Ahead of him, the six domes of the basilica are washed with a pale-saffron light from the setting sun. Across the city, church bells ring out for Vespers. The sound echoes through the narrow streets, rolling around the church towers like a wave breaking against a sturdy harbour pile.
And then Nicholas sees him. There – at that counter, the one that spans the narrow front between this lane and the next. The man in the grey coat!
In the time it takes his eyes to settle on the figure inspecting the wares for sale – old lantern frames without the glass in them – Nicholas has already chided himself for being overly suggestible. But then he sees the awkward feigning of interest in the man’s exaggerated movements; and the trunk-hose showing above his broad-rimmed boots, and the black cloth hat he wears even though most men in the square are bare-headed in the warm evening air.
‘Hey, you!’ Nicholas shouts as he sprints towards the counter, leaving Bianca and Bruno to stare after him. ‘Hold a moment. I want to speak to you!’
He hasn’t gone more than six paces before the man drops the lantern frame he was inspecting so unconvincingly and bolts round the corner into the adjacent lane.
Nicholas reaches the counter in less than two tolls of St Anthony’s bell. Taking the corner into the lane the man has just vanished into, he stumbles. He throws out a steadying hand. Lantern frames clatter onto the cobbles. With a muttered apology to the counter owner – who stares at him in anger – Nicholas dives into the shadows after his quarry.
He can see him ahead in the lane, dodging people as he tries to put distance between himself and his pursuer. Nicholas offers more breathless grunts of apology to passers-by as he weaves after him. He doesn’t know where the lane goes. But from the way the fellow keeps glancing to either side, evidently hoping for a crossroads that he can escape down, Grey-coat doesn’t know, either.
Nicholas is almost brought to a halt by a matron in a colourful gown and wide-brimmed hat. She’s ushering two veiled daughters across the lane to inspect a shoe stall. She regards him with disgust; mutters something in Italian that is clearly not complimentary; shoos her daughters ahead of her to avoid the maniac gasping at her in a foreign tongue. Glancing over his shoulder, Nicholas sees Bruno and Bianca enter the lane, their bemused faces flushed with the effort of trying to catch up with him, frightened he’s taken leave of his senses. For an instant he considers abandoning the chase. But only for an instant.
Reaching the spot where his quarry seemed to disappear, he sees the entrance to a narrow side-street. A fleeting glimpse of grey catches his eye. He follows. Within moments he is deep inside an unfamiliar part of the city, uttering breathless apologies – in Italian now – to everyone he barges past. He knows exactly how this would play out on Bankside: a foreigner racing through the lanes and alleys as though all the demons in hell were on his heels. The dangers inherent in what he’s doing are not lost on him.
A few more paces and the man in the grey coat glances over his shoulder. Seeing that Nicholas is gaining on him, he sprints on past a small group of young men in bright hose and jerkins, then suddenly makes a dart to one side. Nicholas sees one half of a pair of embossed bronze doors swing open, shielding the man from his sight. When the door swings closed, he has gone.
As Nicholas reaches the place, two of the young gallants pick that moment to step further into the lane. Nicholas cannons into one of them, stumbles, rights himself and once more offers an apology. Oblivious to the angry response he gets, he sees that the doors form the entrance to a small church. He throws yet another muttered apology at the young gallant rubbing his bruised arm, pulls open one of the heavy doors and goes inside.
He has a sudden, unsummoned guilty recollection: of slipping late into one of Parson Olicott’s Sunday sermons at Barnthorpe. He’d been fifteen. His excuse, prepared behind the tithe barn even while Yeoman Deary’s oldest daughter was letting him insert a hand beneath her kirtle: It’s taken longer than I thought to sharpen the sickles.
It takes a few moments for his sight to adjust to the darkness. For a while, all he can see is an inky blackness broken by slivers of golden light. What dominate his senses are the smell of incense and the chanting of pious voices.
As his eyes become accustomed to the interior, a small congregation seated in wooden pews emerges from the darkness. At the far end of the church is a gilded altar. Behind it, a garishly pink Jesus hangs from His cross, His bowed wooden head surrounded by golden rays of painted sunlight. A priest in a black robe is pouring the blood of the living Christ into a silver cup. Once again Nicholas feels the shock that comes with proximity to a practice that almost everyone he knows in England would consider amongst the very worst of blasphemies: the consumption of the real blood and flesh of their saviour. Just to be in this place would, for all but recusants like Bianca and John Lumley, put him in danger of damnation. But at this moment the safety of his eternal soul is of secondary importance to finding his quarry.
His sight regained, Nicholas scans the congregation from his place at the back of the church. All he sees are shoulders and the backs of pious heads. None of the shoulders are grey. None of the heads wear a black cloth cap.
He can recall little of the man’s features from the sighting at the hospice in St Bernard’s pass, but he can hardly demand that everyone turns towards him for inspection. Even less can he stride to the altar, push the priest out of the way and view them from the front. He sinks back against the doors, in the hope that no one will take too much of an interest in his arrival. The man will have to leave eventually.
Unless, of course, there’s another way out. He searches the shadows either side of the candlelit altar. The priest’s softly spoken Latin sings to him like a dangerous lullaby: Suscipe, sancte Pater, omnipotens aeterne Deus…
As sure as he can be that there is no way of leaving the church other than through the doorway he came in by, Nicholas lets his eyes linger on the congregation, looking for someone sitting on his own – someone with a hint of the hunted about him.
Three different men draw his attention. Each wears a jerkin or coat that might be grey. But it is too dark to be certain. If one of them is the fellow Nicholas has chased, he’s taken off his cap, out of respect for his surroundings. And there is no way of getting closer to any of them without drawing attention to himself.
He feels the door move at his back. A glint of evening sunlight from the street, and Bianca is beside him. One or two of the congregation in the rear pews turn their heads and tut.
‘What in the name of Jesu are you doing?’ she whispers. ‘Have you taken leave of your senses? You took flight as though the Devil was after you. You’ve left a trail of destruction and outraged Paduans all the way from St Anthony’s!’
‘Didn’t you see him – the fellow at the lantern stall?’
‘What fellow?’
‘The one in the grey coat and the black cap. The one from the monastery in the mountains – the one who’s been following us all the way from Reims.’
‘All I know, Nicholas, is that one moment I was talking to Bruno about finding him a wife, and the next my husband was off like a spaniel after a coney.’
‘He’s here. I chased him into this church.’
Bianca, having forgotten herself in the heat of the moment, genuflects in the direction of the priest. Then, turning back to Nicholas, she says, ‘Are you certain? Are you sure the sun hasn’t fried your brains?’