S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

‘I’ll bring you back a dozen, if you like – but I doubt you’d be able to count them accurately.’

Galileo raises his cup in a good-natured salute. ‘Tell me, Professor, is the door to your new anatomy theatre locked?’

‘Locked? It doesn’t have a door yet. And I intend to take that up with Signor Fassolato of the Arte dei Carpentieri straight after Mass. Why do you wish to know?’

‘An assignation, Professor Fabrici,’ Galileo says, picking the first fiction that comes into his head. ‘You must remember those – though, in your case, it would be a very ancient memory.’

‘You’re a disgrace to the university, Professor Galileo,’ Fabrici replies with good humour, bringing mutters of agreement from his companions.

‘So anyone can just walk in?’

‘Holy Mother of God! Don’t tell me you’re inviting an audience to watch you in your rutting? Are you that desperate to raise money?’

‘Just wondered. It doesn’t sound very secure.’

‘We have a watchman, so you’ll have to bribe him.’ Fabrici gives him a foxy stare. ‘If that’s beyond even your limited resources, I can only suggest you find a convenient wall, like the lecherous rogue you clearly are.’

The drums have started up again, echoing from the head of the procession somewhere on the way to the Basilica of St Anthony. The professors gather up the hems of their togas and prepare to resume their un-martial shuffling.

‘If there should happen to be any sign of…’ Fabrici screws up his face in disgust, ‘fornication… in my anatomy theatre tomorrow morning, Professor Galileo, I shall have stern words with the rector.’

‘Why?’ says the mathematician, making a farewell flourish with his free hand as the professors move off. ‘Does the rector use it, too?’

The blood on Bianca’s dress comes from a glancing slash to her shoulder.

‘It’s not deep,’ Nicholas says, after a careful inspection. ‘But it needs binding.’ He unlaces her sleeve, removes his own doublet, rips one sleeve off his linen shirt and tears a makeshift bandage. When he has tied it in place, he turns his attention to Ruben Maas. The priest’s right eye is half-shut, the socket bloodied from where Nicholas’s first blow landed. He is dabbing his mouth with his kerchief to staunch the bleeding from the gash in his lower lip.

‘Forgive me,’ Nicholas says, ‘but I had every reason to think you were an assassin. You must see how it looked–’

The priest nods slowly through the pain. ‘There is no blame, I have brought all this on myself,’ he says miserably. ‘I am a weak man. A man of faith, not of violence. But even I should have had the courage to have acted earlier, in the cathedral at Den Bosch. Then perhaps I could have stopped all this in its tracks.’

Nicholas stares at him. ‘In the cathedral at Den Bosch? It was you in that chamber? You’re the one I caught a glimpse of as you fled?’

‘I had no idea Hella was going to kill the priest, or the Spaniard. It all happened so quickly. But then, ever since Breda she has been like that: one moment calm and placid, the next a raging she-devil. I believe it is because she has Satan inside her heart. He makes her hate herself.’

‘Hella?’ Nicholas breathes. ‘ She killed them?’ He shakes his head in disbelief. ‘Why was I so blind? She wasn’t screaming in that chamber because of what she’d witnessed. She realized it was too late to run, and the knife was out of reach on the floor. She was screaming to fool me. ’ He stoops to retrieve his doublet from the floor and slips it on, leaving the points unlaced. ‘Help me get my wife to the Borgo dei Argentieri,’ he says curtly, his face creased with self-recrimination. ‘I can bathe her wound properly there – and yours. You can explain everything as we go.’

The fog is so thick now, the night so dark, that they almost miss the bridge. Only the torches burning on the parapet show the way back into the city. Bianca refuses the help of either man. Nicholas clumsily persists.

‘I’m not an invalid, Husband. I can walk perfectly well. It’s my shoulder – there’s nothing wrong with my legs.’

‘But the child–’

‘The child will be fine, Nicholas. I know it. After what Ruben just said, Hella’s curse does not frighten me any more.’ She stares up into the fog, as though it might contain dark creatures floating out of sight. ‘But I fear what she is capable of: the Dutch priest… that Spaniard… poor Matteo Fedele… Bondoni the goldsmith.’

‘Were you in the crowd today, when she pushed Bondoni into the path of the horses?’ Nicholas asks Ruben.

The priest covers his face with his hands. ‘Oh, sweet Saviour, not another one.’

‘I think it is time for you to give a full account of yourself, Father Ruben,’ Nicholas says as they hurry across the canal and into the narrow lanes beyond. ‘And your troubled sister.’

‘It began after Breda,’ Ruben begins. ‘Until then we were a fortunate family – gifted not in riches, but in our minds. Hella was the cleverest by far. She ate numbers as hungrily as others eat sweetmeats and sugared comfits. Soon she started to believe that she could foretell events because of the patterns she saw in numbers – she thought numbers were the underlying structure of all that she saw around her. But after the Spanish came to Breda, she began to blame herself for not foreseeing the greatest threat of all.

‘Afterwards I could not bear to remain in a place with so many terrible memories clinging to it. When Hella took refuge with the Beguines, I went north, into the Protestant territories. I still believed in God, but I knew He could not be a Catholic God. I became a Lutheran priest.’

‘How did you come to be in Den Bosch cathedral then?’ Nicholas asks.

‘Eventually I gathered the courage to go back to search for Hella. I tracked her down to the city, found her sitting in a doorway like a prophet who’s been cast out by those she would warn. She told me of the painting, and that she was going to plead with Father Vermeiren to remove it. When we entered that little chapel, I thought that’s what she was going to do. Then she drew a knife. It all happened so quickly. Vermeiren was dead before he knew what was happening – before I knew what was happening. When the Spaniard tried to take the blade from her, she struck him across the throat.’

‘And then you fled?’

‘What could I do? If they’d found out I was a priest from the Protestant states, they would have hanged me. I looked to my own safety – and for a second time I abandoned my sister.’

Walking in step between the two men, Bianca says, ‘Why did she not kill you , Nicholas?’

‘She had dropped the knife before I stepped out into plain view,’ Nicholas answers. ‘As Ruben says, Hella has faster wits than most. She probably realized that by the time she got to it, either I would have overpowered her or the commotion would have brought others running. So she decided to play the innocent victim. She started screaming.’

‘Why did you decide to follow us, Father Ruben?’ Bianca asks the priest.

‘I thought perhaps I could help my sister find redemption. But at Reims, when I tried to speak to her, she would have none of me. I was not deterred. I would not let myself forsake her again, not like I had after Breda. And to be truthful to you – and God knows it’s time to be truthful to myself – I feared she might kill again.’ He gives a sad, reflective laugh. ‘I thought I could stop her. What a fool I was.’