Heresy by S.J. Parris Read Free Book Online

secret knowledge, as the dove had returned to Noah bearing her olive branch.

    A SUDDEN CRACK of thunder jolted me out of memory, back to the room where I sat pressed up against the rain-slick window of a royal palace, watching a courtyard illuminated by sheets of light. In England I had hoped to live peacefully and write the books that I believed would shake Europe to its foundations, but I was ambitious and that was my curse. To be ambitious when you have neither means nor status leaves you dependent on the patronage of greater men—or, in this case, women. Tomorrow I would see the great university city of Oxford, where I must ferret out two nuggets of gold: the secrets Walsingham wanted from the Oxford Catholics, and the book I now believed to be buried in one of its libraries.



Chapter
2
    W e left for Oxford at first light the following morning on horses that Sidney had managed to procure from the steward at Windsor, fine mounts with elaborate harnesses of crimson-and-gold velvet, studded with brass fittings that jingled merrily as we rode, but we were undoubtedly a more solemn party than had set out the day before on the river amid music and gaily coloured pennants. The storm had broken but the rain had set in determinedly, the warmth had evaporated from the air, and the sky seemed to sag over us, grey and sullen; it would have been impossible to travel by river without being half drowned. The palatine was much quieter over breakfast and sat with his fingers pressed to his temples, occasionally emitting a little moan—Sidney whispered to me that this was the penance for a late night and prodigious quantities of port wine—and my mood was much improved accordingly. Sidney was cheerful, as his winnings from the night’s card games had grown steadily in direct proportion to the palatine’s drinking,but the weather had dampened our bright mood and we spent the first part of the journey in silence, broken now and again by Sidney’s observations of the road conditions or the palatine’s unapologetic belches.
    To either side, the thick green landscape passed unchanging, bedraggled under the rain, the only sound the muted thud of hooves on the wet turf as Sidney drew his horse alongside mine at the head of the party and allowed the palatine to fall behind, his head drooping to his chest, flanked by the two body servants who attended him, their horses carrying the vast panniers containing Laski’s and Sidney’s finery for the visit. I had only one leather bag with a few books and a couple of changes of clothes, which I kept with me, strapped to my own saddle. By the middle of the afternoon we had reached the royal forest of Shotover on the outskirts of Oxford. The road was poorly maintained where it passed through the forest, and we had to slow our pace so the horses would not stumble in the puddles and potholes.
    “So, Bruno,” Sidney said, keeping his voice low, when we were out of earshot of the palatine and his servants, “tell me more about this book of yours, that has brought you all the way from Paris.”
    “For the last century it was thought lost,” I replied softly, “but I never believed that, and all through Europe I met book dealers and collectors who whispered rumours and half-remembered stories about its possible whereabouts. But it was not until I was living in Paris that I uncovered real proof that the book could be found.”
    In Paris, I told him, among the circle of Italian expatriates that gathered around the fringes of King Henri’s court, I had met an aged Florentine gentleman named Pietro, who never tired of boasting to acquaintances that he was the great-great-nephew of the famous book dealer and biographer Vespasiano da Bisticci, maker of books for Cosimo de’ Medici and cataloguer of the Vatican library. This Pietro, knowing of my interest in rare and esoteric works, recounted to me a story passed down to him by his grandfather,Vespasiano’s nephew, who had been an apprentice to his