Sacrilege

Chapter 7

I decided to call at the apothecary’s shop early the next day, as it was on the road to the weavers’ houses. Though my stomach was much improved—a change I could only attribute to the ale at the Three Tuns—I calculated that the purchase of Fitch’s tonic might be repaid by the garrulous apothecary’s store of local gossip. Plenty of people were abroad in the High Street by the time the cathedral bells were striking the hour of eight, carrying baskets or pushing barrows of goods, and most of the shopfronts had their windows open to passersby, but when I reached Fitch’s shop I found it still shuttered and the door closed fast. A plump girl in a white coif was peering anxiously in through the windows, her hands cupped around her face. A basket covered with a linen cloth sat on the doorstep.

“What time does he open?” I said, by way of conversation.

She jumped at being addressed, looking me up and down with apprehension, but then her eyes flicked nervously to the window again. “Is he expecting you?”

“He told me to come back this morning for a remedy he recommended. But I forgot to ask what time he opened.”

The girl shook her head. Neat white teeth chewed at her bottom lip. I guessed her to be in her late teens, though she had that freckled, pink-and-white English complexion that made her look younger.

“He’s always open before the bells sound for eight. And he especially asked me to stop by good and early as he wanted to send me shopping before I go to work. I do what I can for him since my aunt died last year. Poor Uncle,” she added, with a confidential air. “I used to help in the shop sometimes—he liked to teach me a little of his business—but Mother said it was not fit for a girl to learn, so that was an end of that. Now I have to work on the bread stall for Mistress Blunt.” She made a face that left no doubt as to her opinion of her current employer.

“You must be Rebecca, then,” I said, smiling. “He spoke of you when I was in the shop yesterday.”

The girl blushed and giggled, but the laughter quickly faded on her lips as she turned back to the shuttered windows.

“I hope nothing’s wrong. It’s not like him to be late. I’ve tried knocking, but there’s no reply and I can’t see a thing inside.” She bit her lip again.

I pressed my face to the nearest window, shading my face as she had done. The shutters were old and it was just possible to glimpse the inner room through chinks and splits in the wood, but the shop was so dim I could barely make out the shape of the shelves lining the walls.

“Sometimes he doesn’t hear if he’s in the back room with the stills all boiling and bubbling,” the girl continued, just as something caught my eye inside the shop: a pale shape on the floor. I squinted harder, closing my hands around my face to shut out every slant of daylight, and realised it was a book, lying faceup, its pages spread. It was not the only item on the floor either. Though I could not make out much, it looked as if the contents of the apothecary’s shelves had been scattered carelessly around the shop. Apprehension tightened in my chest.

“Is there another entrance to the shop?” I asked. The words came sharper than I meant and I saw my own anxiety reflected in her face.

“There is a yard, at the back,” she faltered. “It gives on to the back room and my uncle’s lodging above the shop. But why …?”

“I think I should check. You wait here.”

She nodded, her lips set with fear. I found a small alley running down the side of the shop next door; it led to a narrow lane behind the row of buildings on the High Street, their yards hidden by a brick wall perhaps six feet high. A small wooden gate in the wall proved locked from the inside, but it took little effort to climb and I dropped into the apothecary’s yard, one hand on my knife. The door to the back room of the shop was closed, the casements to either side intact. But when I tried the door it opened easily and I saw Fitch sprawled facedown in the room he had used as a distillery, a pool of blood congealed around his head.

I took a deep breath. The room was stiflingly hot, despite the early hour, and ripe with the smell of blood and meat. Flies buzzed purposefully around the body, the sound intrusively loud in the stillness. I crossed the room slowly, absorbing the devastation. My feet crunched across broken glass; there had clearly been a struggle in the room, for the apothecary’s glass bottles were smashed across the floor, sticky patches of liquid visible on the boards where their contents had spilled. Blood was spattered across the walls in places, and smeared on the floorboards, as if Fitch had not simply fallen where he lay, but careened around the room spraying blood from his wound before dropping. An iron poker lay discarded a couple of feet from the body; was this the weapon that had struck him down, or had he tried to defend himself with it?

I looked from the poker to the wide brick fireplace and understood the source of the room’s infernal heat: a few embers were still smoking in the hearth. I picked my way through the mess on the floor to take a look. A blackened pot hung over the fire on an iron spit. I picked up a small bellows that lay in the hearth and squeezed it towards the ashes; a faint red glow coughed into life for a moment before fading in a cloud of grey dust. It had been some hours since this fire was stoked; if the apothecary kept it burning in this room to make his infusions, he must have been killed the night before. I wiped the sweat from my brow with my sleeve, and shook my head, suddenly overwhelmed by the enormity of what I had walked into. I had come to investigate one murder and stumbled by chance upon another; now the law would require me to testify as the first finder of the body, and there could be no pretending otherwise, since the girl was waiting outside for me. But who could have wanted to kill the cheerful apothecary? He had not given the impression yesterday that he was a man with anything to fear.

As I stood staring into the empty hearth, trying to decide how I should proceed, I noticed among the ashes a few scraps of burnt paper. Intrigued, I bent closer and realised that under the charred logs was a mass of blackened paper fragments; someone had clearly thrown a bundle of documents onto the fire not long before it was allowed to die. Most were reduced to ash, but one or two had fluttered to the back of the fireplace and escaped the worst of the flames. Pulling up my shirtsleeve, I reached in and hooked out the truant pages. They were badly burned around the edges, but in the centre some of the writing was still legible, through brown patches left by the heat and smoke. One appeared to be a page torn from the great ledger Fitch had used the day before when he recorded my purchase for his accounts. Almost none of the writing was left visible, though I could make out the line “mercury & antimony salts …” and beside it the name “Ezek. Syk …”

The second surviving page was more interesting; I held it towards the window and tried to make sense of the words I read.

“After Paracelsus,” it said, at the top, “according to his Archidoxes.” The next few lines had been rendered obscure by the fire. But beneath, the word “laudanum” stood out clearly, followed by what looked like instructions for a remedy. “Mixed with one part rosemary oil and one part good wine and distilled will bring on the sleep of Morpheus …” Again the writing disappeared, but below whatever had been scorched away I read the word “Belladonna.” Underneath, the author had underlined the following sentence twice, so heavily the quill had pierced the paper: “No more than eight grains diluted while under the influence, though double may be tolerated by… [these next two words were illegible]. Dosis sola facit venenum.”

The dose alone makes the poison. I knew this maxim of Paracelsus, the great Swiss alchemist and physician who had died some forty years earlier; he argued that all substances were potentially beneficial, even those we call toxic, and that the art of medicine was in judging the quantity and exposure that would heal rather than kill. But he argued a lot more besides; in his alchemical studies, Paracelsus had been a student of the philosophy of Hermes Trismegistus, the Egyptian sage whose wisdom I had studied, though in Paris it had earned me a reputation as a sorcerer. Needless to say, the writings of Paracelsus had been forbidden by my order when I was still a monk and I had risked much to track them down and study them. I recalled paying a substantial sum of money to a black-market bookseller in Naples for a copy of the Archidoxes of Magic, a treatise on medicine and alchemy that drew on the movements of the planets and the secrets of astrology. It was not a work I would have expected to find in the shop of a provincial apothecary, but perhaps there was more to Fitch than had been apparent in his breezy, village-gossip manner.

Nothing more could be made out; I turned the paper over but it offered no further clues. In the silence of the room I could hear the blood pounding in my ears as I struggled to make sense of the fragment. Holding it between my fingers as if it might crumble to dust at any moment, I forced my eyes back to the body on the floor.

There was no need to move Fitch to see that his skull had been staved in, though the face and neck were also badly battered, suggesting his assailant had not felled him with the first blow. His limbs had already stiffened into grotesque contortions, one arm thrown forward next to the face. Crouching beside him, I closed my eyes for a moment and laid my fingertips on the sleeve of his shirt, hard and crusted with dried blood, as a mark of respect, trying to imagine the scene that must have ensued not long after I had bid him goodbye with a promise to return in the morning for his tonic. The killing seemed the frenzied work of a madman—Fitch must have been chased around his distillery, desperately trying to fight off his attacker—but the burnt pages in the fireplace suggested something different. Who had thrown them into the flames? Fitch, to prevent someone from seeing them, or whoever had struck him down?

My thoughts were interrupted by a sharp knock at the door. I had forgotten the girl, Rebecca, waiting outside. Now I stepped carefully around the dead apothecary and through the narrow doorway into the shop. This room too was in a state of chaos, as I had seen through the shutters; books had been pulled from shelves and lay scattered about, and an earthenware jar, knocked to the ground, had broken to spill its contents—a pungent yellow powder—across the reeds that covered the stone floor. Empty spaces gaped on a number of the shelves where objects had evidently been hastily removed and not replaced.

The knock came again and I heard the girl calling, “Hello?” Crossing to the front door, I found it locked, with the key still in the keyhole. Whoever had killed Fitch must have left through the back, then. But the door had not been forced; the apothecary must have opened it to his attacker. As I turned the key, my hand froze and my breath caught in my throat as I recalled the physician Sykes in his absurd plague mask, thundering in and demanding that Fitch lock up the shop to give him private audience.

“Uncle William?” the girl asked from the other side of the door, her voice doubtful. I pulled it open just a fraction; as soon as she saw me, her lip trembled. “Where is he?”

“You must go for a constable right away,” I said, keeping my voice low. A couple of goodwives with covered baskets had stopped in the street behind the girl and were watching the door with lively curiosity. “Don’t stop to speak to anyone—just bring him as fast as you can. Do you know where to find one?”

“I want to see my uncle! What has happened?” She planted herself stubbornly on the threshold, her voice loud enough to attract further attention from passersby. I motioned with a finger against my lip.

“I’m afraid your uncle has met with an accident.”

“Oh, God!” She pressed her hands to her cheeks and set up a wail that threatened to rouse the whole street.

“Please—you must fetch a constable.” Perhaps the urgency in my voice lent it some authority; she stopped her noise abruptly, looked at me uncertainly for a moment, and nodded. “Bring him around the back,” I added, giving one sharp look to the staring women before closing the shop door and locking it again. Nothing draws a crowd like a violent death, and I felt the dead man deserved better than to be made into a spectacle for gawping market-goers.

In the gloom, I bent to look at one of the books that had been thrown onto the floor. It was a volume of A New Herbal by William Turner, dog-eared and clearly well-used by a reader who had meticulously annotated and illustrated the margins of almost every page. Squinting, I held up the fragment of paper I had rescued from the embers against the book; the hand was the same as that of the notes scribbled on the pages, which it seemed reasonable to assume was that of Fitch himself. So the papers in the fire, with their curious reference to Paracelsus, had been written by the apothecary—but why had they been thrown into the flames? Without quite knowing why, I folded the charred paper and tucked it into the purse I carried at my belt.

The smell of dead meat by now was almost overpowering; I decided to wait for the constable outside the back door. Still I found it hard to tear my eyes from the corpse. I had looked on violent death many times in my life, especially in the past couple of years, yet it never ceased to chill me, the fragility of our bodies, the way a life can be snuffed out quicker than a candle. Presently the sound of brisk footsteps interrupted this reverie, followed by a rap at the gate in the back wall. I hurried to open the latch and found myself face-to-face with the ginger-haired man whom I had noticed in the marketplace by the cathedral gate the previous evening. He narrowed his eyes as if trying to place me, stroking his pointed beard, then waved me aside.

“Carey Edmonton, constable of this parish. An accident, the girl said?”

“I didn’t want to alarm her. This was no accident—the apothecary has been murdered in his distillery.”

The constable simply stared, as if he had not understood.

“Murder? How do you know?”

“Take a look.”

He continued to regard me a moment longer, as if he was not certain whether to believe me, before asserting himself by brushing past and in through the open doorway, where he stopped abruptly as if slapped, gagging on the smell.

“What in God’s name has happened here?” he whispered, almost to himself, his words muffled by the sleeve he pressed to his mouth. He took a step back and turned to me again, as if expecting me to make sense of the sight before him.

“He was beaten to death, but it seems he put up a brave fight before he was felled. The street door was locked from the inside, but this back door was open, though the gate from the yard to the alleyway was padlocked from the inside.”

Edmonton took his hand slowly from his mouth and stepped back into the yard, frowning as if noticing me properly for the first time.

“How did you get in, then? And who the Devil are you to be poking around?”

“My name is Filippo Savolino. I came as a customer—yesterday Master Fitch had promised me a remedy. I found the girl outside, anxious because she could get no reply, so I offered to see what was wrong. When I couldn’t open the gate, I climbed the wall.”

He pulled at his beard again.

“I see. I have seen you before, have I not? Loitering about the Buttermarket, as I recall.”

“I was not loitering—I was on my way to visit my friend the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson at the cathedral,” I said, stung by his tone. “You will see a great disturbance in the shop,” I continued, trying to sound more placatory as I led him through to the front room. “It seems to me that whoever killed the apothecary was looking for something on his shelves.”

“A robbery, then,” the constable said, as if the business required no further consideration. He glanced at the mess on the floor, set his jaw, and nodded to himself. “Since the plague fears in London, we have more than our share of vagabonds and beggars littering the streets. Probably one of them, looking for gold or whatever he could sell. I’ll have them rounded up—we’ll soon find the villain that did this.” He shot a brief glance back at the workshop and sniffed. “He was a good man, William Fitch, well liked by the townspeople. There’ll be a great deal of anger against the incomers for this.”

“And yet it seems that Master Fitch readily admitted his attacker himself without suspicion, since the shop was locked from the inside, and there is no sign of force,” I said. “And see, here—it is mainly books and papers pulled from the shelves, as if the person was looking for something quite specific. I am not persuaded that this was an ordinary robbery.” I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should mention the appearance of Sykes the previous evening, but decided against it; the physician was clearly a prominent citizen of Canterbury and any suggestion that he might be implicated would only draw unwelcome attention to myself.

The constable folded his arms across his chest and his moustache twitched as his lip curled into a sneer.

“Oh, you are not persuaded? And who are you to offer opinions either way? Are you a parish constable? I think not. You are not even a parishioner.”

I held up my hands as if to mitigate any offence.

“I beg your pardon, Constable. I was only thinking aloud.”

He grunted.

“I shall want testimony from you and the girl. Where will I find you?”

“At the Cheker of Hope.”

“Good. Do not leave the city, Master …”

“Savolino. I won’t.”

He nodded curtly and gestured towards the back gate.

“Now leave me to my job, if you please.”

I bowed slightly and crossed to the door, with a last glance back at the workshop of the unfortunate apothecary. A more thorough search of the place would yield better evidence of the killer, I was sure, but I pulled the front door closed behind me, telling myself that it was no longer my business. I had enough to do to find one murderer, let alone another that had nothing to do with me, and it was only the merest chance that I had discovered the death of Fitch. And yet, as I emerged into the light of the High Street to see a little gaggle of interested observers gathered around the shopfront, I had to acknowledge that hiding that fragment of paper, with its mysterious reference to Paracelsus, was as good as admitting I could not let the matter go. The constable would find some hapless vagrant to blame in order to satisfy the townspeople, who would cheer for his hanging, and all would be forgotten, while the murderer congratulated himself. This was what passed for justice, more often a question of avoiding public unrest than of discovering the truth. This is not your problem, I told myself again, but the apothecary’s murder troubled me, perhaps because the manner of it was so similar to the killing of Sir Edward Kingsley.

I noticed the girl Rebecca at the heart of the crowd, wailing loudly and being comforted by the two stout women who had been watching earlier. No one paid me any attention, so I took the opportunity to slip away towards the weavers’ houses.

A man in his fifties answered the door of the Fleury house. He had greying hair, a full moustache and wore a beaten expression, as if hardship and exhaustion had robbed him of any vital spirit. He looked me up and down, as if I were one more burden Fate had seen fit to lay on his shoulders.

“Monsieur Fleury?”

“I know who you are. Come inside.” He glanced along the lane to either side, but there was no sign of movement. “Is that blood on your stocking?” he asked as he closed the door behind me. The flatness of his tone suggested he was not especially interested either way. I glanced down; there was a streak of dark red on my ankle where I must have brushed against Fitch’s body.

“I was—at the scene of an accident,” I said.

Fleury shook his head.

“I have seen enough blood spilled.” He took me by the sleeve and pulled me close, dropping his voice. “You must take her away. Do you understand? My son …” He faltered and shook his head again. “I got my family out of Paris alive while our friends and neighbours were butchered in their homes. I thought we would be safe in a Protestant country. But already we have lost one child. I will not see my son hanged as well. The girl should not be in my house. We tried to help her, but once is enough. She is dangerous.”

“She is unlucky.”

He set his jaw. “I say she is dangerous, monsieur. You know it and I know it. Only my son cannot see this, because he is young and she is beautiful. Perhaps you close your eyes to it as well, but I am old enough not to have this blindness.” He gave a great sigh that seemed to reverberate through his bones.

He opened a door on the left of the small hallway and motioned me into a long room overlooking the river and dominated by the wooden frames of three large looms, where women sat working the treadle, the mechanism clicking rhythmically as they fed the shuttle back and forth. They gave us only the briefest glance as we passed through, their eyes fixed to the coloured yarns stretched on the frames before them. Bobbin racks and contraptions for stretching thread lined the walls. I looked out of the window at the narrow creek; a man was loading bales of cloth from a small jetty at the back of the house on to a low boat. At the far end of this workshop a narrow staircase ascended to the floor above. I glanced down at the scene of industry in the workshop below as we climbed.

“Business is good here?”

Fleury shrugged.

“Life is always precarious in a strange land. You know this, I think. But we can feed ourselves, for the moment, and for that I give thanks.”

At the top of the stairs was a long landing with another staircase, even narrower, rising to the next floor. He gestured for me to climb alone.

“In the attic,” he whispered, by way of explanation. “Keep your voices down.”

The ceiling was low, sloping to either side under the crooked roof and I had to bend to avoid the supporting beams as I pushed open the small door at the top of the stairs. Sophia was seated at a rough-hewn table, Olivier Fleury standing by the tiny window, leaning on the sill and looking out. Both started with alarm as I slipped through the door; Sophia jumped quickly to her feet.

“Bruno!” For a moment she gave the impression that she was about to run and embrace me, but instead she flashed me a shy smile and raised her arms before letting them fall to her sides. Olivier regarded me with that same expression of sullen disdain. “Any news? Have you found him?”

I looked at Sophia. She had washed and, though she was still dressed in boy’s clothes, they were now clean. Her hair hung softly, almost into her eyes, its shortness at the back emphasising her long, slender neck. I noticed the days of riding in the sun had brought out a scattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose.

“Give me a chance—I have not been here a day. But there is news—I have just come from the scene of another murder.”

“What?”

Her hand flew to her mouth; she stared at me, eyes wide. But my attention was distracted by a gasp from the corner of the room; it was only then that I realised there was a third person present, a young woman dressed in black, sitting on a straw mattress tucked away under the eaves. I raised my eyebrows at Sophia; she glanced briefly at the woman on the bed.

“Hélène, Olivier’s sister,” she said, as if this was not of much interest. “But who has been murdered?”

“Is it a child?” the woman Hélène whispered, her voice dry as autumn leaves. She had fine fair hair and the same full lips as her brother. I looked at her in surprise.

“No—it was the apothecary from the High Street, William Fitch.”

Hélène gave a sort of shudder and crumpled visibly, as if she had been struck. She buried her face in her handkerchief and though her shoulders shook violently she made no sound.

“I am sorry. Did you know him well?” I asked her gently.

“It’s not that.” Olivier glared at me, as if once again I had been the bringer of misfortune, and crossed the room to give his sister a cursory pat on the arm.

Sophia frowned. “Everyone knew Fitch—he was something of a busybody. I kept away from his shop—he asked too many questions.” She shook her head. “But he was amiable with it. I wonder who could have wanted to kill him?”

“The manner of it was similar to your husband’s murder—his skull was smashed. You don’t suppose they could be connected?”

She frowned.

“I can’t see how. Especially if my husband’s killer wanted to be sure I was blamed. Another murder in my absence would undo that.”

“Did Sir Edward know Fitch?”

“He knew everyone in Canterbury. But he didn’t associate with him, if that’s what you mean.”

“But he knew Ezekiel Sykes the physician well, and Sykes knew Fitch,” I mused, thinking again of Sykes’s peremptory visit to the apothecary the previous afternoon.

Sophia made an impatient sound.

“You are overcomplicating matters, Bruno. I have told you where you would do best to look for my husband’s killer. The poor apothecary was probably attacked by robbers, taking advantage of the fact that the city is without a justice of the peace at the moment.”

“So the constable wants to think.”

“Well, then.” She folded her arms. “You see the world as full of hidden connections, Bruno. Sometimes things are no more than they appear. Didn’t William of Ockham say so?” She gave me a mischievous smile, which I could not help returning.

“Something like that. May we talk in private?”

Sophia looked across at Olivier, who still kept a protective hand on his sister’s shoulder. Hélène had sunk into herself, her face obscured by the handkerchief and her clasped hands. He nodded curtly at me, and extended a hand to help his sister rise.

“I hope you will find this man soon, monsieur,” he said, through clenched teeth, as he passed me. “Then you can both leave us in peace.”

“I will do my best,” I said, with forced politeness. Hélène’s gaze flickered briefly upwards to my face, then quickly back to the floor; I reached out and touched her gently on the arm and she flinched as if I had hit her.

“Pardon me,” I said, in French, “but why did you ask if a child had been killed?”

Her red-rimmed eyes filled with tears; she shook her head tightly and bunched the handkerchief harder against her lips. Olivier glared at me again as he put a protective arm around her and led her to the door.

“I have said the wrong thing, somehow,” I observed when they had gone. “Why is she so distressed?”

Sophia sat down at the table again and rubbed the back of her neck. She looked suddenly weary.

“That poor girl. Widowed at eighteen—her husband was killed during the massacre in Paris. She was pregnant when they fled to England and her son, Denis, was born here. Six months ago, he disappeared.”

“How do you mean?”

“Just that—he went out on an errand for his grandparents and never returned. He was only eleven.” She bit her lip and I noticed how she knotted her fingers together, though she kept her expression controlled, her gaze concentrated on a point on the wall. I guessed she was thinking about her own lost son and the sorrow of a mother.

“So that was what Olivier meant when he said they had enough grief already.” I pulled up a stool opposite her. “They reported it, I suppose? There was a search for the boy?”

“They reported it to my husband as the local justice—that was how I first met Olivier. He refused to give up—he came to the house every day until finally Sir Edward had to threaten him with arrest for trespass. There was a search, but since the Huguenots are not regarded by many in the town as true citizens, you may imagine how little effort was made. They told the family he had probably just run off to be a ship’s boy.”

“But you don’t think so?”

She shrugged.

“I never met the boy. The family say he would not have done so. But Hélène has talked herself into believing the worst, because of the other child that was found.”

“What other child?”

“It was last autumn, before I arrived here, a few months before her son went missing. The body of a young boy, around the same age, was found dismembered on a midden outside the city walls. He was a beggar child, they said. But Hélène has seized on it to fuel her belief that her son has been killed too.”

“What do you think?”

She gave me a long look and sighed heavily.

“I think it’s terrible, naturally, but …” She reached out and laid a hand gently over mine. “Bruno, you don’t need to unravel every unsolved death in this town. Just the one you came for, remember? Have you spoken to Nicholas Kingsley yet?”

“I will be a guest at his house tonight.”

She squeezed my hand, her eyes bright. “I knew you would manage this, Bruno. You will find something there to clear me, I’m certain of it.”

I regarded her with a serious expression.

“You are very determined that it should be Nicholas. And he is equally determined that it was you.”

“Well, obviously.” She removed her hand. “As I have said, if I am convicted of killing his father, he will inherit instead.”

“But if I find evidence to incriminate him, you become a wealthy widow. Am I right?”

She leaned across the table and fixed me with that look, her eyes flashing.

“And would I not deserve that, after everything I have suffered?”

“Of course. But you will inherit regardless of who the real killer turns out to be, surely, provided it can be proved? I can’t produce evidence against Nicholas just because you want it to be him.”

“But who else would have a motive for killing Sir Edward and ensuring I am blamed, if not him? Especially after his father’s will was changed.”

“Tell me about the will, then.”

“Before Sir Edward married me, Nicholas was his only next of kin and stood to inherit everything. But about a month before my husband was murdered, he made a new testament. Rights to his property and all the income from his estates was made over to me to be passed to our children, whenever they should arrive.” She broke off and made a face of disgust at the idea. “Nicholas was given a small allowance—barely enough for the lowest kind of food and board.”

“But your husband had no affection for you. Why would he do that?”

“To humiliate his son, I suppose. He had spent so much on Nicholas’s education, only for him to drink and gamble away his chances of a profession in the law. He said he had given Nicholas ample chance to change his ways, and the best way to make him grow up was to close his purse.”

I nodded. “I can see that would have made Nicholas furious. But angry enough to beat his own father to death?”

Sophia rested her chin on her hand.

“I could believe it. To murder his father and have me executed for it would have been a fine revenge on both of us—with the advantage of removing any obstacle to his inheritance.”

“And it rests entirely between you and Nicholas? No one else stands to benefit from Sir Edward’s will?”

“Not that I know of, but then, I never read the document. I only know because Sir Edward took great pleasure in telling Nicholas and me of the changes over dinner. Perhaps he thought it would encourage me to hurry up and give him a better son.”

“Then why did Nicholas mention the Widow Gray?”

“I don’t know. What did he say?”

“She was one of the people he said would not take his inheritance from him, when he was in his cups last night.”

Sophia looked uncomfortable.

“There is gossip about her in the town …” Her voice trailed off. “But who knows if there is any substance to it.”

“Your husband knew her?”

She nodded.

“Could she have been his mistress?”

She shrugged, expressionless.

“Maybe. She has a son, I know that much. A boy of about twelve.”

I nodded. If the boy was Sir Edward’s bastard, that might explain why Nicholas Kingsley thought the widow wanted money from the estate.

“Sir Edward’s friends—the ones who visited him for those secretive meetings. Might any of them have wanted him dead? Had they fallen out, perhaps?”

Sophia looked at her hands for a long moment. Eventually she raised her head.

“Bruno, those are powerful men you are talking about. If you start poking into their business, you’ll draw unwelcome attention to yourself and they’ll find a way to stop you.”

“I thought you wanted me to ask questions?”

“Yes, but—what good will it do anyone if they have you arrested? Better that you concentrate your search—”

“On Nicholas Kingsley?” I stood up, and took a few paces, before rounding on her again, frustrated. “But what if it isn’t him? What if someone killed your husband, not for his money, but for some other reason—revenge, or because he crossed them? You would not want an innocent man to die, surely, however obnoxious he may be. Think—who else might have wanted him dead? What about Tom Garth?”

“Tom Garth? Oh—from the cathedral. What has he to do with it?”

“He held a grudge against the Kingsley family. Last night I heard him talk of taking the law into his own hands. And he is gatekeeper at the cathedral—he could easily have killed Sir Edward that night.”

“But Tom Garth had resented Sir Edward for years, since his sister died. Why would he suddenly take it into his head to kill him now? And why would he leave a woman’s bloodied gloves where they would be found to have me blamed?” She shook her head. “I think you are wandering from the path here, Bruno.”

I ran both hands through my hair.

“Look, you said you wanted me to find the truth—that’s why you dragged me here. Now you are telling me what I should find!”

“Lower your voice.” Her jaw was tight with anger. She took a deep breath. “Very well. His regular supper companions at home were the physician Sykes, the mayor of Canterbury, and the cathedral treasurer—”

“John Langworth.”

She looked surprised.

“You know him?”

“We have met. You know that Langworth is suspected of Catholic sympathies? Did your husband share his feelings? What about Sykes?”

“I don’t know!” She looked nettled. “I never heard my husband express any religious view that was other than orthodox. You have to understand, Bruno—I was concentrating on surviving.”

“I know,” I said, attempting to sound soothing.

We looked at each other in silence for a moment, until she dropped her gaze to the table.

“It was Langworth who brought me the news of my husband’s death, and his belongings.”

“And Langworth who found the body.” I thought again of Harry’s warning. Langworth’s close connection to Henry Howard should have made me more inclined to heed the general view that to cross the treasurer was an act of wilful self-sabotage; instead it made me more determined that he should not be allowed to hide behind the reputation he had tried to create.

Sophia looked up at me, apprehensive.

“That doesn’t mean—”

“I was thinking aloud.” I brushed her objection aside as a thought occurred to me. “Do you think your husband knew that people heard you screaming? Visitors to the house, I mean.”

“Screaming?” she said, as if the idea were absurd. A crease appeared between her eyebrows. “What are you talking about?”

“When he beat you.”

“But I never screamed.” Her voice became very steady and quiet. “He told me if I made a sound he would make it a thousand times worse. Then it became a matter of pride—not to cry at all, to take it all without flinching.” She picked at the skin around her nails and I saw the muscles in her jaw tense.

“Perhaps you cried out without realising it,” I suggested. Her scathing look told me what she thought of that idea.

“I didn’t scream,” she repeated firmly, closing her eyes. After a moment she opened them again and looked at me. “What makes you say that I did?”

“A girl delivering something to the house says she heard someone screaming in the grounds. Who could it be, if not you?”

Sophia shook her head. “Foxes? The house is surrounded by a burial ground grown wild—there must be dens by the dozen.”

“Perhaps.” I sighed. She was right; I needed to concentrate first on the obvious instead of chasing after every chance rumour I caught about Sir Edward. I recalled the girl Rebecca’s noisy grief outside the apothecary’s shop earlier; perhaps, as he had suggested, what she heard was no more than the effects of an overactive imagination.

“Stop pacing, Bruno, it’s tiring to watch you,” Sophia said gently, after a few moments. Then she pushed her stool back and crossed the room to block my path. “Have I asked the impossible?” she whispered, a sad smile hovering at her lips as she rested her hands on my arms, just below the shoulder. It was not quite an embrace, more a gentle restraint.

“I am certain he was killed by someone he knew. It shouldn’t be impossible to find that person—I would wager any amount that he is still here in Canterbury.”

“Don’t wager too much, Bruno, you will be penniless at this rate.”

“I know it.” I laughed softly and placed my hands on her thin shoulders.

“I just want it to be over,” she whispered. “You understand.”

“I will move heaven and earth to find this man for you, Sophia, if it is in my power. I have said I will.” I placed a finger under her chin and gently tilted her face upwards to me. For a moment, as she looked me directly in the eye, I thought I glimpsed her with her defences down, open and vulnerable.

She nodded without speaking, and her lips parted slightly; a pulse quickened in my throat. Almost imperceptibly, I felt her fingers tighten on my arms as the space between us seemed to grow smaller; before I had time to think of the consequences, I found myself leaning towards her, my mouth barely an inch from hers, and to my surprise she did not turn her head or pull away. For an instant I felt her breath warm on my chin, then the door opened. Olivier slipped into the room, his scornful expression for once seeming justified.

“Pardon me,” he said drily, in French. “My father says you are talking too loudly. He is afraid the women downstairs will hear you.” He was looking at Sophia; she lowered her eyes, and let go of my arms.

“Over the sound of the looms?” My anger at the interruption was hot in my voice. I wondered if he had been listening at the door. He merely returned my look, naked dislike in his eyes, and I saw, whatever Sophia might say about their friendship, this boy regarded me as a rival. The thought gave me a small stab of joy. I forced a smile.

“I should be leaving. I will return tomorrow, I hope with more news.”

“Must you go so soon, Bruno?” Sophia raised her eyes to me, but I could not read her look.

“I have work to do, remember?” I made a playful bow in her direction and she smiled. Olivier sucked in his cheeks.

“How long do you expect us to keep her?” he hissed, as I reached the door.

“I don’t know.” Despite everything, I felt sorry for him. “Until I find who murdered her husband. I hope not too long.”

“It was the son. It’s obvious.”

“If it’s obvious, why haven’t you told the authorities?”

He responded with a laconic shrug.

“You think they would listen to me? He’s the son of a magistrate. It’s easier to blame a woman, a foreigner, a refugee, anyone who doesn’t have a voice to argue. It is up to you to find the evidence before they will listen. She says you have a gift for this.”

“I’m doing my best,” I said icily.

But his words made me uncomfortable; I recalled the constable’s casual reference earlier to arresting some itinerant—as if it hardly mattered whom—for the murder of the apothecary. Olivier was right; justice here was a cursory affair, dependent upon whether you happened to be in the wrong place with the wrong face or accent. My fingers rested on the purse at my belt, where I had tucked the scrap of burnt paper with the notes from Paracelsus. Leave it, I told myself sternly. What matters is to prevent Sophia being wrongly condemned; you are not responsible for what the law does to anyone else. And yet I could not shake a sense that I ought to do something.

“Then do your best faster,” Olivier replied. “My parents are terrified she will be found. Who can blame them?”

I could not find an adequate reply to this, so I nodded curtly and took one last look at Sophia before I opened the door. She met my eye only briefly and then her gaze skittered away to the window. I wondered if she regretted the fact that she had nearly kissed me, or that Olivier had seen us, or both.

Reluctantly I closed the door to the attic room but paused on the stairs for a moment, my head bent under the low rafters, hoping I might hear some of their conversation. Behind the door there was only silence.

I was distracted by a discreet cough from below; I looked down and saw Olivier’s father, waiting at the foot of the stairs to show me out.