be riots, you’ll see. Where you from, then?’
‘Naples.’ I took a step towards the inn, then added, ‘Italy,’ when I saw there was no response. I had no wish to engage in small talk with this fellow, particularly about myself, but neither did I wish to give offence. Sophia and I were vulnerable enough without deliberately putting ourselves on the wrong side of fellow travellers.
‘And the boy? What is he, your servant?’
It was a casual question, thrown over his shoulder as he finished, shook off the last drops and tied himself away, but immediately I felt myself tense and the skin on my neck prickled. Whoever he was, he must have been watching us earlier and was sober enough to have recognised me. More than that, he had taken notice of Sophia.
‘My assistant.’ I answered him coolly enough, but my fists were clenched at my sides.
‘Assistant, is it?’ He laughed as he lurched towards me in the direction of the inn’s rear door. To my ear it sounded lascivious, though I knew I may have been over-sensitive. ‘What’s he assist you with, then?’
‘My business is books.’
‘Oh, aye? Do you get much trade?’
‘I make a living.’
Fortunately, it seemed he had little more to contribute on the subject of the book trade. He fell clumsily into step beside me as I made for the tavern door.
‘Come and have a game of cards with us, my friend, you and your assistant. Too hot to sleep, night like this.’ He clapped me on the shoulder; instinctively I flinched, though he was too drunk to notice.
‘I thank you,’ I said, moving a step away as we reached the threshold, ‘but we must make an early start tomorrow. Besides,’ I added, trying to keep my tone light, ‘I’m afraid I am a hopeless card player, no matter what the game.’
‘You’d be all the more welcome at our table, then,’ he said, with a wheezing laugh that showed a few remaining brown stumps of teeth. I smiled and bade him good night, only realising as I climbed the stairs how I had been holding my breath. The man’s curiosity had seemed harmless enough, but it was further proof that Sophia and I made an odd sight travelling together, and one that attracted the eyes of strangers. We would need to be vigilant at every moment; one careless word or gesture, one instant of forgetting who we were supposed to be or failing to keep an eye over our shoulders, and our mission in Canterbury might be over before we even reached the city walls.
I gave a soft tap at the door. After a moment, I heard the lifting of the latch and slipped through into the warm darkness. The candles had been blown out; Sophia was standing behind the door, wrapped in a sheet from the bed. In the dim light from the open casement I saw that her shoulders were bare. Quickly I turned away. The room smelled faintly of sweat and something sharper, the private scent of a woman. I pulled my shirt over my head and lay down on the straw pallet, leaving my breeches on to hide my gently swelling erection, even though I knew she could see nothing in the soft blur of shadows.
‘Tomorrow, as we ride,’ I murmured, partly to distract myself, and partly to confirm, for my own benefit, that she was still awake, still conscious of my presence as I was of hers, ‘we must set to work. I need you to tell me as much as you can remember about your husband, every detail of his work, his habits, his friends, his enemies, his religion. No matter how insignificant it may seem. If we are to clear your name, we must first learn who else could have gained from his death.’
‘His religion?’ Through the dark, I could picture the quizzical expression that accompanied her tone; the slight wrinkling of the nose, the dip of the brows. ‘He was a lay canon of the cathedral, as I told you. Though his sense of Christian duty didn’t go beyond securing a position of influence for himself, as you also know.’
‘But you and I know very well that a man’s public face does not always reflect the faith of his heart,’ I whispered back. She remained silent. ‘Canterbury, like Oxford, is a place of tangled religious loyalties. The cult of the saint still holds many in thrall, I am told. And if your husband was a man with secrets, it’s not impossible that they involved matters of faith. It is, after all, a city with religion soaked into its stones.’
‘My husband thought it all superstitious nonsense, the saint and the shrine,’ she said, dismissively. ‘He regarded himself as a man of reason. Religion for him was a question of civic duty and social advancement. Whatever his secrets, I doubt they were concerned with faith.’
Since her voice implied that this was the last word on the subject, I turned over uncomfortably and closed my eyes. A timber creaked outside the room and I sat bolt upright, hand on my knife, muscles tensed. But whether it was a footfall or merely the old building shifting in its sleep, there was only silence. Sophia laughed softly.
‘Sleep, Bruno. It’s like having a watchdog in the room.’
I lay back, staring at the ceiling, one hand still resting lightly on the knife. A watchdog. It was how I felt. The room settled into the muffled stillness of night. Beyond the casement, the lonely cry of an owl floated through the dark. Sophia’s breathing grew deeper and more regular, almost lulling me out of my watchfulness until, long after I thought she was asleep, I heard her whisper,
‘Bruno?’
‘Yes?’
‘From now on,’ she said, ‘let us not speak about Oxford. The past is gone. I was someone else then. I want to forget everything that happened there. Those terrible murders,’ she added, after a while, barely audible. ‘And then my husband. Violent death seems to touch everyone who comes near me.’
There was a slight break in her voice, a note of despair that restrained me from telling her not to exaggerate. Sophia had known more than her share of misfortune in her young life, but this century is indifferent in its cruelty, and we are taught to regard suffering as our due. Her father and her aunt would no doubt say that she had been the author of her own troubles, that they were a punishment from God because she would not be submissive as a woman should. Someone with less orthodox views – someone like me, for example – might more generously suggest that Sophia’s only fault was to be born with intelligence, an enquiring mind and a yearning for independence, in a world where those qualities are seen as positively dangerous in anyone, let alone a girl. There was only one woman in England who had the freedom to indulge her intellect and her passion, and even her throne could not protect her from daily threats upon her life. I said none of this.
‘But your past has shaped who you are.’ I turned on to my side so that I was facing her bed; despite the darkness, I knew she was looking at me. ‘You carry it with you, even if you would rather not.’
‘No.’ She spoke firmly. ‘I want only to begin again, once this is all over. I will be no one’s daughter, no one’s mother, no one’s sister, no one’s wife. Everyone has gone. I wish to live like you, Bruno, with no ties. It must be a wonderful thing, to have such freedom.’
I said nothing. She was twenty years old; how could I make her understand that exile was not freedom, that solitude was not necessarily liberty? I was tired of travelling; the yearning to belong somewhere, to rest in the knowledge of a secure position, seemed to grow stronger with every year that passed. What she saw as my freedom had been forced on me by the Roman Inquisition.
I shifted again on to my back, the straw pricking at my skin through the thin sheet, and watched the frail moonlight slowly spread across the ceiling. Sophia’s breathing slowed again; occasionally she gave a little moan
