Heresy (35 page)

“It does not look like nothing—it’s bled badly. I could look at it if you like?”

“Are you a doctor?” he snapped, withdrawing his arm hastily as if afraid I might tear the bandage off without his consent.

“Only of theology,” I admitted, “but I did learn a little of the art of making salves when I was a monk. It would be no trouble to examine it.”

“Thank you, but there is no need. It was just a foolish accident. I was sharpening Gabriel’s razor for him and my hand slipped.” He looked down and gave his whole attention to the bread as if the subject was closed. I felt myself tense, but tried to give no sign that I found his words significant.

“Your friend Master Norris does not use the college barber, then?” I asked, in a neutral tone.

Thomas ventured a smile. “He calls him the college barbarian. No, he prefers to do the job himself.”

“When did he ask you to sharpen his razor?”

Thomas thought for a moment.

“It must have been Saturday, because he wanted to shave before the disputation.”

“And has it been in its usual place since then?”

“I … I don’t know, sir. I have not looked. Why would it not be?”

He looked at me, his brow creased with curiosity, and I thought it best not to arouse his suspicions further.

“I only wondered if Master Norris ever lent the razor to his friends.”

“Never, sir. He is careful with his possessions. Many of them are valuable, or else they came from his father.”

He didn’t ask any further questions, but continued to regard me with curiosity. After we had sat for a little in silence, I put down my bread and wiped my fingers.

“But this news of your father—you did not learn it directly from him, if his letters are intercepted. He would surely not have written of his plans to take holy orders.”

“No, he had another correspondent,” Thomas said with his mouth full.

“Had?”

He stopped and his eyes flickered guiltily up toward mine as he realised his slip.

“You mean Doctor Mercer?” I persisted. If he had learned the news three days ago, there could only be one person who now required the past tense.

Thomas nodded. “They continued to write to each other. My father always confided more in Roger Mercer, they were the closest of friends.”

“But Mercer denounced him.”

“I don’t think so. My father never knew who denounced him, but he was certain it wasn’t Mercer. Mercer only testified against him at the trial.”

“Surely that would be enough to end a friendship. Your father must have an exceptional capacity for forgiveness.”

Thomas laid down his knife and was looking at me impatiently.

“You don’t understand, do you? This is exactly what I was saying about faith—the
cause
is always more important. The natural laws of friendship must be sacrificed. My father would not have expected Roger Mercer to do otherwise—and he would have testified against Roger if their positions had been reversed. Both had a greater loyalty. If Roger had spoken in his defence they would likely both have been imprisoned or exiled, and then who would be left to carry on the fight?”

I stared at him. “You mean to say that Roger Mercer was also a Catholic?” I whispered.

Thomas hunched lower over the table.

“I suppose it will not hurt him now that I tell you,” he said, “but please do not repeat it to anyone, I beg you. It could only hurt his family.”

“No, no, of course. But if Roger was a Catholic,” I mused, my mind scurrying to catch up, “and your father was writing to him from Rheims, might he have confided details of the English mission? Might Roger even have played a part?”

“I do not know the contents of their letters, sir,” Thomas said, twisting uncomfortably in his seat. “Doctor Mercer only told me news he thought might affect me directly.”

“But was their correspondence not intercepted by the college authorities
too? Did they not think it suspicious that Mercer continued to write to the man he had helped condemn?”

“Doctor Mercer did not send his letters through the college post, sir.” Thomas’s voice was now barely audible. “He paid to send them privately, through someone in the town who had the means of carrying letters overseas.”

“Ah. A book dealer, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. I did not ask—that was his business,” Thomas said evenly, but his eyes were evasive. Then he suddenly leaned forward so that he was almost lying across the table and grabbed my sleeve. “I am not responsible for my father, sir, nor for any communications he may or may not have sent, as I have tried to tell everyone for the last year. I just want to live quietly, to leave Oxford and study the law at the Inns of Court in London, but I fear I shall never be allowed a career as a lawyer, nor any wife of good family, for as long as I am regarded as my father’s son. Especially once he joins the Jesuits,” he added, with an extra dose of self-pity. “For the Privy Council has spies even in the seminaries and will learn of it soon enough. Unless someone with influence will speak on my behalf.”

He looked at me with imploring eyes, but I looked back unseeing, my mind occupied elsewhere. If Edmund Allen was taking holy orders in Rheims, he must be in some way connected to the mission to England. That would certainly explain the ransacking of Mercer’s room; Allen’s letters to him, if they contained any such matter, might be evidence enough to condemn anyone associated with them. But that still did not explain why Roger had been killed. Had he threatened to betray the cause? Had he crossed someone? Did the letters between Roger Mercer and Edmund Allen name others who wanted to protect themselves at any cost? The “J” in his calendar on the day of his murder might very well stand for Jenkes, I reflected; anyone who could cut off his own ears without flinching surely wouldn’t hesitate to remove a man who threatened his business—unless I was falling
prey to Cobbett’s legends. There were too many questions, while the possible answers were all frustratingly unclear. I put my head in my hands and stared at the table.

“Are you all right, Doctor Bruno?”

“I wondered if Mercer was killed by a Catholic,” I murmured, barely aware that I had thought aloud and only belatedly looking up to find Thomas regarding me with an odd expression.

“Doctor Mercer was killed by a
dog,”
he reminded me.

“Oh, come on, Thomas—do you believe that? How often have you known feral dogs to attack men in the streets of Oxford, never mind a locked garden?”

“I do not know, sir,” he said, avoiding my eye. “I only know what the rector told us. The door was left open, the dog wandered in.”

He made a show of looking into his empty tankard as if hoping more beer might appear if he only peered in hard enough.

“Another drink, Thomas?”

He nodded eagerly, and I summoned the serving girl to bring us another two pots of beer. When she had gone, I leaned across the table and waited for him to meet my eye.

“Was this what you wanted to confide in me, that you could tell no one else, this news about your father?”

Thomas resumed his scratching at the boards of the table.

“That first day, when I thought you were Sir Philip,” he said quietly, “you were kind when Rector Underhill tried to shame me. I thought—perhaps it was foolish, but I thought if you had the ear of men like Sir Philip, you might intercede for me.”

“What is it you wish me to say?”

He took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, his eyes fixed on his hands. “I want to leave Oxford, sir. I am afraid. When my father was deprived, I was questioned twice by the Chancellor’s Court. They would not believe that I
knew nothing of his secret life, and the questioning was hard—they would not accept a word I said, they kept pressing me and pressing me on the same points until I found I was contradicting myself.”

I noticed his hands were shaking and his breathing had quickened; the memory was obviously difficult for him.

“Did they use force?”

“No, sir. But they argued as lawyers do, they twisted every answer I gave until it sounded like the opposite meaning, and I became so confused and afraid I found myself agreeing to statements that I knew were not true. It is strange the way that someone who wants to find you guilty can start to make you believe in your own guilt, even when you know you are innocent. I was afraid I would condemn myself by mistake, sir. It was a horrible experience.”

“I can imagine,” I said, with feeling, remembering the fear that had gripped at my guts when the abbot had told me I would be questioned by the Inquisition all those years ago. “And you are afraid you will be questioned again if it becomes known that your father is to become a Jesuit priest?”

He nodded, finally looking directly at me. “If they refused to believe me before, how much worse will it be when they know he is part of the Jesuit mission? What if they take me to London for questioning? I have heard tales of what they do there to get the information they want. They can make you say anything.”

I remembered my conversation with Walsingham in his garden and shivered involuntarily. Thomas’s narrow, pointed face was stretched tight with fear, his skin so pale that a tracery of blue veins stood out at his temples like a river delta inked on a map. There was no doubt that this fear was real and vivid.

“The authorities would believe you know enough to make hard questioning worthwhile?” I asked.

“I know nothing, sir!” he protested, his cheeks flaming again with emotion.
“But I am not brave—I do not know what I might be capable of saying if they hurt me!”

“Tell me the truth, Thomas,” I said firmly. “I cannot help you if you do not. Are you afraid that you will betray your father’s secrets, and the secrets of his confederates, if you are threatened with torture?”

“I never wanted this knowledge, sir,” he whispered, his voice cracking as he blinked back tears. “I told my father so, but he wanted me to share in it. He was determined to bring me to the Roman faith, he wanted me to go with him to France, so he wouldn’t have to choose between his son and his church. I suppose he thought if he confided in me about his meetings, I would feel some complicity, some loyalty toward his friends. Instead I am trapped by all these secrets I never asked to be told. I am suffering for a faith I don’t even share!” he cried, bringing his fist down on the table.

“You have never thought of offering up these secrets voluntarily?” I ventured. “You must know the Earl of Leicester would surely reward anyone who could give him such information about the Catholic resistance in Oxford as you must have.”

Thomas stared at me as if it was taking him some time to process the meaning of my words.

“Of course I have thought of it. Have you ever seen the execution of a Catholic in England, Doctor Bruno?”

I confessed that I had not.

“I have. My father took me to London to see the death of Edmund Campion and his fellow Jesuits, in December of 1581. I think he wanted me to understand what was at stake.” He passed a hand across his brow and squeezed his eyes hard shut, as if this might blot out the scenes he had witnessed. “They were sliced open like pigs in the slaughterhouse and their guts torn from their living bodies, wound around a spindle to pull them out slower. You can hear them still crying out to God while their entrails are held aloft to please the crowd and their hearts thrown in the brazier. I could not bear to watch, Doctor Bruno, but I looked at my father’s face and he was
rapt, as if it were the most glorious spectacle he had ever witnessed. But I could not willingly deliver anyone to that fate. I don’t want anyone else’s blood on my hands, sir, I just want to be left alone!” His voice rose to a frantic pitch and he clutched at his bandaged wrist.

“Thomas,” I began, and broke off as the serving girl arrived with fresh tankards of beer. When she had set them down, I leaned in, carefully lowering my voice. “Are there other Catholics here in Oxford who know that your father told you about them? I mean, people who know you do not share their faith, and might be afraid that you would betray them if you were questioned?”

Immediately he looked away.

“Are you also afraid that those people would try to silence you before you could hurt them? Like they did with Roger Mercer?”

“I can’t say any more, Doctor Bruno.” His voice was trembling now. “I swear, you don’t want that knowledge either. I only wanted to ask if you might find a time to speak on my behalf to Sir Philip, to beg his patronage and assure him that I am a true Englishman, loyal to the queen and to the English church.”

“I thought you had stopped believing in God,” I said, with a smile.

“What has the Church to do with God?” he countered, almost smiling in return. From somewhere beyond the windows, a church bell began to peal distantly. Thomas jumped as if he had been stung. “Doctor Bruno—I hope this won’t seem ungrateful, but I should get back to college. Gabriel will be returning from lectures soon and I have work still to do.”

It seemed to me that he was suddenly anxious to end the conversation; perhaps he had not anticipated so many questions in return for the favour he wanted. I drained the last of my beer and paid the landlord, feeling a twinge of guilt as I saw the undisguised envy with which Thomas watched me take coins from Walsingham’s plump purse. If he knew that I had been given this money by the very people whose attention he feared, for the exact
purpose of winkling out the kind of secrets his father kept, whatever respect he professed for me would vanish like yesterday’s mist.

Out of the thick warmth of the tavern, the rain had set in again and a chill wind drove it sideways into our faces. Thomas pulled his gown tighter around him as we walked along the High Street under the shadows of the dripping eaves in silence, sunk deep into his own thoughts while I tried to fit what I had just learned with the matter of Mercer’s and Coverdale’s deaths. We had almost reached the turning to St. Mildred’s Lane when I remembered there was something else I had wanted to ask him.

“You said you have no friends here, Thomas, but do you not count Mistress Sophia Underhill?” I said, slowing my pace so that we would not arrive at the college gate before he had a chance to answer.