets to Olivier’s house. His parents had already heard about Sir Edward’s murder – news spreads quickly in a cathedral city, where everyone knows everyone. But they didn’t know I was to be accused of it. They offered to hide me for a while, but I was afraid it would be too dangerous for them – the Huguenots are already treated with suspicion in the city, just because they are foreigners who keep close within their own community and try to preserve their own customs. We English are not terribly accommodating in that regard, I’m afraid.’

‘I have noticed.’

‘Later that same day, old Meg came by to tell us she had been questioned by the constables. They learned, of course, that I had lied about being at home with her the previous evening – poor thing, she had no idea I had told them that. But apparently early that morning someone had found a pair of women’s gloves, stained with blood, thrown on the ground in the cathedral precincts. Put that together with my lying about Meg, stealing my husband’s money and taking flight, they think they have all the answer they need.’

She folded her arms and dropped her head to stare at the table, as if the account had exhausted her.

‘Well, that is absurd,’ I said, indignant on her behalf. ‘Were they your gloves?’

She hesitated.

‘I don’t know – one pair of gloves looks much like any other, doesn’t it? I certainly wasn’t wearing them. But how am I to prove otherwise? When my husband was respected and influential, and I have no money of my own even to pay a lawyer? I’m sure it won’t take long for someone to uncover Mistress Kate’s real name and past, and that will be seen as proof of my degeneracy.’

‘Someone has tried to ensure you were blamed for this murder. Did this Nicholas, the son, know who you really were?’

She shook her head.

‘No. But it was plain he hated me.’

‘Hated you and desired you.’

‘Isn’t that often the case with men and women?’ She lifted her chin and fixed me with a twisted smile.

I was on the point of arguing when I recalled a woman I had known last year, and this memory gave me pause. I did not answer one way or the other.

‘What about the key?’ I asked.

‘What key?’

‘The one to his secret cellar, that you said he wore at his belt. If this canon gave you the valuables he took from the body, was the key not among them?’

She stared at me, her lips parted.

‘No! By God, with everything that happened after, I never once thought of that key. You mean the killer could have taken it?’

‘I don’t know. Only it seems that, if he was found with a gold ring and a sword still on him, the killer was not interested in robbery. Perhaps the key was not given to you because the person who found him didn’t regard it as valuable, that is all.’

‘Or because they knew precisely what it was and kept it.’ She frowned. ‘You think someone wanted to find out what was in that cellar?’

‘I don’t know. But surely any sane person would force the lock rather than hack a man to death for the key? I was only thinking aloud. So – then you came to London?’ I said.

‘As you see,’ she replied. ‘It took over a week.’

I shook my head, half in disbelief, half in admiration.

‘You are fortunate you were not robbed or killed on the road, or both. Did you travel alone?’

She smiled, and there was a hint of pride in it.

‘No. Some of the Huguenot weavers were coming to London, bringing samples of cloth to trade. It was safe enough to travel with them. Especially like this.’ She indicated her boy’s clothes. ‘These are Olivier’s. It was his idea to dress as a boy. Oh, I hated the thought of cutting off all my hair at first, but then his mother sensibly pointed out that they would cut it off for me on the gallows anyway.’ She gave a bitter laugh, but it didn’t mask the fear in her eyes. Although I couldn’t quite ignore my childish resentment of this Olivier for being the first man to her aid, I had to admit my admiration for this practical French family who had taken a considerable risk to help Sophia to safety. My eyes strayed inadvertently to her chest under the rough shirt as I wondered how she had managed to strap herself up. She noticed the direction of my gaze and smiled.

‘To tell the truth, Bruno, there was not much left of them after I had the child and then grew so thin. I wear a linen binding, but I had hardly anything to bind in the first place.’

I felt my face grow hot, which only seemed to amuse her further.

‘You are too easy to embarrass, Bruno. I suppose that comes of being a monk for so long.’ Then her expression became serious. ‘I thought if I could just get to London and find you,’ she continued, turning those wide, golden-brown eyes on me once more, ‘then everything would be all right. All those miles with the weavers’ cart, it was my only thought.’

I wanted to speak, but the words wedged in my throat. Instead I reached out and laid my hand over hers. She did not snatch it away, and for a moment we stayed like that, in silence, looking at one another with everything still unspoken as the dust danced in the thick sunlight, until she nodded to her right with a mischievous grin, and I glanced across to see two men at the next table watching this display of affection with expressions of disgust.

‘They will take me for your catamite,’ Sophia whispered, giggling.

I withdrew my hand quickly. ‘Careful, then. They hang you for that here as well.’

We left the tavern and walked back in the shimmering heat along Gifford Street and on down Old Bailey, Sophia contained in her silence, as if all her words were spent. I glanced sidelong at her as we walked, but she appeared deep in concentration, biting at the knuckle of her thumb, her dirty cap pulled down low over her brow, eyes fixed straight ahead. I decided it was best not to press her any further for now. At the bottom of the lane I paused; my way lay to the right, up Fleet Hill, but I had no more idea of where she intended to go in London than I did of where she had sprung from.

‘I have taken a room at the sign of the Hanging Sword, off Fleet Street,’ she said, pointing ahead, as if she had read my thoughts. I laughed.

‘But that is almost opposite Salisbury Court, where I have my lodgings.’

She seemed pleased by my expression of incredulity and grinned from under the peak of her cap. The food and the ale had heartened her, or perhaps it was the relief of having unburdened herself, and not having been turned away.

‘Of course. Why do you think I took the room?’

‘So how long have you been spying on me?’

‘It’s five days since I arrived. But I lost my nerve a little once I saw what a grand house you lived in – I knew I couldn’t just bang on the door. So I thought I would watch you, see if I could judge from your routine when might be the best time to approach you, if at all.’

‘My routine has little of interest to offer at the moment, I’m afraid,’ I said, spreading my arms apologetically, though the idea that I could have been watched for five days from the tavern across the street made me uneasy. Sophia wished me no harm, but there were those who did, and if she could follow me around London so easily, then so might they. I must not imagine for a moment that I was safe anywhere, I silently reprimanded myself, and resolved to keep my wits sharper in future. ‘As for the embassy, its grandeur is sadly faded, I think, but it is comfortable enough. I am fortunate to have such a residence.’

We fell into step in the direction of the Fleet Bridge, silent again as I turned over in my mind what assistance I might be able to offer Sophia. Money I could just about manage, and perhaps in the longer term I might be able to use some of my contacts to help her into work, but for that she would have to remain in her boy’s disguise, and it seemed impractical to think of keeping that up. It was easy enough to hide in London, with its rabbit warren of old streets and the thousands of people coming and going daily in search of work or trade, but the world was always a smaller place than you imagined, as I had learned to my cost when I was living as a fugitive in my own country. For as long as Kate Kingsley was wanted for the murder of her husband, Sophia Underhill, or whoever she chose to become next, would never be able to live freely in England.

‘Listen, Sophia – Kit,’ I corrected myself hastily before she could. ‘You know I will give you whatever help I can while you are in London, and if you need money, well, my stipend from King Henri of France is sufficiently generous to allow me to support you for a while.’ This was untrue; my living allowance from the French King, in recognition of the fact that I had been his personal philosophy tutor, was barely enough to live on, and unreliable in its arrival. Such income as I had to allow me a reasonable standard of living in London came not from King Henri but from my work for the English government, though naturally no one at the French embassy knew this.

‘The Hanging Sword is expensive,’ I continued, ‘but I could help you look for cheaper lodgings elsewhere while you give some thought to what you are going to do. You might find it difficult to remain as a boy indefinitely, but perhaps …’

I stopped when I saw the look on her face. She had halted abruptly in the middle of the street and was staring at me, her brow knotted in confusion.

‘Bruno – have you not understood any of my story? Why do you think I came all this way to seek you out?’

‘Because …’ I faltered. Had I misunderstood? She was looking at me as a governess might look at a child who has failed to absorb anything of his lesson, despite hours at the same exercise. ‘I presumed because you had few people left whose friendship you could rely on, in the circumstances,’ I said, a little stiffly.

‘Well, that is true,’ she said, impatient. ‘But I remembered how you unravelled those murders in Oxford, when no one else seemed to have the slightest idea who was behind them. That’s why I wanted your help. I need you to find out who murdered my husband and clear my name. I don’t want to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when they will come for me.’

‘No, you don’t,’ I said, with feeling, though I could not believe she was seriously asking this of me. She clutched at my sleeve then, and made me look her in the eye, her face close to mine. I could hear the urgency in her voice.

‘If you don’t help me, Bruno, I shall live as a wanted murderess all my life, and if they find me I’ll be straight for the pyre. You know that’s the punishment for women who murder their husbands? Because the man is master of his wife, it’s regarded as an act of treason. So instead of hanging, they burn you.’

‘Like a heretic,’ I said, softly.

‘Like a heretic.’ She fixed me with a meaningful look.

I stepped back, rubbing my hand across the growth of stubble on my chin and shaking my head.

‘You want me to go to Canterbury and find the killer?’

‘If you could do it in Oxford, why not in Canterbury?’ She sounded petulant, and I was reminded, despite her weight of experience, how young she still was.

‘It’s not quite as simple as that. I can’t just take off across the country – I would need permission …’ But as I considered the possibility, I felt my blood quicken with the prospect of it: a change of scene, a new challenge, and the ultimate prize of freeing Sophia from a sentence of death.

‘Permission?’ She looked scornful.

‘From the Ambassador. As a member of his household, out of courtesy I must consult with him before I go anywhere. And with the diplomatic situation so fraught at the moment, he may be reluctant to let me leave.’ But it was not the Ambassador’s permission I was concerned about. I sincerely doubted whether my real employer would want me away from the embassy at such a time.

‘You are not the Ambassador’s ward, Bruno. You are a grown man, or so I thought. Well, it doesn’t matter, then.’ She wrapped her arms tightly around her chest and started walking briskly away towards the narrow bridge; I watched her for a moment, before hurrying to catch her up.

‘Wait!’ I had to work hard to match her determined stride, but on the bridge I caught her by the sleeve. ‘I have said I will help you, and I meant it. I will see if this can be arranged. But it will be difficult – I would have no authority to undertake an investigation of any kind in Canterbury, and you said yourself how they are suspicious of foreigners there.’

‘You could pretend to be a visiting scholar,’ she said brightly. ‘They have a fine library in the cathedral precincts, I am told. Please, Bruno? You are all the hope I have now.’ Her eyes widened, and the pleading in them was in earnest. ‘If you don’t help me, no one will.’

She looked down at her boots, shamed by her own helplessness; Sophia, whose independent spirit chafed at being beholden to a man, any man. She kicked at a small stone, her arms wrapped again around her chest, as if to protect herself from further hurt. It was a gesture that clutched at my heart, and I knew that, whatever the obstacles, I must find a way to help her. If nothing else, it would assuage the lingering sense of guilt that still needled me over my actions in Oxford, and the fear that I had somehow been the indirect cause of everything that had happened to her since. I owed her a debt, I believed, and she had counted on my conscience.

‘Very well then. Santa Maria!’ I grabbed at my hair with both hands in a gesture of mock exasperation that made her laugh. ‘You would wear down a stone, Sophia. But what will you do, if I get myself to Canterbury?’

‘I will come with you, of course.’ She looked nonplussed.

‘What? And how are you going to do that? You are wanted for murder.’

‘I wouldn’t venture into the city, obviously. I will stay as a boy, and you can say I am your apprentice.’

‘Travelling scholars don’t have apprentices.’

‘Your scribe, then. Or servant, it doesn’t matter. But you will need me there, Bruno, to point you in the right direction – I know the city and I can direct you to Sir Edward’s associates. We could find lodgings somewhere on the edge of town. I could keep out of sight.’

Her face was animated now, her eyes bright and eager. We could find lodgings? Was she proposing that we share rooms together? I looked at her doubtfully, but I could find no trace of teasing in her eyes, only earnest hope. Perhaps she believed her disguise was good enough to convince both of us that she really was a boy. Was that the kind of friendship she envisaged between us, despite the fact that in Oxford I had once been so bold as to kiss her, and she had responded? I wished I had a better sense of how she regarded me.

It would be an enormous risk for her, returning to the city where, even with her cropped hair and dirty clothes, there was every chance of being recognised as the murdered magistrate’s wife. On the other hand, she was right: I would fare better with someone to guide me around the city of Canterbury, and what would she do otherwise in London, alone and friendless as her money rapidly ran out? At least if she came with me I could do my best to take care of her – and the thought of spending days in her company, reviving the conversations we had enjoyed in Oxford, was more than I had dared to hope for, even if, for now, she saw me only as a trusted friend. Until that morning, I had thought she was dead to me, and I knew that I could not abandon her to circumstance again.

‘Let me see if I can make arrangements,’ I said.

‘Good. But we must leave soon. Because of the assizes.’

‘The assizes?’

‘Yes. Once a quarter a judge comes from London to try all the criminals taken since the last session, the cases too serious for the local Justice. The next one is due in early August. If you were to find the real killer by then, he could be tried at the assizes and I would be free.’

‘You don’t ask much, do you?’

Outside the Hanging Sword, we parted company, I assuring her that I would secure permission from the Ambassador as soon as possible, and warning her in the meantime to keep her money close about her person and not to walk around the streets of London after dark.

‘But I have this,’ she said, pulling aside the front of her jerkin to reveal a small knife buckled to her belt.

‘That will come in very handy if you should need to peel an apple. But I don’t suggest you try your hand at any tavern brawls with it,’ I said.

She smiled, and her face seemed more relaxed.

‘I’d prefer not to.’

We stood awkwardly for a moment, uncertain of how to say goodbye. Sophia seemed less stooped, less diminished, as if a weight had lifted from her. ‘Thank you, Bruno,’ she said, checking in both directions to see that the street was empty before leaning in and giving me an impulsive hug. ‘You are a true friend. One day I will find a way to repay you.’

I could only blink and smile stupidly as she stepped back and turned away towards the tavern. I moved to cross the street towards Salisbury Court, wondering what on earth I had undertaken.

‘Ciao, Kit,’ I called, glancing over my shoulder to see her pause at the tavern door. She lifted a hand in farewell, then executed a mock bow.

She moves too much like a woman, I thought, watching the way she snaked her narrow hips to one side to avoid a man coming out as she slipped through the doorway. This Kit will need some lessons on being a man, if we’re not to be arrested. Before that, though, I needed to find a way to make this madcap plan palatable to the two men whose authority I must respect while I live in London: Michel de Castelnau, the French Ambassador, and Sir Francis Walsingham, Queen Elizabeth’s Principal Secretary. Both were certain to be opposed. I sighed. Sophia might imagine that a man enjoys the freedoms she lacks, but we are all beholden to somebody, in the great chain of patronage and favour that stretches right the way up to the Queen herself; and even she is not truly free, as long as she lives in fear of the assassin on the stairs, like the poor Prince of Orange.

THREE

‘Canterbury?’ Sir Francis Walsingham fairly spat the word across the room. ‘What on earth for?’

‘To travel,’ I said, lamely. ‘I was thinking that I have been in England over a year now and I have seen so little of the country …’ Walsingham gave me a long look and the words dried up. Since I had agreed to work secretly for Queen Elizabeth’s master of intelligence the previous spring I had become skilled at dissembling to everyone around me, but there was no point in lying to Walsingham. Those calm, steady eyes gave you the impression they could penetrate lead. Many a suspected conspirator against the Queen had cracked and confessed under that gaze before they were even shown the inside of the Tower of London, with its ingenious array of instruments to assist confession.

‘Pilgrimage, is it? Following the example of your patron?’ He raised a sardonic eyebrow and tapped the rolled-up letter I had brought from the French Ambassador Castelnau on the edge of his desk for emphasis.

Leaning against the mantelpiece, I shifted my weight from one foot to the other and avoided his eye.

‘It’ll be a book,’ Sir Philip Sidney observed from his perch on the window seat, where he sat with one of his long legs bent up on the cushions, the other stretched out before him. He had barely aged since I first met him in Padua, I thought; especially when clean-shaven, as he was today, he could pass for nineteen, ten years younger than his true age, with his fair hair that always stuck up in a tuft at the front, no matter how he tried to tame it, and the bright blue eyes that lit up his handsome face whenever he sensed adventure. He was wearing only a lace-edged shirt with his breeches instead of the usual starched ruff that was the fashion among the young men at court, and without his stiff brocaded clothes he seemed less self-conscious. ‘Bruno wouldn’t rouse himself unless it was in pursuit of a book.’ He waited until I glanced up and gave me a broad wink.

‘Or a woman?’ Walsingham looked back to me and I could almost fancy a hint of amusement in the twitch of his mouth.

‘I understand the cathedral is very fine,’ I said.

‘The oldest in England,’ Sidney said. ‘But I don’t believe you’ve developed a sudden fascination for architecture, Bruno. Come on – what’s really tempting you to Canterbury?’

I hesitated; Walsingham grew impatient.

‘Never mind the cathedral – what are we going to do about this?’ He brandished the letter again, a shadow of irritation flitting across his face.

We were gathered in the Principal Secretary’s private office at his country home in Barn Elms, some miles along the Thames to the west of the city of London. Since Sidney had married Walsingham’s daughter the previous autumn, the young couple had lived at Barn Elms, Sidney’s finances being too precarious to support a household of his own at present. From my point of view, the situation was ideal – I could visit my friend and arrange meetings with Walsingham at the same time without arousing the French Ambassador’s suspicions unduly, though I know it chafed at Sidney to be living in such close quarters with his in-laws.

Behind the wide oak desk, Walsingham sat back and folded his hands together, his gaze focused on the empty fireplace as if deep in thought. Despite the warmth of the day, he wore his customary suit of plain black wool and the small black skullcap that always made him look a little severe. His was a strong face, with wisdom and sadness written into its lines and the pouches beneath his eyes; there were moments when those eyes seemed to contain the weight of all the kingdom’s strife. This was not far from the truth. Walsingham and the intelligence he gathered from his network of informers all over Europe were the Queen’s last defence against the myriad plots on her life and the security of England. At fifty-two, Walsingham’s hair and beard were almost entirely grey now; only his black eyebrows served as a reminder of how he must have looked in his youth. Over the past year I had grown to respect this rational, sober man above any other, though I also feared him a little.

The letter that had so infuriated him contained a grovelling apology from Castelnau on behalf of King Henri of France, who said he could not receive Sidney as a guest in Paris as he was unfortunately about to go on a pilgrimage to Lyon.

‘Her Majesty will be livid,’ Sidney remarked. ‘I’m quite piqued about it myself – I fancied a trip to Paris.’ He leaned back into the patch of sun that spilled through the diamond-paned glass and clasped his hands behind his head.

Walsingham frowned.

‘Henri of France is weak, though this is not news to us. He knew Her Majesty was not sending Sidney on a social call, but to persuade him to commit French troops to a joint intervention in the Netherlands. I suppose Castelnau thought we would be less likely to shout at you, Bruno?’

‘I believe that was his reasoning, your honour.’

‘Well, he can explain himself to the Queen face to face in due course. France cannot dither on the fence for much longer.’ He shook his head. ‘This war against the Spanish in the Netherlands has been a bloody mess for the last twenty years, but the Queen is now seriously considering an offer of troops to help the Protestant rebels. If Henri had any conscience he would do the same. Especially since it was his idiot brother who made the situation a hundred times worse,’ he added, regarding me darkly from under his brows as if I were somehow implicated.

‘My uncle the Earl of Leicester has long argued for an English military intervention to aid the Dutch rebels,’ Sidney said, sitting forward with sudden vigour and clenching his fists. ‘And I would go with him in an instant. Teach those Spanish curs a lesson they won’t forget.’

Walsingham looked up sharply. ‘Don’t be too hasty, Philip. That war could easily rumble on for another twenty years, with thousands more deaths on each side. In my opinion, it can’t be won, except with a concerted effort by united Protestant forces from all across Europe, and I see little prospect of that.’

Sidney sat back, chastened, and I wondered if Walsingham had interpreted his eagerness for a military adventure as a personal slight, a desire to escape his domestic life here at Barn Elms. Moments passed in silence, the only sound a persistent fly buzzing against the window. I watched the sunlight cast patterns on the wooden boards, broken by flickering shadows from the leaves of the trees outside, and waited for someone to speak.

‘God’s death!’ Walsingham cried suddenly, slamming his fist down on the desk so that his tortoiseshell inkwell rattled and Sidney and I started out of our private thoughts. ‘The Prince of Orange has just been shot on his own stairs as he left his dinner table. Can you imagine how this news has shaken Her Majesty? You will not see her show it in public, but she no longer sleeps. She knows Philip of Spain means her to be next.’ He took a deep breath and passed a hand over his head as if smoothing his thoughts, looking from me to Sidney like a schoolmaster. ‘The Catholic forces in Europe are gaining strength. If Spain regains control of the Netherlands, the Protestants there will be massacred. And then Spain will turn his attention to England. Who will France support when that day comes? King Henri must talk to us, he cannot hide his head in his rosary beads for ever.’ He pounded his fist on the table again and glared at me, as if he held me responsible for the French King’s havering. ‘Sidney and I saw Saint Bartholomew’s Day in Paris with our own eyes, you know,’ he added, more quietly. ‘Little children and their grandmothers cut down with swords in their own homes. A thousand lifetimes would not be enough to forget such sights.’ He closed his eyes, and his features seemed weighed down by sorrow.

Sidney and I glanced at one another; it was rare to see Walsingham ruffled by foreign affairs. Part of his incomparable value to Elizabeth was his faultless composure in any situation. Walsingham is frightened, I thought, and the realisation made me feel for a moment as if the ground had shifted beneath my feet, just as I felt as a child when I first saw my soldier father afraid. The murder of the Prince of Orange had struck at the English government in its tenderest spot. This thought brought me back to the other murder that had preoccupied my thoughts for most of the night.

‘I could meet him in Lyon, when his pilgrimage is finished,’ Sidney offered, resting his feet on the window seat and pulling his knees to his chest, the way a child would sit. ‘It would be no great trouble to journey to Lyon instead.’

Walsingham looked at him again with a sceptical frown. I was certain that he heard, as I did, the note of longing in Sidney’s voice. My friend itched for the life of travel and adventure he had known in his youth; the longer he stayed cooped up at Barn Elms and the court, the quicker he would be to volunteer for any mission that offered different horizons, even if it meant going to war.

Walsingham stood, making a show of sorting the papers on his desk into two piles and arranging them neatly side by side.

‘Well, we will put that to Castelnau when I summon him to an audience with the Queen. Tell him to give it some thought, Bruno. Meanwhile, I am intrigued to hear about your pilgrimage. What attraction can Canterbury hold for you, hmm?’

I hesitated again. There was a risk in telling Walsingham the truth; he might forbid me outright, for any number of reasons, and to make the journey against his express wishes would result in my being dismissed from his service, which I could not afford either in terms of income or patronage. But there was a greater risk in not telling him, since he would discover the truth anyway; no one kept secrets from Walsingham, not even the King of Spain or the Pope himself. So I stepped forward, as if taking my place on a stage, and gave them a brief précis of the story Sophia had told me, leaving out any details that I thought might compromise her. When I had finished, Sidney was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, staring at me with new admiration, while his father-in-law looked fiercer than ever.

‘I remember the Rector’s daughter,’ Sidney said, with a lascivious grin. ‘You sly dog, Bruno.’

Walsingham’s face remained serious. ‘You have had your head turned by this woman before, I think, Bruno. What proof have you that she didn’t murder her husband?’

I spread my hands wide. ‘No proof except her word, your honour. But I am willing to take the risk.’

‘So I see. But I’m not sure that I’m willing for you to put yourself in that position.’ He cupped his chin in his hand, his long fingers stretched across his mouth as he continued to regard me with a thoughtful expression. It was a familiar gesture of his, one he employed when he was weighing up a situation, as if his hand were a mask to hide any tell-tale emotion. ‘There was some doubt over her religion, as I recall?’

I paused briefly before looking up and meeting his eye.

‘I assure you that she follows no unorthodox religion now, your honour.’ I refrained from adding that she followed no religion at all.

Walsingham scanned my face with his practised gaze, as if for any twitch of a nerve that might betray a lie. My throat felt dry, and I reminded myself that I was still on the same side as Walsingham, even if on this matter I needed to bend the truth a little. What must it be like to be interrogated by him, I wondered. That steely, unswerving stare could break a man’s defences even without the threat of torture – a measure he did not shy from in the interest of defending the realm.

This scrutiny seemed to last several minutes until, with a flick of his hand, he dismissed the idea.

‘Impossible, anyway. I need to know what is unfolding in France the minute King Henri writes to his Ambassador. We can’t afford to have you away from the embassy.’

I bowed my head and said nothing; from the corner of my eye I noticed Sidney looking at me with concern.

‘With respect, Sir Francis – Bruno is not our only source of intelligence from France,’ he said, his former languor all brushed away and his tone serious. ‘And he could be useful in Canterbury.’

Walsingham looked taken aback at this unexpected mutiny and a small furrow appeared briefly in his brow, but when he realised Sidney was in earnest his expression changed to one of cautious curiosity.

‘That is the first time I have heard you express any interest in your constituency.’ He turned to me. ‘You know Sidney was returned as Member of Parliament for Kent this year? Though I don’t think the people of Kent could accuse him of being over-attentive to their needs.’

‘Never been,’ Sidney said, with cheerful insouciance. ‘Bruno can report back for me. That way I’ll be fully briefed in time for the autumn session.’

‘Bruno would be too conspicuous,’ Walsingham said, after a moment’s reflection.

‘Not necessarily,’ Sidney countered. ‘No one knows him there. He might have an easier time of it than Harry. Besides, if men of standing in the city are being murdered – you never know …’

Walsingham frowned again and I swivelled my head between them, trying to follow this new direction. Sidney glanced across and gave me an almost imperceptible nod of encouragement while Walsingham was deep in thought.

‘Canterbury is not an immediate priority,’ Walsingham said at length, with a tone of finality.

‘We do not know how much of a priority it is, since Harry’s letters are so patchy,’ Sidney said, without pausing for breath. ‘Remember how well Bruno served Her Majesty in Oxford?’ he added, with a subtle smile.

‘I have not forgotten, Philip. But neither have I forgotten that he helped save England from an invasion of Catholic forces last year, and he did that from within the French embassy.’

‘I still think Bruno has a talent for making friends and gaining confidences in places neither you nor I nor Harry can go. He may uncover more than a murderer in Canterbury, given the chance.’ Sidney folded his arms across his chest and sent Walsingham a meaningful look; I recognised the stubborn cast to his jaw and knew that he did not mean to back down in this argument. While I appreciated his willingness to square up to his father-in-law on my behalf, I was not entirely sure what he was petitioning for. Too conspicuous for what?

‘Forgive me,’ I said, as they continued to glare at one another, ‘but who is Harry?’

Walsingham turned to me, sighed, and waved me towards a chair. Then he pushed his own chair back, stood up from behind his desk, and moved in front of the fireplace, diamonds of bright sunlight patterning his neat black doublet and breeches as he paced, rubbing his beard with his right hand.

‘What do you know of Canterbury, Bruno?’

I shrugged. ‘Only that until the English Church broke with Rome, it was one of the most important pilgrim shrines in Europe.’

‘And one of the most lucrative. The monks of the former priory raked in a fortune from pilgrims through their trade in relics and indulgences, and the rest of the city profited greatly from the vast numbers of the faithful – hostelries, cobblers, farriers, every industry that serves those who travel long distances.’ He set his mouth in a grim line. ‘There are a great many in that city who have seen their incomes dwindle and their family’s fortunes fall since the shrine was destroyed.’

‘So there are plenty who hanker after the old faith, I imagine?’

‘Exactly. Remember, the shrine was only destroyed in 1538. Forty-six years is not long for a city to forget or forgive such a loss of status. There are plenty still living who carry bitter memories of what the Royal Commissioners did to the abbey and the shrine, and hand that resentment down to their children and grandchildren.’

‘Who watch and wait, clinging to the belief that one day soon England will have a Catholic sovereign again, and the shrine of Canterbury will be restored to its former glory,’ Sidney cut in.

‘Except that lately we fear they have been doing more than merely watching and waiting,’ Walsingham added.

‘But the Archbishop of Canterbury is the most senior prelate of the English Church,’ I said. ‘Surely he is extra careful about religious obedience in his own See?’

‘The Archbishop is never there,’ Walsingham replied. ‘He is too busy politicking in London. The Dean and the canons have de facto power in the city, and one never knows how many of them may hold secret loyalties in their hearts.’

‘One in particular,’ Sidney added darkly.

‘Who has connections to some of those involved in the conspiracy against the Queen last autumn.’ Walsingham looked at me. ‘Including your friend Lord Henry Howard.’

I recalled Sophia saying that her late husband had been a lay canon at the cathedral. If there were plots brewing there, might he have known something of them, given his penchant for secrecy?

‘Then there is the cult of the saint,’ Walsingham added, lowering his voice as if to begin a ghost tale. ‘Do you know the story of Thomas Becket, Bruno?’

‘Of course – we had shrines to him even in Italy. The former archbishop who was murdered in the cathedral.’

Walsingham nodded. ‘He was a great friend of the King – Henry II, this is – who thought he could use Becket to promote his own interests against the Church. But Becket refused the King’s demands. In 1170 their quarrel came to a head.’

‘“Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”’ Sidney declared, with relish. ‘So the King said, according to the legend, and four of his knights chose to take that as a direct command.’

‘They murdered him as he knelt at prayer, if I remember right?’ I said.

‘Struck him down with their swords.’ Sidney’s eyes gleamed; he had not lost his schoolboy fascination for the details of violent death. ‘Cut off the crown of his head, so his brains spilled all over the stone floor.’

‘The King was stricken with remorse, of course,’ Walsingham continued, but I was staring open-mouthed at Sidney.

‘What did you say?’

He looked surprised.

‘They struck him down with a sword.’

‘After that. His brains.’

He made a ghoulish face. ‘An eyewitness account said the knights trod the whites of his brains across the flagstones, all churned up with his blood. Sorry to upset you, Bruno – I forget you have never been to war.’ He meant it as a joke, but his smile faded when he saw that I was not laughing with him. Sophia’s description of her husband’s murder had echoed dimly in my memory, but now it was clear; I had been thinking of the death of Thomas Becket. To cut a man down in the precincts of Canterbury Cathedral in the same manner as its most famous murder victim seemed a grim coincidence. But did it signify any more than that?

‘Are you all right, Bruno?’ Walsingham asked, leaning closer, his sharp eyes missing nothing.

‘Yes, your honour.’ I quickly composed my expression. ‘I was remembering the story.’

He looked at me shrewdly for a moment, then continued:

‘Becket’s body was buried under the floor of the crypt, for fear it would be stolen. Before long, the tales of miracles began and grew in the telling, as martyrs’ legends will, and the monks realised they were sitting on a pot of gold. If they could keep inventing stories of miraculous healing by the power of Saint Thomas’s body, the penitent would keep bringing their offerings.’

‘Until the tomb was destroyed,’ I said, almost in a whisper.

‘Well, that, of course, is the great question.’ Walsingham folded his arms and looked at me expectantly.

‘It was not destroyed?’ I turned to him, confused.

‘The shrine was smashed, certainly, and all its gold plate and jewels taken for the royal treasury,’ he said.

‘And the bones in the tomb were scattered on the ground with every last fragment crushed to dust,’ Sidney added.

‘Then what is the question?’ I asked, looking from one to the other.

‘Whose bones were they?’ Walsingham smiled as he watched my widening eyes.

‘Ah. So the body in the tomb was a substitute?’

‘No one knows for certain. But the legend persists that in 1538 some among the priory monks, knowing the sword was about to fall on the cathedral shrine, hid the real body of Becket to save it from destruction. Since then, custody of his bones has passed down to a small number of guardians, who are preserving it in secret until the great Catholic reconquest that many would like to believe is inevitable, when the shrine can be rebuilt. You understand?’

I nodded slowly.

‘If people believe the holy relics of Becket are still safe, they have a focus for their resistance.’

‘Precisely. The bones of Saint Thomas are said to have miraculous powers. Some claim they have even raised the dead. For those who believe, they can certainly raise the city of Canterbury back to prosperity again.’

‘But you have no idea where the body might be hidden?’

‘We have no idea if the story is even true,’ Walsingham replied, a little curtly, as if I had cast aspersions on his efficiency. ‘But the fact that it exists at all is a problem. Someone with enough cunning could wave around the thigh-bone of an ox, claiming it was Becket’s, and there are plenty who would flock to it if it promised them prosperity and salvation.’

‘And is there a suggestion that this could happen?’

‘There are always rumours,’ he said, with a dismissive wave. ‘Most of my work is sifting through rumour and speculation, hoping to chance upon a grain of truth like a gem in a dungheap. You have seen for yourself how the English love their superstitions and prophecies.’ He gave a quiet snort and resumed his pacing. ‘And Canterbury is significant, in that it is close to the Kent coast. If the city was sympathetic, it could be of great assistance to a Catholic invading force. I have a man there inside the cathedral Chapter, Harry Robinson, who keeps an eye on those we suspect of disloyalty and reports back to me.’

‘But Harry grows old now, Sir Francis, and his eyes and ears are not what they were,’ Sidney persevered. ‘And there are many places he cannot tread, given his position.’ He made his voice persuasive, but Walsingham looked unmoved.

‘This is not a good time to be a foreigner in England, Philip. The poor harvest, the threat of plague – and now there will be more refugees arriving from the Netherlands if the Spanish come down harder on them. Her Majesty would not countenance closing our ports to Protestants fleeing persecution, though there are those on the Privy Council who would argue for it. But the feeling among the common people is that there are just too many incomers now, taking bread and work from Englishmen. Resentment stews until it erupts in violence. Saving your presence, Bruno. But you would be a good deal safer if you stay at Salisbury Court.’

‘Not if the plague comes,’ Sidney argued, with a note of triumph. ‘Besides, you cannot rely on Harry to tell you the truth about the money.’

‘What money?’ I looked at Walsingham.

He sighed. ‘Do you know how much the cathedral foundations of England are worth, Bruno?’ I shook my head. ‘More than thirty-five thousand pounds, put together,’ he continued. ‘And what are they? For the most part, that money does nothing but support small communities of learned men to live in fine houses debating theology among themselves over a good dinner. While the poor parishes all around are served by barely literate priests, and superstition and popery are allowed to flourish. England’s cathedrals have become no better than the monasteries they replaced. With sufficient evidence of mis-spending, it would be quite admissible to close some of them down.’

‘My father-in-law wants to do for the cathedrals what Lord Cromwell in the Queen’s father’s time did for the religious houses,’ Sidney said, with a mischievous glance at Walsingham. ‘To pay for the Dutch war.’

Walsingham looked exasperated, and seemed about to reprimand him when we heard a sharp knock at the door.

‘Yes?’ Walsingham snapped, and his steward put his head apologetically through the smallest possible gap.

‘There is a gentleman at the door says he must see you, sir.’

‘What gentleman?’

‘He will not give his name, but he says you will want to hear his message.’

I was touched to see how Sidney rose instantly, his hand reaching instinctively to his left side, where he would carry his sword if he were more formally dressed.

‘Should I come?’

‘He has been searched, Sir Philip, and he is not armed,’ the steward assured him.

Walsingham laughed then, and I read affection in the way he looked at his son-in-law. ‘Peace, Philip. I have survived this long without you guarding my every step. Besides, there are armed men at the gate.’

It was true; given the number of Catholics who would like to run the Queen’s Principal Secretary through with a dagger, Walsingham’s house was as well guarded as if he were a royal heir.

‘Don’t go anywhere,’ he said, with a warning finger directed between us, ‘while I see whether this messenger brings a gem, or more dung.’

As soon as the door had shut, Sidney turned to me and grinned broadly, stretching his legs out on the window seat and clasping his hands behind his head again. ‘He will let you go, fear not. He only objects to remind you who is in charge, and because he hates the idea of changing plans without due consideration.’

‘Well, I thank you for your efforts on my behalf,’ I said, loosening my collar and flapping the material of my shirt to create a semblance of a breeze. ‘Anyone would think you wanted rid of me,’ I added, returning his smile. I was curious as to why he would run the risk of displeasing Walsingham in order that I should have my own way.

‘Listen, Bruno …’ He yawned, stretched his long limbs, and fixed me with an earnest look. ‘It would do you good to get out of London. God knows, I feel the need for it myself. But you have been confined to the embassy for a year, spending all your time with that book of yours. I don’t like to see you brooding so much.’

‘I prefer to call it “thinking”,’ I said. ‘I am a philosopher, after all.’

‘Call it what you will, I think you could do with a bit of adventure in every sense. You need to live a little.’ He gave a crude thrust of his hips and winked.

‘I had my share of adventure during my first six months in England. I cheated death more than once. Besides,’ I added, ‘I am not the one idling around the house growing fat while my wife embroiders my shirts.’

He jumped to his feet and I thought he would feign a punch in my direction, but instead he looked down at himself in alarm, both hands laid flat across his stomach.

‘Oh, God, you speak the truth, Bruno. I am grown soft.’ He appeared so stricken that I had to smile.

‘I was only baiting you. But you are happy?’

He glanced at the door, then gave a half-shrug. ‘I have an eighteen-year-old wife and my debts are settled. What man would not be happy?’ But there was an edge to his voice that I could not miss.

‘And yet you want to go to war?’

‘And yet, yes, it seems I have this inexplicable longing to torment the Spanish. I just want to be doing something, Bruno, you understand?’ He clenched and unclenched his fists and after a moment’s silence produced a tight laugh. ‘But I had better not go to war until I have got myself an heir, had I? Just in case. And there seems no sign of that, despite my best efforts. Anyway,’ he sat down again, patted his belly and forced a lightness into his tone, ‘we were not talking about me. You should get yourself a woman, Bruno, you spend too much time alone. I see how your face changes when you talk about the Rector’s daughter – no, don’t deny it. She matters to you. You’ve saved her life once already, at the risk of your own.’

‘Then I abandoned her to a fate she didn’t deserve.’

‘Well then, don’t make the same mistake twice,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘I will work on Walsingham. But be prepared to find yourself hunting for the corpse of a dead saint as well as a murderer.’

‘Since I seem to have a knack of stumbling over corpses wherever I turn, perhaps I am the man for the job,’ I said. But again the similarity between Sophia’s words and Sidney’s pricked at my thoughts, and I pictured the dead man’s brains spilling out of his shattered skull across the worn flagstones.

I hoped Sidney’s optimism was well founded. Their story about the secret cult of Saint Thomas had piqued my interest in the city of Canterbury yet further, but above all I wanted to visit Sophia at the tavern that evening with good news, to see the colour in her face and hope in her eyes. Two impossible tasks – to find a dead saint and a living murderer – but, as Sidney said, it was better than sitting idle, waiting for fate to unfold its design around you.

CANTERBURY

FOUR

The road out of London towards Kent, known as Watling Street, was still busy with traders and drovers, though the traffic of pilgrims had long since stopped. We set out early, but weeks without rain had baked the unpaved track hard as stone and before we had even reached Southwark my eyes and throat were stinging from the clouds of dust flung up by hooves and cartwheels. Every traveller we passed wore a cloth tied around his or her mouth and nose, and I resolved to buy something similar in whichever town we came to next.

Sophia rode beside me, the peak of her cap pulled low over her face. She had barely spoken since we set out and, though I could see little of her expression, the tense line of her jaw betrayed her anxiety at the journey we were now undertaking. Perhaps, after pinning so much hope on its outcome, she had finally begun to appreciate the grave danger she would face when she rode back through the gates of the city that wanted her arrested for murder. Now and again she would clear her throat and I would turn expectantly, waiting for her to speak, but she would only smile wearily and indicate the dust.

I had hired two strong horses at considerable expense, paid for partly out of the purse Walsingham had sent to cover my stay in Canterbury. Eventually he had relented, according to the messenger who had been waiting for me in the street outside the embassy with an encrypted letter two days after my visit to Barn Elms. In it Walsingham had included a fully stamped travel licence, without which I would risk arrest for vagrancy, and instructions that I was not to travel under my own name, nor was I to reveal it under any circumstances to anyone in Canterbury except Harry Robinson.

My host, the French Ambassador, had been reluctant to let me go, but he acknowledged that he had no power to forbid me from travelling, since I did so (he believed) at his sovereign’s expense. He bade me farewell with genuine affection and regret in the midst of his own arrangements for moving the embassy household to the countryside, and I felt a pang of sadness at leaving, though it was outweighed by the delight on Sophia’s face as she flung her arms around my neck when I told her the news.

Now she was riding at my side as the sun climbed higher into a sky of untouched blue and the road stretched out before us, and I could not suppress a swelling sense of anticipation. Sophia’s future depended on the outcome of this journey; if I could clear her of the charges of murder, I could also clear my own conscience of the guilt that had hung heavy on any thought of her since the events in Oxford. Freed of these burdens, might we not begin again, as if on a fresh page?

There was also the prospect, after almost a year spent at a desk buried in books and astronomical charts, of proving my worth again to Walsingham and the Queen. The goodwill of princes was fickle, as every courtier knew, and an ambassador could be recalled or expelled at a moment’s notice. I was certain that my own best prospects, if I wanted to go on writing my books without fear of the Inquisition, lay at the court of England, not France, but to ensure myself a future there I needed Walsingham to value me for my own skills and not merely for my useful connection to the French embassy.

Sophia’s horse gave an impatient little whinny and tossed its mane, making her start in the saddle. I turned, but she recovered her poise and purposefully ignored my expression of concern, her eyes fixed on the road. She rode competently enough, though she looked uncomfortable astride the horse, her long legs pressed tightly against its sides. I tried not to dwell on this thought. She was unused to riding like a man, I supposed, and the stiffness of her posture in the saddle could give her away. One more small trap to avoid, if her boy’s disguise were to hold up. I concentrated my gaze again on the tips of my horse’s ears. There would be danger in this for both of us; I was not so caught up in dreams of adventure as to pretend otherwise. If Sophia was recognised within the city walls of Canterbury, she would be arrested to await trial for her husband’s murder, and if my search for the evidence to vindicate her did not succeed before the assizes, she would face certain execution. There were other dangers too; if the real killer was still in the city and thought he had escaped blame, he would not thank a stranger for asking awkward questions. Anyone who could strike a man down with such force that his brains spilled over the ground would surely not hesitate to dispatch those who seemed overly curious. And as for the legend of Becket’s corpse, I could not help but remember that my last attempt to infiltrate the underground Catholic resistance had very nearly ended fatally.

The one consolation was that no one knew me in Canterbury; I was free to present myself in any guise I chose. At my belt I wore a purse of money, with another inside my riding boots and another wrapped in linen shirts in the panniers slung over my saddle. Across my back I carried a leather satchel containing my travel licence and a letter sealed in thick crimson wax with Sidney’s coat of arms, recommending me as a visiting scholar to his former tutor, the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson, and requesting that he make me welcome during my stay in Canterbury. The letter was a cover, naturally, in case I needed to explain myself to any inquisitive authorities along the road. Robinson had never been Sidney’s tutor, though he was apparently acquainted with the family of Sidney’s mother, but the Sidney coat of arms ought to be sufficient protection against the bullying of petty officials. So that I might travel anonymously if I should be searched, Walsingham had sent a fast rider ahead to Harry Robinson two days earlier with an encrypted letter explaining who I was and the true nature of my business in Canterbury, and requesting Doctor Robinson to assist me for Walsingham’s sake as best he could.

What I was to do with Sophia was another matter, I thought, glancing over at her as she rode, head bowed, teeth gritted. I had omitted to mention to either Walsingham or Sidney that I was planning to take her to Canterbury with me – I already knew all the arguments they would make against such folly. My belt held a sheath for the bone-handled knife that had saved my life more than once, and which a more superstitious man might have been tempted to regard as a good-luck charm.

The low, whitewashed taverns and brothels of Southwark, London’s most lawless borough, ended abruptly and beyond them the horizon opened up into a wide vista of drained marshland converted to fields now parched yellow, the Kent road threading through the bleached landscape, lost in the shimmering distance. As soon as we left the narrow streets behind, the fetid smells of the city receded, to be replaced by the ripe scents of baking earth and warm grass. Despite the dust, I inhaled deeply, tasting for the first time in weeks air that was not thick with the stench of rot and sewage. Swallows looped patterns in the empty sky. Out here, the birdsong was loud and insistent, with a joyful lilt in its cadences, so different from the shrilling of gulls that I had grown used to, living so near the river. Along the way we passed travellers heading in the same direction, many with mules or carts piled with what looked like domestic possessions, and children precariously balanced on top – families fleeing the threat of plague.

‘Where will they go?’ Sophia wondered, as we passed one straggling group with a small donkey-cart and several barefoot children who stared up at us with watchful expressions. One of the older children held a baby in its lap, and I saw Sophia’s eyes latch on to it. She spoke so quietly she might almost have been talking to herself.

‘To relatives, I suppose.’

‘What if their relatives will not take them in? Coming from a plague city?’

I shrugged. ‘Then they will have no choice but to return to London, I imagine.’

‘To the plague,’ she whispered, barely audible. She appeared stricken; I watched her for a moment as she turned back to take a last look at the child and the baby. She has a new understanding of what it means to be a refugee, I thought, a raw sympathy with the desperate, those who must throw themselves on the mercy of others. I remembered my own early days as a fugitive on the road to Rome and then north through Italy; how quickly I was exposed to the best and worst of human nature at close quarters. I was taught to survive by bitter experience, but I learned more about compassion in those months than I ever did in thirteen years of prayer and study as a Dominican monk.

‘No one has yet seen any sign of plague,’ I reminded her.

Sophia turned to me with a distant smile, as if seeing me properly for the first time since we had set out.

‘So you would not believe there is plague in London until you see a man fall dead of it at your feet, is that it?’

‘I would ask for some proof beyond marketplace rumour, if that’s what you mean.’

‘And yet you will believe that the Earth goes around the Sun, and that the fixed stars are not fixed, and the universe is infinite, full of other worlds, all with their own suns? Where is your proof for that?’

‘There are calculations based on measurements of the stars –’ I began, until I noticed the smile of amusement playing at the corners of her lips. Her chin jutted defiantly. ‘Very well, you are right – I have no firm proof that there are other worlds. The question is, rather, why should we assume there are not? Is it not arrogance to think we are the only creatures in the cosmos who know how to look up at the night sky and consider our place in it?’

‘The holy scriptures say nothing about any distant worlds.’

‘The holy scriptures were written by men. If there are people who inhabit other worlds out there –’ I gestured with one hand – ‘it is reasonable to suppose they would have their own writings, no? Perhaps their books have no mention of us.’

She smiled, shading her eyes with one hand as she turned to look at me.

‘Have you put all this in your book for the Queen?’

‘Not all, no.’

‘Just as well.’

She laughed briefly before retreating into her pensive silence again, but there had been warmth in that laughter. The brief exchange had offered a glimpse of the old Sophia, as if she had thrown me a scrap of what I had hoped for from this journey, the conversations we had known in Oxford, when I had sensed she wanted to sharpen her intellect against mine. Perhaps I had been a fool to imagine we would have the leisure for that kind of talk, with such a burden weighing on her shoulders. But to a hungry man, even a scrap is enough to quicken his appetite.

By evening we had reached the small market town of Dartford. As if sensing an end to the journey, the horses slowed their pace along the main street as I scanned the painted signs that hung immobile from the eaves of low timber-framed buildings in search of a suitable inn. The fierce heat of the day had begun to subside, but the air remained heavy and it was a welcome relief to ride into the shade of houses. At the end of the high street we found an inn that must have stood in that spot beside the river for more than a century; I pictured generations of long-dead pilgrims pressing through the wide gates into its yard, footsore and dry-throated, hoping desperately – as was I – that there would be a room.

I pulled my horse gently to a halt outside the gate and turned to Sophia. She had remained unusually quiet through the afternoon’s long hours of riding as the sun hammered down, the road affording little respite except for the few brief stretches where we passed between copses of beech trees. Now she raised her head to reveal a face streaked with dirt and sweat, lips crusted with the dust of the road.

‘Don’t clean yourself up too much,’ I remarked, quietly. ‘You look more like a boy with all that filth on you.’

She rubbed the back of one hand across her mouth. ‘I must smell appalling.’

‘No worse than any other traveller in here.’

My body ached from the ride, my thighs, back and behind sore and stiff from the hours in the saddle, but Sophia had not uttered a word of complaint, though I knew she was unused to riding and I had noticed in the last hour of our journey how she winced whenever she shifted position. My horse gave a little jog on the spot and whinnied with impatience; perhaps he could smell fresh hay from the inn yard. I looked down at my hands on the reins for a moment, then back at Sophia. There was one subject I had not dared to broach with her on the journey, but it could not be avoided any longer.

‘I fear we will have to share a room tonight.’ I had not meant to state it so baldly, but there was no point in being coy. She appeared not the least surprised by this; her expression, beneath the dust, seemed unperturbed.

‘I know.’

‘Because you are travelling as my servant, you see, and it would arouse suspicion if we did not,’ I continued, speaking too fast. ‘Besides –’ I tapped the purse at my belt – ‘we must use our money wisely. We don’t know how long we will need to make it last.’

Sophia nodded, as if all this had been understood and agreed; her calm only made me more flustered. It also brought a sharp pang of rejection; I realised that, for her, the prospect of sharing a room carried none of the implications it held for me. I looked away, sizing up the inn, scratching the damp hair at the back of my neck until I was sure my eyes would not betray me.

‘We must take great care from now on, especially in the company of strangers,’ I said, lowering my voice. ‘There may be people on the road looking for you, and we do not know if a reward has been offered in Canterbury for your capture. And your disguise is flimsy, to say the least.’ I looked her up and down. ‘The best thing you can do is to speak as little as possible. Your voice is more likely to give you away than anything. You can always pretend to be simple.’

She smiled, and rolled her shoulders back to ease the stiffness.

‘And you, Bruno, must remember to call me Kit. And don’t keep looking at me the way a man looks at a woman. If anything is likely to give us away, it is you.’ She wagged a finger, pretending to chide, but I did not laugh. So she had noticed how I looked at her. Was she as indifferent to that as she sounded, or was she simply better at being practical than I in this situation, as women so often are? ‘Try to forget you ever knew me as Sophia,’ she whispered, glancing around to make sure no one could overhear. ‘You must think of me as a boy all the time now.’

‘I will do my best. Though you must understand, I don’t find that easy.’

She smiled again, and behind the exhaustion and the dirt I saw a gleam in those amber eyes that might have been an acknowledgement of my meaning.

‘You had better call me by another name too,’ I added, shifting my weight in the saddle to ease my back. ‘I travel as Filippo Savolino, scholar of Padua.’

‘Why? Do you think your fame has reached as far as Canterbury?’ The corners of her mouth twitched in amusement.

‘Don’t laugh – my last book was very popular in Paris. It’s not impossible.’ I smiled. ‘It’s just a precaution. There are people who would like to track me down too, don’t forget.’ And not just the Inquisition, I added silently, thinking of the various enemies I had made in barely more than a year in England.

‘Why that name? Is it someone you knew?’

‘In a sense. It was the name I used in Italy after I fled the monastery. Filippo is the name my parents baptised me – I took Giordano when I entered the Dominican order. Savolino was my mother’s family name.’

She nodded slowly, her eyes narrowed as if reappraising me.

‘So all this time, I have never even known your real name. What other secrets do you hide, Filippo?’

‘Oh, hundreds. But I do not give them up to just anyone.’

I winked, and gently kicked my horse onwards towards the inn yard, pleased to think that I had in some small way intrigued her again.

That night, after an uncomfortable supper in the inn’s crowded tap-room, eaten almost in silence to avoid any more attention from the travellers, traders and itinerants who regarded us suspiciously from beneath their brows, Sophia and I faced one another by the light of a candle across the narrow bed of our small room. For the first time all day she took off her cap and scratched violently at her sweat-plastered hair until it stuck up in tufts. An earthenware jug and bowl stood on a washstand under the one grimy window; she poured out a little water and splashed it over her face and neck. I turned abruptly, aware that I had been watching her too intently.

‘You take the bed,’ I said, sitting on it to ease off my boots. The money hidden there had rubbed my ankles raw and I hoped we would reach Canterbury undisturbed so that I could find a more secure hiding place at the house of Doctor Harry Robinson.

The inn was spartan, but by no means among the worst places I had endured as a traveller; it smelled strongly of the sweat of men and horses, but so did every place in this heat. I tugged my shirt out from my breeches and flapped it up and down. The room the innkeeper had given us was at the top of the house and the heat of the day was trapped under the eaves; even with the casement open, the air seemed to crush the breath from you. I glanced down at the small truckle-bed that pulled out from under the main bed, meant for a servant to sleep alongside his master. I decided I would sleep in my underhose; even if Sophia had not been there, I had learned from experience that it was never wise to go to bed entirely naked in a roadside inn, however hot it might be. You never knew when you might need to leap to your feet at a moment’s notice.

I unbuckled the belt holding my purse and the bone-handled knife and laid them carefully on the floor before turning back to look at her. Her hair was spiked at the front from the water and her efforts at washing had merely succeeded in spreading the dust over her face in different patterns, giving her an endearingly impish look. She met my eyes, then wrapped her arms around herself awkwardly before glancing across the room. Her gaze fell on a cracked piss-pot in the corner and immediately I understood.

‘I think I will just go and check on the horses,’ I said quickly, pulling my boots back on. Poor Sophia – this was one of the hardest parts about her disguise, and the one most likely to betray her, I thought – that she could not piss like a man. Earlier in the day I had had to wait by the side of the road holding her horse’s bridle while she looked for a spot in some trees, away from the eyes of passers-by. More than her voice, we must take care that her refusal to relieve herself on any street corner alongside other boys did not attract undue attention. ‘Latch the door behind me and don’t open it to anyone,’ I added, standing up. I tucked the knife into the waist of my breeches, just in case. We had drawn stares in the tap-room, I supposed because between us we looked so exotic. One day’s ride in the sun had tanned my Italian skin the colour of olivewood, making me look yet more foreign, and Sophia, for all her filthy clothes, was so striking as to make any man look twice. Even if no one suspected she was a woman, there were always plenty of men in any roadside tavern whose tastes were broad enough to include a pretty, soft-skinned boy.

Outside in the courtyard the day’s heat had ebbed away, leaving cool shadows and a gentle night breeze. It would be more comfortable to sleep out here, I thought, picturing Sophia lying alongside me among the hay bales stacked against the wall of the stable, under the stars. I wandered across to the open door of the stable building, to give her time to finish her ablutions in private, exchanged a few words with the stable boy, gave him a groat to make sure our horses were well brushed down and fed for the morning, and strolled back slowly towards the inn, glancing up at the windows, some still lit by the flickering amber glow of candles. Occasionally the shadow of a figure would cross in front of the casement, and I looked up at the row of gabled windows in the attic storey, trying to work out which was ours. In one of those upper rooms, Sophia was undressing, unbinding her breasts, stretching out her long, aching limbs on the coarse sheets. I shook my head and tried to discipline my wayward thoughts. This business in Canterbury would be difficult enough without deliberately tormenting myself over Sophia and fantasies of what I could not – yet – have. The surest way to secure her trust and affection was to perform the role she required of me, which for the moment was that of trusted friend.

Between the bullying husband and his drunken, lusty son, she had seen enough of men whose only interest was what they could take from her. She had come to me because she believed I was different, and I wished her to see that she was right. Though I was a man like any other, I had learned during the years I lived as a monk to master the urges of the body that prove such a powerful distraction to men, especially those trying to concentrate on the life of the mind or of the spirit. As a sixteen-year-old novice I had served for a little time in the infirmary as assistant to the physician, and there I saw some among my brother Dominicans writhing in pain, burning up from within, clawing at festering sores, screaming every time they passed blood-streaked water, or sinking towards death in the incoherent ravings of madmen, all because of an ill-judged tumble with a whore or a serving girl. I had asked the brother physician what had brought these men – some of them not much older than me – to such a pass. ‘Sin,’ he had replied emphatically, through clenched teeth. No further explanation was needed. These early lessons in the price to be paid for the fierce cravings of desire had led me to value my health and my sanity above the insistent clamour of my body; it was partly thanks to those poor tortured souls that I had chosen to devote myself to philosophy and worked hard to acquire the discipline needed to live the life of the mind. But Sophia was something different altogether; from the first moment I had seen her, across her father’s dinner table in Oxford, I had found her impossible to forget. Her return to me had all the irresistible force of an event decreed by the stars – or so I could almost believe.

I laughed drily at myself as I stopped to piss against a wall of the courtyard.

‘Be another hot one tomorrow.’

I looked up; the speaker was a stocky man also relieving himself a few yards along from me. He nodded up at the cloudless sky.

‘I think you are right,’ I said, finishing my business and retying my breeches.

‘We’ll have no harvest at all if we don’t get some rain soon,’ he remarked, his stream still splashing vigorously against the stones. His words were slurred from drink and he swayed slightly as he continued to let loose the evening’s beer. I could not see his face in the half-light. Across the yard a horse whinnied, making me start. ‘Then there’ll be riots, you’ll see. Where you from, then?’

‘Naples.’ I took a step towards the inn, then added, ‘Italy,’ when I saw there was no response. I had no wish to engage in small talk with this fellow, particularly about myself, but neither did I wish to give offence. Sophia and I were vulnerable enough without deliberately putting ourselves on the wrong side of fellow travellers.

‘And the boy? What is he, your servant?’

It was a casual question, thrown over his shoulder as he finished, shook off the last drops and tied himself away, but immediately I felt myself tense and the skin on my neck prickled. Whoever he was, he must have been watching us earlier and was sober enough to have recognised me. More than that, he had taken notice of Sophia.

‘My assistant.’ I answered him coolly enough, but my fists were clenched at my sides.

‘Assistant, is it?’ He laughed as he lurched towards me in the direction of the inn’s rear door. To my ear it sounded lascivious, though I knew I may have been over-sensitive. ‘What’s he assist you with, then?’

‘My business is books.’

‘Oh, aye? Do you get much trade?’

‘I make a living.’

Fortunately, it seemed he had little more to contribute on the subject of the book trade. He fell clumsily into step beside me as I made for the tavern door.

‘Come and have a game of cards with us, my friend, you and your assistant. Too hot to sleep, night like this.’ He clapped me on the shoulder; instinctively I flinched, though he was too drunk to notice.

‘I thank you,’ I said, moving a step away as we reached the threshold, ‘but we must make an early start tomorrow. Besides,’ I added, trying to keep my tone light, ‘I’m afraid I am a hopeless card player, no matter what the game.’

‘You’d be all the more welcome at our table, then,’ he said, with a wheezing laugh that showed a few remaining brown stumps of teeth. I smiled and bade him good night, only realising as I climbed the stairs how I had been holding my breath. The man’s curiosity had seemed harmless enough, but it was further proof that Sophia and I made an odd sight travelling together, and one that attracted the eyes of strangers. We would need to be vigilant at every moment; one careless word or gesture, one instant of forgetting who we were supposed to be or failing to keep an eye over our shoulders, and our mission in Canterbury might be over before we even reached the city walls.

I gave a soft tap at the door. After a moment, I heard the lifting of the latch and slipped through into the warm darkness. The candles had been blown out; Sophia was standing behind the door, wrapped in a sheet from the bed. In the dim light from the open casement I saw that her shoulders were bare. Quickly I turned away. The room smelled faintly of sweat and something sharper, the private scent of a woman. I pulled my shirt over my head and lay down on the straw pallet, leaving my breeches on to hide my gently swelling erection, even though I knew she could see nothing in the soft blur of shadows.

‘Tomorrow, as we ride,’ I murmured, partly to distract myself, and partly to confirm, for my own benefit, that she was still awake, still conscious of my presence as I was of hers, ‘we must set to work. I need you to tell me as much as you can remember about your husband, every detail of his work, his habits, his friends, his enemies, his religion. No matter how insignificant it may seem. If we are to clear your name, we must first learn who else could have gained from his death.’

‘His religion?’ Through the dark, I could picture the quizzical expression that accompanied her tone; the slight wrinkling of the nose, the dip of the brows. ‘He was a lay canon of the cathedral, as I told you. Though his sense of Christian duty didn’t go beyond securing a position of influence for himself, as you also know.’

‘But you and I know very well that a man’s public face does not always reflect the faith of his heart,’ I whispered back. She remained silent. ‘Canterbury, like Oxford, is a place of tangled religious loyalties. The cult of the saint still holds many in thrall, I am told. And if your husband was a man with secrets, it’s not impossible that they involved matters of faith. It is, after all, a city with religion soaked into its stones.’

‘My husband thought it all superstitious nonsense, the saint and the shrine,’ she said, dismissively. ‘He regarded himself as a man of reason. Religion for him was a question of civic duty and social advancement. Whatever his secrets, I doubt they were concerned with faith.’

Since her voice implied that this was the last word on the subject, I turned over uncomfortably and closed my eyes. A timber creaked outside the room and I sat bolt upright, hand on my knife, muscles tensed. But whether it was a footfall or merely the old building shifting in its sleep, there was only silence. Sophia laughed softly.

‘Sleep, Bruno. It’s like having a watchdog in the room.’

I lay back, staring at the ceiling, one hand still resting lightly on the knife. A watchdog. It was how I felt. The room settled into the muffled stillness of night. Beyond the casement, the lonely cry of an owl floated through the dark. Sophia’s breathing grew deeper and more regular, almost lulling me out of my watchfulness until, long after I thought she was asleep, I heard her whisper,

‘Bruno?’

‘Yes?’

‘From now on,’ she said, ‘let us not speak about Oxford. The past is gone. I was someone else then. I want to forget everything that happened there. Those terrible murders,’ she added, after a while, barely audible. ‘And then my husband. Violent death seems to touch everyone who comes near me.’

There was a slight break in her voice, a note of despair that restrained me from telling her not to exaggerate. Sophia had known more than her share of misfortune in her young life, but this century is indifferent in its cruelty, and we are taught to regard suffering as our due. Her father and her aunt would no doubt say that she had been the author of her own troubles, that they were a punishment from God because she would not be submissive as a woman should. Someone with less orthodox views – someone like me, for example – might more generously suggest that Sophia’s only fault was to be born with intelligence, an enquiring mind and a yearning for independence, in a world where those qualities are seen as positively dangerous in anyone, let alone a girl. There was only one woman in England who had the freedom to indulge her intellect and her passion, and even her throne could not protect her from daily threats upon her life. I said none of this.

‘But your past has shaped who you are.’ I turned on to my side so that I was facing her bed; despite the darkness, I knew she was looking at me. ‘You carry it with you, even if you would rather not.’

‘No.’ She spoke firmly. ‘I want only to begin again, once this is all over. I will be no one’s daughter, no one’s mother, no one’s sister, no one’s wife. Everyone has gone. I wish to live like you, Bruno, with no ties. It must be a wonderful thing, to have such freedom.’

I said nothing. She was twenty years old; how could I make her understand that exile was not freedom, that solitude was not necessarily liberty? I was tired of travelling; the yearning to belong somewhere, to rest in the knowledge of a secure position, seemed to grow stronger with every year that passed. What she saw as my freedom had been forced on me by the Roman Inquisition.

I shifted again on to my back, the straw pricking at my skin through the thin sheet, and watched the frail moonlight slowly spread across the ceiling. Sophia’s breathing slowed again; occasionally she gave a little moan in her sleep, a reminder of her warm presence, while I lay awake, tormented and watchful, my ears straining for any sound of a tread on the stairs.

FIVE

We reached Canterbury by noon on the fourth day. Alone, I could have made the journey in less time, but Sophia was increasingly suffering the pains of long hours on horseback, and though she never complained, I reasoned it was better to take the journey at a slower pace, for her sake and for the horses’. My anxiety only increased each time we rode into an inn yard at dusk. The second night we spent in Rochester, a small town straddling the river estuary, where I bought some cloth and had it cut into makeshift kerchiefs we could tie around our faces to keep from breathing the dust. The third night we stopped in a village by the name of Faversham, where the clamour of the gulls and cool salt breeze made me long for the nearby sea. That night, she stood by the open window for a long time after I had blown out the candle, looking into the blue-black distance without speaking; when I tentatively approached and she turned, I realised that she was crying. I didn’t ask why, merely allowed her to rest her forehead against my shoulder until the moment passed. Before she got into bed, she touched my hand lightly, twining her fingers with mine for the space of a breath, as if to say thank you. Neither of us spoke, but I felt a surge of hope as I stretched out uncomfortably on my pallet, as if something essential had been communicated without the need for words.

We kept to ourselves, spoke as little as possible in the company of strangers, and survived the three nights and the hard ride with few unwelcome attentions. In every village where we broke our journey to water the horses and buy bread, rumours of the plague travelled before us, quick as flames through dry tinder; the old pilgrim road crawled with refugees clutching few belongings and less money, and the taverns were closing their doors to many. The townspeople wanted as little as possible to do with travellers from London; we were fortunate that money still spoke with a voice louder than fear.

A mile or so outside the walls of Canterbury we stopped in the village of Harbledown to let the horses drink. It was a pretty enough place, surrounded by orchards, no more than a few houses straggling along a single street which rose steeply towards the city in the distance. We led the horses off the road by an old almshouse and found a spot in the shade to sit down and prepare ourselves for the riskiest part of our journey. My head ached and my throat was gritty with dust, despite the kerchief.

‘If the plague fears have reached Canterbury, we may find them more vigilant than usual at the gates,’ I said, passing Sophia a leather bottle of small beer, warm now from hanging by my side along the road, but better than nothing. ‘Though the fact that everyone has a cloth tied around their face ought to work to our advantage. If they stop us, just keep your eyes down, your cap low over your face, and your mouth shut. We can pretend you are a mute. You shouldn’t find that too hard,’ I couldn’t help adding, at the sight of her sullen expression.

She reached for the bottle, held my gaze for a long moment, enough to be sure that I knew she was still angry with me, then took a swig and looked pointedly away, squinting into the sun above the trees. For the best part of an hour she had refused to speak, ever since I had broken the news to her that morning that she would not be able to stay with me in Canterbury and would need to presume again on the hospitality of her Huguenot friends. I had expected her to be displeased by the idea, knowing she would fear for their safety, but I had not anticipated the flash of fury it provoked. She had railed at me, accusing me of reneging on my promise to help her, until I pointed out sharply that we were not the only travellers on the road and that shrieking like a girl-child was the best way to give herself up before we even reached the gates. She had fallen silent after that and remained so, with the occasional simmering glance from beneath her cap, until we stopped.

Now she propped herself up on one elbow and regarded me dispassionately before offering me the bottle. I took a brief sip and winced; my stomach had been feeling queasy since I first awoke and the heat of the day was not improving the symptoms.

‘What if the French houses have been searched, looking for me?’ Sophia said. ‘Someone will have told the constables that I was friends with Olivier, I am sure of it.’

‘Then you should be all the safer. You have been gone from Canterbury more than a fortnight; if the authorities have already searched the city, they will not expect you to return.’

‘I still don’t see why I can’t come with you, if I am supposed to be your servant.’ She tore up a clump of grass with some force, then flung it away as if she found it offensive.

‘Because innkeepers, and especially their wives, are the most professionally inquisitive people in all creation,’ I said impatiently. ‘Their whole business is to observe and speculate on the travellers who come through their doors. We’ve been lucky so far, but any more than one night in the same hostel and someone will deduce right away that Kit is not what he claims to be. No.’ I shook my head. ‘Lie low with the Huguenots. I will be enough of a curiosity on my own.’ I rubbed a hand across my chin; four days’ growth of dark beard only reinforced the foreignness of my appearance, especially now that the sun had tanned my face to a colour it had not been since I was a boy running free all day on the slopes of Monte Cicada. My hair, too, had been neglected over the past weeks when I was preoccupied with finishing my book; I could not remember the last time I paid a visit to the barber, and it had grown so that it fell across my eyes at the front and curled over my collar at the back. ‘One of my first tasks once we are inside the city gates must be to get a shave and a haircut,’ I complained, pushing my fringe back from my face.

‘You look better with no beard,’ she remarked, her voice brighter. ‘Younger, I mean. It suits you.’

I glanced up, surprised, but she remained preoccupied with plucking blades of grass and scattering them around her and did not look at me. I was reminded again of how little I understood a woman like Sophia. I hardly considered myself an expert on the ways of women, but it had been eight years since I cast off my Dominican habit and with it my vows, and at the court of Paris I was given ample opportunity to observe the flirting and simpering of fashionable ladies at close quarters. Sophia had learned none of these wiles, yet her artless frankness was far more disarming; she could offer a compliment as casually as remarking on the weather and every time, like a fool, I allowed it to quicken a little spark of hope.

‘It’s a pity we can’t get you a beard somehow,’ I said, after a moment’s silence, watching how the shadow of the leaves fell across her smooth cheek. ‘It would help your concealment no end.’

‘My aunt had the beginnings of one,’ she said, looking up with an unexpected grin. ‘She was forever trying to pluck hairs from her chin. I suppose we can’t wait for me to reach her age.’

‘If we don’t make your disguise convincing, you won’t live to reach her age,’ I said, and immediately regretted it; her smile vanished on the instant and her eyes clouded again. She returned to pulling up the grass with renewed force.

‘Are you afraid?’ I said.

She looked directly at me then and held my gaze in those expressionless, honey-coloured eyes.

‘Canterbury is a small city, as you’ll see. Now that we are so close to its walls, I wonder what I was thinking, coming back.’ She passed a hand across her brow and sank on to her elbows. ‘But this place has never been anything other than a prison to me since I was first brought through its gates. I don’t suppose a real prison would be all that different.’

The careless note in her voice was betrayed by the tightness around her mouth, the way she pressed her lips into a white line. I remembered her silent tears in Faversham. She was afraid, but she was damned if she was going to let me see it. I glanced up at the sky, where a single skein of pale cloud interrupted the eggshell blue.

‘Well, then,’ I said, levering myself to my feet. ‘Into the lion’s den.’

The vast circular towers of the city’s West Gate loomed up ahead of us on the road, solid and forbidding in dark, flint-studded stone, set in the thick walls like the entrance to a fortress and visible from some distance away. To either side the road was lined with modest buildings of wood and plaster. We crossed a little stone bridge over a rivulet just before the gate and as we followed the road into the cool shadow of its great central archway I felt my skin rise in gooseflesh and my bowels clench. Now that we were on the threshold, I acknowledged the truth in Sophia’s words; if we should be stopped here, I had as good as led her to her death in my eagerness to save her. A foreigner and a fugitive; what chance did we have of passing unnoticed in a small English city with an entrenched suspicion of outsiders? I glanced across at Sophia, but could see little of her face between the peak of her cap and the cloth she pulled up tighter over her nose. I did likewise, and nudged the horse onward under the gate.

But the guard at the gate gave only a cursory glance to my travel licence before waving us through; his main concern seemed to be keeping the flow of traffic moving, though I felt every muscle tense with the expectation of a hand on the reins at any moment. The greatest impediment to our free movement came from the jostling vegetable carts and the press of people carrying baskets and bundles in both directions through the gate, most of whom, I noticed, also had cloths tied around their faces. Perhaps the citizens of Canterbury were less alarmist about the plague rumours, or perhaps the necessity of making a living prevented them from being too picky about incomers. A trickle of sweat ran down my open collar and I tugged it away from my skin with one finger, my eyes still roving the street for any sign of danger.

We found ourselves at the end of a thoroughfare that ran between lines of two- and three-storey houses in the English style, of white plaster and dark timber frames, each upper storey overhanging the one below, so that it seemed the buildings were leaning inwards in order to share some gossip with those opposite. On both sides the ground floors of these buildings had their shutters up and their windows employed as street-counters from which to sell their wares; we passed chandlers, ironmongers, drapers, shoe-makers and apothecaries, each shop with its own distinctive smell, all clamouring for the attention of passers-by. Barefoot children chased one another, laughing, through the crowds, dodging the mounds of horse dung and refuse and amusing themselves by throwing odd vegetables that had fallen from the carts at stray dogs. Washing had been hung to dry from the windows of the upper storeys, though the closeness of the buildings kept the street shaded. On every corner the painted signs of inns or taverns creaked above doorways, a reminder of the days when Canterbury had played host to travelling pilgrims in their thousands, though many of the hostelries appeared run-down and neglected now, their plaster cracked and paint forlornly blistered. Outside them, old men lolled on wooden benches, jugs of beer in their hands, fanning themselves and watching the life of the street. Passing too close to strangers, I caught the smell of sour sweat. I craned my head back; above the line of crooked rooftops to my left rose the bell tower of the famous cathedral, standing sentinel over the city.

‘Turn left,’ a voice behind me growled. I turned sharply, and saw Sophia motioning to me with her eyes. ‘Left here,’ she said again, this gruffness apparently an attempt at sounding masculine.

I almost laughed, but did my best to swallow it and urged the horse to the side of the street down a narrow alleyway between houses. Towards the far end of this lane the dwellings grew smaller and poorer, but along the right-hand side where the lane bordered the river stood a row of compact three-storey houses joined together. Their frontage was neat and clean, the steps by the front doors swept free of refuse and to each side of the door earthenware pots brimmed with red flowers. I rode as far as I could go, until the lane petered out in a cluster of shabby cottages. Here I turned the horse in a tight circle and looked expectantly at Sophia.

‘The white houses near the road – those are the weavers’ houses,’ she hissed. ‘The middle door. Ask for Olivier Fleury.’

I nodded briskly, dismounted and handed her my horse’s reins. The little street was empty, but I glanced around uneasily, imagining curious eyes behind the glass of every window. Surely it was not unusual for the French weavers to receive visitors, I told myself; I must shake off this conviction that everyone regarded us as suspicious or I would cause them to do so by my behaviour.

Stiffly I approached the low doorway of the middle house and knocked, pulling the cloth down from my face with the other hand as I did so. Through the open windows I could hear sounds of industry: the rhythmic clicking of wood against wood, a clanking of metal, the odd muted voice, sharp, as if giving instruction or calling out some demand. A hot, heavy smell drifted out; steam and wet wool and some other ingredient I could not identify. I knocked again and eventually the door was opened and I jumped back in surprise.

A tall, wiry youth, barely into his twenties, stood in the doorway, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow. He looked at me, suspicion in his eyes. There was a faint hint of arrogance in his expression that sowed a seed of dislike in me. Nonetheless, I smiled graciously.

‘Olivier Fleury?’

‘Who wants him?’

He spoke in French, so I replied in kind.

‘An old friend.’

He considered me for a moment.

‘I have never seen you before, monsieur.’

He possessed that combination of sullen carelessness and self-regard that I had observed often among the French courtiers, though it seemed misplaced in the son of émigré weavers. But if I was honest, I found myself disliking this Olivier because, despite his sulky expression, he was undeniably handsome. His dark brown hair was cropped short and his skin was tanned, making his blue eyes appear all the more vivid. He had a manner of looking at you from under hooded lids with his head tilted back that implied disdain, and his full lips were set in a permanent pout. I could see how a young woman of twenty, trapped in a cruel marriage, might choose to seek solace in the company of a sympathetic youth with a face like this. Though I was unsure of the details of their friendship, I wished I did not have to deliver Sophia directly into his home, and fleetingly considered the possibility of taking her to stay with me at the inn instead. Reluctantly, I was obliged to concede that her safety was more important than my jealousy.

‘The friend I speak of is a young man of your acquaintance recently returned from London, on personal business.’ I gave him a meaningful look; his blue eyes registered first confusion, then slowly widened in disbelief as he leaned forward on the step, bunching his apron in his fist, his gaze anxiously searching the street to left and right. I nodded to my left; he pulled the door to behind him and followed me around the bend in the lane to where Sophia sat, still mounted, holding my horse by his reins.

If there had been some connection deeper than friendship between them, however, their initial response gave no indication of it. Olivier stared up at the ragged figure on the horse, her face barely visible between the cloth mask and the cap, then took a step backwards with a minute shake of his head, as if trying to deny to himself the evidence of his own eyes. Sophia merely returned his look, her eyes glints of light in the shadow that obscured her expression. Olivier’s frown of confusion hardened into anger as she slid awkwardly from the saddle and led her horse and mine a few paces towards us.

‘Why is she here?’ Olivier hissed through bared teeth, turning to me with a flash of fury. ‘This is madness.’

‘There was no choice,’ I began, but it was clear he wasn’t listening. He seemed genuinely afraid as he fixed his eyes again on Sophia.

‘Olivier,’ Sophia whispered, stepping closer. ‘This is my friend Bruno. He is going to find my husband’s killer and clear my name. But I had to come back to help him.’

She raised her eyebrows and nodded earnestly, as if this might persuade him. Olivier pushed both hands through his hair. He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled slowly, still staring at her as if she were insane.

‘Who else knows you are here?’ he asked her, in English.

‘We have only just this moment ridden through the city gate,’ I offered.

He shook his head again and glanced quickly up the lane.

‘Get inside the house, then, before anyone sees you. This will kill my mother, you know,’ he added in French, turning his scowl on me, as if it were all my fault.

‘I am sorry for any distress to your family,’ I said, feeling that to placate him would aid us best. ‘But she would not be safe anywhere else.’

‘She would be safe in London,’ he hissed back. ‘That was the whole point.’

‘Better you don’t fight about it in the street,’ Sophia murmured, with remarkable calm, handing me the halters of both horses as she slipped past Olivier into the doorway of his house. He glared at me again.

‘For one night, then. But we will speak further.’

‘I would be glad to, if you tell me where to find you,’ I said, still trying to deflect his anger with civility. I could understand how disconcerted he must feel, having thought he was free of any danger from his association with Sophia; to conceal a fugitive criminal was, as I understood the English law, itself a hanging offence. For a refugee family who had already escaped religious persecution, sought a quiet life and risked their good name once out of kindness, being expected to repeat that same sacrifice might seem an excessive test of their faith. If I had been gratified at first to see that neither Sophia nor Olivier showed any obvious pleasure at being reunited, such sentiments were quickly supplanted by a sense of shame at my own triviality.

‘Come back tomorrow morning,’ he muttered, darting another nervous glance over my shoulder, towards the end of the lane and the main street beyond. ‘My family and I will decide what to do by then.’

‘Tomorrow, then. And you take care of her,’ I added, just to let the boy know that I too had a vested interest. He took a step closer; he was taller than I, and drew himself up to emphasise this advantage.

‘We all want to keep her safe, monsieur. My family and friends risked everything to get her away from this place. Now you bring her back.’ He brought his face closer to mine and glared from beneath lowered brows, so fiercely it seemed he hoped I would burn up from the force of his eyes. ‘As if we did not have enough grief here already.’ Then he turned and disappeared inside the house, slamming the door behind him.

I looked around carefully at the windows of the neighbouring houses in case anyone had witnessed our exchange, but there was no obvious sign of movement. Even so, I felt distinctly uneasy as I led the horses back towards the main street, as if hostile eyes were following me, marking my steps.

I stabled the horses at the Cheker of Hope Inn, a great sprawling place that occupied most of the corner between the High Street, as I learned the main thoroughfare was called, and Mercery Lane, a smaller street that led towards the cathedral. The inn was one of the few that still seemed to attract a healthy trade; Sophia had recommended it because of its size; it was three storeys high, and built around a wide yard that often hosted performances by companies of travelling players. Despite my accent, the landlady – a heavily rouged woman in her forties – gave me an appreciative look when I secured the room; from the way her eyes travelled over me, I gathered she was pleased with more than the sight of the coins in my purse. I deflected her questions as politely as I could, hoping that here, with more travellers coming and going, I might enjoy greater anonymity than in the smaller places we had stayed in along the road, where everyone wants to know your business.

My stomach still felt dangerously unsettled – entirely my own fault, I suspected. The heat of the room during the previous night had brought on such a thirst that in desperation I had drunk some of the water left in a pitcher on the window-ledge for washing. Experience had taught me not to touch any water in England unless you have watched it come fresh from a spring or a well with your own eyes, but I had ignored good sense and now I was paying the price for it. With the horses safely stabled I was at liberty to explore the city on foot, and as I remembered noticing an apothecary’s sign along the High Street when we had ridden through the town, I decided to pay the shop a visit in the hope of purchasing something to ease my digestion before I attempted to introduce myself to Harry Robinson.

Over the door a painted sign showed the serpent coiled around a staff that denoted the apothecary’s trade; beside it the name Wm. Fitch. A bell chimed above the door as I entered and the front room was surprisingly cool inside, shaded from the heat of the day by the overhanging eaves, its small casements open to a vague breath of air from the street. I inhaled the sour-sweet smell that reminded me for a poignant moment of the distillery belonging to my friend Doctor Dee; a mixture of leaves and spices and bitter concoctions preserved in spirits. The apothecary was nowhere in sight so I closed the door behind me and called out a greeting as my gaze wandered over the shelves and cabinets lining the walls from floor to ceiling. Here great glass conical flasks containing potions and cordials in lurid colours vied for space beside earthenware jars of tinctures and pots stuffed with the raw ingredients for poultices and infusions, all balanced precariously alongside bunches of dried herbs, dog-eared books and other curiosities that may or may not have belonged to the man’s trade (on one shelf, a piccolo; on another, the skull of a ram). On the ware-bench in front of me, a pestle and mortar containing a greenish paste had been left as if in mid-preparation. Next to it stood a little brass balance, its weights scattered round about beside a quill and inkwell. I was peering up at one jar, trying to ascertain whether it really did contain a human finger, when the door at the back of the shop opened and a small, florid-faced man with receding hair appeared in a cloud of steam, wiping his hands on his smock. He flapped his hand as if to disperse the humid air.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said cheerfully, nodding towards the back room. ‘Had to check on my distillery. It’s like a Roman bath-house in there today.’ He paused to mop sweat from his forehead with a sleeve. ‘I’m a firm believer that steam purges the body of excess heat, though there are those who believe it has the opposite effect. Now, what can I do for you, sir? You have a choleric look about you –’ he waved a finger to indicate my face. ‘Something to balance the humours, perhaps?’

‘I’m just hot,’ I said, pushing my damp hair back from my face.

‘Ah, you are not English!’ he exclaimed, his eyes lighting up at the sound of my accent. ‘But not French either, I venture? Spanish, perhaps? Now, your Spaniards are naturally choleric, much more so than your Englishman, whose native condition tends towards the phlegmatic –’

‘Italian,’ I cut in. ‘And I have an upset stomach, though I think that has less to do with my birthplace than with drinking stale water. I was hoping you might have some infusion of mint leaves?’

‘My dear signor, I can do better than that,’ he beamed, grasping a little wooden ladder that leaned against the back shelves and moving it to the cabinet to my left. ‘I can offer you a most efficacious decoction of my own devising for disorders of the stomach, combining the benefits of mint leaf with hartshorn, syrup of violets, rosewater and syrup of red poppies. You will be thoroughly purged both upwards and downwards, I promise.’

‘It sounds tempting. But I’d prefer the mint leaves, I think.’

‘Really?’ He paused, a bottle of something thick and dark green held aloft. When I shook my head firmly, he replaced it on the shelf with a theatrical sigh. ‘Ah, you disappoint me, signor,’ he said, descending and shuffling his ladder to the right. His hand hovered over the shelves for a moment before plucking down a small packet, which he laid on the ware-bench and began to unwrap. ‘But you are right, it is a brave man or a desperate one who will experiment on himself with a stranger’s cures. I tell you what – if you are staying in Canterbury awhile and your problems do not resolve themselves, please do me the honour of coming back and at least giving my cordial a chance. I’ll do you a special price. Meanwhile you may ask around for testimony – I provide for some of the highest men in the city.’ He nodded enthusiastically. ‘Yes, including the physician to the Dean and the Mayor. Ask who you like – there’s not a man of means in these parts who doesn’t swear by Will Fitch’s remedies.’

I was beginning to like this Fitch, despite the fact that I had never met an apothecary who was not also a terrible fraud, and I suspected this one to be no different. If ever their remedies did work, it was entirely by lucky chance or guesswork; more often they knowingly sold wholly useless concoctions to the poor and credulous, who were too easily persuaded that the higher the price of a medicine, the more effective it would be.

‘The Dean’s own physician?’ I affected to look impressed. ‘No doubt aldermen and magistrates of the city too, eh?’

He puffed out his chest and patted it with the flat of his hand.

‘Doctor Sykes, he’s physician to them all – trained in Leipzig, you know – and he won’t buy his supplies anywhere else but my shop. Mind you,’ he added, with another heavy sigh, ‘there’s some things even he can’t cure. Our poor magistrate was horribly murdered not a month past and they have not appointed a new one yet, nor will they in time for the assizes. Mayor Fitzwalter has his hands full trying to do the job of two men preparing for the visit of the Queen’s Justice next week. You’ll have noticed the constables on every corner.’ I had not, but he did not wait for me to respond, shaking his head as if in sorrow at the state of the world. ‘Forgive me – I have a tendency to run on, and we are all much preoccupied with our civic affairs at the moment.’

‘I quite understand – murder is no small matter. Though I suppose that is a hazard of being a magistrate,’ I said, conversationally, as I watched him measure a quantity of dried leaves in his little scales. ‘The family of some felon he had convicted, out for revenge, I guess.’

‘Ah, not in this case,’ Fitch said, leaning closer over the bench, his eyes bright. ‘It was the wife – all of Canterbury knows it. She ran away the very same day and took a good deal of his money too.’

‘Really? What reason would she have to kill him?’

He put his head on one side and looked at me oddly, then gave a bleat of laughter.

‘From that remark, I deduce you have no wife, signor.’ He laughed again at his own joke, then shrugged. ‘They say she had a lover, but then they always like to say that. Pretty thing, she was. But she’s led the law a merry dance, I can tell you – they’ve had the hue and cry out for her since it happened, but they can’t find so much as a hair of her head. No, she’s long gone – over the water, if she’s any sense.’ He grinned, as if delighted by the audacity of the crime. ‘Now – do you want to take the leaves as they are or shall I make you up an infusion while you’re here? If you take it here, I’ll add a few fennel seeds – good against cramps of the gut. I have some spring water heating in the back room, it won’t take a moment.’

‘Thank you, I’d be grateful,’ I said, thinking that the man’s evident love of gossip could prove useful. He emptied the mint leaves into a small dish and disappeared through the door into the back of the shop. I wiped a trickle of sweat from my temples with the sleeve of my shirt and waited. Eventually he emerged carrying an earthenware beaker wrapped in a cloth.

‘Careful, it’s hot. That’s sixpence for the whole – I haven’t charged you for the fennel,’ he added.

I fished in my purse for the appropriate coin, which he examined closely, holding it up to the light.

‘No offence,’ he said, seeing me watching, ‘but we get all sorts of foreign types passing through from the Kentish ports, and I can’t trade with their coins. Not that I have anything against you lot, though many do. I like variety – keeps life interesting, doesn’t it?’ He tucked the coin into a moneybag at his belt. ‘I’d have liked to travel myself, if I’d had the means.’ He reached to a shelf under the bench and produced a large ledger, which he opened and thumbed through to the current page. Dipping the pen in the ink, he recorded the transaction meticulously. ‘May I take your name?’

‘My name?’

I must have reacted more suspiciously than I intended, because he looked taken aback.

‘Just for my shop records, signor. Helps me to remember what was sold and when, in case of any shortfall. I’ve a dreadful memory, you see.’ He tapped the side of his head and offered an encouraging smile.

‘Oh.’ I hesitated. ‘Savolino.’

Beside the amount received he dutifully inscribed ‘Savolino’, then glanced up and smiled again, as if to prove to me that this had had no ill effect.

‘Did they ever find the lover?’ I asked, sipping at the steaming cup. The concoction smelled refreshing and tasted pleasant enough, though the heat made more beads of sweat stand out on my face.

‘Well.’ He folded his arms and leaned against the bench as if settling in for the tale. ‘The son made a great noise, pointing his finger hither and yon, but nothing came of it. If he had a better character himself, his accusations might have stuck, but he’s been in so much trouble, that one, it was only ever his father’s money and position that kept him safe from the law. He’s not respected in the town. You couldn’t keep Master Nicholas Kingsley out of the Three Tuns long enough to notice what was going on under his own roof. Supposed to be studying the law himself, he was, up in London – well, that was a good joke. He was thrown out of his studies for drink and brawling. Ended up back here doing exactly the same at his father’s expense, God rest him.’

I drained the beaker. ‘It must have been a sore disappointment to his father.’

‘Well, they always were an odd family,’ Fitch said, squinting into the middle distance where spirals of dust eddied in the sunlight, as if trying to remember something.

‘How so?’

He shook his head dismissively. ‘Ah, goodwives’ gossip, most of it. His first wife was wealthy – she died of an ague, oh, ten years back. People whispered, as they always will, that he’d done her in, though as far as I know they had no reason to say so. But then maybe a year later he hired a maidservant, Sarah Garth, young girl from the town, and she’d not been there more than a few months when she took sick and died as well.’

‘Sickness is common enough everywhere, is it not?’ I tried to keep my voice casual.

‘Aye, of course, but folk found it strange that neither Sir Edward nor his son took ill with whatever she had. Still – in his defence, he brought in Doctor Sykes to treat the girl at his own expense. But they’ve taken no servants from that day to this, except their old housekeeper, Meg Turner. And there’s another thing.’ He leaned further across the bench and lowered his voice. ‘My late wife’s niece, Rebecca, she helps out Mistress Blunt on her stall at the bread market.’

He paused for effect; I bent towards him and nodded conspiratorially, as if I were quite familiar with the relationships of all these people.

‘Not more than six months past, Rebecca was asked to run an errand, take a package of bread out to Sir Edward Kingsley’s house – you know, the old priory out past the Northgate.’

‘I don’t know it, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, he leased the prior’s house of St Gregory’s as was. Grand old building – the only bit of the priory left standing now, apart from the burial ground. Anyhow, she was walking through the graveyard to the door, and that’s where she heard it.’

‘Heard what?’

‘A dreadful cry.’ He gazed at me solemnly to let his words take effect. ‘She’ll swear to it – freeze your blood, she says. So frightened, she was, she dropped the bread and ran all the way back to the Blunts’ shop.’

My chest tightened; surely it could only have been Sophia, crying out as her husband administered one of his beatings. Again I pictured it, and the stoical, dull-eyed expression on her face when she related the story. I made an effort to unclench my jaw.

‘A woman screaming, was it?’

‘No.’ He held up a forefinger as if to admonish me. ‘That’s just it – she said it wasn’t like any human sound she’d heard. When she told the story, she was fairly shaking for pity. Well, of course, the graves are still there, so you can imagine how a young girl’s imagination runs wild. She said the noise came from beneath her feet, from the very graves themselves.’ He smiled indulgently. ‘Anyhow, she wouldn’t set foot near the place again. Mind you, nor will any other maid in Canterbury since Master Nicholas came back from London – he’ll do his best to grope any woman he can get his hands on, even in broad daylight.’ He frowned in disgust and I mirrored his expression in sympathy.

‘Though he is a rich man now, I suppose, with his father dead. Some woman might be glad of his attentions eventually,’ I ventured.

‘Ha! He’s not got a penny till his father’s last testament is sorted out,’ Fitch said, as if pleased by the justice of this. ‘Sir Edward had lately changed his bequests, but I understand nothing can be cleared up until the wife is found and tried, since she is one of the beneficiaries. Naturally, if she’s proved guilty, it’s all forfeit to Master Nicholas, but the law must take its course.’ He rolled his eyes; I smiled in solidarity. If there is one thing that can unite men from all walks of life and all countries, it is a shared contempt of lawyers.

‘You are very well-informed, Master Fitch, I must say.’ I half-turned, reluctantly sensing that I could not prolong my visit much further.

‘Everyone gets sick, Signor Savolino,’ he said sagely. ‘Rich or poor – everyone in this city, or their servants, has to pass through my door at some point, like it or no. So there’s not much goes on that I don’t get to hear about.’ He tapped his nose and gave me a knowing wink.

I laughed, but his words made me uneasy. Was he implying something? The apothecary may prove a rich source of gossip, but it did not take much wit to realise that, if I were to stay in Canterbury, in a very short time he would make me his business too. I wondered what more he might know and whether his stores of knowledge were for sale to the right bidder.

I was about to wish him good day when the street door was flung open to admit a broad man dressed in the long robe of a physician, tied up at the collar despite the heat. Over his mouth and nose he wore a mask with a curved protuberance like the beak of an exotic bird, like a character in the commedia. Above the mask his eyes were small and beady; they rested on me with an air of suspicion.

After staring at me for a few moments, he turned to the apothecary and pulled the mask down to reveal a heavily jowled face glistening in the light.

‘Fitch, I expected you after dinner, did you not get my message? I sent a boy this morning.’ He gave me a brisk nod as he swept past and leaned his considerable bulk over the counter.

‘Very good, Doctor Sykes,’ the apothecary said, unruffled, inclining his head in a gesture of deference. ‘We were just talking about you. Still wearing your defence against the plague, then?’

The doctor narrowed his eyes, unsure if he was being mocked. ‘Well, I am not dead of it yet. Aromatic herbs,’ he said, for my benefit, pointing to his beak. ‘Keeps the plague miasma at bay. William, I must speak business with you.’ He tapped on the ware-bench, his voice impatient. ‘In private.’

‘I have not forgotten, Doctor Sykes – just let me finish up with my customer. I was telling our Italian visitor here how many prominent citizens you attend in Canterbury, and how your services are so much in demand.’

Sykes turned to look me full in the face at this, peering closer as if he were short-sighted. The ring of fat between his jaw and his collar protruded as he did so, putting me in mind of a toad puffing out its throat.

‘Quite so. Which is why I do not have time to stand about in idle chatter. Italian, you say? What brings you to Canterbury? Do you have friends here?’

‘I stay with Doctor Harry Robinson at the cathedral. We have friends in common and I wished to see your beautiful city.’

Sykes squinted, nodding. ‘Ah, yes, Harry. Well, you are welcome to Canterbury, sir. And now, if you would excuse us. Fitch – close the shop behind this gentleman, would you, while we go inside?’ He gave me an oily smile.

Fitch hurried to obey, ushering me towards the door with an apologetic gesture.

‘Come back first thing tomorrow, signor, if your stomach is not cured.’ He held the door for me, with another of his jerky little bows. ‘I will offer again my tonic and you won’t regret it, I swear.’

‘Thank you – I may take you up on that,’ I said, with every intention of revisiting the talkative apothecary as soon as possible.

As I stepped back into the dust and bustle of the street I heard Sykes hissing, ‘Who was that?’

SIX

I took a narrow road leading off the High Street in the direction of the cathedral tower, keeping my kerchief tied close around the lower half of my face in the hope of avoiding too much attention. As I walked, I glanced about me as unobtrusively as I could. Now that Fitch had mentioned the presence of the constables I felt even more conscious of how oddly I must stand out. Where the street opened into a small market square with a stone cross in its centre, I noticed a ginger-haired man in dark breeches and doublet loitering with an air of purpose, restless eyes flitting from right to left along the streets branching away from the square, hand lightly on the hilt of his sword. Was this one of the parish constables? Behind him, incongruous between two ordinary-looking houses, rose a great gatehouse with two octagonal towers four storeys high, built of pale stone intricately carved in the perpendicular style, a row of escutcheons and Tudor emblems painted in bold heraldic colours spanning the width of it above the gateway. Through the larger of the two open doors, a central arch high enough to admit horses and carts, I glimpsed for the first time the precincts of the famous cathedral.

I pulled the cloth from my mouth and stepped into the shade of the gatehouse, conscious of the man with the sword watching me from across the square with less than friendly curiosity. I met his eye briefly and looked away to find myself face to face with a tall, broad-set man in a rough tunic, who barred my way through the gate, crossed his thick arms over a barrel-like chest and demanded to know my business in the cathedral.

‘I am here to see the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson,’ I offered, with an ingratiating smile.

‘Expecting you, is he?’ He didn’t move.

‘Yes, he is. And I carry a letter of recommendation from a mutual friend at the royal court in London.’

His round face twitched with uncertainty; I guessed he was in his mid-twenties, though there were already creases at the corners of his eyes that deepened with anxiety. I brought out the paper and pointed at the imposing wax seal.

‘The crest of Sir Philip Sidney, nephew to the Earl of Leicester,’ I added, for effect. He glanced uneasily over his shoulder, then nodded.

‘Do you go armed, sir?’

I held my palms out, empty. ‘Only this little knife.’ I indicated the sheath at my belt.

‘I must ask you to leave it with me. No weapons in the cathedral precincts, by order of the Dean. Not after …’ He hesitated, then appeared to think better of it and held out his hand for the knife. I noticed his left hand was wrapped in a dirty bandage with rust-coloured patches of blood on it.

‘There was a murder, I understand.’ I unstrapped the knife from my belt and passed it over.

‘Yes, sir.’ A guarded expression tightened his features. ‘The Dean has taken precautions now, though. There is a watchman who patrols the precincts after dark, and the gate is always kept locked, so you need not be concerned on that account.’

‘A little late for the poor fellow who was struck down,’ I remarked lightly. ‘Robbers, I suppose?’

‘I couldn’t say.’ He shifted his large bulk uneasily from one foot to the other, scratching at his patchy stubble. ‘If you go to the right of the cathedral, past the conduit house, you will see a row of narrow lodgings before you get to the Middle Gate. Doctor Robinson’s is the fourth along.’ He pointed through the gateway; unlike the apothecary, he showed little appetite for talk of the murder.

‘Thank you. What is that handsome building opposite?’ I gestured towards a large red-brick mansion visible through the archway, just to our left.

‘The Archbishop’s Palace.’

‘I heard he is never here.’

‘You heard right. The Dean lives there mostly.’

He fell silent again, squinting up at the sky and absently weighing my knife in his hands.

‘Take care of that. I am very attached to it.’

He frowned, as if I had insulted his competence, and stepped aside to let me pass, though I could feel him watching me as I entered the sacred precincts of what had been one of the greatest churches in Christendom.

Stepping out of the gatehouse into sunlight, I almost forgot my purpose as I took in the sight before me. I am no stranger to beauty in architecture; my travels have taken me through many of the finest cities of Europe – though not always by choice. I have taken Mass in the towering basilicas of Rome and Naples, walked the streets of Padua, Geneva and Toulouse, attended services at the magnificent cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris in the company of the King of France. But the austere beauty of this proud monument to England’s faith made my breath catch in my throat. The spires of its great towers rose perhaps two hundred feet above me, stone pale as ivory against the fierce blue of the summer sky, gilded by the afternoon sun so that it seemed lit as if by divine light. Its height, its severe perpendicular lines, its vast windows all contributed to an overwhelming grandeur that could not help but make you shrink into yourself a little. What effect must its splendour have had on the hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who first set eyes on this view after days of dragging their weary feet across the English downs? A cathedral such as this one, I thought, was intended to humble onlookers; a testament to the glory of God, perhaps, but more obviously to the might of the Church that built it. Standing at the foot of its bell tower, you could never forget your own insignificance. By the same token, might not the men who held positions of authority here also develop a distorted sense of their own power?

The precincts were empty, shadows stretching out across the dusty path that curved around the length of the cathedral. I glanced up at the sky; it must be mid-afternoon, not yet late enough for Evensong, but it seemed odd to see so little activity in what, to judge by the number of lodgings crowded around the inner wall of the precincts, must still be a busy community. The gatekeeper’s directions led me to a row of tall, narrow houses, well-kept but plain, with small leaded windows facing the cathedral and a stretch of garden in front separating them from the walkway. At the fourth, I followed the path that led alongside the garden – which boasted two scrawny apple trees and what appeared to be a vegetable patch – and knocked firmly on the door.

After some moments it was opened by a tall man with a narrow face and thinning black hair. He was perhaps nearing forty, and looked at me down the length of his nose with an expression that suggested I had interrupted something important.

‘Doctor Robinson?’

‘He’s not at home.’ He moved as if to close the door; I took a stride forward and laid a hand on it to keep him from doing so. Though he was bigger than me he flinched slightly, as if he feared I might force my way in, and immediately I regretted my action; people here must be nervous, so soon after a violent killing in what was supposed to be a place of sanctuary.

‘Forgive me,’ I said hastily. ‘May I wait for him? He is expecting me.’

‘He’s not expecting anyone.’ His voice was oddly nasal; it scraped at your ears like a nail on glass.

‘Who is it, Samuel?’ The call came from somewhere in the depths of the house. I raised an eyebrow at the man Samuel, who merely flicked his eyes over his shoulder and made an impatient noise with his tongue. Ungraciously, he opened the door a little wider and I glimpsed a figure in the shadows, shuffling towards the light. Samuel stood back to reveal a white-haired man about my own height, his loose shirt untucked from his breeches and his chin bristling with silver stubble. He leaned heavily on a stick but his green eyes took the measure of me, keen and alert as a hunting dog’s.

‘So. You must be the Italian. Forgive me – if I’d known you were arriving today I’d have had a shave.’ He spoke with an educated tone, his manner neither friendly nor hostile; merely matter-of-fact.

I gave a slight bow. ‘At your service.’

‘Are you, now? Come in, then – don’t hang about on the doorstep. Samuel, fetch our guest some fresh beer.’

The manservant, Samuel, held the door for me, unsmiling, a chill of dislike emanating from him as I crossed the threshold. I wondered why his immediate response had been to lie about his master’s absence. Whatever his reason, he made no apology, nor did he seem at all sheepish at being exposed in a falsehood. He merely closed the door and trod silently behind me as I followed Harry Robinson into an untidy front parlour, airless and choked with the day’s accumulated heat.

Harry waved me to one of the two high-backed chairs by the empty hearth. Against the far wall stood an ancient wooden buffet and under the small window a table was covered with books and papers, more books piled high on the floor to either side. Through the leaded glass, sunlight still painted the façade of the cathedral gold, though the room was all sunk in shade and I blinked as my eyes adjusted. The old man’s shock of hair and bright eyes stood out against the gloom as he settled himself into the chair opposite me with difficulty, narrating the business with little grunts and huffs of discomfort as he tried to ease his stiff leg into position. When he seemed satisfied, he peered closer, reading my face, and nodded as if to seal his silent judgement.

‘So Walsingham has sent you to see if I am still up to the job?’

‘Not at all – that is, I …’ I faltered and saw a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth. He had wrong-footed me with the bluntness of his question, not only because it had not occurred to me that he might regard my presence in this light, but also because the servant Samuel had entered the room at the same moment and could not have avoided overhearing. Flustered, I glanced up at him as he set a pitcher down on the buffet and poured two cups of beer, smiling to himself.

Harry Robinson barked out a dry laugh.

‘Don’t mind Samuel – he knows all my business, and he knows who you are,’ he said. ‘Who else would carry my correspondence to London? There’s no talk hidden from him in this house. I’d trust him with my life.’

Samuel shot me a fleeting glance, ripe with self-satisfaction. I felt I would not trust him to hold my coat, but I nodded politely.

‘Doctor Robinson, my visit here has nothing to do with your own work, which I am certain –’

‘Don’t condescend to me, son. And call me Harry.’ He shifted his weight laboriously from one side of the chair to the other, rubbing his stiff leg. ‘If Her Majesty’s Principal Secretary is sending men from London to look into the murder of a provincial magistrate, it is only because he believes there is some matter here of wider significance to the realm, and that I cannot be relied upon to discover it without help. Not so?’

‘It is more that –’

‘But I question where he has this intelligence,’ he continued, regardless. ‘I had mentioned the unfortunate death of Sir Edward Kingsley in my most recent letter – I thought it of interest because he associated with those among the cathedral Chapter strongly suspected of disloyalty to the English Church – but that letter cannot have reached London yet, can it, Samuel?’

‘No, sir,’ Samuel replied, handing each of us a cup with his eyes demurely lowered. He retreated as far as the window, where he stood with his hands clasped behind his back, apparently surveying the cathedral close. I wished he would leave the room, but he clearly felt entitled to eavesdrop on the conversation and Harry seemed content to behave as if his servant were merely a part of the furnishings.

‘So whose suspicions brought you here, Doctor Giordano Bruno, I ask myself?’ Harry leaned forward on his stick and fixed me with those stern eyes. I cleared my throat, glanced at Samuel’s unmoving back, and pulled my chair a little closer.

‘I have a personal interest, you might say.’ I hesitated, before lowering my voice even further. ‘I knew his wife.’

Harry took a moment to absorb this, then he sat back and nodded. He seemed pleased by this idea.

‘Well, well. So she escaped to London, did she? Canny of her – the gossipmongers here had her on a boat to France. We are not far from the Kentish ports, you see, and there is a good deal of trade with Europe. Easy for a fugitive to get out.’

‘And secret priests to get in, so I hear,’ I said.

‘Very true. They apprehended a pair of them last month at Dover.’ He tilted his head to one side, studying me. ‘So you are here for the wife’s sake? Gallant of you, Doctor Bruno. You are probably the only person in this entire county who cares to find out whether she is innocent. If she’s caught, she’ll burn, and I doubt it would spoil the crowd’s enjoyment a jot if she hadn’t done it. They like a crime of passion, especially where there’s a spirited young woman involved. If she’s gone to London, she had better stay well hidden. Of course, I never thought it was her.’

‘Why not?’

He rubbed his chin.

‘I saw the corpse when they found him. Not the work of a woman. Apart from the gore, a woman wouldn’t have the strength to wield a weapon like that. Besides, if a wife wanted to kill her husband, as plenty do, surely she’d look for an opportunity closer to home? Poison his supper or some such? That’s a woman’s way.’ He shook his head.

‘Who do you think killed him, then?’

‘Ah, Doctor Bruno, I have not the evidence even to hazard a guess. That is your task, is it not? I will help you as much as I can with information on our late magistrate and his associates, but you will need to tread carefully. The friends of Sir Edward Kingsley have powerful interests in this town and they may not appreciate a stranger poking too closely into their business. Foreigners are not much liked here, I’m sorry to say, for all that this city had its greatest prosperity from visitors.’

I watched him for a moment as I took a drink of small beer, grateful for the sensation of liquid in my dusty throat.

‘You mentioned Sir Edward was involved with papists?’

Harry laughed again, an abrupt bark.

‘Papists. You make it all sound so black and white. Walsingham said in his letter you once professed the Roman faith yourself.’

I bowed my head in acknowledgement. ‘I was in the order of Saint Dominic.’

‘And why?’ He pointed a finger at me.

‘Why did I enter a monastery?’ I looked at him, surprised; it was rare that anyone asked me this. ‘Simple – my family was not rich. It was the only way for me to study.’

‘Precisely.’ He sat back. ‘So you understand that what we call faith may spring from many motives, not all of them purely pious. Particularly in Canterbury.’ He paused to take a draught from his cup. ‘There are many in this city whose loyalty to the English Church is only skin-deep, and not even that, sometimes – a few of them within the Chapter itself. But if they are nostalgic for the old religion, it is less from love of Rome than from attachment to their own Saint Thomas and the glory he brought.’

‘So I understand. The Queen’s father tried to wipe out the Saint’s cult completely,’ I mused, remembering suddenly a Book of Hours I had seen in Oxford, the prayer to Saint Thomas and the accompanying illumination scraped from the parchment with a stone.

‘Folly,’ Harry pronounced, shaking his head. ‘They say that before the Dissolution there were more chapels, chantries and altars in this land dedicated to Thomas Becket than any other saint in history. You can’t erase that from people’s minds, especially not in his home town, not even by smashing the shrine. You just drive it into the shadows.’

‘Not even by destroying the body?’

He regarded me shrewdly and smiled.

‘You’ve heard the legend of Becket’s bones, then?’

‘Is it true?’

‘Quite probably.’ He emptied his cup, bent awkwardly to set it on the floor, and leaned forward, one hand on his stick. ‘Yes, I’d say it’s very likely the body they pulverised and scattered to the wind was not old Thomas. Those priory monks were no fools, and they knew the destruction was coming. But in a sense the literal truth of it doesn’t matter, you see? If enough people in Canterbury believed that Saint Thomas was still among them, it might put fire in their bellies.’

‘And do they believe it?’

He made a non-committal gesture with his head.

‘Everyone knows the legend. I dare say many of them believe it in an abstract sense. What they really need, though, is a sign. That would rouse them.’

‘A miracle, you mean?’

‘The cult of Thomas began with a miracle – here, in this cathedral, less than a week after he was murdered – and it could be revived by one too. Imagine the effect among so many disaffected souls. Like throwing a tinder-box into a pile of dry kindling. And Kent is a dangerous place to risk an uprising, as Walsingham knows all too well. Last time Kentish men rebelled they marched on London, captured the Tower and beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury and the royal Treasurer.’

‘Really?’ I stared at him, wide-eyed. ‘I had not heard – when was this?’

Harry laughed.

‘Two hundred years ago. But Kentish men are still made of the same stuff. And the coast here is so convenient for any forces coming out of France – it’s not a place they want to risk a popular rebellion against the Crown. The Queen needs to keep Canterbury loyal.’

He fell silent and stared into the fireplace while my thoughts scrambled to catch up.

‘Do you believe in miracles?’ I asked, after a few moments.

He looked up from his reflections, his eyes bright.

‘Do I believe that Our Lord can perform wonders to show His might to men, if He chooses? Yes, of course. But He chooses very rarely, in my view. If you ask, do I believe that a four-hundred-year-old shard of rotting skull can heal the sick, then I would have to say no.’ He shifted position again, rubbing at his leg. ‘When I was six years old, in 1528, there was a terrible outbreak of the sweating sickness in England. My parents and my five brothers and sisters all died, I did not even take ill. Was that a miracle?’

He fixed me with a questioning look; I made a non-committal gesture.

‘My relatives certainly thought so – they gave me up to the Church straight away, and here I have dutifully remained, to the age of sixty-two years, because I was told so often as a child how God had spared me to serve Him. But who really knows?’

I caught the weight of sadness in his voice and wondered how often in his life as a young churchman he had stopped to wonder at the different paths he might have taken, only to be trapped by the obligation to this great miracle of his survival, God’s terrible mercy. That could have been me, I thought, with a lurch of relief, if I had not taken the opportunity to flee the religious life: white-haired and slowly suffocating in the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore, rueing the life I might have lived if I had only dared to try. I wanted to reach out and touch his crooked hand, so brittle with its swollen joints, to show that I understood, but I suspected this might alarm him. The English do not like to be touched, I have learned; they seem to regard it as a prelude to assault.

‘One need not be a doctor of physic to observe that some are better able to resist sickness than others,’ I said softly.

‘True. But one might be considered impious for failing to acknowledge the hand of God in such an occurrence.’

‘In Paris, I once saw a man at a fair make a wooden dove fly over the heads of the crowd, and that was accounted a miracle by all who witnessed it. To those of us who knew better, it was an ingenious employment of optical illusion and mechanical expertise.’

Harry raised one gnarled finger, as if to make a point.

‘But there you have it, Bruno. If it looks like a miracle, most are content to believe it is so.’

I was about to answer, but the closeness of the room and the weariness of days in the saddle conspired to make me suddenly dizzy and I almost fell, silver lights swimming before my eyes, clutching at the seat of the chair for fear I should faint. Harry peered at me, concerned.

‘Are you unwell?’

‘Forgive me.’ My voice sounded very far away. ‘Could we open a window?’

He frowned.

‘Too hot? I suppose it is hot in here. Samuel never complains and I don’t notice – it’s a curious thing about age, one is always cold. Come – we will take a walk around the close and you can see where this monstrous deed occurred.’ He straightened the stick, took a deep breath, clenched his teeth and with an almighty effort began to rouse himself to his feet. I extended a hand to him, though I still felt unsteady myself, but he brushed it away impatiently.

‘Not on my deathbed yet, son. While I can stand on my own two feet, leave me to it. I call it independence. Samuel calls it stubbornness. What time is it, Samuel?’

The servant, who had remained motionless gazing out of the window and doubtless taking in every word, now turned back to the room.

‘About half past three, I think, sir.’

‘Then we have time. I’ll want a shave before Evensong, if you could have the necessaries ready when I return.’

‘You don’t wish me to accompany you, sir?’ Samuel turned dubious eyes on me, as if the prospect of allowing his master out alone with me would be a dereliction of duty.

‘I’m sure you have things to attend to here,’ Harry said. ‘We shall probably manage a turn around the close. I dare say Doctor Bruno will pick me up if I fall over.’

‘If you’ll let me,’ I said, and when I saw the twinkle in his eye, I knew that, despite his gruff manner, he was warming to me. Samuel looked at me with a face like stormclouds.

‘My doublet, Samuel,’ Harry said, waving a hand. ‘Here, hold this, will you?’ He handed me the stick and planted his legs wide to balance himself while he tucked his shirt into his breeches. ‘Wouldn’t want to run into the Dean, looking like a vagrant,’ he muttered, with a brief smile. ‘You never know who’s about in this place. That reminds me –’ he looked up. ‘Your story, while you’re here. The reason for your visit – what do we tell people? They’re an overly curious lot, especially the Dean and Chapter.’

‘I’m a Doctor of Divinity from the University of Padua, exiled to escape religious persecution and lately studying in Oxford, where I heard much praise for the cathedral of Canterbury and wanted to take this opportunity to see it for myself.’

He considered my rehearsed biography and grunted.

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