Sacrilege (54 page)

"Oh dear--did you really think ...?" He shook his head indulgently, as if at a slow child. "I'm afraid English law does not permit counsel for those accused of capital crimes. Now, if you stood accused of stealing five shillings, you would have a man of law to speak for you. But not for murder. It is one of those funny little quirks. The idea being, I suppose, that to hang a man the evidence must be so clear that there can be no defence."

"But the evidence against me is all fabricated," I said, through my teeth. "I must be allowed to challenge it!"

"You will have the chance to answer the charges," he said, in a soothing tone, resuming his pace. "But you would be well advised not to raise your hopes."

The crowds lining the street grew denser as we approached the Guildhall. Outside the main door, a handful of men on horseback in city livery did their best to hold back the press of people, but it was almost impossible to get in the door. Men stood on each other's shoulders, straining for a glimpse in the windows, while women shrieked vague generic abuse as we passed.

"They are ripe for a hanging," Edmonton murmured as our guards used the shafts of their weapons to encourage a path through the crowd. "Too many acquittals at the last assizes, they went home disappointed. People do like to see justice done, don't they?"

"Well, they have not much hope of that here," I said.

"Your quick tongue will avail you nothing with Justice Hale," he said over his shoulder as he tried to elbow his way through to the door. He spoke as if the justice were an old drinking partner, a friend he had known for years. "He likes proper decorum in his courtroom. For pity's sake, good people, let us through or there will be no trial today at all!" he bellowed at the broad goodwives in their best caps and bonnets, dressed up as if for a carnival.

On the threshold I lifted my hands, the chains rattling, and clutched at Edmonton's sleeve.

"Constable? May I have one request?"

He turned to me with a face of incredulity and brushed my fingers away from his arm as if they might leave a stain. "What do you think you are, a nobleman in the Tower? Even now, you think you merit special treatment just because Harry Robinson was fool enough to pay your bail?" When I did not respond, he sighed. "Well, what is it?"

"I wish to speak to Dean Rogers."

"Before you are called? Impossible. Why?"

"I would like him to pray with me. I am sure he would not refuse."

Edmonton hesitated.

"If my friends at court should learn that I was refused that comfort, it will go the worse for you."

"Yes, yes. Your friends at court. Sing another song." But he looked uncomfortable. "Make way for the prisoner there!" he called out, as the guards drove back the spectators to allow us to enter the Guildhall.

The crush of people was even greater in the entrance hall, and small skirmishes were breaking out as the crowd fought with one another for access to the main hall. I was dragged through to an anteroom guarded by two solid-looking men holding pikestaffs at a slant across the doorway. A clerk of the court with a portable writing desk slung around his neck stood outside and looked up, enquiring, his pen poised.

"Filippo Sav-- What is your name, Italian?" Edmonton snapped, turning to me.

"Savolino," I said to the clerk. He ran a finger down his list and nodded.

"Murder, attempted murder, and grand larceny," Edmonton added with emphasis, as if I might be confused with another Filippo Savolino there on lesser charges. The clerk made a mark in his register and nodded to the guards, who lowered their weapons and allowed us to pass.

The stench in this room hit you like a fist in the throat, the sick-bed, sewer stink of the gaol; at least fifty men and women were packed together as tight as cattle in a market, staring large-eyed at the door with blank faces. Seeing them here, in stark daylight instead of the gloom of the West Gate cell, they reminded me of pictures of the damned I had seen in frescoes; gaunt with hunger, misshapen with disease, their eyes already dead. For many of them, I supposed, this was death's waiting room, the trial a mere shuffling of papers on their way to the gallows. They were curiously silent, the only sounds a muffled weeping and the slither and clink of chains whenever any of them moved. Looking at some of them, it was hard to feel death would not be a kindness.

Edmonton had his sleeve pulled across his mouth against the foul air, so that his words could barely escape.

"Get in. Now you wait here to be called. Use the time to pray for mercy, I should." Behind his arm he was smirking again.

"And Dean Rogers?"

He made some dismissive noise and turned on his heel. The door was closed after him.

I was forced to stand, pressed in on either side by the mass of prisoners. Across the room I saw the old monk, Brother Anselm, and sent him an encouraging smile, but he only stared, unfocused. I suspected his eyesight was not good enough to recognise me. Either that, or he was beyond encouragement, like most of those manacled together in here. I closed my eyes and retreated into my theatre of memory, that system of corresponding wheels and images that had made my name in Paris and brought me to the notice of King Henri, which in turn had led to his sending me to London, which had brought me here, to face trial at a provincial assizes alongside coiners and horse thieves. All for a woman and a book, as Sidney had said.

I knew now who had killed Sir Edward Kingsley and Doctor Sykes. I just had to make certain. And then I had to decide what I would do about it.

Minutes stretched out; I do not know how long I waited there. One of the older women passed out and fell, dragging down those manacled to her; someone else pissed themselves where they stood, past any care for human dignity. Hemmed in on both sides, I retreated into my thoughts, feeling that a hole had been ripped through me, as if with cannon-shot.

After a while the door opened a crack and the clerk's face appeared in the opening.

"Where is the Italian?" he said.

I shuffled forward, raising my hands. The chains were growing heavier and my shoulders ached from the weight of holding them. He beckoned me forward and stepped back as I passed him, as if to avoid contagion.

Dean Rogers stood outside, his long face tight with anxiety.

"They said you wanted to pray?"

So Edmonton was afraid of my connections after all. I nodded. "I also needed to ask you something."

"Whatever I can do." He glanced around, then leaned closer. "I have spoken to Justice Hale on your behalf. But--the evidence ..." He trailed off uncertainly.

"I understand. I just need to know if anyone apart from you has a key to enter the crypt."

The dean frowned.

"Normally, no one but myself. Although," he added, with a dismissive wave, "some weeks ago I did give a copy to the minister of the Huguenot Church, for access to their little chapel, but in practice he does not need to use it. They hold their services during the hours when the crypt is unlocked. Why do you ask?"

"What is his name, the Huguenot minister?" My mouth had dried and the words came out cracked.

"He is a lay minister only, but he is ordained. Pastor Fleury. Jacques Fleury, the master weaver. But has this anything to do with your case?" he asked, concern in his eyes.

"I--" I looked up at him. "Will you pray with me now?"

"Of course." He laid a hand on my shoulder and embarked on some benign platitudes in his pleasant, soothing voice. I was grateful for the sentiment, but my thoughts were elsewhere. When he had finished, the clerk cleared his throat and opened the door into the anteroom.

"The prisoner ought to go back until he is called," he said, apologetically.

"Have you seen Harry? Is he here?" I whispered to the dean, as the guards ushered me towards the door.

He shook his head. "Not yet. I fear he may not be able to get through the crowds with his leg. Now I must take my seat in the courtroom. God be with you, Doctor Savolino."

I thanked him and submitted to being returned, none too gently, to my fellow prisoners. Had Harry found his way to Justice Hale in time to
explain everything? I would only know the answer when I stood to face him.

I was crushed next to one prisoner whose head hung towards the floor as if he had fallen asleep standing up.

"Are you a Canterbury man?" I asked, nudging him in the ribs.

He raised his head slowly and stared at me, amazed at being spoken to. I recoiled a little at the running pustules around his mouth.

"Born and bred. And shall die here today, most like," he said, as if it no longer mattered.

"Where is St. Radigund's Street?" I asked. He blinked slowly.

"Out by the old Blackfriars. You know," he said, when I looked blank. "Crosses the river a little way past the weavers' houses."

"The weavers' houses," I repeated, nodding. The man looked at me for a moment longer, then hung his head again. He did not ask why I wanted to know. When you are facing the gallows, such things have no importance.

T
HE COURTROOM ITSELF
was less chaotic than the entrance hall and anterooms; here, at least, benches were provided along one side of the room for citizens of status, though people were packed standing into the spaces behind and to every side. The air was smoky and smelled strongly like the apothecary's shop; in each corner, braziers stood on tall tripods burning aromatic herbs to ward off gaol fever. It must have been near to midday by the time I was led in along with nine other prisoners, including the old monk, all of us indicted for cases of blood; we were hustled into a corner behind a low wooden barrier. At the far end of the room a raised dais had been built, where Justice Hale sat at a broad table covered with piles of papers and surrounded by his retinue of earnest, black-robed clerks and juniors. Around his neck he wore a silver chain with a round pomander, which he raised frequently to his nose as protection
against the pestilence. To his right, twelve grim-faced men shifted on their benches, arms folded. This, I guessed, was the jury; they did not have the look of men you would turn to for compassion. The murmur of conversation swelled as we filed in, chains clinking rhythmically like a tolling bell; I glanced up and saw that Hale was looking at me. Our eyes met and he held my eye for a moment with a grave expression, but he gave nothing away.

The prisoners were taken up one by one to the bar to face the prosecutor and hear the charges against them read. The old monk, Brother Anselm, was the first to be called; as the guards unfastened him from the chain and shoved him to his place, I glanced around the courtroom. Dean Rogers was seated among the city dignitaries, as was Langworth, his brow drawn, the scar pressed white with apprehension. I had not missed the expression that flashed across his face when I was led into the hall; if he had depended on my being found dead in my bed this morning, he allowed his displeasure to show for only for a moment. He would have some other weapon up his sleeve, I had no doubt. Among the onlookers standing I saw Tom Garth and the Widow Gray; Rebecca and Mistress Blunt; Nicholas Kingsley and his hangers-on. There was still no sign of Harry. I closed my eyes, as if that might shut out the pain in my chest. Twice the justice tried to speak over the din of conversation, but the crowd were so animated, talking and pointing (for the most part, I was conscious, at me), that the court bailiff had to shout for order and thump his staff on the floor several times before Hale could make himself heard.

A witness stepped up to say he had found the old monk beside the dismembered body of a young boy on a midden outside the city wall one morning when he was bringing his cart in for the market; Brother Anselm tried to explain to the bench what he had told me, but in his distress he became incoherent, clutching at his clothes and lapsing into Latin. When he spoke his plea of not guilty there was a chorus of loud boos and hisses from the onlookers. I watched, dismayed, as three of the jurymen turned to confer among themselves with barely disguised contempt.
Another seemed more interested in the movements of a fly on the ceiling, leaning back with his hands folded behind his head, and another was quite brazenly falling asleep, his chin slumped onto his chest. Occasionally he would jerk upright and look around, as if unsure where he was, before his lids began to droop again. To sit through fifty or more of these cases unpaid would test any man's patience, I supposed, but my gut twisted with anger at the thought that any man could be so casual with another's life. Hale nodded for the old man to stand down. As he was taken from the bar, his eyes cast around wildly and landed on me, wide and pleading. "Speak for me, brother!" he cried out, as he was led back to us. "You know the truth!" I nodded, hoping to offer him some comfort, but that only caused more whispering and pointing in my direction.

Hale shuffled papers, made notes, replaced his quill carefully in its stand, sniffed his pomander, and eventually looked up from his list.

"The Italian, Filippo Savolino."

I was led out to the bar accompanied by a groundswell of murmuring that rose to such a crescendo that again the bailiff had to bang his stick for silence. I confirmed my name on oath, thinking as I did so that I had already perjured myself, so in a sense I was at liberty to say anything.