S Parris - Heresy

Sophia shook her head furiously, her lips pressed tightly together.

"You are blind and stubborn, Thomas, and you have ever been so!" she cried, taking a step toward him. "You have always acted impetuously, always convinced that you are right! But you are badly mistaken this time, as I have already tried to tell you."

Lady Tolling folded her arms impatiently and her glance flickered from Sophia to Thomas, but her voice remained steady. "What is this about? Who are these men, Sophia? Who means to kill her?"

"He is deluded, my lady, his wits are troubled, he knows not what he says," Sophia interrupted quickly, her throat tight with emotion.

Thomas turned to face Lady Tolling with defiant eyes, apparently undaunted by her rank, the craven manner I had seen in Oxford entirely vanished.

"Your visiting priest," he said, enunciating the words precisely. "Father Jerome Gilbert."

If Lady Tolling was perturbed either by the accusation that she harboured a priest or that this same priest was bent on murder, she gave no sign of it, save for a small twitch of her mouth.

"Well, then, let us ask him," she said, her voice calm as ever, and she crossed the room in a rustling of satin and stepped into the small antechamber on the right-hand side, from which Sophia had entered. We caught a brief exchange of voices from within and almost immediately she returned, followed by the young man I had known as Gabriel Norris.

He was dressed as usual in a well-cut doublet and breeches of sombre black, though evidently of costly fabric, and wearing good leather boots with a silver buckle, his blond hair swept back from his face. Handsome and self-possessed, he looked every inch the country gentleman's son; no one passing him in the town or the colleges would have taken him for a secret missionary. He looked from Thomas to Sophia to me with a steady, careful gaze, then nodded slowly.

"Well, then," he said, spreading out his hands, palms up. "Let us say what needs to be said. Lady Eleanor, with the greatest respect, I would ask that you leave us. There are matters that must be resolved between old friends before any of us can go on."

Lady Tolling seemed unwilling to relinquish control of any drama to be played out under her roof.

"Your safety, Father," she murmured, glancing at me and Thomas. "These men have not even been searched."

"I know them," Norris said, reassuringly. "All will be well."

When the door had closed behind her and the servant, Norris-or Jerome, as I supposed I must now call him-turned and fixed me with his clear green eyes.

"Doctor Bruno," he said, a puzzled frown etched in the space between his brows. "I had thought-"

"You had thought Rowland Jenkes would have killed me tonight?" I offered.

"Well, yes. Though I am not altogether surprised you shook him off-I told him you should not be underestimated. You are, after all, the man who escaped the Inquisition." His mouth curved into the barest hint of a smile, showing his white teeth. "Have you and Thomas formed your own Anti-Catholic League?" He paused briefly to laugh at his own joke. His manner was oddly relaxed and easy, given the circumstances, and now that he was not playing up to his flamboyant alias, he spoke in a more measured, mature tone. When he turned again to look me directly in the eye I was reminded of Humphrey Pritchard's words: that Father Jerome made you feel you were the only person in the world that mattered. "Well, then," he continued, softly, "so you know the truth. Are you come to arrest me?"

"I came because I believed Sophia was in danger," I said, trying to return his look evenly, though there was something disconcerting about the intensity of his gaze. I determined I would not look away first.

"From me?" he asked, as if the idea were absurd. "Why should I wish to hurt Sophia, who has so recently been received through my ministry into the one true Catholic Church?"

"Your ministry? Is that what you call it?" Thomas burst out.

"Because she carries your child," I said simply.

"Slander," Jerome said, his eyes suddenly flashing with anger as he took a step toward me.

"Did Thomas tell you that?" Sophia cried, her cheeks blazing. "You know that everything he says is a lie?"

"No one told me," I said, now lying myself to spare Cobbett. "I may have been a monk but I grew up in a small village-I know how to recognise such things."

Sophia said nothing, but pressed a hand over her mouth; Thomas smirked; Jerome sucked in his cheeks and appeared to be thinking.

"You will understand better than anyone, I think, Bruno," he said seriously, at length, "how a man may feel trapped by the strictures of his order. Yes, I sinned, but I would not commit a greater sin to cover it. Sophia will be conveyed in safety to Rouen, where she will be looked after until such time as I can join her." His eyes flicked toward Sophia as he spoke and she looked up gratefully, but there was something evasive about the look that convinced me he was lying for her benefit.

"I also know from experience, Father," I said, "that the religious orders do not let go of their own so easily. Especially the Jesuits."

Jerome nodded as if he were reluctantly impressed. "Very good, Bruno, you have done your work thoroughly. Yes, I was ordained a Jesuit in Rome and joined the English mission through the seminary in Rheims. Thomas's father brought me to Oxford-it was his role to coordinate the arrival of priests into Oxfordshire, find us safe houses, manage our provisions and disguises. The role Roger Mercer took over after Edmund's exile. But you already know this, I presume."

"I have only recently begun to understand the connections," I admitted. "Yours was a very good disguise."

"Disguise." Thomas spat the word, his eyes cold. "It was no disguise at all. He carried himself as what he always was-the son of a wealthy family who ever expected others dance to his tune. Joining the Jesuits was just another means of adventuring, for him. His disguise, as you call it, was so natural a part of him that in the end it became all too easy for him to forget his mission."

Thomas glared pointedly at Sophia; Jerome at least had the grace to look sheepish.

"And fall into temptation," I mused, looking from Jerome to Sophia and remembering the Book of Hours the rector had found sewn into her mattress, with its suggestive, intimate dedication. "J." Not Jenkes, then, but Jerome. So it must have been Jerome, too, that Roger Mercer had expected to meet in the grove on Saturday morning, when he met his violent death instead.

"But Roger Mercer found you out," I said, meeting the Jesuit's level gaze as my chest suddenly tightened at the thought that I was standing mere feet from the killer. "And I had thought he was killed for those papers."

Jerome's eyes widened instantly and he stepped forward, his air of amused complacency vanished.

"How do you know about the papers?" he demanded, looking genuinely shaken for the first time since our arrival.

"I have seen them," I said, managing to sound calmer than I felt.

"Where?"

"In the chest in your chamber. Where you hid them."

"In my-?" He swung around and stared at Thomas now in disbelief. "But you said-"

"Roger Mercer caught them in the grove one night," Thomas cut in, a note of spite in his voice. I noticed that his right hand was tucked inside his cloak. "Sophia used to steal the key from her father's study at night. Mercer was appalled, as you may imagine. He came to our room the next day, exploding with rage. Reminded Father Jerome here how many Catholics in Oxford were risking their lives for his sake, and how he would not take the sacrament any longer from a priest living in mortal sin, and could not allow the others in their circle to do so unwittingly. Said he had no choice but to report Jerome to the Jesuit Superior."