Sacrilege

Langworth more. I had no doubt that Langworth and Sykes were behind my arrest. Perhaps Edmonton had received money. I swallowed hard as I was led up a narrow spiral staircase inside the tower, and my throat hurt. I could only hope that Harry had the power—and the inclination—to save my neck.

At the top of the staircase the gaoler unlocked a thick iron-clad door and barked something incomprehensible, his hand still on the latch; from behind it came a chorus of plaintive cries and a frenzied scuffling.

“Get in,” he said to me, pushing the door open no more than a couple of feet, simultaneously kicking out at the bony hand that crept through the gap and flapped at his sleeve. “Hurry up, before these vermin try and get out.”

The guards shoved me up the next step and, before I could protest, the gaoler had laid a thick hand on top of my head and was trying to force me into the room.

“I have money,” I whispered, clutching at his tunic. If English gaols were anything like those in Italy, a prisoner’s comfort would depend entirely on his ability to hand out bribes. The gaoler’s fat face creased into a mocking smile, showing the hole where his teeth once were.

“Have a little taste of West Gate hospitality, why don’t you, and we can talk again about your purse when you’ve had time to reflect.” He winked grotesquely and pushed me hard in the chest, so that I fell through the half- open doorway onto a hard stone floor. I could not even pick myself up before the lock turned behind me.

“Figlio di puttana!” I shouted at the indifferent door.

Recovering my balance, I sat up and took in my surroundings. The room I had been hustled into was small and narrow. Thin arrow slits provided the only light, which fell in narrow shafts on the hunched shapes of perhaps nine or ten men, sitting in their own excrement in the drifts of filthy straw that covered the floor. Some had chains securing their hands or feet; all looked half starved. A hot, vivid stench of ordure and unwashed bodies filled the cell, together with a pervasive atmosphere of despair. These prisoners were facing the assizes in a few days’ time; if they were accused of murder, the only possible end would be the hangman’s rope, and you could see the knowledge of it in their dead eyes. My empty stomach heaved and I tasted bile at the back of my throat.

As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, I began to make out the other prisoners’ faces. Opposite me sat an emaciated man with a beard like a hermit and wild, staring eyes that appeared to look beyond me, as if he spied a sight of mortal terror just over my shoulder. No one spoke. I pressed myself into a space against the wall, pulling my knees close to my chest so that I took up as little room as possible. With my forehead against my knees, I closed my eyes and tried to breathe through my mouth as I struggled to piece together everything that had happened since I arrived in Canterbury, largely to keep my thoughts away from my own prospects if Harry did not intervene. A youth spent in the shadow of the Roman Inquisition had not left me with any faith in the idea that innocence was a guarantee of justice. But I did have faith in my own ability to organise the human mind and the knowledge it accumulates—my own, at least. Hours spent devising my systems of memory had kept me from despair during many lonely days and nights on the road north through Italy and beyond. This was not the first time I had been in prison, either; in Geneva the Calvinists had learned what I was teaching in my public lectures and had me arrested as a heretic and disturber of the peace. Ironic, when I had only gone to Geneva because the Catholic Church was pursuing me as a heretic.

Someone nearby struck up a low continuous moaning that seemed to ebb and flow, echoing mournfully from the walls. I turned my thoughts inward and imagined I was making notes on a clean sheet of paper. There were four deaths that may be connected—five, if you counted Sarah Garth nine years earlier. The beggar child found dismembered on the midden last autumn—there was no proof that it was the same boy Meg had seen Edward Kingsley feeding in the kitchen of St. Gregory’s, except for the bloodied sacks I had found in the underground tomb, but it was a strong possibility. Next there was the Huguenot boy Denis, who was certainly linked to Edward Kingsley and had most likely died in that dreadful burial chamber beneath the mausoleum. I did not yet know who had killed the boy or why, but the crude attempt at embalming his body—to disguise the smell of decay and prevent discovery?—must surely have something to do with Ezekiel Sykes’s purchase of mercury and antimony salts. Which leads to the third death: William Fitch. Someone had ransacked the apothecary’s shelves in a frantic haste to destroy incriminating papers—among them evidence of that purchase of Sykes’s. And afterwards, John Langworth had been back to Fitch’s shop to retrieve two stones of black laudanum. Why?

And then there was Sir Edward himself, the focus of my absurd journey. Why had he died? “Didn’t have the wit to look behind him on a dark night,” Langworth had said to Samuel, but his tone had been one of irritation, not triumph, as if his friend’s murder were more of an inconvenience than anything else. What was Sir Edward’s business with the boys? He was too eminent and too recognisable in Canterbury to have gone out scouring the streets for homeless children to lure back to the priory; he must have had someone to do that for him. Fitch? The apothecary would have had the means to drug the boys—perhaps with laudanum—to keep them quiet. I rubbed a hand across my face. None of it made any sense. Those poor boys must have been imprisoned to feed someone’s appetites. Both Langworth and Sir Edward himself were known to have relationships with women; that did not necessarily exclude baser tastes, but I remained unconvinced. Was Sir Edward procuring the boys for someone else, as a favour or a debt? Sykes, perhaps, or someone more powerful? As magistrate, it was a grave risk to take; if it was not for his own benefit, it must have been for substantial reward. But I still had no answer to the question of why he had to die.

Nor could I ignore the practical details of his murder. Whoever struck him down that night had been inside the cathedral precincts, taken the crucifix from the crypt, and waited for him, knowing he would come through the cloisters in the direction of Langworth’s house. Only the dean had a key to the crypt. And anyone trying to leave the precincts would have been seen by Tom Garth. I sighed. Unless, of course, it was Tom Garth. From what Meg had told me, he had good reason to want revenge on Sir Edward. But why now, after nine years?

I glanced up and saw that the old man with the beard was crawling towards me through the filth. Repulsed, I shrank back into the wall, but there was nowhere to go. His bony hand clawed at the sleeve of my shirt; a filthy smell came off him and the hand gripping my arm ended in long brown nails that curved over, reminding me of the dead boy’s hand in the prior’s tomb. White spume gathered at the corners of his mouth as it worked frantically with no sound. But though I flinched and pulled back, I noticed that one of his eyes was milky with the thick film of a cataract, and both were filled with tears. He was trying to say something. Holding my breath, I leaned closer.

“What is it, old man?”

He mumbled the same phrase again; it seemed to end in “me,” but he spoke so quietly I could not recognise the words.

“Tell me again,” I said, gently. His eyes opened wider and he repeated his phrase a little louder, shaking my arm as if his message was of great urgency. Wincing against his foul breath in my face, I watched the movement of his shrivelled lips and realised that he was not speaking English at all.

“Sinite pueros venire ad me,” he whispered again.

I stared at him.

“Suffer the little children to come unto me,” I repeated. “Which children?”

“Sinite pueros venire ad me, et nolite eos vetare talium est enim regnum Dei,” he muttered, completing the verse from the Gospel of Luke. His face clouded with despair.

“ ‘And do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.’ Do you know more Latin?” I asked, intrigued. “Are you an educated man?”

His good eye roamed my face and his mouth twisted into something like a smile.

“Monachus,” he said.

“You were a monk?” I asked, in Latin. He nodded sadly. I laid a hand over his and tried to keep my voice low as I pointed to my chest.

“And I.”

At first I thought he had not understood, but after a moment’s consideration he shook his head.

“Impossible. You are too young. They tore down the sanctuaries and put us on the road before you were even born, son.”

“Not here. In Italy. Were you a monk here in Canterbury?”

He nodded. “At Christ Church Priory.” Then he pushed back the matted strands of hair that grew around the fringes of his head to show me his burned ear. I studied his weathered face; he must have been near to eighty.

“I thought all the brothers were dead.”