The question was barely a whisper. She knew the answer. She clenched her hands to stop them trembling and her face was tight with fear – the same fear I had felt only a moment before at her mention of Fontanelle. The naked terror of being found out.
‘Yes. Is it your mother?’
She nodded, a tense little jerk of her head, her eyes still boring into me.
‘She must have been beautiful,’ I said. ‘But something as valuable as that should be carefully guarded. Others might not be so understanding of your desire to honour your family memory.’
She gave a gulping sob and wrapped both hands over the locket. ‘Thank you.’ She swallowed. ‘Did you show it to anyone? What is inside, I mean?’ She glanced over her shoulder, as if I might have brought an army of Inquisitors to hide around the corner.
‘No one but me. And I will say nothing.’
‘Why?’ That sharpness again; the muscles twitching in her jaw. ‘Why should I trust you?’
‘Because …’ Because my own secret is far worse, I thought, and it is the very least I owe you for the fact that you will never truly know what happened to your sister. I could not say that. But the answer I gave her was also true. ‘Because I believe God is bigger than the rules we impose on one another. I think He does not mind if we find different paths to Him.’
‘That is heresy,’ she whispered.
‘So is that.’ I nodded to the locket in her hand.
‘You are a good man, Bruno,’ she said. Unexpectedly, she leaned forward and placed a soft kiss on my cheek, at the edge of my mouth. She stood back and almost smiled. ‘For a Dominican.’ I could not look her in the eye.
‘Wait,’ she called, as I began to walk away. ‘That man. The friar. Donato, is that his name? Where can he be found?’
‘At San Domenico. Or at the Cerriglio, where you found him last night.’
‘But he is always surrounded by people. I want to speak to him alone.’
‘He would never allow it. Not after your last encounter.’
She shrugged. ‘Still, I have to try. For my sister’s sake. I just want to know.’
I considered this. ‘He is rarely alone, except in his cell. Or perhaps when he takes one of the upstairs rooms at the tavern, to meet a woman.’
She nodded, tucking the information away. ‘The cruellest part,’ she said, with some difficulty, pausing to master her emotions, ‘is that he has stolen from us even the chance to bury and mourn her properly. Whatever he has done with her, I can never forgive him for that.’ I watched her teeth clench. She took a deep breath. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her voice harder this time, determined. ‘For what you have done for my family. Perhaps we will meet again.’
‘Perhaps.’ I bowed and turned away. She would never know my part in what happened to her sister, but I would carry the weight of that knowledge with me always.
September rolled into October, apples ripened in the orchard and mists drifted in from the bay, though without a repeat of the previous year’s fever epidemic. Fra Gennaro relaxed around me as he realised that I appeared to have suppressed my qualms and was not going to endanger him with a sudden eruption of conscience; he requested my assistance more frequently in the dispensary, and on occasion confided in me his notes and drawings from previous experiments, as if to demonstrate his trust. He promised to introduce me to a friend of his in the city, an aristocrat and a man of considerable influence as a patron of the sciences. As the weeks passed, I even managed to sleep through the night untroubled by dreams of the dead girl, though not every night.
But in other ways, my fortunes took a turn for the worse. It became clear that I had put myself on the wrong side of Donato, and that was a dangerous place to be. Perhaps he thought I knew too much, or perhaps he just wanted to remind me of his threat. I was summoned before the prior, charged with a series of minor infractions of the rules that he could not have known about unless someone was spying on me. I was given penance and a stern warning not to repeat the offences, as there would be no leniency in future. I lost the small freedoms taken for granted by the wealthier young friars, and found myself reduced to a life of prayer, worship and study – which was, I supposed, no more or less than the life I had signed up to in the first place, but it still chafed. The watch brothers were told to confirm that I was in my cell every night between Compline and Matins. My reading material and my correspondence were subject to unannounced inspections. Everywhere I felt his eyes on me – in the refectory, in chapel, in chapter meetings – and I could do nothing but watch and wait for him to strike. All this petty needling, I felt, was just a prelude. Donato was afraid of what he thought I knew, and he had something planned for me. The worst was not knowing what or when, so that I was permanently on my guard.
Over a month had passed since the night of the girl’s death. The season was growing colder; at night, when we trooped reluctantly to Matins as the bells struck two, the air was tinged with woodsmoke and our breath plumed around our faces. I shuffled to my place in the chapel one night in October, stifling a yawn (there was a penance for that, if you did it too often), when I glanced across the choir and noticed the empty seats. Donato, Agostino, Paolo and at least two of the other younger friars had not returned in time for the service. This in itself was unusual; for all his swagger, Donato was careful to make an outward show of obedience. He reasoned that, as long as he was present at each appointed office, no one would question what he did in between. I could see that the prior, too, had noted the absences, though he made no mention of it.
Ten minutes into the service, I heard a disturbance at the back and turned to see Agostino rush in, his face blanched and stricken, the door clanging behind him. With no regard for propriety, he pushed through to Fra Gennaro and whispered in his ear; Gennaro immediately snatched up his candle and followed Agostino out of the chapel. The prior was furious at the interruption, his face slowly turning the colour of ripe grapes, but he mastered himself, exchanged a few words with the sub-prior, and disappeared after the troublemakers. The younger novices were almost bursting with excitement at the unknown drama and the sub-prior had to call us back to order several times. It was a small miracle that we managed to complete the office as if nothing was amiss.
Paolo was waiting for me in the cloister when I returned from Matins. I had never seen him look so shaken.
‘Did you hear? Donato is dead.’
‘What?’ I stared at him. ‘When?’
‘An hour ago. At the Cerriglio.’
Heedless now of the watch brothers, I followed him to his cell and made him tell me everything.
Donato had taken a room upstairs at the tavern and engaged the services of one of the girls. After she left, he had called for hot water and towels to wash himself before returning to the convent. When the servant took the basin of water up to him there was no answer from the room. She knocked louder and then opened the door, to find him lying on the bed naked with his throat cut. You could have heard her screams at the top of Vesuvius, Paolo said. No one had noticed any disturbance from Donato’s room earlier, though one of the other customers thought he had seen a new serving girl, one he did not recognise, loitering on the stairs by the back door shortly before the body was found. But Signora Rosaria had not hired any new serving girls recently, and this man was quite far gone in his cups, so his word was not worth much.