Читать книгу Sacrilege - S. J. Parris - Страница 13

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.