Bruno says through gritted teeth, ‘Perhaps he thought it too public. Maybe he didn’t recognize me until it was too late. Maybe Santucci simply picked the wrong man for the job.’
‘Just like the Podestà has,’ Bianca mutters under her breath.
If the captain hears her, he doesn’t show it. Nicholas smiles and squeezes her hand.
‘Well, Signor Barrani,’ the captain says, ‘I see you have placed guards at your gate. If you come across this man again, let us hope you have picked the right men for the job.’
‘Is that it? Am I to be afforded no other protection?’ Bruno asks.
Satisfied that he has investigated the crime thoroughly – and downed enough of the witness’s wine – the captain rises from the table. ‘I do not profess to understand for a moment the precise nature of what you are engaged upon in that storehouse, Signor Barrani, but His Excellency the Podestà seems to think it is worth something to him. As for me, I will have enough on my plate keeping the public safe from felons and criminals on the Feast of the Holy Rosary. I can do without some foolish spat between you clever-dick men of learning. Therefore I would prefer it if there were no further outbreaks of jealousy in this city. Do I make myself clear?’
‘Completely,’ says Bruno.
The captain turns to Galileo. ‘And that includes you, Signor Mathematician.’
As the captain departs, Galileo makes an obscene gesture to his back. Then he pats Bianca’s thigh in a manner she assumes is meant apologetically, but can’t be sure.
Bruno orders Alonso to recharge everyone’s cups. When it is done, he lifts his own. ‘Drink up, Signor Compass, Cousin Bianca, Nicholas – to the memory of Matteo Fedele, may God welcome his soul into His everlasting peace.’
Amens are said around the table. Alonso is dispatched for another jug. But although the wine is good and the night warm, in the house in the Borgo dei Argentieri nothing can lift the sense of disbelief and sadness.
‘The fellow you chased into the church and the one Bruno encountered on the bridge – can they really be one and the same man?’ Bianca asks later in their chamber. Beyond the window the night is lit by flashes of lightning as a silent storm rages far off over the distant mountains.
‘If they are, one thing is certain: he didn’t come from Florence to murder Matteo Fedele.’
Bianca sits up in bed and props her chin on her bended knees. ‘He follows us all the way from Brabant without so much as an uncivil word, and then murders someone we barely know?’
‘Perhaps it wasn’t us he was following.’
A lightning flash paints Bianca’s face a deathly white. ‘Hella? You believe he was following Hella?’
Nicholas nods. ‘I think I’ve had it wrong all along. He’s no more an agent of the Privy Council than Luca or Alonso.’
‘But why kill Matteo, of all people?’
‘I don’t know,’ Nicholas confesses. ‘But the lad was close to her. Therefore Hella could well be in terrible danger.’
‘That might explain why he didn’t try to kill Bruno.’
‘Probably.’
Bianca eases herself over the end of the bed. She goes to the window. By the flickering lightning Nicholas can see the form of her body through the thin linen of her nightgown. He imagines a slight swelling of her belly, but knows it is only a fancy. It is too early. He wonders if he should tell her about his meeting with the maid, tell her he knows why she thinks herself cursed. But he suspects that if he does, there will be a storm right here in the chamber that will put the one over the mountains to shame.
‘You’re going to warn her, aren’t you?’ Bianca says presciently, looking out into the darkened street.
‘I have to. I can’t simply leave her to an assassin. My conscience–’
‘I know, Nicholas. I know.’
He puts the sudden squirm that infects his spine down to the sweat trickling along his back. ‘It doesn’t have to be face-to-face,’ he says. ‘I’ll send her a note.’
‘No, you won’t. That isn’t your nature.’
‘One meeting, that’s all. Just to warn her. I’ll get Bruno to ask the Corio cousins to look out for her.’
Bianca turns back from the window. ‘And then we put her out of our lives for ever. Do you promise?’
Nicholas climbs out of bed and takes his wife in his arms. The first audible rumble of thunder rolls down across the valley and over the walls of Padua like the secret marauders of an advancing army.
‘As if she had never existed,’ he says.
37
Assurances, promises, denials… in the last half-hour Nicholas has made them all. None have appeared to ease Bianca’s heart. Over breakfast she has listened to him with a face of stone. In desperation he says, ‘You agreed. One visit. Then we will forget her for ever.’
She looks at him for what seems like an hour, her eyes unreadable to him. Then she says, ‘I agreed. What else needs to be said?’
He thinks, how about: I know why you fear the maid so much.
But he knows that if he turns his thoughts to words, they will very likely raise a fire in her that will burn them both.
‘I will be brief with her, I promise,’ he tells her. ‘I will be back before you know it.’
‘Take all the time you need,’ she says. ‘I’m going to pay another visit to the place where I grew up – my parents’ house.’
‘Will you wait until I return? I would like to see it.’
She shakes her head. ‘Another time, perhaps. This journey I need to take alone.’
It feels to Nicholas as though Bianca has slammed a door in his face. He lays his knife down amongst the peach stones and leaves the table. When he reaches the stairs he looks back, only to see that her attention is not on him, but on something he cannot know or see. Something far away.
At the Beguinage, Nicholas is shown into Madonna Antonella’s office. She is a doughty woman of fifty with canny, generous eyes and severely crimped grey hair that makes the simple linen coif she wears on her head look like a kerchief stuffed with hazelnuts. Though she welcomes him cordially enough, he detects wariness in her eyes, a suspicion honed through experience that sometimes the men who come here enquiring after her Beguines are not always truthful about their motives. He gives her the story about him being a Catholic recusant, fleeing English tyranny. At first he tells her only that Hella Maas accompanied him and Bianca on the Via Francigena, omitting any mention of what happened in the cathedral at Den Bosch. Then he tells her about Grey-coat and the murder of Matteo Fedele. As he speaks, Madonna Antonella’s face darkens.
‘You sincerely believe her life could be in danger?’ she asks when he has finished speaking.
‘Yes, Madonna. I thought at first he might have been an English bounty-hunter – that it was me he was following. Now I believe Signorina Maas is his intended quarry.’
‘Have you come to any conclusion as to why this man should want to harm her?’ Madonna Antonella asks.
‘I believe it has something to do with a crime she witnessed, in the Duchy of Brabant.’
‘A crime?’ Madonna Antonella echoes with a lift of her brow, as though crime is something indistinct and living only on the far edge of her memory. ‘What manner of… crime?’
‘A double murder, Madonna. A Catholic priest and a Spanish officer. I can only assume that the assassin believes Hella can identify him. Perhaps that is why he has followed her here. Perhaps he killed her friend Matteo Fedele whilst trying to force him to reveal where she is sheltering.’