The fog is so thick now, the night so dark, that they almost miss the bridge. Only the torches burning on the parapet show the way back into the city. Bianca refuses the help of either man. Nicholas clumsily persists.
‘I’m not an invalid, Husband. I can walk perfectly well. It’s my shoulder – there’s nothing wrong with my legs.’
‘But the child–’
‘The child will be fine, Nicholas. I know it. After what Ruben just said, Hella’s curse does not frighten me any more.’ She stares up into the fog, as though it might contain dark creatures floating out of sight. ‘But I fear what she is capable of: the Dutch priest… that Spaniard… poor Matteo Fedele… Bondoni the goldsmith.’
‘Were you in the crowd today, when she pushed Bondoni into the path of the horses?’ Nicholas asks Ruben.
The priest covers his face with his hands. ‘Oh, sweet Saviour, not another one.’
‘I think it is time for you to give a full account of yourself, Father Ruben,’ Nicholas says as they hurry across the canal and into the narrow lanes beyond. ‘And your troubled sister.’
‘It began after Breda,’ Ruben begins. ‘Until then we were a fortunate family – gifted not in riches, but in our minds. Hella was the cleverest by far. She ate numbers as hungrily as others eat sweetmeats and sugared comfits. Soon she started to believe that she could foretell events because of the patterns she saw in numbers – she thought numbers were the underlying structure of all that she saw around her. But after the Spanish came to Breda, she began to blame herself for not foreseeing the greatest threat of all.
‘Afterwards I could not bear to remain in a place with so many terrible memories clinging to it. When Hella took refuge with the Beguines, I went north, into the Protestant territories. I still believed in God, but I knew He could not be a Catholic God. I became a Lutheran priest.’
‘How did you come to be in Den Bosch cathedral then?’ Nicholas asks.
‘Eventually I gathered the courage to go back to search for Hella. I tracked her down to the city, found her sitting in a doorway like a prophet who’s been cast out by those she would warn. She told me of the painting, and that she was going to plead with Father Vermeiren to remove it. When we entered that little chapel, I thought that’s what she was going to do. Then she drew a knife. It all happened so quickly. Vermeiren was dead before he knew what was happening – before I knew what was happening. When the Spaniard tried to take the blade from her, she struck him across the throat.’
‘And then you fled?’
‘What could I do? If they’d found out I was a priest from the Protestant states, they would have hanged me. I looked to my own safety – and for a second time I abandoned my sister.’
Walking in step between the two men, Bianca says, ‘Why did she not kill you, Nicholas?’
‘She had dropped the knife before I stepped out into plain view,’ Nicholas answers. ‘As Ruben says, Hella has faster wits than most. She probably realized that by the time she got to it, either I would have overpowered her or the commotion would have brought others running. So she decided to play the innocent victim. She started screaming.’
‘Why did you decide to follow us, Father Ruben?’ Bianca asks the priest.
‘I thought perhaps I could help my sister find redemption. But at Reims, when I tried to speak to her, she would have none of me. I was not deterred. I would not let myself forsake her again, not like I had after Breda. And to be truthful to you – and God knows it’s time to be truthful to myself – I feared she might kill again.’ He gives a sad, reflective laugh. ‘I thought I could stop her. What a fool I was.’
Nicholas says, ‘That’s when I saw you first, when you stopped her in the cathedral square. And then again at the hospice of St Bernard’s in the mountains. You could have spoken to us. It would have been better if you had.’
Father Ruben finds another failing in himself. He adds it to the list with a slow shake of his head. ‘Alas, I am not accomplished at intrigue. Besides, Hella told me I should not trust you.’
‘Hardly a fortnight after we saved her life,’ Bianca says, as though she’s known it all along.
‘Why did you run – the day I saw you in that side-street by the Basilica?’ Nicholas asks.
‘I told you: I am a coward. That’s what cowards do. They run.’
Bianca lays a hand on Ruben’s forearm. ‘You are not a coward, Father Ruben. A coward would not have risked his life to seek out his sister in a land dangerous to him. And a coward wouldn’t have done what you did in that storehouse.’ She turns her head to Nicholas. ‘Hella pulled a blade. She would have killed me. As it was, she landed a strike on my shoulder even as I was trying to get away from Ruben – whom I believed at that moment was the true assassin. He stood over me. He told her that if she was determined to take my life, she would have to take his first. If that isn’t courage, I don’t know what is.’
‘It took me long enough to find it. When I followed Hella to that same place a few days ago, on the day she murdered that poor young fellow, I fled again – like a frightened child.’
‘At least I know now why she’s doing it,’ Nicholas says. ‘Warning us about the dangers of seeking knowledge is no longer enough for her. She’s come to the conclusion it’s better to stop us altogether. If we’re dead, we can’t look behind the curtain. We can’t open the door and risk letting the Devil in.’
Ahead of them, the two Corio cousins rise up out of the fog, their dice and their wine forgotten. Staring in disbelief at the apparitions emerging from the night, they begin to draw their rapiers. Bianca stays them with a brief call of reassurance. Once inside the house, Nicholas dispatches one of them to fetch a flask of aquavite di vinaccia from the credenza in the parlour. He uses the grape spirit to clean Bianca’s wound and the lacerations that his fury has inflicted on Ruben’s face.
‘Where did your sister go?’ he asks, dabbing the spirit-soaked cloth against the priest’s mouth.
‘She didn’t say.’
‘She walked out into the fog without a word?’
‘Not exactly. She said something about an audience?’
‘She wants an audience for whoever in the Arte dei Astronomi she intends to kill next?’ Nicholas asks, horrified.
‘I heard what she said,’ Bianca chimes in. ‘I’m not quoting her exactly, but it was along the lines of: It is bad enough people opening the door to the Devil’s knowledge without scholars making a theatre of it and inviting an audience.’
‘Then I believe I know where she’s gone,’ Nicholas says. The sense of dread that has been with him ever since the Arte dei Astronomi began its march without its leading light has become a hard, cold stone in his stomach. ‘I’m going back to the Palazzo Bo.’
Bianca rises from her chair.
‘No, stay here,’ Nicholas says, sounding harsher than he intended. ‘She has already tried to kill you once. At least here you have the Corio cousins to keep you safe.’
He turns to Ruben.