Giordano Bruno Thriller Series Books 1-3: Heresy, Prophecy, Sacrilege

‘I need to see the rector urgently,’ I panted, ignoring his tone.

‘Rector Underhill cannot see you this morning, he is extremely busy. And the ladies are out,’ he added, with an emphasis that implied he knew just what I was after.

‘Christ’s blood, man, did you not hear me? The matter is urgent – I will fetch him myself if I must.’ I shouldered my way past him through the dining room and thumped on the door of the study.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ the rector blustered, throwing it open. ‘Doctor Bruno?’

‘He forced his way in, sir,’ Adam whined, waving his hands ineffectually behind me.

‘You must come immediately,’ I said. ‘Master Slythurst has discovered something in the strongroom – he called it a monstrous crime. He was too much affected by what he saw – I was sent to bring you as a matter of urgency.’

The rector’s eyes widened in fear and his jowls trembled.

‘A theft, you mean?’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said quietly. ‘A theft does not generally make a grown man heave up his breakfast. I guess Slythurst has seen something more – disturbing – to make his stomach turn like that.’

The rector stared at me.

‘Not another …?’

‘We will not know, sir, until you come to investigate.’

Underhill nodded mutely, then gestured for me to lead the way.

When we reached the west range, Slythurst was already waiting by the door to the sub-rector’s staircase; some of the colour seemed to have returned to his cheeks but he had not yet regained his composure.

‘You must steel yourself, Rector,’ he said, his voice still hoarse. ‘I returned this morning from my business in Buckinghamshire – I left at first light and had only just now returned to college. I thought to take the revenues I had brought from our estates straight up to the strongroom before I changed. I knocked for James but there was no reply, so I went to Cobbett for the spare key to his room. The inner door to the strongroom was locked, as usual, but when I opened it, I found …’ His eyes bulged again and he shook his head, his teeth firmly clenched.

‘Found what?’ the rector asked, as if he did not want to be told the answer.

Slythurst only shook his head and pointed to the stairwell. The rector turned to me awkwardly.

‘Doctor Bruno, perhaps you would …? You have shown us a clear head in such situations before.’

I nodded; the rector was a coward at heart, comfortable ruling his little domain of books, where men snipe at their enemies with rhetoric, but out of his depth when the violence became real. He clearly feared what he was about to witness; suddenly the funny Italian was not so laughable, and he wanted me at his side. Slythurst gave me a sideways glance through narrowed eyes; it seemed that, despite his shock, he had not forgotten his dislike of me and would have preferred me not to be included, but he was in no state to argue with the rector.

The stairs creaked unexpectedly under my feet, making the rector jump; though there was hardly any light in the stairwell, I could make out marks on the threshold of Doctor Coverdale’s room as I entered the door Slythurst had left open. Holding a hand out behind me, I bent to take a closer look and saw that the stains were smudged footprints leading from the tower room. I touched a finger to one of the marks and it came away with a sticky, rust-coloured coating which, when I sniffed it, could only be blood, though it was not fresh. I turned to look at my companions with a grim expression; below me, the rector’s round white face, pale as the moon in the shadowy stairwell, flinched but nodded me onwards.

The low door at the back of the tower room was also swinging open; inside it, I found a narrow spiral staircase barely wide enough for a man to pass, curving upwards to the top of the tower. Halfway up there was a small arched doorway, whose studded oak door had been left ajar by Slythurst in his flight from the sight within. The smell of death was unmistakeable now, stinging my nostrils as I approached the threshold; the rector gave a strangled cry as he cowered behind me. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open and stepped into the college strongroom; immediately I gagged and cried out at what I saw, and felt the rector’s hand grasp at the back of my jerkin as he jostled to see through the doorway. Here, then, was the answer to the mystery of what had happened to Doctor James Coverdale.

The strongroom seemed more claustrophobic than the sub-rector’s room below it, though much of that had to do with the smell; the dimensions of the walls were almost the same, but the wooden-beamed ceiling was lower and the two windows, one facing into the quadrangle and the other towards St Mildred’s Lane, were smaller and narrower, a single perpendicular arch letting in little light on this overcast day. Along each wall stood a number of heavy wooden chests of varying sizes, all painted with heraldic devices, girded with iron bands and fastened with formidable padlocks – the coffers containing the college revenues. To the left of the window that faced into the college was James Coverdale. His wrists had been bound together and tied over his head to an iron bracket fixed into the wall for candles. He was naked except for his linen undershirt, and his head slumped downwards so that his chin rested on his chest, which was drenched with blood, now matted and dried – he had not died in the past few hours, it seemed. But the most extraordinary aspect, the sight that had made me cry out in shock, was that he had been shot numerous times with arrows from a close range. Nine or ten stuck out from his torso at various points, giving him the appearance of a pincushion – or an icon. I knew immediately what I was witnessing; so, it seemed, did the rector, who tightened his grip on my sleeve so that I could feel his hand trembling. I glanced sideways at him as he stared in unblinking horror at the corpse of a second colleague in two days; his lips were working rapidly and I thought at first that he was uttering a silent prayer, until I realised that he was trying to speak but could not make his voice obey him. When eventually he managed to pronounce the word, it was the one that had leapt instantly to my own mind:

‘Sebastian.’

‘Sebastian who?’ said Slythurst impatiently. He was still lingering behind us on the stairs, his eyes averted, as if reluctant to enter the room a second time.

‘St Sebastian,’ I said quietly.

The rector nodded absently, as if in a trance.

‘“He was commanded to be apprehended, and that he should be brought into the open field where, by his own soldiers, he was shot through the body with innumerable arrows”,’ he recited hoarsely; I had no doubt that the words belonged to Foxe. ‘And look.’ He lifted a trembling hand and pointed. On the wall beside the window, raggedly traced with a finger dipped in the dead man’s blood, was the symbol of a spoked wheel.

‘And there is the weapon,’ Slythurst said decisively, entering the room and pointing at the wall beneath the window, where a handsome carved English longbow, inlaid with green-and-scarlet tracery, had been left leaning beside an empty quiver decorated in similar fashion, as if the killer had placed it there calmly and carefully when his work was done.

‘But that is Gabriel Norris’s longbow,’ the rector croaked in disbelief. ‘I told him to have it locked away here the other morning, after he shot the dog.’

‘Then we have our killer,’ Slythurst asserted, nodding a full stop to his pronouncement.

I took a couple of paces towards the body, crouching to peer up at the face.

‘These arrows did not kill him,’ I said.

‘Oh? You think he died of a fever?’ Slythurst seemed to have regained his old manner remarkably quickly; I sensed his impatience with my presence in what he regarded as his domain.

‘Quiet, Walter,’ said Underhill sharply, and for once I was grateful to him. ‘Go on, Doctor Bruno.’

‘His throat has been cut,’ I said, and clenching my teeth I grasped Coverdale’s abundant hair and lifted the head so that the dreadful face was visible. The rector gave a little squeal into his handkerchief; Slythurst winced and turned away. The dead man’s eyes were half closed, a rag stuffed into his mouth as a gag, and his throat had been sliced straight across. The wound pulled open as I lifted the head, and from its sticky edges I could see that the incision was a botched job, though it had, in the end, achieved its aim; his neck was scored with the nicks and scratches of aborted cuts, as if the killer had taken several attempts to hold his knife steady and in the right place, suggesting that he was not a practised assassin.

‘Who would have such a weapon?’ the rector asked tremulously. ‘All the university men are forbidden to carry daggers in the city precincts.’

‘A razor could have done it,’ I said grimly. ‘Or a small knife, if it was sharp enough.’

‘Then why shoot him like a boar afterwards?’ asked Slythurst, daring to step slightly nearer. ‘And the picture – is that a message?’

‘The rector has already told you,’ I said. ‘For show. This is a parody of the martyrdom of St Sebastian, just as Roger Mercer’s death was supposed to mimic the martyrdom of St Ignatius. I do not think you can pass this one off as an accident, Rector,’ I added, turning to Underhill, who had sat down heavily on one of the sturdy chests, his face in his hands.

‘What arrant nonsense!’ Slythurst exclaimed, now fully over his initial shock, it seemed. ‘Roger is attacked by a dog and you read into that the mimicry of a martyrdom? What murderer would go to such lengths? I rather think your brain is fevered, Doctor Bruno. This, I grant you –’ he gestured at the punctured corpse of James Coverdale hanging from the candle bracket – ‘is clearly some horrific violence against poor James by a madman, but these fanciful patterns will not help us catch a dangerous intruder! I can only guess that someone tried to break into the strongroom, James tried to stop him, and this was the result.’

He paused, breathless, hands on his hips as if daring me to challenge this hypothesis.

‘A thief who stopped to paint pictures in a dying man’s blood?’ I said, returning his insolent stare. ‘And none of the doors have been forced, nor have these chests been tampered with. You said yourself that both the strongroom and the door to the outer room were locked when you returned this morning,’ I reminded Slythurst. ‘Who would have had a key to the strongroom?’

‘The three of us,’ Slythurst said, indicating the rector and the bloody corpse in the corner of the room. ‘Each of us has a key to open the strongroom door, but the principal coffers here have three padlocks apiece, so that the rector, the bursar and the sub-rector must all be present to open them. We call them the chests of the three keys. The bulk of the college funds are kept in these. The trunks containing account books and deeds I can open alone.’

‘A safeguard against embezzlement,’ the rector added.

‘So Doctor Coverdale must have unlocked the door himself and let the killer in,’ I mused, ‘and his killer could have locked it afterwards using Coverdale’s own key.’

‘He must have been forced to open it at knifepoint by a robber,’ Slythurst speculated.

‘But that would have been fruitless if he could not then open the coffers on his own,’ I said.

‘A robber would not know that. Perhaps that’s why he was killed,’ Slythurst said. ‘The thief flew into a rage because he did not believe James couldn’t open the chest. That must be it!’

He seemed remarkably keen to discount my theory that Coverdale’s death was connected to Roger Mercer’s, I thought, and wondered if that was just because he could not stand to concede that I might be right in anything, or because it suited him to throw up a false trail. After all, he was one of the two people alive with a key to the strongroom.

‘When were either of you last here?’ I asked.