Giordano Bruno Thriller Series Books 1-3: Heresy, Prophecy, Sacrilege. S. J. Parris
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his arms wrapped around his thin torso.
‘You have no idea what you are talking about,’ he said eventually, looking straight ahead as if he were not speaking to me at all, but thinking aloud.
Then he dropped his gaze apologetically, and clasped my hand between both of his. ‘Thank you for listening to me, Doctor Bruno. And I’m sorry if I spoke out of turn on occasion – I am still afraid of saying the wrong thing. You will remember my request, if it’s not too much trouble?’
‘I will, Thomas. I am glad we have talked.’
‘I need to leave Oxford,’ he said, gripping my hand urgently. ‘If I could get to London and begin a life there – you will tell Sir Philip that? A recommendation from him would ease my path, and I would swear my loyalty to him and the earl.’
‘I will do my best for you,’ I promised, and meant it, though I was certain he had not told me all he knew. ‘And take care of that wound on your wrist.’
He bowed slightly and then scuttled away through the gate to his duties.
The rain continued to blow across the courtyard in endless diagonal lines, the sky now darker than when I had first ventured out. I glanced up at the small window at the top of the tower and shivered to think of Coverdale’s blood-soaked body dangling from the sconce, those arrows mockingly protruding from his chest and stomach. I had once visited the basilica of San Sebastiano Fuori le Mura in Rome, in whose catacombs the saint’s remains are buried; the great icon there, with his face of pious agony and his arrows sticking out like the spines of a porcupine, had struck me then as exaggerated and unreal in his torment, like a scene from a play, garishly painted, and I realised I had had the same response on seeing James Coverdale’s body. The grisly tableau had appeared almost as a practical joke; I had hardly been able to believe him dead until I saw the great wound in his throat. As I pulled my jerkin up again around my face and prepared to put my head down into the rain, I remembered suddenly a phrase from the rector’s Foxe quotation: By his own soldiers. Sebastian, a captain of the Praetorian guard, had been executed on the orders of the Emperor Diocletian by his own men. Had the murderer kept that detail in mind? Had James Coverdale also been killed by someone who was supposed to be on his side? And what side might that be, in this place of tangled loyalties?
I had barely stepped out into the courtyard from the gatehouse when I saw the rector emerging from the archway opposite, followed closely by Slythurst. Both had the hoods of their gowns pulled close around their faces and were hurrying towards me; when the rector caught sight of me, he beckoned hastily for me to join them. In the shelter of the gatehouse, he huddled closer, out of earshot of a group of students taking refuge from the rain.
‘You saw my daughter this morning, did you not, Bruno, in the porter’s lodge?’ Underhill demanded.
‘Yes – she was waiting for her mother to go out,’ I said, caught by the trace of urgency in his voice.
‘Did you see her leave?’
‘No – Master Slythurst arrived with his terrible news and I came to fetch you.’
‘Then, she must have …’ Underhill shook his head, with an expression of vague confusion. ‘It is no matter. She was ever defiant. She will be back.’
‘What has happened?’ I pressed him.
‘When my wife arrived at the gatehouse, Sophia was no longer there,’ he said, looking around the courtyard as if in hope that she might appear at any moment. ‘Margaret thought she must have gone on ahead to the house of her acquaintance, so she set off herself, but when she got there, they had seen no sign of Sophia either. Margaret is fretting, as she is wont to do, but I am inclined to believe Sophia has taken it upon herself to go off walking without telling anyone – she complains often of being cooped up here. She thinks she should have the liberty to go wandering the lanes and fields outside the city for the best part of the day, just as she used to with her brother. Well, that was different. She will learn the manners proper to a young lady, even if she will not learn them willingly.’ His face clouded for a moment. Then he glanced around again, distracted, as if hoping the events of this day might have gone away of their own accord.
‘Surely she would not have chosen a day such as this to go out walking?’ I said, gesturing to the relentless sky and trying to keep my own voice even. Only the night before, Sophia herself had told me she believed she was in danger, and Thomas Allen had just implied something similar. Now she had disappeared. I hoped fervently that the rector was right, but I sensed that he had told this story to persuade himself because he could not cope with any more worries on top of Coverdale’s murder and all it implied for the college.
‘Yes, yes – I’m sure she will be back for her dinner before we know it,’ he said, waving a hand. ‘And now, Master Slythurst will take my letter to the coroner, and I must prepare what I will say to the community in Hall. The hour is almost upon us.’
He looked at me and sighed. He seemed to have aged ten years in the past hour.
‘I will be in my study, Doctor Bruno. We will speak later. I would ask you to be present in Hall at noon for dinner, when I shall announce this tragedy to the college. It would be prudent for you to know the exact terms in which I have informed the college community of events so that you do not repeat anything beyond that. I would like to limit gossip as far as possible.’
I bowed in acknowledgement.
‘It would likewise be prudent, Rector, not to let anyone else know that you have asked me to look into this matter,’ I said, in a low voice. ‘There may be some who would keep information back if they thought I sought it on your behalf.’
‘I understand. Go where you will, Doctor Bruno, and I will not mention your involvement. But find who did this thing – these things,’ he corrected himself, ‘and whatever reward the college may offer will be yours for the asking. Provided I am still in place to grant it,’ he added gloomily, before turning to retrace his steps to his lodgings.
The bell summoning the college to dinner at midday still clanged incessantly long after the Fellows and students had filed into the Great Hall, marking time over the susurration of urgent whispered conversations that betrayed the tension crackling in the atmosphere like the charge before a storm. Outside, the rain beat against the windows so hard that we had to raise our voices to make ourselves heard even to our neighbours.
I was disconcerted to find that a place had been saved for me at the High Table with the senior Fellows. Seated between Richard Godwyn, the librarian, and Slythurst, who made no effort to disguise his distaste at my presence among his colleagues, I could not help but be aware that the seat I occupied must surely have belonged to one of the two dead men.
The High Table was raised up on a low dais that gave me a vantage over the rest of the hall. It was a handsome room, its walls whitewashed and hung with tapestries in the French style of the last century that were clearly expensive work, though now grown somewhat faded with age. The hall was dominated by the open hearth that stood in the centre of the floor beneath an octagonal louvre set in the high timber roof, its beams blackened with soot, to allow the smoke to escape. Around the hearth was a wooden pale, wide enough for several people to sit on and warm themselves; either side of this, a long table had been set beneath the windows, where the undergraduates and junior Fellows now crammed themselves on to benches with frequent glances at the dais, murmuring among themselves about the rector’s drawn face and the second empty place at the High Table.
A skinny young man with unkempt red hair, dressed in a gown several sizes too large for him, mounted the lectern that stood beside the High Table and in a voice surprisingly sonorous for his slight frame, began to pronounce Grace. I recognised him as the boy I had watched clearing away the appurtenances of Matins in the chapel the previous day. The solemn tolling of the bell was silenced just as he opened his mouth.
‘Benignissime Pater,