Bristol House (21 page)

I held her by the hair of her head and made her look at me. “You think you are not afraid of pain, my daughter? Let us see.”

I knew it was in her mind that I would beat her again more fiercely than before, but that was not what I planned.

For some time the smell of smoke had drifted downriver from Smithfield, where there is some days a market for meat. At such times many set up braziers and scurry around among the butchers, collecting the offcuts that fall to the ground. The smell of them roasting causes the stomach to growl, and the tidbits, though mostly gristle, can be sold for a farthing, sometimes even a ha’penny. So it was that day when, using the leash with which I’d fixed her to the post, I dragged my daughter from the house. The smell of cooked meat was everywhere.

But it was people they burned on Smithfield that day.

I had heard there were three heretics to go to the stake, and the business was under way when we got there, but it was not finished. As usual, they burned them one at a time. That way those waiting for punishment were given a plentitude of time to watch and ponder what was to come.

Rebecca hung back as soon as she heard the screams. “No, no, no,” she protested when I dragged her up the hill and onto the meadow. “Why have you brought me here?”

“So you will know exactly what will happen if we defy the master.”

We arrived at the very moment when one victim finally shuddered and screamed his last agonies. Those who tended the fire had thrown on enough fuel to cause the flames to leap up and engulf him, not crawl slowly up his flesh so as to cause suffering but not death. Which was the custom for the first hour.

The last victim was a woman, a witch they said, and they stripped her naked, then tied her to the stake. People in the crowd, mainly children, were given long tongs and encouraged to pick up embers from the earlier fires and run toward her and burn all parts of her body. The woman cried out at the pain of those fiery kisses as if she did not know how meek they were, and how much more she would soon have to lament. Then the tenders built a small fire and lit it, and the flames devoured her feet and her ankles and her legs, and the smoke turned black and scented the air with the burning grease of her flesh, and she screamed and screamed and screamed until it seemed there could be no other sound in all the world. After that the tenders fueled the fire higher, though not yet high enough for mercy.

It took at least an hour for the poor wretch to die, and I made my daughter watch and listen and smell until the end. When I took Rebecca home, she was covered with the blown ash of the witch’s hair because I had thrust her forward as it took the flames. I knew her will was bent to mine, and I would have no further need of strap or leash or chains or anything else.

But the lesson was, perhaps, better learned by me than by my daughter. That very night I witnessed her defiance in a way that, had it occurred prior to the command from Master Cromwell concerning whose wife she was to be, would have caused me to send her into the street exactly as she was, there to whore or beg, while I would mourn the daughter dead to me. Instead it happened after Cromwell told us our fate and while I yet had imprinted on my eyes the vision of the witch burning in agony, and in my heart deep hatred for the man who had so upended my life.

It was because Cromwell had made himself my master that I had become custodian of a patrimony that prevented my simply leaving this bitter land and seeking a better place. Before I uncovered the pit, that was surely what I would have done, rather than give my daughter in marriage to the most repulsive man in all the kingdom.

After sundown, when Rebecca and I had both gone to our beds, there was a soft tap on the door. I was sure it was the brother whom Dom Hilary, the monk of the Charterhouse, had recently sent to make arrangements for the collection of a chest such as “you will know what to do with.” The message struck me as coming from one who had little understanding of conspiracy. Who would not overhear it and have his suspicions aroused? The plan, however, was sensible enough.

The brother would come again when the time was right to send Rebecca to the Charterhouse. There her cart would be loaded with honey to take into the town to sell. She had done this before, and always the arrangement had proved itself profitable both for us and for the monks. Only on this occasion, according to the plan, there would be a small chest beneath the honey and well concealed by it. I was to hide the chest in a secure place until the monks wished to claim it.

That evening when the knock at the door came, I was sure it was the brother who had come before, this time with a firm date for the collection of the honey, and I rolled over and ignored it. I was reluctant to quit my warm bed behind the hearth, so heavy did my body feel after the rigors of the last three days, particularly that afternoon at the Smithfield fires. Let her deal with him, I thought. She must be the one to collect the honey.

I think I may have fallen asleep in the moments after I heard them whispering in the door of my house, but only for the space of a few short breaths. Then I woke with a start, sitting bolt upright and not knowing at first why, though the explanation of what troubled me came quickly enough. I had not heard Rebecca’s footsteps returning to her bed.

I was at once certain my daughter was no longer under my roof.

I knew I had to find her. More, I admit, for fear of Master Cromwell than for the loss of my child. Rebecca had become a burden to me, and I wanted to be rid of her, though I did regret the necessity to give her to a husband who was with good cause repugnant to her.

It was a balmy evening, full dark by then, but lit by a quarter moon. I took no overtunic, only a sturdy staff from its place beside the door, and went into the night.

The path to the right led to the few other houses that made up the small hamlet where we lived, then to the hill leading to the Holborn Bar and the city beyond. Rebecca would not go that way. I went left, toward the stand of alder and birch that came between my holding and the river. I was only a short way into the trees when I heard them rutting. In a few steps I could see them.

My daughter lay on the ground, her skirts pulled up to her waist, and her arms wrapped tight around a figure wearing the white robe that marked him as vowed to chastity. There was moonlight enough for me to see that the one lying on top of her was not the humble brother who had first brought the note (I had not truly imagined it would be) but Dom Justin, as he is known now he’s vowed and priested.

I raised my staff and started forward. My rage was boundless. I intended to beat them about their heads, even maybe to kill one or the other or both.

I cannot say what damped my righteous anger. Perhaps it was the echoes of my dead wife’s cries as she birthed the child, or perhaps the thought of Master Cromwell and his disgusting acolyte; perhaps simply because the entire drama tired me. All that had transpired these days since Cromwell called me to Westminster—no, even much earlier—was for exactly what I saw before me. The lust for one particular cunny, when so many others might be made to serve the same purpose, drove the poxed stinker and this supposed monk both to strive and connive and quite possibly pave their same but separate ways to Gehenna.

I had a patrimony to protect. If I were brought before the bailiff on a charge of murder, it would not help that cause. Besides, what did I care if the stinker took soiled linen to his bed rather than fresh? Did he deserve better? Was his noxious affliction not already a mark of how Boré Olam disfavored him? As for her, let her find her own way to explain that the blood she should have shed in her marriage bed she now poured willingly on the ground.

I turned and left them to their pleasure, quite certain they did not know they had been observed.

•

16

At number eight Bristol House the locksmith came and went, taking wax castings and promising to come back the following day and fit new locks with keys that were harder to copy. “How hard?” Annie asked. The locksmith shrugged.

After he left, Geoff suggested an early dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant. “Not great,” he said, “but above average.” Annie barely tasted the food. When she only picked at the chocolate mousse he’d ordered to cheer her up, he decided it was time to go. “My place,” he said. “You need an early night.”

As soon as they got through the door, while she was wondering if there was a second bedroom upstairs and she simply hadn’t noticed, he said, “Mind if we catch the news?”

“No, of course not.”

She hadn’t noticed a television either. She was still looking for it when he aimed a remote, and a large flat screen descended to eye level near the black leather couch. She might have guessed.

“. . . was buried today in Jerusalem,” a woman’s voice said. “A celebrated scholar, Cardinal Luigi Falcone, was ninety-two and had retired to the Holy Land after years of being in charge of the Vatican Secret Archives.” The pictures on the screen were of a casket draped in red being carried into what looked like the crypt of a church.

Geoff leaned forward. “They didn’t waste any time getting him out of the way. He died a few days ago while I was in Jerusalem.” He pulled out his iPhone and began keying in something. “Texting Fiona,” he said. “Maybe she’s got something more.”

“Who’s Fiona?”

Geoff nodded toward the TV. “Fiona Bruce. That’s her.”

The picture on the screen had switched to an attractive young woman sitting behind a news desk. A dead-wife-Emma type, Annie noted, with the sort of straight dark hair that had to be cut every few weeks to keep its perfect shape. She wondered if Fiona had visited the upstairs bedroom. “I take it,” she said, “what you find interesting about the death of a ninety-two-year-old cardinal is the Secret Archives connection.”

“Only partly,” Geoff said. On the screen someone was going on about an EU directive concerning cabbages. “It’s how he died that’s intriguing.”

“How?”

“Choked to death on six quail eggs. All of which were still in the shell and lodged in his throat.”

“Wow! And they’re not telling that story on television?”

“Exactly my point. Do you think an old guy would willingly swallow half a dozen unshelled quail eggs?”

“Maybe he had some kind of dementia.”

“Not according to everyone who knew him. He was physically frail, but he still had all his much-admired marbles.”

Annie thought for a moment. “There are said to be fifty-six miles of shelves in the Secret Archives. And the collection has never had a public catalog.”

The woman on the television was saying, “This is Fiona Bruce, and—”

Geoff clicked her off. “In practical terms, what does it mean not to have a catalog?”

“That the only way to get hold of a document is to request it by name. You have to already know it exists and that it’s there. What you ask for may or may not be produced even so, but the absence of a public catalog means you can’t try and prove a thesis by following a number of different leads until you find one that works.”

“Would the archivist of such a collection know everything that’s in it?”

“That’s not possible with something as extensive as what we’re talking about,” Annie said. “But he might remember something specific, and if that was precisely what someone didn’t want discussed . . .” She shrugged.

Geoff’s iPhone vibrated. “Text from Fiona,” he said. “She doesn’t have anything more. The story only made the cut because of Falcone’s influence, and the Secret Archives, and because not a lot happened today.”

“Sounds to me as if the Jerusalem authorities kept quiet about the quail eggs.”

“It does,” he said.

“How did you find out about them?”

“Pretty much by accident. The day Falcone died, I was having dinner with an old friend, a reporter on an English-language paper, and he mentioned it. Because of the oddity factor. But I remember looking for the story in his paper the next day, and it wasn’t there.”

“So who quashed it?” Annie asked. “The Vatican or the Jerusalem authorities?”

“That’s exactly what I’d like to know.”

Annie sat up straighter. “Oh my God.”

“What?”

“You know I have the news on all the time when I’m at Bristol House?” He nodded. “A while back there was something about another cardinal who’d just died. I’m sure they said he’d choked on a quail egg. Damn. I can’t think which cardinal it was or where he was from.”

“Forget about it,” he said. “We’ll check it out later. You’re beautiful.”

“That’s a whopping non sequitur,” she said. “But I don’t think I mind.”

Finally another real kiss.

“I was planning to sleep down here on the couch,” he said. “Honest.”

Annie smiled and shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

***

She was too tense, in country too unfamiliar. She knew about casual sex but not this. At least not this as she perceived it to be. The feel of his skin against hers, his breath warm on her neck—there was a glory here she had not known before. It terrified her, and she could not let go.

When it seemed he’d been holding back and waiting for her forever, she faked it.

Annie thought she’d gotten away with it, but a few moments later he rolled her on top. “Nice and slow and easy,” he murmured. “There’s plenty of time.”

There was.

“Okay?” Geoff asked afterward.

“Much more than okay,” Annie said. “Wonderful.” And because the splendor seemed too much, she retreated to humor. “As they say in the business world, thank you for your patience.”

He chuckled. “I didn’t feel as if I’d been put on hold.”

“You weren’t.”

“I know.”

By then she lay next to him, and he was hovering over her, leaning on one elbow and looking at her. He bent his head and kissed her forehead. “You’re so beautiful,” he said again, his finger tracing the outline of the glass heart that was still around her neck. “All my life I’ve heard of green-eyed redheads, but until now I’ve never actually met one.”