Harry gave a brusque laugh and clapped me on the shoulder.
“Come. You had better be seen at Evensong, praying for God’s mercy.”
WE RETRIEVED SOPHIA from the outbuilding at dusk, when the congregation had dispersed and the senior canons gone to the dean’s banquet in honour of the justice, bundling her through the shadows and into Harry’s hall. She looked numb and shivered inside her shapeless cloak, despite the fact that it was a warm night. I left them alone in the kitchen and went to the inn around the corner for hot food, carrying the covered dishes back myself rather than risking the serving boy coming anywhere near the house. Sophia gulped it down like a beggar, the way I had seen her eat that first day in London. I watched her, wishing for a moment that she had not found me again. I brushed the thought away.
“I may as well have been thrown into prison,” she said, looking morosely into her bowl. “I spend my life being shut into small rooms as it is.”
“What I don’t understand, Mistress Kingsley,” Harry said, wiping a piece of bread around his plate, “is why you would return to Canterbury when you had already made it safely to London? Knowing there was a price on your head?”
“Because I didn’t want to live the rest of my life as a fugitive,” she said, raising her head, her eyes bright. She pinched the rough cloth of the skirt she wore and held it up. “In borrowed clothes. Looking over my shoulder, fearing someone would recognise me. I wanted my name cleared, for good. I thought Bruno would be able to find the person who did it. And then I would be free.” She sighed, and rested her cheek on her fist, as if the possibility of this was receding by the moment.
“And rich, I suppose,” Harry said casually, still looking at his bread.
“If I were cleared of murder, I would inherit the greater part of my husband’s estate, yes,” she said, defensive. “And it would be small recompense for what I suffered at his hands, I assure you.”
“Madame, I meant no harm,” Harry said mildly. We finished the meal in silence.
Later, when I blew out the candles in the upper room, she turned away from me and climbed under the sheet still wearing her shift. It seemed pointless in the circumstances to undress myself, so I moved in beside her in my shirt and underhose.
“Bruno,” she said, refusal in her voice before I had even reached for her, “I am exhausted, and afraid. I have spent all day in a shed with nowhere to piss but at my own feet, fearing every creak of the boards in the wind. Could we just …” She let the meaning hang in the air.
“Of course,” I murmured into her hair, allowing her to settle herself against my shoulder, willing myself to a gallantry I did not feel. “Did you read the book?” I asked, mainly to distract myself from the pressure of her left breast against my rib cage.
“I tried. It was impossible to understand.”
“All Greek to you.”
“That is the point—it is not all Greek. My Greek is poor but I can usually make out some of the meaning. Part of this book is written in a language I have never seen.”
I laughed.
“It is a cipher. The book was translated into Greek from a very ancient manuscript in Egyptian. The translator believed the knowledge it contained was so powerful that it should not be made visible except to a very few adepts.”
“Magic?” She raised her head an inch and I heard the animation in her voice.
“Beyond magic. I believe this book contains the last great secret of the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus —the truth of how man can become like God.”
She whistled softly; I felt her breath tickle my neck.
“It must be very valuable.”
“Only a handful of people could recognise its true worth.” I pictured them: my friend John Dee, now living in Prague at the court of Emperor Rudolf; Lord Henry Howard, who had once almost killed Dee in pursuit of this book, and would have sent it down here to Langworth for safekeeping when he knew he was to be sent to prison and his house raided. “My patron, King Henri of France, is a great collector of occult manuscripts. I can barely imagine what he would be willing to pay for it. But I do not mean to sell it at any price,” I added.
“Have you broken the cipher?”
I smiled. “You have had more leisure to read that book than I ever have. But I will.”
“If anyone can, Bruno, it is you.” She laid her hand on my chest and I rested my cheek on her hair. For a moment it was possible to imagine that this was real, that tomorrow I would not be on trial for my life. “What will happen to us?” she whispered, as if reading my thoughts.
“I don’t know. The justice seems a sensible sort of man. He is friends with the dean, and the dean is anxious not to offend my connections at court, so perhaps it will go well for me. I still have hope that my letter will have reached my friend Sidney in time.”
I did not think they would dare to execute me on the spot, which meant there was still time for an intervention. If my letter had found its destination, I thought, with a brief wave of despair; the weavers would not know the urgency. They may spend two or three days in town attending to their own business before they remembered they had a message to deliver.
“And me?” she asked, in a small voice.
“If Tom Garth will find the courage to speak, it will weaken the case against you to know that the gloves were not yours. There is no other evidence against you.”
“Except that I ran, and took his money,” she murmured. “And that I gain most from his will. I thought you would find the real killer easily, like you did in Oxford.” There was a faint hint of accusation in her voice, and I bridled at it.
“Because you thought the answer was simple. You thought it was Nicholas. But I can only think it was Langworth, for some complex reason connected with the experiments on the boys and their plans regarding Becket. But I cannot prove it for certain. Not by tomorrow, anyway.” I took a deep breath. “I am sorry if you think I have failed you.”
“No.” She stroked a finger along my collarbone. “Perhaps it is I who have failed. I have failed all along, all my life. I must have been born under a very bad aspect.”
“You were just born to the wrong station in life,” I whispered into the top of her head. “A spirit like yours would have been better suited to being a princess.”
She laughed, a gentle bubbling sound against my chest. “Please, Bruno, aim higher. Queen, I think.”
“And yet, you know the queen of England lives every day in fear of her life too?”
“At least she has never been forced to take a husband,” she said, with feeling.
I slept; at least, I drifted in and out of sleep as the moon drifted among its violet tatters of cloud, its blue light slowly moving the shadows on the wall each time my eyes half opened. Sophia slept easily against my chest, her breathing rhythmic and soft, her face flushed and smooth as her eyelids twitched. The arm I had under her head grew numb but I kept still for fear of waking her. Hours passed. The moon was hidden, revealed, hidden again. And then, I heard it: a tread on the stair. The faintest of movements; as if a cat had approached the door. But my nerves sprang alive, the hairs on my arms prickled; in my gut I felt a sudden inkling of danger. Gingerly I retrieved my arm from under Sophia’s head and pushed myself upright, trying to keep quiet; might it only be Harry, shuffling about on the floor below, fumbling for his piss-pot in the dark? But the movement had sounded too close at hand. I felt for my knife and realised I had unbuckled it and left it with my belt and breeches on a chair against the far wall.
I was easing myself upright slowly when the door was pushed open and the shadow of a man loomed across the white wall opposite the bed. I made to move but he was at the end of the bed before I could shake off the sheet and in the thin light I caught the unmistakable glint of a knife. I hardly needed the moon to reveal him; the long nose, the gleam of his pale domed head.
“Well, well.” Samuel nodded at Sophia’s sleeping form. “Two birds with one stone, you might say. And you will die with your sins on you, which is no more than you deserve, you heretic dog.”
Sophia stirred and opened her eyes at the sound of his voice; dazed, she took a moment to comprehend the scene, but when she did she gave a little scream, which she stifled with her hand.
“Why didn’t you kill me sooner, if you meant to?” I asked, hearing the tremor in my voice.
