talking about me. You should get yourself a woman, Bruno, you spend too much time alone. I see how your face changes when you talk about the Rector’s daughter – no, don’t deny it. She matters to you. You’ve saved her life once already, at the risk of your own.’
‘Then I abandoned her to a fate she didn’t deserve.’
‘Well then, don’t make the same mistake twice,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘I will work on Walsingham. But be prepared to find yourself hunting for the corpse of a dead saint as well as a murderer.’
‘Since I seem to have a knack of stumbling over corpses wherever I turn, perhaps I am the man for the job,’ I said. But again the similarity between Sophia’s words and Sidney’s pricked at my thoughts, and I pictured the dead man’s brains spilling out of his shattered skull across the worn flagstones.
I hoped Sidney’s optimism was well founded. Their story about the secret cult of Saint Thomas had piqued my interest in the city of Canterbury yet further, but above all I wanted to visit Sophia at the tavern that evening with good news, to see the colour in her face and hope in her eyes. Two impossible tasks – to find a dead saint and a living murderer – but, as Sidney said, it was better than sitting idle, waiting for fate to unfold its design around you.
The road out of London towards Kent, known as Watling Street, was still busy with traders and drovers, though the traffic of pilgrims had long since stopped. We set out early, but weeks without rain had baked the unpaved track hard as stone and before we had even reached Southwark my eyes and throat were stinging from the clouds of dust flung up by hooves and cartwheels. Every traveller we passed wore a cloth tied around his or her mouth and nose, and I resolved to buy something similar in whichever town we came to next.
Sophia rode beside me, the peak of her cap pulled low over her face. She had barely spoken since we set out and, though I could see little of her expression, the tense line of her jaw betrayed her anxiety at the journey we were now undertaking. Perhaps, after pinning so much hope on its outcome, she had finally begun to appreciate the grave danger she would face when she rode back through the gates of the city that wanted her arrested for murder. Now and again she would clear her throat and I would turn expectantly, waiting for her to speak, but she would only smile wearily and indicate the dust.
I had hired two strong horses at considerable expense, paid for partly out of the purse Walsingham had sent to cover my stay in Canterbury. Eventually he had relented, according to the messenger who had been waiting for me in the street outside the embassy with an encrypted letter two days after my visit to Barn Elms. In it Walsingham had included a fully stamped travel licence, without which I would risk arrest for vagrancy, and instructions that I was not to travel under my own name, nor was I to reveal it under any circumstances to anyone in Canterbury except Harry Robinson.
My host, the French Ambassador, had been reluctant to let me go, but he acknowledged that he had no power to forbid me from travelling, since I did so (he believed) at his sovereign’s expense. He bade me farewell with genuine affection and regret in the midst of his own arrangements for moving the embassy household to the countryside, and I felt a pang of sadness at leaving, though it was outweighed by the delight on Sophia’s face as she flung her arms around my neck when I told her the news.
Now she was riding at my side as the sun climbed higher into a sky of untouched blue and the road stretched out before us, and I could not suppress a swelling sense of anticipation. Sophia’s future depended on the outcome of this journey; if I could clear her of the charges of murder, I could also clear my own conscience of the guilt that had hung heavy on any thought of her since the events in Oxford. Freed of these burdens, might we not begin again, as if on a fresh page?
There was also the prospect, after almost a year spent at a desk buried in books and astronomical charts, of proving my worth again to Walsingham and the Queen. The goodwill of princes was fickle, as every courtier knew, and an ambassador could be recalled or expelled at a moment’s notice. I was certain that my own best prospects, if I wanted to go on writing my books without fear of the Inquisition, lay at the court of England, not France, but to ensure myself a future there I needed Walsingham to value me for my own skills and not merely for my useful connection to the French embassy.
Sophia’s horse gave an impatient little whinny and tossed its mane, making her start in the saddle. I turned, but she recovered her poise and purposefully ignored my expression of concern, her eyes fixed on the road. She rode competently enough, though she looked uncomfortable astride the horse, her long legs pressed tightly against its sides. I tried not to dwell on this thought. She was unused to riding like a man, I supposed, and the stiffness of her posture in the saddle could give her away. One more small trap to avoid, if her boy’s disguise were to hold up. I concentrated my gaze again on the tips of my horse’s ears. There would be danger in this for both of us; I was not so caught up in dreams of adventure as to pretend otherwise. If Sophia was recognised within the city walls of Canterbury, she would be arrested to await trial for her husband’s murder, and if my search for the evidence to vindicate her did not succeed before the assizes, she would face certain execution. There were other dangers too; if the real killer was still in the city and thought he had escaped blame, he would not thank a stranger for asking awkward questions. Anyone who could strike a man down with such force that his brains spilled over the ground would surely not hesitate to dispatch those who seemed overly curious. And as for the legend of Becket’s corpse, I could not help but remember that my last attempt to infiltrate the underground Catholic resistance had very nearly ended fatally.
The one consolation was that no one knew me in Canterbury; I was free to present myself in any guise I chose. At my belt I wore a purse of money, with another inside my riding boots and another wrapped in linen shirts in the panniers slung over my saddle. Across my back I carried a leather satchel containing my travel licence and a letter sealed in thick crimson wax with Sidney’s coat of arms, recommending me as a visiting scholar to his former tutor, the Reverend Doctor Harry Robinson, and requesting that he make me welcome during my stay in Canterbury. The letter was a cover, naturally, in case I needed to explain myself to any inquisitive authorities along the road. Robinson had never been Sidney’s tutor, though he was apparently acquainted with the family of Sidney’s mother, but the Sidney coat of arms ought to be sufficient protection against the bullying of petty officials. So that I might travel anonymously if I should be searched, Walsingham had sent a fast rider ahead to Harry Robinson two days earlier with an encrypted letter explaining who I was and the true nature of my business in Canterbury, and requesting Doctor Robinson to assist me for Walsingham’s sake as best he could.
What I was to do with Sophia was another matter, I thought, glancing over at her as she rode, head bowed, teeth gritted. I had omitted to mention to either Walsingham or Sidney that I was planning to take her to Canterbury with me – I already knew all the arguments they would make against such folly. My belt held a sheath for the bone-handled knife that had saved my life more than once, and which a more superstitious man might have been tempted to regard as a good-luck charm.
The low, whitewashed taverns and brothels of Southwark, London’s most lawless borough, ended abruptly and beyond them the horizon opened up into a wide vista of drained marshland converted to fields now parched yellow, the Kent road threading through the bleached landscape, lost in the shimmering distance. As soon as we left the narrow streets behind, the fetid smells of the city receded, to be replaced by the ripe scents of baking earth and warm grass. Despite the dust, I inhaled deeply, tasting for the first time in weeks air that was not thick with the stench of rot and sewage. Swallows looped patterns in the empty sky. Out here, the birdsong
