The bells had just rung for Prime when the sun slipped out from behind its veil of cloud and I caught a metallic glint at the foot of a twisted trunk. I knelt and fished out from among the dried stalks a chain with a gold pendant. An oval, about the size of a large olive, faced with exquisite filigree work and a finely wrought figure of the crucified Christ on the front. I wondered if the girl’s father had made it. The chapel bell sounded its sonorous note again and I glanced up to see Fra Donato crossing the grove towards me in rapid strides. With his bright hair lit by the early morning sun, he looked like a painting of the newly risen Christ, if Christ had ever glared at someone as if he wanted to burn them alive with his eyes. I barely had time to slip the locket inside my habit and stand, hands folded demurely into my sleeves, to greet him.
‘Brother. Pax vobiscum.’
‘What are you doing here, Fra Giordano? Shouldn’t you be at prayer?’ He had no authority over me, except that afforded by seniority and birth, though he addressed me as if he were the prior himself. His cold blue gaze swept over the lemon trees and seemed to comprehend the scene in a glance. He had come in search of the locket too, I was certain.
‘I am praying, Brother. I felt moved to speak to God here among the trees, where I can meditate on the wonders of Creation.’
‘Perhaps you should have joined the Franciscans.’ He left a pause. ‘Do you know, they say you are the most promising scholar San Domenico has seen in a generation.’ I shrugged. ‘They do not say so in my hearing.’
‘Well, of course not. They would not want to provoke you to the sin of pride.’ He tilted his head to one side. There was an intensity in the way he held my eye that made me understand why a woman might fall under his spell. That and the remarkably fine features, the bones that looked as if they had emerged from a sculptor’s vision of an archangel. ‘I hear you have a prodigious memory too.’
I made a non-committal movement with my head. ‘It serves.’
‘That is a great gift,’ he said, as if he were granting me a rare concession. ‘But even with your powers of memory, Brother, certain things are best forgotten. That scene in the tavern, for instance. A woman who believes I slighted her sister or some such thing. Women do not take well to feeling scorned, you know. It can quite turn their wits. They will say terrible things in their fury.’
‘I barely recall it,’ I said.
He gave me a sliver of a smile. ‘Good. It’s just that I thought you went out after her.’
‘No, Brother,’ I said, composing my expression into one of perfect sincerity. ‘I had been unwell. I went out because I felt sick and needed air.’
He was watching me carefully, I knew. ‘Well, I hope your health is improved,’ he said, in a lighter tone. ‘We had better not be late for Prime. They also say you show a particular aptitude for your Hebrew studies,’ he added, as I turned towards the path. I stopped, remembering his insult to Maria. Was he insinuating something? ‘A surprising aptitude,’ he repeated. ‘Almost a natural fluency, apparently. Is there Hebrew blood in your family, Fra Giordano?’
‘No.’ I regarded him with a steady eye. ‘My family has lived in Nola for generations. You may make any enquiries you wish.’
‘Oh, I have,’ he said, with a pleasant smile. ‘Your father is a soldier, is he not? And a soldier for hire at that – not even an officer.’ He sounded regretful. ‘Still – with the right patronage, a young man with your rare abilities might achieve great things in the Dominican order. You were fortunate to be admitted to San Domenico. Without your place here, I fear your exceptional talents would go to waste.’ His eyes skated over me from head to foot as he spoke, as if he were trying to detect whether I was concealing anything.
‘I do consider myself fortunate, Brother.’ I lowered my gaze to demonstrate deference.
‘You might prove it by showing a little less disregard for the rules,’ he said. I jerked my head up and stared at him, indignant. He laughed and stretched his arm out to pull down a branch of the tree above us. ‘No doubt you think me a hypocrite for saying so. But here one has to earn the right to a degree of flexibility. You are very cocksure for a friar who has barely taken his vows. Not my words, Brother, but those of others who have noted your tendency to pick and choose when to honour the vow of obedience. And I do not believe you have the learning to challenge the authority of Holy Scripture in the way you do. I offer this as a friendly warning. But you should be aware that they are keeping a close eye on you.’ He snapped off the twig in his hands and stood there, twirling it between his fingers.
I walked away. I did not know if there was any truth in his words, but the warning itself was not to be ignored. Donato was certainly watching me, and he wanted to be sure I knew he could break my future as easily as that branch. When I reached the far side of the gardens I glanced back to see him under the trees, searching the ground and kicking at the grass with the toe of his calf-leather shoes.
As soon as I was alone in my cell for silent prayer, I opened the locket. The clasp sprung with a satisfying click, to reveal a miniature portrait of a dark-haired woman. It was cheaply rendered; the paint blurred in places so that it was hard to make out her features, though I assumed it must be the girls’ mother. I turned the locket over in my hand, perplexed as to why Maria should have been so afraid of losing it. I pictured again the flash of panic in her eyes, the desperate catch in her voice. Perhaps it was more valuable than she admitted, or it was all the sisters had to remember their mother. But I could see that the back of the golden oval was deep and rounded, though the portrait it contained was flat. It looked as if it had been designed to contain something more substantial than a picture. Something concealed behind it, perhaps. Such things were used for smuggling secret communications, I had heard. With this sudden understanding, my skin prickled into goosebumps. Of course a master goldsmith would know how to work a hidden compartment into a pendant like this. The question was how to find the opening without damaging the mechanism. I worked at the clasp with the tip of my knife with no success, before trying the same trick with the hinge on the other side. I nicked my fingertips so many times the surface and the blade grew slippery with blood, until at last I heard a catch give and the back of the locket opened smoothly. I licked the blood from my fingers, wiped them on my habit and drew out a folded square of parchment.
The writing on it was tiny and densely packed, though neat and precise as if it had been written with a quill as fine as a needle. But my heart was hammering as fiercely as the moment I first saw the girl’s body, for the characters written there were Hebrew. I mouthed the first words – Shema Yisrael – and realised I was holding a text more dangerous than anything I had read in my life. This was a copy of the Shema, from the Jewish prayer service. Anyone found to possess this would be immediately summoned before the Inquisition, with little hope of a pardon. No wonder Maria was so terrified of it falling into the wrong hands.
Officially there were no Jews left in Naples. They had been expelled in 1541, though a few had chosen to convert and stay. Maria’s father must be one such convertito, if he was permitted to trade here as a Neapolitan. I had heard that their houses were raided occasionally to ensure that they had truly renounced the faith, but it was rumoured that some had managed to cling on to their traditions in secret. I recalled the deliberate cruelty of Donato’s insult to Maria; the way she had flinched as if he had struck her. The insinuations he had made to me – that he could taint me with the same slur if he wished. What did he know of Maria’s family history? If the girl Anna had believed herself in love with him, how much might she have confided? To hide the Shema in the locket suggested that, however tentatively, she had chosen to hold on to her identity. Surely she would not have given up such a dangerous secret to a man who belonged among the city’s Inquisitors, no matter how strongly she felt for him?