Читать книгу Heresy - S. J. Parris - Страница 11

I read and revised my notes for the disputation until my lamp burned out, and afterwards I slept fitfully; the room was cold and the rain lashed hard against the panes as the timbers creaked. So it was that when I was disturbed by a great noise during a brief slumber I was at first not sure if it was morning or merely a hallucination of my confused dreams. Gradually, though, the noise became more insistent, and as I awakened to see that it was not yet dawn, I realised that the infernal riot outside my windows was the frenzied sound of a barking dog. I pulled the sheet closer around me, cursing the rector or whomever had thought to keep such a feral animal in the college grounds and curled up in the hope of recovering my ruined sleep, when a second sound joined that bestial dawn chorus, one that I have never forgotten and still, sometimes, hear in dreams. It was the blood-chilling scream of a human being in pain and mortal terror, and it rose in pitch and agony as the creature’s barking grew wilder and more vicious.

As the horror of those combined sounds dispelled the last vapours of sleep, I realised that someone not far from my windows was in fear of their life; I supposed it must be some intruder, surprised perhaps by a watchdog, but I could not ignore it, so I hastily pulled on my breeches and a shirt and set out to find the source of this consternation and see if I might offer assistance.

I emerged from my staircase into the shadowy courtyard; the heavy clouds were broken with veins of pale light and the rain, for the moment, had abated, leaving behind a silvery mist that hung thick in the morning air so that I could barely make out the clock on the north range opposite and had to step forward to read its hands: almost five. The dreadful noise of the hound continued and from other staircases around the main courtyard figures appeared through the vapour as young men, with hose pulled on under their nightshirts and hair disarrayed, timidly gathered in groups, whispering to one another, unsure whether to come any closer. The din was unmistakeably coming from the passageway in the east range that led to the rector’s lodgings and the Grove, the Fellows’ garden I had explored the previous evening. Gathering my wits, I ran the length of the passage to the iron gate, where I found two young men pulling at the handle, to no avail, and peering into the misty depths of the garden. Hearing my footsteps, they turned, their faces ashen.

‘Someone is in there, sir, with a wild beast!’ cried the taller. ‘I had just risen to wash when I heard his cries, but from here we can see nothing.’

‘We do not have a key!’ the other said frantically. ‘Only the senior men do, and the door is fast.’

‘Then we must wake one of the senior men,’ I said, wondering how the rector, whose lodgings must have windows on to the garden, could possibly be sleeping through this tumult. ‘You must know where their rooms are – quick, go and wake anyone who could open the gate. Is there another entrance?’

‘Two, sir,’ said the tall student, terrified, while his friend scuttled away up the passage in search of help. ‘Another gate like this from the passage at the other end of the hall, by the kitchens, and a door in the garden wall from Brasenose Lane, but they are all locked at night.’

‘Well, the man in there must have got in somehow,’ I said, urgently, as a throttled voice unmistakeably cried, ‘Jesu, save me! Holy Mother, save me!’ Another scream rent the air, followed by mangled cries for help, then a ferocious growling and a truly inhuman sound, a strangled gurgling that seemed to last for minutes. A small crowd of curious and agitated undergraduates was forming behind us when I heard the rector’s voice crying, ‘Let me through, I say!’

His face was puffy and bleary with sleep, a coat thrown over his nightgown, and he carried in his hand a bunch of keys. He started when he saw me.

‘Oh – Doctor Bruno – what is this ungodly disturbance? Who is within – can you see anything? I tried to look from my windows, but the mist and the trees hide all else from sight.’

‘I can see nothing, but it seems that a wild animal is savaging someone in the garden. He must be helped, and quickly!’

The rector stared at me as if I had just told him a herd of cows had flown over the college; then he collected himself and stepped towards the gate with his keys, but just as suddenly he stopped and turned back to me, his face tight with fear. The terrible snarling and barking continued within, but the human sounds had tailed off. I feared the worst.

‘But – but then it would be folly to enter without a weapon if a wild dog is on the loose!’ the rector stammered. ‘It must be killed – someone must fetch the constable or a serjeant-at-arms, who can bring a crossbow. One of you – quickly!’ he snapped at the crowd of half-dressed boys who stood at the end of the passageway, staring, open-mouthed. ‘Go for the constable – immediately!’ They all looked at one another before a couple of them ran out to the courtyard.

‘Could we not find a stick or a poker, anything? We must go in, Rector – I fear we may already be too late for the poor wretch trapped in there,’ I urged, holding out a hand for the keys.

The rector looked around in panic.

‘But – how could there be a dog in the garden?’ he asked, as if to himself, his brows knit in perplexity.

‘Is it not a watch dog, to keep out intruders?’ I asked, now puzzled myself. ‘Could it not be some thief who has scaled the wall, perhaps?’

‘But there is no watch dog,’ the rector said, his voice tight with panic. ‘The porter has a dog, but it is an old, blind creature that has only the use of three legs and it sleeps in his lodge by the main gate. No one else in college is permitted to keep an animal.’ He shook his head, unable to make sense of the evidence of his own ears; the beast in the garden went on making its hellish noise.

‘Step aside there,’ said a calm voice behind us, and the gaggle of students crowded in the passageway parted to reveal a tall young man with shoulder-length fair hair, dressed incongruously in a fine doublet and breeches, black silk slashed to show a rich crimson lining and topped with an elaborate ruff, looking for all the world as if he were off to a dance or a playhouse in London, not hastily risen like the rest of us in all the confusion. In one hand he carried an English longbow, of the kind the nobility use for the hunt, taller than himself and ornately carved with gilded inlays and green and scarlet tracery. In the other he held a leather quiver of arrows decorated with the same design of curlicued vines and gilt leaves.

‘Gabriel Norris!’ exclaimed the rector, staring at the longbow. ‘What is this?’

‘You must open the gate, Doctor Underhill,’ commanded the young man, ‘there is no time to lose, a man’s life is in danger.’

He spoke in measured tones, despite the urgency of the situation, as if he and not the rector held the authority here; half-dazed, the rector unlocked the gate and the young man stepped through, fitting an arrow to his bow as he did so. I followed him hesitantly, and the rector fell in behind me, keeping close to the wall.

The mist hung heavily between the twisted trunks of the apple trees, playing tricks on my eyes with its shifting shapes. Stepping cautiously through the blue shadows, I glimpsed suddenly towards the furthest north-east corner the movement of a large, long-legged dog – by its shape a wolfhound of sorts, I thought, though I could not see clearly. I kept close to the wall as this Gabriel, conspicuous in his gaudy clothes, advanced in steady paces towards the animal, which was still growling and shaking between its teeth a limp black object at its feet. As I moved closer, the mist thinned and I was able to see the animal clearly; its jaws were bloody and daubed with shreds of torn flesh. My heart sank then and my stomach convulsed, for I knew we were too late. The young man paused a few paces away; the dog, catching a scent or a sound, paused in the mauling of its prey and raised its head. For the briefest moment, its snarling ceased and it made a movement towards the young man; as it did so, he let the arrow fly. He was a good shot, despite the thick air, and the animal crumpled to the ground as the arrow-head tore through its neck.

As soon as it fell, Gabriel dropped his bow and we both rushed to the black heap that lay up against the wall, beside the animal’s corpse. It was the body of a man, lying face down, his black academic gown spread out around him, the grass all torn and soaked with a quantity of blood around the body. I helped Gabriel roll the man over, and cried out suddenly in shock. Here was Roger Mercer, his head bent at a hideous angle, eyes staring to the sky, his throat quite torn out – a flap of flesh hung open, raw tissue protruding from the wound. Instinctively I reached out to staunch the blood that still seeped down his neck and breast, but it was too late – the eyes were motionless, fixed forever in a stare of terror. Gabriel Norris jumped back from the bloody corpse, checking anxiously to see that he had got no gore on his clothes, as if this were his only concern. Preening little peacock, I thought in disgust – then remembered where I had heard his name before; Mercer himself had referred to him the night before in exactly the same terms. I crouched in disbelief by the body, taking in the ravaged hands – two of the fingers near bitten off where he had tried to fight the animal away – the chunks of flesh torn from the legs and ankles where it had dragged him to the ground, that horrifically mauled gullet.

The rector came cautiously towards us, a handkerchief clutched over his mouth.

‘Is he …?’

‘We came too late, God have mercy on his soul,’ I said, more from custom than piety. The rector moved close enough to identify the mutilated body of the man who had sat at his right hand only the night before at dinner, and was immediately sick. The young man called Gabriel seemed to have recovered himself, and was probing the corpse of the dog with his toe.

‘A giant of a beast,’ he said, with a note almost of pride, as if he were displaying it as a hunting trophy. Peering more closely, it struck me: hunting was the apt image.

‘This is a hunting dog,’ I said, kneeling beside it. ‘And look, here.’ I pointed to where its ribs protruded painfully under its wiry grey pelt. ‘See how thin it is – it looks as if it was starving. And look at its leg.’ A ring of raw flesh ran around the top of the dog’s left hind leg where the skin had been brutally chafed by a tether of some kind. The fur around the wound was patchy and torn, as if the dog had tried repeatedly to tear off its fetter with its own teeth. ‘It has been chained up, I think – you see? No wonder it went so crazed.’

‘What was it doing in the garden, though?’ the young man asked, looking at me expectantly. ‘And why was Doctor Mercer here with a dog?’

‘Perhaps he was walking his dog and it suddenly turned on him – dogs are sometimes unpredictable,’ I suggested, unpersuaded by my own hypothesis.

‘But Roger didn’t have a dog,’ the rector said in a weak voice, wiping his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘I told you – no one in the college, save the porter, is allowed to keep an animal. No – no, gentlemen, there is nothing to see here!’ he cried suddenly, as the scholars began crowding through the narrow gate into the garden, intent on seeing the spectacle. ‘Back to your rooms, all of you! Chapel at six as normal – back to your rooms and make yourselves ready, I say!’

The students reluctantly turned and shuffled back through the gate, casting glances over their shoulders and murmuring among themselves in animated tones. The rector turned then to the young man, who stood contemplating the corpses, the quiver still dangling from his shoulder; an expression of disbelief spread over the rector’s face, as if he were only now seeing the young man clearly for the first time.

‘Gabriel Norris!’ he exploded, flapping a hand frantically. ‘What in God’s name are you wearing?’

Norris looked down at his flamboyant doublet and hose, then shifted his feet as if embarrassed.

‘I think now is not the time, Doctor Underhill,’ he began, but the rector cut him off.

‘You know perfectly well the Earl of Leicester’s edict about the rules of dress for undergraduates! And I am charged with enforcing it – would you have us both disciplined by the Chancellor’s Court, after all that has happened?’ His face had turned the shade of beetroot, his voice strangulated; I could not help but think that this was an overreaction, in the circumstances. ‘No ruffs, no silks, no velvets, no cuts in doublet or hose!’ he continued, his pitch rising with every item. ‘And no weapons! You deliberately flaunt every rule laid down regarding apparel! This is a community of scholars, Master Norris, not some ball at court for you to flaunt your wealth!’

The young man pursed his lips and looked surly. Even in this attitude of petulance, I saw that he was exceptionally handsome and was clearly used to having his own way.

‘This community of scholars could not do without my wealth, as you well know, Rector. And you overcharge us as it is – I am forced to eat like a pauper here, must I also dress like one?’

The rector, chastened, lowered his voice.

‘You must dress as the Earl of Leicester deems fitting for an Oxford man,’ he said. ‘Now please make haste and change – if you are reported we will both be in trouble and how shall I explain …?’ He broke off there, looking around him helplessly at the two bodies, and I saw that his hands were shaking badly; I suspected he was in shock.

Gabriel Norris looked at me for a moment, as if reluctant to leave the scene of his heroism, then perhaps thought better of it and with some haste picked up his bow and turned to go.

‘Master Norris!’ the rector called after him.

The young man turned defiantly.

‘Yes, Rector?’

‘A longbow? Why in the Lord’s name do you even have a bow and arrows in college?’

Norris shrugged.

‘My father left it to me. It is a keepsake. Besides, hunting for sport is permitted to those commoners who have a licence.’

‘It is not permitted to keep a longbow in college rooms,’ the rector said weakly.

‘If I had not had it in college, you would have had to wrestle that dog with your bare hands, Rector,’ Norris replied drily. ‘But I do not expect you to thank me.’

‘Nevertheless, Master Norris, I insist that you take it to the strongroom in the tower where it can be held for safekeeping. Ask Master Slythurst or Doctor Coverdale to lock it away for you. Today, please!’ he added, as Norris disappeared through the open gate.

The rector took a deep breath and then his legs seemed to buckle under him; I offered my arm and he leaned on me gratefully.

‘Rector Underhill,’ I said gently, indicating Mercer’s body, ‘a man has died in a horrific accident, and we must try to understand how this could have come to pass. If indeed it is an accident,’ I added, for the circumstances troubled me the more I looked for an explanation.

The rector stumbled then, and almost fell against me, his face blanched.

‘Dear God, you are right, Bruno. The reports will spread like wildfire among the students. But how can it be explained? Unless …’ There was terror in his face and I felt sorry for him; his calm, ordered little kingdom upended in a few minutes.

‘Well, let us look for the most likely causes first,’ I said. ‘If there are no dogs in the college save the porter’s old hound, this one must have found its way in from the outside, most likely through this gate.’

‘Yes – yes, that’s it, some feral stray, found its way in through the gate.’ The rector grasped at the suggestion gratefully.

Mercer had fallen and been savaged only yards from the wooden gate into the lane behind the college, but when I went to try the handle, it was locked fast. The rector stood as if transfixed by the bodies of the hunter and his prey. On the back wall nearby I noticed a scrap of black material spiked on the edge of a brick; below this spot the grass was churned to mud with boot and paw prints, and splashed liberally with Mercer’s blood.

‘It looks as if he tried to scale the wall, poor man,’ I said, half to myself. ‘That would account for the mauling of his legs. But it is twice the height of a man – why did he not simply run towards the gate to escape? Unless the dog was between him and the gate, meaning it must have come in from outside. But then, how is the gate locked?’

I glanced at the rector, who remained immobile, then I ran to try the second gate into the college, from the passage that ran between the hall and the kitchens. This too was locked. How, then, I puzzled, had the dog entered the garden? And how, for that matter, had Roger Mercer?

I walked back to where the bodies lay.

‘Is it possible,’ I ventured, as the reality of what I had seen began to solidify in my mind, ‘that someone could have let the dog in deliberately?’

The rector turned to look at me incredulously.

‘As a prank, you mean?’

‘Hardly a prank. Whoever unleashed a half-starved hunting dog must have known it could kill.’ I knelt down by Mercer’s mauled body and patted the pockets.

‘Doctor Bruno!’ the rector exclaimed. ‘What are you about? The poor man is still warm, if you please.’

Roger Mercer had been fully dressed, despite the early hour; in one of the pockets sewn into his breeches I found what I had been looking for.

‘Here,’ I said, holding up two iron keys attached to a single ring, one much larger than the other. ‘Is one of these a key to the garden?’

The rector took the ring from my hand and examined the keys against the light.

‘Yes, the larger would open any of the three gates.’

‘Then either he let himself in and locked the gate behind him, or someone locked the gate through which he entered once he was inside,’ I reasoned. ‘Either way, he was trapped in here with a savage dog.’

‘But we still don’t know how the dog got in,’ the rector said, uncomprehending.

‘Well, we know it didn’t jump the wall, and it didn’t let itself in and lock the gate after it.’ I looked him directly in the eye as I spoke, waiting for understanding to take effect.

The rector clutched my arm, his face twisted with panic; I could smell the bile on his breath.

‘What are you saying, Bruno? That someone let that dog in and then closed every means of escape?’

‘I can’t see another explanation,’ I said, looking again at the dog’s fearsome teeth, through which its limp tongue now lolled, spittle hanging in tendrils from its jaws. Norris’s arrow stuck upright from its gullet. ‘Someone who knew Doctor Mercer would come here at this hour. But surely he never suspected any harm would come to him, else he would have armed himself.’

Then I remembered Mercer’s strange remark the previous night, about how we might all live differently if we saw death approaching. I had dismissed it, but had he been revealing that he feared for his life? Unhappy coincidence only, I guessed; besides, he had spoken confidently of attending the disputation, and of conversing with me later. I felt a sudden awful sorrow; though I hardly knew the man, he had seemed warm and genuine, and I had stood by only minutes ago and listened to him die. To think that he might have been saved if I had acted quicker, if someone had had a key, if Norris had arrived sooner with his bow. One moment of indecision decides a man’s fate, I thought, and realised that I too was trembling.

‘Was it perhaps his regular practice to walk in the garden so early?’ I asked. ‘I mean, could someone have known to expect him here?’

‘The Fellows often like to read in the quiet of the Grove,’ the rector said. ‘Though not usually at this hour, I grant you – it is too dark. The undergraduates usually rise at half past five to make themselves ready before chapel at six – morning service is compulsory. There is rarely a soul abroad in the college any earlier, not even the kitchen servants. I confess I have never walked in the garden at such an hour so I could not say if any of my colleagues had the habit of doing so.’

As I bent again to Mercer’s body, separating the bloodied and torn clothes to see if anything on his person might explain his presence in the Grove so early, I remembered how he had joked about the garden being popular for trysts. Had he been expecting someone who never came, or who came and brought death with them? He carried no book, but a bulge inside his doublet suggested a hidden pocket; reaching in, I withdrew a fat leather purse that jingled with coins.

‘If his purpose was a quiet, contemplative walk before sunrise, surely he would not have needed to bring this,’ I said, untying the purse and showing the rector its contents. The English coins meant nothing to me, though there were clearly a lot of them, but the rector’s eyeballs bulged at the sight.

‘Good God, there is at least ten pounds here!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why would he carry such a sum?’

‘Perhaps he expected to meet someone to whom he owed money.’

‘And knowing he would be here, they set a dog on him!’ he exclaimed, his eyes wide. ‘Revenge for a bad debt, that must be it.’

I shook my head.

‘Then why is the money still in his pocket? If someone had wished to harm him for failure to pay a debt, surely they would have made sure to take the money first?’

‘But who would ever have meant to harm Roger?’ asked the rector in despair.

‘I cannot say. But a wild dog does not get into an enclosed garden through locked gates by accident.’ I brushed down my clothes, realising that they were now stained with Mercer’s blood. ‘I suppose now that this terrible thing has happened, Rector, you will want to cancel the disputation this evening?’

The rector’s face filled with fear again.

‘No!’ he said fiercely, gripping my shoulders. ‘The disputation must go ahead. We cannot allow this incident to disrupt a royal visitation – can you imagine the consequences, Doctor Bruno? Especially if it were rumoured to be –’ he glanced around before whispering the word – ‘deliberate. The college would be tainted and my reputation with it, and we have already had so much trouble here lately, I fear Leicester’s displeasure more than I can tell you.’

‘But a man has been brutally killed – perhaps murdered,’ I protested. ‘We cannot go about our business as if nothing has happened.’

‘Shh! For the love of Christ, do not repeat that dreadful word murder, Bruno.’ The rector looked frantically about the garden and lowered his voice, though we were alone. ‘We will have it announced that this was a tragic misfortune – we shall say …’ he paused briefly to compose his story ‘… yes, we shall say that the garden gate was left open and a stray dog got in and attacked Roger, who had got up early to pray and meditate in the Grove.’

‘Will this be believed?’

‘It will if I say it was the case – I am the earl’s appointed rector,’ said Underhill, a touch of his old pomposity returning. ‘Besides, it was dark and misty and no one saw clearly.’ There was a hardness in his face now, and desperation; I saw then his determination to preserve the college’s good name at any price, and imagined this same ruthlessness must have ruled him during the trial of the hapless Edmund Allen.

‘But the locked gates—’ I protested.

‘Only you and I know about the locked gates, Bruno. I see nothing to be gained from mentioning them at present, if you wouldn’t mind.’

‘What about the porter? Will he not remember checking the gates at night?’

The rector gave a dry laugh.

‘I see you are not acquainted with our porter. A clear head and a sharp memory are not his strong points. If I say a gate was left open, he could not for certain claim otherwise. No, I think this is our safest course.’

Seeing my look of concern, he squeezed my shoulder and added, in a lighter tone, ‘If all suspicion is hushed up, it will be the easier to investigate what really happened here this morning. But if there is a great fuss, and all Oxford is abuzz with the idea that Lincoln is a place of savage murder, the perpetrator – if indeed there is a perpetrator – will surely disappear in the hubbub. If justice is to be served, we do best not to shout this tragedy from the tower. I would be most grateful for your help in this matter, Doctor Bruno.’

I was not sure whether he meant the matter of disguising the truth or of uncovering it, but I was sorely troubled by the thought that I may well have been the last person to see Roger Mercer alive, and that whoever had planned his vicious end was at that moment at liberty somewhere in Oxford, perhaps exulting in his success. The rector’s cold briskness had shocked me, too; his human response to his colleague’s awful death seemed swallowed up in fear for his office.

The sky had grown paler and the mist was thinning, lingering only in ragged shreds among the trees. The two corpses in the dewy grass had acquired a stark solidity with the grey light. The rector glanced up anxiously.

‘Dear God – it is almost time for chapel! I must be there to speak, reassure the community. Already the story will be growing.’ He twisted his fingers together until the knuckles turned white, speaking as if to himself. ‘First I must order the kitchen servants to bring a sack for that carcass. It cannot stay here.’

I stared at him, appalled, until he noticed my expression.

‘The dog, Bruno! But you are right – the coroner must be fetched before the body can be removed. Oh, there is too much to do! I will have to ask Roger—’ Then he clapped his hands to his mouth and turned back to look at the corpse, as if only now comprehending the loss of his deputy.

‘Oh, God,’ he whispered. ‘Roger is dead!’

‘That’s right,’ I said, watching him absorb the truth of it.

‘But then – this means there will have to be another congregation, another election for sub-rector, and there is no time to convene – but in the meantime I must have someone to act under me, and that will occasion all the usual petty jealousies and ill-feeling, just when we do not need them – oh, how could this have come to pass?’ Trying to contain his mounting fears, he turned to me with an earnest expression, his hands flapping helplessly at his sides. ‘Doctor Bruno – this is a dreadful thing to ask of a guest, I know, but would you stay with poor Roger’s body until the coroner can be brought? I must make the sad announcement of this morning’s events in chapel in such a way that quiets the reports of it, if that is possible. Keep the students out – we do not want them crowding in here to satisfy their ghoulish curiosity as if it were a bear-baiting.’

‘Of course I will stay,’ I said, hoping my vigil would not be a long one; though I am not superstitious about the dead, the empty stare of Roger Mercer’s sightless eyes seemed to accuse me for my failure to help him. Our fears are all for our poor, weak flesh, he had said the night before. Now he had looked that fear full in the teeth; I still remembered his cracked voice crying to Jesus and Mary to save him.

The rector scuttled off across the grass in the direction of the courtyard, and I was left alone with the bodies and my whirling thoughts. While I waited for them to settle into some semblance of order, I bent again to Mercer’s corpse and lifted what remained of his tattered gown to cover his ravaged face. Superstition says that the eyes of a murder victim retain the image of his killer, but as I looked at Mercer’s terrified stare for the last time I thought: if such foolishness were true, would I see the image of the great dog? But the fact of the locked gates stubbornly persisted; the dog was not Mercer’s true killer, only his agent. I moved again from the sub-rector’s body to the dog’s to examine it. It was a huge brute, the height of a man’s waist upright with a long, narrow head. I noted again how thin it was, though it did not look otherwise abused. Whoever had loosed this dog in here must have planned the event carefully, increasing the force of the attack by keeping it desperately hungry for some days beforehand, by the look of it. And Mercer’s heavy purse – which the rector had taken – suggested he had been expecting to meet someone to effect some kind of transaction. But if the money had been at the centre of some dispute in which Mercer had fallen out with someone so badly that they could wish to kill him, I could not fathom why the purse had been left. It would seem that the money had been less of a priority than the sub-rector’s death, though it must have been key to the meeting he anticipated.

I considered again the layout of the garden. It was abutted on the north side by the kitchen part of the way, though I could see no door from the kitchens into the garden. On three sides it was enclosed by a wall at least twelve feet high, and on the fourth it adjoined the east range of the college, the side of the quadrangle that housed the hall and the rector’s lodgings. I presumed Mercer had entered the garden through one of the two passageways either side of the hall, letting himself in with his own key. Had he then locked the gate behind him, so as not to be disturbed, or had someone waited for him to enter before locking the door from the college side, leaving him unwittingly shut in? Could that have been the same person who then opened the gate from the lane through which the dog – presumably muzzled until the last moment – had been released, locking that behind the animal? But it would have taken a good few minutes to run out of the main gate and around the side of the building, and anyone doing so would have been seen by the porter – assuming he had been awake.

From the courtyard a bell tolled dismally to rally the scholars to chapel, where the rector would spread his benign reassurance and dispel the young men’s more lurid imaginings. As I rose to my feet, I wondered idly if James Coverdale would finally achieve his ambition of becoming sub-rector, and a thought struck me like a cold blade. The rector had asked, rhetorically, who would want to harm Roger Mercer, and I had replied that I had no idea. But now that I considered the proposition I realised that even I, a stranger who had not been in the college one full day, had already encountered two people who apparently hated him. Might there not be more? Perhaps one of them tried to extort money from him and decided instead to kill him. I had found him a genial enough man, but it seemed his part in the trial of the unfortunate Edmund Allen had aroused resentment; who was to say how many other enemies he might have made? But these resentments must have simmered for a long time; why wait until the week of a royal visitation to act on them? Unless—

I was interrupted in my pursuit of this new trail by the sight of a figure running towards me through the trees from the direction of the college; I stepped forward in the hope that the coroner had arrived to relieve me of my duties, and was surprised to recognise Sophia Underhill, dressed in a thin blue gown with a shawl around her shoulders, her hair flying out behind her. She halted a few yards away, looking equally surprised to see me.

‘Doctor Bruno! What – what are you doing in here?’

‘I was – waiting for your father,’ I said, taking another step towards her in the hope of guiding her away from the two corpses.

‘They said Gabriel Norris shot down an intruder,’ she said, her face flushed with the drama of the moment. ‘Is he still here?’ Her eyes were bright with eager anticipation as she looked around wildly, but I noticed she was twisting her hands together in agitation in the same manner as her father.

‘Not quite.’ I almost smiled; despite the rector’s best efforts, it seemed the tale was already growing in the telling. ‘You have not spoken to your father?’

‘He is at morning prayers in chapel – I heard the news from two scholars who were running there late,’ she said, peering past me to where the shapes lay in the dense grass. ‘Of course we heard all the noise from our windows but I never imagined – is that the thief’s body there?’ She seemed keen to take a look; I planted myself firmly in her path.

‘Please, Mistress Underhill, you must keep back. It is not a sight you should see.’

She tilted her head and stared at me defiantly.

‘I have seen death before, Doctor Bruno. I have seen my own brother with his neck broken, do not treat me like one of these pampered ladies who has never been out of a parlour.’

‘I would not dream of it, but this is worse,’ I said, holding my arms out absurdly as if this might obscure the sight. ‘Well, not worse than one’s brother, I don’t mean – I mean only, it is very bloody, not something a woman should see. Please trust me, Mistress Underhill.’

At this she snorted, and placed her hands on her hips.

‘How is it that men think women are too frail to look on blood? Do you forget we bleed every month? We push out babies in great puddles of gore, do you imagine we hide our eyes when we do that, in case it offends our delicate senses? I promise you, Doctor Bruno, any woman can look on blood with more fortitude than a soldier, though men think we must be treated like Venice glass. Do not be one more who wants to wrap me up in linen and keep me in a box.’

I was surprised by the ferocity of her argument, and conceded that she had a point; even so, I had been charged with protecting Mercer from prurient eyes, so I stepped forward again until I was standing directly in front of her, only a few inches away. It was disconcerting to find that she was almost as tall as me.

‘I would not dream of it. Nevertheless, Mistress Underhill, I beg you not to go any closer – this body is badly mutilated. I fear it would be distressing, however strong your constitution.’

She stood her ground for a moment longer, and then her instinctive propriety dictated that she step back. The defiant expression was replaced by one of anxious curiosity.

‘What happened, then?’

‘A man was savaged by a wild dog. Norris shot the dog, not the man.’

Her brow creased.

‘A dog? In the garden? Wait –’ she shook her head, flustered, as if she had her questions all in the wrong order. ‘Which man?’

‘Roger Mercer.’

‘Oh, no. No!’ she repeated, one hand clasped to her mouth, the other to her breast. ‘No!’ Her eyes darted about wildly, resting nowhere, then she sank slowly to the ground, her skirt billowing around her, her hand still pressed to her mouth; I was unsure if she was about to cry or faint, but her face was drained of all colour. ‘Oh God, it can’t be.’

I crouched beside her and laid a tentative hand on her shoulder.

‘I am sorry. You were fond of him?’

She looked up at me with a fleeting expression of puzzlement, then nodded emphatically.

‘Yes – yes, of course – this is my home, the senior Fellows here have been like family to me these past six years,’ she said, her voice shaky. ‘I cannot believe something so horrible could happen here in college, just below our windows too. Poor, poor Roger.’ She glanced past me to the heap in the grass and shuddered. ‘If only …’ she broke off, pressing the edge of her thumb to her mouth again.

‘If only?’ I prompted.

But she merely shook her head and cast her eyes around again frantically. ‘But where is Master Norris?’

‘Your father sent him to change. His attire was apparently unsuitable.’

She gave a soft, indulgent laugh then and I felt a sudden unexpected pang of jealousy. Was she fond of the dandyish young archer?

‘A dog, though?’ she mused, running her hands through her hair as if thinking aloud, her expression troubled again. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘The gate to the lane must have been left open during the night – it looks as if some stray found its way in and was so starving it would set upon anything,’ I said, as evenly as I could.

Sophia’s eyes narrowed.

‘No. That gate is never unlocked. Father is paranoid about vagabonds and trespassers getting in at night, or undergraduates using it to meet the kitchen girls – he checks it every evening at ten before he retires. He would no more forget the gate than he would forget his prayers or his work. That cannot be.’

‘Perhaps he left that task to the porter last night, as he had to attend to our supper,’ I suggested, thinking how absurd it was that I should be defending the improbable falsehood when I wanted to compare her suspicions with my own. ‘I hear the porter is an unreliable old drunk.’

She looked at me then as if she were disappointed in me.

‘Cobbett is an old man, yes, and he likes a drop now and again, but he has been at the college since he was a boy and if my father had entrusted him with such a task he would rather die than let the rector down. He may be only a servant to you, Doctor Bruno, but he is a kind old man and does not deserve to be spoken of with contempt.’

‘I am truly sorry, Mistress Underhill,’ I said, chastened. ‘I did not mean—’

‘You had better call me Sophia. Whenever I hear Mistress Underhill called, I look around for my mother.’

‘Your mother did not hear the commotion this morning?’

‘I don’t know, she is in bed.’ Sophia sighed. ‘She is in bed most of the time, it is her chief occupation.’

‘I think she carries a great weight of sadness since your brother’s death,’ I said gently.

‘We all carry a great weight of sadness, Doctor Bruno,’ she snapped, her eyes flashing. ‘But if we all hid under the counter pane pretending the sun no longer rose and set, the family would have fallen apart. What do you know of my brother’s death, anyway?’

‘Your father made a brief account last night. It must have been unbearable for you.’

‘It would be unbearable to lose a brother in any case,’ she said, in a milder tone. ‘But I was given unusual liberties while John lived, because he spoke up for me, he insisted that I should be his companion in all his pursuits and treated as his equal. Without him, I am forced to behave like a lady and I must confess I do not take to it at all.’

She laughed unexpectedly then and I was greatly relieved, but her laughter trailed off into silence and she began plucking at the grass distractedly.

‘I suppose your disputation today will be postponed because of this?’ she asked, gesturing vaguely towards the mound of Roger Mercer’s body as if she did not much care either way.

‘No indeed – your father is determined not to disappoint the royal guest. We shall go ahead as planned, he says.’

Her face lit up with anger again – her temper was as changeable as the weather over Mount Vesuvius, it seemed – and she rose to her feet, brushing down her dress with quick, furious strokes.

‘Of course he does. No matter that someone has died, terribly – nothing must interrupt college life. We must all pretend nothing is amiss.’ Her eyes burned with fury. ‘Do you know, I never saw my father shed one tear when my brother John died, not one. When they brought him the news, he just nodded, and then said he would be in his study and was not to be disturbed. He didn’t come out for the rest of that day – he spent it working.’ She spat this last word.

‘I have heard,’ I said hesitantly, ‘that Englishmen find this mask necessary to hide what they feel, perhaps because it frightens them.’

She made a small gesture of contempt with her head.

‘My mother hides in her sheets, my father hides in his study. Between them, I am sure they have almost managed to forget they had a son. If only they did not have the inconvenience of my presence to remind them.’

‘I am sure that is not the case—’ I began, but she turned away and set her mouth in a terse line. ‘What is this work in which your father buries himself?’ I asked, to break the silence.

‘He is writing a commentary on Master Foxe’s Actes and Monuments of these Latter and Perillous Days,’ she said, with some disdain.

‘Ah, yes – the Book of Martyrs,’ I said, remembering that someone at dinner had mentioned the rector preaching on this subject. ‘Does it need a commentary? Foxe is quite prolix enough on his own, as I recall.’

‘My father certainly thinks so. Indeed, my father thinks its need for a commentary is more pressing than any other business in the world – except perhaps his endless meetings of the College Board, which are nothing but an excuse for gossip and back-biting.’ She pulled a handful of leaves from the branch overhead with special vehemence as she said this, then lifted her head to look at me. ‘These are supposed to be the cleverest men in England, Doctor Bruno, but I tell you, they are worse than washerwomen for the pleasure they take in malicious talk.’

‘Oh, I have been around enough universities to know all about that,’ I smiled.

She seemed about to say more, but there was a noise from the direction of the courtyard, where two sturdy men in kitchen aprons approached.

‘I had better go,’ Sophia said, glancing once more with a fearful expression at the corner where the bodies lay. ‘I am sorry that I will not be able to attend the disputation, Doctor Bruno. I am not permitted, but I should have liked to see you best my father in a debate.’

I raised an eyebrow in mock surprise, and she smiled sadly.

‘No doubt you think that disloyal of me. Perhaps it is – but my father has such fixed ideas about the world, and its ordained order, and everyone’s place in that order, and sometimes I think he believes these things only because he has always believed them and it is less trouble to go on the same way.’ She bit anxiously at the knuckle of her thumb. ‘I would just dearly love to see someone shake his certainties, make him ask himself questions. Maybe if he can accept even the possibility that there might be a different way of ordering the universe, he might learn to see that not everything in that universe has to stay as it has always been. That is why I want you to win, Doctor Bruno.’ With these last words she actually gripped my shirt and gave me a little shake. I nodded, smiling.

‘You mean that if he can be convinced that the Earth goes around the Sun, he might also be persuaded that a daughter could study as well as a son, and that she might be allowed to choose her own husband?’

She blushed, and returned the smile.

‘Something like that. It seems you are as clever as they say, Doctor Bruno.’

‘Please, call me Giordano,’ I added.

She moved her lips silently, then shook her head. ‘I cannot say it properly, my tongue gets all tangled. I shall just have to call you Bruno. Win the debate for me, Bruno. You shall be my champion in this joust of minds.’ Then she lowered her eyes to the bloodstained grass and her smile quickly faded. ‘Poor Doctor Mercer. I cannot believe it.’

She cast a long look at the mounds of the bodies beneath the trees, her expression unreadable, then turned and ran lightly over the grass towards the college, throwing me a last glance over her shoulder as the burly man who now drew level with me lifted up a capacious sack and said,

‘Right, matey – where’s this dog wants buryin’ then?’