Sacrilege

Chapter 13

The rain continued, unabated, long after darkness had fallen, relentless in its force, as if the heavens meant to compensate for the weeks of drought by unloading all their water at once. I lay awake on the truckle bed in Harry’s spare room, listening to the torrents streaming from the eaves, pelting the roof above me like pebbles thrown in endless handfuls. Through the open casement I could smell wet earth and something metallic in the charged air. I stretched and clenched my fingers repeatedly, waiting until I could be sure all the residents of the cathedral close were sleeping; my nerves were taut, my mind as alert as if it were morning.

Supper at the dean’s had been a tedious affair, despite the quality of the food and the undoubted beauty of the dining room in the Archbishop’s Palace. The canons talked in wearisome detail of cathedral business and regarded me—when they bothered to acknowledge me at all—with an air of suspicion that bordered on outright contempt; apart from the dean, who interrogated me about my life in London and who else I knew of any standing at court, barely bothering to disguise the fact that his whole interest in me was in seeing what influence I might be placed to exert on his behalf in London, once the awkward business of the assizes had been dealt with. The food was excellent and I gathered that the dean and his circle of friends and colleagues dined like this as a matter of course; I could see why Walsingham might resent the resources tied up in furnishing this small group of well-educated clerics with the comfortable life of gentlemen. I was conscious that the dean was giving me an opportunity to ingratiate myself with the other canons and to counter some of the gossip they may have heard about me; I appreciated the thought, but I was too preoccupied with the coming night to be good company and I was relieved when Harry, perhaps sensing my discomfort, declared himself to be too tired to stay for port and pipes and asked me if I would accompany him home through the rain.

Now I moved to the window and looked out across the darkened close. The night was still hot, despite the storm, and the rain seemed to rise again from the ground, misting the air with moisture. The cathedral was a dense black shape solid as a fortress against the inky clouds chasing across the sky behind its towers. There was no sign of life on the ground and no light to be seen at any window. The world was silent except for the insistent drumming of the rain and the hiss of water running down stone. I doubted whether Tom Garth or the watchman would be abroad in this weather, but I would have to take my chances. Somewhere under that vast dark church, Sophia was waiting for me.

I descended as quietly as I could manage, pausing on each creaking stair and hoping I had not woken Harry. Before he retired to bed he had left a pair of new candles and a tinderbox for me on the buffet in the front parlour, and I now tucked these inside the black doublet I wore over my shirt. With black breeches, I hoped I would not be visible as I moved around the precincts; I could keep close to the cathedral wall and hope to blend into the shadows. From the corner of my eye I half glimpsed a movement and turned to see Harry in the doorway in his nightshirt, his white hair even wilder than usual.

“Sorry to startle you.” He held up what looked like a black cloth. “Take my cloak. It’ll keep the rain off and you’ll be less recognisable if you wear the cowl up.”

I breathed out, aware again of how on edge I was. Even Harry’s unexpected appearance had set my pulse racing in my throat.

“Thank you.” I pulled the cloak around my shoulders and drew the hood over my head. In the purse at my belt I carried the copies of Langworth’s keys and my bone-handled knife was tucked into my boot.

“I don’t like this at all, Bruno, but we are in so deep now that our only hope is to turn up solid evidence against Langworth and his fellow conspirators. If there is something hidden in that crypt, you had better find it. And without getting caught. If you are found breaking into the treasury it will hardly help the case for your innocence.” He sighed, and clapped me on the shoulder. “Godspeed.”

I thanked him and opened the door into the storm.

IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE to see more than a few feet ahead and I had to move slowly as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. Rain clouds obscured the moon, though the clouds themselves seemed lit from behind by a violet storm light. Surely, I thought, if any watchman was out on a night like this he would have to carry a lantern, which would give me warning of his presence so that I could slip into the shadow of a buttress or outbuilding; without a light myself, I was unlikely to be noticed in this weather. I stumbled as far as Harry’s front gate and paused there, grateful for the hooded cloak which kept the worst of the rain out of my face. When I was sure that all was quiet, I ran as fast as I could across the open path and into the shelter of the cathedral wall. Keeping close to the wet stone, I crept forward through the gate and past the timber yard until I rounded the corona at the eastern end. Here I felt my blood quicken again; I now had to pass the row of houses that ran parallel to the north side of the cathedral, and to reach the treasury I would have to walk right by Langworth’s front door. I had no way of knowing whether he had returned or stayed overnight with Nicholas Kingsley, but I was certain that if he was at home and heard any suspicious sound near the treasury he would not hesitate to investigate.

I edged around the curve of the corona until I could see the outline of the row of houses opposite. All the windows were dark; the rain continued to beat down, obscuring any sound. My steps were muted by the wet earth of the path. Just as I was almost on the north side of the apse, an almighty crack exploded overhead and for the space of a heartbeat the whole sky flared into a brilliant white light, leaving me outlined against the stone wall as starkly as if it were noon. The thunder grumbled on for a few moments longer and eventually died away, as I pressed into the corner by a buttress, chest heaving, legs trembling with shock. The rain seemed to attack even more fiercely as I tried to slow my breathing and recover my composure. If the heart of the storm was now upon us, I had to move fast; every sheet of lightning would illuminate me as if I were on a stage.

Before the next burst, I quickened my pace, trying to keep all my senses alert through the torrents of water now streaming from the cowl of Harry’s cloak. I passed Langworth’s house with a shudder, glancing up nervously at the dark windows, but I could see nothing except rain and shadows. I was relieved when I turned the corner around the chapel that jutted out and found myself on the path between the library and the cathedral and out of sight of any residential houses, with the treasury on my left.

Here between the buildings it was pitch-black. I felt my way along the wall to the carved stone of the shallow porch. The rain was beginning to soak through Harry’s cloak and the first rivulets were trickling down my neck as I fumbled at my belt for the bunch of keys. But I could not find the latch and my fingers scrabbled frantically across the pitted wood of the door, slick with rainwater streaming down its surface, as I searched for the keyhole, cursing under my breath. It was only at the moment of another apocalyptic crack overhead, accompanied by a flash that lit the scene in its strange bluish glare, that I was able to see clearly enough to insert the first key. Prompted by some instinctive unease, I glanced quickly over my shoulder and thought for a moment I saw a figure outlined against the archway that led through to the cloister, someone dressed like me in a hooded cloak. I froze, all my senses prickling, straining for any sound over the dying rumble of thunder and the constant battering of the rain, but no movement came. The lightning had lasted only a fraction of a moment and I told myself it must have been my fevered imagination, seeing shapes in shadows. The second key I tried fitted the lock and turned smoothly, and I gave a small exclamation of triumph as the treasury door opened to me with a portentous creak.

I dropped back the dripping hood of Harry’s cloak and took out one of the candles tucked into my doublet. Here inside the building was only the silence and the peculiar musty smell of damp stone; in the chill I shivered as I struggled to strike the tinder. After some efforts I had the candle lit, and holding it up could see that I was in a stark, high-ceilinged room, with a stone floor and walls, unadorned except for the shelves of ledgers and scrolls neatly arranged under the windows. There were two broad desks standing at right angles to each other in one corner and to the left of these, a low wooden door set into the wall. I turned slowly, shielding the flame with my hand, searching the walls and floor for some evidence of an opening to the vault I had seen marked on the map. If the map was right, the vault was built under the treasury and connected with the crypt through its southern wall. So the entrance should be somewhere along the wall of the treasury that backed onto the cathedral, to my right. As I walked, I could hear the drip of water from the cloak’s hem and the sound of my wet boots on the flagstones; I had to hope the trail would dry quickly or it would be immediately clear that an intruder had entered.

The southern wall of the treasury held no bookshelves; instead there was a wide brick-lined fireplace. I leaned in and attempted to look up the flue, but the candle’s light was too feeble to illuminate much beyond my own height. Looking down, I saw that the hearth had been carefully swept; it was clearly some time since a fire had been lit there. The entrance to the vaults had to be concealed somewhere inside the fire-place; I could see no other place that would make sense. It was just a question of finding it. Crouching, I moved farther in and began to press my fingers along the brickwork. On the right-hand side, I thought I felt a seam that suggested the outline of a doorway, but in that light it was impossible to see. I continued to push at the bricks with no success and a growing anxiety. If I could not find the entrance to the vault, there was no way of reaching Sophia before the dean came to open up the crypt in the morning, and even if I did locate it, the night was short—I still had to find Sophia and get her back to Harry’s before dawn crept across the sky, and that was without the task I had set myself of searching for Becket’s bones.

I took a deep breath to calm my racing pulse; if I allowed my fears to overcome me now I would not be able to think clearly and everything would be forfeit. As I tried to settle my thoughts, another burst of thunder exploded like cannonfire above me, rattling around the walls, as the lightning whitewashed the room so that all was hard-edged light and shadow, and in that moment there flashed before me on the stage of my memory the image of another such brick wall, in a house I had seen in Oxfordshire. There a concealed entrance had been built on a pivot operated by pressing one of the flagstones on the floor. Hopeful again, I half stood so that I could try the same here by pushing my weight onto my heel. Nothing happened. Gathering all my determination, I tried the same with the next flagstone along and heard a distinctive click, as the wall I was leaning on shifted almost imperceptibly. I pressed against it with my shoulder and the wall swung soundlessly inwards on its hinges, more lightly and easily than I had expected; the outward layer of brick was just to disguise a wooden door panel that had been built into the fireplace. In front of me the candle illuminated a flight of spiral steps curving downwards into darkness. With great relief, and no small sense of triumph, I began my descent, pulling the doorway closed behind me.

So this was Langworth’s secret vault that allowed him into the crypt unseen, I thought, as I felt my way down the narrow stairs. That first day when he had appeared to Harry and me as if from one of the tombs, he must have come through this entrance. With his house positioned almost next to the treasury, it would be easy for him to visit the crypt at night, unseen by any of the other residential canons. The door in the fireplace had opened smoothly, as if it was well-used. I guessed that Langworth must visit his hidden treasure frequently.

The staircase opened out into an underground vault that was perhaps half the size of the treasury building above, dank with the smell of mould. I reached out to the wall to guide myself and my fingertips met something cold and slimy. I recoiled in haste, and held the candle up to see dark green moss growing on the stones. At intervals iron rings were fixed into the stone, rusting and leaving an orange-brown trail that bled into the green. I recalled that the map said the place had once been used as a prison. I shuddered to think of it, and thought of the frayed rope in the underground tomb at St. Gregory’s, where those poor boys must have been kept while Sykes carried out his experiments on them as if they were no more than mice. I determined that, for the sake of those children, I would find the evidence to convict Langworth and Sykes and make sure no more boys had to see the inside of that tomb.

Opposite the staircase was a low iron-clad door; locked, naturally, though as I had hoped the last untried key of Langworth’s fitted and turned stiffly. The door opened inward and I slipped through into another dark space, where almost immediately I walked into a solid object so unexpectedly that I nearly dropped the candle. Fortunately I managed not to exclaim aloud, and held the flame up so that I could see a wooden panel some eight feet high fitted over the niche where the door to the vault entered the crypt to conceal the entrance. A few moments of impatient searching revealed a latch hidden on the inside of the panel; when pressed, it swung outward on its hinges, allowing me to pass into what I now realised was one of the small chantry chapels of the crypt. I pushed the panel shut behind me. In the wavering light I saw that the side facing outwards showed a handsome painting of the Nativity—and stepped forward into the dark.

In the depths of the night, the empty crypt with its forest of columns and endlessly repeating arches seemed more menacing than before, and more vast. After a few steps I paused to get my bearings, alert for any sound that would betray the presence of another person, but all I could hear was the rasp of my own breathing and the intermittent rumble of thunder from outside, sounding far distant, as if I were hearing it from underwater. As I advanced, I realised I was parallel with the small altar I had seen on my first visit, the one that lay at the heart of the crypt, flanked by stone tombs. Was Becket hidden somewhere here? I moved closer until the candlelight caught the silver crucifix in the centre of the altar cloth. I picked it up and weighed it in my right hand. Though the cross itself was no more than eighteen inches high, the base was square and solid and certainly heavy enough to crack a man’s skull if brought down with sufficient force.

I tried to picture that night: Sir Edward Kingsley walking back from the Archbishop’s Palace on the north side of the cathedral, towards Langworth’s house. Someone waiting in the shadows as he passed the treasury building; a step forward, and a single blow to the back of the head would have been enough to fell him, but it would have been growing dark. Whoever struck him must have been very sure of his aim. And then, according to the reports, the killer had continued to bludgeon Kingsley as he lay there, until his skull was almost destroyed and his brains spilled over the ground like the cathedral’s famous martyr. A murder fuelled by hatred or vengeance, not merely the need to dispatch someone because they presented an inconvenience. Or at least made to appear that way. I looked down at the crucifix, puzzled. A tall strong man like Tom Garth might wield such an object efficiently as a weapon, but how would Tom have smuggled it out of the crypt before the dean locked up for the night?

I thought I heard a noise beyond me, somewhere in the eastern end of the crypt. Replacing the crucifix, I moved as quickly as the darkness allowed towards the part that Langworth had made sure to tell us was cordoned off and used for storage. Now that I remembered that encounter, it seemed to me obvious that he was deliberately directing us away from that part of the crypt; here, then, I would begin my search.

At the eastern end the crypt appeared to open up, the ceiling vaults were higher and the broad stone columns gave way to delicate pillars, spaced more widely and made—I noticed as I drew nearer—of a glossy polished marble. The floor was piled with chests, wooden crates, and the skeletal outlines of broken furniture. There were small chapels built off to each side and they too were filled with unwanted or forgotten items. It was from one of these that I heard the sound again; a kind of scratching, like the movements of a rat. I held up the candle; its flame was burning lower now, elongating as I tilted it to avoid the hot wax dripping down my wrist.

“Sophia?”

No response; just the scratching noise again.

“Are you here? It is I.” I moved closer to the source of the noise, tripping as I did so on some box I had not seen, sending it into a pile of crates with a terrifying clatter. “Merda!” I stooped to rub my injured toe and heard a muffled laugh from the far corner of the chapel. “Where are you, damn it?”

“Bruno? Is it really you?”

From the mass of objects heaped up by the disused altar, a shape detached itself and approached, picking its way carefully through the debris. Bundled into a bulky cloak, the figure stopped in front of me and drew back its hood.

I swear she had never looked more beautiful to me; the sweet relief on her face when she saw me, after what must have been hours of fear alone in the dark; her fragility in that moment, the tears that sprang involuntarily to her eyes as they searched my face. Was that the moment when I knew I loved her, and would do whatever it took to make her love me? Perhaps; all I know is that when she threw herself on me and clung around my neck as if she would never let go, I felt I would have willingly endured any amount of time in that filthy gaol cell for the glory of feeling how much she needed me in that moment.

“Oh God, Bruno, I thought you would never come,” she murmured against my neck, and then a great sob welled up within her and erupted into my shoulder.

I felt her thin shoulders shaking as she gave vent to the tension and fear that must have been building during her hours of hiding in the darkness, not knowing who would find her first. I held her until her silent cries subsided as she pressed herself fiercely against me, and I don’t remember how it happened but suddenly her open mouth found mine and I was kissing her as I had once kissed her in Oxford, but this time she did not pull away. Instead she responded, as hot and hungry as I, knotting her fingers into the hair at the back of my neck to pull me closer; I felt the wetness of the tears on her face and the wetness of her mouth, and I was still holding the candle precariously away from us in my right hand, my arm outstretched, while with my left I scrabbled at the fastening of her cloak. As it fell to the floor I pulled at the strings that held the bodice of the rough dress she wore underneath and slipped it from one shoulder; she arched backwards with a soft moan as I bent my head to take her small breast in my mouth, and at that moment I heard, unmistakably, the sound of footsteps on stone.

We froze. It was Sophia who reacted first, while I stood, helpless, dazed by desire; she blew out the candle and grabbed at her cloak, pulling me by the other hand back to her hiding place behind the altar. But I was afraid we had made enough sound to draw the attention of whoever was down here. Sophia sank to the floor, her back against the altar; I felt her trembling beside me. Trying to regain my wits and silence my ragged breath, I shuffled into a position where, by craning my neck, I could just about see through the piles of boxes into the main body of the crypt. The wavering light of a lantern crept along the floor. I slid a hand into my boot and drew out my knife.

The footsteps grew closer, then stopped, as if the person was looking around. After a few moments the light moved away a little distance. Perhaps he had not heard us after all and was searching another part of the crypt. I continued to move cautiously towards the entrance to the chapel. From here I could see that it was Langworth, his gaunt black figure outlined against the glow of the lamp, pacing slowly, turning, his right hand held out before him holding something—what? He turned again and I saw it clearly; he had a dagger too. My stomach tightened; I would wager he knew how to use it. He paused, seeming to sniff the air like a dog and I froze, expecting that at any moment he would turn in my direction with his light and see me crouching on the threshold of the chapel. But instead his behaviour was more curious. He stopped between two of the delicate marble columns and genuflected, making the sign of the cross before kneeling with his back to me and lowering his face close to the stone floor, as if he was examining it. He set the lantern on the ground beside him and pressed both hands to the stones, feeling his way along. I watched him for a moment, intrigued, before I realised this was my best chance.

Rousing myself, I leapt to my feet and ran towards him. His head jerked up at the sound but he was not quick enough and I hurled myself at his kneeling form, throwing him to the ground. He lashed out with his dagger as I did so, catching me along the length of my left forearm, but in an instant I had my own knife to his throat and I grasped his wrist with my other hand, forcing him to drop his weapon.

“What will you do, Giordano Bruno—murder me here, on hallowed ground?” he hissed, as I pressed his head against the cold stone. “You think even your puppet master Walsingham could protect you from the consequences of that?”

“Did you think twice before you murdered in a place of sanctuary?”

He let out a hollow laugh, though it emerged strangled by the angle of his head. I had him pinned facedown against the stones, one hand holding his head, the other keeping my knife point at his throat, yet I had the strange sensation that he was not afraid of me.

“I have killed no one,” he said, with remarkable calm.

“What about Edward Kingsley?”

Again, that sardonic laugh, as if my ignorance amused him.

“Edward Kingsley was my friend. I am the very last person who would have had an interest in his death. In fact, it has caused me nothing but inconvenience. And sorrow, naturally,” he added, as an afterthought. “The only person whose blood I should not be sorry to have on my hands is yours.”

“You are very free with your threats for a man with a knife to his throat,” I said, nettled.

“You will not kill me. You cannot. You must present me to Walsingham alive so that I can be questioned in the Tower, is it not so? We both know you would not be forgiven for destroying such a valuable source of information. Besides, you need someone to answer for Kingsley’s murder at the assizes or his wife cannot be found innocent, and that is your whole purpose here, is it not?” The scar at the edge of his lips curved into a lascivious smirk. “I have no intention of letting you hand me to the queen’s torturers, by the way. Henry Howard warned me you were slippery, but I have allies in this town and you have none.”

I took a deep breath, keeping my knife steady. He was right; I could not kill him, here or anywhere, and if I hurt him it would only strengthen the case against me at the coming trial. I dug my knee harder into his back and he winced sharply, but would not give me the satisfaction of crying out.

“Where is Thomas Becket?” I hissed in his ear.

“Dead and gone,” he said, but I noticed his eyes flicker towards the place he had just been examining.

“You lie.”

By way of answer he laughed softly. My patience snapped; transferring my knife to my left hand, I hooked my right arm around his throat so that his Adam’s apple fitted in the crook of my elbow and began to squeeze gently. The movement took him by surprise and he tried to cry out but I was already crushing the breath from him. I could feel my arm trembling as I increased the pressure; I had learned this trick in Rome, where I had also learned that if you misjudge the timing by even a heartbeat it can be fatal. In barely a moment, Langworth’s eyes began to bulge and cloud over and his body went limp under me. I lowered him to the floor and tucked my knife away, heart thudding against my ribs. When I looked up, Sophia was standing beside me, her eyes wide with fear.

“Christ’s blood, Bruno, have you killed him?”

“I hope not.” I reached under Langworth’s slumped form and pressed my hand to his chest. At first I feared my gamble had not paid off, but after a moment’s groping I found the faint flutter of his heart. “No, thank God. He has passed out, but I don’t know how long before he comes round. We have to work quickly. Take this.” I handed her Langworth’s lantern. “See if there is anything stored in that side chapel we could use as a lever.”

I took the tinderbox and my spare candle from inside my doublet. When it was alight, I melted a little wax on the floor and stood the candle upright. Though the light was poor, I could make out traces on the flagstones where Langworth had been kneeling, the outline of an oblong shape where the stone felt of a different texture. He had made the sign of the cross here; his piety had given him away.

There was a narrow gap between the flagstones and I tried to prise one by inserting my fingers but it was too heavy. Impatiently, I watched Langworth’s face for flickers of life as I waited for Sophia to return. After a moment she appeared, triumphant, holding a rusting shovel in one hand and the light in the other.

“Better than I had hoped,” I said, taking the shovel from her. I inserted the digging edge under the flagstone, hoping it was not so fragile that it would snap with the weight. But the stone lifted easily, as if it was used to being moved. I motioned to Sophia to bring the lantern closer and my heart sank; in the cavity I could see only rubble.

“There might be something beneath that,” she said.

Kneeling, she began to scrape away the loose covering of stones and earth. I leaned in to join her, one eye still on Langworth, until eventually she gave a small cry.

“I can feel a sharp corner here,” she whispered. I brought the lantern in close and she brushed away the dirt with her hand; there, only a foot beneath the surface, was the edge of what looked like a marble coffin.

“We need to get up the other flagstones,” I said. I worked quickly; though the stones were heavy, I barely felt the weight of them as I lifted them and Sophia helped me to brush away the rubble hiding the box beneath. When we had cleared enough to see, I sat back on my haunches and surveyed what we had uncovered. A marble coffer, but not sufficiently long or wide to contain the body of an adult man. Unmarked, unadorned in any way. Sweat prickled on the back of my neck and the palms of my hands. Somewhere overhead, thunder boomed and died away, more distant than before.

“Help me with this lid,” I hissed through my teeth. I moved to one end and she grasped the other. I nodded and we both lifted together and almost fell backwards; the slab covering the coffer was not attached in any way and was much lighter than I had expected. We shifted it to one side and I knelt to examine what lay beneath.

As I looked, a strange frisson shook me the length of my body, and I felt my hands trembling. I had long ago left behind the Catholic faith and its rituals of saints and relics, but some dormant instinct prickled with awe at what I saw before me. At one end of the coffer was a raised stone square and placed carefully upon it, as if on a pillow, lay a human skull. Surrounding the skull were the remaining bones of the skeleton, arranged in three sides of a square. The body had evidently been moved to this place when the bones were all that remained. I did not dare touch them, though I could see they were very old—perhaps centuries old. But what caused the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck to stand up was the gaping hole at the back of the skull where a killing blow had broken away the crown of this man’s head. I exhaled slowly, hearing the shudder in my breath, and looked up to meet Sophia’s stare.

“Is it him?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper. “Is it Becket?”

“It could be. Certainly it looks as if people believe it’s him, and that is all a relic ever is. For their purposes, that is all that matters.”

“It is absurd to believe that old bones have any power,” Sophia said, with a scornful frown. “Superstitious nonsense of old women.”

“And yet, sometimes it seems to work. It’s almost as if it is the belief itself that is powerful.” I reached out and touched the top of the skull with my fingertips. “In Italy I once witnessed what you might call a miracle. A merchant’s wife healed of a wasting sickness by a vial of the holy blood.”

“So you believe in it?” She looked sceptical.

“Not in the relics, no. I think that somehow she cured herself simply by having faith that she would be healed. It is the human mind and will that have the ability to effect miracles—one day I should like to study this further. Our minds have untold power if we only knew how to harness it. But we haven’t much time. Look at this—” I leaned forward; at the far end of the stone coffer, separate from the skeleton, there were more objects buried. I shone the light over bulky shapes wrapped in oilcloth to protect them from decay and damp. Sophia took the lantern as I lifted the first item out and unwrapped it. I held up an ampulla of smoky glass, about the size of my hand, round and plain with a long neck and a handle on each side. It was full of a pale liquid; I pulled out the stopper and sniffed, but it had little odour, save for a slight stale, greasy smell. I tipped the ampulla and touched a drop to my finger; some sort of oil, certainly. The ampulla looked like the sort used by priests.

“What do you think this is? Chrism, perhaps? Do they say the Mass down here over the bones?”

Sophia tilted her head to one side and looked at the ampulla.

“There is a legend—I heard my husband speak of it once. The holy oil of Saint Thomas. In the story it was given to Thomas Becket by the Virgin, to anoint the true king of England. Then it was supposedly lost for centuries and found again hidden in a secret chest in the Tower. The legend says the last English sovereign to have been anointed with it at her coronation was Bloody Mary, Queen Elizabeth’s half sister.”

“The last Catholic monarch of England,” I mused. “Who was married to Philip of Spain—that makes sense. ‘King Philip entrusts to the servants of the blessed saint his holy oil in readiness,’ ” I recited, recalling the words of Mendoza’s letter. “So they not only believe they have Becket himself, they also have his holy oil to give divine approval to England’s next Catholic king or queen.” I shook my head, half in admiration. “They have thought of everything. This might all have fallen into place if the invasion had succeeded last autumn.”

A small moan came from my left; Sophia and I froze, staring at Langworth, but it appeared he had only made an involuntary noise exhaling. Nevertheless, we could not waste any more time. I wrapped the ampulla in its covering again and replaced it, then pulled out the last object hidden in the coffer and extracted it from its oilskin. As I brought it into the light, I experienced such a jolt of recognition and disbelief that I felt I had been struck by lightning; my heart and my breath seemed to stop, my brain swam, and I was forced to sit back quickly on the floor of the crypt, my prize held in my lap, for fear I would fall down in a faint.

In my hands was a carved wooden casket, its surface traced with elaborate designs of geometric patterns all inlaid with gold. I had seen this box before, in the secret chapel of Lord Henry Howard. With trembling hands, I lifted the lid, hardly daring to hope…

Inside the casket was a linen cloth, and inside the cloth, carefully protected, a book; small, about the size of a personal prayer book, with worn calfskin bindings. It had board covers holding together manuscript pages that were warped with age, though—as far as I could see in that light—the closely written Greek characters remained clear and bold. The book was not remarkable for its rich illustrations—it had none—nor for the sumptuous decorations of its binding. At first glance it would be of little interest to an antiquary or collector, since there was no obvious value in its shabby exterior. But I knew what this book was; I knew why Henry Howard had sent his nephew the Earl of Arundel to deliver it into Langworth’s hands for safekeeping before the queen’s searchers ransacked his house, and I also—together with only a handful of other men in Christendom—knew its true value. This book was the gem I had been searching for since I first learned of its existence some years before from an old Italian bookbinder in Paris. It seemed ironic, given its content, that the safest place Langworth could think of to hide it was in the coffin of the holiest relics in England.

“Are you all right, Bruno?” Sophia said, holding up the lantern. “You look as if you’ve seen a vision.”

I put the book quickly into its casket and tucked it inside my doublet. “We have to get out before he wakes. Quick—help me with this.”

We shifted the coffer’s lid back into place with some effort and scraped the loose covering of rubble over it. The flagstones made an almighty crash as we dropped them back into place, but Langworth still did not stir, though it was with some relief that I caught the sound of his effortful breathing rasping beside us. I knew that I was risking my life in taking the book; Langworth could not publicly accuse me of theft without revealing the secret of Becket’s bones, but after tonight he might decide it was more efficient to dispose of me without waiting for the process of the assizes.

I left the treasurer’s lantern burning low beside his prostrate form; holding the last candle, I picked up Harry’s cloak, grabbed Sophia’s wrist, and led her as quickly as possible—stopping only to pick up the old woman’s cloak she had worn as her disguise—back through the crypt to the vault below the treasury and out into the cathedral precincts.

The storm had spent the worst of its energy and was rolling away towards the sea, leaving behind a thin rain that seemed to ripple in silver sheets across the grounds. I pulled up the hood of my cloak to hide my face and Sophia did the same with hers. With no light, we felt our way around the corona and were poised to make the dash across the exposed part of the cathedral close to Harry’s house.

“I think it’s clear,” I whispered to Sophia, peering into the misty darkness. “Take my hand—as fast as we can now.”

I had run barely three steps when I felt Sophia’s hand slip from my grasp; an arm hooked around my throat and jerked my head back and I was thrown face forward onto the wet ground.