S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

Tucking the note into the sleeve of his tunic, Galileo Galilei walks back to the bench, ready to thank the messenger and explain – regretfully – that he cannot afford to tip her for her troubles.

But when he reaches the spot, he finds she has not waited.

The mist is thickening. Night has the upper hand now as Nicholas pushes on through the lanes towards the Borgo dei Argentieri. Soon he is all but alone. He passes only the occasional citizen late for the festivities and the odd scrawny, prowling cat. More than once he takes a wrong turning, straying down stuccoed canyons whose ends are lost in darkness. So far he has realized his error before becoming irretrievably lost. But the prospect of wandering into the heart of this vaporous labyrinth and losing all sense of place is frighteningly real to him. When he spots the two Corio cousins sitting on the cobbles outside the entrance to Bruno’s house, a flask of wine and a dice board lying beside them, he feels like a mariner who’s spotted land on the very day the food runs out.

He asks, ‘Where is Signor Barrani? Have you seen him?’

One of the cousins points back up the street. ‘He’s in the procession, Master.’

‘I’ve just come from there,’ Nicholas says, trying hard to stifle the fears that are marching inside him now with a din that would put the Piazza dei Signori to shame. ‘They started without him.’

The man shrugs. ‘That’s what he said when he left. We haven’t seen him since.’

‘And Signora Bianca? You must have seen her leave. Which way did she go – towards the Piazza dei Signori?’

The other cousin shakes his head. To Nicholas’s horror he points in the opposite direction – towards Porta Portello.

Along the riverbank the mist has turned to fog. The narrow margin of black water that is visible to Nicholas is shot through with a golden weave from the torches burning here and there in their mounts. As he crosses the bridge, his fears rise up from the surface like monstrous sea creatures. He can think of only one place Bianca could have headed for in this quarter of the city: the storehouse. And he can think of only one reason for her visit. He sees again in his mind her brief exchange with Hella in the Piazza del Santo this morning, and he recalls only too clearly her refusal to reveal what had passed between them.

The brickwork of the storehouse looms out of the fog, like the walls of a prison so grim that he cannot stop himself imagining the torturers at work within. The fact that he can see a glimmer of torchlight in the narrow window beneath the eaves gives him no comfort. A torturer needs enough light to work by, but not so much that he can see too deeply into his victim’s eyes. Unless, of course, he has no soul.

The wide doors at the front look securely barred. Slipping down the side of the building, he sees the smaller door ajar. His heart pounding, his mind flinching at all the horrors presented to it by his imagination, he slips quietly around the door and inside. He is certain now that something very wrong has happened tonight, and that Hella is at the centre of it.

What he sees confirms the very worst of his fears.

Bianca is lying against the cradle of Bruno’s great sphere, clad in the pearl-coloured gown Bruno had brought her. Only it is no longer pristine. It is stained with blood. And looming over her is the man in the grey coat.

Nicholas is upon him even as the man turns, alerted by his footsteps and his sudden, agonized intake of breath. Indifferent to the near-certainty that the assassin has a blade, Nicholas hauls him off Bianca’s body, smashing his fist into his upturned, startled face. He doesn’t feel the damage done to his own knuckles. The rage, the despair, makes pain meaningless. He strikes again, driving the man down as though he would batter him into the very earth itself and bury him. He raises his fist to strike a third time, all restraint gone, only raw murder in his mind.

And then Bianca’s voice stays his hand.

‘Nicholas, for the love of Jesu, leave Ruben be! You’re killing him.’

His right elbow thrust out at an acute angle, his balled fist held at the instant before he smashes it home, Nicholas freezes. The man slithers away from him, groaning, his face bloodied.

‘ Ruben? ’ he repeats, confused beyond measure. ‘You know him?’

‘I do, now ,’ Bianca says. ‘His name is Ruben Maas. He’s Hella’s brother – the priest. And he wasn’t trying to harm me. In fact I owe him my life.’

For a moment Nicholas does not understand. Then he remembers the conversation he and Hella had in the forest outside Clairvaux Abbey, when she told him of the Spanish fury at Breda and the slaughter of her family: The day of the massacre I was with my twin brother, Ruben… I didn’t see him more than once or twice after that… He became a priest.

Nicholas hauls the cowering Ruben to his feet. ‘Is this true?’ he asks, still half-consumed by a murderous anger.

Ruben Maas answers in passable English, distorted only by a Dutch accent and the fact that blood from his nose and lips has found its way in no small quantity into his mouth.

‘Yes, it is true. I try my best to protect your woman. But I am not a man of action. I am a man of God. Violence does not come readily to me.’

Nicholas fishes a kerchief from his doublet and hands it to the man to clean his face. ‘If you’re a priest, why aren’t you dressed like one?’

Ruben tries to smile. ‘I have no stomach to be a martyr. I am a Lutheran. And while I may be a coward, I am no fool. Only a fool would flaunt his Protestant faith in a papist country.’

Another fragment of the conservation in the Forest of Troyes comes back to Nicholas: He refused to countenance that God could be a Catholic, like the Spanish who had murdered our family…

‘Why have you been following us all the way from Reims?’ he asks.

Ruben Maas lets out a bitter laugh that bubbles through the blood seeping from his mouth. ‘Reims? I’ve been following you from Den Bosch.’

‘But why ?’

The young priest struggles to force himself upright. Nicholas’s assault has taken the strength out of his legs. He sways precariously. Nicholas puts out a hand to steady him and Maas flinches, as though he anticipates another blow.

‘It’s alright,’ Nicholas assures him. ‘I will not strike you again. But tell me why you’ve been following us all this way.’

Ruben Maas looks into Nicholas’s eyes with the pain of a man who knows he cannot meet the measure he has set for himself. He says, ‘Because I wanted to stop my sister from committing the sin of murder – again.’

‘Are you too elevated to march with us tonight, Professor Galileo?’ calls a voice teasingly from the Piazza dei Signori. ‘Is our company too dull for your exceptional mind? Or are you too drunk to walk in a straight line?’

Looking up from his wine, the mathematician sees the procession has come to one of its frequent halts. Directly in front of him, grouped in an untidy gaggle around the university’s banner, are the senior men from the Palazzo Bo. In the fog, their black scholastic togas soften their outlines, making them look as though the darkness of the night has taken on a solid, human form. By the light of the torches their servants carry, he can see them grinning at him.

‘Maestro Fabrici,’ he calls back, recognizing the speaker, ‘our august professor of anatomy! Off to do some butchery, are you? Bring me back a good slice of fresh pork.’