S. PERRY - The Heretic’s Mark

Nicholas says, ‘That’s when I saw you first, when you stopped her in the cathedral square. And then again at the hospice of St Bernard’s in the mountains. You could have spoken to us. It would have been better if you had.’

Father Ruben finds another failing in himself. He adds it to the list with a slow shake of his head. ‘Alas, I am not accomplished at intrigue. Besides, Hella told me I should not trust you.’

‘Hardly a fortnight after we saved her life,’ Bianca says, as though she’s known it all along.

‘Why did you run – the day I saw you in that side-street by the Basilica?’ Nicholas asks.

‘I told you: I am a coward. That’s what cowards do. They run.’

Bianca lays a hand on Ruben’s forearm. ‘You are not a coward, Father Ruben. A coward would not have risked his life to seek out his sister in a land dangerous to him. And a coward wouldn’t have done what you did in that storehouse.’ She turns her head to Nicholas. ‘Hella pulled a blade. She would have killed me. As it was, she landed a strike on my shoulder even as I was trying to get away from Ruben – whom I believed at that moment was the true assassin. He stood over me. He told her that if she was determined to take my life, she would have to take his first. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.’

‘It took me long enough to find it. When I followed Hella to that same place a few days ago, on the day she murdered that poor young fellow, I fled again – like a frightened child.’

‘At least I know now why she’s doing it,’ Nicholas says. ‘Warning us about the dangers of seeking knowledge is no longer enough for her. She’s come to the conclusion it’s better to stop us altogether. If we’re dead, we can’t look behind the curtain. We can’t open the door and risk letting the Devil in.’

Ahead of them, the two Corio cousins rise up out of the fog, their dice and their wine forgotten. Staring in disbelief at the apparitions emerging from the night, they begin to draw their rapiers. Bianca stays them with a brief call of reassurance. Once inside the house, Nicholas dispatches one of them to fetch a flask of aquavite di vinaccia from the credenza in the parlour. He uses the grape spirit to clean Bianca’s wound and the lacerations that his fury has inflicted on Ruben’s face.

‘Where did your sister go?’ he asks, dabbing the spirit-soaked cloth against the priest’s mouth.

‘She didn’t say.’

‘She walked out into the fog without a word?’

‘Not exactly. She said something about an audience?’

‘She wants an audience for whoever in the Arte dei Astronomi she intends to kill next?’ Nicholas asks, horrified.

‘I heard what she said,’ Bianca chimes in. ‘I’m not quoting her exactly, but it was along the lines of: It is bad enough people opening the door to the Devil’s knowledge without scholars making a theatre of it and inviting an audience.’

‘Then I believe I know where she’s gone,’ Nicholas says. The sense of dread that has been with him ever since the Arte dei Astronomi began its march without its leading light has become a hard, cold stone in his stomach. ‘I’m going back to the Palazzo Bo.’

Bianca rises from her chair.

‘ No , stay here,’ Nicholas says, sounding harsher than he intended. ‘She has already tried to kill you once. At least here you have the Corio cousins to keep you safe.’

He turns to Ruben.

‘Forgive me for the hurt I did you, Father. Do you feel well enough to come with me? You may be the only man able to avert further tragedy tonight.’

Ruben tries to smile through the swollen corner of his lip. ‘I’ve come this far,’ he says. ‘Only a true coward would give up now.’

The streets around the Palazzo Bo are almost empty. The tail of the procession is somewhere off to the south, towards the Basilica of St Anthony, mired in the fringes of the great crowd filling the Piazza del Santo. But Nicholas can still hear the echoing of drums and the occasional roar of public approval.

By day, the arcades that line the university are teeming with students and scholars, arguing, debating, sometimes even brawling. But tonight they stand empty, like the cloisters of an abandoned monastery. The mist drifts around the arches like a mournful sea lapping at an uninhabited shore. The watchman’s brazier burns unattended. Nicholas calls out, but receives no answer.

‘Perhaps he’s slipped away to watch the procession,’ Ruben says as he and Nicholas lift torches from an iron rack bolted to a pillar and light them in the brazier. Nicholas doesn’t answer. His fear is that the watchman has been lured away not by curiosity, but by some clever deceit – or, worse, that he has met the same fate as the Spaniard at Den Bosch, paying with his life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

On the way from the Borgo dei Argentieri he has had plenty of time for dark images to crowd his mind. Now he understands Bruno’s failure to join the procession. He is certain that Bruno and the mathematician have somehow been lured to this place by Hella Maas. The knowledge fills him with dread. The fact that she is one young woman, alone, does not ease that dread for an instant.

Torch in hand, the flames casting devilish patterns on the plastered walls, he approaches the empty hole in the night that is the open doorway to the uncompleted anatomy theatre. He senses Ruben hesitate.

‘Be careful,’ he warns the priest. ‘This place is full of workmen’s gear and rubbish. I’ve caused you enough hurt already, without you planting your face on the floor or walking into a beam.’

‘There is no room left in my heart for any further hurt,’ Ruben says grimly. ‘It is too full of pain for what my sister has done.’

On either side of the open doorway a flight of wooden stairs curves away around the elliptical body of the auditorium, creating a narrow space between the inner and outer walls. Ahead of him, through the entrance, Nicholas can see the railed enclosure where Professor Fabrici will carry out his dissections when the anatomy theatre is in use. It is not a large space, just long enough to take a cadaver, with enough room for the lecturer to stand between his subject and the first tier of his audience.

To his horror, he sees the dissection area is not empty. By the torchlight he can make out a figure lying on the platform. He moves cautiously closer, holding up the torch. Suddenly the figure sits up. In Nicholas’s mind, he has just seen a corpse rise from its grave.

‘You’ve left the procession, Signor Physician,’ says Galileo, his voice a little slurred. ‘Wise fellow. Who wants to listen to a priest blessing a toy boat when there are taverns still open?’ He jabs a finger in Nicholas’s direction. ‘I was expecting Master Purse,’ he adds as an afterthought. ‘Has he sent you instead? Have you brought the money with you?’

‘Money?’ echoes Nicholas, confused.

‘Bruno sent me a note to meet him here. He said he had a heavy purse of the doge’s coin to give me.’

‘Did you receive this note from his own hand, Professor?’ Nicholas asks.

‘No, it was a maid. She looked like one of those Poor Clares, clad in sackcloth and brimming with piety.’

Nicholas covers his face with his free hand for a moment, as if to stop his thoughts from spinning and fix them in one place.

‘From Hella Maas?’

‘No, it wasn’t her,’ Galileo says. ‘I’d have recognized her .’

‘I fear greatly for Bruno’s life, Professor – and yours,’ Nicholas tells him. ‘I think you should come away from this place, now. There is great danger here.’