S.J. Parris - Sacrilege

Sidney sighed. “The book and the girl—they’ve become the same obsession in your mind, Bruno. Something you can’t quite possess, but you won’t rest until you do. You’ve grown thinner,” he added, tracing a circle around the rim of his glass with a forefinger, before looking up, his face serious. “Unless you let them both go you will end by losing your mind. And as Her Majesty pointed out, your mind is unique. It must be preserved for the nation.”

I smiled, shifting position in my chair. “And you? Are you still determined to go to war?”

He shrugged, and pursed his lips. He had grown a beard since the summer and it made him seem more adult, more careworn. “The queen is still havering over whether to intervene in the Netherlands. The Canterbury business made her think twice about the wisdom of depleting her armies here. Meanwhile, I must stay at Barn Elms and see if I can get myself an heir before the year is out. Walsingham will not hear of my going anywhere until that is achieved.” He pushed a hand through his hair. “Sometimes I think I shall have to disregard them all and simply run away.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“How do you know?” He looked at me, eyes flashing dangerously. “You could come with me.” For a moment, something of his old spark seemed to light him up.

“I have been running away for eight years.”

“Sorry, Bruno. I didn’t think.”

For a few moments the only sound was the rhythmic crackle of the flames and the occasional pop and hiss of a log subsiding.

“You know they never found Becket?” Sidney said, at length.

“Langworth couldn’t be persuaded to tell them?”

He shook his head.

“Not a word, despite Walsingham’s best efforts.”

I shuddered; we both knew what those efforts would have involved.

“He went to his execution still clutching his secrets. He was a ruthless man, but at least he had the courage of his convictions. You have to admire that.”

I looked up at him. “I don’t have to admire anything about a man like Langworth.”

Sidney shrugged: suit yourself. “Mayor Fitzwalter, on the other hand, pissed himself and blurted out everything he knew before he even got a look at the rack.” The disgust in his voice suggested that, for Sidney, cowardice was more despicable in a man than murdering children.

“Was any of it worth hearing?”

“He confessed to being the fourth guardian, said he had been blackmailed into it, recanted any connection with the Catholic Church, all the usual stuff. But he swore blind he knew nothing about what Langworth had done with Becket’s bones. Walsingham believed him. He had spilled all he knew.”

“So Thomas Becket is still out there somewhere, waiting.”

“We must suppose so. At least the legend will live on. But the English are always waiting for some past hero to come back from the dead and restore a golden age,” he added, with disdain. “Thomas Becket, King Arthur …”

“Christ Himself.”

“Careful, Bruno.” He looked at me from under his brows. “One day your irreverence will land you in real trouble.”

I had been told this before, more than once, but I had never been good at heeding advice. Sidney went on talking—about the war in the Netherlands, the necessity of English intervention—but his words began to wash over me as I continued to stare into the restless flames. I would go after the book. Despite Sidney’s warning, I could not let it end like this. If Sophia had taken the book to Paris with the intention of selling it, I must find a means to hunt it down. Hunt her down. We had unfinished business, and I knew I could have no peace of mind until I had done everything in my power to resolve it. Call it stubbornness, call it pride; I preferred to think of it as tenacity. Whether Queen Elizabeth saw fit to patronise my book or not, I knew that nothing I wrote would ever truly live until I had unravelled the secrets of that book, and I also knew that I was the only one who could do it. I would not rest until I had it in my hands again—and until I had made Sophia understand that she was wrong.

Heresy

Prophecy