Sacrilege (52 page)

"All Greek to you."

"That is the point--it is not all Greek. My Greek is poor but I can usually make out some of the meaning. Part of this book is written in a language I have never seen."

I laughed.

"It is a cipher. The book was translated into Greek from a very ancient manuscript in Egyptian. The translator believed the knowledge it contained was so powerful that it should not be made visible except to a very few adepts."

"Magic?" She raised her head an inch and I heard the animation in her voice.

"Beyond magic. I believe this book contains the last great secret of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus--the truth of how man can become like God."

She whistled softly; I felt her breath tickle my neck.

"It must be very valuable."

"Only a handful of people could recognise its true worth." I pictured them: my friend John Dee, now living in Prague at the court of Emperor Rudolf; Lord Henry Howard, who had once almost killed Dee in pursuit of this book, and would have sent it down here to Langworth for safekeeping when he knew he was to be sent to prison and his house raided. "My patron, King Henri of France, is a great collector of occult manuscripts. I can barely imagine what he would be willing to pay for it. But I do not mean to sell it at any price," I added.

"Have you broken the cipher?"

I smiled. "You have had more leisure to read that book than I ever have. But I will."

"If anyone can, Bruno, it is you." She laid her hand on my chest and I rested my cheek on her hair. For a moment it was possible to imagine that this was real, that tomorrow I would not be on trial for my life. "What will happen to us?" she whispered, as if reading my thoughts.

"I don't know. The justice seems a sensible sort of man. He is friends with the dean, and the dean is anxious not to offend my connections at court, so perhaps it will go well for me. I still have hope that my letter will have reached my friend Sidney in time."

I did not think they would dare to execute me on the spot, which meant there was still time for an intervention. If my letter had found its destination, I thought, with a brief wave of despair; the weavers would not know the urgency. They may spend two or three days in town attending to their own business before they remembered they had a message to deliver.

"And me?" she asked, in a small voice.

"If Tom Garth will find the courage to speak, it will weaken the case against you to know that the gloves were not yours. There is no other evidence against you."

"Except that I ran, and took his money," she murmured. "And that I gain most from his will. I thought you would find the real killer easily, like you did in Oxford." There was a faint hint of accusation in her voice, and I bridled at it.

"Because you thought the answer was simple. You thought it was Nicholas. But I can only think it was Langworth, for some complex reason connected with the experiments on the boys and their plans regarding Becket. But I cannot prove it for certain. Not by tomorrow, anyway." I took a deep breath. "I am sorry if you think I have failed you."

"No." She stroked a finger along my collarbone. "Perhaps it is I who have failed. I have failed all along, all my life. I must have been born under a very bad aspect."

"You were just born to the wrong station in life," I whispered into the top of her head. "A spirit like yours would have been better suited to being a princess."

She laughed, a gentle bubbling sound against my chest. "Please, Bruno, aim higher. Queen, I think."

"And yet, you know the queen of England lives every day in fear of her life too?"

"At least she has never been forced to take a husband," she said, with feeling.

I slept; at least, I drifted in and out of sleep as the moon drifted among its violet tatters of cloud, its blue light slowly moving the shadows on the wall each time my eyes half opened. Sophia slept easily against my chest, her breathing rhythmic and soft, her face flushed and smooth as her eyelids twitched. The arm I had under her head grew numb but I kept still for fear of waking her. Hours passed. The moon was hidden, revealed, hidden again. And then, I heard it: a tread on the stair. The faintest of movements; as if a cat had approached the door. But my nerves sprang alive, the hairs on my arms prickled; in my gut I felt a sudden inkling of danger. Gingerly I retrieved my arm from under Sophia's head and pushed myself upright, trying to keep quiet; might it only be Harry, shuffling about on the floor below, fumbling for his piss-pot in the dark? But the movement had sounded too close at hand. I felt for my knife and realised I had unbuckled it and left it with my belt and breeches on a chair against the far wall.

I was easing myself upright slowly when the door was pushed open
and the shadow of a man loomed across the white wall opposite the bed. I made to move but he was at the end of the bed before I could shake off the sheet and in the thin light I caught the unmistakable glint of a knife. I hardly needed the moon to reveal him; the long nose, the gleam of his pale domed head.

"Well, well." Samuel nodded at Sophia's sleeping form. "Two birds with one stone, you might say. And you will die with your sins on you, which is no more than you deserve, you heretic dog."

Sophia stirred and opened her eyes at the sound of his voice; dazed, she took a moment to comprehend the scene, but when she did she gave a little scream, which she stifled with her hand.

"Why didn't you kill me sooner, if you meant to?" I asked, hearing the tremor in my voice.

Samuel considered this.

"We didn't know how much you knew. But now you cannot be permitted to air your theories in a public courtroom."

"How will you explain my death?"

He shrugged. "Not for me to explain. I am on the road to London, remember? I expect it will look as if Harry killed you in self-defence and then died of his own wounds."

"Oh, God, no." My stomach lurched and I tasted bile. "You have not killed Harry?"

"Not yet. But he cannot be left at liberty to repeat your suppositions to Francis Walsingham or anyone else." His voice was remarkably calm. But then a man who could drop a dismembered child out of a sack onto a rubbish heap must be unusually free of emotion. "Now then." He looked from me to Sophia with lascivious anticipation. "What would give you the greatest suffering, Bruno--to watch me kill her first, or to die yourself knowing I mean to have some sport with her while you bleed your life out on the floor like a slaughtered calf?"

Sophia muffled a sob and pulled her shift tight around her legs, hugging her knees to her chest. I glanced over Samuel's shoulder to where my knife lay; any attempt to lunge past him for it and he would stick his
blade straight in me. My best hope was somehow to distract him and then to kick him in the arm holding the knife while his attention was divided. It was not the first time I had kept the threat of death at bay by talking; it was worth a try again.

"Why did you kill Sykes?" I blurted.

"What?" He sounded irritated by the question. "I did not kill Sykes, you fool."

"Then who did?"

"You tell me."

I stared at him, perplexed.

"
I
? What would I know? You killed him, surely, on Langworth's order, like you killed Fitch."

He made a small, impatient movement with his head.

"Fitch was becoming a problem. He didn't know how to keep his mouth shut. When Sykes saw him talking to you that day, knowing who you were--we had to make sure he said nothing else."

"So you killed him because of me?" I thought of the apothecary's merry laugh.

"It would have happened sooner or later."

"And Sykes?"

"I told you--I didn't touch Sykes. Do not think to delay me with this. I will do what I came here to do." He took a step closer to my side of the bed, his knife held out. I gathered my strength and kicked out at his hand, but he had anticipated the movement and circled it deftly away, the tip of the blade grazing my foot. "Save your energy for your prayers," he said through his teeth, and took another step towards me, blade poised.

He was perhaps three feet away now; one good thrust and he could strike me from there: face, chest, stomach. In the dim light I saw the shine of his eyes as they flickered over me, anticipating the best spot for the first blow. Then, a sound, unexpected; I felt Sophia tense and sit up. Samuel must have heard it too; he hesitated for the space of a heartbeat, knife half raised, and almost turned. There was a movement, a slicing and a rush of air, then a sickening crack and he seemed to crumple like a
straw effigy, first to his knees and then onto his side. Behind him, in the doorway, Harry stood in his nightgown, a poker clutched in his shaking hands.

"He would have killed you," he mouthed, staring at Samuel's prone form and his own makeshift weapon in amazement.

"I thought you couldn't get up the stairs," I said, feeling my own limbs beginning to tremble in the aftershock.

"Well, I can when I need to," he said, transfixed by the scene in front of him, as if he could not quite believe it was his own doing. "I couldn't sleep. I heard the key turning in the front door--my ears are still good, if nothing else. I knew it could only be him. He would have killed you," he repeated, almost mechanically, and I realised he was justifying his actions to himself, reassuring his conscience, or his God, that he had had no choice.

Then, as suddenly as if he himself had been struck with a poker, his legs seemed to give way beneath him and he slumped against the wall, his free hand flapping in vain as if searching for his stick. Snapped out of my daze, I leapt across the bed and caught him under the arms before he fell, guiding him gently to sit on the bed. Sophia subsided into quiet sobs, her face pressed into her knees. I did not know which of them to comfort first.

"Let us thank God that we are all alive," I said, exhaling slowly. "The question is--what do we do with him?"

We all looked at Samuel, who chose that moment to let out a guttural moan as blood bubbled from his nose. Sophia jumped back with another little scream.

"Better thank God that he is still alive too," Harry muttered, but I could hear the relief in his voice. He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He had feared the stain of murder on his soul.

"We must get him upright," I said, picking up the knife that had fallen from Samuel's hand. I shouldered him into a sitting position against the wall with a strange sense of familiarity; it seemed only moments since I had done the same for Nick Kingsley. "If they only knew--I haven't
murdered the man they claim I did, but I have nearly killed three others since I've been here."

"
I
nearly killed this one, Bruno, don't take all the glory."

I looked at Harry and we both broke out laughing; after staring at us blankly for a moment, Sophia joined in and the three of us must have sounded like tavern drunks, doubled over and wiping tears from our faces in sheer relief, until Samuel groaned again, a throaty, bestial sound, and slid sideways.

"He must be kept safe somewhere until tomorrow," I said, as if sobering up.

On the floor by the bed, Sophia had dropped the voluminous dress of Olivier's grandmother; I found one of the underskirts made of a rough heavy linen and began to tear through it with Samuel's knife, until I had cut it into long strips. With Harry holding Samuel's body up, I bound the servant's wrists tightly together behind him, did the same with his ankles, and tied three thick strips around his mouth.

"Can he breathe through that?" Harry asked, peering anxiously into Samuel's unseeing face. "If his mouth is filled with blood?"

"We'll have to take our chances. Come now, both of you--we'll have to get him down the stairs and lock him in his own chamber. Keep him here until we are ready to have him fetched before the justice. And Langworth must not know Samuel was unsuccessful tonight, or he may try something else."

Between us, Sophia and I manoeuvred Samuel's limp body down the stairs to the first floor and into the small bedchamber he had used at the back of the house. It was plainly furnished, with no sign of personal belongings save a wooden chest in one corner, secured with a padlock. Sophia's strength belied her slender frame, and we hauled Samuel until he was propped against a stool by the wall. I retied his hands around one leg of the stool; it was not fixed down, but it would make it harder for him to free himself. Harry took a ring of keys from his servant's belt and clicked through them until he found the one he wanted. At the door, he paused to take a last, pitying look.

"Don't be sentimental, Harry," I warned, seeing his expression. "He meant to kill you after me."

Harry sighed. "And yet he seemed a loyal servant for so many years."

"Even while he was passing every detail of your business to Langworth for money. Come now," I said, stifling a yawn, as Harry locked Samuel securely into the room, "I doubt we shall sleep more tonight. Let me warm some wine--we would all be glad of a drink."

Downstairs, in the kitchen, when Sophia had returned to bed, Harry sat at the table swilling the dregs of his wine around the glass.

"You love that girl," he remarked, not looking at me.

"I ..." I looked away. It seemed fruitless to finish the sentence.

"Will you marry her? You should, you know," he added, in a tone of mild reproach, when I did not reply.

"I have no means to support a wife, Harry. Besides, I don't know if she would have me." Even as I spoke, I felt I did know. Sophia did not want another husband. The point about Sophia, I wanted to tell him, was that you would never be sure you really had her. That was her appeal--beyond her beauty, it was this sense that she belonged wholly to herself, and always kept something in reserve. She was as elusive as the true meaning of that book upstairs in its wooden casket, and bred in me the same unsatisfied longing. But I was too tired to try and explain any of this.

"Even though she has married you in the sight of God?" He raised an eyebrow. Meaning, because I had taken her to my bed.

To my knowledge, Sophia had already married three men in the sight of God in that sense, and quite possibly more. For myself, I doubted God concerned Himself too far with such things; with Christendom still tearing itself apart over the true substance of a piece of bread and a glass of wine, did He really have time to count? I didn't say this either. We sat in sympathetic silence, like two bruised survivors of a skirmish, until the dawn light filtered through the small casement and Harry suggested I heat a bowl of water for a shave.