The Secret Dead (6 page)

I turned away in disgust.

“What else would you do?” he continued. “Call in the
magistrates? Destroy the whole convent and college with a scandal, for the sake
of one foolish girl?” He rubbed the flat of his hand across his cropped hair. “I
admire your sense of justice, Bruno, I have already told you that. But you are
young. If you want to make your way in this city, you must learn to be a
realist.”

I wanted to tell him that folly did not deserve death, that
her name was Anna, and she did have people to mourn her. I wanted to protest
that a rich and well-connected young man was not entitled to snuff out a life
merely because it had become inconvenient to him. But I could say nothing
without revealing that I had been asking questions. My gaze shifted away to the
rows of glass bottles and earthenware jars ranged along the shelves. The
dispensary always smelled clean, of freshly crushed herbs and the boiling water
with lemon juice that he used to scrub down his table and instruments, a
contrast to the pall of sickness and old bodies that hung over the infirmary.
Somewhere in here a tiny, half-formed child was suspended in alcohol, in a jar.
Donato’s child.

“Suppose someone knew she came here last night, and comes in
search of her?”

Gennaro’s brow lowered; he fixed me with such a penetrating
stare that I almost feared he could see my deception.

“Why should you imagine that?”

“Her clothes did not look like those of a whore. Perhaps,”
I added, as if I had just thought of it, “when you first found her, she was wearing
some jewelry that might identify her? If we knew who she was, we might be
better prepared to defend ourselves against any accusations.”

He sighed, as if the conversation were keeping him from
something pressing. “The girl came here alone last night. Donato took her into
the lemon grove — they argued, and he grabbed her by the neck to frighten her
into silence, he said, for he feared she threatened to make a scene and rouse
the whole convent. She resisted, and he held her harder than he intended. Her
death was an accident.”

“You know that is a lie,” I said, quietly. “He meant to
silence her all right. She must have told him she was with child.”

He brought his hand down hard on the table. “The business
is done now, Bruno. There is no evidence that she was ever here.”

“Did he ask you to help dispose of her?” My voice sounded
small and uncertain in the thick silence of the dispensary. “Did he know what
you were going to do?” With every question, I was unpicking the fine thread of
trust that existed between me and Gennaro, but I could not stop myself. I
wanted the truth. He had brought me into that room with her corpse last night;
I felt it was the least he owed me. A sigh rattled through him, and he leaned
back against the workbench as if he needed support.

“Donato came to me in a blind panic last night, shaking all
over. He told me what I just told you — that this young woman had come to the
gate, demanding to talk to him. He had taken her into the lemon grove, away
from prying eyes, and they had argued, he grabbed her by the throat, she fell
to the ground. He claimed he thought she had merely passed out — he wanted me
to go with him to see if I could revive her.”

I made a scornful noise. “He must have known she was dead.”

“Well, he was in no doubt as soon as I saw her. He was on
the verge of hysteria — he was begging for my help. She could not be discovered
inside the walls, obviously. Our only option was to move the body as far from
San Domenico as possible before anyone noticed her missing.”

“But you decided to cut her up first.”

His eyes slid coldly over me. “It was not my first
intention — though I knew it would greatly lessen any chance of the convent
being implicated if her body were made unrecognizable. It was only when he
mentioned that they had argued over her threat of a paternity suit …” He
trailed off, tracing one finger along the grain of the table’s surface.

“You saw an opportunity that some of the leading anatomists
in Europe would sell their own souls for.” I thought of the embryo, silent and
transparent in its jar.

That cold sheen in his eyes intensified; he pointed a
finger toward me. “Do not be so quick to judge, Giordano Bruno. The advance of
knowledge demands a certain ruthlessness. It is a quality I do not doubt you
possess yourself, though you have not yet fully discovered it. I told Donato that
if he would help me move the body to the storeroom, I would see to it that she was
not found anywhere near San Domenico. He was greatly relieved, I think, to have
shifted the problem on to someone else’s shoulders.”

I said nothing, but I could not look at him. Gennaro folded
his arms across his chest. When he spoke again, his voice was kinder.

“The only accusations that can harm us now are coming from
your own conscience, which you must learn to silence, or you will put us all in
jeopardy. She is no longer your business. Do not give me cause to repent of my
belief in you, Bruno.”

I lifted my head and met his gaze. In his stern expression,
I saw anger tempered by a fatherly concern. I had thought I was being tested,
to see how much I was prepared to risk in the pursuit of knowledge. Now I felt
deceived; this had not been about the advance of science at all. What we had
done was all in the service of protecting a murderer and the name of San
Domenico. A murderer who might one day be the head of the most powerful
religious house in Naples. I wished bitterly that I had never thought to follow
Fra Gennaro last night. Not that my ignorance would have changed anything, but
I would have been spared the weight of this guilt.

From beyond the window, the chapel bell struck a long, low
note.

“You had better get yourself to Matins,” he said. He
reached a jar down from a cabinet to his right, unstoppered it, and pulled out
one of the ginger and honey balls he kept for throat complaints in winter. “Here.
Take one of these — I can smell the tavern on your breath. And Bruno …” he
called, softly, as I opened the door. I turned, expectant.

“Remember your oath.”

I nodded. But I also remembered my promise to Maria.

*
* *

At first light, shortly after Lauds, I crept out of my cell
again and crossed the gardens to the lemon grove. I scoured the ground,
fancying I could see here or there in the parched earth and scrubby grass some
sign of a struggle, but there was nothing conclusive. Nothing to say that the
girl had ever set foot here. I searched among the trees for almost half an hour,
in vain. Gennaro had deftly ignored my question about jewelry; perhaps he had
disposed of the girl’s locket in case it should identify her, or perhaps he had
never seen it. A necklace chain could easily be broken if you were fighting off
a pair of strong hands around your throat.

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 toward 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,” he said. “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 noncommittal 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 toward 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 honor 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 that 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 realized 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 its falling into the wrong hands.