“You are thinking of the Portuguese. I am neither Spanish nor Portuguese—I am Italian,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster. “Giordano Bruno of Nola, at your service.”
“Then why don’t you go back there!” said the rat-faced fellow, glancing up at his friend for approval.
“Aye. Why do you come to London—to murder us and make us bow down to the pope?”
“I could not very well do both, even if I wanted,” I said, and quickly saw that humour was not the means to disarm him. “Listen, good sirs—I meant no offence to anyone. May we all now go on our way?”
They exchanged a glance.
“Aye, we may …” said the big man, and for a moment I breathed a sigh of relief. “When we have taught you a lesson.”
He thumped one meaty fist into the palm of his other hand; his friend cackled nastily and cracked his knuckles. With a reflex quick as blinking, my knife was out again and pointed at them before either of them had even stepped forward. I did not spend three years on the road in Italy without learning how to defend myself.
“Gentlemen,” I said, keeping my eyes fixed on them both as I shifted my weight onto my toes, primed to run if need be. “I am a resident of the embassy of France and as such a guest of Queen Elizabeth in your country and under her protection. If you lay a finger on me, you will answer directly to Her Majesty’s ministers. And they will know where to find you.” I nodded towards the house behind them.
They looked uneasily at each other. The smaller one appeared to be waiting for his companion’s verdict. Finally the bigger man lowered his hands and took a pace back.
“Piss off then, you pope-loving shit. But stay away from this street in future, if you have a care for your pretty face.”
Relieved, I sheathed my knife, nodded, straightened my shoulders, and walked on, bowing slightly to the old woman, who had stooped to gather up her fallen wares. I almost offered to help, but the force of her glare was enough to keep me moving on. I had barely walked ten paces when something whistled past my left ear and clattered onto the ground; I leapt aside; just ahead of me a stone the size of a man’s fist was rolling to a standstill in the dust. Whipping around, I saw the two men cackling as they stood together, legs planted firmly astride, arms folded. With more bravado than I felt, I seized my knife again and made as if to come back for them; they faltered for a moment, then the smaller one tugged his friend by the sleeve and both retreated hastily into their house.
I put away the knife once more, wiping the sweat from my upper lip. My hands were shaking and I could feel my heart hammering under my ribs; those two louts had meant to frighten me, but they could not have known how well they had succeeded. Last autumn, I had almost been killed by just such an attack, a rock hurled at my head with no warning, out of the night. If I had become more skittish since then, it was not without reason. I looked around, still taut with fear, one hand laid protectively over my bag. The old woman had almost reached the far end of the street; otherwise there was no sign of life. But I thought I knew who was stalking me through the streets of London; I had been half expecting him since last year. And if I was right, he would not be satisfied until I was dead.
“GIORDANO BRUNO! COME in, come in. What’s happened, man? You look as if you’ve seen the Devil himself.” Charlewood flung open the door of his lodgings, took in my appearance with one practised glance, and gestured for me to come inside. “Here—I will have the housekeeper bring us something to drink. Are you in trouble?”
I waved his question aside; he called down the corridor while I went through into his front parlour and began the task of unpacking my manuscript from its satchel and linen wrappings.
“Well?” He followed me in, rubbing his hands together in anticipation. “Is the masterpiece finally ready? We don’t want to keep Her Majesty waiting, do we?” He grinned, stroking his pointed beard.
What I liked most about Charlewood was not his willingness to print and distribute books of radical and potentially inflammatory ideas, nor that he was well travelled, spoke several languages, and had a much broader mind than many of the Englishmen I had met; it was the fact that he was an unapologetic rogue. A slightly built man of about forty-five, with reddish hair and mischievous eyes, Charlewood so crackled with restless energy that he seemed barely able to stand still for five minutes together, and was constantly picking, fiddling, hopping from one foot to another, tugging at his sleeves or his beard or the little gold ring he wore in his right ear. He cared nothing for what was said about him and he was as unscrupulous as the business required; more than once he had been in trouble for printing illegal copies of books to which he had no licence, and he was happy to dress up any book with invented credentials if he thought it would help the sales. But to his authors he was always loyal, and he was fiercely opposed to any censorship of books; on that point, we agreed wholeheartedly. His latest innovation was to publish works by Italian authors for what was still a small but elite aristocratic readership in England. I had been introduced to him by my friend Sir Philip Sidney, the unofficial leader of the little group of liberal-minded intellectuals at Queen Elizabeth’s court who gathered to read one another’s poetry and discuss ideas that many would regard as unorthodox or even dangerous. It was Sidney who had told Charlewood that the queen was interested in reading my work in progress; naturally the printer saw an opportunity for his own advancement and had gone so far as to create a fictitious Venetian imprint to add authenticity. Queen Elizabeth was fluent in Italian, as she was in many of the languages of Europe, and was reported to possess a formidable intellect and an unusual appetite for new and experimental ideas in science and philosophy, but even her broad mind might balk at the audacity of my latest work. I looked at the carefully written pages in my hands and wondered if Charlewood really had any idea of what he was undertaking.
Laying aside the linen cloth that had wrapped the manuscript, I handed him the bundle, bound with a silk tie. He accepted it reverently, smoothing the topmost page with the palm of his hand.
“La Cena de le Ceneri. The Ash-Wednesday Supper.” He looked up, his brow furrowed. “We might need to work on the title, Bruno. Make it a little more …” He waved his fingers vaguely in a circular motion.
“That is the work’s title,” I said firmly.
He grinned again, but did not concede anything.
“And will it be wildly controversial? Will it set the cat among the pigeons in the academies?”
“You are hoping the answer will be ‘yes,’ I can see,” I said, smiling.
“Well, of course,” he said, loosening the tie that held the pages. “People love the thought that they are reading something the authorities would rather they didn’t see. On the other hand, a royal endorsement—”
“She has not said she will endorse it,” I said, quickly. “She has only expressed an interest in reading it. And she doesn’t yet know of its contents.”
“But she must know of you by reputation, Bruno. The whispers that followed you from Paris …” His eyes glinted.
“And what whispers are those, John?” I asked, feigning innocence, though I knew perfectly well what he was talking about.
“That you dabble in magic. That you are neither Catholic nor Protestant, but have invented your own religion based on the ancient wisdom of the Egyptians.”
“Well, I have been excommunicated by the Catholic Church and imprisoned by the Calvinists, so I suppose that much is true. But it would take a man of extraordinary arrogance to dream of creating his own religion, would it not?” I raised an eyebrow. One corner of his mouth curved into a smile.
“That is why I can believe it of you, Bruno,” he said, giving me a long look from under his brows. He tapped the pages with the back of his hand. “I will take this with me to Suffolk to read over the next few weeks. There will be no business done in London anyway until this blasted heat abates and the plague threat is over. But come the autumn, we will produce a book that will cause the biggest stir in Europe since the Pole Copernicus dared to suggest the Earth is not the centre of God’s creation. Let us hope no one else is assassinated in the meantime to steal its thunder. Agreed?”