S.J. Parris - Sacrilege

“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 storm clouds.

“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.

“They will accept that readily enough, I should think. And how do you and I know each other?”

“A letter of introduction from our mutual friend, Sir Philip Sidney.”

Harry smiled at this.

“Ah, little Philip. He was about four years old when I last saw him. Turned out well, I hear. His mother was a great beauty in her day, you know.” His gaze drifted to the window, as though he was seeing faces from years long past. Samuel came in with a plain black doublet of light wool and helped his master into it. “Well, then.” Harry gestured to the door. “What name do you travel under here? I had better get used to it in case I am obliged to introduce you to anyone.”

“Filippo Savolino.”

“Savolino. Huh.” He repeated it twice more, as if to accustomise himself to the feel of it.

“It is unlikely that anyone in Canterbury would know my reputation, but—”

“We do read books here, you know. We’re not entirely cut off from learned society.”

“No, I didn’t mean to imply—”

“There’s quite a trade in books from the Continent, too, being so near the ports. Legal and otherwise. Including plenty from your country.” He regarded me thoughtfully. “Padua, eh? I have never travelled beyond England, though as a young man I dreamed of doing so. I would have liked to see Italy for myself. A country of wild beauty, I am told.”

“I think no man can say he has seen beauty until he has watched the sun set over the Bay of Naples, with the shadow of Mount Vesuvius in the background.”

“A volcano. I can hardly imagine a volcano,” he said, with simple longing.

“Perhaps you may see it one day.”

He slapped his bad thigh and barked out another laugh. “With this leg? No—while you are here, you must describe it to me and I shall be able to picture it. I do not think these eyes will ever look on the Bay of Naples.”

“Nor will mine again,” I said, and the weight of this struck me as I spoke the words, so that I heard my voice catch at the end.

We looked at each other, the moment ripe with regret. Harry shook his head briskly, as if to rid himself of sentiment.

“Come then, Savolino, we have work to do.”

AIR, REAL AIR, with the faintest hint of a breeze carrying the indignant cries of seagulls; I was so grateful that I stood still on the garden path, head spinning as I gulped down great lungfuls like a man who has narrowly escaped drowning. Harry shuffled ahead of me into the cathedral close and motioned to his right; when I had recovered and my blood felt as if it were pumping once more, I followed him. Samuel stood in the doorway watching us with an inscrutable expression in his eyes. I could not help noticing that Harry’s limp became less pronounced and his pace speeded up a little once we had rounded the corner and were out of his servant’s sight.

“Have you ever been married, Bruno?” he asked.

“No,” I said, surprised by the question. Shielding my eyes, I looked up to our left; sideways on, the cathedral had the appearance of a vast warship, ribbed with buttresses, its high windows so many gunports.

“Nor I,” he said. “When I entered the clergy, churchmen didn’t marry, and once it became acceptable, I had missed the boat. Instead I have Samuel—all the fussing and nagging of a wife, with none of the benefits.” He gave a deep, rasping laugh.

“He doesn’t like me, I’m afraid.”

“Don’t mind him, he doesn’t like anyone. He has a suspicious cast of mind and he’s jealous as a wife, too—likes to feel that I’m dependent on him. Can’t bear to share my attention. This way.”

The path passed through a gate by a block of stables and continued around the east end of the cathedral. Cut timber and logs were piled against its wall behind a makeshift fence, covered by oilskin cloths. To our right, a wooded area of thick oak trees in full leaf cast long shadows over the grass beneath, stretching back as far as the precinct walls, a relic from the priory that had stood on the site before the Dissolution, I supposed. Here the heat of the day had begun to subside; I loosened my collar and breathed deeply. The leaves stirred as the breeze lifted, sending light flickering through the foliage. The place seemed so at peace with itself, it was hard to believe it could be the setting for bloody murder. Perhaps Thomas Becket had once thought the same, I reflected.

Harry paused and craned his head back to look at the sky. “What a fine day. God’s bones, I should leave the house more often. I’m sure it would do wonders for my constitution.”

“You are confined by your health?”

He laughed again.

“By my work. When I arrived in Canterbury six years ago, I took it upon myself to compile a history of the cathedral from its foundation in the sixth century to the Dissolution.” He smiled at my expression. “I know—utter folly. My allotted span is almost up and I’ve only got as far as the martyrdom. Still another four hundred years to get through.”

“You may yet finish it.”

“Even if I had another score years left to me, that would not be enough to sort through the manuscripts in the cathedral library—hundreds of years’ worth of documents and papers buried there, but they’ve never been archived or catalogued properly, and I doubt they ever will, unless someone comes along prepared to dedicate his entire life to the job. There could be all manner of treasures gathering cobwebs.”

“Surely the librarian has some idea of what books are in his care?” I asked.

Harry gave that dry bark of laughter that I now recognised as cynicism.

“He may well. If so, it must suit him to keep them hidden from the rest of us.” He resumed his shuffling as the path curved around the eastern end of the cathedral. Here he raised his stick and pointed to the semicircular tip of the building. “The corona, they call this part. Built to house the reliquary that contained the fragment of Becket’s skull hacked away by his murderers. Come.” He waved me forward with his stick.

On the north side of the cathedral more houses had been built amid the ruined masonry of the old priory, as if in their haste to replace the old religious house the builders had not even bothered to clear its traces away. Naked arches stood stark against the sky like the ribs of a great decayed beast. Harry led me around into the shadow of the cathedral church. Just past these houses, where a small chantry chapel jutted out from the side of the main building, he paused and pointed with his stick to a spot on the path. A dark stain, though faded, could still be seen in the dust, like the outline of a puddle.