S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

He turns and walks away towards the stairs.

‘You will come to me eventually, Nicholas,’ he hears her call out, even as he raises his hands to his ears. ‘Why do you think I am here in Padua? It isn’t to help Galileo and that fool Matteo with their calculations; it’s to be where you can find me. You will come back to me – it is written. The signs are all there, like the signs that foretell what is coming: the rains, the storms, the comets, the war, the pestilences… They are all telling us that time is running out.’

He tries to shut out the sound of her voice as he goes. But her parting words are a cold breeze blowing in his ears.

‘Don’t delay, Nicholas. Don’t leave it too long. I cannot face what is coming alone. And there is very little time left.’

The Marshalsea Prison, Bankside,

2nd October 1594

In the sickly grey light filtering through the rain that streams down the leaded-glass window, Rose Monkton eases herself out of her husband’s embrace. She can feel his reluctance to let her go, as though his great fingers are already beginning to stiffen after the long drop from the gallows.

‘How is your memory, ’Usband?’ she asks, taking stock of how he seems a little diminished since last she saw him. His great auburn beard will require a good trimming, she thinks. And he’ll need a clean linen shirt. The ecclesiastical court will take a lot of convincing, but it will be down to Ned alone to save himself.

‘My memory?’

He seems confused by her question.

‘Yes, your memory. How is it?’

‘Have I forgotten something, Wife?’ he asks, perplexed. ‘I know it’s not our anniversary. An’ it’s not your birthday…’

‘No, ’Usband. You have forgotten nothing. It is a simple question. How good are you at remembering things?’

‘Why do you ask, Rose?’

‘I have been to see Lord Lumley. He says there is no hope for us – but one. He would have you plead Benefit of Clergy.’

‘He wants me to call a priest?’ Ned asks, misunderstanding her. ‘Does he think giving me papist absolution before I ’ang is going to help?’

Rose looks horrified. ‘ No , ’Usband. If you plead the Book, sentencing will fall to the Church authorities, not a temporal court. A first offence will be punished only with a branding upon the thumb – an M , to show you’ve been judged guilty of slaying a man – so that you cannot plead mercy again, should you commit another felony. Not that you did commit a felony – you’re innocent… I know that… but it’s the only way.’

Ned lays a steadying hand upon Rose’s shoulder to stop her words running away with her. ‘Well, what’s a sore thumb, Wife, if it joins what has been torn asunder?’

The tears begin to flow again. ‘Oh, but dearest Ned, it is not that easy. You must sermonize from the Bible – Psalm fifty-one – like you was a parson. An’ there’s you without the readin’…’

Ned offers her a huge smile that stops the tears mid-flow.

‘So you want to know if my memory is up to learning what you will read out to me – is that it?’

Rose snorts a rapid volley of watery breaths. ‘I… I lie abed at night, unable to sleep for weeping. I know Mistress Bianca thinks I’m an addle-pate an’ can’t keep one thought in my head longer than an ’eartbeat, but I ’ave tried so hard to think of a way of saving you from the noose. An’ now Lord Lumley offers this chance, but you can’t read. So I must read to you, an’ you must remember it, Ned – perfectly. If you gets it wrong, all is lost. And I know how hard remembering is. I fear you will forget.’

Ned guides her to the mattress. He eases her down gently, her body folding compliantly to the pressure of his hands. He sits beside Rose, pulls her head into the cushion of his armpit.

‘There, sweet, there. Trouble yourself no more. You will sleep easy tonight.’

She looks up at him. ‘How?’ she asks. ‘How shall I sleep, when all I think about is losing my Ned?’

‘Let me tell you of the time before I met you, Rose,’ he begins. She feels the great rumbling of his voice through his shirt, as it flows from the wellspring deep inside him. ‘You know well that I was a solitary man…’

She nods.

‘My days and my nights were not spent like other men’s. I lived amongst the dead – in the mortuary crypt at St Tom’s hospital. You know that.’

Another nod.

‘The dead were all I had for company. They were poor, for the most part: men, women, children… vagrants, vagabonds, outcasts… sailors drowned in the river… suicides destined to lie alone in unconsecrated ground. They were my only company. An’ when they left the crypt for a pauper’s grave – an unmarked pauper’s grave – they had only me to remember them, to mourn them. So I remembered their names. An’ if they had no name, why, I would give them one. An’ every day I would take a moment to speak those names – a score or so in a sitting – so that they would not be forgotten.’

Ned pulls Rose even closer. She can smell his unwashed body and the musty smell of his linen shirt. It is like a balm to her. He could be a father soothing his child to sleep, telling her a tale of knights and princesses, dragons and queens. She feels safe for the first time in weeks.

‘So fear not for my memory, Rose Monkton,’ he whispers softly as he kisses the top of her head, inhaling the clean scent of apple from the pomatum she uses to tame her wild curls, ‘’tis as sharp as it ever was.’

As Bruno Barrani approaches the stone bridge to the Porta Portello in the early evening of the following day, his thoughts whine like the clouds of zanzare rising from the surface of the canal. And, like their bites, they cannot be ignored. Until the Podestà acceded to his request for the Arte dei Astronomi to take part in the great parade to celebrate the Feast of the Holy Rosary, he hadn’t appreciated how much there would be to consider.

For instance: where in the parade should the Arte be permitted to march? At the front, naturally, Bruno had suggested boldly. The Podestà had laughed at that, pointing out that the vanguard was reserved for the most influential guild – the richest guild. The best Bruno had been able to screw out of the pompous old clown was a position in the rear third, between the water carriers and the basket weavers. That had stung. But he could live with it; next year, perhaps…

Then there was the matter of a suitable banner. After much consideration, he had decided upon a field of dark-blue silk, with a pattern of stars woven out of gilded thread. It would be carried on a cross of spruce.

Livery was something else he hadn’t thought about until now. The city’s newest company could not possibly march in its present attire. Look at the Corio brothers: they dress like bandits. Bondoni can’t afford to dress any better than a beggar, because his mistress and their six children leave him without so much as a scudo for clothes. So Bruno has had to pay through the nose to get them fitted out. And finding a tailor at this late hour who can stitch a straight seam has taken all his ingenuity. Still, he thinks, it will all be worth it when his own bust is placed with great ceremony upon the balustrade of this bridge, beside the other great men of Padua.

He has called a meeting of the Arte to let its members know how diligently he has been working on their behalf, and to dismiss their usual complaints and objections. He is early. This is because first he wishes to see if Pasolini the carpenter has delivered the corrected segments of the mount that carries the sphere’s equatorial ring. He doesn’t trust Pasolini’s eye. He intends to lay out the segments himself, checking that they fit together and that, once assembled, they form a circle and not something resembling a child’s doodle.