Sacrilege (22 page)

"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.

T
hough Monsieur Fleury checked that the lane outside the weavers' cottages was empty before allowing me out, I walked into the High Street with a sense of unease; it seemed I was picking up the fear that saturated that house. Without any clear idea of what to do next, I found myself turning in the direction of the cathedral. I decided to call on Harry Robinson, to see if he had heard the news of the apothecary's murder and what he made of it. It was not yet nine. Outside the shop, a small crowd was still gathered, whispering with relish, hands clasped to scandalised mouths, the goodwives thoroughly enjoying this latest episode of town drama. I hurried past, keeping my head down, though no one paid me any attention. I noticed the girl Rebecca was no longer among them.

Who killed Sir Edward Kingsley? I half smiled to myself at the memory of Sophia quoting William of Ockham at me, as if she were the philosopher. I was fairly certain she could not share those jokes with Olivier; at least I had that on my side. If I had learned anything in the past couple of years, it was that the obvious solution was often far from the truth. She wanted me to find Nicholas Kingsley guilty of his father's murder; it would be a neat solution, certainly, and a chance for revenge on a young
man with few redeeming qualities. But to assume his guilt from the beginning would make me no better than Constable Edmonton, with his talk of rounding up vagrants.

Sophia. Damn her, damn her eyes and her mouth and her throat and the curve of her hip and everything else she could not disguise. What was I doing here? I should be in London, among my books, not miles away in a strange city, regarded with suspicion and hostility and mixed up in murders that had nothing to do with me. I, who had always prided myself against the weaknesses of the heart; how often I had mocked or pitied other men who had allowed themselves to be distracted from the pursuit of knowledge by delusions of love. On the one occasion, during my stay in Toulouse, when I had grown to love a woman I could not have, I had made a decision and left for Paris one night without saying goodbye, rather than staying to waste my time and hers in useless pining. How, then, had I allowed myself to fall under the spell of Sophia? Beauty, yes, but I had seen beauty many times before and resisted it. Perhaps it was a kind of recognition; I had seen in Sophia, even from our first meeting, a searching intelligence, a refusal to accept what she was told merely because it had always been so. She and I wanted the same thing: independence, the right to choose our own path and to ask questions, and we had both been born to a station in life that kept such freedom out of reach. Perhaps that was the root of my feelings for her; she reminded me of my younger self. The thought prompted a hollow laugh; was that not the ultimate vanity? "
Sciocco
," I told myself, under my breath, bunching my right hand into a fist until the nails dug into my palm, as if the pain would bring me back to my senses.

In the Buttermarket, crowds gathered around the stone cross and the horse trough in the centre of the cobbles, the formidable towers of Christ Church gate casting their shadow across the coloured awnings of the market stalls. There was a great deal of animation in the buzz and hum of conversation, the townspeople clearly stirred up by the excitement of another killing in their midst.

Tom Garth stood solid as a stone column in his alcove under the
gatehouse arch, arms folded across his broad chest. His expression when he saw me was even more hostile than it had been the day before, yet he nodded me through, holding out his right hand.

"Your knife, sir." He did not meet my eye. "Are you here for divine service?"

I unstrapped the knife from my belt and placed it into his outstretched palm. "What time is it?"

"Holy Communion at nine, sir. You're early."

"I will call on Doctor Robinson in the meantime." I hesitated. "You were very angry last night, it seemed."

He looked away as if he had not heard me.

"At the Three Tuns," I persisted.

"I have good cause," he said eventually, still not meeting my eye. He turned my knife between his hands.

"Young Master Kingsley's manners would try anyone's patience," I ventured.

"You seemed tight enough with him and his crowd last night, for a newcomer," he flashed back, finally glaring at me, then appeared to regret having spoken and returned his attention to the knife.

"I wished only to take his money."

Garth raised his eyes and looked at me with new curiosity.

"And did you?"

"To make money at cards, sometimes you first need to lose a little. To build the trust of your companions."

Unexpectedly, Garth smiled. It transformed his large, crude features from their habitual suspicious frown to an expression of bright amusement.

"You lost, then."

I acknowledged the truth of this with a laugh.

"I damned well did. But I'll get it back next time."

"I never heard a churchman talk like that before."

"I am not your ordinary churchman."

He nodded, as if to say that much was plain.

"Well, I wish you luck of it. Take all the blasted money you can from that whoreson, begging your pardon, sir." He glanced at the cathedral with guilty eyes, as if it might disapprove of his language, and his face grew hard again.

"If he owes you a debt, can you not go to law?"

He shook his head, his lips pressed together.

"You would not understand."

"Try me," I said gently. "I know a little of English law." A little was the truth; I lacked any knowledge to advise him, but I hoped to win his confidence.

He sighed, and glanced over his shoulder, biting the knuckle of his thumb.

"His father was the local justice, you know?" He lowered his voice, even though no one was within earshot.

"The man who was murdered here in the cathedral?"

He muttered an acknowledgement and looked down.

"What help could my family expect from the law when the man who owed us
made
the law?"

"Was it a large sum?"

He twisted his big body awkwardly and did not answer.

"The debt, I mean?"

"What that man owed my family ..." He paused and twitched his head slightly, as if to dislodge a persistent fly. "It was a debt you can't put a price on." Another pause; this time he looked at me, as if considering whether I merited his trust. He leaned in slightly. "My sister died in his house, nine years ago."