Heresy (38 page)

“Did he say why?”

Ned shook his head. “Only that he had to return to college early but he needed an excuse to walk out.”

“He did not say if he was meeting someone?”

Ned wriggled impatiently under my hands.

“He said nothing else, sir. I took my groat and did as I was bid, and that was all I knew of it until just now.” Suddenly his eyes grew large with the drama of the event. “Do you think that’s when they got him, sir, when he came back to college early?”

“You didn’t see if he met anyone outside the Divinity School after you gave him the message? A man with no ears, perhaps?”

“No, sir, but I know the man you mean,” Ned said, his freckled face lighting up as if he had answered a difficult examination question. “But it was Master Godwyn was meeting him outside the Divinity School, not Doctor Coverdale.”

“Godwyn?” I repeated, uncomprehending.

“Yes, I saw him meet the man you mean, the bookseller Jenkes, outside the Divinity School while I was waiting to give the false message to Doctor Coverdale. But then I followed Doctor Coverdale all the way back to college after that. I thought I’d take the chance to skip off early myself—no offence, sir,” he added, looking suddenly guilty; I shook my head briefly.

“You missed nothing, I assure you. But Coverdale—you saw him go straight to his room?”

“Yes, sir. That’s to say, I saw him going into his staircase.”

“And you saw nothing else unusual? No one abroad in the college?”

“No, sir. Only—”

“What?” I asked, my voice rising higher as I shook him urgently.

“Well—I have a room above the library, as I have serving duties there and in the chapel. It’s how I pay for my studies, sir,” he explained, a little sheepishly. “Well, as I was climbing the stairs to my room, I heard voices from behind the door.”

“In the library? Whose voices?”

“I don’t know, but I heard a man’s voice raised as if he was angry. I couldn’t catch the words, though. I just crept past the landing up to my attic as quiet as I could, but they must have heard my tread on the stairs because they fell silent for a moment. Then when I heard the library door close a few minutes later, I tried to look down from my window into the quad to see who it was so I could report them to Master Godwyn.”

“Could it have been Master Godwyn himself, returned early?” I asked.

“I don’t know. They both had cloaks on with hoods up, so I couldn’t tell.” He shrugged, as if it was of no great interest.

“Thank you, Ned.”

Defeated, I let go of his shoulders and rummaged again in my purse for another shilling. Next time I needed information, I thought, I would remember to make it a groat. Ned snatched it gladly and grinned. As his fist closed around it, I glanced across the courtyard to see Slythurst emerging from the stairway that led to the library and chapel. He shot me a look of pure loathing and hurried through the curtains of rain in the direction of the rector’s lodgings. So Godwyn had also left the disputation early, in order to meet Jenkes. Could they have returned to the college together in search of Coverdale? Or might they have had other business in the library, perhaps involving those illegal books?

People continued to shove and press around us as they peered out into the courtyard, trying to decide whether to wait for the rain to ease. I braced myself and skittered across the courtyard into the downpour, weaving around the dispersing crowd of students. Under the tower archway, a small crowd had gathered to watch with interest the arrival of three men in long cloaks and tricorn hats, shaking the water from their shoulders. One carried an official-looking staff with a carved brass head, and I supposed these must be the constables and the coroner, come to retrieve the body. Rector Underhill stood behind them, twisting his hands fretfully, while Slythurst tried to keep the undergraduates at bay. I wondered if the rector would tell
the coroner about the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian, or leave him to draw his own conclusions.

“Dio buono, amico mio
—what a day!” exclaimed a voice behind me. I turned to see John Florio pulling a cloak tightly around his shoulders as if preparing to brave the weather. “You never saw rain like this in Naples, I’ll wager?”

“Not even Noah saw rain like this,” I replied grimly, casting a glance heavenward.

“Are you going out?” he said, taking my arm and fixing me with an oddly expectant look as I followed him through the gate into St. Mildred’s Lane. “Perhaps we could walk together,” he went on eagerly, without waiting for an answer. “I am headed for Catte Street to enquire after some French books I have ordered from a dealer there, and I must say, I will be glad to get away from the college even for an hour, despite this weather. This dreadful attack has left us all quite shaken. Why don’t you come with me? His shop would interest you, I think—his real trade is bookbinding but he has good contacts with printers in France and the Low Countries, and there are often interesting imports to be found, obscure texts that you won’t find elsewhere, if you can tolerate the man himself.”

We fell into step through the filthy streets, Florio speculating wildly in Italian about the assault on Coverdale, gesticulating with his hands as he talked, while I nodded and murmured agreement in the few pauses he left to draw breath. At the corner of St. John Street and Catte Street, I suddenly heard shouting and a peal of coarse laughter ring out across the street; we both turned to see a gang of apprentice boys by the Smythgate jostling one another and pointing in delight, jeering and calling out insults. Florio steered me by the elbow away from them as they yelled out, “Papist whoresons! Get out of England!”

“Ignore them,” Florio muttered, quickening his pace as one of the boys reached down to throw a stone and another spat in our direction. They followed
us for a few paces but did not have the nerve for more than shouting and eventually grew bored with their baiting.

“They are not overfond of foreigners here,” I observed as we ducked gratefully into the scant shelter of the overhanging upper stories of the houses in Catte Street. Florio gave me a rueful glance.

“It is an excuse to make trouble. To the ignorant, all foreigners are Catholics who want to slaughter them in their beds. I live with this all the time, and I was born here. Forget about it,
amico mio
. Look, we are almost here.”

“What is this book dealer’s name?” I asked, though I had already guessed.

“Rowland Jenkes,” Florio called over his shoulder, since there was not room for us to walk two abreast and still have the meagre respite offered by the eaves. “You will hear of him before long, I’m sure. He is greatly reviled in the town—they call him a necromancer, but you know how people gossip. But Jenkes will find you books that could not be had without travelling to France yourself—and that is of particular value to me. There are those who would not step foot in his shop and will spread malicious talk about any Fellow who does, but I try to close my ears to all that. I have enough trouble here already as
un inglese italianato
, as you have seen. Here we are,” he finished, pointing to the low shop front where I had seen William Bernard and Jenkes enter the day before. The shutters were open now, but the windows looked no less dark and forbidding.

Florio hesitated, then laid a hand on my arm.

“Forgive me, but before we go in, I must ask you, Doctor Bruno, if you read my note?” he whispered, his eyes bright with urgency and apprehension.

I stared at him, astonished.
“Your
note?”

“Yes. I left you a note. Did you not receive it?”

“Well … yes, but I did not realise it came from you.” I was still looking
at him with incredulity; if the mysterious letter had come from Florio after all, it could only mean that he had vital information about the killings. Why, then, had he not told someone in authority what he knew? Then I remembered what Thomas Allen had said about the rumours of a government spy in the college; Florio, with his languages and his highborn contacts, would be just the sort of man Walsingham might make use of. Perhaps, then, he was afraid to reveal his cover and had been waiting until he could make contact with Sidney and me. I continued to stare at him, waiting for some further clarification. He looked slightly perplexed.

“Oh. I had thought it would be clear, for obvious reasons. I am sorry for any confusion.”

“But, Florio,” I said, clutching his arm and drawing him in closer; the water from the overhanging timbers above cascaded in sheets to the sodden ground and I had to raise my voice to be heard. “Why did you not come and speak to me about this in person?”

He lowered his eyes as if abashed.

“It is a delicate matter, Doctor Bruno—I thought it best that I approach it in a more formal manner. One must observe propriety in such things.”

“Propriety be damned, Florio—two men have died and there may be more to follow!”

He looked at first startled, then his expression turned quickly to fear.

“But, Bruno—you think there will be more deaths? What makes you say so?”

“We cannot know, until we learn what links these two victims and discover the killer’s motive, do you not agree? And there I think you have something to tell that could illuminate the matter, am I right?”

Florio stared at me then with a look of utter incomprehension, but before he could reply, the door beside us opened and Rowland Jenkes stood on the threshold of his shop, surveying us with his habitual expression of amused detachment.

“Buongiorno, signori,”
he said, in that sly, educated accent that so belied his ravaged face, while effecting a little bow that I took to be sarcastic. “Not the weather to be standing out of doors, Master Florio. Please, come in, and bring your friend.” He stepped back and made a grandiose gesture with his arm to usher us in. Florio looked at me for a moment longer, then lowered his dripping cloak and stepped inside.

T
he room we now entered was built below street level, so that we had to descend three stone steps onto flagstones strewn with rushes, which quickly soaked up the rainwater that streamed from our clothes. A low ceiling, ribbed with dark timbers, made the shop feel close and intimate. Florio and I, being short of stature, could stand upright, but Jenkes had to hunch his shoulders so as not to clip his head, a posture that gave him a slightly obsequious air, as if he were permanently half bowing. There was little light in the room, the grimy diamond-paned windows either side of the door admitting scant daylight in this gloomy weather, though a pair of candles burned in a wall sconce behind the ware bench opposite the door. They were good wax, too, as they did not give off the filthy smell of the cheap tallow kind that lit my chamber at Lincoln. In fact, the narrow shop smelled more like home than any place I had been since my arrival in Oxford, for it smelled of books; a warm scent of new leather and paper, and the mustier
traces of old vellum and ink, a heady mixture that brought on a sudden pang of nostalgia for the scriptorium at San Domenico Maggiore where I had spent so many hours of my youth.

Carved wooden book stacks lined each side of the shop showing the bookbinder’s art: each was filled from floor to ceiling with volumes bound in coloured leather and organised according to size, placed with their fore edge outward so that the brass clasps glinted under the darting flames of the candles. Along the bench where Jenkes stood, rubbing his hands and looking from me to Florio with an expression of greedy anticipation, examples of different types of binding and format were ranged, from the old-fashioned wooden boards encased in calfskin that would keep a parchment manuscript from cockling, to the newer Paris bindings of double pasteboard for lighter books of paper, that needed no brass clasps but were tied together with leather thongs or ribbons. All were secured, like the books in Lincoln library, by a brass chain attached to a rod running beneath the bench. Behind this bench, opposite the street door, was another door which gave onto a larger interior room, no better lit than this one, which, from the little I could see within, appeared to be the workshop. I thought I glimpsed the shadow of someone moving, out of sight, and supposed that Jenkes must have apprentices at work.

“And this is Signor Filippo Nolano, is it not?” Jenkes greeted me with a feline smile, holding out a surprisingly delicate hand, which I shook with some reluctance, feeling Florio’s curious eyes on the side of my face. “I wondered when we would be seeing you here, after you followed me from the Catherine Wheel the other day.”

“I … that is—” I was unsure how to meet this accusation, especially with Florio’s amazed stare burning into me.

Jenkes waved his hand as if to dismiss my small offence. “No matter. But Signor Nolano, I cannot help noticing that our friend here, Signor Florio, seems surprised to hear me address you so. Perhaps he knows you by a
different name?” He raised one eyebrow theatrically, steepling his fingertips. He had a habit of speaking almost without moving his lips, so that every sentence had the air of a confidence that could not quite be spoken aloud.

I looked him in the eye, feeling myself at a disadvantage; not only was I in his shop, soaked to the skin, but he had clearly made it his business to find out about me even as I had thought myself to be tailing him.

“For many years I travelled in places where it was not safe to give one’s own name,” I said, setting my shoulders back and attempting to hold myself with some dignity. “It has become a habit when among strangers, that is all.”

Jenkes smiled. “A man would go to any lengths to avoid the Inquisition, I am sure, Doctor Bruno.”

I nodded carefully, trying not to betray any surprise. Florio continued to frown, bemused.

“I hope you will not long think of us as strangers. But there are places even in our glorious free realm where a man would do well to watch his words. What drew you to the Catherine Wheel, I wonder?”

I shrugged. “I was hungry. I saw the sign and went to look for hot food.”

At this, Jenkes threw his head back and guffawed, revealing his crooked teeth.