‘Forgive me, Signor Shelby,’ she says, lifting a small silver bell from her desk. ‘Sometimes men come here trying to convince us they have their women’s interests at heart when in fact they seek only to regain their influence and dominion over them.’ She gives the bell one brisk shake. An elderly Beguine enters. ‘Is Sister Hella with us, Sister Giulia? Or is she at the Basilica, telling God how to behave?’
‘She is in the dormitory, Madonna – with Sister Carlotta,’ the Beguine says, casting a doubting look at Nicholas.
‘Then please be so kind as to bring her to me.’
While he waits, Madonna Antonella asks him about the trials of life as a Catholic in a heretic land. Nicholas pilfers uncomfortable answers from his memory, things he’s heard Bianca and John Lumley say. Now, in Padua, they seem more damning to him than when first spoken in England, where he has never had to feign humility to keep himself safe, or deny his faith lest someone close proves not to be the friend they claimed, but an informer.
When Hella arrives, she bows stiffly to Madonna Antonella. Nicholas is favoured with little more than mild curiosity.
‘This gentleman says he is an English physician, and that you spent some time together on the Via Francigena,’ Madonna Antonella says. ‘Is that true, Sister Hella?’
‘It is, Madonna Antonella,’ she says.
‘Do you wish to hear what he has to say to you? Do you trust him, child?’
‘With my life, Madonna Antonella. And even beyond it.’
Satisfied that Nicholas is neither a vengeful lover nor a bullying relative, Madonna Antonella gestures to Nicholas to speak. He chooses English, for discretion. Immediately it proves to be a wise choice.
‘I need to talk with you,’ he says brusquely. ‘It is of some considerable import.’
‘Have you finally found the courage to cast off Bianca?’ she says coldly. ‘Have you come to take me away?’
He cannot stop himself glancing at Madonna Antonella. To his relief, she has retreated into studying a leather-bound psalter.
‘I’ve come to warn you that you may be in grave danger.’
Her smile is so weak it can live for no more than a moment. ‘We are all in danger, Nicholas. Haven’t I convinced you of that yet?’
‘Young Matteo Fedele is dead,’ he says brutally, seeing no gain in gentleness. ‘He was murdered.’
He studies her face, expecting emotion. He sees none.
‘You don’t seem troubled by that. I thought you were close to him.’
‘I told you before, I only indulged the boy in order to stay close to you.’
‘Do you feel no pity?’
She shrugs. ‘Why should I pity him, Nicholas? Matteo is at peace. He will remain at peace until the time comes when he faces what we must all face.’
‘Don’t you want to know who killed him?’
‘Does it matter?’
Nicholas struggles to rein in his anger at her indifference, lest Madonna Antonella has second thoughts about letting an English stranger into her Beguinage.
‘It matters, Hella, because the man who killed him might think to play hazard with your life, too. I believe it was the same man I saw at Reims, and again at the hospice in the mountains. He wore a grey coat… black boots… a black cloth cap on his head. I am sure now that he spoke to you in the cathedral square when we joined the Via Francigena. But that morning we left the mountains you denied it, when I asked if you had seen such a person. So I ask again now, in a place of holiness where God hears every word: do you know why this man would follow you to Padua and murder Matteo Fedele?’
Nicholas is aware that Madonna Antonella has put down her psalter and is regarding him with new-found suspicion. She can tell by the tone of his voice that his words to the maid are not words of reassurance.
‘I have told you before, I do not know this man, Nicholas. And I cannot imagine that he has come all this way to kill me.’
‘I fear he believes you recognized him in the cathedral at Den Bosch. I think he may be the man who killed Father Vermeiren and the Spaniard. Are you not at least afraid?’
‘I am not afraid to die, if that is what you mean. Like poor little Matteo, it would bring a period of peace before the Day of Judgement.’
Stunned by her utter lack of emotion, Nicholas opens his mouth to protest. Madonna Antonella lifts a hand to stop him. She says, ‘Enough! I do not know what you are saying to Sister Hella, but it does not seem to me to be kind counsel. She will be safe enough here in the Beguinage; we are well used to dealing with men who have violence in their hearts towards the Sisters who have sought refuge here. We will look after her. You may rely upon it. Now, Dr Shelby, I think it best we consider this audience at an end.’
Bianca Merton stands in the lane and looks up at the stuccoed wall of the house she was born in. Since she left, it has been painted a garish yellow. She knows her mother would be horrified.
The wooden double doors on the ground floor are as crooked as she remembers them. She wonders what lies behind them now. In her childhood it had been sacks and crates of the herbs and spices Simon Merton imported from the lands of the Ottoman Turks. Above was the accommodation: two bedrooms, a living space and a kitchen. On the top floor her father had a curtained space where he set down on paper the strange notions he had about the world and the cosmos, notions that had eventually earned him a dank cell and the attention of the Inquisition. At the rear of the house her mother had a chamber with a table and a basin, where she could mix her balms and medicaments, her syrups and her poisons. Looking up at the little windows beneath the eaves, Bianca finds it almost amusing: the notion that her father’s harmless pursuits proved fatal, whereas her mother’s dangerous ones made her reputation.
Taking Simon Merton’s silver Petrine cross from her gown, she holds it against her chest, the crucified figure of St Peter facing outwards, as though house and cross might somehow be united again, at least for a brief moment. Or is it, perhaps, an offering? A gift, to seek approval from her mother for what she intends to do? Then she turns and walks away.
She does not go far. Just two lanes away, in the direction of the Piazza delle Erbe, she stops before a narrow shop front. It is a place so ancient that she imagines the first transactions here were made in Latin. Tentatively, as though afraid its substance is no more solid than her recollection of it, she pushes at the door.
Inside, the shop is exactly as she remembers it, dark and reeking with heavy pungent scents. Moving further in, Bianca smiles with recollection, half-expecting to see the eyes of forest nymphs peeping at her from between the profusion of leaves, sprigs, bunches, roots, tubers and stems.
‘Signor Tiziano,’ she calls out. ‘It is I, Signorina Bianca.’
At the back of the shop, as if emerging from a fairy glade, a very old man in a pale, discoloured cloth gown, tied at the waist with a cord, emerges. As he moves, Bianca hears the slow clack of wooden clogs on flagstones. She closes the distance, because she knows his eyesight is not good.
‘Is it really you – little Bianca Caporetti?’ the apothecary says, reaching out to take Bianca’s hands in his. ‘Or am I dreaming?’
‘You never did call me by my father’s name,’ Bianca says with a gentle smile as she grasps what feels to her like two sprigs of dried reed wrapped in fragile parchment. ‘Why was that, Signor Tiziano?’
‘Because your mother was a Caporetti, and the Caporettis have been known in Padua since before the Venetians came here, before the Carrara even.’ The old man gives her a toothless grin. ‘Nothing against the Englishman, your father, of course. A good fellow; but he wasn’t one of us. Have you tired of his land, Daughter? I hear they are all heretics there. Is that why you have come home?’