Heresy (50 page)

Thomas glared pointedly at Sophia; Jerome at least had the grace to look sheepish.

“And fall into temptation,” I mused, looking from Jerome to Sophia and remembering the Book of Hours the rector had found sewn into her mattress, with its suggestive, intimate dedication. “J.” Not Jenkes, then, but Jerome. So it must have been Jerome, too, that Roger Mercer had expected to meet in the grove on Saturday morning, when he met his violent death instead.

“But Roger Mercer found you out,” I said, meeting the Jesuit’s level gaze as my chest suddenly tightened at the thought that I was standing mere feet from the killer. “And I had thought he was killed for those papers.”

Jerome’s eyes widened instantly and he stepped forward, his air of amused complacency vanished.

“How do you know about the papers?” he demanded, looking genuinely shaken for the first time since our arrival.

“I have seen them,” I said, managing to sound calmer than I felt.

“Where?”

“In the chest in your chamber. Where you hid them.”

“In
my
—?” He swung around and stared at Thomas now in disbelief. “But you said—”

“Roger Mercer caught them in the grove one night,” Thomas cut in, a note of spite in his voice. I noticed that his right hand was tucked inside his cloak. “Sophia used to steal the key from her father’s study at night. Mercer was appalled, as you may imagine. He came to our room the next day, exploding with rage. Reminded Father Jerome here how many Catholics in Oxford were risking their lives for his sake, and how he would not take the sacrament any longer from a priest living in mortal sin, and could not allow the others in their circle to do so unwittingly. Said he had no choice but to report Jerome to the Jesuit Superior.”

“I have heard the Jesuits deal ruthlessly with those who stand in the way of their mission,” I said, taking a step back, but Jerome had turned his green eyes on Thomas. “They are as ready to kill for their faith as to die for it—as you have already shown.”

“As
I
have shown?” Jerome looked back at me for a moment, then let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “I see—you have weighed up your evidence, Bruno, and concluded that I must be the Lincoln killer because I have the most to protect. Am I right?”

“Roger Mercer threatened to expose your breach of chastity,” I said, grasping at facts that had seemed so self-evident a moment ago and now threatened to slip away from me. “You wanted him silenced.”

“I do not deny that. I mentioned to Jenkes that Roger had been fed ill reports of me and his doubts threatened my safety—I expected Jenkes to have a quiet word in his usual way. But I made a mistake.” He paused to rake his smooth hair out of his face. “Perhaps you know the story of our Saint Thomas Becket, Bruno—our greatest Archbishop of Canterbury. It is said that King Henry the Second, in a moment of frustration, cried in the presence of his nobles, ‘Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?’ He meant it
as a rhetorical question only, but they chose to understand it as an order—consequently Becket was run through with a sword while at prayer, to the king’s horror. That was my mistake. I muttered something similar over poor Roger Mercer, and my faithful servant here”—he cast a look at Thomas every bit as loaded with scorn as his voice—“chose to interpret that in his own way.”

“I did not hear you object,
Father,”
Thomas said quietly. “You were pleased to have my help then.”

Jerome shrugged, unabashed. “I do not deny that the thought of sparing myself—and Sophia—the disgrace Roger Mercer had threatened was attractive.” He turned back to me. “But since you seem to have appointed yourself constable and magistrate in this case, Bruno, you should look more closely at your evidence. Thomas is every bit as good a player as I am—it seems he had you cozened, at any rate. He may appear harebrained and nervous as a coney, but he is as shrewd as the Devil himself.”

Thomas merely returned his stare, his face inscrutable.

“He proposed that he would conjure a solution to our difficulty,” Jerome continued. “Those were his words. I accepted his offer and said I wished to know nothing more until it was done. So I had no idea he had persuaded the Nappers to help him steal a dog. I was on my way back from Mass that night when I heard the commotion in the grove and ran for my longbow. Only then did I learn what an elaborate display he had created.” He twisted his mouth in distaste.

“But why?” I asked, turning to Thomas as I tried to revise all the conclusions I thought I had made. “What made you kill a man in such a manner, when you could not even be certain of the outcome?”

“Martyrs,” Thomas spat, as though the very word disgusted him. “It is become their obsession. They all wanted to be martyrs for their faith, or at least they claimed they did. The highest glory.” His voice was rising to a manic pitch; he shook his head in fury. “Even my father seeks a martyr’s
crown, it seems. What kind of a religion is that, Doctor Bruno, that makes men fall in love with death over life? Where is love, then? Where is human kindness?”

I could have pointed out that a man who would set a starving hunting dog on his father’s closest friend may not be the best placed to talk of human kindness, but I kept silent. Thomas gestured at Sophia. “To have the love of a woman like Sophia, the prospect of new life in her womb—”

“Thomas!” Sophia cried, stepping forward, but Jerome held out a hand to restrain her.

“But this …
creature”
—Thomas exploded, stabbing a finger at Jerome—“throws it all aside, he saves all his desire for the executioner’s blade!” His pointing finger trembled with pent-up passion. “Well then, let them try martyrdom, I thought, see how they like it. The rector had just given a sermon on the death of Saint Ignatius. The teeth of wild beasts. It seemed as good a way as any to send Roger to meet his God.” He produced a strange, high-pitched laugh that chilled my blood. “After the pain my father suffered for his sake, it was the least he deserved.”

An unnerving silence followed this outburst as the echo of his words died away. Sophia, Jerome, and I stared at Thomas in rapt horror for a moment.

“And with every member of the college under increasing scrutiny, I was afraid my cover would be at risk. Which was your intention all along, was it not, my friend?” Jerome added softly, raising his head to look at Thomas, who only continued to return his stare, unblinking. I watched them both, still feeling all my nerves taut as a bowstring; I didn’t know if Thomas was more disturbing when he was pulsing with manic energy or in this strange new stillness, as if he were a cat waiting to pounce.

“So you went to Mercer’s room to get your hands on those papers before Thomas did?” I asked, turning back to Jerome. He made a brief, impatient movement with his head.

“I had no idea that Thomas knew about them. After Mercer threatened to expose me, I knew I would always be vulnerable while those letters—all
Edmund Allen’s correspondence with Rheims about my mission, and the
Regnans in Excelsis
papal bull—were not in my own hands. But I barely had time to search his room before I saw you through the window, crossing the courtyard toward the tower staircase. I had to hide myself up on the roof of the tower before you came in. That was when I knew your true business in the college.” He nodded significantly, planting his hands on his hips.

“I had no
business,”
I said, my heart pummelling at my ribs, “other than an interest in finding out how a man could have met such a horrific death—an interest none of his colleagues seemed to share. I only wanted to find some clue as to who he planned to meet and why he carried a full purse.”

Jerome cast his eyes down, his face guilty for the first time.

“Thomas asked only that I lure Mercer to the grove that morning. I had told him I felt I should return to France in the circumstances. I asked him to meet me to return some of the money he held for me on behalf of the mission so that I could travel.”

“But then what of Coverdale?” I asked, looking from Jerome to Thomas. “Did he also find out about Sophia?”

“You had better ask Thomas about Coverdale,” Jerome said, setting his jaw.

“That snake,” Thomas whispered, his soft voice making me jump after his long silence. “Coverdale petitioned the rector for my removal from the college. He feared I knew too much and thought I would betray them out of revenge. The rector at least had some compassion and let me stay on, but it was Coverdale’s fault that I lost my scholarship and had to depend on
his
charity.” He jerked his head toward Jerome. “Well, James Coverdale learned what revenge looked like. He was ever a coward—he cried like a girl child when I showed him the razor, and pissed himself.”

“So you decided to make a martyr of him too, because you despised his faith?”

Thomas smiled, looking at me from the corner of his eye like a child caught out in some mischief.

“When Jerome sent me to take his longbow and arrows to the strong room, I had the idea of Saint Sebastian. I thought if the deaths looked like a pattern, it would frighten them even more. I asked Doctor Coverdale if I could speak privately with him later and he told me he would arrange to leave the disputation early. He feared I had come to bargain with him, but he never expected what happened next.” He was hugging himself tightly, rocking slightly, his mouth wide in a silent laugh. “I needed those letters too. That room used to be my father’s, remember? I knew if I could put them into the right hands,
he
would be finished.” He pointed again at Jerome with a flourish.

“But I don’t understand,” I said. “If you wanted to expose Jerome, why not just tell the rector what you knew, long before this? You could have saved two innocent lives.”

Thomas gave me a scathing look. “And lose my own? I took you for a clever man, Doctor Bruno. I was dependent on him—don’t you see that? I could do nothing until I was assured of another place by some means. And perhaps you do not know the laws of our land. To aid, comfort, or maintain a Jesuit is a felony, punishable by death. To live as his servant, to take his shilling, to maintain his disguise—what is that if not aiding? And if the law did not kill me, that whoreson Jenkes would have done it first if I betrayed Gabriel.
Gabriel
—ha! He even took the name of an archangel—is that not hubris?”

“The face of an angel,” I murmured, echoing Humphrey Pritchard’s words. “But if someone
else
were to discover him, then you could not be implicated. All you had to do was point them in the right direction, with your quotations and your diagrams.” I let the words hang in the air. Thomas only looked at me, his teeth grinding together unconsciously. “And poor Ned? Did he also betray your father?”

“Ned?”
Sophia, who until now had been listening to Thomas’s confessions with an expression of increasing horror, suddenly reached out and clutched Jerome’s arm. “Little Ned Lacy, the Bible clerk? He is not dead too?”

I nodded grimly, watching Thomas. Sophia pressed her hands over her face.

“He saw me with Sophia in the library while everyone was at the disputation, before I went to Coverdale’s room,” Thomas said, with a shrug. “I was trying to persuade her not to run away with Jerome.” His brow creased briefly and he rubbed his eyes. “Then I saw you giving Ned money, I didn’t know what to do. If he had not come back early, he would not be dead. It was his own fault.”

“But you couldn’t resist visiting a martyrdom on him as well?” I said, my revulsion growing as I watched his apparent coldness. Thomas smiled slowly.

“It was a way of punishing the rector. Didn’t you always say, Sophia, that your father loved Foxe’s book more than his family? I swore I would make him hate that book. For you,” he added. “It was all for you. One day you will see that.”

“Enough!” Sophia cried, her voice thick with emotion. “Enough talking, all of you—it is almost full daylight and no doubt they will have the watch out looking for me by now. We must leave, Jerome. What’s done is done, and it will all be for nothing if we do not get away while we can.” She pulled urgently at his sleeve.

Thomas suddenly sprang to life as if a fire had been lit under him.

“You will not go to your death, Sophia,” he breathed, planting his feet firmly and fixing her with his furious gaze, his trembling hand still pointed at Jerome. “You think he will take you safe to France? Five years of training and the best part of his inheritance he has given to this mission—you really believe he will give it all up for you? No, he craves the glory of martyrdom like the rest of them. He means for you to meet with an accident at sea.”

“Your mind is addled, Thomas,” Jerome began, taking a step toward him, his hand held out in a placatory gesture. Thomas sprang away.

“But I will not let that happen,” he cried, his voice high and strangulated, “and if you will not heed my warning—”

He left the threat unspoken as, instead, he pulled the razor from under his cloak and, in the same movement, lunged at Jerome. I slipped Humphrey’s knife from my belt but the Jesuit was soundly trained; before I could move, he had pushed Sophia behind him and aimed a kick at Thomas’s outstretched arm. Thomas lost balance for a moment, though he did not drop the razor, but his slip gave Jerome the chance to bend and pull a knife from the side of his boot. Both circled warily, facing each other, eyes locked and weapons drawn, while Sophia stifled a scream and I hovered uselessly at the edge of this duel, wondering how I might intervene. But I did not have the chance; at that moment the door burst open and Barton ran into the room, his poker held aloft. Thomas wheeled around with blazing eyes and, faster than you could blink, slashed wildly at the man’s arm with his razor before he could strike. Barton howled and dropped the poker, clutching at his wound, and Thomas, seemingly crazed, leaped upon him and slashed at his neck with the razor over and over again. I threw myself at Thomas, wrapping myself around his back and pulling at his arm but he was surprisingly strong for such a wiry boy, and it seemed his fury had lent him supernatural strength. He attempted to shake me off, but I was unable to restrain him and Barton’s last guttural cries were drowned by Sophia’s screams as his lifeblood gushed from the open wound over the brick floor and his dying breath faded as he clutched at Thomas’s cloak and then slumped to the ground.