S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

‘No, you won’t. That isn’t your nature.’

‘One meeting, that’s all. Just to warn her. I’ll get Bruno to ask the Corio cousins to look out for her.’

Bianca turns back from the window. ‘And then we put her out of our lives for ever. Do you promise?’

Nicholas climbs out of bed and takes his wife in his arms. The first audible rumble of thunder rolls down across the valley and over the walls of Padua like the secret marauders of an advancing army.

‘As if she had never existed,’ he says.

Assurances, promises, denials… in the last half-hour Nicholas has made them all. None have appeared to ease Bianca’s heart. Over breakfast she has listened to him with a face of stone. In desperation he says, ‘You agreed. One visit. Then we will forget her for ever.’

She looks at him for what seems like an hour, her eyes unreadable to him. Then she says, ‘I agreed. What else needs to be said?’

He thinks, how about: I know why you fear the maid so much .

But he knows that if he turns his thoughts to words, they will very likely raise a fire in her that will burn them both.

‘I will be brief with her, I promise,’ he tells her. ‘I will be back before you know it.’

‘Take all the time you need,’ she says. ‘I’m going to pay another visit to the place where I grew up – my parents’ house.’

‘Will you wait until I return? I would like to see it.’

She shakes her head. ‘Another time, perhaps. This journey I need to take alone.’

It feels to Nicholas as though Bianca has slammed a door in his face. He lays his knife down amongst the peach stones and leaves the table. When he reaches the stairs he looks back, only to see that her attention is not on him, but on something he cannot know or see. Something far away.

At the Beguinage, Nicholas is shown into Madonna Antonella’s office. She is a doughty woman of fifty with canny, generous eyes and severely crimped grey hair that makes the simple linen coif she wears on her head look like a kerchief stuffed with hazelnuts. Though she welcomes him cordially enough, he detects wariness in her eyes, a suspicion honed through experience that sometimes the men who come here enquiring after her Beguines are not always truthful about their motives. He gives her the story about him being a Catholic recusant, fleeing English tyranny. At first he tells her only that Hella Maas accompanied him and Bianca on the Via Francigena, omitting any mention of what happened in the cathedral at Den Bosch. Then he tells her about Grey-coat and the murder of Matteo Fedele. As he speaks, Madonna Antonella’s face darkens.

‘You sincerely believe her life could be in danger?’ she asks when he has finished speaking.

‘Yes, Madonna. I thought at first he might have been an English bounty-hunter – that it was me he was following. Now I believe Signorina Maas is his intended quarry.’

‘Have you come to any conclusion as to why this man should want to harm her?’ Madonna Antonella asks.

‘I believe it has something to do with a crime she witnessed, in the Duchy of Brabant.’

‘A crime?’ Madonna Antonella echoes with a lift of her brow, as though crime is something indistinct and living only on the far edge of her memory. ‘What manner of… crime?’

‘A double murder, Madonna. A Catholic priest and a Spanish officer. I can only assume that the assassin believes Hella can identify him. Perhaps that is why he has followed her here. Perhaps he killed her friend Matteo Fedele whilst trying to force him to reveal where she is sheltering.’

‘Forgive me, Signor Shelby,’ she says, lifting a small silver bell from her desk. ‘Sometimes men come here trying to convince us they have their women’s interests at heart when in fact they seek only to regain their influence and dominion over them.’ She gives the bell one brisk shake. An elderly Beguine enters. ‘Is Sister Hella with us, Sister Giulia? Or is she at the Basilica, telling God how to behave?’

‘She is in the dormitory, Madonna – with Sister Carlotta,’ the Beguine says, casting a doubting look at Nicholas.

‘Then please be so kind as to bring her to me.’

While he waits, Madonna Antonella asks him about the trials of life as a Catholic in a heretic land. Nicholas pilfers uncomfortable answers from his memory, things he’s heard Bianca and John Lumley say. Now, in Padua, they seem more damning to him than when first spoken in England, where he has never had to feign humility to keep himself safe, or deny his faith lest someone close proves not to be the friend they claimed, but an informer.

When Hella arrives, she bows stiffly to Madonna Antonella. Nicholas is favoured with little more than mild curiosity.

‘This gentleman says he is an English physician, and that you spent some time together on the Via Francigena,’ Madonna Antonella says. ‘Is that true, Sister Hella?’

‘It is, Madonna Antonella,’ she says.

‘Do you wish to hear what he has to say to you? Do you trust him, child?’

‘With my life, Madonna Antonella. And even beyond it.’

Satisfied that Nicholas is neither a vengeful lover nor a bullying relative, Madonna Antonella gestures to Nicholas to speak. He chooses English, for discretion. Immediately it proves to be a wise choice.

‘I need to talk with you,’ he says brusquely. ‘It is of some considerable import.’

‘Have you finally found the courage to cast off Bianca?’ she says coldly. ‘Have you come to take me away?’

He cannot stop himself glancing at Madonna Antonella. To his relief, she has retreated into studying a leather-bound psalter.

‘I’ve come to warn you that you may be in grave danger.’

Her smile is so weak it can live for no more than a moment. ‘We are all in danger, Nicholas. Haven’t I convinced you of that yet?’

‘Young Matteo Fedele is dead,’ he says brutally, seeing no gain in gentleness. ‘He was murdered.’

He studies her face, expecting emotion. He sees none.

‘You don’t seem troubled by that. I thought you were close to him.’

‘I told you before, I only indulged the boy in order to stay close to you.’

‘Do you feel no pity?’

She shrugs. ‘Why should I pity him, Nicholas? Matteo is at peace. He will remain at peace until the time comes when he faces what we must all face.’

‘Don’t you want to know who killed him?’

‘Does it matter?’

Nicholas struggles to rein in his anger at her indifference, lest Madonna Antonella has second thoughts about letting an English stranger into her Beguinage.

‘It matters, Hella, because the man who killed him might think to play hazard with your life, too. I believe it was the same man I saw at Reims, and again at the hospice in the mountains. He wore a grey coat… black boots… a black cloth cap on his head. I am sure now that he spoke to you in the cathedral square when we joined the Via Francigena. But that morning we left the mountains you denied it, when I asked if you had seen such a person. So I ask again now, in a place of holiness where God hears every word: do you know why this man would follow you to Padua and murder Matteo Fedele?’

Nicholas is aware that Madonna Antonella has put down her psalter and is regarding him with new-found suspicion. She can tell by the tone of his voice that his words to the maid are not words of reassurance.

‘I have told you before, I do not know this man, Nicholas. And I cannot imagine that he has come all this way to kill me.’

‘I fear he believes you recognized him in the cathedral at Den Bosch. I think he may be the man who killed Father Vermeiren and the Spaniard. Are you not at least afraid?’